Eleuthéria Read online

  ELEUTHERIA

  A play in three acts

  By Samuel Beckett

  Translated from the French by Michael Brodsky

  Foxrock, Inc ./New York

  © 1995 Les Editions de Minuit

  English translation© 1995 Foxrock, Inc.

  Published by permission of the Beckett Estate.

  Introduction© 1995 S.E. Gontarski

  Foreword© 1995 Martin Garbus

  Translator's notes© 1995 Michael Brodsky

  Published in the United States by:

  Foxrock, Inc.

  61 Fourth Avenue

  New York, N.Y, 10003

  Distributed by arrangement with Four Walls Eight Windows, Inc.

  First printing May 1995

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or

  other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means,

  including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or

  otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  LIBRARY OF CosGRESS CATALOGING-Is-PusuCAnos DATA:

  Beckett, Samuel, 1906

  [Eleutheria. English]

  Eleutheria/by Samuel Beckett

  p. em.

  ISBN 0-9643740-0-5

  I. Title.

  PQ2603.E378E413

  1995

  842'.914-dc20

  95-5229

  CIP

  Text design by Raugust Communications

  Printed in the United States

  10 98 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FOREWORD

  By Martin Garbus, Esq.

  The dispute between the Beckett Estate and

  Foxrock over the publication of Eleuthena is a clash

  of moral and legal values, personalities, cultures and

  legal systems.

  Under French law, there is substantial protection of an author's moral rights to control his own work during his life and after death; in America, there

  is less protection . In America, because of the First

  Amendment, there is an extraordinary commitment

  to the free exchange of ideas; in case of doubt, we say

  publish and let the reader judge the value of the art.

  Under the laws of France, the executor of an

  estate can decide which of the author's works can be

  published, if the author's intention is unclear.

  In France, if the executor wen t to Court, and

  if the facts prove the author' s intention changed

  and is unclear, the n the exe cuto r ' s single voice

  could stop publication . I n America, more weigh t

  would be given to the possible right of the public

  to read the work.

  Rosset, a close friend and confidant to Beckett,

  was for thirty-three years the American publisher and

  dramatic agent for Beckett's work. He was responsible for the publication of over twenty volumes of Beckett's works as well as for approving performances

  of Beckett's works in the United States.

  When Foxrock, the firm created to publish

  Eleuthena by Rosset,John Oakes and Dan Simon , and

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  SAMUEL BECKEIT

  Jerome Lin don , literary executor of the Beckett Estate , failed to agree wh e ther and how the play should be published, I suggested three courses of

  action . The first suggestion was that the two sides

  in the dispute agree to appoint a third party or

  appoin t two representatives to appoint a third party

  to decide if the facts permit publication . Lindon

  refused this proposal .

  I then suggested that, i n addition to potential

  third party arbitrators, there are groups of scholars

  and theater people, including the Samuel Beckett

  Society, that could play a role in resolving the dispute . Lindon refused to consider this possibility.

  Finally, I suggested a variety of informal procedures. Lindon refused them all. This left us the option of resorting to more formal mediation of arbitration procedures, either in the United States or France. Lindon refused these as well.

  I suggested that if we were to litigate we should

  agree to a variety of neutral principles that reduce

  the time, cost and rancor of a federal lawsuit. Lindon

  refused to consider them. His only course continued

  to be to threaten a federal copyright suit.

  Rosset, Oakes and Simon hoped that if Lindon

  saw a favorable response to the play he would permit its

  publication and production . Accordingly, in New York,

  in September of 1994, a private reading of the play was

  arranged. Directed by Peter Craze of Britain, it was to

  be put on at the New York Theatre Workshop, but

  Lindon threatened to sue the theater, Rosset, the translator and the actors if the reading took place.

  The Theatre Workshop, caught in the middle,

  asked Rosset to post a $25 ,000 bond, which he could

  not do.

  ELEUTHERIA

  v

  Following the precedent set by John Houseman and Orson Welles when their premiere of Marc Blitzstein 's The Cradle Will Rock was canceled by the

  WPA Theater Project on what was to have been its

  opening night in 1936, Foxrock changed the venue

  for the reading and, with a group of 13 actors and an

  audience of approximately 100 invited guests, a reading was conducted that very same day of the theater cancellation in a rehearsal studio in the building

  where Rosset lives.

  Critics who saw the reading discussed the play's

  substantial merits and its importance in the Beckett

  oeuvre, and great interest in a future production was

  aroused.

  As a result of the reading and examination of

  the manuscript, both in its original French and in a translation, letters were addressed to myself and to Foxrock from some of America's most important and creative

  stage directors and theater owners. They stated a deep

  interest in the play; more importantly, many of those

  who wrote stated that they wished to produce Eleuthiria

  and that its performance would constitute a m�or theatrical event. Rosset told all the directors in advance that they would have to obtain permission from the

  Beckett Estate. Lindon received these letters and refused

  permission and said he would not be persuaded by them.

  Finally, Foxrock had me prepare papers to file

  in Federal Court copyright action in the United States

  District Court in New York, seeking an injunction and

  declaratory judgment that the play could be published and performed. Lindon had threatened, if the book were published, to sue bookstore owners and

  book distributors in the same way that he threatened

  the publishers of this book and the New York Theatre

  VI

  SAMUEL BECKETT

  Workshop that had offered to house the reading of the

  play. However, at this point, the publishers decided to

  bypass legal action and to proceed with the "publication" of Eleuthiria in a limited edition.

  Rosset proposed this limited not-for-sale edition

  in order to make the book available to at least some of

  the people most interested in Eleuthiria. The publishers

  were taking a risk and they knew it, but the decision was

  made to publish. They were very aware that censors
hip

  of their efforts could come about through either governmental court action or expensive, time-consuming litigation. They went ahead. Thus, the forthcoming

  publication of the free edition of Eleuthena was announced. A normal, commercial edition had been announced previously, but this new plan superseded it.

  At that point, Lindon, apparently realizing the

  true determination of his American oppone n ts,

  agreed to Foxrock's publication of Eleuthena. He had

  done nearly all he could to prevent its publication ,

  and seeing that it was futile, wrote to Rosset:

  ... [A] s I see you are staunchly bent on publishing your

  translation, I bring myself to grant you that publication right for the United States which you have been asking me for two years ... The one thing I am sure of is

  that Sam would not have liked us to fight against each

  other about him in a public lawsuit. My decision - I

  should say: renouncing- is essentially due to that.

  And so, this edition at long last brings to the

  public the text of an importan t play that for too

  long has been read only by a handful of privileged

  scholars.

  We hope and believe this edition will eventually lead to the play's performance.

  The play's title , Eleu thbia, is a Greek word

  meaning "freedom."

  INTRODUCTION

  By S.E. Gontarski

  "Perhaps it is time that someone were simply nothing"

  -Victor Krap

  In his catalogue of the Samuel Beckett papers

  at the University of Texas ' s Humanities Research

  Center, Carlton Lake calls attention to the curious

  publishing history of the work Samuel Beckett wrote

  just after. World War II as he turned to writing in

  French: "Along with Watt and Mercier et Camier one of

  the more long-drawn-out publishing histories in

  Beckett's career is that leading up to Nouvelles et textes

  pour rien" (i.e., Stories and Texts for Nothing) .1 Indeed,

  this was a period in Beckett's creative life when the

  time between composition and publication was unusually protracted. Watt, for instance, written mostly in the south of France during the Second World War

  and completed in 1945, did not see print for some

  eight years after its completion . It was rejected by

  more publishers than even Beckett could remember

  before being published by the group Beckett called

  the "Merlin juveniles" in collaboration with Maurice

  Girodias's notorious Olympia Press in 1953. Beckett's

  short story "Suite" (later "La Fin" or "The End") was finished in May 1946. It was published almost immediately in the July 1946 issue of Les Temps Modernes.

  Beckett expected the second half of the story to appear in the October issue, but Simone de Beauvoir considered the first part complete in itself and refused to publish the second. Beckett argued that print-

  Vlll

  SAJ1UEL BECKETI

  ing half the story was a "mutilation," but Mme. de

  Beauvoir remained adamant, and it was some nine

  years before the complete story appeared. Beckett in

  fact wrote four French stories, nouvelles, in 1946, and

  he expected that they would appear quickly in book

  form from his first French publisher, Bordas, which

  would publish his own ti anslation of Mu rphy in 194 7.

  By December of 1946 Beckett could write with some

  confidence to his English friend and agent, George

  Reavey, "I hope to have a book of short stories ready

  for the spring (in French) . I do not think that I shall

  write very much in English in the future. "2 But Bordas

  dropped plans to issue both Mercier et Gamier and the

  four stories, Qu atre Nouvelles, when sales of the French

  Murphy proved disastrous. When Beckett finally found

  a second French publisher willing to take on the

  whole of his creative backlog, Les Editions de Minuit,

  in 1950, he hesitated and finally withheld much of

  the earliest writing in French, Mercier et Gamier, one

  of his four stories, "First Love," and his first full-length

  play written in French, Eleu theria. The remaining

  three nouvelles of 1946 were finally published in

  France by Les Editions de Minuit in 1955 and in the

  U. S. by Grove Press in 1967, both in combination

  with 13 Texts for Nothing. Both Mercier et Gamier and

  "First Love" were eventually published as Beckett

  yielded to pressure from his publishers: 1970 in

  French and 1974 in English .

  But these publishing difficulties, hiatuses, hesitations, instances of self-doubt and self-censorship pale before the intractable difficulties surrounding

  the publication of Beckett's first full-length play,

  Eleuthhia, published only in 1995, nearly half a century after its writing. If the publication history of Watt,

  ELEUTHERIA

  ix

  Mercier et Gamier, and "Premiere Amour" is curious,

  the history of Eleuthena is curio user. As with Mercier et

  Gamier and his four Stories, Beckett was at first eager

  to have Eleuthena performed and published. He saw

  Eleuthena as part of a sequence which reflected a certain continuity to his writing. On july 8, 1948, for example, he wrote to George Reavey, "I am now typing, for rejection by the publishers, Malone meurt [Malone

  Dies], the last I hope of the series Murphy, Watt, Mercier

  & Gamier, Molloy, not to mention the 4 nouvelles &

  Eleuthena. "3 Malone Dies was not, of course, the last of

  the series. Ano ther play followed shortly the reafter, En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) , completed in january of 1949, and a third French novel, L'innommable (The Unnamable) , completed a year

  later. Alo n g wi th Molloy a n d Malone D i e s, The

  Unnamableformed part of what Beckett called "the

  so-called Trilogy."

  Eleuthenawas begun on january 18, 1947 as a

  retreat from the problems caused by the prose Beckett

  had been writing at the time . As he told his first biographer Deirdre Bair in 1972, "I turned to writing plays to relieve myself from the awful depression the prose

  led me into . Life at the time was too demanding, too

  terrible, and I thought theatre would be a diversion . "4

  By February 24 he had completed a draft of the threeact play, and by late March 194 7 he had turned over a typescript (which he always made himself, mindful

  perhaps of the errors and changes introduced into

  James joyce's work by various typists) to Toni Clerkx,

  sister of Bram and Geer van Velde, who would for a

  time function as Beckett's literary representative in

  France, and who was responsible for placing Murphy

  with Bordas. And in fact Mme . Clerkx managed to

  X

  SAMUEL BECKETI

  interest Jean Vilar at the Theatre Nationale Populaire

  in the play, but Vilar wanted Beckett to cut it to one

  long act. When Beckett refused, Vilar dropped his

  interest. By the fall of 194 7, Mme. Clerla told Beckett

  that she could no longer represent him and still have

  time for her own writing, and so Beckett's live-in companion an d future wife , Suzann e D e sch eve aux­

  Dumesnil, began to circulate his work among producers and publishers.

  By January of 1949, Beckett had completed a

  second French play, En attendant Godot (Waiting for

  Godot)
, written again "as a relaxation to get away from

  the awful prose I was writing at the time," this time

  presumably Molloy and Malone meurt (Malone Dies) ,

  an d th at p l ay to o was c i rc u l a t e d by M m e .

  Descheveaux-Dumesnil-without success, until she

  saw a production of August Strindberg's Ghost Sonata

  performed at the Gaite Montparnasse in early spring

  of 1950. The play, staged by Roger Blin , a disciple of

  Antonin Artaud, had impressed her, and she dropped

  the typescripts of both plays at the box office for Blin

  to consider. Blin had heard of Beckett from the Dada

  poet Tristan Tzara. He was interested in the plays even

  though "he frankly did not understand Waiting for

  Godot, but he liked it. He decided that he should probably begin with Eleuthbia because it was more traditional, and to his mind easier to cope with ."5 But finally economics entered the decision-making process, and as Blin noted, "Eleu thbia had seventeen characters, a divided stage, elaborate props and complicated lighting. I was poor. I didn 't have a penny. I couldn 't

  think of anyone who owned a theater suitable for such

  a complicated production. I though t I ' d be be tter

  off with Godot because there were only four actors

  ELEUTHERIA

  Xl

  and they were bums. They could wear their own

  clothes if it came to that, and I wouldn ' t need anything but a spotlight and a bare branch for a tree."

  With such decisions, then, was theater history shaped.

  In October of 1950 Suzanne Descheveaux­

  Dumesnil, still systematically and assiduously making

  the rounds of French publishers, delivered the typescripts of three novels, the "so-called trilogy," Molloy, Malone meurt and L 'innommable, to the desk of Georges

  Lambrich, an editor at Jerome Lindon 's Editions de

  Minuit, a house rapidly gaining a reputation among

  the Paris avant-garde . By November, Beckett had a

  French publisher, and the publication of Molloy was

  scheduled for January of 1951 (although it was finally

  delayed several months) to be followed shortly thereafter by Malone meu rt. Blin had been making some headway with the production of Waiting for Godot. He

  had interested Jean-Marie Serreau in the play just as

  Serreau was opening his Theatre de Babylone, and

  Blin had gotten a small grant from the French Ministry for Arts and Letters to produce the play. Jerome Lindon had seen copies of the two plays and had