“How I dislike that play now . . .”

One of the last of Samuel Beckett’s letters in Volume One of this indispensable edition was written to James Joyce, in January 1940. In it Beckett thanked Joyce for having brought his work to the attention of a potential sponsor. “It was kind of you to write him about Murphy. He offers very kindly to read the translation & to ‘introduce’ me to the French public.” Nearly fourteen years later, Beckett wrote to Mania Péron, the widow of his friend Alfred, “I am in the shit fontanelle deep: rehearsals every day, translations on all sides, people to see. I can’t keep up”. And a month or so after that he wrote to his American lover Pamela Mitchell, “I went to Godot last night for the first time in a long time. Well played, but how I dislike that play now. Full house every night, it’s a disease”.

primeiro parágrafo de um artigo no TLS a edição das cartas de Beckett de George Craig.

mother

“I keep watching my mother’s eyes, never so blue, so stupefied, so heartrending, eyes of an endless childhood, that of old age. Let us get there rather earlier, while there are still refusals we can make. I think these are the first eyes that I have seen. I have no wish to see any others, I have all I need for loving and weeping, I know now what is going to close, and open inside me . . . .”