A Beckett Canon

1947–49: Mais la Réalité, Trop Fatigué Pour Chercher le Mot Juste

1947–49
Mais la Réalité, Trop Fatigué Pour Chercher le Mot Juste (But reality, too tired to look for the right word) 1947
Perhaps Beckett felt that Le Calmant took him as far as he could penetrate toward an avatar of being that was garbed in splenetic namelessness. Whatever the provocation, he veered suddenly from ‹ction to theater, beginning Eleutheria on January 18, and completing that three-act play on February 24. From the unlocalized settings of the French ‹ction, Beckett turned to a highly localized Paris in his ‹rst French play, but neither of these two settings resembles the actual cold, cramped apartment in which he himself was writing . Eleutheria Beckett hesitated between Eleutheria and L’Eleutheromane as the title of his ‹rst complete play. The latter translates from Greek as “the lunatic for liberty ,” and it de‹nes the play’s hero, young Victor Krap, although this is not revealed until the last of the three acts—the act that underwent most revision in manuscript. In the ‹rst two acts the stage is divided between the furniture152 The holograph of Eleutheria is in two notebooks at HRC. A typescript is at NhD, with copies at RUL and MoSW. Upon completing the play in 1947, Beckett desired publication and production, but when this did not happen, he came to dislike Eleutheria even more than his other works, and he withdrew permission for both. After his death, a translation was proposed by Foxrock in the United States, whereupon Minuit reluctantly published the original French (1995), to which my page numbers refer. The ‹rst English translation was published by Foxrock later in 1995, and a new British translation was published by Faber and Faber in 1996. The British translation is superior to the American, but translations in my text were made in 1972 by Beckett, or by me, with his approval for my Back to Beckett. Although a “reading” of Eleutheria in English took place in New York City, there has been no production of the play. ‹lled salon of the Krap Paris home and Victor’s wretched hotel room, located near l’Impasse de l’Enfant-Jésus—as was Beckett’s own apartment. The split stage ostentatiously symbolizes two different ways of life. Act I satirizes the ailing Krap family, whose heaviest af›iction is their son Victor, who left home two years earlier, to live in sordid inertia. After Krap senior dies offstage between acts I and II, Victor opens act II by throwing his shoe at his hotel window and breaking it. A glazier enters immediately (and improbably) to repair it, and he remains present while emissaries from the bourgeois Krap world try to lure or threaten Victor back to the family bosom. As in the well-made play, obstacles vanish in act III. Victor declares his independence: “C’est là la liberté: se voir mort” (149) [Liberty is seeing yourself dead]. At the ‹nal curtain, having rejected both suicide and social reintegration, having looked long and hard at the audience, Victor lies down on his folding bed, “le maigre dos tourné à l’humanité” [his thin back turned on humanity]. The act I satire of Eleutheria borders on farce. In this French play characters have silly English names like Krap, Piouk, and Skunk. A servant Jacques knocks farcically whenever he enters the Krap salon. M. Krap is unable to urinate. Dr. Piouk espouses birth control and euthanasia to diminish the human race. Farce diminishes in act II, with the arrival of the nameless glazier,1 whose rhythmic exchanges with his son recall those of Mercier and Camier. The glazier comments critically upon the action in which he sporadically participates. Act III mocks the well-made play when a spectator, a prompter, and the play-text itself appear on stage. Yet the plot rolls mercilessly on toward its resolution, with Victor explaining his stance: “En étant le moins possible. En ne pas bougeant, ne pas pensant, ne pas rêvant, ne pas parlant, ne pas écoutant, ne pas percevant, ne pas sachant, ne pas voulant, ne pas pouvant, et ainsi de suite” (148) [By being as little as possible. By not moving, not thinking, not dreaming, not speaking, not listening, not perceiving , not knowing, not desiring, not being able, and so on]. Although Victor recognizes that his version of liberty is unattainable, he will dedicate his life to its pursuit: “Je ne serai jamais libre. (Pause.) Mais je me sentirai sans cesse le devenir. (Pause.) Ma vie...