Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

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Segment 1

[1753] to time I came on a kind of crossroads, you know, a star, or circus,
of the kind to be found in even the most unexplored of forests.
[1754] And
turning then methodically to face the radiating paths, hoping for I
know not what, I turned in a complete circle, or in less than a circle,
or more than a circle, so great was the resemblance between the paths.
[1755] Here the gloom was not so thick and I made haste to leave it. [1756] I don't
like gloom to lighten, it's suspicious.

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Segment 2

[1757] I had a certain number of
encounters in this forest, naturally, where does none not, but nothing
serious.
[1758] I notably encountered a charcoal-burner. [1759] I might have loved
him, I think, if I had been seventy years younger.
[1760] But it's not certain.
[1761] But then he too would have been younger by as much, oh not quite as much,
but much younger.
[1762] I never really had much love to spare, but all the
same I had my little quota, when I was small, and it went to the old men,
when it could,.

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Segment 3

[1763] And I even think I had the time to love one or two, oh
not [r]with true love, no, nothing like the old woman, I've lost her name
again, Rose, no, anyway you see who I mean, but all the same, how shall
I say, tenderly, as those on the brink of a better earth.
[1764] Ah I was a
precocious child, and then I was a precocious man.
[1765] Now they all give
me the shits, the ripe, the unribpe and the rotting from the bough.
[1766] He
was all over me, begging me to share his hut, believe it or not.

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Segment 4

[1767] A total
stranger.
[1768] Sick with solitude probably. [1769] I say charcoal-burner, but I
really don't know.
[1770] I see smoke somewhere. [1771] That's something that never
escapes me, smoke.
[1772] A long dialogue ensued, interspersed with groans.
[1773] I could not ask him the way to my town, the name of which escaped me stilll.
[1774] I asked him the way to the nearest town, I found the necessary words,
and accents.
[1775] He did not know.

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Segment 5

[1776] He was born in the forest probably and
had spent his whole life there.
[1777] I asked him to show me the nearest way
out of the forest.
[1778] I grew eloquent. [1779] His reply was exceedingly confused.
[1780] Either I didn't understand a word he said, or he didn't understand a word

Transcription
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