Eleuthéria Read online

  already anticipates the apparitions of the later work.

  And chronologically nearer, we can see as well the

  novel Molloy evolving from Victor's futile struggles to

  explain himself. But Eleuthhia has its own qualities as

  well, and it is now in the hands of a broader public to

  decide if and how it fails, if and how it succeeds.

  ELEUTHERIA

  XXI

  Notes

  1. No Symbols Where None Intended: A Catalogu e of Books,

  Manuscripts, and Other Material Relating to Samuel Beckett

  in the Collections of the Humanities Research Center, Selected and Described by Carlton Lake (Austin, TX: Humanities research Center, 1984) , 81.

  2 . Carlton Lake , 81.

  3. Carlton Lake, 53.

  4. Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography (New York:

  Summit Books, 1990) , 361.

  5. Deirdre Bair, 403.

  6. S.B. letter to Barney Rosset, 25 June 1953, in The

  Review of Contemporary Fiction (Grove Press Issue) , ed.

  by S. E. Gon tarski, 10.3 (Fall 1990) : 65.

  7. See , for instan c e , Ruby Coh n , Back to Beckett

  (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973) , 124-7;

  Guy Croussy, Beckett (Paris: Hachette, 1971) , 102-3;

  John Fletcher and John Spurling Beckett: A Stu dy of

  His Plays (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972) , XX;James

  Knowlson and John Pilling, Frescoes of the Skull: The

  Later Prose and Drama of Samu el Beckett (New York:

  Grove Press, 1980) , 23-38; and most importantly,

  Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld, Beckett in

  the Theatre: The Author as Practical Playwright and Director (New York: Riverrun Press, 1988) , 29-45.

  8. Numero hors-serie (Paris: Editions Privat, 1986) ,

  111-132; See also Dougald McMillan , "Eleuthhia: le

  Discours de la Methode inedit de Samuel Beckett,"

  translated by Edith Fournier, in the same issue, pp.

  101-109.

  9. En attendant Godot, edited by Colin Duckworth

  (London: George G. Harrap, 1966) , xlv.

  xxn

  SAMUEL BECKETI

  10. The novel finally appeared, amid much squabbling among its publishers, from Black Cat Press, Dublin, in 1992 and from Arcade Publishing, in association with Riverrun Press, in 1993, both editions edited by Eoin O ' Brien and Edith Fournier. In his

  letter to the Times Literary Supplement on 16July 1993,

  however, Eoin O ' Brien dissociates himself from the

  second edition , although he remains listed as its editor: "Both the US (Arcade) and UK (Calder) 1993

  editions of this work have been printed without taking into account the necessary corrections I, and my co-editor, Edith Fournier, made to the proofs of the

  re-set text. It is of deep concern that Samuel Beckett's

  work be treated in this manner. We can be held accountable ," he continues, "only for the first edition published in 1992 by Black Cat Press in Dublin and

  can accept no responsibility for the errors in the US

  and UK flawed editions."

  11. The whole of this letter is published in the Grove

  Press issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction, pp.

  64-5.

  12 . Carlton Lake, p. 51.

  13. McMillan and Fehsenfeld, pp. 29-30.

  TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

  By Michael Brodsky

  The process of translating Eleuthiria revealed

  over and over that preservation of meaning, both

  overarching and minute, from French to English,

  required an unswerving dedication to what I came to

  call "tonal value." Because this creature is so much a

  function of context, it was not unusual for the same

  word appearing in many differe n t places in the

  French text to require starkly different equivalents

  in English .

  Depending on the speaker and state of things

  on stage, a word like histoire (an Eleuthiriajack-of-alltrades) might mean "firsthand account," "business"

  or (as chez Mme . Meek) "a thing to happen ! ". Similarly, formidable seemed at one moment ( Pioukian ) best served by ( a very self-aggrandizing) "tremendous" and at another (Glazierlike) by (a very otherdeflating) "first-rate ."

  Although at some point the French supprimer

  ( tonal value : penological, archly literary /legal) managed to survive its translantic flight "intact" (as "suppress," tonal value pretty much the same ) , its more offhand and everyday shading elsewhere demanded,

  alas, a less cognately configuration ( "do away with")

  in English.

  Wh a t b e c a m e m o s t c o n s p i c u o u s i n th e

  course of tran slating was , first, Beckett's fascination with shardlike colloquializings as ( a ) played against exte n d e d arias of abstraction - mono-

  XXIV

  SAMUEL BECKETI

  logues on such topics as freedom: the ever-receding tortoise a Ia Zen o , the worker's relation to his/

  her raw materials, plausibility of a given theatrical

  system , the ups and down s of the euthanasia busin ess, and human kin d ' s unaccountable soft spot for its essen tial thwartedness on every fron t and (b)

  aiding and abe tting, in con trast to problem-play

  psychologizing, brute duration 's highly suggestive

  con tamin ation of the life lived on stage .

  Second, it became clear that Beckett's struggle

  wi th/re sistan ce to creating th e work was to be

  transmogrified into the very thew and sinew - the

  living fiber -. of that work's unfolding over stage time;

  indeed, his unquenchable ambivalence about siring

  a protagonist whose plight might hold water in the

  audience-friendly "plane of the feasible" does get itself enacted, and through ever greater elaboration , compliments of the endearing teamwork of the conscientiously hideous Dr. Piouk, the conscientiously Mephistophelean Glazier and the con sci en tiously

  (and ebulliently) Pirandellian Audience member.

  In my sojourn among them I've tried to respect their creator's predilection for building toward an extreme response to things as they are via the most

  uninflectedly basic of constituents.

  In closing, I thank Laurence Brodsky for her

  crucial help.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  By Barney Rosset

  I would like to acknowledge , foremost and

  most importantly, john G.H. Oakes and Dan Simon ,

  the intensely creative and energizing founders and

  publishers of Four Walls Eight Windows, Inc. , which

  is the partn er firm to Blue Moon Books, Inc. in

  Foxrock, Inc. Foxrock was named (and we feel properly named) after Samuel Beckett's birthplace, and was founded to publish Eleuthhia. Without john and

  Dan, the project would at best have been very dubious. They made it happen .

  Stan Gontarski, whose combination of good

  academic research, keen observation and enthusiasm

  for the creative impulse in modern literature opened

  up this new pathway to Beckett.

  Michael Brodsky and his consummate effort

  as the translator who came on board at a late and

  crucial moment with "full speed ahead" and "damn

  the torpedos."

  Our English cohorts, Peter Craze, director, john

  Zei tier, his assistant, and James Stephens, actor, for their

  successful efforts in giving us a most memorable reading of Eleuthhia. They transformed detours into a main thoroughfare. Cristina Middleton (who found them)

  and the whole wonderful American cast which included:

  Keith Benedict
, Laila Robins, Lola Pashalinski, Patricia

  Connelly, Edie Avioli, Emily Bly, Austin Pendleton, Richmond Hoxie, Scott Sears, Steven Petrasca, Lynn Cohen, and Doug Stender. Thanks to David Beyda, for his tech-

  ..

  XXVI

  SAMUEL BECKETI

  nical assistance. And another Brit, Pat Butcher, whose

  suggestions on many aspects, including, and especially, translation, were valued.

  The Blue Moon staff: Louella D izon , Iza

  Ostolski, Yvonne Pesquera and Richard Baxstrom,

  who all contributed their organizational skills, composure and savoir faire under fire.

  And terribly important to me personally, my

  own aide de camp, Astrid Myers, whose wise counsel

  and unflagging belief in the cause never let me down .

  And our valian t counselors at law, Martin

  Garbus and Robert Solomon who waved us through

  all red lights and stop signs. It was "Gung ho" from

  the start.

  Our thanks to Albert Bermel, for his belief in

  and early work on the project; Beckett specialist Lois

  Oppenheim, and the writer, Deirdre Bair.

  Joe Strick, my close friend for more than fifty

  years, was there encouraging and advising me at

  every step.

  Samuel Beckett. Sam, you wrote to your friend

  Tom McGreevy in 1948. Speaking of Eleuthena you

  said that "I think it will see the boards in time, even if

  only for a few nights." Well, Sam, all of us have done

  our b e s t to m ake your p r e d i c t i o n c o m e tru e .

  Eleuthena, as of this writing, is not yet "on the boards,"

  but now you can count on the fact that it will be, and

  here is the most important evidence for that conclusion-Eleuthena in book form . Sam, I would like to believe and I do believe that all of the outpouring of

  love and admiration for you and your work expressed

  by the people whom I have named, and those whom

  I have unwittingly left unnamed, would have pleased

  you. And so to you , Sam , God Bless!

  ELEUTHERIA

  A play in three acts

  By Samuel Beckett

  Translated from the French by Michael Brodsky

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  M. Henri Krap.

  Mme. Henri Krap.

  Victor Krap, their son .

  Madame Meek, friend of the Kraps' .

  Dr. Andre Piouk.

  Madame Andre Piouk, sister of Madame Krap.

  Mademoi_selle Olga Skunk, Victor's fiancee.

  A Glazier.

  Michel, his son .

  An Audience member.

  Tchoutchi, a Chinese torturer.

  Madame Karl, Victor's landlady.

  Jacques, manservan t in the Krap home.

  Marie, maidservan t in the Krap home , Jacques's

  fiancee.

  Thomas, Madame Meek's chauffeur.

  Joseph , a thug.

  Prompter.

  Place: Paris.

  Time: Three successive winter afternoons.

  ..

  2

  SAMUEL BECKETI

  This play, in the first two acts, calls for a staging juxtaposing two distinct locations and therefore two simultaneous actions, a main action and a marginal action, the latter silent apart from a few short sentences and, as regards non-verbal expression, reduced to the vague attitudes and movements of a single character. Strictly speaking, less an action than

  a site, often empty.

  The script concerns the main action exclusively. The marginal action is the actor's business, within the limits of the directions in the following

  Note.

  NOTE ON THE STAGE SET-UP AND

  THE MARGINAL ACTION

  The scene on stage, in the first two acts, depicts, juxtaposed, two locales separated from each other in real space, namely, Victor's room and an area

  of the morning room at the Krap home, the latter as

  if wedged into the former. There is no partition .

  Victor's room moves imperceptibly o n into the Kraps'

  morning room , as the sullied into the clean , the sordid into the decent, breadth into clutter. Over the entire width of the stage there is the same back wall,

  the same flooring, which , however, in moving on from

  Victor to his family, become housebroken and presentable . It's the high seas becoming the harbor basin . The question is therefore one of conveying scenically the sense of a dualistic space less via transition effects than through the fact that Victor's room takes up three quarters of the stage and by the flagrant disharmony between the two sets of furnishings, those of Victor's room comprising a folding bedstead and nothing more, those of the room at

  the Kraps' a highly elegant round table , four period

  chairs, an armchair, a floor lamp and a sconce.

  The daytime lighting is the same for the two

  sides (window in the middle of the back wall) . But

  each has its appropriate artificial lighting, Victor's

  (Acts II and III) the bulb provided by the Glazier, the

  Krap morning room 's (Acts I and II) the floor lamp

  and, at the end of the first act, the sconce which stays

  lit after floor lamp is turned off.

  Each side has its own door.

  4

  SAMUEL BECKETT

  In each act Victor's room is presented from

  another angle, with the result that, viewed from the

  house , it is to the left of the Krap enclave in the first

  act, to the right of the Krap enclave in the second

  act, and that from one act to the next the main action remains on the right. This also explains why there is no marginal action in the third act, the Krap side

  having fallen into the pit following the swing of the

  scene on stage .

  The main action and the marginal action

  never encroach, nor do they more than barely comment, on each other. The characters on the two sides are checked, in their movements toward each other,

  by the barrier they alone see. Which doesn 't prevent

  them from almost touching at times. The marginal

  action , in the first two acts, has to be carried through

  with the utmost discretion. Most of the time it is a

  question only of a site and of a being in stasis. The

  rare unavoidable movements, with a function, like

  Madame Karl's entrance and Victor's exit in the first

  act, Victor's entrance and exit in the second act, and

  the two sentences (Madame Karl's in the first act,

  Jacques's in the second) are to be led in to through a

  sort of wavering in the main action, but then it often

  .

  .

  1s wavenng.

  The marginal action occurs, in the first act in

  Victor's room, in the second in the Krap morning

  room .

  Marginal Action, Act I

  Victor in bed. Motionless. There is no need to

  see him at once . He moves this way and that, sits up

  in bed, gets up, goes back and forth, in his stocking

  feet, in every direction, from the window to the footlights, from the door to the invisible barrier on the

  ELEUTHERIA

  5

  main action side, slowly and vaguely, often stops, looks

  out the window, toward the audience, goes back to

  sit on the bed, gets back in bed, becomes motionless,

  gets up again, resumes his walk, etc. But he is more

  often motionless or moving this way and that in one

  spot than moving off. His movements, for all their

  vagueness, do follow just the same a most decided

  rhythm an
d pattern, so that one ends up knowing his

  position approximately without having to look at him.

  At a certain point, namely when Madame Krap

  has had time to arrive, Madame Karl enters and says:

  Your mother. Victor seated on the bed. A silence. He

  gets up, looks for something (his shoes) , doesn 't find

  them, exits in his stocking feet. Room empty. Dimmer and dimmer. Victor returns after, say, five minutes, resumes his flim-flam . He is to be lying in bed, motionless, all through the end of the main action ,

  involving Monsieur Krap and Jacques.

  Marginal Action, Act II

  Stage for a long time empty. Enter Jacques.

  He goes back and forth , exits. Stage again for a long

  time empty. Enter Jacques, he goes back and forth,

  exits. One senses that he is thinking of his master

  whose armchair he gently touches several times over.

  Stage again empty. Enter Jacques. He turns on the

  floor lamp, goes back and forth, exits. Stage again

  empty. At a certain point, namely when Victor has

  had time to arrive , Jacques shows him in. Victor sits

  down in his father's armchair, under the floor lamp.

  Victor a long time motionless. Enter Jacques. Jacques:

  Monsieur may come along. Victor gets up and exits. Stage

  empty until the end of the act.

  ACT I

  An area of the morning room in the home of the

  Kraps.

  Round table, four period chairs, club chair, floor

  lamp, wall lamp with shade.

  A late afternoon in winter:

  Madame Krap seated at the table.

  Madame Krap motionless.

  A knock. A silence. Another knock.

  MME. KRAP

  (With a start) Come in. (Enter

  Jacques. He holds out to Mme .

  Krap a tray bearing a calling card.

  She takes up the card, looks at it,

  puts it back on the tray) Well?

  Qacques uncomprehending) Well?

  Qacques uncomprehending)

  What brutishness! Qacques lowers

  his head) I thought I told you I

  was not in for anybody, except for

  Madame Meek.

  jACQUES

  Yes, Madame, but it's Madame ­

  Madame's sister - so I thought -

  MME. KRAP

  My sister!

  jACQUES

  Yes, Madame.