For those interested, I’ve added a “facing page” version of Beckett’s first paragraph to our library. Thanks to Maureen for uploading the entirety of Ill Seen Ill Said.

For those interested, I’ve added a “facing page” version of Beckett’s first paragraph to our library. Thanks to Maureen for uploading the entirety of Ill Seen Ill Said.

[Joshua Wilner]

I just came across this quotation from Wittgenstein:

“…it’s damned hard to write things that make blank sheets better…”

A good fit for Beckett’s paragraph.

Does anybody know where it’s from?

[Patricia Brody]

I read the mal dit briefly. Fascinating.
How about translating Encore to On.

I wonder est quil y a un autre parole???
Joublie ma francaise.
Je m excuse.
Parole pour “ on”
On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 3:44 PM Joshua Wilner (Poets Together!) <
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[Patricia Brody]

Ooops je veux dire “ mot”
pas parole.

Pardonnex moi Marie Ann !

On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 3:44 PM Joshua Wilner (Poets Together!) <
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[Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her)]

thank you, josh! is it your translation?

[Joshua Wilner]

Beckett translated it himself. “Ill seen Ill” said is one of three novels making up the volume Nohow On, the other two being “Company” and “Worstward Ho,” which were not translated by Beckett himself. I don’t know what their titles in French were/are, nor whether Nohow On existed as a collection in French before being assembled in English.

[Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her)]

hi josh! thank you for that explanation. in the volume i have, i think i copied the cover in that pdf?, there is a fourth text: stirrings still. now i wonder why that is, if the other three are a trilogy — why include the 4th? perhaps it is a tetralogy? …these texts are all also in the book i have two copies of, beckett’s complete prose 1929 – 89 but they are not in that volume presented as a group… how is it that we get beckett wrong so broadly and in so many instances? and that title Nohow On, that’s important to know! …i remember david lloyd speaking at glucksman house last year, he has a book out on beckett which i love, anyway i remember him talking about “no” and “on” and reversing them and it was all very interesting. thank you for the info! will try to be present tmrw — i teach til 4 and then have an irish studies / frederick douglass event at 5pm but will try to duck my head in 4:30 – 5.

[Joshua Wilner]

I am by no means a Beckett scholar, but from a little fleet googling I conclude that the collocation of the Nohow On titles with “Stirrings Still” on the cover of your edition is an editorial decision meant to foreground and bring together the late prose.

It also appears (from googling!) that Worstward Ho was written in English and declared by Beckett to be untranslatable into French. (No surprise there: How on earth would one translate the pun on “westward ho”?) As for “how it is that we get beckett wrong so broadly and in so many instances,” perhaps he had his own plan to “keep the professors busy for centuries”?

No meeting tomorrow (Monday), by the way. Mary Ann shifted that meeting to Tuesday since CUNY is officially closed on Monday (for yom kippur).

[Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her)]

thank you for all that josh! i also see, looking at the TOC for my edition, that there are still other prose piece also included in it… yes i think you’re right about him, and i say much the same about mcguckian in my book — she says she wants to be understood, but does she really? 🙂 same with him. (the northern writers almost to a person write under much influence of beckett, imho.)

and yes, i meant tuesday — a monday sched for me and oh my gosh, zooms from morning til night!

thanks again josh! all very helpful…

~maureen

[Mary Ann Caws (she/her)]

seems to me that we translations have often to do a double or triple? line: not just in Beckett but in Char French (“loup” wolf and résistance figurer, etc)

westward

worstward

worstword

so Beckett!

Mary Ann Caws