This document was written with the typewriter, and contains edits in typewriter, black ink, blueblack ink, blue ink, pink ink, pencil. In this visualisation, unclear words are placed between [brackets].
[p. 100r]
[1806] that you can't stand up for yourself, and generally speaking that is so.
[1807] But given favourable conditions, a feeble and awkward assailant, in your own class what, and a lonely place, and there's a chance of your [⁁]you have a good chance of showing what stuff you are made of.
[1808] And it is doubtless in order to revive interest in this possibility, too often forgotten, that I have delayed over an incident of no interest in itself, like all that has a moral.
[1809] But did I eat at least, from time to time?
[1810] Perforce, perforce, roots, berries, sometimes a little mulberry, a mushroom from time to time, trembling, knowing nothing about mushrooms.
[1811] What else, haah yes, carobs, so dear to goats.
[1812] In a word whatever I could find, forests abound in good things.
[1813] And having heard, or more probably read somewhere, in the days when I thought it would help [⁁]I would be well advised to educate myself, or to amuse myself, or to stupefy myself, or to kill time, that when a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line.
[1814] For I stopped being a half-witted,[₰] and became as cute as a fox [⁁]sly, whenever I took the trouble.
[1815] And my head was a storehouse of useful knowledge.
[1816] And if I did not go in a rigorously straight line, with my system of going in a circle, at least I did not go in a circle, and that was something.
[1817] And by going on doing this, day after day, and night after night, I looked forward to getting out of the forest, some day.
[1818] For my region was not all forest, far from it. [1819] But there were plains too, mountains and sea, and some towns and villages, with [⁁]connected by highways and byways. between them.
[1820] And I was all the more convinced that I would get out of the forest some day, for having because I had [⁁]as I had already got out of it, more than once, and I knew how difficult it was not to do again what you have done already before.
[1821] But things had been rather different then.
[1822] And yet I did not despair of seeing the light tremeble, some day, through the still boughs, the strange light of the plain, its pale wild eddies,
[p. 101r]
[1822] through the bronze-still boughs, which no breath ever stirreed.
[1823] But it was a day I dreaded too.
[1824] So that I was sure it would come sooner or later.
[1825] For it wasn't was not so bad being in the forest, I could imagine worse, and I could have stayed there till I died, unrepining, yes, without pining for the light and the plain and the other amenities of my region.
[1826] For I knew them well, the amenities of my region, and I considered that the forest was no worse.
[1827] And it was not only no worse, to my mind, but it was better, in this sense, that I was in it there.
[1828] That is a strange way, is it not, of looking at things.
[1829] Perhaps less strqange than it seems.
[1830] For being in the forest, a place neither worse nor better than the others, and being free to stay there, was it not natural I should think highly of it, not because of what it was, but because I was in it [⁁]there.
[1831] For I was in it [⁁]there.
[1832] And being there I did not have to go there, and that was not b to be despised, seeing the state of my legs and my body in general.
[1833] That is all I wished to say, and if I did not say it at the outwset it is simply that something was against it.
[1834] But I could not, stay in the forest I mean, I was not free to. [1835] That is to say I could have, physically nothing could have been easier, but I was not purely physical, I lacked something, and I would have had the feeling, if I had stayed in the forest, of going against an imperative, at least I had that impression.
[1836] But perhaps I was mistaken, perhaps I would have been better advised to stay in the forest, perhaps I could have stayed there, without remorse, without the painful impression of being at [⁁]committing a fault, almost in a state of sin.
[1837] For I have greatly sinned, at all times, greatly sinned against my prompters.
[1838] And if I cannot decently be proud of this I see no reason either to be sorry.
[1839] But imperatives are a little different, and I have always been inclined to submit to them, I don't know why.
[1840] For they never led me anywhere, but tore me from places where, if all was not well, all was no worse than anywhere
[p. 102r]
[1840] else, and then went silent, leaving me on the rocks [⁁]stranded.
[1841] So I knew my imperatives well, and yet I submitteed to them.
[1842] It had become a habit.
[1843] It is true they nearly all bore on the same question, that of my relations with my mother, and on the need to bring [⁁]importance of bringing as soon as possible some light to bear on them [⁁]these and even on the kind of light that should be brought to bear and the most effective means of doing so.
[1844] Yes, these imperatives were quite explicit, [₰] and even detailed until, having set me in motion at last, they gbegan to falter, anthen went silent, leaving me there like a fool who neither knows where he is going nor why he is going there.
[1845] And they nearly all bore, as I may have said already, on the same painful and thorny question.
[1846] And I do not think I could mention even one having a different purport.
[1847] And the one enjoining me then to leave the forest without delay was in no[x]way different from those I was used to, as to its meaning.
[1848] For in its framing I thought I noticed something new.
[1849] For after the habitual [⁁]usual blarney there followed this solemn warning, Perhaps it is already too late.
[1850] It was in Latin, nimis sero, I think that's Latin.
[1851] Charming things, hypothetical imperatives.
[1852] But if I had never succeeded in liquidiating this matter of my mother, the fault must not be imputed solely to that voice which deserted me, prematurely.
[1853] It had its share was partly to in the blame responsible [⁁]blame, that's all it can be reproached with.
[1854] For the outer world opposed my succeeding too, with its wiles, I have given you some examples. of them.
[1855] And even if the voice could have harried me to the very scene of action, even then I might well have sucfceeded no better, because of the other obstacles barring my way.
[1856] And in this command which faltered, then died, it was hard not to hear the unspoken entreaty, Don't do it, Molloy.
[1857] In forever reminding me thus of my duty was its purpose to show me the folloy of it?
[1858] Perhaps.
[1859] Fortunately it did no more than exhort stress, the better to mock if you like, an innate velleity.
[1860] And of myself,
[p. 103r]
[1860] all my life, I think I had been going to my mother, with the purpose of establishing our relations on a less precarious footing.
[1861] And when I was with her, and I often succeeded, I left her without having done anything.
[1862] And when I was no longer with her I wqas again on my way to her, hoping to do better the next time.
[1863] And when I appeared to give up and to busy myself with something else, or with nothing at all any more, in reality I was hatching my plans and seeking the way to her house.
[1864] This is taking a queer turn.
[1865] So even without this so-called imperative I impugn, it would have been difficult for me to stay in the forest, since I was forced to assume my mother was not there.
[1866] And yet it might have been better for me to try and stay.
[1867] But I also said, Yet a little while, at the rate things are going, and I won't be able to move, but will have to stay, where I happen to be, unless someone comes and carries me.
[1868] Oh I did not say it in such limpid language.
[1869] And when I say I said, etc., all I mean is that I knew confusedly things were so, without knowing exactly what it was all about.
[1870] And every time I say, I said this, or, I said that, or speak of a voice saying, far away inside me, Molloy, and then a fine phrase more or less clear and simple, aor find myself compelled to attribute to others intelligible words, or hear my own voice uttering to others more or less articulate sounds, I am merely complying with the demands of the convention that you [⁁]demands you either lie or hold your peace.
[1871] For what really happened was quite different. [1872] And I did not say, Yet a little while, at the rate things are going, etc., but that resembled perhaps what I would have said, if I had been able.
[1873] In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, who which gives a start and pretends to be dead.
[1874] And then sometimes there arose in within me, confusedly, a kind of consciousness, which I exrp[8]ressed by saying, I said, etc., or, Don't do it Molloy, or, Is that your mother's name?
[p. 104r]
[1874] said the sergeant, I quote from memory.
[1875] Or which I express without sinking to the level of oratio recta, but by means of other figures quite as deceitful, as for example, It seemed to me that, etc., or, I had the impression that, etc., for it seemed to me sweet damn [⁁]nothing at all, and I had no impression of any kind, but simply somewhere something had changed, so that I too had to change, or the world too had to change, in order for nothing to be changed.
[1876] And it was these little adjustments, as between Galileo's jars [⁁]vessels, that I can only express by saying, I feared that, or, I hoped that, or, Is that your mother's name? said the sergeant, for example, and that I might doubtless have expressed otherwise and better, if I had gone to the trouble.
[1877] And so I shall perhaps some day when I have less horror of trouble than today.
[1878] But I think not. [1879] So I said, Yet a little while, at the rate things are going, and I won't be able to move, but will have to stay, where I happen to be, unless some kind person comes and carries me.
[1880] For my marches got shorter and shorter and my halts in consequence more and more frequent and I may add prolonged.
[1880] For the notion of the long halt does not necessarily follow from that of the short march, nor that of the frequent halt either, when you come to think of it, unless you give frequent a meaning it does not possess, and I could never bring myself to do a thing like that.
[1881] And I was all the more anxious it seemed it seemed to me all the more important to get out of this forest as fast as I could, [⁁]with all possible speed in view of the fact that [⁁]as I would very soon be powerless to get out of anything whatsoegver, were it but a bower.
[1882] It was winter, it must have been winter, and not only many trees had lost their leaves, but these lost leaves had gone all black and spongy and my crutches sank into them, in places right up to the fork.
[1883] Strange to say I felt no colder than usual.
[1884] Perhaps it was only autumn.
[1885] But I wqas never very sensitive to changes of temperature.
[1886] And the gloom, if it seemed less blue than before, was as thick as ever.
[1887] Which made me say in the end, It is less