Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
"I was not made for the great light that devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to shine it on the empty shadows."
Murphy
(1938)
“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the
nothing new.”
WATT
(1941)
“God is a witness who cannot be sworn”.
THE
EXPELLED (1946)
“Memories are killing. So you must not think of
certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of
them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind,
little by little.”
“I have always been amazed at my
contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in
the mere quest of itself.”
“Yes, I don’t know why, but I have never been
disappointed, and I often was in the early days, without feeling at the same
time, or a moment later, an undeniable relief.”
“Poor juvenile solutions, explaining nothing. No need then for caution, we may reason on to
our heart’s content, the fog won’t lift.”
“Does one ever know oneself why one laughs?”
THE
CALMATIVE (1946)
“(T)his evening something has to
happen, to my body as in myth and metamorphosis, this old body to which nothing
ever happened, or so little, which never met with anything, wished for
anything, in its tarnished universe, except for the mirrors to shatter, the
plane, the curved, the magnifying, the minifying, and to vanish in the havoc of
its images.”
“I marshalled the words and opened my mouth,
thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle,
unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended.”
THE END
(1946)
“I didn’t feel well, but they told me I was
well enough. They didn’t say in so many words that I was as well as I would
ever be, but that was the implication.”
“The memory came faint and cold of the story I
might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage
to end or the strength to go on.”
MALLOY
(1951)
“Don't wait to be hunted to hide, that's always
been my motto.”
“There is something … more important in life
than punctuality, and that is decorum.”
“Can it be we are not free? It might be worth
looking into.”
“In me there have always been two fools, among
others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other
imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.”
“What do you expect, one is what one is, partly
at least.”
“I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As
for God, he is beginning to disgust me.”
“Unfathomable mind, now beacon, now sea.”
“I was not made for the great light that
devours, a dim lamp was all I had been given, and patience without end, to
shine it on the empty shadows.”
“There is a little of everything, apparently,
in nature, and freaks are common.”
MALONE
DIES (1951)
“Let me say before I go any further that I
forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of
hell and in the execrable generations to come an honoured name.”
WAITING
FOR GODOT (1952)
Vladimir:
You should have been a poet.
Estragon:
I was (Gesture towards his rags.) Isn't that obvious?
Estragon:
Let's go.
Vladimir:
We can't.
Estragon:
Why not?
Vladimir:
We're waiting for Godot.
Estragon:
(despairingly). Ah!
Estragon:
What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir:
Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
Estragon:
(highly excited). An erection!
Vladimir:
With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek
when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
Estragon:
Let's hang ourselves immediately!
Estrogen: “We are all born mad. Some remain
so.”
Pozzo: The tears of the world are a constant
quantity. For each one who begins to
weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation,
it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.)
Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.
“Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi,
to give us the impression we exist?
Vladimir:
Yes, yes, we're magicians.”
Vladamir: “Let us do something, while we have
the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we
personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better.
To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our
ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we
like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!”
“Memories are killing. So you must not think
of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of
them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind,
little by little.”
Dance first. Think later. It's the natural
order.”
“My
mistakes are my life.”
“What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”
“What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”
BECKETT ON GODOT
“If by Godot I had meant God I would have said
God, and not Godot.”
“It means what it says.”
THE UNNAMEABLE (1954)
“I am such good man, at bottom, such a good
man. How is it that no one noticed?”
“The
tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied
brain.”
“At no moment do I know what I’m talking about,
nor of whom, nor of where, nor how, nor why, but I could employ fifty wretches
for this sinister operation and still be short of the fifty-first, to close the
circuit, that I know, without knowing what it means.”
“Yes, in my life, since we must call it so,
there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent,
and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.”
“This place, if I could describe this place, no
place around me, there’s no end to me, I don’t know what it is, it isn’t flesh,
it doesn’t end, it’s like air…”
The cries abate, like all cries. (That is to say they stop.) The murmurs
cease, they give up. The voice begins again (it begins trying again). Quick now
before there is none left, no voice left, nothing left but the core of murmurs,
distant cries: quick now and try again, with the words that remain.
You must
go on. I can't
go on. I'll go on.
ENDGAME
(1957)
“The end is in the beginning and yet you go
on.”
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant
you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we
laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's
like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we
don't laugh any more.”
“Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it
must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly,
there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any
more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for
him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table,
and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.”
“I love
order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each
thing in its last place, under the last dust.”
“All
life long, the same questions, the same answers.”
“My
anger subsides, I'd like to pee.”
Clov: “God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it's indecent,
there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world.
Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making
me a pair of trousers in three months!'
Hamm: 'But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at
the world and look at my TROUSERS!”
Hamm: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?
Nagg: I
didn't know.
Hamm: What?
What didn't you know?
Nagg: That
it'd be you.
Clov: Why
this farce, day after day?
Hamm:
Routine. One never knows. [Pause.] Last night I saw inside my breast. There was
a big sore.
Clov:
Pah! You saw your heart.
Hamm: No,
it was living.
Hamm:
What's happening?
Clov:
Something is taking its course. [Pause.]
Hamm:
Clov!
Clov:
[impatiently] What is it?
HAMM:
We're not beginning to... to... mean something?
CLOV:
Mean something! You and I, mean something!
(Brief
laugh.) Ah that's a good one!”
HAMM: “Use your head, can't you, use your head,
you're on earth, there's no cure for that!”
CLOV: “The
end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” “I use the words you taught me. If
they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.”
Hamm: “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”
KRAPP’S
LAST TAPE (1958)
“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was
a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me
now.”
WORSTWORD
HO! (1983)
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever
failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
THE END (1946)
“The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.” - The End
Noted Beckett interpreters Alan Mandell and Barry McGovern in scenes from
Waiting for Godot
Krapp's Last Tape starring Patrick Magee
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