A Beckett Canon

1977–89: Comment Dire

1977–89
Comment Dire (What is the word) 1977
It is likely that the biblical life-span of three score and ten years struck Beckett ’s mind during his seventieth year, but he remained active. He ›ew twice to Germany: in May to Stuttgart to direct his recent two teleplays, and in September to Berlin to direct Rick Cluchey in Krapp’s Last Tape. There and elsewhere he scribbled brief poems, mainly in French, on whatever bit of paper came to hand—appointment pages, backs of letters, cigarillo wrappings . Dated between 1976 and 1981, most of the verse was written during 1977. However impromptu in origin, these odd scraps of paper were saved by Beckett and subsequently copied into a small notebook now at RUL. Mirlitonnades Two substantial articles help explicate the verse. David Wheatley publishes draft versions of some poems and comments brie›y on all of them (but he is insensitive to French rhyme and rhythm). Matthijs Engelberts selects the more amusing examples to savor as “light verse” (and he corrects some of 345 As described in BatR, ms. 2460 at RUL “contains thirty-six irregularly shaped scraps of paper which feature manuscript drafts” of the brief poems, Mirlitonnades. However , the catalog’s explanation of the title Mirlitonnades misses its point; a mirliton is a kazoo or makeshift musical instrument consisting of two thin membranes through which the breath or voice passes; it is often wrapped in colored papers. Vers de mirliton is therefore doggerel, but in inventing the word mirlitonnade, Beckett endows it with connotations of fragility and brightness, while not quite succumbing to the pejorative vers de mirliton. Beckett copied these scattered poems into the socalled Sottisier Notebook in preparation for publication. Some of the poems are published in the 1978 Minuit Poèmes and in the 1984 Calder Collected Poems, 1930–1978. Kevin Perryman has skillfully translated six of them into English (Babel 6 [1990]). The most detailed analysis is that of Cerrato. Wheatley’s errors). Beckett’s small poems seem to me to be sprightly rhymes about dark moods. Tossed off in lieu of sustained work, the verse is Beckett’s way of teasing himself about his own obsessive themes—death, nothingness, fragility of the body, inadequacy of language. As published, the rhyming epigrams move from skepticism about words to desire for the peace of death. Rhymes contrast light and dark, sound and silence. Or individual body parts are imaged—eye, head, foot, heart, even ‹ngers. Engelberts has pinpointed what these poems share—rhymes, puns, brevity, unusual word order, and a light tone for lugubrious subjects. Mirlitonnades may be an acquired taste for Beckett readers, and even though I have acquired it, I don’t ascribe much importance to this light verse, which re›ected his passing thoughts and travels, and my comments are therefore cursory. On the verso page of his ‹rst poem of 1977 Beckett calculated seventy years in days, hours, and minutes, and then rounded out the results—twenty-six thousand days, six hundred thousand hours, three and one-half million minutes. Setting these aside, he chose for his poem an obsolete measurement “milliasse,” as strange to the francophone as the anglophone reader. “somme toute / tout compte fait / un quart de milliasse / de quarts d’heure / sans compter / les temps morts.” I dare not translate this, but even without French, the reader can savor the repetitions and the feeling of relentless arithmetic, which climaxes in dead time. Another mirlitonnade re›ects Beckett’s mood. An April 10 letter to Alan Schneider announces that he had tried in vain to write something new, and he added jocularly: “Wish I could do an Atropos all in black—with her scissors ” (Harmon, 355). On April 21 in Tangiers he did indeed “do an Atropos ,” without naming the Greek fate who cut life off: noire soeur qui es aux enfers à tort tranchant et à travers qu’est-ce que tu attends [dark sister who art in hell wrongly slicing and cross-cutting why dost thou delay] It is improbable, however, that Beckett would call such amusement writing. In addition to Mirlitonnades, Beckett penned the short lyric “One Dead of Night,” but letters to various friends testify to his efforts to sustain a beckett canon: 1977–89 346 narrative prose at this time. In January 1978 he began a piece on which he was unable to make headway. 1978
Verbatim Although some of the phrases...