Echo's Bones Read online

  As for the ‘horrible and immediate switches of focus’, there is hardly a sentence in ‘Echo’s Bones’ that is not borrowed from one source or another, bearing out Beckett’s own statement that he had ‘put all I knew and plenty that I was better still aware of’ into the story. These references range from the recondite to the popular (Marlene Dietrich, French chansons), and are inscribed in the text both openly and covertly. In compositional terms, ‘Echo’s Bones’ mainly draws on the so-called Dream Notebook; essentially Beckett used those quotations from this artistic notebook that he had not previously used in the novel of the same name or in More Pricks Than Kicks. Either Beckett was grasping around for whatever he had to hand, in his haste to complete this last story for Chatto & Windus, or he was re-enacting a compositional strategy that had been impressed upon the young writer by Joyce’s example. ‘Echo’s Bones’ is, without doubt, more densely allusive, more Joycean, than any of Beckett’s other early writings; both on a verbal and a structural level, it harnesses a range of materials, from science and philosophy to religion and literature. As its title suggests, this is a story made up of echoes, of allusions to multiple cultural contexts. However, as John Pilling has remarked, at times there are so ‘many echoes that they seem to multiply to infinity, and yet they are little more than the bare bonesof material without any overarching purpose to animate’ (Pilling 2011, 104). The switches between the three parts of the story, as well as the references, both erudite and contemporary, seem randomised, all of which is compounded by the shifts in register. The style draws on various literary periods, and the language oscillates between the ornate (‘Archipelagoes ofpollards, spangled with glades’) and the demotic (Dublin slang).

  The story structurally and conceptually parallels Dante’s glimpse of the afterlife in the Divine Comedy, and plays on forms of atonement that correspond to the sinner’s actual

  vices. The pervasively purgatorial tone is compounded by phrases taken from the Bible, as well as from Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ and Jeremy Taylor’s The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Dying (1650–1), the latter a book Beckett was reading at the time he was composing the story. However, and despite the many quotations from St Augustine’s Confessions, this is not a story of punishment, conversion and salvation. Indeed, any possibility of religious salvation for Belacqua is undercut by the litter of sexual puns (learned or schoolboy), lewd jokes, and terminology deriving from flagellation, infertility and homosexuality, especially in the second part of the story. The themes of impotence and sterility are woven through the story, clothed in literary as well as sexual allusions. The threat of reproductive sex, visible across Beckett’s early work, is here deflected humorously, and the general profanity owes much to the Marquis de Sade, whose 120 Days of Sodom Beckett was later to consider translating into English.

  The struggle to identify what is at stake in the story is made more difficult by the employment of devices from fantastical, non-realist genres and narratives. One such area is myth; as the title already suggests, Beckett employs the story of Narcissus and Echo from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to frame Belacqua’s ‘post-obit’ journey from living character to echoic voice, until only his bones remain in the final tableau of the story. Beckett also invests the proceedings with a gothic atmosphere, especially in the final section, which plays out in a cemetery. Perhaps more surprising is the use of fairy tale, a form which throws longer shadows over Beckett’s early oeuvre than is usually acknowledged. Blending fairy tales, gothic dreams and classical myth, ‘Echo’s Bones’ is in parts a fantastical story replete with giants, tree-houses, mandrakes, ostriches and mushrooms, drawing on a tradition of folklore as popularised by W. B. Yeats and the Brothers Grimm, for example.

  Beckett’s experiments with the fairy tale form, and the general hilarity of the knock-about between Belacqua and Lord Gall, obscure but never quite obliterate the sense of grief and absence that pervades the story. Indeed, as its opening words indicate, ‘the dead die hard’, and Beckett may well have had the death of his cousin and lover, Peggy Sinclair (in May 1933, of tuberculosis), and that of his father (in June 1933), on his mind when writing the story. Indeed, the various clusters of motifs – resurrection, graveyards, legal issues of estates and successions, and the fact that Lord Gall has no son, just as Beckett has no father – suggest a preoccupation too distressing to be stated more directly. Whereas in the literary world of Dream of Fair to Middling Women it was ‘remarkable how everything can be made to end like a fairy tale’, in the real world this was simply not possible. As such the final words of ‘Echo’s Bones’ (which occur twice in the story), taken from the Brothers Grimm, fuse the fairy-tale element with a tone of resignation and acceptance: ‘So it goes in the world’. As ‘Echo’s Bones’ is a story about absent fathers and sons, about the afterlife and about the deplorable state of the world, it is hardly surprising that its main literary dialogue is with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. On both a thematic and a verbal level, Hamlet ghosts through ‘Echo’s Bones’.

  It is of course impossible to ascertain whether early readers would have ‘shuddered’ with confusion, as Prentice predicted, when reading ‘Echo’s Bones’ as part of More Pricks Than Kicks; or, put differently, whether the story actually ‘belongs’ to that collection. One could argue that Beckett, in the knowledge that he had a contract for the stories, went back to the way of writing he preferred at the time, the exuberant yet enigmatic style of Dream of Fair to Middling Women. In any case, while it is interesting to read ‘Echo’s Bones’ as part of the collection it was intended to conclude, it stands on its own. And we need see it neither as a step toward Beckett’s farewell to Joyce’s accumulative style of writing, by clearing out his store of quotations, nor as an emotionally charged text which – as Walter Draffin’s book is described in the More Pricks story ‘What a Misfortune’ – was simply ‘a mere dump for whatever he could not get off his chest in the ordinary way’ (133). The literary merit of ‘Echo’s Bones’ is evident; moreover, it is a vital document, which represents the missing link in Beckett’s development during the 1930s, and suggestively anticipates the postwar texts, stating a conundrum which will be restated in Waiting for Godot and beyond: ‘They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.’ ‘Echo’s Bones’ allows us to witness a young writer at ease yet at odds with the cultural contexts of his time, attempting to forge a literary path.

  —Mark Nixon, 2014

  NOTE ON THE TEXT

  Samuel Beckett’s story ‘Echo’s Bones’ survives in one typescript, held at the Rauner Library at Dartmouth College, and a carbon copy held in the A. J. Leventhal Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The two texts are thus identical, but there are differences in Beckett’s manuscript corrections. The Dartmouth typescript (given by Beckett to the critic Laurence Harvey in 1962) has all of the corrections made to the Austin copy, but also has further corrections, and thus forms the base text for this edition. Underlined words have been retained.

  Typographical errors that remain in Beckett’s typescript have been silently corrected, but more substantive changes are listed below; Beckett’s manuscript corrections, if of interest, are discussed in the annotations.

  [p. 7]: The word ‘the’ has been added to the sentence ‘But her first impression was confirmed by the absence of any shadow [. . .]’.

  [p. 8]: The word ‘a’ has been added to the sentence ‘Now the fact of the matter is that a personal shadow is like happiness [. . .]’.

  [p. 9]: In footnotes 1 and 2, Beckett writes ‘Cf.’ and ‘Cp.’ respectively; this has been standardised by using ‘Cf.’ in both instances.

  [p. 12]: A third point has been added to the ellipses at the end of the sentence ‘Now if there should turn out to be a Voltigeur in this assortment . . . !’. Beckett uses both two- and three-point ellipses before other punctuation in this manner; this has been standardised throughout the text to use three.

>   [p. 13]: Beckett’s spelling of ‘exageration’ has, in both instances the word occurs, been changed to ‘exaggeration’.

  [p. 14]: Beckett initially wrote ‘mentioned that he was bemired bemired with sins’; it is unlikely, if not impossible, that he intended the repetition, so one occurrence of the word ‘bemired’ has been omitted.

  [p. 20]: In citing Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Dying, Beckett writes ‘Duke of Ebenberg’ instead of Duke of Ebersberg; this error has been corrected here.

  [p. 32]: The word ‘considerable’ has been changed to ‘considerably’.

  [p. 36]: Beckett’s reference on this page and on p. 97 to ‘page 7, paragraph 2’ refers to a passage in his own typescript, rather than this edition.

  [p. 41]: The word ‘been’ has been added to the sentence ‘“I dassay my life was a derogation and an impùdence” said Belacqua “which it was my duty, nay should have been my pleasure, to nip in the wombbud”’.

  [p. 42]: The sentence ‘There you glump like a fluke in a tup and what to know from what’ has been changed to ‘There you glump like a fluke in a tup and want to know from what’.

  [p. 47]: The word ‘be’ has been added to the sentence ‘“In the event of dispute” said Doyle, “it might be a wise thing to appoint an arbitrator”’.

  ECHO’S BONES

  The dead die hard, they are trespassers on the beyond, they must take the place as they find it, the shafts and manholes back into the muck, till such time as the lord of the manor incurs through his long acquiescence a duty of care in respect of them. Then they are free among the dead by all means, then their troubles are over, their natural troubles. But the debt of nature, that scandalous post-obit on one’s own estate, can no more be discharged by the mere fact of kicking the bucket than descent can be made into the same stream twice. This is a true saying.

  At least it can be truly said of Belacqua who now found himself up and about in the dust of the world, back at his old games in the dim spot, on so many different occasions that he sometimes wondered if his lifeless condition were not all a dream and if on the whole he had not been a great deal deader before than after his formal departure, so to speak, from among the quick. No one was more willing than himself to admit that his definite individual existence had in some curious way been an injustice and that this tedious process of extinction, its protracted faults of old error, was the atonement imposed on every upstart into animal spirits, each in the order of time. But this did not make things any more pleasant or easy to bear. It occurred to him one day as he sat bent double on a fence like a casse-poitrine in delicious rêverie and puffed away at his Romeo and Juliet that perhaps if he had been cremated rather than inhumed directly he would have been less liable to revisit the vomit. But happily for all of us this thought was too egregious to detain him long. He tried all he knew, without shifting his position however, to conceive of his exuviae as preserved in an urn or other receptacle in some kind person’s sanctum or as drifting about like a cloud of randy pollen, but somehow he could not quite bring it off, this simple little flight. Was it possible that his imagination had perished in the torture chamber, that non-smoking compartment? That would indeed be something to be going on with, that would be what a Madden prizeman, his eyes out on stalks like a sentinel-crab’s with zeal and excitement, would call a step in the right direction.

  To state it then fairly fully once and for all, Belacqua is a human, dead and buried, restored to the jungle, yes really restored to the jungle, completely exhausted, conscious of his shortcomings, sitting on this fence, day in day out, having this palpitation, picking his nose between cigars, suffering greatly from exposure. This is he and the position from which he ventures, to which he is even liable to return after the fiasco, in which he is installed for each dose of expiation of great strength, from which he is caught up each time a trifle better, dryer, less of a natural snob. These predicates do not cover him, no number of them could. If as dense tissue of corporeal hereditaments – ha! – he was predicateless, how much more so then as spook? But cover they do the mean, the least presentable, aspect of his cruel reversion, three scenes from which, the first, the central and the last, we make bold to solicit as likely material for this fagpiece, this little triptych.

  To begin then at the beginning, he felt himself nodding in the grey shoals of angels, his co-departed, that thronged the womb-tomb, distinctly he felt himself lapsing from a beatitude of sloth that was infinitely smoother than oil and softer than pumpkins, he found himself fighting in vain against the hideous torpor and the grit and glare of his lids on the eyeballs so long lapped in gloom, and the next thing was he was horsed as it were for major discipline on the fence as see above, the bells pealing in all the steeples, his pockets crammed with cigars. He took the band off one of these, lit it, looked into his heart and exclaimed:

  ‘My soul begins to be idly goaded and racked, all the old pains and aches of me soul-junk return!’

  Hardly had this thought burst from his brain as a phosphate from the kidneys when a woman shot out of the hedge and stood before him, serene yet not relaxedly gay. There she stood, frankly alluring him to come and doubt not, stretching forth to hug him her holy hands pullulant with a million good examples. There was nothing at all of the grave widow or anile virgin about her, nothing in the least barren in her appearance. She would be, if she were not already, the fruitful mother of children of joys.

  ‘They call me Zaborovna’ she simpered.

  ‘I don’t hear what you say’ said Belacqua. ‘Speak up will you.’

  Now it must be clearly understood that there were no stews where Belacqua came from, no stews and no demand for stews. But here in the dust with night getting ready to fall it was quite a different matter. Belacqua felt he had been dead a long time, forty days at least.

  ‘You are Belacqua’ she said ‘whom we took for dead, or I’m a Dutchman.’

  ‘I am’ said Belacqua, ‘restored for a time by a lousy fate to the nuts and balls and sparrows of the low stature of animation. But who is we and who are you?’

  ‘I told you’ she said, ‘Zaborovna, at your service; and we, why little we is just an impersonal usage, the Tuscan reflexive without more.’

  ‘The mood’ said Belacqua, ‘forgive the term, of self-abuse, as the English passive of masochism.’

  ‘How long do you expect to be with us?’ said Zaborovna.

  ‘As long as I lived’ said Belacqua, ‘on and off, I have the feeling.’

  ‘You mean with intermissions?’ she said.

  ‘Do you know’ said Belacqua, ‘I like the way you speak very much.’

  ‘The way I speak’ she said.

  ‘I find your voice’ he said ‘something more than a roaring-meg against melancholy, I find it a covered waggon to me that am weary on the way, I do indeed.’

  ‘So musical’ she said, ‘I would never have thought it.’

  It was high time for a pause to ensue and a long one did. The lady advanced a pace towards the fence, clearly she was sparring for an opening, Belacqua pulled furiously at the immense cigar, a bird, its beak set in the heaven, flew by.

  ‘Too late!’ he exclaimed at last in piercing tones. ‘Too late!’

  ‘What is too late?’ said Zaborovna.

  ‘This encounter’ said Belacqua. ‘Can’t you see my life is over?’

  ‘Oh’ she said, in a voice something between a caress and a dig in the ribs, ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.’

  In the echo of the above pause she seized her opportunity, transferred her slyly grave deportment to the knees and thighs of the revenant, which parts of him trembled in the chill of the hour. A colony of rooks made their evening flight and darkened the sky, yes actually darkened the sky. Belacqua polished off his cigar, pressed it out fiercely against the rail, elevated his mind to God, crossed himself a thousand times.

  ‘Forgive me’ he said, ‘I’m as bad as Dr Keate of Eton, I can see his shaggy red brows distinctly, I can’t recall your name for the
moment.’

  ‘Zaborovna’ she said, ‘yours to command, Miss Zaborovna Privet, put your arm about her won’t you.’

  Belacqua, whom nothing could teach not to spit and dig for clotted mucus in the presence of ladies, shanghaied now a snot on his cuff and brought his eyes that were so sore with one thing and another, whinging and the light that quick-change artist, close up to those, sparklers of the first water and in which he seemed to discern a number of babies, of the Privet, who after a short and gallant struggle was constrained to look away, so searing, so red-hot and parallel, were the prongs of his gaze. Away she looked to the cool, not to say bitter, east and observed her shadow, like an old man’s desire, prone and monstrous on the grass, but not a sign of her pick-up’s, out of whose lap she sprang at once and stood on the ground well to one side, thinking that perhaps she had been seeing single, and looked again. But her first impression was confirmed by the absence of any shadow but the fence’s and her own, projected in tattered umber far across the waste. The sun was there all right, belting away in the west behind, ignoring him completely. This body that did not intercept the light, this packet of entrails that had shed the ashen spancels, she looked it up and down. He had produced a razor from some abyssal pocket and was lovingly whittling a live match. This when pointed according to his God he used to pierce a deep meatus in a fresh cigar, visit his teeth all round, top and bottom, light the cigar. Then he made to throw it away but recovered himself in time and stuck it like a golf tee in the stuff of his pullover.