Beckett often overwrites or
overtypes
overtypes
to self-correct; when typ ing, he sometimes cancels a word or phrase if it does not fit the space on the page, and then rewrites it on the next line or page.
Samuel Beckett
But for anyone who knows no Russian, the local trans literation is the only one to matter.
Exactly the same will be true, for example, for Arabic place-names: Marrakesh for the English, Marrakech for the French.
Much ofBeckett's writing life is in France, and what he sees will usually be French transliterations.
As it happens, the issue of Russian names arises again, in a very different cultural and historical context.
The world ofdance is profoundly affected, first and foremost in France, by the innovations ofSergei Diaghilev, the founder ofthe Ballets Russes.
The very name ofthe company hints at the long-established link between Russia and France (educated Russians in those days spoke French, some indeed as their first language), and it was to France that Diaghilev took his dancers.
Many ofthese settled there - and took on French versions oftheir names.
Massine and Fokine (like Lenine and Staline, in this respect ifno other) have that final "e" in French in order to avoid what would otherwise be an unwarranted nasal sound in the second syllable.
These are the names that Beckett is used to seeing on billboards, tickets, programs.
The same holds for writers, musicians (whether composers or performers), and actors.
Beckett, unsurprisingly, will tend to reach for the first name to hand, regardless oflanguage, when he comes to write about any ofthem.
Finally, there is Beckett's capricious handling, influenced by where he happens to be at the time of writing, offoreign names or terms.
In the letters inspired by his tour of German art collections in the late 1930s, he often adopts the German
xxxvii
French translator's preface
spelling "barock" for what English, following French, refers to as "bar oque"; or calls French towns by the German version ofthem: "Strassburg" for "Strasbourg," "Kolmar" for "Colmar. " Against that, he also uses the English spellings of certain French place-names, for instance "Marseilles. "
But it is the French/English divide and its consequences that matter above all. Within that, a new divide appears: before Godot and after. Fame brings its rewards, but exacts a price which Beckett finds heavy. The effect on the letters is immediate. His correspondents are no longer only friends, old or new. For the first time, wariness appears in the writing. Beckett's legendary courtesy ensures that letters will be answered, but many raise, directly or indirectly, questions that irritate or dismay him (letters to friends indicate how much). The division in time is accompanied by a division in kind: on the one hand, letters to intimates; on the other, letters to the rest.
To these questions specific to Beckett must be added other inescap
able but more general issues. All letters written in French to anyone
other than an intimate will normally have one of a set of formal open
ings, and one of a set of even more formal endings. With the openings,
the very formal "Monsieur" or "Madame" and the rather less formal
"Cher Monsieur" or "Chere Madame" must be adjusted in English to
include the person's surname. But it is the writer who decides on the
degree of formality. Decisions of this kind may well be difficult, which
is why the much less formal and neatly non-committal "Cher ami" is
such a boon to writers. But since there is no direct equivalent in English,
the choice of degree of intimacy is pushed back on to the translator.
Here another factor comes in. The habit among men of using surnames
hung on much longer in France than in England, where the American
preference for first names edges it out. "Cher ami" gives no clue
whether it would be more appropriate to write "Dear Smith" or "Dear
John"; and this is something which, like the "vous"f"tu" distinction,
may have surprising importance. An example can be found in the
ending of Beckett's letter to his agent George Reavey, with whom
relations have gone from cool, even frosty, to trusting. The distance
traveled can be seen, even in the jokiness, with "Vas-y" (go ahead) at the
1
beginning and "A toi" (yours) at the end, both in the intimate form. Endings are less troubling, for although the battery of conventional formulas is much greater, the differences between them are. for Beckett, largely unimportant. Their ostentatious formality and
xxxviii
French translator's preface
apparent obsequiousness have no echo in English. The typical "Je vous prie de croire, Monsieur, a ! 'assurance de mes sentiments les meilleurs" would sound grotesque in English if rendered "literally. " It, and its like, have virtually no emotional charge in French, however, and so must be represented by a neutral, comparably uncharged formula. English has in fact very few of these, so "Yours sincerely" will appear very often.
Then there is the matter of punctuation. Beckett's practice is unpre dictable, but that merely compounds a difficulty: the difference between standard French and English usages. In French, for example, it is perfectly proper to connect two main clauses by a simple comma; English requires a semicolon (as in this sentence), or a new sentence. Here again, the only reliable guidance for the translator comes from the English-language letters.
More interesting, perhaps, is the question of "swearwords": the whole territory that French calls engagingly "la langue verte. " The issue surfaces in the letters concerned with the Lord Chamberlain's refusaltoallowperformanceinEnglandofthetextofFindepartieunless certain cuts are made. The main point is that French and English "swearwords" do not overlap neatly. Some of the French ones are the etymological cousins of the English ones, but patterns of use are not at all the same. Several French words ("connerie" is an example) have been virtually emptied of their scabrous or vulgar content. The base-word "con" is close kin to the English word "cunt," but has long been used without any ofthe harsh or sexual associations ofthe English word. It is a very common way of saying "fool," "idiot," "nitwit," so that a "connerie" is what someone like that would do or say: something stupid. Similarly, years before well-brought-up young women would have said "shit" in public, "merde" and its cognates were in common use in France. Elderly ladies were saying "Mon Dieu" in French and meaning little more than "Goodness me" when their English equiva lents would not have dreamed of saying "My God. " The particular significance of "connerie" is that it is one of the words that the Lord Chamberlain objected to in the projected performances at the Royal Court Theatre of Fin de partie. Clearly, he or his adviser was unaware of the wide difference in practice between French and English, and assumed that the word was one of the words then forbidden (in 1957 there was still a long way to go to the lifting of restrictions that
xxxix
French translator's preface
followed the verdict in the Chatterley trial and led eventually to the abolishing, in this connection, ofthe powers ofthe Lord Chamberlain). But these orders of difficulty, concerned as they are with small differ ences of cultural practice, are as nothing compared with that raised by Beckett's wordplay. It is not just that at any moment he may spice his English with a word or a phrase in French: that much is expectable from an expatriate English-speaker writing to a friend in Ireland or England or the USA. Nor is French the only foreign language he draws on - we are also likely to be faced with words or passages in Italian, or German, or Latin - usually because the language chosen has a neater or more expressive rendering of what he wants to say. This, after all, is the currency that translators must expect to deal in. But Beckett's practice is often at the boundary oflanguages. There are Gallicisms: deliberate, as in "was for much in" ("etait pour beaucoup dans" [was an important influence in or played a considerable part in]); unconsciously mimetic, as in "the script is function of its . . . "("le scenario est fonction de ses . . . "). 2 No single editorial formula can deal satisfactorily with all examples. Even
single-word usages (such as "transatlantic," modeled on the French "transatlantique") cannot be definitively pigeon-holed, since it is not always possible to know whether Beckett's choice is deliberate or invol untary. 3 Then there is the difference between such calques and the cases where Beckett plays with both languages simultaneously, as when he writes "fucking the field," where he brings to life a dead French meta phor - the long-familiar colloquialism "foutre le camp" even then meant little more than "to leave suddenly," "to get away" - in a deliberately grotesque English version. 4 The painful mismatch - Beckett's briefverbal thrust as against the present labored explanation/commentary - is evi dence enough: neat categories are not possible here.
There are inventions galore. And there are instances where the pun ning, telescoping, or other wordplay simply has no equivalent in English. Above all there are the wholly idiosyncratic, almost always breathtaking, representations ofparticular insights or ventures, as when, in a cover ing note to two poems he is sending to George Reavey, he writes "Voici deux Prepuscules d'un Gueux. "5 The combining of the very grand (in the echo of Le Crepuscule des dieux [The Twilight of the Gods]) with the grotesquely self-deprecating "prepuces" (foreskins) and the more ordi narily modest "opuscule" (small literary work) leads on to more play ing at self-abasement in the nicely archaic "Gueux" (beggar). Some of
xl
French translator's preface
this verbal play, dependent on French, is simply untranslatable, either because nothing in English corresponds to the play, or because the invention itself is so idiosyncratic as to be unrecoverable.
In my second suggested dimension, the tonal. interpretation of a different kind is required. Here what is at issue is the altogether more testing question of the relation of Beckett to the addressee at the time of writing, on a spectrum that runs from the exalted or desperate to the factual-businesslike. In this, the only indicator available to the trans lator is the "vous"/"tu" distinction, as in the Reavey example above, as compared with the "vous"-based letter to Eisenstein.
The letters are in this respect quite unlike the rest of his oeuvre, in which the notion of a particular addressee simply does not arise. The letters themselves bring all the illustration one could need. Whatever their purpose, they are always Beckett writing. For the translator, there is only ever the task of catching, as far as that is possible, the shading of this passage or that, this letter or that. There is no pre-existing method; translation is, after all, a reading differently articulated - but one that takes place in the shadow of what it was for Beckett, a writing differ ently articulated.
George Craig
NOTES
1 SB to George Reavey, 23 June 1934.
2 SB to Thomas McGreevy, 20 February 11935];SB toSergeiEisenstein. 2 March 1936. 3 SB to Thomas McGreevy, 4 August 1932.
4 SB to Thomas McGreevy, [after 15 August 1931);SB to Thomas McGreevy, 16January
1930.
5 SB to George Reavey, 6 November 1932.
xli
GERMAN TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
For the translator, the letters that Samuel Beckett wrote in German
present an unusual problem. Even though he is writing in German, he is
thinking in his native English. Beckett's thoughts become subsequently
"verfremdet," estranged or distanced from their intent, when trans
lated into a language still quite foreign to him. In order to put them
back into English, the translator must therefore look behind the
1
"Schleier," or veil, that the German language created for Beckett. Although George Craig also alludes to this issue in his translator's preface with regard to Beckett's writings in French, Beckett's German letters clearly reflect the much greater distance between his native language and his acquired German. This comes as no surprise, as French was a language Beckett learned as a child and maintained all his life, whereas he did not begin his study of German until adulthood, a disadvantage never quite overcome. Nonetheless, Beckett is never less than sophisticated in his thinking and his awareness of language. A great deal of the challenge involved in Beckett's letters in German therefore lies in discerning and representing the difference between his lack of full linguistic competence and his intentional language play.
Since Beckett's German letters span a wide range of biographical contexts, they provide wonderfully clear examples of what George Craig defines as dimensions of SB's "historical-developmental" and "tonal" uses of the language. 2 In fact, Beckett's German letters were not written for purely practical reasons, namely, out of the necessity to make himself understood, but rather because he wanted to write in German. Thus, George Craig's analogy of a "love affair" seems all the more fitting in the case of Beckett's relationship to German.
Beckett's earliest German letter was written to his cousin Morris Sinclair in 1934 and is familiar in tone. Apparently Beckett trusted that his ventures into testing, in word and thought, the limits of his still quite rudimentary language abilities would not be faulted. In
xliii
Gennan translator's preface
December 1936 when Beckett writes to his new friend and contempo rary Gunter Albrecht, the letter is casual in tone and content, relating his travel experiences following his stay in Hamburg. Intended to prac tice his much-improved German, albeit still a little stilted at times, this letter shows only a few mistakes such as typographical errors, insignif icant oversights, and some errors of syntax.
For many reasons the most problematic German letter in Volume I is the draft dated 9 July 1937 and addressed to Axel Kaun, to whom Beckett was introduced by Gunter Albrecht. Not only was Kaun a some what distant acquaintance, but the occasion for the letter related to a commission of translation, and its content extends to a broader discus sion of language itself. Hence it is a letter of greater tonal formality, as well as greater complexity and breadth of reference. In this letter Beckett perhaps most accurately reflects all three of the aspects that Matthew Feldman found revealed in Beckett's German Workbook: namely, the extent of Beckett's knowledge of German in 1936; his developing artistic outlook; and his temperament. 3
The translation of this letter to Axel Kaun was further complicated by
the fact that it exists only as a corrected draft which, to make matters
worse, has had a history of over-correction. Therefore this letter
remains very difficult to judge linguistically, and to a degree continues
4
After some deliberations we have decided not to mark grammatical
or syntactical errors in Beckett's German letters, following the editorial
principle to present Beckett's letters as written. Only where we had to
make an interpretive decision have we indicated in a note the reading
that we have used for our translation. For example, the sentence in a
letter of 5 May 1934 to Morris Sinclair, "So bitte ich dich, ihm fur mich
vorzustellen, diese Versaumung sei mir zum Trotz" (So I ask you to get
him, on my behalf, to imagine that this omission might be in spite of
myself), not only contains several grammatical errors, but also various
possibilities of interpretation based on the two understandings of the
main verb "vorstellen" (imagine and introduce). Further complicating
clear understanding was Beckett's use of syntax that is possible in
5
familiar with the types and patterns of mistakes that English-speaking students of the German language commonly make. This proved to be
xliv
to raise interpretive issues about its intended message.
English but not in German.
As a language teacher with many years of experience, I am all too
sion "lass es dir gut gefallen" were more difficult to sort out.
Another aspect of discovering a foreign language involves creative wordplay, word inventions, and unusual word combinations. Students of foreign language and culture immensely enjoy combining, mixing and matching sounds, images, and words to create new word inventions. How much more would the mind of a Samuel Beckett find delight in such possibility? Rarely if ever does a teacher have the opportunity, and the privilege, of working with a "student text" composed by a future Nobel laureate, who is subjugating his creative images and rich thought constructions to a language not his own. And so the translator struggles with intriguing word creations such as "Unwort," "Gegenstandsauger,"
German translator's preface
particularly helpful in translating Beckett's German letters. Many of the
grammatical and syntactical problems encountered in these letters are
neither uncommon nor surprising in learners of German and generally
do not require undue guesswork. Near misses such as those that result
from merging German and English syntax in, for example, the expres
6
"schweizzige Moralisten," and "verpersonifiziert. "7
In addition, and not unlike many advanced language students,
Beckett had a distinct affinity for that most cumbersome of German
constructions: the extended adjective expression. Beckett confronts the
challenge to stretch his German. The extended adjective construction
allowed him to experiment creatively by testing sophisticated imagery
and wrapping it in complex syntax. There are many illustrations to be
found in Beckett's early German letters. For example, he writes "eine
ganz andere Ruhe, als die zu dieser groben, englischen Landschaft
8
Kaun. In the same letter, Beckett chooses a similarly complicated construction when referring to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony: "die von grossen schwarzen Pausen gefressene Tonflache in der siebten Symphonie von Beethoven, so dass wir sie ganze Seiten durch nicht anders wahrnehmen ki:innen als etwa einen schwindelnden unergrilnd liche Schli. inde von Stillschweigen verkni. ipfenden Pfad von Lauten? "10 Such linguistic excursions do not translate literally into English because such constructions generally require added verbs or division into more than one clause to make them intelligible.
A different, perhaps more common problem presents itself in Beckett's unusual word combinations, such as "Biedermeier bathing
xlv
gehi:irende"inalettertoMorrisSinclair, and"aufjenemaltenfaulen von Musik und Malerei Hingst verlassenen Wege" in the letter to Axel
9
Gennan translator's preface
suit," an image that we retained rather than distort because its unique emotionalandculturalattachmentshavenoequivalentinEnglish. II Or the translator may be faced with a phrase such as "sachsischer Stiitzwechsel," mixing historical-cultural dimensions with multiple meanings of words, the whole concocted into sophisticated imagery shot through with irony - indeed a challenge. 12
On the one hand, if we assume that, when composing his letters in German, Beckett would formulate his thoughts in his native English first, then the particular challenge for the translator in the case ofthe German letters was to return as closely as possible to that original English articulation. On the other hand, though, it also seemed impor tant to reflect and retain in the English translation, particularly for the reader not familiar with German, some ofthe awkwardness ofBeckett's German, especially in his early letters. One benefit that this provided was a way to demonstrate both Beckett's remarkable progress and his equally impressive linguistic courage in "massaging" the language and seeking German formulations appropriate to the complexity of his thoughts, even when the latter far outstripped the former. Beckett, quite like the ardent lover alluded to earlier, never ceased to push to the limits ofhis language abilities or to risk experimenting with inno vative attempts to express himselfin German, this language he so loved to embrace.
Viola Westbrook
NOTE S
1 SBtoAxelKaun,9July1937:"UndimmermehrwieeinSchleierkommtmirmeine Sprache vor, den man zerreissen muss. "
2 George Craig, "French translator's preface," this volume, p. xxxiii.
3 Matthew Feldman, Beckett's Books: A Cultural History ofSamuel Beckett's "Intenvar Notes"
(New York: Continuum, 2006) 26.
4 When Beckett gave this draft to Lawrence Harvey in the early 1960s, it was already
marked with corrections; possibly either Beckett himself, or Beckett and Harvey, went over the German and made further corrections. This is also a letter that has appeared in a transcription and translation by Martin Esslin in Ruby Cohn's edition of Beckett's writings, Disjecta; readers will find differences between Esslin's cor rected edition and our transcription and translation (Samuel Beckett, "German Letter of 1937" tr. Martin Esslin in Disjecta, ed. Cohn, 51-54, 170-172).
5 SB to Morris Sinclair, 5 May 1934 n. 7: SB's Geiman construction would have been correct had he used the word "erklaren" (explain). By using "vorstellen" instead, he merged the two constructions possible with that verb and thereby the two meanings
xlvi
Gennan translator's preface
(introduce and imagine). with the result that neither form is used correctly.
Considering the contents and tone of the letter, we have settled on "imagine. "
6 SB to Thomas McGreevy, 22 December 1936 n. 2.
7 SB to Axel Kaun, 9 July 1937; SB to Morris Sinclair, 5 May 1934.
8 SB to Morris Sinclair, 5 May 1934: "! Sometimes I long for those mountains and
fields, which I know so well, and which create] a completely different calm from
the one associated with this coarse English landscape. "
9 SB to Axel Kaun, 9 July 1937: "[Or is literature alone left behind] on that old, foul
road long ago abandoned by music and painting. "
10 SB to Axel Kaun, 9 July 1937: "! Is there any reason why that terrifyingly arbitrary
materiality of the word surface should not be dissolved, as for example] the sound surface of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is devoured by huge black pauses. so that for pages on end we cannot perceive it as other than a dizzying path of sounds connecting unfathomable chasms of silence? "
11 SBtoAxelKaun,9July1937.
12 SB to Gunter Albrecht, 30 March 1937.
xlvii
EDITORIAL PROCEDURES
Unlike a novel, letters to old friends are not checked carefully before they are sent, and inevitably eccentricities appear: slips of the pen, typos, accidental substitutions, oddities of spelling (particularly of proper names that SB had misheard or mis-remembered), and persis tent confusions (sent and send). To signal each one with "sic" or "for" would interfere with reading, so we do so only when they might pre vent or distort understanding. Letters are transcribed as written and presented as a clear text, that is, the final text as sent to the recipient.
Sequence Letters are presented chronologically. If more than one letter was written on the same day, the letters are ordered alphabeti cally by recipient's name, unless internal evidence suggests another sequence. When the editors supply dating, the letter appears in sequence according to the presumed date.
Recipient The full name ofthe recipient, with a corporate identifica tion ifrelevant, and the city to which the letter was sent are indi cated in a header in small capitals. These are editorial additions; Beckett himselfseldom included a recipient's name and address in a letter; however, when he does, this is shown as written.
Date Dates are presented as written by Beckett, who most often fol lows European format (day, month, year), but placement is regular ized. If the date, or any portion of it, is incomplete or incorrect, editorial emendation is given in square brackets; if a date, or any portion ofit, is uncertain, this emendation is preceded by a question mark. The rationale for the dating is given, ifneeded, in the biblio graphical note following the letter.
Place Place is presented as written, but placement is regularized. Where place is incomplete, editorial emendation is given in square brackets, preceded by a question mark if uncertain. Occasionally, the place ofwriting is not congruent with the place ofmailing; for
xlviii
Editorial procedures
example, Beckett may write as iffrom Paris, but post the letter in La
Ferte-sous-Jouarre. This is not corrected.
Orthography Beckett'sidiosyncraticspelling,capitalization,andabbre
viation are preserved: this includes abbreviations without punctuation
r
(wd, cd, yrs), varying presentation ofsuperscripts (M! , y , 1-41! "'), use of
ampersands, contractions written without an apostrophe ("wont" for "won't"), and use of diacriticals. Beckett's practice of indicating the titles of works by underscoring is inconsistent: sometimes he does, sometimes he does not, sometimes he underscores partially. When grammatical or spelling variants interfere with sense, these are edito rially expanded or corrected within square brackets in the text.
Beckett often uses words or phrases from other languages when writing in English or French, but he seldom underscores such words or phrases. If Beckett's shifts from one language to another produce what appears to be a variant spelling in the dominant language of the letter, this is marked or explained in a note.
Beckett frequently spells a name incorrectly, most often when he has only heard the name and not met the person or read the name. When a person's name, a title, or another reference is misspelled in the text ofa letter, the corrected spelling is given in the notes and the index; if the misspelled name is likely to confuse, its first use is corrected within square brackets in the text: e. g. "Stevens [for Stephens]. " When, as in a joke or pun made with a name, a misspell ing is judged to be deliberate, it stands as written; correct spelling is given in the notes and the index.
In Volume I, there are two exceptions to this rule, and both are noted at their first occurrence. Thomas McGreevy changed the spell ing ofhis family name toward the end of1941 to MacGreevy. Since all of the letters through 1940 are addressed to McGreevy, that spelling is retained through the present volume; in subsequent volumes his name will be spelled MacGreevy. During the period covered by Volume I, Beckett almost always spelled the name of Gwynedd Reavey as "Gwynned"; this is noted at the first occurrence and then silently emended. When Beckett does spell her name correctly, this change is also noted.
Beckett presents ellipses with spaced dots; however, these are variously two dots or three dots. Beckett occasionally punctuates with a dash instead of a period at the end of a sentence.
xlix
Editorial procedures
Authorial emendation The results of Beckett's cancelations, inser tions, and inversions are presented as a clear text. When a reading of an emendation by Beckett is uncertain, it is given within square brackets in the text, preceded by a question mark.
Beckett often overwrites or overtypes to self-correct; when typ ing, he sometimes cancels a word or phrase if it does not fit the space on the page, and then rewrites it on the next line or page. Beckett changes his mind as he writes: sometimes omitting or inserting a word, phrase, or sentence; inverting word order; extending a thought in the margins. Typed letters contain both typed and handwritten corrections. Drafts of letters show many more changes.
When Beckett's changes are substantive - that is, not merely corrections of spelling or typos or false starts - these are presented in the notes: e. g. , SB wrote" <the Aldingtons> Richard and Bridget. " Scholars interested in the patterns of Beckett's changes will wish to consult the original manuscripts.
Editorialemendation Editorialemendationstothetextaresupplied only when necessary to understanding. Other than obvious typo graphical errors (overtypes, space slips, extra spacing, false starts), and other than what is stated above, there are no silent emendations.
Placement and indentation of date, address, closing and signature lines are regularized. Paragraph indentations are standardized. Line ends are marked only in poetry. Postscripts are presented following the signature; if their original placement differs, this is described in a note.
Editorial ellipses in letters and other unpublished manuscripts are shown by three unspaced dots within square brackets; editorial ellipses in published materials are shown with three spaced dots.
filegibility Illegibility is noted in square brackets [illeg]. If a reading is uncertain, it is given within square brackets and preceded by a question mark. Damage to the original manuscript that obscures or obliterates the text is described in the bibliographical note and is indicated in the text as illegibility.
Signature The closing and signature lines are regularized. An auto graph signature or initial can be assumed for an autograph letter; in a typed letter, the notation "sf" indicates a handwritten signature or initial. A typed letter may have both an autograph and a typed
signature. When these are not identical, both are shown. When these are identical, rather than present the signature twice, the existence of an autograph signature is indicated only by "sf" and the typed signature is presented in the line that follows:
With best wishes
sf
Samuel Beckett
An unsigned carbon copy presents only the typed signature, but spacing allows for an autograph signature in the original:
With best wishes Samuel Beckett
Bibliographical note Following each letter is a bibliographical note which gives a description of the letter (e. g. ALS, autograph letter signed) followed by the number of leaves and sides (2 leaves, 4 sides). Description of the physical document may include its letter head (if SB replaces or alters it), the image on a postcard, and enclo sures. This note also includes the address on a postcard or envelope, the postmark, and any additional notation on the envelope, whether written by Beckett or in another hand (e. g. forwarding address, postal directives, or other notations). Postmarks are described by city (not by post office) and date. Editorial markers are given in italics: e. g. env to George Reavey; pm 16-5-35, Paris. The ownership of the physical property is given with the designated library abbre viation, collection name and accession information; private owner ship is indicated according to the owner's preference, by name or simply as "private collection. " Previous publication is noted when the letter has been published in full or in a substantial portion (more than halt); facsimile reproductions are indicated in this note.
Notations used in the bibliographical description indicate whether the letter is handwritten or typed; whether a letter, postcard, tele gram, or pneumatique; it indicates the number of leaves and sides, and whether it is signed, initialed, or unsigned. A leaf is a physical piece of paper; a side is a page written on, whether recto or verso. A postcard may bear an address on the recto (1 leaf, 1 side) or on the verso (1 leaf, 2 sides). Beckett sometimes folded a single piece of
Ii
Editorial procedures
Editorial procedures
paper so that it had four sides (1 leaf, 4 sides). All editorial notations
are detailed under "Abbreviations. "
Discussionofdating Whenthedateofaletteriscorrectedorderived
from internal or external evidence, the rationale for the assigned date or date-range is given following the bibliographical note. Undated or partially dated letters are not unusual. Beckett may not date a letter when it is part of a frequent exchange or when it follows or anticipates a personal meeting; he often misdates letters at the beginning of a new year. If envelopes are clearly affiliated with the letter in question, the postmark may be helpful in dating. Some correspondence received by publishers and other businesses was routinely date stamped; this is noted in the bibliographical note and may inform incomplete dating. While Beckett occasionally delivers a note personally, it is also the case that some stamped letters are sent without cancellation. Telegrams are often difficult to date precisely and may bear only the date of receipt.
Translation Letters written entirely in a language other than English are translated immediately following the transcription of the original and its bibliographical note. Translators' initials are given when other than George Craig for French and Viola Westbrook for German. In the first volume, when published translations were not available, Adolf von Baden-Wurttemberg and George Craig have translated from Latin and Greek; Dan Gunn has translated from Italian.
Translations of words or phrases are provided in the notes to the letter. Translations are given with the following formulation: "Bon travail & bon sommeil" (work well & sleep well). The language of the original is not indicated in the translation unless there may be ambiguity; if required, these abbreviations are used: colloq. , collo· quial; Fr. , French; Ger. , German; Gk. , Greek; Ir. , Irish; It. , Italian; Lat. , Latin; Sp. , Spanish. Published translations are used for literary quo tations, if available, and are so noted (see below).
Beckett may write the name ofa German city with German, French, or English spelling; however, translations and editorial material present the English spelling of city and place names. Translations do not repeat Beckett's mistakes (slips of the pen, misremembering or misspelling of proper names, and the occasional incoherence inevitable in unrevised writings). In the rare cases when spelling norms have changed (in the 1930s Beckett wrote "to-day" and
Iii
"to-morrow"), current practice is followed. Although Beckett prac· ticed English-style capitalization when writing the titles of books in other languages, translations and notes use the capitalization prac· tice of the language in which the book was written. In the translation of letters, all titles of books are indicated by italics.
ANNOTATIONS
In the notes, Samuel Beckett is referred to as "SB. " Translations follow British spelling and punctuation practice; all other editorial materials follow American English spelling and punctuation. Although all letters are presented as written, in line with standard French practice the edition does not put accents on initial capitals in editorial matter. All other accents are displayed, even where, as in editorial headers, the material is represented in small capitals. This affects only editorial matter in French; other languages have other conventions.
Identifications of persons The first reference gives a person's full name (including birth name, and/or acquired appellations including pseudonyms and nicknames), years of birth and death, and a brief statement of identification. Additional statements of identification may be given over the course of a volume, or over the four volumes, when a person's primary occupation, affiliation, or relationship to Samuel Beckett changes. Identifications are not given for well· known figures such as William Shakespeare, Rene Descartes, Dante Alighieri.
Names Namesarenotnecessarilyconstantovertime. ThomasMcGreevy chose to change the spelling of his family name; after World War II, Georges Pelorson changed his name to Georges Belmont. Some women assume their husband's surname when they marry: Mary Manning became Mary Manning Howe and then Mary Manning Howe Adams, but she used her maiden name professionally. Editorial practice is to follow Beckett's spelling of the name at the time of writing (with the exception of misspelling), but also to refer to writers by the name given on the title page of their books.
Painters are often given a name that includes their parentage, their city of origin, or their association with a school of painting. Beckett's practice varies, so identifications in the annotations follow
liii
Editorial procedures
Editorial procedures
those given by The Grove Dictionary ofArt, with variant names and spellings given only where confusion might otherwise arise.
Some persons become known by their initials, some by their nick names, and some by both. Abraham Jacob Leventhal generally indi cates his name in publications as A. J. Leventhal, but he is most often referred to in Beckett's letters by his nickname, "Con. " Beckett's cousin Morris Sinclair may also be addressed as "Maurice," or by his family nickname "Sunny" which in German becomes "Sonny" (indeed he was the only son in the Sinclair family).
After first reference, editorial practice is to use the name that Beckett uses. When a name changes, a note will signal this change. Both/all names will be entered as one heading in the Index.
Dates Approximate dates are preceded by c. (circa), fl. (flourished), or a question mark; when dates are approximated as a range, the earliest birth year and the latest death year are given, preceded by c. to indicate approximation. If only the birth year or death year is known, it is given as, for example, (b. 1935) or (1852-? ) or (d. 1956). Rarely, the only date known is a marriage date; this will be given as (m. 1933). When a date is unknown, it is indicated as (n. d. ).
Titles In editorial material (translations, annotations, appendices), titles are presented with the capitalization and spelling conventions of the original language. The title of a work of art is presented in English since the language of the artist may not be the same as the language of the museum or collections that have owned it. Generally, a catalogue raisonne gives titles in several languages. Titles of musical works are often in the language of the composer and remain untranslated; however, lines from songs, recitatives, and arias are translated. Titles of books that are referred to in the text appear in the notes in their original language, followed by date of first publication and title in English if there is a published trans lation, e. g. Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932;Journey to the End ofthe Night); if the English title is given in roman font, e. g. Die notwendige Reise (1932; The Necessary Journey), this indicates that an English trans lation has not been published and that the translated title has been supplied by the editors.
Sources for names, titles, and dates To arbitrate varying names, spellings of names, and dates, editorial practice has relied upon The Grove Dictionary of Music; The Grove Dictionary of Art; The Cambridge
liv
Editorial procedures
Biographical Encyclopedia, second edition; the catalogues of the Bibliotheque Nationale, the British Library, the National Library of Ireland, the Library of Congress, as well as other national libraries; and The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.
Glosses Unusual or archaic English words or foreign-language terms that have entered common English usage are not glossed if they can be found in the second electronic edition of The Oxford English Dictionary.
References References to unpublished materials give the archive and manuscript identification of the documents. References to pub lished materials give a full bibliographical citation at the first mention, and a short-title reference thereafter. The Bibliography includes all published materials that are cited. Titles that are iden tified in the text but not cited do not appear in the Bibliography, but they are indexed.
Cross-reference Cross-reference that refers back to specific material within the edition is given by indicating the date of the letter and the number of the pertinent note, e. g. 9 January 1936, n. 5. References are rarely given forward. It is presumed that most readers will read sequentially; those who wish to pursue a single figure will be able to do so by use of the Index.
Choiceofeditions Althoughitisnecessarytoselectstandardeditions for editorial reference, these choices are not governed by a single rule. For example, most often the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade edition of French text is used, or the more recent of these where two editions exist, because these editions take into account earlier edi tions. Exceptions have been made when a reference requires a first edition or an edition that Beckett refers to in a letter, or one he is known to have read, or the only one he could have read. The choice of standard editions is explained at the point of first reference. Volumes II, III, and IV of The Letters may present other issues in this respect. Where there is no standard edition, editions are selected for their accessibility, for example the Riverside edition of Shakespeare's works. Biblical references are taken from the King James Version. Although the publication information is given for all first and subsequent editions of Beckett's texts when this infor mation is germane to the context of a letter, quotations are gener ally taken from the Grove Press editions.
Iv
Editorial procedures
Choice of translations English literary translations are provided for Beckett's foreign-language citations. Beckett nearly always read in the original language, and so choice of a translation is seldom direc ted by his reading.
Chronologies Chronologies precede each year of the letters to present an overview of the events mentioned by Beckett's letters; these include significant world events.
Profiles Biographicalprofilesofpersonswhohaveacontinuingrolein the narrative of The Letters of Samuel Beckett appear in the Appendix. Those who have a profile are indicated with an asterisk following their first reference. A profile presents a narrative of a person's life and work, with regard particularly to his or her association with Beckett. Profiles appear in the first volume of the letters in which the person becomes a figure of significance. The profiles cover the historical range of a person's association with Beckett because they will not be reprinted in subsequent volumes of the edition. Profiles are also given for certain institutions, publications, and organizations.
lvi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The family of Samuel Beckett has been welcoming as well as generous in sharing memories and documents. The editors warmly thank Edward and Felicity Beckett, Caroline and Patrick Murphy, Diana Zambonelli, Jill Babcock, and remember with gratitude Ann Beckett (d. ), John Beckett (d. ), Sheila Page (d. ), and Morris Sinclair (d. ).
FUNDING AND CONTRIBUTIONS
The Graduate School ofEmory University has generously supported the research for The Letters ofSamuel Beckett since 1990. The editing project at Emory, known as "The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett," is a labo ratory for humanities research in which graduate students in several disciplines of the humanities are engaged. Faculty and staff colleagues at Emory have unfailingly supported the edition with their knowledge and resources.
The extensive process ofgathering, organizing, and preparing docu ments and oral histories fundamental to such an edition was facilitated by major support from The National Endowment for the Humanities from 1991 to 1997. The Graduate School of Emory University contrib uted both the overhead and cost-sharing for these grants.
The research for this edition is international and cross-cultural. The Florence Gould Foundation supported the French and American part nership of this research from 1995 through 2003. The Graduate School of Emory University and The American University of Paris contributed cost-sharing. The support of the Gould Foundation helped to establish a Paris center for the research at The American University of Paris, direc ted by Associate Editor Dan Gunn; students there served as interns, conducting research in French collections.
The Mellon Foundation supported research at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin
! vii
Acknowledgments
(1993-1994); the Huntington Library / British Academy Exchange Fellowship (1994-1995) supported research at the Huntington Library; the Helm Fellowship supported research at the Lilly Library, Indiana University (1997-1998, 2002-2003). The Rockefeller Foundation enabled the editorial team to meet at its Bellagio Study Center, Italy (2004-2005), to work together on the first two of the edition's four volumes.
The Cultural Division of the Department of European Affairs of Ireland has undertaken the distribution of copies of each of the four volumes of The Letters ofSamuel Beckett to universities and public libraries overseas and those operated through the Irish Diplomatic Missions abroad. We appreciate the support of Noel Treacy TD, former Minister for European Affairs, for making possible this tribute to Samuel Beckett's Irish legacy.
Without the continuing and substantial contributions of Emory Professors Alice N. Benston and George J. Benston (d. ), the project to edit The Letters of Samuel Beckett would not have gone forward. Their belief in the centrality of literature and the arts in an educated life, their intellectual mentorship and, especially, their personal encourage ment and friendship have been an immeasurable gift.
We are grateful for the efforts ofJoseph Beck of Kilpatrick Stockton LLP, who has been a steadfast adviser providing pro bono assistance to the edition in the area of copyright law. His thoroughness, expertise, and capacious understanding guided the editors; his personal support has been unbounded. We also thank Pam Mallari of Kilpatrick Stockton LLP for her pro bono services.
The editors greatly appreciate the generous in-kind contributions of the following persons: Mimi Bean, Brenda Bynum, R. Cary Bynum, Carainn Childers, Maydelle and Sam Fason, Neil Garvin, Barbara Gruninger, David Hesla, Jacob Hovind, Nori Howard-Butot, Alexandra Mettler, Breon Mitchell, Maria Chan Morgan, James Overbeck, Eduardo Paguaga, Lynn Todd-Crawford, Colette and Denis Weaire, and Gerald Weales.
The edition has been the beneficiary of gifts from individual donors, all of whom have additionally enriched this endeavor with their con tinuing interest: Laura Barlament, Jean B. Bergmark, Brenda and R. Cary Bynum, Claydean Cameron, Hilary Pyle Carey, Brian Cliff, Mary Evans Comstock, Judith Schmidt Douw, Jennifer Jeffers, Louis LeBroquy and
lviii
Acknowledgments
Ann Madden, Victoria R. Orlowski, and Frances L. Padgett in honor of Brenda Bynum.
EMORY UNIVERSITY
The vision and support of the Deans of the Graduate School have
brought the edition to fruition; the editors especially thank George Jones, Alice N. Benston, and Eleanor Main(d. ), who made the edition's affiliation with Emory possible, and subsequent Deans Donald G. Stein, Robert Paul, and Lisa Tedesco, who continued this support. The editors also thank Vice Provost of International Affairs Holli Semetko for con
tributions to the international research for the edition.
The Advisory Board at Emory University includes Alice N. Benston, Ronald Schuchard, Maximilian Aue, Geoffrey Bennington, and Sandra Still. The editors wish to recognize them and the contributions of other Emory faculty colleagues: Matthew Bernstein, Philippe Bonnefis, Thomas Burns, Brenda Bynum, David A. Cook, Michael Evenden, Steve Everett, William Gruber, Josue Harari, David Hesla, Geraldine Higgins, Peter H6yng, Dalia Judovitz, Judith Miller, Clark V. Poling,
Donald Verene, andJ. HarveyYoung(d. ).
Emory University Libraries have been at the heart of the research for
the edition: The Woodruff Library - Directors Joan Gotwals, Linda Matthews, and Richard Luce, and Librarians Rachel Borchardt, Lloyd Busch,Joyce Clinkscales, Margaret Ellingson, Erika Farr, Kristin Gager, Marie Hansen, Erin Mooney, Anne Nicolson, Eric Nitschke, Marie Nitschke, Elizabeth Patterson, Chuck Spornick, Sandra Still, Ann Vidor, Elaine Wagner, Sarah Ward, Erik Wendt, and Gayle Williams; The Manuscript and Rare Book Library(MARBL) - Director Stephen Enniss, Teresa Burk, Ginger Cain, David Faulds, Naomi Nelson, Ellen Nemhauser, Elizabeth Russey, Kathy Shoemaker, and Donna Bradley; the staff of The ECIT center; The Michael C. Carlos Museum - Catherine Howett Smith; Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library - Director Carol Burns, Barbara Abu-Leid, and Erin Busch.
The dedicated support team in the Beckett Project office over the years has managed the varied demands ofthe edition superbly: Amanda R. Baker, Daphne Demetry, Julia Getman, Courtney King, Suzanne Powell, Molly Stevens, and especially Lynn Todd-Crawford. The editors appreciate the assistance of Rosemary Hynes and Geri Thomas in the
! ix
Acknowledgments
Graduate School, as well as the services of members of the Emory technical support staff: Adolf von Baden-Wiirttemberg, Mahbuba Ferdousi, Wei Ming Lu, and Laura Pokalsky.
Emory University Graduate Fellows have served the research of the project with diligence and creativity: Adrienne Angelo, Levin Arnsperger, Jeffrey Baggett, Laura Barlament, Jenny Davis Barnett, Andre BenhalIIl, Patrick Bixby, Karen Brown-Wheeler, Brooke Campbell, Lauren Cardon, Miriam Chirico, Brian Cliff, Curtis Cordell, Kathryn Crowther, Brian Croxall, Anthony J. Cuda, Anna Engle, John Fitzgerald, Christian Paul Holland, Jacob Hovind, Jennifer Jeffers, Michael Johnson, Jason Jones, Margaret Koehler, Paul Linden, Dominic Mastroianni, Martha Henn McCormick, Michelle Miles, Jennifer Poulos Nesbitt, Eduardo Paguaga, John Peck, Ralph Schoolcraft, Petra Schweitzer, Jennifer Svienty, Melissa Thurmond, Derval Tubridy, Kerry Higgins Wendt, Patrick Wheeler, and Julia McElhattan Williams.
Emory University Undergraduate Assistants have been effective and energetic in their work with the project: Margaret Anello, Amanda Barnett, Maiben Beard, Jonah Bea-Taylor, Shanta! Chan-Friday, Rebecca Conner, Daphne Demetry, Kirsten Dorsche, Natasha Farquharson, Neil Garvin, Jessica Gearing, Julia Hendricks, Lisa Hutchinson, Erin Igney, Danielle Kuczkowski, Josh Millard, Toure Neblett, Alina Opreanu, Victoria Orlowski, Sarah Osier, Jason Rayles, Amanda Robinson, Brian Serafin, Danielle Sered, Emily Shin, Hannah Shin, John Southnard, Shannon Weary, Amanda Wilburn, and Ashley Woo.
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
Initiated with the award of a grant from the Florence Gould Foundation, the edition's partnership with The American University of Paris has included faculty, staff, and students. The editors appreciate the assis tance and support of Presidents Lee Huebner, Michael Simpson, and Gerardo della Paolera; Deans William Cipolla, Andrea Leskes, Michael Vincent, and Celeste Schenck; faculty - Christine Baltay, Geoffrey Gilbert, Richard Pevear, Roy Rosenstein, and University Librarians Toby Stone and Jorge Sosa Ortega, as well as the assistance of William Gatsby, Beatrice Laplante, Brenda Tomey, and Karen Wagner.
AUP student interns: Amy Christine Allen, Lauren Anderson, Isolde Barker-Mill, Maranda Barnes, Susan Bell, Mischa Benoit-Lavelle, David
Ix
Bornstein, Brian Brazeau, Chrislaine Brito-Medina, Zachary Brown, Sarah Champa, Christina Chua, Laura Cook, Alessandra Cortez, Lisa Damon, Lindsay Franta, Natalie Frederick, Mia Genoni, Delphine Henri, Eric Hess, Laura Kaiserman, Alkmini Karakosta, Jennifer Kerns, Anthony Kraus, Caroline Laurent, Jennifer Laurent, Eugene Manning, Caroline Markunas, Ivy Mills, Candace Montout, Disa Ohlsson, Caleb Pagliasotti, Marta Lee Perriard, David Pollack, Jennifer Scanlon, Pamela Schleimer, Nils Schott, Jonathan Scott, Avra Spector, Jan Steyn, Alix Strickland, Leigh Thomas, Geoffrey Thompson, Gina Tory, Ulrike Trux, Todd Tyree, Christian West, Eugenia Wilbrenninck, Alison M. Williams, and April Wuensch.
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French translator's preface
spelling "barock" for what English, following French, refers to as "bar oque"; or calls French towns by the German version ofthem: "Strassburg" for "Strasbourg," "Kolmar" for "Colmar. " Against that, he also uses the English spellings of certain French place-names, for instance "Marseilles. "
But it is the French/English divide and its consequences that matter above all. Within that, a new divide appears: before Godot and after. Fame brings its rewards, but exacts a price which Beckett finds heavy. The effect on the letters is immediate. His correspondents are no longer only friends, old or new. For the first time, wariness appears in the writing. Beckett's legendary courtesy ensures that letters will be answered, but many raise, directly or indirectly, questions that irritate or dismay him (letters to friends indicate how much). The division in time is accompanied by a division in kind: on the one hand, letters to intimates; on the other, letters to the rest.
To these questions specific to Beckett must be added other inescap
able but more general issues. All letters written in French to anyone
other than an intimate will normally have one of a set of formal open
ings, and one of a set of even more formal endings. With the openings,
the very formal "Monsieur" or "Madame" and the rather less formal
"Cher Monsieur" or "Chere Madame" must be adjusted in English to
include the person's surname. But it is the writer who decides on the
degree of formality. Decisions of this kind may well be difficult, which
is why the much less formal and neatly non-committal "Cher ami" is
such a boon to writers. But since there is no direct equivalent in English,
the choice of degree of intimacy is pushed back on to the translator.
Here another factor comes in. The habit among men of using surnames
hung on much longer in France than in England, where the American
preference for first names edges it out. "Cher ami" gives no clue
whether it would be more appropriate to write "Dear Smith" or "Dear
John"; and this is something which, like the "vous"f"tu" distinction,
may have surprising importance. An example can be found in the
ending of Beckett's letter to his agent George Reavey, with whom
relations have gone from cool, even frosty, to trusting. The distance
traveled can be seen, even in the jokiness, with "Vas-y" (go ahead) at the
1
beginning and "A toi" (yours) at the end, both in the intimate form. Endings are less troubling, for although the battery of conventional formulas is much greater, the differences between them are. for Beckett, largely unimportant. Their ostentatious formality and
xxxviii
French translator's preface
apparent obsequiousness have no echo in English. The typical "Je vous prie de croire, Monsieur, a ! 'assurance de mes sentiments les meilleurs" would sound grotesque in English if rendered "literally. " It, and its like, have virtually no emotional charge in French, however, and so must be represented by a neutral, comparably uncharged formula. English has in fact very few of these, so "Yours sincerely" will appear very often.
Then there is the matter of punctuation. Beckett's practice is unpre dictable, but that merely compounds a difficulty: the difference between standard French and English usages. In French, for example, it is perfectly proper to connect two main clauses by a simple comma; English requires a semicolon (as in this sentence), or a new sentence. Here again, the only reliable guidance for the translator comes from the English-language letters.
More interesting, perhaps, is the question of "swearwords": the whole territory that French calls engagingly "la langue verte. " The issue surfaces in the letters concerned with the Lord Chamberlain's refusaltoallowperformanceinEnglandofthetextofFindepartieunless certain cuts are made. The main point is that French and English "swearwords" do not overlap neatly. Some of the French ones are the etymological cousins of the English ones, but patterns of use are not at all the same. Several French words ("connerie" is an example) have been virtually emptied of their scabrous or vulgar content. The base-word "con" is close kin to the English word "cunt," but has long been used without any ofthe harsh or sexual associations ofthe English word. It is a very common way of saying "fool," "idiot," "nitwit," so that a "connerie" is what someone like that would do or say: something stupid. Similarly, years before well-brought-up young women would have said "shit" in public, "merde" and its cognates were in common use in France. Elderly ladies were saying "Mon Dieu" in French and meaning little more than "Goodness me" when their English equiva lents would not have dreamed of saying "My God. " The particular significance of "connerie" is that it is one of the words that the Lord Chamberlain objected to in the projected performances at the Royal Court Theatre of Fin de partie. Clearly, he or his adviser was unaware of the wide difference in practice between French and English, and assumed that the word was one of the words then forbidden (in 1957 there was still a long way to go to the lifting of restrictions that
xxxix
French translator's preface
followed the verdict in the Chatterley trial and led eventually to the abolishing, in this connection, ofthe powers ofthe Lord Chamberlain). But these orders of difficulty, concerned as they are with small differ ences of cultural practice, are as nothing compared with that raised by Beckett's wordplay. It is not just that at any moment he may spice his English with a word or a phrase in French: that much is expectable from an expatriate English-speaker writing to a friend in Ireland or England or the USA. Nor is French the only foreign language he draws on - we are also likely to be faced with words or passages in Italian, or German, or Latin - usually because the language chosen has a neater or more expressive rendering of what he wants to say. This, after all, is the currency that translators must expect to deal in. But Beckett's practice is often at the boundary oflanguages. There are Gallicisms: deliberate, as in "was for much in" ("etait pour beaucoup dans" [was an important influence in or played a considerable part in]); unconsciously mimetic, as in "the script is function of its . . . "("le scenario est fonction de ses . . . "). 2 No single editorial formula can deal satisfactorily with all examples. Even
single-word usages (such as "transatlantic," modeled on the French "transatlantique") cannot be definitively pigeon-holed, since it is not always possible to know whether Beckett's choice is deliberate or invol untary. 3 Then there is the difference between such calques and the cases where Beckett plays with both languages simultaneously, as when he writes "fucking the field," where he brings to life a dead French meta phor - the long-familiar colloquialism "foutre le camp" even then meant little more than "to leave suddenly," "to get away" - in a deliberately grotesque English version. 4 The painful mismatch - Beckett's briefverbal thrust as against the present labored explanation/commentary - is evi dence enough: neat categories are not possible here.
There are inventions galore. And there are instances where the pun ning, telescoping, or other wordplay simply has no equivalent in English. Above all there are the wholly idiosyncratic, almost always breathtaking, representations ofparticular insights or ventures, as when, in a cover ing note to two poems he is sending to George Reavey, he writes "Voici deux Prepuscules d'un Gueux. "5 The combining of the very grand (in the echo of Le Crepuscule des dieux [The Twilight of the Gods]) with the grotesquely self-deprecating "prepuces" (foreskins) and the more ordi narily modest "opuscule" (small literary work) leads on to more play ing at self-abasement in the nicely archaic "Gueux" (beggar). Some of
xl
French translator's preface
this verbal play, dependent on French, is simply untranslatable, either because nothing in English corresponds to the play, or because the invention itself is so idiosyncratic as to be unrecoverable.
In my second suggested dimension, the tonal. interpretation of a different kind is required. Here what is at issue is the altogether more testing question of the relation of Beckett to the addressee at the time of writing, on a spectrum that runs from the exalted or desperate to the factual-businesslike. In this, the only indicator available to the trans lator is the "vous"/"tu" distinction, as in the Reavey example above, as compared with the "vous"-based letter to Eisenstein.
The letters are in this respect quite unlike the rest of his oeuvre, in which the notion of a particular addressee simply does not arise. The letters themselves bring all the illustration one could need. Whatever their purpose, they are always Beckett writing. For the translator, there is only ever the task of catching, as far as that is possible, the shading of this passage or that, this letter or that. There is no pre-existing method; translation is, after all, a reading differently articulated - but one that takes place in the shadow of what it was for Beckett, a writing differ ently articulated.
George Craig
NOTES
1 SB to George Reavey, 23 June 1934.
2 SB to Thomas McGreevy, 20 February 11935];SB toSergeiEisenstein. 2 March 1936. 3 SB to Thomas McGreevy, 4 August 1932.
4 SB to Thomas McGreevy, [after 15 August 1931);SB to Thomas McGreevy, 16January
1930.
5 SB to George Reavey, 6 November 1932.
xli
GERMAN TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
For the translator, the letters that Samuel Beckett wrote in German
present an unusual problem. Even though he is writing in German, he is
thinking in his native English. Beckett's thoughts become subsequently
"verfremdet," estranged or distanced from their intent, when trans
lated into a language still quite foreign to him. In order to put them
back into English, the translator must therefore look behind the
1
"Schleier," or veil, that the German language created for Beckett. Although George Craig also alludes to this issue in his translator's preface with regard to Beckett's writings in French, Beckett's German letters clearly reflect the much greater distance between his native language and his acquired German. This comes as no surprise, as French was a language Beckett learned as a child and maintained all his life, whereas he did not begin his study of German until adulthood, a disadvantage never quite overcome. Nonetheless, Beckett is never less than sophisticated in his thinking and his awareness of language. A great deal of the challenge involved in Beckett's letters in German therefore lies in discerning and representing the difference between his lack of full linguistic competence and his intentional language play.
Since Beckett's German letters span a wide range of biographical contexts, they provide wonderfully clear examples of what George Craig defines as dimensions of SB's "historical-developmental" and "tonal" uses of the language. 2 In fact, Beckett's German letters were not written for purely practical reasons, namely, out of the necessity to make himself understood, but rather because he wanted to write in German. Thus, George Craig's analogy of a "love affair" seems all the more fitting in the case of Beckett's relationship to German.
Beckett's earliest German letter was written to his cousin Morris Sinclair in 1934 and is familiar in tone. Apparently Beckett trusted that his ventures into testing, in word and thought, the limits of his still quite rudimentary language abilities would not be faulted. In
xliii
Gennan translator's preface
December 1936 when Beckett writes to his new friend and contempo rary Gunter Albrecht, the letter is casual in tone and content, relating his travel experiences following his stay in Hamburg. Intended to prac tice his much-improved German, albeit still a little stilted at times, this letter shows only a few mistakes such as typographical errors, insignif icant oversights, and some errors of syntax.
For many reasons the most problematic German letter in Volume I is the draft dated 9 July 1937 and addressed to Axel Kaun, to whom Beckett was introduced by Gunter Albrecht. Not only was Kaun a some what distant acquaintance, but the occasion for the letter related to a commission of translation, and its content extends to a broader discus sion of language itself. Hence it is a letter of greater tonal formality, as well as greater complexity and breadth of reference. In this letter Beckett perhaps most accurately reflects all three of the aspects that Matthew Feldman found revealed in Beckett's German Workbook: namely, the extent of Beckett's knowledge of German in 1936; his developing artistic outlook; and his temperament. 3
The translation of this letter to Axel Kaun was further complicated by
the fact that it exists only as a corrected draft which, to make matters
worse, has had a history of over-correction. Therefore this letter
remains very difficult to judge linguistically, and to a degree continues
4
After some deliberations we have decided not to mark grammatical
or syntactical errors in Beckett's German letters, following the editorial
principle to present Beckett's letters as written. Only where we had to
make an interpretive decision have we indicated in a note the reading
that we have used for our translation. For example, the sentence in a
letter of 5 May 1934 to Morris Sinclair, "So bitte ich dich, ihm fur mich
vorzustellen, diese Versaumung sei mir zum Trotz" (So I ask you to get
him, on my behalf, to imagine that this omission might be in spite of
myself), not only contains several grammatical errors, but also various
possibilities of interpretation based on the two understandings of the
main verb "vorstellen" (imagine and introduce). Further complicating
clear understanding was Beckett's use of syntax that is possible in
5
familiar with the types and patterns of mistakes that English-speaking students of the German language commonly make. This proved to be
xliv
to raise interpretive issues about its intended message.
English but not in German.
As a language teacher with many years of experience, I am all too
sion "lass es dir gut gefallen" were more difficult to sort out.
Another aspect of discovering a foreign language involves creative wordplay, word inventions, and unusual word combinations. Students of foreign language and culture immensely enjoy combining, mixing and matching sounds, images, and words to create new word inventions. How much more would the mind of a Samuel Beckett find delight in such possibility? Rarely if ever does a teacher have the opportunity, and the privilege, of working with a "student text" composed by a future Nobel laureate, who is subjugating his creative images and rich thought constructions to a language not his own. And so the translator struggles with intriguing word creations such as "Unwort," "Gegenstandsauger,"
German translator's preface
particularly helpful in translating Beckett's German letters. Many of the
grammatical and syntactical problems encountered in these letters are
neither uncommon nor surprising in learners of German and generally
do not require undue guesswork. Near misses such as those that result
from merging German and English syntax in, for example, the expres
6
"schweizzige Moralisten," and "verpersonifiziert. "7
In addition, and not unlike many advanced language students,
Beckett had a distinct affinity for that most cumbersome of German
constructions: the extended adjective expression. Beckett confronts the
challenge to stretch his German. The extended adjective construction
allowed him to experiment creatively by testing sophisticated imagery
and wrapping it in complex syntax. There are many illustrations to be
found in Beckett's early German letters. For example, he writes "eine
ganz andere Ruhe, als die zu dieser groben, englischen Landschaft
8
Kaun. In the same letter, Beckett chooses a similarly complicated construction when referring to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony: "die von grossen schwarzen Pausen gefressene Tonflache in der siebten Symphonie von Beethoven, so dass wir sie ganze Seiten durch nicht anders wahrnehmen ki:innen als etwa einen schwindelnden unergrilnd liche Schli. inde von Stillschweigen verkni. ipfenden Pfad von Lauten? "10 Such linguistic excursions do not translate literally into English because such constructions generally require added verbs or division into more than one clause to make them intelligible.
A different, perhaps more common problem presents itself in Beckett's unusual word combinations, such as "Biedermeier bathing
xlv
gehi:irende"inalettertoMorrisSinclair, and"aufjenemaltenfaulen von Musik und Malerei Hingst verlassenen Wege" in the letter to Axel
9
Gennan translator's preface
suit," an image that we retained rather than distort because its unique emotionalandculturalattachmentshavenoequivalentinEnglish. II Or the translator may be faced with a phrase such as "sachsischer Stiitzwechsel," mixing historical-cultural dimensions with multiple meanings of words, the whole concocted into sophisticated imagery shot through with irony - indeed a challenge. 12
On the one hand, if we assume that, when composing his letters in German, Beckett would formulate his thoughts in his native English first, then the particular challenge for the translator in the case ofthe German letters was to return as closely as possible to that original English articulation. On the other hand, though, it also seemed impor tant to reflect and retain in the English translation, particularly for the reader not familiar with German, some ofthe awkwardness ofBeckett's German, especially in his early letters. One benefit that this provided was a way to demonstrate both Beckett's remarkable progress and his equally impressive linguistic courage in "massaging" the language and seeking German formulations appropriate to the complexity of his thoughts, even when the latter far outstripped the former. Beckett, quite like the ardent lover alluded to earlier, never ceased to push to the limits ofhis language abilities or to risk experimenting with inno vative attempts to express himselfin German, this language he so loved to embrace.
Viola Westbrook
NOTE S
1 SBtoAxelKaun,9July1937:"UndimmermehrwieeinSchleierkommtmirmeine Sprache vor, den man zerreissen muss. "
2 George Craig, "French translator's preface," this volume, p. xxxiii.
3 Matthew Feldman, Beckett's Books: A Cultural History ofSamuel Beckett's "Intenvar Notes"
(New York: Continuum, 2006) 26.
4 When Beckett gave this draft to Lawrence Harvey in the early 1960s, it was already
marked with corrections; possibly either Beckett himself, or Beckett and Harvey, went over the German and made further corrections. This is also a letter that has appeared in a transcription and translation by Martin Esslin in Ruby Cohn's edition of Beckett's writings, Disjecta; readers will find differences between Esslin's cor rected edition and our transcription and translation (Samuel Beckett, "German Letter of 1937" tr. Martin Esslin in Disjecta, ed. Cohn, 51-54, 170-172).
5 SB to Morris Sinclair, 5 May 1934 n. 7: SB's Geiman construction would have been correct had he used the word "erklaren" (explain). By using "vorstellen" instead, he merged the two constructions possible with that verb and thereby the two meanings
xlvi
Gennan translator's preface
(introduce and imagine). with the result that neither form is used correctly.
Considering the contents and tone of the letter, we have settled on "imagine. "
6 SB to Thomas McGreevy, 22 December 1936 n. 2.
7 SB to Axel Kaun, 9 July 1937; SB to Morris Sinclair, 5 May 1934.
8 SB to Morris Sinclair, 5 May 1934: "! Sometimes I long for those mountains and
fields, which I know so well, and which create] a completely different calm from
the one associated with this coarse English landscape. "
9 SB to Axel Kaun, 9 July 1937: "[Or is literature alone left behind] on that old, foul
road long ago abandoned by music and painting. "
10 SB to Axel Kaun, 9 July 1937: "! Is there any reason why that terrifyingly arbitrary
materiality of the word surface should not be dissolved, as for example] the sound surface of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is devoured by huge black pauses. so that for pages on end we cannot perceive it as other than a dizzying path of sounds connecting unfathomable chasms of silence? "
11 SBtoAxelKaun,9July1937.
12 SB to Gunter Albrecht, 30 March 1937.
xlvii
EDITORIAL PROCEDURES
Unlike a novel, letters to old friends are not checked carefully before they are sent, and inevitably eccentricities appear: slips of the pen, typos, accidental substitutions, oddities of spelling (particularly of proper names that SB had misheard or mis-remembered), and persis tent confusions (sent and send). To signal each one with "sic" or "for" would interfere with reading, so we do so only when they might pre vent or distort understanding. Letters are transcribed as written and presented as a clear text, that is, the final text as sent to the recipient.
Sequence Letters are presented chronologically. If more than one letter was written on the same day, the letters are ordered alphabeti cally by recipient's name, unless internal evidence suggests another sequence. When the editors supply dating, the letter appears in sequence according to the presumed date.
Recipient The full name ofthe recipient, with a corporate identifica tion ifrelevant, and the city to which the letter was sent are indi cated in a header in small capitals. These are editorial additions; Beckett himselfseldom included a recipient's name and address in a letter; however, when he does, this is shown as written.
Date Dates are presented as written by Beckett, who most often fol lows European format (day, month, year), but placement is regular ized. If the date, or any portion of it, is incomplete or incorrect, editorial emendation is given in square brackets; if a date, or any portion ofit, is uncertain, this emendation is preceded by a question mark. The rationale for the dating is given, ifneeded, in the biblio graphical note following the letter.
Place Place is presented as written, but placement is regularized. Where place is incomplete, editorial emendation is given in square brackets, preceded by a question mark if uncertain. Occasionally, the place ofwriting is not congruent with the place ofmailing; for
xlviii
Editorial procedures
example, Beckett may write as iffrom Paris, but post the letter in La
Ferte-sous-Jouarre. This is not corrected.
Orthography Beckett'sidiosyncraticspelling,capitalization,andabbre
viation are preserved: this includes abbreviations without punctuation
r
(wd, cd, yrs), varying presentation ofsuperscripts (M! , y , 1-41! "'), use of
ampersands, contractions written without an apostrophe ("wont" for "won't"), and use of diacriticals. Beckett's practice of indicating the titles of works by underscoring is inconsistent: sometimes he does, sometimes he does not, sometimes he underscores partially. When grammatical or spelling variants interfere with sense, these are edito rially expanded or corrected within square brackets in the text.
Beckett often uses words or phrases from other languages when writing in English or French, but he seldom underscores such words or phrases. If Beckett's shifts from one language to another produce what appears to be a variant spelling in the dominant language of the letter, this is marked or explained in a note.
Beckett frequently spells a name incorrectly, most often when he has only heard the name and not met the person or read the name. When a person's name, a title, or another reference is misspelled in the text ofa letter, the corrected spelling is given in the notes and the index; if the misspelled name is likely to confuse, its first use is corrected within square brackets in the text: e. g. "Stevens [for Stephens]. " When, as in a joke or pun made with a name, a misspell ing is judged to be deliberate, it stands as written; correct spelling is given in the notes and the index.
In Volume I, there are two exceptions to this rule, and both are noted at their first occurrence. Thomas McGreevy changed the spell ing ofhis family name toward the end of1941 to MacGreevy. Since all of the letters through 1940 are addressed to McGreevy, that spelling is retained through the present volume; in subsequent volumes his name will be spelled MacGreevy. During the period covered by Volume I, Beckett almost always spelled the name of Gwynedd Reavey as "Gwynned"; this is noted at the first occurrence and then silently emended. When Beckett does spell her name correctly, this change is also noted.
Beckett presents ellipses with spaced dots; however, these are variously two dots or three dots. Beckett occasionally punctuates with a dash instead of a period at the end of a sentence.
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Editorial procedures
Authorial emendation The results of Beckett's cancelations, inser tions, and inversions are presented as a clear text. When a reading of an emendation by Beckett is uncertain, it is given within square brackets in the text, preceded by a question mark.
Beckett often overwrites or overtypes to self-correct; when typ ing, he sometimes cancels a word or phrase if it does not fit the space on the page, and then rewrites it on the next line or page. Beckett changes his mind as he writes: sometimes omitting or inserting a word, phrase, or sentence; inverting word order; extending a thought in the margins. Typed letters contain both typed and handwritten corrections. Drafts of letters show many more changes.
When Beckett's changes are substantive - that is, not merely corrections of spelling or typos or false starts - these are presented in the notes: e. g. , SB wrote" <the Aldingtons> Richard and Bridget. " Scholars interested in the patterns of Beckett's changes will wish to consult the original manuscripts.
Editorialemendation Editorialemendationstothetextaresupplied only when necessary to understanding. Other than obvious typo graphical errors (overtypes, space slips, extra spacing, false starts), and other than what is stated above, there are no silent emendations.
Placement and indentation of date, address, closing and signature lines are regularized. Paragraph indentations are standardized. Line ends are marked only in poetry. Postscripts are presented following the signature; if their original placement differs, this is described in a note.
Editorial ellipses in letters and other unpublished manuscripts are shown by three unspaced dots within square brackets; editorial ellipses in published materials are shown with three spaced dots.
filegibility Illegibility is noted in square brackets [illeg]. If a reading is uncertain, it is given within square brackets and preceded by a question mark. Damage to the original manuscript that obscures or obliterates the text is described in the bibliographical note and is indicated in the text as illegibility.
Signature The closing and signature lines are regularized. An auto graph signature or initial can be assumed for an autograph letter; in a typed letter, the notation "sf" indicates a handwritten signature or initial. A typed letter may have both an autograph and a typed
signature. When these are not identical, both are shown. When these are identical, rather than present the signature twice, the existence of an autograph signature is indicated only by "sf" and the typed signature is presented in the line that follows:
With best wishes
sf
Samuel Beckett
An unsigned carbon copy presents only the typed signature, but spacing allows for an autograph signature in the original:
With best wishes Samuel Beckett
Bibliographical note Following each letter is a bibliographical note which gives a description of the letter (e. g. ALS, autograph letter signed) followed by the number of leaves and sides (2 leaves, 4 sides). Description of the physical document may include its letter head (if SB replaces or alters it), the image on a postcard, and enclo sures. This note also includes the address on a postcard or envelope, the postmark, and any additional notation on the envelope, whether written by Beckett or in another hand (e. g. forwarding address, postal directives, or other notations). Postmarks are described by city (not by post office) and date. Editorial markers are given in italics: e. g. env to George Reavey; pm 16-5-35, Paris. The ownership of the physical property is given with the designated library abbre viation, collection name and accession information; private owner ship is indicated according to the owner's preference, by name or simply as "private collection. " Previous publication is noted when the letter has been published in full or in a substantial portion (more than halt); facsimile reproductions are indicated in this note.
Notations used in the bibliographical description indicate whether the letter is handwritten or typed; whether a letter, postcard, tele gram, or pneumatique; it indicates the number of leaves and sides, and whether it is signed, initialed, or unsigned. A leaf is a physical piece of paper; a side is a page written on, whether recto or verso. A postcard may bear an address on the recto (1 leaf, 1 side) or on the verso (1 leaf, 2 sides). Beckett sometimes folded a single piece of
Ii
Editorial procedures
Editorial procedures
paper so that it had four sides (1 leaf, 4 sides). All editorial notations
are detailed under "Abbreviations. "
Discussionofdating Whenthedateofaletteriscorrectedorderived
from internal or external evidence, the rationale for the assigned date or date-range is given following the bibliographical note. Undated or partially dated letters are not unusual. Beckett may not date a letter when it is part of a frequent exchange or when it follows or anticipates a personal meeting; he often misdates letters at the beginning of a new year. If envelopes are clearly affiliated with the letter in question, the postmark may be helpful in dating. Some correspondence received by publishers and other businesses was routinely date stamped; this is noted in the bibliographical note and may inform incomplete dating. While Beckett occasionally delivers a note personally, it is also the case that some stamped letters are sent without cancellation. Telegrams are often difficult to date precisely and may bear only the date of receipt.
Translation Letters written entirely in a language other than English are translated immediately following the transcription of the original and its bibliographical note. Translators' initials are given when other than George Craig for French and Viola Westbrook for German. In the first volume, when published translations were not available, Adolf von Baden-Wurttemberg and George Craig have translated from Latin and Greek; Dan Gunn has translated from Italian.
Translations of words or phrases are provided in the notes to the letter. Translations are given with the following formulation: "Bon travail & bon sommeil" (work well & sleep well). The language of the original is not indicated in the translation unless there may be ambiguity; if required, these abbreviations are used: colloq. , collo· quial; Fr. , French; Ger. , German; Gk. , Greek; Ir. , Irish; It. , Italian; Lat. , Latin; Sp. , Spanish. Published translations are used for literary quo tations, if available, and are so noted (see below).
Beckett may write the name ofa German city with German, French, or English spelling; however, translations and editorial material present the English spelling of city and place names. Translations do not repeat Beckett's mistakes (slips of the pen, misremembering or misspelling of proper names, and the occasional incoherence inevitable in unrevised writings). In the rare cases when spelling norms have changed (in the 1930s Beckett wrote "to-day" and
Iii
"to-morrow"), current practice is followed. Although Beckett prac· ticed English-style capitalization when writing the titles of books in other languages, translations and notes use the capitalization prac· tice of the language in which the book was written. In the translation of letters, all titles of books are indicated by italics.
ANNOTATIONS
In the notes, Samuel Beckett is referred to as "SB. " Translations follow British spelling and punctuation practice; all other editorial materials follow American English spelling and punctuation. Although all letters are presented as written, in line with standard French practice the edition does not put accents on initial capitals in editorial matter. All other accents are displayed, even where, as in editorial headers, the material is represented in small capitals. This affects only editorial matter in French; other languages have other conventions.
Identifications of persons The first reference gives a person's full name (including birth name, and/or acquired appellations including pseudonyms and nicknames), years of birth and death, and a brief statement of identification. Additional statements of identification may be given over the course of a volume, or over the four volumes, when a person's primary occupation, affiliation, or relationship to Samuel Beckett changes. Identifications are not given for well· known figures such as William Shakespeare, Rene Descartes, Dante Alighieri.
Names Namesarenotnecessarilyconstantovertime. ThomasMcGreevy chose to change the spelling of his family name; after World War II, Georges Pelorson changed his name to Georges Belmont. Some women assume their husband's surname when they marry: Mary Manning became Mary Manning Howe and then Mary Manning Howe Adams, but she used her maiden name professionally. Editorial practice is to follow Beckett's spelling of the name at the time of writing (with the exception of misspelling), but also to refer to writers by the name given on the title page of their books.
Painters are often given a name that includes their parentage, their city of origin, or their association with a school of painting. Beckett's practice varies, so identifications in the annotations follow
liii
Editorial procedures
Editorial procedures
those given by The Grove Dictionary ofArt, with variant names and spellings given only where confusion might otherwise arise.
Some persons become known by their initials, some by their nick names, and some by both. Abraham Jacob Leventhal generally indi cates his name in publications as A. J. Leventhal, but he is most often referred to in Beckett's letters by his nickname, "Con. " Beckett's cousin Morris Sinclair may also be addressed as "Maurice," or by his family nickname "Sunny" which in German becomes "Sonny" (indeed he was the only son in the Sinclair family).
After first reference, editorial practice is to use the name that Beckett uses. When a name changes, a note will signal this change. Both/all names will be entered as one heading in the Index.
Dates Approximate dates are preceded by c. (circa), fl. (flourished), or a question mark; when dates are approximated as a range, the earliest birth year and the latest death year are given, preceded by c. to indicate approximation. If only the birth year or death year is known, it is given as, for example, (b. 1935) or (1852-? ) or (d. 1956). Rarely, the only date known is a marriage date; this will be given as (m. 1933). When a date is unknown, it is indicated as (n. d. ).
Titles In editorial material (translations, annotations, appendices), titles are presented with the capitalization and spelling conventions of the original language. The title of a work of art is presented in English since the language of the artist may not be the same as the language of the museum or collections that have owned it. Generally, a catalogue raisonne gives titles in several languages. Titles of musical works are often in the language of the composer and remain untranslated; however, lines from songs, recitatives, and arias are translated. Titles of books that are referred to in the text appear in the notes in their original language, followed by date of first publication and title in English if there is a published trans lation, e. g. Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932;Journey to the End ofthe Night); if the English title is given in roman font, e. g. Die notwendige Reise (1932; The Necessary Journey), this indicates that an English trans lation has not been published and that the translated title has been supplied by the editors.
Sources for names, titles, and dates To arbitrate varying names, spellings of names, and dates, editorial practice has relied upon The Grove Dictionary of Music; The Grove Dictionary of Art; The Cambridge
liv
Editorial procedures
Biographical Encyclopedia, second edition; the catalogues of the Bibliotheque Nationale, the British Library, the National Library of Ireland, the Library of Congress, as well as other national libraries; and The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.
Glosses Unusual or archaic English words or foreign-language terms that have entered common English usage are not glossed if they can be found in the second electronic edition of The Oxford English Dictionary.
References References to unpublished materials give the archive and manuscript identification of the documents. References to pub lished materials give a full bibliographical citation at the first mention, and a short-title reference thereafter. The Bibliography includes all published materials that are cited. Titles that are iden tified in the text but not cited do not appear in the Bibliography, but they are indexed.
Cross-reference Cross-reference that refers back to specific material within the edition is given by indicating the date of the letter and the number of the pertinent note, e. g. 9 January 1936, n. 5. References are rarely given forward. It is presumed that most readers will read sequentially; those who wish to pursue a single figure will be able to do so by use of the Index.
Choiceofeditions Althoughitisnecessarytoselectstandardeditions for editorial reference, these choices are not governed by a single rule. For example, most often the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade edition of French text is used, or the more recent of these where two editions exist, because these editions take into account earlier edi tions. Exceptions have been made when a reference requires a first edition or an edition that Beckett refers to in a letter, or one he is known to have read, or the only one he could have read. The choice of standard editions is explained at the point of first reference. Volumes II, III, and IV of The Letters may present other issues in this respect. Where there is no standard edition, editions are selected for their accessibility, for example the Riverside edition of Shakespeare's works. Biblical references are taken from the King James Version. Although the publication information is given for all first and subsequent editions of Beckett's texts when this infor mation is germane to the context of a letter, quotations are gener ally taken from the Grove Press editions.
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Editorial procedures
Choice of translations English literary translations are provided for Beckett's foreign-language citations. Beckett nearly always read in the original language, and so choice of a translation is seldom direc ted by his reading.
Chronologies Chronologies precede each year of the letters to present an overview of the events mentioned by Beckett's letters; these include significant world events.
Profiles Biographicalprofilesofpersonswhohaveacontinuingrolein the narrative of The Letters of Samuel Beckett appear in the Appendix. Those who have a profile are indicated with an asterisk following their first reference. A profile presents a narrative of a person's life and work, with regard particularly to his or her association with Beckett. Profiles appear in the first volume of the letters in which the person becomes a figure of significance. The profiles cover the historical range of a person's association with Beckett because they will not be reprinted in subsequent volumes of the edition. Profiles are also given for certain institutions, publications, and organizations.
lvi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The family of Samuel Beckett has been welcoming as well as generous in sharing memories and documents. The editors warmly thank Edward and Felicity Beckett, Caroline and Patrick Murphy, Diana Zambonelli, Jill Babcock, and remember with gratitude Ann Beckett (d. ), John Beckett (d. ), Sheila Page (d. ), and Morris Sinclair (d. ).
FUNDING AND CONTRIBUTIONS
The Graduate School ofEmory University has generously supported the research for The Letters ofSamuel Beckett since 1990. The editing project at Emory, known as "The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett," is a labo ratory for humanities research in which graduate students in several disciplines of the humanities are engaged. Faculty and staff colleagues at Emory have unfailingly supported the edition with their knowledge and resources.
The extensive process ofgathering, organizing, and preparing docu ments and oral histories fundamental to such an edition was facilitated by major support from The National Endowment for the Humanities from 1991 to 1997. The Graduate School of Emory University contrib uted both the overhead and cost-sharing for these grants.
The research for this edition is international and cross-cultural. The Florence Gould Foundation supported the French and American part nership of this research from 1995 through 2003. The Graduate School of Emory University and The American University of Paris contributed cost-sharing. The support of the Gould Foundation helped to establish a Paris center for the research at The American University of Paris, direc ted by Associate Editor Dan Gunn; students there served as interns, conducting research in French collections.
The Mellon Foundation supported research at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin
! vii
Acknowledgments
(1993-1994); the Huntington Library / British Academy Exchange Fellowship (1994-1995) supported research at the Huntington Library; the Helm Fellowship supported research at the Lilly Library, Indiana University (1997-1998, 2002-2003). The Rockefeller Foundation enabled the editorial team to meet at its Bellagio Study Center, Italy (2004-2005), to work together on the first two of the edition's four volumes.
The Cultural Division of the Department of European Affairs of Ireland has undertaken the distribution of copies of each of the four volumes of The Letters ofSamuel Beckett to universities and public libraries overseas and those operated through the Irish Diplomatic Missions abroad. We appreciate the support of Noel Treacy TD, former Minister for European Affairs, for making possible this tribute to Samuel Beckett's Irish legacy.
Without the continuing and substantial contributions of Emory Professors Alice N. Benston and George J. Benston (d. ), the project to edit The Letters of Samuel Beckett would not have gone forward. Their belief in the centrality of literature and the arts in an educated life, their intellectual mentorship and, especially, their personal encourage ment and friendship have been an immeasurable gift.
We are grateful for the efforts ofJoseph Beck of Kilpatrick Stockton LLP, who has been a steadfast adviser providing pro bono assistance to the edition in the area of copyright law. His thoroughness, expertise, and capacious understanding guided the editors; his personal support has been unbounded. We also thank Pam Mallari of Kilpatrick Stockton LLP for her pro bono services.
The editors greatly appreciate the generous in-kind contributions of the following persons: Mimi Bean, Brenda Bynum, R. Cary Bynum, Carainn Childers, Maydelle and Sam Fason, Neil Garvin, Barbara Gruninger, David Hesla, Jacob Hovind, Nori Howard-Butot, Alexandra Mettler, Breon Mitchell, Maria Chan Morgan, James Overbeck, Eduardo Paguaga, Lynn Todd-Crawford, Colette and Denis Weaire, and Gerald Weales.
The edition has been the beneficiary of gifts from individual donors, all of whom have additionally enriched this endeavor with their con tinuing interest: Laura Barlament, Jean B. Bergmark, Brenda and R. Cary Bynum, Claydean Cameron, Hilary Pyle Carey, Brian Cliff, Mary Evans Comstock, Judith Schmidt Douw, Jennifer Jeffers, Louis LeBroquy and
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Acknowledgments
Ann Madden, Victoria R. Orlowski, and Frances L. Padgett in honor of Brenda Bynum.
EMORY UNIVERSITY
The vision and support of the Deans of the Graduate School have
brought the edition to fruition; the editors especially thank George Jones, Alice N. Benston, and Eleanor Main(d. ), who made the edition's affiliation with Emory possible, and subsequent Deans Donald G. Stein, Robert Paul, and Lisa Tedesco, who continued this support. The editors also thank Vice Provost of International Affairs Holli Semetko for con
tributions to the international research for the edition.
The Advisory Board at Emory University includes Alice N. Benston, Ronald Schuchard, Maximilian Aue, Geoffrey Bennington, and Sandra Still. The editors wish to recognize them and the contributions of other Emory faculty colleagues: Matthew Bernstein, Philippe Bonnefis, Thomas Burns, Brenda Bynum, David A. Cook, Michael Evenden, Steve Everett, William Gruber, Josue Harari, David Hesla, Geraldine Higgins, Peter H6yng, Dalia Judovitz, Judith Miller, Clark V. Poling,
Donald Verene, andJ. HarveyYoung(d. ).
Emory University Libraries have been at the heart of the research for
the edition: The Woodruff Library - Directors Joan Gotwals, Linda Matthews, and Richard Luce, and Librarians Rachel Borchardt, Lloyd Busch,Joyce Clinkscales, Margaret Ellingson, Erika Farr, Kristin Gager, Marie Hansen, Erin Mooney, Anne Nicolson, Eric Nitschke, Marie Nitschke, Elizabeth Patterson, Chuck Spornick, Sandra Still, Ann Vidor, Elaine Wagner, Sarah Ward, Erik Wendt, and Gayle Williams; The Manuscript and Rare Book Library(MARBL) - Director Stephen Enniss, Teresa Burk, Ginger Cain, David Faulds, Naomi Nelson, Ellen Nemhauser, Elizabeth Russey, Kathy Shoemaker, and Donna Bradley; the staff of The ECIT center; The Michael C. Carlos Museum - Catherine Howett Smith; Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library - Director Carol Burns, Barbara Abu-Leid, and Erin Busch.
The dedicated support team in the Beckett Project office over the years has managed the varied demands ofthe edition superbly: Amanda R. Baker, Daphne Demetry, Julia Getman, Courtney King, Suzanne Powell, Molly Stevens, and especially Lynn Todd-Crawford. The editors appreciate the assistance of Rosemary Hynes and Geri Thomas in the
! ix
Acknowledgments
Graduate School, as well as the services of members of the Emory technical support staff: Adolf von Baden-Wiirttemberg, Mahbuba Ferdousi, Wei Ming Lu, and Laura Pokalsky.
Emory University Graduate Fellows have served the research of the project with diligence and creativity: Adrienne Angelo, Levin Arnsperger, Jeffrey Baggett, Laura Barlament, Jenny Davis Barnett, Andre BenhalIIl, Patrick Bixby, Karen Brown-Wheeler, Brooke Campbell, Lauren Cardon, Miriam Chirico, Brian Cliff, Curtis Cordell, Kathryn Crowther, Brian Croxall, Anthony J. Cuda, Anna Engle, John Fitzgerald, Christian Paul Holland, Jacob Hovind, Jennifer Jeffers, Michael Johnson, Jason Jones, Margaret Koehler, Paul Linden, Dominic Mastroianni, Martha Henn McCormick, Michelle Miles, Jennifer Poulos Nesbitt, Eduardo Paguaga, John Peck, Ralph Schoolcraft, Petra Schweitzer, Jennifer Svienty, Melissa Thurmond, Derval Tubridy, Kerry Higgins Wendt, Patrick Wheeler, and Julia McElhattan Williams.
Emory University Undergraduate Assistants have been effective and energetic in their work with the project: Margaret Anello, Amanda Barnett, Maiben Beard, Jonah Bea-Taylor, Shanta! Chan-Friday, Rebecca Conner, Daphne Demetry, Kirsten Dorsche, Natasha Farquharson, Neil Garvin, Jessica Gearing, Julia Hendricks, Lisa Hutchinson, Erin Igney, Danielle Kuczkowski, Josh Millard, Toure Neblett, Alina Opreanu, Victoria Orlowski, Sarah Osier, Jason Rayles, Amanda Robinson, Brian Serafin, Danielle Sered, Emily Shin, Hannah Shin, John Southnard, Shannon Weary, Amanda Wilburn, and Ashley Woo.
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
Initiated with the award of a grant from the Florence Gould Foundation, the edition's partnership with The American University of Paris has included faculty, staff, and students. The editors appreciate the assis tance and support of Presidents Lee Huebner, Michael Simpson, and Gerardo della Paolera; Deans William Cipolla, Andrea Leskes, Michael Vincent, and Celeste Schenck; faculty - Christine Baltay, Geoffrey Gilbert, Richard Pevear, Roy Rosenstein, and University Librarians Toby Stone and Jorge Sosa Ortega, as well as the assistance of William Gatsby, Beatrice Laplante, Brenda Tomey, and Karen Wagner.
AUP student interns: Amy Christine Allen, Lauren Anderson, Isolde Barker-Mill, Maranda Barnes, Susan Bell, Mischa Benoit-Lavelle, David
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Bornstein, Brian Brazeau, Chrislaine Brito-Medina, Zachary Brown, Sarah Champa, Christina Chua, Laura Cook, Alessandra Cortez, Lisa Damon, Lindsay Franta, Natalie Frederick, Mia Genoni, Delphine Henri, Eric Hess, Laura Kaiserman, Alkmini Karakosta, Jennifer Kerns, Anthony Kraus, Caroline Laurent, Jennifer Laurent, Eugene Manning, Caroline Markunas, Ivy Mills, Candace Montout, Disa Ohlsson, Caleb Pagliasotti, Marta Lee Perriard, David Pollack, Jennifer Scanlon, Pamela Schleimer, Nils Schott, Jonathan Scott, Avra Spector, Jan Steyn, Alix Strickland, Leigh Thomas, Geoffrey Thompson, Gina Tory, Ulrike Trux, Todd Tyree, Christian West, Eugenia Wilbrenninck, Alison M. Williams, and April Wuensch.
