Mercury sesquiquadrate with the Anarete is most malefic and will greatly conduce to Success terminating in the height of Glory, which may injure Native’s prospects.
The Square of Moon and Solar Orb afflicts the Hyleg. Herschel in Aquarius stops the Water and he should guard against this. Neptune and Venus in the Bull denotes dealings with the Females only medium developed or of low organic quality. Companions or matrimonial Mate are recommended to be born under a fiery triplicity, when the Bowman should permit of a small family.
With regards to a Career, the Native should inspire and lead, as go between, promoter, detective, custodian, pioneer or, if possible, explorer, his motto in business being large profits and a quick turnover.
The Native should guard against Bright’s disease and Grave’s disease, also pains in the neck and feet.
Lucky Gems. Amethyst and Diamond. To ensure Success the Native should sport.
Lucky Colours. Lemon. To avert Calamity the Native should have a dash in apparel, also a squeeze in home decorations.
Lucky Days. Sunday. To attract the maximum Success the Native should begin new ventures.
Lucky Numbers. 4. The Native should commence new enterprises, for in so doing lies just that difference between Success and Calamity.
Lucky Years. 1936 and 1990. Successful and prosperous, though not without calamities and setbacks.
“Is it even so,” said Murphy his yellow all revived by these prognostications. “Pandit Suk has never done anything better.”
“Can you work now after that?” said Celia.
“Certainly I can,” said Murphy. “The very first fourth to fall on a Sunday in 1936 I begin. I put on my gems and off I go, to custode, detect, explore, pioneer, promote or pimp, as occasion may arise.”
“And in the meantime?” said Celia.
“In the meantime,” said Murphy, “I must just watch out for fits, publishers, quadrupeds, the stone, Bright’s—”
She gave a cry of despair intense while it lasted, then finished and done with, like an infant’s.
“How you can be such a fool and a brute,” she said, and did not bother to finish.
“But you wouldn’t have me go against the diagram,” said Murphy, “surely to God.”
“A fool and a brute,” she said.
“Surely that is rather severe,” said Murphy.
“You tell me to get you this . . . this . . .”
“Corpus of deterrents,” said Murphy.
“So that we can be together, and then you go and twist it into a . . . into a . . .”
“Separation order,” said Murphy. Few minds were better concocted than this native’s.
Celia opened her mouth to proceed, closed it without having done so. She despatched her hands on the gesture that Neary had made such a botch of at the thought of Miss Dwyer, and resolved it quite legitimately, as it seemed to Murphy, by dropping them back into their original position. Now she had nobody, except possibly Mr. Kelly. She again opened and closed her mouth, then began the slow business of going.
“You are not going,” said Murphy.
“Before I’m kicked out,” said Celia.
“But what is the good of going merely in body?” said Murphy, thereby giving the conversation a twist that brought it within her powers of comment.
“You are too modest,” she said.
“Oh, do not let us fence,” said Murphy, “at least let it never be said that we fenced.”
“I go as best I can,” she said, “the same as I went last time.”
It really did look as though she were going, at her present rate of adjustment she would be gone in twenty minutes or half an hour. Already she was at work on her face.
“I won’t come back,” she said. “I won’t open your letters. I’ll move my pitch.”
Convinced he had hardened his heart and would let her go, she was taking her time.
“I’ll be sorry I met you,” she said.
“Met me!” said Murphy. “Met is magnificent.”
He thought it wiser not to capitulate until it was certain that she would not. In the meantime, what about a small outburst. It could do no harm, it might do good. He did not feel really up to it, he knew that long before the end he would wish he had not begun. But it was perhaps better than lying there silent, watching her lick her lips, and waiting. He launched out.
“This love with a function gives me a pain in the neck—”
“Not in the feet?” said Celia.
“What do you love?” said Murphy. “Me as I am. You can want what does not exist, you can’t love it.” This came well from Murphy. “Then why are you all out to change me? So that you won’t have to love me,” the voice rising here to a note that did him credit, “so that you won’t be condemned to love me, so that you’ll be reprieved from loving me.” He was anxious to make his meaning clear. “Women are all the same bloody same, you can’t love, you can’t stay the course, the only feeling you can stand is being felt, you can’t love for five minutes without wanting it abolished in brats and house bloody wifery. My God, how I hate the charVenus and her sausage and mash sex.”
Celia.put a foot to the ground.
“Avoid exhaustion by speech,” she said.
“Have I wanted to change you? Have I pestered you to begin things that don’t belong to you and stop things that do? How can I care what you DO?”
“I am what I do,” said Celia.
“No,” said Murphy. “You do what you are, you do a fraction of what you are, you suffer a dreary ooze of your being into doing.” He threw his voice into an infant’s whinge. “‘I cudden do annyting, Maaaammy.’ That kind of doing. Unavoidable and tedious.”
Celia was now fully seated on the edge of the bed, her back turned to him, making fast her Bollitoes.
“I have heard bilge,” she said, and did not bother to finish.
“Hear a little more,” said Murphy, “and then I expire. If I had to work out what you are from what you do, you could skip out of here now and joy be with you. First of all you starve me into terms that are all yours but the jossy, then you won’t abide by them. The arrangement is that I enter the jaws of a job according to the celestial prescriptions of Professor Suk, then when I won’t go against them you start to walk out on me. Is that the way you respect an agreement? What more can I do?”
He closed his eyes and fell back. It was not his habit to make out cases for himself. An atheist chipping the deity was not more senseless than Murphy defending his courses of inaction, as he did not require to be told. He had been carried away by his passion for Celia and by a most curious feeling that he should not collapse without at least the form of a struggle. This grisly relic from the days of nuts, balls and sparrows astonished himself. To die fighting was the perfect antithesis of his whole practice, faith and intention.
He heard her rise and go to the window, then come and stand at the foot of the bed. So far from opening his eyes he sucked in his cheeks. Was she perhaps subject to feelings of compassion?
“I’ll tell you what more you can do,” she said. “You can get up out of that bed, make yourself decent and walk the streets for work.”
The gentle passion. Murphy lost all his yellow again.
“The streets!” he murmured. “Father forgive her.”
He heard her go to the door.
“Not the slightest idea,” he murmured, “of what her words mean. No more insight into their implications than a parrot into its profanities.”
As he seemed likely to go on mumbling and marvelling to himself for some time, Celia said good-bye and opened the door.
“You don’t know what you are saying,” said Murphy. “Let me tell you what you are saying. Close the door.”
Celia closed the door but kept her hand on the handle.
“Sit on the bed,” said Murphy.
“No,” said Celia.
“I can’t talk against space,” said Murphy, “my fourth highest attribute is silence. Sit on the bed.”
&
nbsp; The tone was that adopted by exhibitionists for their last words on earth. Celia sat on the bed. He opened his eyes, cold and unwavering as a gull’s, and with great magical ability sunk their shafts into hers, greener than he had ever seen them and more hopeless than he had ever seen anybody’s.
“What have I now?” he said. “I distinguish. You, my body and my mind.” He paused for this monstrous proposition to be granted. Celia did not hesitate, she might never have occasion to grant him anything again. “In the mercantile gehenna,” he said, “to which your words invite me, one of these will go, or two, or all. If you, then you only; if my body, then you also; if my mind, then all. Now?”
She looked at him helplessly. He seemed serious. But he had seemed serious when he spoke of putting on his gems and lemon, etc. She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time.
“You twist everything,” she said. “Work needn’t mean any of that.”
“Then is the position unchanged?” said Murphy. “Either I do what you want or you walk out. Is that it?”
She made to rise, he pinioned her wrists.
“Let me go,” said Celia.
“Is it?” said Murphy.
“Let me go,” said Celia.
He let her go. She rose and went to the window. The sky, cool, bright, full of movement, anointed her eyes, reminded her of Ireland.
“Yes or no?” said Murphy. The eternal tautology.
“Yes,” said Celia. “Now you hate me.”
“No,” said Murphy. “Look is there a clean shirt.”
From Watt
In the general introduction to this volume I related the details of my involvement in the original publication of Watt in Paris in 1953. Despite all efforts toward objectivity, I confess that that relationship may well account for the fact that it is one of my favorite works of fiction. Since that initial, collective reading of the work by the members of Merlin at our rue du Sabot headquarters, I have reread the work perhaps half a dozen times. And each time I discover formerly unperceived clues, nuances, insights, wordplays, that make it all the richer. The name of the title character himself, Watt, and that of the man into whose service he goes, Knott, lend themselves to all the obvious puns—and quite a few less obvious. Who is Watt? And what is Watt? And Mr. Knott is not, to mention only the negative and not the knot.
But Watt is not just fun. That it does contain so much mad, irrepressible humor is proof of how basic comedy is in Beckett’s vision of the world, for one must remember the harsh, trying conditions under which it was written. He was living in Roussillon, in the unoccupied zone of France, working as a laborer, helping with the harvests, cutting wood, and even going so far as to glean the near-bare potato fields after the picking, in order to keep body, not to mention soul, alive.
Watt differs from the earlier prose in a number of ways. While the setting of More Pricks Than Kicks is clearly Dublin and environs, and Murphy evolves recognizably in London, with backward forays to the land of the Gaels, Watt lies in less certain country. The opening passage seems still identi-fiably Dublinesque, if not Dublin itself, and allusions abound throughout to the Ireland of the author’s youth, yet Watt’s journey, like those of the first-person protagonists of the French novels yet to come, is essentially an inner journey, through the landscape of the author’s mind. From this point on there will be a turning inward, away from the concrete and visible.
Different, too, is the prose style itself. Here it is more personal, tighter though no less poetic. Gone are the youthful exuberances of the Belacqua stories, and even of Murphy; gone too the occasional Joycean mannerisms of those earlier works. The prose here is not quite the lean, gleaming language of the Trilogy, but it is the bridge to that masterpiece.
The humor: Watt, I have always maintained, is one of the funniest novels in the English language. But Beckett, doubtless affected and influenced by the dark events through which the world was passing, here offers a bleaker vision than before: pain and despair temper the comedy, and the asylum is at the end of the road.
If, as some critics have maintained, Murphy’s mind is the true hero of that work, Watt’s mind may fairly be said to be the hero of this. Jacqueline Hoefer, in one of the earliest critical assessments of the novel, suggested that Watt is a logical positivist in an illogical environment. Watt is a rationalist, and the incremental repetitions and seemingly endless permutations with which the novel abounds—to the dismay of some, the joy of others—are his method of dealing with the illogical, of proceeding on the assumption that the empirical mind can get to the bottom of apparent mysteries by patient analysis.
In construction, too, Watt is far more complex than the earlier works. While it is Watt’s story we are reading, there is as well a narrator, Sam. And while Watt divided his story into four parts, which he told in nonchronological order— II, I, IV, III—it is only Sam’s word we have for that. And though Sam does rearrange them into chronological order, we also learn, or deduce, that some doubt must be cast on any order, for both Sam and Watt dwell in the mansions and gardens of a mental asylum. Thus every statement, every observation, every deduction and conclusion, and the most logical permutations may indeed be but the results of the illogical mind believing itself logical; or of Watt’s flawed memory; or of Sam’s imperfect comprehension; or of Watt’s mumbling; or of Sam’s failing hearing: the possible permutations here are perhaps calculable, but I would assume can safely be said to be legion.
All of which adds to the maddening effect, or the general hilarity, as the case may be. You, sir or madam, are in the dock.
Mr Hackett turned the corner and saw, in the failing light, at some little distance, his seat. It seemed to be occupied. This seat, the property very likely of the municipality, or of the public, was of course not his, but he thought of it as his. This was Mr Hackett’s attitude towards things that pleased him. He knew they were not his, but he thought of them as his. He knew were not his, because they pleased him.
Halting, he looked at the seat with greater care. Yes, it was not vacant. Mr Hackett saw things a little more clearly when he was still. His walk was a very agitated walk.
Mr Hackett did not know whether he should go on, or whether he should turn back. Space was open on his right hand, and on his left hand, but he knew that he would never take advantage of this. He knew also that he would not long remain motionless, for the state of his health rendered this unfortunately impossible. The dilemma was thus of extreme simplicity: to go on, or to turn, and return, round the corner, the way he had come. Was he, in other words, to go home at once, or was he to remain out a little longer?
Stretching out his left hand, he fastened it round a rail. This permitted him to strike his stick against the pavement. The feel, in his palm, of the thudding rubber appeased him, slightly.
But he had not reached the corner when he turned again and hastened towards the seat, as fast as his legs could carry him. When he was so near the seat, that he could have touched it with his stick, if he had wished, he again halted and examined its occupants. He had the right, he supposed, to stand and wait for the tram. They too were perhaps waiting for the tram, for a tram, for many trams stopped here, when requested, from without or within, to do so.
Mr Hackett decided, after some moments, that if they were waiting for a tram they had been doing so for some time. For the lady held the gentleman by the ears, and the gentleman’s hand was on the lady’s thigh, and the lady’s tongue was in the gentleman’s mouth. Tired of waiting for the tram, said* Mr Hackett, they strike up an acquaintance. The lady now removing her tongue from the gentleman’s mouth, he put his into hers. Fair do, said Mr Hackett. Taking a pace forward, to satisfy himself that the gentleman’s other hand was not going to waste, Mr Hackett was shocked to find it limply dangling over the
back of the seat, with between its fingers the spent three quarters of a cigarette.
I see no indecency, said the policeman.
We arrive too late, said Mr Hackett. What a shame.
Do you take me for a fool? said the policeman.
Mr Hackett recoiled a step, forced back his head until he thought his throatskin would burst, and saw at last, afar, bent angrily upon him, the red violent face.
Officer, he cried, as God is my witness, he had his hand upon it.
God is a witness that cannot be sworn.
If I interrupted your beat, said Mr Hackett, a thousand pardons. I did so with the best intentions, for you, for me, for the community at large.
The policeman replied briefly to this.
If you imagine that I have not your number, said Mr Hackett, you are mistaken. I may be infirm, but my sight is excellent. Mr Hackett sat down on the seat, still warm, from the loving. Good evening, and thank you, said Mr Hackett.
It was an old seat, low and worn. Mr Hackett’s nape rested against the solitary backboard, beneath it unimpeded his hunch protruded, his feet just touched the ground. At the ends of the long outspread arms the hands held the armrests, the stick hooked round his neck hung between his knees.
So from the shadows he watched the last trams pass, oh not the last, but almost, and in the sky, and in the still canal, the long greens and yellows of the summer evening.
But now a gentleman passing, with a lady on his arm, espied him.
Oh, my dear, he said, there is Hackett.
Hackett, said the lady. What Hackett? Where?
You know Hackett, said the gentleman. You must have often heard me speak of Hackett. Hunchy Hackett. On the seat.
The lady looked attentively at Mr Hackett.
So that is Hackett, she said.
Yes, said the gentleman.
Poor fellow, she said.
Oh, said the gentleman, let us now stop, do you mind, and wish him the time of evening. He advanced, exclaiming, My dear fellow, my dear fellow, how are you?
I can’t go on, I’ll go on Page 9