32. ‘cramp just mentioned’. See p 31: the coils which ‘would come to an end for lack of room’
Rafflesia: the largest flower known (named after Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore). It is a malodorous parasite on a vine, rootless leafless and stemless. After seven days it becomes black and slimy. It is sometimes called the corpse flower.
‘my little ones born in my absence’. So they were someone else’s little ones, and correctly described on p. 39 as ‘little bastards’.
33. ‘a small rotunda - windowless, but well furnished with loopholes’. A skull?
‘periods’: menstrual periods. (French: les menstrues.)
‘Ptomaine’: the name of ‘little mother’. The word was coined by a 19th C Italian physician to describe sickness spread from corpses. ‘Any of various very often poisonous organic compounds formed by the action of putrefactive bacteria on nitrogen-containing matter.’ Ptoma (Greek) means fall, hence fallen body, hence corpse.
‘the whole ten or eleven of them’. But ‘grandpa, grandma, little mother and the eight or nine brats’ (above) makes eleven or twelve of them.
35. ‘Ptoto’: diminutive of Ptomaine. Toto is the dog in The Wizard of Oz.
‘I quote Malone’. Is there a specific reference to anything in Malone Dies.
Bat-horse: a horse which carried the baggage of an army officer. Bat (French} means pack-saddle. (L'Innommable: ‘une vieille carne de somme ou de trait’.)
36. ‘well-supplied with pain-killers’. See p.31: ‘to devour a narcotic’.
‘Ellman's Embrocation.’ Ellman the biographer of Joyce?
38. ‘the bacillus botulinus’. Botulism is poisoning by the botulinus toxin which is produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria. It is caused by eating improperly sterilized canned foods.
‘my adhesion’. See p 31.
Infundibuliform: funnel-shaped.
39. ‘beat in retreat’. 'beat a retreat’?
‘Isolde’s breast’. Isolde seems not to be one of the little bastards. She must be grandma!
41. ‘they’ve inflicted the notion of time on me’. See p.21: ‘years is one of Basil's ideas’.
42. ‘First I'll say what I'm not’. Somewhere in Beckett there is ‘define God in terms of what he is not’.
‘I'd wish they did’: I’d wish they did exist.
43. Helicoidal: spring-like.
‘the statue of the apostle of horse’s meat’. There used to be such a statue in the Rue Brancion. Reference?
45. Carrots, turnips: root vegetables. See Waiting for Godot.
Flakkee and Colmar Red are varieties of carrot. The district formerly known as Flakkee is part of the island of Goeree in the south of the Netherlands. Colmar is in Alsace. A museum there has a 15th century Last Supper painting of a red-bearded Judas by Gaspart Isermann. (Hence Colmar Red??)
‘her salad’. See ‘the services I rendered her lettuce’, above.
‘better still, I don’t know why, a swede’. Perhaps because of the philosopher Swedenborg, whom Kant read.
‘De nobis ipsis silemus’. Kant’s motto for second edition of his Critique. Origin?
47. ‘two phases of the same carnal envelope’. The carnal envelope is the dwelling for the spirit. The reincarnated spirit returns in a new carnal envelope.
‘that other old age’: Malone? 'that other middle age’: Molloy? ‘youth in which they had to give me up for dead’: Murphy?
48. ‘blue mirrors’: eyes.
49. ‘tumefaction of the penis’: of those who are hanged. See Waiting for Godot.
Manstuprating: masturbating with the hand. Masturbating: stimulating the genitals by any means besides intercourse.
Clydesdale: Scottish draught horse with heavily feathered legs. Suffolk: English breed of chestnut coloured draught horses.
50. ‘Slough off this mortal inertia’. See Hamlet: ‘shuffled off this mortal coil’.
Chap: jaw.
Bay of Naples: one of ‘the splendours of nature’ (above). Aubervilliers: an industrial town NE of Paris.
‘infarctus’. Infarct: an area of death in a tissue or organ resulting from obstruction of the local blood circulation.
‘they put me out of my agony’: ‘they’ have not previously intruded on the Rue Brancion.
Backers: sleeping partners. (French: commanditaires.)
52. ‘two falsehoods’. See p. 54: ‘two labours then’.
‘changing my tune’. See p.18.
‘before I can etc.’: ‘before being admitted to the peace where…’(above).
53. ‘the other voice’: as distinct from ‘they’. (See p.10: ‘the other advances full upon me’.) Is this (and ‘he alone’, p.54) Worm? ‘this solitary’ who is baptized Worm (p. 55)?
‘So nothing about me’: so I have received no information about me.
54. ‘Two labours then’. See p.52: ‘two falsehoods’
‘galley-man….. crawls between the thwarts’. See p.57: ‘I am he…..who crawls towards the thwarts.’ See p.123: ‘I no longer crawl between the thwarts’.
See Molloy (p.54): ‘I who had loved the image of old Geulincx, dead young,who left me free, on the black boat of Ulysses, to crawl towards the East, along the deck. That is a great measure of freedom, for him who has not the pioneering spirit.’ The Flemish philosopher Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669) held that although one can only do what God has willed one is free to accept this willingly or unwillingly. (Where in Geulincx is this reference?)
See How It Is (p.95): ‘…..I fall on my knees crawl forward clink of chains perhaps it’s not me perhaps it’s another perhaps it’s another voyage confusion with another…..’
‘It's like the other madness’: praying is like the other madness.
55. ‘give me a mother and let me suck her white’: because mammals suckle their young.
‘pinching my tits’. My tits? (French: ‘en me pincant les tetins’.)
56. ‘The problem of liberty too, as sure as fate’: fate is the opposite of liberty.
‘these two fomentors of fiasco’: Worm and Mahood?
tertius gaudens: a third party who rejoices.
‘squirming... at the end of the line’. Squirming like a fish who has taken the bait (which is Worm}? But a worm also squirms at the end of the line.
‘a sporting God’: God a fisherman holding the rod, Worm as bait, ‘I’ swallowing the hook
‘three hooks’: which three? see p. 57: ‘the third line falls plumb from the skies’.
57. ‘bleeding’: after biting the hook.
‘They'll surely bring me to the surface’: still like a fish being caught. But the word ‘fish’ is never used.
‘news of Worm.... I'll soon know if the other is still after me.’ Oh. I thought Worm and the other were the same. p 57. Is Mahood the other?
‘But even if he [the other] isn't [still after me] nothing will come of it: he [Worm? the other?] won't catch me, I won't be delivered from him (I mean Worm).’ So being caught involves being delivered from the catcher?
‘crawls between the thwarts’. Not a fish any longer! Pp.54 and 123.
‘The third line’. See p.56: ‘I've swallowed three hooks’. Which are the previous two?
‘That [my soul?] brings us up to four...’: which four? Worm, Mahood, my soul and...God? ‘We'll always be short of me’ - so ‘me’ is not one of the four.
‘gnawing of termites in my Punch and Judy box’ His puppets?
58. ‘the three of us’: not four any more?
‘in this direction’: in the direction of trying to be Worm?
‘Worm cannot note’: he is not a scribe.
Hippophagist: eater of horse-meat. Is Ducroix a name of some real man?
59. Marguerite: pearl, daisy, chrysanthemum. The first mention of her name?
‘cogitate’: Descartes, cogito ergo sum.
Now Marguerite is Madeleine.
60. ‘How.... can Mahood expect me to behave normally?’ So the speaker is not Mahood now.
61. ‘victim of a hallucination’ etc. Philosophical problem: how know that what we see is ‘real’?
‘enough of this cursed first person’. But the first person continues. There is a more successful attempt to eschew it from p.79 to p.89.
62. cang: a wooden yoke hung round a criminal's neck (in China), inscribed with a list of his offences.
‘real presence’, ‘substantiality’. In the catholic mass.
‘the sentence it [my substantiality] entails’: death?
63. ‘sequestrating me’. Seizing a debtor's property? Or putting away ? (‘stowed away’, below).
64. Marguerite again!
65. ‘all is a question of voices’. See p.66: ‘it is solely a question of voices’.
66. ‘he exists nevertheless: but not for himself, for others.’ ‘Worm is, since we conceive him.’ So Worm is now God-like (as Mahood was for Madeleine).
‘Others. One alone, then others.’ (French:‘Les hommes. Un seul, puis d'autres.’) ? ‘One [who? Worm?] turned towards the all-impotent.…towards him..who...is nothing’. A God-like entity turned towards a Godlike entity?
‘Who is not spared by the mad need to speak [French: ‘que n’epargne pas la rage de parler’.].….ignorant of his silence and silent’.?
‘What a velvet glove!’: how soft, how weak, are these words! [?]
67. ‘inexpungable’. Misprint for ‘inexpugnable’ (from Latin ‘pugna’): not able to be taken by assault.
68. Wistit: a small South American monkey; a marmoset.
69. ‘tenth-rate Toussaint L'Ouverture’. Toussaint was a rebel slave who ruled Haiti around 1800. He wrote many letters, but ‘wrote and spoke [French] poorly, usually employing the Creole patois and African tribal language’.
70. ‘that first disaster’. Presumably this disaster was when ‘I catch this sound that will never stop’ (p.69).
‘That will not last for ever.’ This same ‘sound that will never stop’?
‘gather while I may’: gather roses.
‘a billybowl of thorns’. Why a billybowl? See p.29: ‘my next vice-exister will be a billy in a bowl’ - ie in the jar in the Rue Brancion. Is Worm briefly back there now?
‘perfume-laden’. Perfume of roses? Or of farts?
72. Purveyors: caterers, suppliers. Purveyors of ‘all these titbits’.
73. ‘I begin by the ear’: begin by saying what I heard? See p.75: ‘How long did I remain a pure ear?’
‘Whereas ever since, what radiance!’ Ever since what? Since there was an ear? since I began?
‘Perhaps it’s Botal's Foramen.’ Foramen: a small anatomical opening or perforation (from Latin forare, to bore). Leonardo Botallo (born Asti, Piedmont c.1519, died 1587/88) re-discovered that the blood's passage from right to left side of the heart in the foetus was by way of the foramen ovale cordis (Botallo's foramen). His patron was Catherine de Medici. He was physician to Charles IX and Henri III. ‘Perhaps I'm not in a skull or a belly but in a part of a foetal heart which has no function after birth’. ‘All about me palpitates and labours’: at birth. See ‘never been properly born’ (Endgame, etc.).
74. ‘If I speak of a head’. He hasn't spoken of a head lately. But he will soon.
‘some other section of the conduit’: the conduit from head to lung, from mind to body, from outside to inside.
Fistula: an abnormal or surgically made passage leading from an abscess or hollow organ to the body surface or between hollow organs.
‘I wouldn't say no’: wouldn’t say no to their terms (above)? to bubbling with reason?
75. Irrefragable: irrefutable. From late Latin irrefragibilis (in + refragari (oppose).
‘when the eye joins in’: when sight comes, as well as hearing.
‘and worse than the evil, its treasure-house’. ?
76. ‘I shall not say I again’. He says it four more times immediately, then not until p. 89.
77. ‘the only noises…..are those of mouths?’: there are no noises of breathing.
‘The groaning of the air beneath the burden’: beneath the burden of words?
‘When on earth later on the storm rages’: in everyday life?
78. ‘The circumvolutionisation will be seen later, when they get him out’. Volution is a rolling or revolving motion; in architecture, a twist. The head will roll round later?
‘fill the rose of the winds’: fill all directions at once. (Rose: a rose-like card attached to compass showing the 32 points.) Mystical reference?
80. ‘But Worm will never know this joy but darkly (being less than a beast).’ Beasts would know the joy of dropping less darkly than Worm would?
81. ‘Indian file’. See pp.89 and 111.
‘gaffs, hooks, barbs, grapnels’. He’s a fish again!
82. Killarney: a beauty spot, somewhere that needs seeing.
83. ‘that’s grave (gravid)’. Gravid: pregnant (carrying eggs or young).
‘bugaboos’: bugbear, source of fear.
‘Ah mother of God, the things one has to listen to!’ See p 87: ‘Merciful God, the things one has to put up with!
‘Confusion…..pending the great confounding.’
‘With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded.’ (Milton: Paradise Lost, Book 2.)
84. ‘embarrassing silence…. genuine hell’: that’s odd.
‘A man would wonder…. but Worm suffers only from the noise which prevents him from being what he was before. (Note the nuance!)’ The nuance is that Worm is not a man.
85. Naja: asian cobra
‘tedious equipoise’: between light and no light.
‘currish obscurity’. Why is obscurity currish, particularly?
86. ‘this impotent crystalline’.What is crystalline? The first eye since p. 79? I don't think so. What then?
‘Worth ten of Saint Anthony's pig's arse!’ Saint Anthony of Egypt, or Anthony the Abbot, 251-356, had a wild pig, the runt of a litter, which protected him in the wilderness during 24 years of torments by demon-beasts. Jacques Callot, 1592-1635, engraved (etched?) ‘The Temptations of Saint Anthony’ in 1633 (one print is in the Hermitage, St Petersburg). A detail shows one of the beasts sticking a bellows up the arse of Anthony's pig. (Where did Beckett see this?) Bosch's Temptation of Saint Anthony was much earlier (he died in 1516).
[detail from Callot’s ‘The Temptations of Saint Anthony’]
What has the pig’s arse got to do with it?
‘Worm waiting for his sweetheart!’ The sweetheart is the faithful visitor. Are the flowers in his sickroom?
‘look at the daisies! You’d think he was dead!’. Pushing up the daisies? (French: ‘ces marguerites’.)
87. ‘traltralay pom pom’. Some particular waltz?
‘too soon, to return, to where I am’: the ‘I’ since p. 79.
88. ‘I should have fled, Worm should have fled’: the last ‘I’ until p. 94.
‘It's like slime!’ See p. 89: ‘It’s like shit!’
89. ‘Indian file’: see pp. 81 and 111.
‘your material’: the material dug out from the holes.
‘It's like shit!’ See the mud in How It Is, Part Three: ‘all our shit’.
‘a question of elimination’: in both senses.
90. ‘the ozone…..sterilizes’. Ozone sterilizes air and water. But what has it to do with deserts, particularly?
91. One motto of William the Silent (1533-84) (who strove for Dutch independence from Spain) was: ‘It is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere.’ (Another motto was ‘saevis tranquillus in undis’: tranquil amidst the savage waves.) (William was called ‘the Silent’ because he said nothing when Henri II of France told him he intended to rout out the Protestants from the Netherlands.)
92. ‘the hussar gets up on a chair’. Reference?
‘lacking to my glory’. Biblical reference?
95. ‘that stet’. Stet: ‘let that stand’ (proof-reader’s mark). Re
ferring to ‘listened’?
96. ‘I come, I come, my heart's delight.’ Any reference?
‘A little raw perhaps, the white, with all the pissing.’ Light has been pissing on the white of his eye?
‘paraphimotically globose’. Paraphimosis is when the foreskin gets locked behind the glans penis. (Greek ‘phimos’: a muzzle, or nose-band of a bridle.) ‘Phimosis exists when the maximum size of the preputial orifice is less than the maximum diameter of the glans on erection’. Globose: tending to be globular (botanical). The ‘trifle more prominent’ eye is more globular than it was: it’s like the glans when the foreskin is stuck behind it.
98. ‘spiked, in their pools, with a spear’. When are frogs thus spiked?
Aphonic: voiceless
100. ‘the master’: first mentioned on p. 23
103. ‘But my dear man’ to ‘you'll be all right you'll see’: addressing a man has ‘no identity’.
‘true for you’. (French: ‘c’est vrai’.)
‘look at this death's-head’: a police photograph?
‘without battery’: ‘assault and battery’ is a standard offence.
104. ‘I beg your pardon? Does he work?’ to ‘Look, here’s the photograph’: addressing a third party (concerning the man with no identity).
‘I assure you, it's a bargain.’ The speaker is trying to sell the man?
‘You'll see, you'll be all right...the only way out.’ Again addressed directly to the man with no identity? The ‘painful moment’ must be life.
‘I beg your pardon? Have I nothing else?’: addressing the third party once more.
‘if you were not rather.….’: rather uninquisitive?
‘What you don't understand?.….levity’: addressing the reader?
‘Yes I was right…..you all over’: addressing the man without identity.
‘Look here's the photograph.... I assure you’: addressing the third party.
105. ‘as he me’: as he coaxes me out
‘bullskrit’: a blend of ‘bullshit’ and ‘bullscript’? It’s ‘pidgin bullskrit’ because there is no verb.
106. ‘six and eight’: six shillings and eightpence.
‘flowers of rhetoric’: Pliny the Younger (62-113): ‘I have not altogether neglected the flowers of rhetoric of my favourite Marc-Tully.’
‘thousand flowers’: Mao Tse-Tung (May 1956) said ‘let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend’. Beckett translated L’Innommable into English in 1956-58. (French: ‘a vingt centavos les mille effets de manche’.)
Three Novels: Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable Page 30