Beckett described himself as "a young man with the itch to make and nothing to say."
O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni - What a misfortune to be without balls! - the Eunuch in Voltaire's Candide
And if you do not understand it, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is because you are too decadent to receive it…Here form is content, content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in Englsih. It is not written at all. It is not to be read, or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something: It is that something itself ... When the sense is sleep the words go to sleep. When the sense is dancing, the words dance. (Beckett on Joyce's FINNEGANS WAKE, from Beckket's essay in Our Exagmination Round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (1929).
For Beckett [Jules] Renard was man who had found the secret of the perfect approach to life: how to live completely within himself, to examine himself minutely, to write about this examination and yet to inhabit the outer world with tranquility and contentment.
Beckett student valentine to Beckett: "S-. B-CK-TT: I wish he would explain his explanations. -BYRON
Beckett to Walter Lowenfels: "Walter, all I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante."
"She had never been born entirely." -JUNG (keystone for Beckett's womb fixation)
"Better a bougie [catheter] than a burst bladder. (SB on publishing a book despite setbacks)
Man is doomed to failure, for he can never commit or abandon himself completely to his inner voice.
"To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."
More than once he repeated his dictum that his work was a matter of simple, fundamental sounds, and that the actors should not look for meaning but should concentrate on what he intended them to do.
"I couldn't have done it otherwise. Gone on, I mean. I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence."
POEMS BY BECKETT
Gnome by Samuel Beckett
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning
Cascando by Samuel Beckett
1.
why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed
is it not better abort than be barren
the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives
2.
saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love
the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words
terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending
I and all the others that will love you
if they love you
3.
unless they love you
"From the only poet to a shining whore" by Samuel Beckett
for Henry Crowder to sing
Rahab of the holy battlements,
bright dripping shaft
in the bright bright patient
pearl-brow dawn-dusk lover of the sun.
Puttanina mia!
You hid them happy in the high flax,
pale before the fords
of Jordan, and the dry red waters,
and you lowered a pledge
of scarlet hemp.
Oh radiant, oh angry, oh Beatrice,
she foul with the victory
of the bloodless fingers
and proud, and you, Beatrice, mother, sister, daughter,
beloved,
fierce pale flame
of doubt, and God’s sorrow,
and my sorrow.
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