Incredible reading: Harold Pinter performs the end of Beckett's "The Unnameable"

[Retinend]

https://youtu.be/-N99S8n2TiA?t=239

I see nothing, it's because there is nothing, or it's because I have no
eyes, or both, that makes three possibilities, to choose from, but do I really see
nothing, it's not the moment to tell a lie, but how can you not tell a lie, what an
idea, a voice like this, who can check it, it tries everything, it's blind, it seeks me
blindly, in the dark, it seeks a mouth, to enter into, who can query it, there is no
other, you'd need a head, you'd need things, I don't know, I look too often as if I
knew, it's the voice does that, it goes all knowing, to make me think I know, to
make me think it's mine, it has no interest in eyes, it says I have none, or that
they are no use to me, then it speaks of tears, then it speaks of gleams, it is truly
at a loss, gleams, yes, far, or near, distances, you know, measurements, enough
said, gleams, as at dawn, then dying, as at evening, or flaring up, they do that

too, blaze up more dazzling than snow, for a second, that's short, then fizzle out,
that's true enough, if you like, one forgets, I forget, I say I see nothing, or I say
it's all in my head, as if I felt a head on me, that's all hypotheses, lies, these
gleams too, they were to save me, they were to devour me, that came to nothing,
I see nothing, either because of this or else on account of that, and these images
at which they watered me, like a camel, before the desert, I don't know, more
lies, just for the fun of it, fun, what fun we've had, what fun of it, all lies, that's
soon said, you must say soon, it's the regulations. The place, I'll make it all the
same, I'll make it in my head, I'll draw it out of my memory, I'll gather it all
about me, I'll make myself a head, I'll make myself a memory, I have only to
listen, the voice will tell me everything, tell it to me again, everything I need, in
dribs and drabs, breathless, it's like a confession, a last confession, you think it's
finished, then it starts off again, there were so many sins, the memory is so bad,
the words don't come, the words fail, the breath fails, no, it's something else, it's
an indictment, a dying voice accusing, accusing me, you must accuse someone, a
culprit is indispensable, it speaks of my sins, it speaks of my head, it says it's
mine, it says that I repent, that I want to be punished, better than I am, that I
want to go, give myself up, a victim is essential, I have only to listen, it will
show me my hiding-place, what it's like, where the door is, if there's a door, and
whereabouts I am in it, and what lies between us, how the land lies, what kind of
country, whether it's sea, or whether it's mountain, and the way to take, so that I
may go, make my escape, give myself up, come to the place where the axe falls,
without further ceremony, on all who come from here, I'm not the first, I won't
be the first, it will best me in the end, it has bested better than me, it will tell me
what to do, in order to rise, move, act like a body endowed with despair, that's
how I reason, that's how I hear myself reasoning, all lies, it's not me they're
calling, not me they're talking about, it's not yet my turn, it's someone else's
turn, that's why I can't stir, that's why I don't feel a body on me, I'm not
suffering enough yet, it's not yet my turn, not suffering enough to be able to stir,
to have a body, complete with head, to be able to understand, to have eyes to
light the way, I merely hear, without understanding, without being able to profit
by it, by what I hear, to do what, to rise and go and be done with hearing, I don't
hear everything, that must be it, the important things escape me, it's not my turn,
the topographical and anatomical information in particular is lost on me, no, I
hear everything, what difference does it make, the moment it's not my turn, my
turn to understand, my turn to live, my turn of the life-screw, it calls that living,
the space of the way from here to the door, it's all there, in what I hear


somewhere, if all has been said, all this long time, all must have been said, but
it's not my turn to know what, to know what I am, where I am, and what I
should do to stop being it, to stop being there, that's coherent, so as to be
another, no, the same, I don't know, depart into life, travel the road, find the
door, find the axe, perhaps it's a cord, for the neck, for the throat, for the cords,
or fingers, I'll have eyes, I'll see fingers, it will be the silence, perhaps it's a
drop, find the door, open the door, drop, into the silence, it won't be I, I'll stay
here, or there, more likely there, it will never be I, that's all I know, it's all been
done already, said and said again, the departure, the body that rises, the way, in
colour, the arrival, the door that opens, closes again, it was never I, I've never
stirred, I've listened, I must have spoken, why deny it, why not admit it, after all,
I deny nothing, I admit nothing, I say what I hear, I hear what I say, I don't
know, one or the other, or both, that makes three possibilities, pick your fancy,
all these stories about travellers, these stories about paralytics, all are mine, I
must be extremely old, or it's memory playing tricks, if only I knew if I've lived,
if I live, if I'll live, that would simplify everything, impossible to find out, that's
where you're buggered, I haven't stirred, that's all I know, no, I know something
else, it's not I, I always forget that, I resume, you must resume, never stirred
from here, never stopped telling stories, to myself, hardly hearing them, hearing
something else, listening for something else, wondering now and then where I
got them from, was I in the land of the living, were they in mine, and where,
where do I store them, in my head, I don't feel a head on me, and what do I tell
them with, with my mouth, same remark, and what do I hear them with, and so
on, the old rigmarole, it can't be I, or it's because I pay no heed, it's such an old
habit, I do it without heeding, or as if I were somewhere else, there I am far
again, there I am the absentee again, it's his turn again now, he who neither
speaks nor listens, who has neither body nor soul, it's something else he has, he
must have something, he must be somewhere, he is made of silence, there's a
pretty analysis, he's in the silence, he's the one to be sought, the one to be, the
one to be spoken of, the one to speak, but he can't speak, then I could stop, I'd
be he, I'd be the silence, I'd be back in the silence, we'd be reunited, his story
the story to be told, but he has no story, he hasn't been in story, it's not certain,
he's in his own story, unimaginable, unspeakable, that doesn't matter, the
attempt must be made, in the old stories incomprehensibly mine, to find his, it
must be there somewhere, it must have been mine, before being his, I'll
recognise it, in the end I'll recognise it, the story of the silence that he never left,
that I should never have left, that I may never find again, that I may find again,



then it will be he, it will be I, it will be the place, the silence, the end, the
beginning, the beginning again, how can I say it, that's all words, they're all I
have, and not many of them, the words fail, the voice fails, so be it, I know that
well, it will be the silence, full of murmurs, distant cries, the usual silence, spent
listening, spent waiting, waiting for the voice, 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, try what, I don't know, I've forgotten, it doesn't matter, I
never knew, to have them carry me into my story, the words that remain, my old
story, which I've forgotten, far from here, through the noise, through the door,
into the silence, that must be it, it's too late, perhaps it's too late, perhaps they
have, how would I know, in the silence you don't know, perhaps it's the door,
perhaps I'm at the door, that would surprise me, perhaps it's I, perhaps
somewhere or other it was I, I can depart, all this time I've journeyed without
knowing it, it's I now at the door, what door, what's a door doing here, it's the
last words, the true last, or it's the murmurs, the murmurs are coming, I know
that well, no, not even that, you talk of murmurs, distant cries, as long as you can
talk, you talk of them before and you talk of them after, more lies, it will be the
silence, the one that doesn't last, spent listening, spent waiting, for it to be
broken, for the voice to break it, perhaps there's no other, I don't know, it's not
worth having, that's all I know, it's not I, that's all I know, it's not mine, it's the
only one I ever had, that's a lie, I must have had the other, the one that lasts, but
it didn't last, I don't understand, that is to say it did, it still lasts, I'm still in it, I
left myself behind in it, I'm waiting for me there, no, there you don't wait, you
don't listen, I don't know, perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would surprise
me, I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream
again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don't know, that's
all words, never wake, all words, there's nothing else, you must go on, that's all
I know, they're going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they're going to
abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will
be mine, the lasting one, that didn't last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go
on, I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on, you must say words, as long as
there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you
must go on, perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already,
perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that
opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the

silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't
know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

[Retinend]

Bonus Pinter brilliance:

https://youtu.be/PH96tuRA3L0
Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter
158,381 viewsNov 9, 2011

text:
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2005/pinter/25621-harold-pinter-nobel-lecture-2005/

[Smeraldina Rima]

An interesting fact I read about this is that in the original draft it ended on the last page of the notebook he was using. But there's still a quarter of the page left when he writes 'FIN' underneath.

[Retinend]

That would imply that he knew that the novel would continue until there was no space left in the notebook left to continue - an deliberately arbitrary length. That makes sense, since the character of the unnameable is a sort of engine of disembodied anxiety and schizophrenic wordplay - it would never be able to compose a novel of any deliberate length.


Here's a nod to Beckett's The Unnameable in an unexpected place (the rest of the lyrics seem totally unrelated but for the chorus)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uLoABycwSg
The Waitresses Go On
4,296 views

[Smeraldina Rima]

That song's brilliant. Never listened to The Waitresses before, it's gone on to "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful" which is even better.

I'm not sure how to interpret what I mentioned about the notebook. I like your idea. He could also have brought it to a close when he realised he had kept going towards the end but without having decided beforehand that he would fill it up.

There's a good Murphy audiobook on Ubuweb, unusual in having a big cast but following the text. I enjoyed listening to this while walking around the bits of London in the book:

https://www.ubuweb.com/sound/beckett_murphy.html

The complete unabridged text. Narrated by Fionnula Flanagan, starring Colm Meaney (Mr. O'Brien of Star Trek: The Next Generation) as Murphy, and featuring 20 of the finest English and Irish voices in the world.

Written in English and later translated by Beckett into French, Beckett's second novel was rejected by over forty publishers. Murphy is by its own admission a puppet show, in which Menippean characters with prodigious vocabularies deal with the absurd costs of living: insanity, lust, and love. Despite his stout Irish everyman's name, Murphy himself is not a puppet, but a consciousness in crisis:

Murphy's mind pictured itself as a large hollow sphere, hermetically closed to the universe without. This was not an impoverishment, for it excluded nothing that it did not itself contain. Nothing ever had been, was or would be in the universe outside it but was already present as virtual, or actual, or virtual rising into actual, or actual falling into virtual, in the universe inside it.

This "seedy solipsist" is driven into action (such as it is) by a horoscope his lover, Celia Kelly, procures at his request: among other things, it advises him to wear lemon as a lucky colour, to place faith in the years 1936 and 1990, and to take great care "in dealing with publishers, quadrupeds, and tropical swamps." At Celia's urging and in a notably reluctant and listless manner, Murphy casts about London for a job, eventually finding a real vocation as a nurse at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat (called the MMM). Unfortunately for Celia and the other characters looking for him, Murphy finds the catatonia of the MMM's patients, especially the oblivion of Mr. Endon, supremely attractive – an alternative to consciousness and its attendant pains and inconveniences. After surrendering to him in chess, Murphy stares into his own reflection in Mr. Endon's unseeing eyes and, thus blessed, retires to his garret in the MMM and "soon his body was quiet." Perhaps the "excellent gas" from the heater kills him before his final immolation.

Murphy is a funny and precocious book, but also, it must be said, a mean one. There is a quintessential pointlessness to all its characters' endeavours, with the notable exception of the search for oblivion, which of course needs not to be sought to be eventually encountered. The schemes of Neary, Wylie, and Miss Counihan get nowhere. Cooper does manage to sit down and remove his hat, but he ultimately relapses into drink. Despite his wishes to have his remains flushed down the toilet, Murphy's ashes are scattered about in a barfight. Celia grimly returns to prostitution. (Indeed, this book of all Beckett's works shows least sympathy for women, to put it mildly.) Only Mr. Kelly's kite achieves transcendence, in what might be the book's most beautiful and terrifying passage:

Except for the sagging soar of line, undoubtedly superb as far as it went, there was nothing to be seen, for the kite had disappeared from view. Mr. Kelly was enraptured. Now he could measure the distance from the unseen to the seen, now he was in a position to determine the point at which seen and unseen met. It would be an unscientific observation, so many and so fitful were the imponderables involved. But the pleasure accruing to Mr. Kelly would be in no way inferior to that conferred (presumably) on Mr. Adams by his beautiful deduction of Neptune from Uranus. He fixed with his eagle eyes a point in the empty sky where he fancied the kite to swim into view, and wound carefully in.

Mr. Kelly's kite then escapes in much the same way that Murphy has slipped out of the puppet show: by crossing from one realm to the other, from the seen to the unseen. It is not exactly death that is the release here, but simply not being, which so often in Beckett means not being seen.

The reader (addressed as "gentle skimmer") has to endure quite a lot in this novel. Abstruse allusions fly fast and thick, and words like "Æruginous" and "neo-merovingian" push for more room among Latin relatives. Yet so many of the implements, structures, and devices we associate with Beckett and which recur in so many of his works have their earliest incarnations here, too: the nerve-steadying rocking chair; the interchangeable clowns in pairs or sequence (Bim and Bom, Neary and Wylie); the uneasy love between master and servant (Bim and Ticklepenny, Neary and Cooper); the carefully-paced "rest" between spoken words; and the appreciation of routine's choreography (the novel's funniest scene, Murphy's plan for his biscuits and the interruption thereof by Miss Dew and her beloved doggy, anticipates both the calculated stone-sucking of Molloy and Hamm's toy dog in Endgame). Murphy is a romance that fails, a mechanism that pulses with life and activity despite itself and its wishes. It is not surprising that it ends in defeat with "the tired heart," Celia closing her eyes (like the protagonist of Film does to end his narrative existence), and the words All out.

Produced in association with Viper Records, TZ Entertainment, and San Quentin Drama Workshop

Starring:

Narrator:   Fionnula Flanagan
Murphy: Colm Meaney
Celia: Bairbre Dowling
Neary: Morgan Sheppard
Wylie: Hamilton Camp
Cooper: Fred Wayne
Mr. Kelly: Brendan Dillon
Miss Counihan: Nora Masterson
Miss Carriage: Mary Dryden
Miss Dew, Vera, Char Lady, Cathleen: Sheelagh Cullen
Bim/Bom: Chris Campbell
Ticklepenny: James Lancaster
Mr. Endon: Bernard Kates
Dr. Killiekrankie: Neal Hunt
Coroner: Ian Abercrombie
Civic Guard: Redmond Gleeson
Chandler One: Billy Hayes
Chandler Two: Alan Mandell
Chandler Three Park Ranger: Rick Cluchey
Dr. Fist, Hindu Polyhistor, Chelsea, Pensioner, Barman: R.S. Bailey

Executive Producers: Jonathan and Helena Stuart
Producer: Rick Cluchey
Director, Editor: R.S. Bailey
Story Adaptation to Audio: Rick Cluchey, R.S. Bailey

[Retinend]

I agree with the critical parts of what you quoted - Murphy is a mean-spirited book that is frustrating to read. There's too much of Joyce in it.

I view it as a false start for what he would go on to do properly in Molloy (12 years or so after Murphy). Both books are totally original, but Molly has the execution that makes it positively frightening and unnerving, rather than merely "experimental" or "clever".

I highly recommend anyone interested to read the entire trilogy of novellas: Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable. They are all short books.

[Twit 2]

The beginning of The Unnamable is used in the third movement of Berio's Sinfonia, amongst a collage of "shit loads of other shit:"

https://youtu.be/9YU-V2C4ryU

[All Surrogate]

Thanks for that, Retinend.

Lately I've been repeatedly listening to Lucky's speech from Waiting For Godot. I can't work out which of these versions I prefer:
Lucky's speech from Waiting for Godot, directed by Beckett, 1985.
Lucky's speech from Waiting for Godot, 'Beckett on Film', 2001.

I can't help but notice the repetition of "I resume" between the two pieces, as well as the how "be done with hearing" echoes with "have done with losing" from Hamm's final soliloguy in Endgame, and of course the connection with Not I.

Think, pig!

[Retinend]

https://youtu.be/nRW9S4Wmldw?t=3807
Samuel Beckett: As the Story Was Told documentary (1996)
144,989 viewsNov 7, 2017

the URL is timestamped to the point that one of the premiere actors of Waiting for Godot performs "Lucky's Speech" -in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, several decades later. Astounding!

Code Select Expand

source: http://www.samuel-beckett.net/Penelope/Pozzo_Lucky.html

LUCKY: (monotone sales-pitch)  Being    given    the existence    such 
       (débit monotone) — Étant     donné   l'existence        telle


that it     gushes forth    from the    recent      public works         of
qu'elle    jaillit                des               récents     travaux publics    de


Poinçon    and    Wattman1    of a       personal God        quaquaquaqua
Poinçon    et        Wattman      d'un     Dieu personnel    quaquaquaqua


with a    white beard        quaqua      outside    of the     time      of...
à              barbe blanche     quaqua     hors          du          temps    de ...



[touchingcloth]

and of course the connection with Not I.

I've seen Not I, and when I read the OP I thought "wait, is that from Not I?" I've not seen Godot, but watching that speech of Lucky's I thought "hold on, isn't this from Not I?"

So is that Beckett, then? Streams of consciousness/nonsense at a million miles an hour?

[Retinend]

No, but he's very good at doing that.

I still love your avatar - it's adorable, no matter what the post.

[touchingcloth]

That sounds like a challenge if ever I heard one.

[QDRPHNC]

The Pinter reading is great, thanks for posting. I tend to enjoy reading Beckett more than seeing him performed though. The voice in my head is much less capital-d Dramatic.

[All Surrogate]

https://youtu.be/nRW9S4Wmldw?t=3807
Samuel Beckett: As the Story Was Told documentary (1996)
144,989 viewsNov 7, 2017

the URL is timestamped to the point that one of the premiere actors of Waiting for Godot performs "Lucky's Speech" -in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, several decades later. Astounding!

Indeed, and I've just realised that that is Jean Martin with his parkinsonian interpretation of Lucky. Amazing.

So is that Beckett, then? Streams of consciousness/nonsense at a million miles an hour?

Haha, well, Play could fall into that category as well. At the other extreme, you've got the speechless plays, like the aptly titled Act Without Words I and II. But there's plenty in between.

If you want pauses, go to Pinter direct.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Pinter's version of Krapp is quite affecting. Extremely poignant not only its removal of the more physical and kinetic elements, but the way he inverts the play's dependency on the disembodied voice between reflected by a very emotive and expressive face, especially with McGee. The "pinter pauses" are there not as silences but as stony expressionlessness where other Krapps would emote. I wonder if the incisive emphasis of "uninhabited" in the final tape reflects his politics concerns at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IUDUMkTva8

[Video Game Fan 2000]

how many explicit negative references to Joyce can you catch in Krapp? there are a two major ones but they're kind of deep cuts. Pinter really spits one with the characters "vehemence" which amuses me greatly.

[Retinend]

That song's brilliant. Never listened to The Waitresses before, it's gone on to "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful" which is even better.

By the way, I'm glad you liked them too - The Waitresses are my favourite band of the 80s. Now you too can fall in love with the inimitable Patty Donahue - an absolute goddess and rock icon:



Patty Donahue (1956 – 1996)

Old Grey Whistle Test performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaYfca_zauY
I Know What Boys Like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMV0I_boVqc
No Guilt

Music video for "Make The Weather" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db0R9bDa9gc