This brings up a question of
enduring
importance.
Samuel Beckett
Principles of inclusion were formed and tested, then re-formed, re-tested, and re-applied. Among the central questions were: Does the letter record a signal event in Beckett's working life? Does the letter reveal Beckett as a writer? Does it represent the working relation ships that he had with colleagues? Does it offer glimpses of Beckett's reading, thinking, and valuing? Does it show his responses to art and music? Subtending all these questions: Does the letter illuminate the oeuvre?
Everywhere there were choices to be made. A great many postcards were written when Beckett was away on holiday, and many letters confirm receipt of books or newspaper cuttings. Most of Beckett's correspondents in the later years received a small correspondence card written to arrange, say, an eleven o'clock coffee at the Petit Cafe Frarn;:ais de l'H6tel PLM on the Boulevard St. Jacques; some correspond ents received many such cards. A choice among similar letters and cards was determined, in part, by the contribution each could make to the
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overall narrative. Did the particular card or letter establish or show a continuing working relationship? Did it fill a gap in time or explain a change of location? Did it lead to further communication that became important to Beckett's work?
The line between the life and the work is not easy to distinguish. What may appear entirely personal in a particular letter may tum up, months or years later, practically unchanged, in a published work. What may appear as markedly literary has often emerged from an intimate, lived sense of connection or dislocation.
The editors wished to present letters in their entirety, annotated with portions of other letters Beckett wrote. They had to accept, however, that any edition that deals with living contemporaries and their imme diate families must respect personal privacy and public reputation. The editors' views have not always coincided with those of The Estate of
Samuel Beckett, particularly when the Literary Executor was Jerome Lindon who understood Beckett's "work" to mean only the published oeuvre. When Edward Beckett became Literary Executor, he largely agreed with the editors' insistence that letters themselves are impor tant acts of writing, that "work" included jettisoned as well as pub lished writing, and that Beckett's reading, and his interests in art and music, as well as his relation to other writers, musicians, and artists, were all significant to the literary work.
The editors believe, especially because the several biographies of Beckett make liberal use of the letters in quotation or paraphrase, that there remains very little reason to exclude a letter, or part of a letter, because of what Beckett says about himself. To take one exam ple, it is the editors' view that Beckett's frequent, at times almost obsessive, discussion of his health problems - his feet, his heart palpi tations, his boils and cysts - is of direct relevance to the work; with this The Estate of Samuel Beckett has disagreed.
Rather than exclude a letter because it speaks of an individual's difficulties, or includes repetition of mere gossip (here considered the relayingofthecommentsofathirdparty),ortouchesonmattersjudged too intimate, the editors have followed a policy of inclusion, publishing letters relevant to Beckett the writer. Although doing so has required some ellipses, the editors have tried to limit these. Every letter included in the edition is cited with its current ownership, and those in archives can be consulted in full.
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LANGUAGES
Beckett wrote letters primarily in English (65 percent), and also in French (30 percent), and German (5 percent). The choice of language may have been determined by the first language of his recipient or by a language they had in common, or sometimes by other factors, such as when he writes to McGreevy in French to safeguard the privacy of their exchanges, or when he wishes to play. The richness of his language and syntax, as well as Irish turns of phrase, occasional Gallicisms, and multilingual puns, his knowledge of several languages and his willing ness to mix them, his etymological curiosity and his immense vocabu lary - all these as well as many other features present challenges not faced by editors working on a writer more solidly anchored in a single tradition or time.
PRESENTATION
Beckett's letters themselves have guided the formation of the editorial principles. The editors' goal has been to let the letters speak for them selves wherever possible, their preference being for a minimum of intrusion. The letters are presented as written, preserving Beckett's habits and idiosyncrasies. Letters are presented as clear copy, reflecting the changes that Beckett made as or after he wrote them, that is to say, the letter as it was received by its recipient. If Beckett canceled a word and inserted a phrase, his insertion is included; if Beckett corrected his spelling, the corrected word is shown. Other than obvious typograph ical errors such as overtypes and extra spaces, there are no silent emendations. Editorial emendations made to clarify ambiguity are pre sented within square brackets (preceded by a question mark if a reading is doubtful) to signal that these are not Beckett's words. Letters are presented in their original language; translation into English follows; words or phrases from languages other than the dominant one of the letter are translated in the notes.
Each letter is prefaced by the name of the recipient and the place to which the letter was written (if known), since Beckett seldom includes the recipient's name and address in the body of his letters. The date and the place of writing are given as written. Beckett's signature is recorded
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as written. Postscripts are placed following the signature; their place ment in the original is noted, if it differs from what appears.
A bibliographical note follows each letter, presenting a description of the document, indicating whether autograph or typed, whether signed or initialed, whether postcard or lettercard; this includes the number of leaves and sides of the letter. It also records any notations on the letter in another hand or damage to the document that affects legibility. This note indicates if the letter is written on letterhead or if a card bears the imprint ofBeckett's name; it records the image in the case ofa picture postcard. Also included are the details ofsending and the enve lope, if one exists: the addressee and address, the postmark, and any other notations, even in another hand, such as forwarding instructions. Finally, the note records the ownership or repository of the letter.
This information is followed, where required, by a discussion of dating. Beckett occasionally misdates letters, especially at the begin ning ofa new year. In a correspondence that follows a personal meeting or in which letters are exchanged with rapidity, as for example in that with Georges Duthuit, only the time of day or the day of the week may be given. Any dating supplied editorially is given within square brack ets, with doubtful dating noted; occasionally the dating supplied can only suggest a date range.
ANNOTATION
During early conversations concerning the edition, Beckett told the editors, "Please, no commentary. " The editors rejoined: "Not commen tary, but there must be context. " And to this he readily agreed.
The inevitable questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why? ) led the editors into sometimes arcane areas of research, such as menus and timetables, playbills and weather reports, exchange rates and sports results. A recipient's letters to Beckett were of course the most helpful resource, when they were available. When they were not, the recipients and their associates were usually informative and ready to suggest further avenues of research. Often, other Beckett letters provided nec essary information; whenever possible, these are used in the notes. When need arose to clarify an issue not addressed by published sources, specialists and scholars in many fields were consulted. In shaping the annotations, the editors wanted to open future research, not limit it,
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keeping in mind that future generations of readers and scholars would ask new questions of these letters.
There are several views which may be taken of notes in an edition of letters, ranging from what could be called the "maximalist" approach, employed for example in The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats under the General Editorship of John Kelly, to the "minimalist" approach favored by Richard Ellmann in his edition of the Letters of
James Joyce. Both approaches have their virtues. The former helps the inquiring reader to understand the context and the often obscure refer ences, but risks distracting attention from the letters themselves. The latter keeps the focus on the principal object, but risks leaving the reader with many unanswered questions. This is a selected rather than a complete edition of the letters, annotated whenever possible by other letters written by Beckett. The editors have tended toward the "minimalist" approach to annotation, although, because of the very complex nature of the material, at times it may not seem so. The governing principle is that what is indispensable to the understanding of the letter be noted; however, with a writer as learned, as multi lingual, and as well versed in the history of literature, art, and music as Beckett was, the quantity of what may be indispensable is often dauntingly extensive.
Any annotation makes assumptions about the level of general and specialized knowledge that readers might be expected to have, as well as about the research tools to which readers might reasonably be expected to have ready access. While the readers who may be familiar with the 1930s or even the 1950s have been decreasing in number, the quantity of readers has been growing who have almost instant access, through internet search engines, to a fund of sources, such as digital ized out-of-print texts, electronic catalogues of museum collections, and searchable text bases. The present edition seeks to be a scholarly edition of record, and it presumes levels of cultivation that this implies, while presuming this unevenly: given that readers of Beckett are more likely to be well versed in literature than in the visual arts, more is taken for granted in literary arenas than in the domains of art or music, or indeed those of chess or mathematics or television production, or the myriad other fields in which Beckett invested himself.
Annotations immediately follow the letter, its bibliographical note, and its translation; because the notes apply to both the letter and its
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translation, endnotes have been preferred to footnotes. The notes seek to identify the persons, places, events, and other references in letters. Often they point to sources for further detail, such as Beckett's own notebooks, various editions of his works, and his reading, but allusions to parallel passages or echoes in Beckett's works are not supplied because these would be too numerous. When possible, annotations draw upon other documents and letters to, from, and about Beckett. Sources of quotations are cited within the note, including location information for unpublished materials. At the end of each volume there is a bibliography of published works cited.
The initial identification of a person generally includes the full name, followed by any nickname or pseudonym, dates of birth and death, and a brief note on his or her career or activity at the time of first reference; any dubious information is preceded by a question mark. Subsequent refer ence will not repeat this information, but may expand on it as an indi vidual changes name, role, or occupation; readers who do not read sequentially should use the index for the location of this information. Short biographies of recipients and other persons as well as brief accounts of publications and institutions referred to with some frequency in the letters can be found in the appendix, "Profiles. " Fuller detail concern ing editorial practice, including abbreviations, notations, idiosyncrasies of Beckett's usage, as well as a discussion of the editorial principles of translation, are presented later in the introductory matter. A chronol ogy for each year provides an overview and precedes the letters for each year.
THE FOUR VOLUMES
The original contract for the edition called for three volumes of letters, but the quantity of the sixty years of correspondence quickly made four volumes more practical. The divisions between the volumes presented themselves rather naturally.
Volume I (1929-1940) begins with a letter written from Germany to James Joyce in Paris; it ends with a letter to Marthe Arnaud, the com panion of Bram van Velde, written as the Nazis were about to occupy Paris. In the eleven years represented in Volume I, Beckett explores a world beyond Ireland: he is on the move, from his post at the Ecole Normale Superieure to his lectureship at Trinity College Dublin, from
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his alternating periods ofresidence in London and Dublin between 1933 and 1937 to his travels through Germany in late 1936 and early 1937. Although Beckett has settled in Paris by the end of1937, Ireland is never entirely left behind.
In the early years, Beckett is imagining a literary life even while he proclaims his disqualification from it. Thomas McGreevy is the princi pal sounding-board during this period, while others provide a more or less perceptive and responsive audience: George Reavey, Arland Ussher, Edward Titus, Samuel Putnam, Eugene and Maria Jolas, James Joyce, Jack B. Yeats, Charles Prentice, Nuala Costello, Mary Manning Howe, Brian Coffey, to name but the most significant figures. The writing of letters constitutes for Beckett both a warming-up exercise and an end in itself, an act ofwriting often as exciting as anything he is composing with a view to publication. Although some of his writing from this period remains unpublished, Beckett's Proust, Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates, More Pricks than Kicks, and the novel Murphy appear in print, as do poems, essays, and stories in Dublin, London, and Paris journals.
During the War years, Beckett served in the French Resistance and avoided capture by the Gestapo by escaping to Roussillon in Unoccupied France. While there were communications during this period, they were official telegrams transmissible only to and through the Irish Legation in Vichy - the barest lines telegraphed on behalf ofBeckett to his family about health or money, with no mention of his work.
Volume II (1945-1956) opens in the aftermath ofWorld War II, when Beckett is visiting Ireland before his return to France in 1945 as a member ofan Irish Red Cross field hospital team. In the twelve years represented in this volume Beckett produces the work for which he is best known - a period, then, of unprecedentedly intense literary activ ity, but also a period ofsometimes frenetic letter-writing. By the end of this time, En attendant Godot has been translated and performed in France and Germany (1953), England and Ireland (1955), as well as the United States (1956), and Beckett's reputation is secure. During this period, Beckett begins to write seriously in French, most notably the three novels, Molloy, Malone meurt, and L'Innommable, and the plays Eleutheria and En attendant Godot. This period also sees Beckett form his most explicit and fully articulate aesthetic, which grows in no small
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measure out of his long and impassioned correspondence with Georges Duthuit, art historian and Editor of the post-war version of the journal Transition. During this period, and not without difficulty, Beckett forges permanent ties with publishers and agents who will represent his work for the rest of his creative life: Les Editions de Minuit in France, Grove Press in New York, John Calder and Faber and Faber in London, Fischer Verlag and Suhrkamp in Germany.
Although Beckett resigned himself to being "written out" by 1957, the letters of Volume III record a period marked by experiment. During this time, Beckett writes for radio and film, creates new possibilities for drama in Fin de partie, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Days, and generates new and formidably challenging narrative forms with Comment c'est and other, shorter fictions. He also becomes personally engaged in the practical realization of his work on the stage and in radio, film, and television. Beckett decided, certainly by the time of the English trans lation of En attendant Godot, that he must himself take responsibility for translating his texts, whether conceived and written in French or English, into the other language, and, with very few exceptions, he did. Still, for him, moving a work from one language to another was next to impossible.
Letters from this period are often directed to specific issues: ques tions posed by translators, the problems of directors, or the sequencing of a series of short prose pieces for inclusion in a collection. Supporting materials for this volume include interviews with Beckett's friends, edi tors, directors, designers, performers, and "crrritics. " The editors con sulted scripts, photos, recordings, reviews, and letters to and from Beckett's production teams. While the research for this volume has been marked by a greater possibility of direct conversation with the recipients of Beckett's letters, it has also entailed working with papers that are primarily in private hands, or which are in the process of being transferred to archives.
At the end of 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize, an honor which his wife Suzanne described as a "catastrophe. " The unsought bounty of worldwide attention that follows is reflected in Volume IV, which stretches from 1970 to the author's death in 1989. The encum brance of mail intensifies: there are replies to old friends, responses to new correspondents, meetings to arrange, and projects to authorize, guide, or deflect. Still, Beckett finds ways to retain the privacy necessary
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for his writing, for this is a period that sees the publication and produc tion of many new works. The possibilities of television are more fully explored in Ghost Trio, . . . but the clouds. . . , Nacht und Triiume, and Quad. In his stage plays, Beckett expands the presence of interiority often through recorded sound, in such works as That Time, Footfalls, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, and Quoi ou. As he has done from the start of his writing career, Beckett continues to write poetry during his final years, and the resulting works range from the brief and pithy Mirlitonnades to the open-ended musing of "Comment dire. " This is the period of Le Depeupleur, Still, Company, Mal vu mal dit, Worstward Ho, and Stirrings Still.
LACUNAE
There were times when Beckett and his correspondents were moving frequently between countries with little more than what a suitcase could hold; unnecessary papers were jettisoned as a result. Along with documents that have been lost, places have changed: certain buildings no longer exist where they once stood, streets have been renamed. Works of art are moveable properties: it is not surprising that some of the paintings which Beckett saw in one museum should be in a differ ent collection now. Normal changes over time were multiplied by the havoc ofWorld War IL Some works ofart that Beckett viewed in private collections and museums during his German travels in 1936-1937 were confiscated, sold, or destroyed. The editors' research has necessitated identifying the location and ownership ofsuch art works, both past and present.
All contemporary readers are removed in time and culture from the immediate contexts of Beckett's letters. The editors readily acknowl edge that there are gaps in their knowledge, and have not hesitated to report the limits of what they have been able to discover, indicating when handwriting is illegible, when a reference is unclear, when evi dence is insufficient, or when the relevant information has simply not been found. Whether in a reference to a once-common patent medicine or to a reel-to-reel tape recorder, the letters testify to how rapidly the quotidian reality has changed.
The fact that most of Samuel Beckett's letters open with some form of "Glad to have your letter" shows that letters were, for him, a welcome
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and real connection. In writing replies, Beckett acknowledges and often attempts to bridge the gaps of time, distance, and circumstance. Even though the instability of all the terms (the writer, his fictive voice, the occasion, and the reader) conspire against it, a letter purports to miti gate, ifnot to close, the gap between writer and reader. 9
NOTES
1 Samuel Beckett to Arland Ussher, 6 November 1962, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin (hereafter "TxU"). Hereafter "SB" will be used in the notes to refer to Samuel Beckett.
2 SB to Mary Manning Howe, 25 December 1965, TxU.
3 Samuel Beckett, No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan
Schneider, ed. Maurice Harmon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Some of these letters were published in Samuel Beckett, "Beckett's Letters on 'Endgame': Extracts from His Correspondence with Director Alan Schneider," The Village Voice 19 March 1958: 8, 15; rpt. in The Village Voice Reader: A Mixed Bagfrom the Greenwich Village Newspaper, ed. Daniel Woolf and Edwin Fancher (New York: Doubleday, 1962) 182-186; 2nd edn. (New York: Grove Press, 1963) 166-169; rpt. as "On Endgame" in Samuel Beckett, Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, ed. Ruby Cohn (New York: Grove Press, 1984) 106-110, and in translation.
The following publish full letters to individuals: Samuel Beckett and Erich Franzen, "Correspondence on Translating MOLLOY," Babel 3 (Spring 1984) 21-35; Claire Stoullig and Nathalie Schoeller, eds. , Bram van Ve! de [to Marthe Arnaud, Bram van Velde, Jacques Putman, some facsimile! (Paris: Musee National d'Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, 1989) 160, 165, 172-175, 183, 185, 187-189; Maurice Nadeau, Graces ! eur soient rendues (Paris: Albin Michel. 1990) 363-369; Vivienne Abbot, "How It Was: Egan and Beckett" in Desmond Egan: The Poet and His Work, ed. Hugh Kenner (Orono, ME: Northern Lights, 1990) 45-53; Samuel Beckett, "Letters to Barney Rosset. " The Review of Contemporary Fiction 10. 3 (Fall 1990) 64-71; Samuel Beckett and Barney Rosset, "The Godot Letters: A Lasting Effect" (Letters of Samuel Beckett and Barney Rosset), The New Theatre Review 12 (Spring 1995) 10-13; Marin Kannitz, Comedie [facsimile! (Paris: Les Editions du Regard, 2001) 14-25; and Anne Atik, How It Was: A Memoir of Samuel Beckett [to Avigdor Arikha and Anne Atik, facsimile! (London: Faber and Faber, 2003).
Exhibition, library. and dealer catalogues in print and on the Web have repro duced Beckett's letters. Those that reproduce the widest range of letters are: Carlton Lake, with the assistance of Linda Eichhorn and Sally Leach, No Symbols Where None Intended: A Catalogue ofBooks, Manuscripts, and Other Material Relating to Samuel Beckett in the Collections of the Humanities Research Center (Austin: Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 1984); Marianne Alphant and Nathalie Leger, eds. , Objet: Beckett (Paris: Centre Pompidou, IMEC-Editeur, 2007).
Numerous publications have included individual letters. The letter to Axel Kaun and the letter to Sergei Eisenstein included in this volume have been the most frequently published. Previous publications of individual letters are indicated in the bibliographical notes for them in this and subsequent volumes.
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4 SB to Martha Dow Fehsenfeld [summer 1986], private collection.
5 SB to Carlton Lake, 24 October 1987,JohnJ. Bums Library of Rare Books and Special
Collections. Boston College, Rasset Collection (hereafter "Bums Library").
6 SB to Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, 18 March 1985, private collection.
7 Signed by SB, 28 March 1989.
8 Signed by Edward Beckett, 24 April 1990.
9 "Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit" in Beckett, Disjecta, 144.
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FRENCH TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
Translation is never simple, but it is normally, in at least one major respect, straightf01ward: the translator renders from the native lan guage of the writer into the native language of the reader. With Beckett we have a different reality. In the first place, his native language is English; French is a language which he gradually acquires, in a learning process that runs from total ignorance in early childhood to near-total ease and competence in later years. When Beckett permanently settles in France from late 1937 and begins to make friends with, among others, monoglot French-speakers, some at least ofthe letters have to be written in French, whatever his level of competence. It is, of course, not a simple switch. In most cases, he does it for the obvious practical reasons: the addressee knows only French, or has only limited English. But Beckett sometimes chooses to write in French to friends or acquaintances whose native language is English - now playfully, now ostentatiously, now as part ofa particular intimacy. Many ofthe English letters contain some French, from single words or short phrases to whole paragraphs.
The translator, then, must keep in mind two dimensions ofBeckett's French: the historical-developmental and the tonal. In the first, the earliest step will be deciding where Beckett is, at the moment ofwrit ing, in what we have come to call the learning curve. Inevitably this will matter above all in the early letters, when he is only a little way on from his formal study of French, and less and less as time goes on, although it never disappears. In later volumes we shall see Beckett writing drafts of French-language letters, especially ifthe letter involves the essentially unfamiliar territory oflegal or administrative language (as for instance in inquiries about rights, or negotiations with theatre managers and impresarios, as distinct from directors and actors, with whom commu nication is both easier and more natural). There is one extraordinary letter that illustrates the effects ofsuch hesitation: Beckett's request to Sergei Eisenstein (dated 2 March 1936) to be allowed to work in Moscow
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under his guidance. The document that survives has a standard French beginning (the formal "Monsieur") and a comparably formal French ending ("Veuilliez agreer mes meilleurs hommages") although the first word is incorrectly spelled. The tone of the whole mixes English and French styles. The initial choice of French is of course sensible: it is highly probable that Eisenstein will be more at ease with French. The body of the letter, however, is in English, but here too there are unmis takable signs of haste: three not-quite-sentences, dotted with abbrevi ations, sketching in his CV, as well as other oddities. In short, it reads like a draft. It seems wholly unlikely that anybody with Beckett's respect for Eisenstein could have sent such a mishmash while asking, or at least hoping, for a favorable response from the great man. Beckett's letters to friends give evidence of the ease with which he moves between English and French, but this letter exemplifies hesitations that go beyond lan guage. It is impossible to say what changes of thought or mood triggered the decision to send it, but send it he did.
The developmental dimension takes on greater importance once Beckett has decided to write some of his works for publication in French, a decision which means, among other things, that writing in French can never again be exclusively private. The letters allow us insight into the consequences of Beckett's decision, but remind us too that Beckett is still also an English-speaker, still also someone who writes for publication in English.
This brings up a question of enduring importance. Responsible translators worry at times about whether they have or have not "got it right"; whether their man or woman "would have said that. " They worry, in fact, that they may have betrayed the writer whose work they have rendered. Always, as if in mockery of their attempts, they can hear the dire finality of "traduttore traditore"; but they learn to live with that risk. With Beckett, the situation is more challenging. Of virtually any letter it could be said that he might have written part or all of it in English. But the body of English-language letters is there to remind the boldest as well as the most timorous of translators that English-Beckett, or indeed Beckett-English, cannot simply be presumed - or, without great risk, invented. What is to be done with his idiosyncratic wordplay? Will the translator's nonce-words give the flavor of Beckett's? And what of his disregard for French practice in capitalization (names of days or months, titles of books, names of institutions), or again, his erratic
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use of diacriticals (his address for some months, the "Hotel Liberia," often appears without diacriticals; the cedilla needed on "�a" or "<;:a" hardly ever appears, partly due to the limitations of his typewriter)? And so on.
Clearly, these questions cannot be left in the air. The decisions taken for this edition are as follows. The governing assumption is that we will at all points draw on the English-language letters of the time as indica tive of what is idiomatically appropriate, particularly in the case of colloquialisms. This has often meant excluding what might well be neater or more forceful expressions if these were not in circulation at the time of writing. Thus World War II slang moved beyond "fed up" to "browned off' and on through variants like "cheesed (off)" to the near-universal "pissed (off)": all or any of these would have fitted the mood of Beckett faced with publishers' neglect or rejections, but none of them was available in the 1930s, when almost all of the letters in the first volume were written. Nor is this only a matter ofchoice ofwords. It was customary in the 1930s to write "I did not," "they were not," "it is," and so on; by the end of the 1940s the contractions "I didn't," "they weren't," "it's," etc. , are much more frequently found. Not the least interesting feature of such changes is the wide variation in speed of acceptance: trend-conscious journalists in the fast lane, so to speak, elderly scholars stalling in the slow lane. Beckett's own practice is variable. It is worth noting, for example, that in the late 1930s, Beckett was still writing "to-day" and "to-morrow. " In the case of his inventions (nonce-words, portmanteau-words, and the like), the aim is that of representing not just the semantic or tonal direction, but also the charge (the greater or lesser boldness). As for Beckett's "mistakes" (slips of the pen, misspelled or misremembered proper names, the occasional incoherence inevitable in unrevised writings), policy is not to repeat these in editorial matter, but rather to use the form regarded as correct now ("today," "Hotel Liberia") and, in the case of capital ization in titles, to use current French practice for French words and English for English.
Dwarfing all these is a still more troubling, even frightening, worry. It is the obverse side of Beckett's decision to write for publication in French. What would he have said in the other language? A single example will make the point. If, when writing to a friend, he were to say of a man they both know: "II y a longtemps que je ne l'ai pas vu,"
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French translator's preface
there are obvious translations: "I have not seen him for a long time," or "It is a long time since I saw him. " But Beckett is an Irishman, and, if writing to a fellow Irishman, he might well have said (and often did say) "I have not seen him this long time," a phrase requiring an audible stress on "long," a usage not found in standard English. If the translator is aware of both possibilities, which one should he choose? In practice, our decision is to allow lrishisms only where it is clear that the addres see is familiar with them. This hypothetical example is relatively trivial, but it points up something that goes far beyond the usual preoccupa tions of translators: Beckett's relation to his native language -which is, let us be quite clear, English, not Irish, a language which he does not know. That relation is not something that can be dealt with in these few pages, but certain aspects of it are immediately relevant. For the rela tion is not symmetrical, in a pattern where, as it might be, the French gets better while the English gets worse. Then again, Beckett's case is quite unlike that of, say, Kafka, aware of a linguistic limbo in which, for external historico-political reasons, three languages press on him: German, Czech, and Yiddish. Nor is Beckett like Nabokov, whose even tual decision to go over to writing in English is linked to his rejection of Soviet Russia.
Beckett's case is in fact a familiar one -but not among writers. It is the case of all those who, for whatever reason, have freely chosen to immerse themselves in the life, language, and culture of another coun try. Not unlike the evolution of a love affair, the first phase is often marked by idealization of the new object, and a tendency to run down what went before. This is very much in evidence in the second and third volumes of the Letters, written in a period when he is working on trans lations of his own work into English. This task is for him both burden some and irritating, in part at least because of his ambivalent relation with his native language (at one moment, "cette horrible langue"). He never loses his distaste for the chore of translation, but his acute con cern with the translation of his own work indicates that the issues go well beyond likes and dislikes.
Once the fame of Godot has spread, translations follow, almost all into languages of which Beckett knows little or nothing, but there is at least one interesting intermediate case: German. His reading and his visits to Germany have given him some familiarity with the language: nothing comparable to his grasp of French, or indeed of Italian, but capable of
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French translator's preface
prompting in him worries about aspects of his translator's work. As it happens, his primary German translator, Elmar Tophoven, is capable of responding appropriately, and there ensues a fascinating correspond ence and an enduring friendship. More generally, Beckett's letters to his translators, as well as illustrating his moral generosity and his appreci ation oftheir efforts, abound in acute and revealing reflections on writing and language.
There is one further area in which international difference matters: the representation ofwords, and above all proper names, from languages (Russian, Greek, Arabic mainly) that do not use the Roman alphabet. The case ofRussian illustrates the difficulty perfectly. Transliteration is an attempt to represent as closely as possible the sounds ofRussian, but the representations themselves vary according to the norms of the receiving language. Thus the Russian poet is Pushkin for English-speakers, but Pouchkine for the French, while the dramatist is respectively Chekhov and Tchekhov. 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).
