You may be right, said Mr Nixon.
Too fearful to assume himself the onus of a decision, said Mr Hackett, he refers it to the frigid machinery of a time-space relation.
Very ingenious, said Mr Nixon.
And what do you suppose frightens him all of a sudden? said Mrs Nixon.
It can hardly be the journey itself, said Mr Hackett, since you tell me he is an experienced traveller.
A silence followed these words.
Now that I have made that clear, said Mr Hackett, you might describe your friend a little more fully.
I really know nothing, said Mr Nixon.
But you must know something, said Mr Hackett. One does not part with five shillings to a shadow. Nationality, family, birthplace, confession, occupation, means of existence, distinctive signs, you cannot be in ignorance of all this.
Utter ignorance, said Mr Nixon.
He is not a native of the rocks, said Mr Hackett.
I tell you nothing is known, cried Mr Nixon. Nothing.
A silence followed these angry words, by Mr Hackett resented, by Mr Nixon repented.
He had a huge big red nose, said Mr Nixon grudgingly.
Mr Hackett pondered this.
You are not asleep, my dear, said Mr Nixon.
I grow drowsy, said Mrs Nixon.
Here is a man you seem to have known all your life, said Mr Hackett, who owes you five shillings for the past seven years, and all you can tell me is that he has a huge big red nose and no fixed address. He paused. He added, And that he is an experienced traveller. He paused. He added, And that he is considerably younger than you, a common condition I must say. He paused. He added, And that he is truthful, gentle and sometimes a little strange. He glared up angrily at Mr Nixon’s face. But Mr Nixon did not see this angry glare, for he was looking at something quite different.
I think it is time for us to be getting along, he said, is it not, my dear.
In an instant the last flowers will be engulfed, said Mrs Nixon.
Mr Nixon rose.
Here is a man you have known as long as you can remember, said Mr Hackett, to whom you lent five shillings seven years ago, whom you immediately recognize, at a considerable distance, in the dark. You say you know nothing of his antecedents. I am obliged to believe you.
Nothing obliges you, said Mr Nixon.
I choose to believe you, said Mr Hackett. And that you are unable to tell what you do not know I am willing to believe also. It is a common failing.
Tetty, said Mr Nixon.
But certain things you must know, said Mr Hackett.
For example, said Mr Nixon.
How you met him, said Mr Hackett. In what circumstances he touched you. Where he is to be seen.
What does it matter who he is? said Mrs Nixon. She rose.
Take my arm, my dear, said Mr Nixon.
Or what he does, said Mrs Nixon. Or how he lives. Or where he comes from. Or where he is going to. Or what he looks like. What can it possibly matter, to us?
I ask myself the same question, said Mr Hackett.
How I met him, said Mr Nixon. I really do not remember, any more than I remember meeting my father.
Good God, said Mr Hackett.
In what circumstances he touched me, said Mr Nixon. I met him one day in the street. One of his feet was bare. I forget which. He drew me to one side and said he was in need of five shillings to buy himself a boot. I could not refuse him.
But one does not buy a boot, exclaimed Mr Hackett.
Perhaps he knew where he could have it made to measure, said Mrs Nixon.
I know nothing of that, said Mr Nixon. As to where he is to be seen, he is to be seen in the streets, walking about. But one does not see him often.
He is a university man, of course, said Mrs Nixon.
I should think it highly probable, said Mr Nixon.
Mr and Mrs Nixon moved off, arm in arm. But they had not gone far when they returned. Mr Nixon stooped and murmured in Mr Hackett’s ear, Mr Nixon who did not like the sun to go down on the least hint of an estrangement.
Drink, said Mr Hackett.
Oh my goodness no, said Mr Nixon, he drinks nothing but milk.
Milk, exclaimed Mr Hackett.
Even water he will not touch, said Mr Nixon.
Well, said Mr Hackett wearily, I am obliged to you, I suppose.
Mr and Mrs Nixon moved off, arm in arm. But they had not gone far when they heard a cry. They stopped, and listened. It was Mr Hackett, crying, in the night, Pleased to have met you, Mrs Nisbet. Mrs Nixon tightening her hold on Mr Nixon’s arm, cried back, The pleasure is mine, Mr Hackett.
What? cried Mr Hackett.
She said the pleasure is hers, cried Mr Nixon.
Mr Hackett resumed his holds on the armrests. Pulling himself forward, and letting himself fall back, several times in rapid succession, he scratched the crest of his hunch against the backboard. He looked towards the horizon that he had come out to see, of which he had seen so little. Now it was quite dark. Yes, now the western sky was as the eastern, which was as the southern, which was as the northern.
Poetry
Beckett had been in Paris for about two years, as lecteur d’anglais at l’Ecole Nomale Supérieure, when he heard tell of a contest that Nancy Cunard of the Hours Press was sponsoring. The none-too-piddling prize of £10 was to be awarded to the winning poem, which would, in addition, see the light of print courtesy of the sponsor.
Thomas MacGreevy, Beckett’s Irish friend and his predecessor at l’Ecole Normale, told Beckett about the contest the day of the deadline, in mid-June. A hundred or so poems had already been entered, but Richard Aldington and Miss Cunard, the self-appointed judges, found none worthy of the award. MacGreevy challenged Beckett to try his luck. It was by then already late in the afternoon, but Beckett, perhaps tempted by the prize money but more likely by the imposed theme—Time—set about to write what was to become Whoro-scope, a ninety-eight-line poem which has the dubious distinction of containing, as appendix, more footnotes than The Waste Land.
Beckett wrote the first half of the poem before dinner that evening, downed a hasty meal (as Nancy Cunard reports in her Those Were the Hours), then went back to l’Ecole Normale and finished it by three in the morning, at which point he walked down to Miss Cunard’s and dropped it in her mailbox.
The competition had stipulated that the entries should not exceed one hundred lines, and Whoroscope, tailored to conform, made it just under the wire at ninety-eight lines. At the suggestion of Richard Aldington, Beckett added, in the manner of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, copious notes, meant to elucidate the poem itself. As some critics have pointed out, the notes are often more puzzling than the text. In any case, they make it clear that we are dealing with a dramatic monologue, the subject of which is René Descartes.
Whoroscope appeared under the imprint of Miss Cunard’s Hours Press in the summer of 1930, in an edition of 300 copies, on the cover of which was a white label that read:
This poem was awarded the £10 prize for the best poem on Time in the competition judged by Richard Aldington and Nancy Cunard at the Hours Press, and is published in an edition of 100 signed copies at 5s. and 200 copies at Is. This is also Mr. Samuel Beckett’s first separately published work.
During the next five years scattered poems appeared, but no new volume was published until 1935. If 1930 and the year or two that followed had seemed auspicious for the young Irishman, there followed a prolonged period of drought and doubt, especially after the death of his father in 1933. The year 1935 found Beckett down and out in London, eking out a bare existence through a combination of his small annuity, some reviewing, and a bit of translating. Still, by the spring of that year, he felt he had enough for a slim collection of poems, and in his faithful friend George Reavey a young if impecunious publisher willing to bring them out. As is the case with most young poets, the problem of publication was nigh insurmountable, and often in desperation the young poets themselves tu
rn publisher to see the light of print. Reavey published not only Beckett and his fellow Irish poets Denis Devlin and Brian Coffey, but also two volumes of his own. Beckett’s Echo’s Bones appeared in 1935.
The following year, in the June, 1936, issue of transition, Eugene Jolas reprinted a number of the poems in the volume, thus giving the young Beckett a somewhat wider exposure.
Three decades after the publication of Echo’s Bones, the BBC Third Programme presented a selection of poems by Samuel Beckett, produced by Martin Esslin, the choice of poems having been made by critic John Fletcher. Beckett, who was present at the taping, happened to mention to Esslin that, had the choice been his, he would have chosen somewhat differently. As a result, a second program was broadcast later that year using the author’s own preferences.
When I made the initial selection for the present volume, I was unaware of these 1966 programs; yet I was pleased to note that my selection differed from Beckett’s in only two instances. I have incorporated these two poems in the following selection.
Whoroscope
What’s that? An egg?
By the brothers Boot it stinks fresh.
Give it to Gillot.
Galileo how are you
and his consecutive thirds!
The vile old Copernican lead-swinging son of a
sutler!
We’re moving he said we’re off—Porca
Madonna!
the way a boatswain would be, or a sack-of-
potatoey charging Pretender.
That’s not moving, that’s moving.
10
What’s that?
A little green fry or a mushroomy one?
Two lashed ovaries with prostisciutto?
How long did she womb it, the feathery one?
Three days and four nights?
Give it to Gillot.
Faulhaber, Beeckman and Peter the Red,
come now in the cloudy avalanche or Gassendi’s
sun-red crystally cloud
and I’ll pebble you all your hen-and-a-half ones
or I’ll pebble a lens under the quilt in the midst
of day.
20
To think he was my own brother, Peter the
Bruiser,
and not a syllogism out of him
no more than if Pa were still in it.
Hey! pass over those coppers,
sweet millèd sweat of my burning liver!
Them were the days I sat in the hot-cupboard
throwing Jesuits out of the skylight.
Who’s that? Hals?
Let him wait.
My squinty doaty!
I hid and you sook.
30
And Francine my precious fruit of a house-and-
parlour foetus!
What an exfoliation!
Her little grey flayed epidermis and scarlet
tonsils!
My one child
scourged by a fever to stagnant murky blood-
blood!
Oh Harvey belovèd
how shall the red and white, the many in the
few,
(dear bloodswirling Harvey)
eddy through that cracked beater?
40
And the fourth Henry came to the crypt of the
arrow.
What’s that?
How long?
Sit on it.
A wind of evil flung my despair of ease
against the sharp spires of the one
lady:
not once or twice but....
(Kip of Christ hatch it!)
in one sun’s drowning
50
(Jesuitasters please copy).
So on with the silk hose over the knitted, and
the morbid leather—
what am I saying! the gentle canvas—
and away to Ancona on the bright Adriatic,
and farewell for a space to the yellow key of
the Rosicrucians.
They don’t know what the master of them that
do did,
that the nose is touched by the kiss of all foul
and sweet air,
and the drums, and the throne of the fæcal
inlet,
and the eyes by its zig-zags.
So we drink Him and eat Him
60
and the watery Beaune and the stale cubes of
Hovis
because He can jig
as near or as far from His Jigging Self
and as sad or lively as the chalice or the tray asks.
How’s that, Antonio?
In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up
that egg.
Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?
Anna Maria!
She reads Moses and says her love is crucified.
Leider! Leider! she bloomed and withered,
70
a pale abusive parakeet in a mainstreet window.
No I believe every word of it I assure you.
Fallor, ergo sum!
The coy old frôleur!
He tolle’d and legge’d
and he buttoned on his redemptorist waistcoat.
No matter, let it pass.
I’m a bold boy I know
so I’m not my son
(even if I were a concierge)
80
nor Joachim my father’s
but the chip of a perfect block that’s neither old
nor new,
the lonely petal of a great high bright rose.
Are you ripe at last,
my slim pale double-breasted turd?
How rich she smells,
this abortion of a fledgling!
I will eat it with a fish fork.
White and yolk and feathers.
Then I will rise and move moving
90
toward Rahab of the snows,
the murdering matinal pope-confessed amazon,
Christina the ripper.
Oh Weulles spare the blood of a Frank
who has climbed the bitter steps,
(René du Perron....!)
and grant me my second
starless inscrutable hour.
1930
Notes
René Descartes, Seigneur du Perron, liked his omelette made of eggs hatched from eight to ten days; shorter or longer under the hen and the result, he says, is disgusting.
He kept his own birthday to himself so that no astrologer could cast his nativity.
The shuttle of a ripening egg combs the warp of his days.
P.80,1.
3
In 1640 the brothers Boot refuted Aristotle in Dublin.
4
Descartes passed on the easier problems in analytical geometry to his valet Gillot.
5-10
Refer to his contempt for Galileo Jr., (whom he confused with the more musical Galileo Sr.), and to his expedient sophistry concerning the movement of the earth.
17
He solved problems submitted by these mathematicians.
P. 81,1.
21-26
The attempt at swindling on the part of his elder brother Pierre de la Bre-tailliere—The money he received as a soldier.
27
Franz Hals.
29-30
As a child he played with a little crosseyed girl.
31-35
His daughter died of scarlet fever at the age of six.
37-40
Honoured Harvey for his discovery of the circulation of the blood, but would not admit that he had explained the motion of the heart.
P.82,1.
41
The heart of Henri iv was received at the Jesuit college of La Fleche while Descartes was still a student there.
45-53
His visions and pilgrimage to Loretto.
56-65
His Eucharistic sophistry, in reply to the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, who challenged him to reconcile his doctrine
of matter with the doctrine of transubstantiation.
P. 83,1.
68
Schurmann, the Dutch blue-stocking, a pious pupil of Voët, the adversary of Descartes.
73-76
Saint Augustine has a revelation in the shrubbery and reads Saint Paul.
77-83
He proves God by exhaustion.
P.84,1.
91-93
Christina, queen of Sweden. At Stockholm, in November, she required Descartes, who had remained in bed till midday all his life, to be with her at five o’clock in the morning.
94
Weulles, a Peripatetic Dutch physician at the Swedish court, and an enemy of Descartes.
From Echo’s Bones
The Vulture
dragging his hunger through the sky
of my skull shell of sky and earth
stooping to the prone who must
soon take up their life and walk
mocked by a tissue that may not serve
till hunger earth and sky be offal
Serena I
without the grand old British Museum
Thales and the Aretino
on the bosom of the Regent’s Park the phlox
crackles under the thunder
scarlet beauty in our world dead fish adrift
all things full of gods
pressed down and bleeding
a weaver-bird is tangerine the harpy is past
caring
the condor likewise in his mangy boa
they stare out across monkey-hill the elephants
Ireland
the light creeps down their old home canyon
sucks me aloof to that old reliable
the burning btm of George the drill
ah across the way a adder
broaches her rat
white as snow
in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis
limae labor
ah father father that art in heaven
I find me taking the Crystal Palace
for the Blessed Isles from Primrose Hill
I can’t go on, I’ll go on Page 11