David Hayman_CONTINUING NOW: Crisis Enjambments in the "Watt" Manuscripts

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CONTINUING NOW: Crisis Enjambments in the "Watt" Manuscripts Author(s): David Hayman Source: Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, Vol. 12, PASTICHES, PARODIES & OTHER

IMITATIONS / PASTICHES, PARODIES & AUTRES IMITATIONS (2002), pp. 205-212Published by: Editions Rodopi B.V.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25781419Accessed: 12-05-2015 23:45 UTC

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CONTINUING NOW: Crisis Enjambments in the Watt Manuscripts

David Hayman

The Spring-Summer-Fall of 1942, when he had completed two large notebooks of

preparations of Watt, Beckett had to leave Paris and begin a prolonged and painful period of wandering. During that time he abandoned and resumed work on what was to be his first chapter three times. To help him restart, he devised and repeatedly reused the term "continuing." The term resonated enough for him to use it elsewhere in the novel, even where it was inappropriate. The memory of the crisis resonated

years later when he used it to dramatic effect in the conclusion of Ulnnommable and later translated it as "go on".

"I can't go on" "Je ne peux pas continuer"

The manuscripts for Watt bristle with micro-events of all sorts. Most of them are of strictly local interest, reflecting directly on a given creative moment only. Others mark turning points. Others still have unexpected long-term consequences. One of the latter reveals the trick Beckett used repeatedly when returning to his manuscript after his flight from his Paris apartment in the summer of 1942.

While pausing at Nathalie Sarraute's country house in Vanves, Beckett initiated a formula that was to serve him well later. By that time he had established the character, background and setting of Mr Quin and was in the midst of writing the long comic-dramatic encounter between the

pro-to-Watt or 'we' and Arsene. Immediately before he left Paris, Beckett had written a passage in which 'we' tells Arsene he plans to write a best

seller inspired by their encounter in Quin's passageway. They then debate the possibility that the result could be "the book of the week" (Notebook III, 33). Contemplating this prospect, 'we' plunges into a Lewis Carroll like revery on the number 52 that soon generates a song to be sung by a

mixed choir that in turn [degenerates into an hallucinated description of the performers and their performance. That hilarious passage, typical both of this stage in the narrative's development and of its demented narrator, was interrupted, perhaps by design at the time of the flight.

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The typescript made prior to the couples' departure raises questions about that departure or at least about the Beckett's haste, suggesting that in

the climate of tension Beckett had done some planning a good while before he learned of his friend Alfred Perron's incarceration. The existence of that typescript, which included in revised form everything written to that time and even some fresh material, suggests that Beckett was better prepared to leave than we have been led to believe. It seems likely that the choice to stop both manuscript and typescript in the middle of a passage was deliberate, a writer's trick designed to facilitate-the resumption of work.

At any rate, on September 4th, once settled at the Sarraute's house

Vanves, Beckett chose to finish the interlude. (The date and place are clearly Inscribed in Notebook III as are the other dates relevant to my argument.) Given his circumstances, it might seem incredible that he could pick up and write almost without a break in the narrative. But because he had the pas sage well in hand when he left Paris he must have found it relatively easy to complete the process. The Paris text ended with a lyrical description of the singers singing to an unseen audience through an idealized landscape. In Vanves Beckett began by writing "Continuing thus, the song had been so slow, so sad, so mad.. ."(39). At the end of the interlude, taking temporarily an omniscient stance, the narrating 'we' returns to the awareness that, while he was wool-gathering, all Arsene had experienced was "a little wind com

ing & going, [...], which made him think that dawn was not far off" (41). Indeed, Arsene, concerned only with the time they have wasted during the

night, simply wants to get on with their adieus. Appearances to the contrary therefore, rather than enabling a simple continuation, Beckett's preparations permitted him to leap forward to the next stage in the novel's development. Or so it seems... but... rather than move to Arsene's lengthy instructions and

goodbye, Beckett had the ur-Watt segue (brilliantly) into an extended paren thesis, a disquisition on another sort of meeting-parting, that of fictive maid servants (45-55). The encounter of the maids quickly turns into the account of one maid, Mary, and the details of her serial meals, an episode that can be read as a dress rehearsal for the famous description of Knott's meals.1 The effect is very Sternean. From a biographical perspective, the passage suggests that, marooned in the strange house, faced with other peoples' servant and

probably with a shortage of food, Beckett let his own mind roam. At the time of his departure from Vanves, he was describing the appear

ance of the slovenly and gluttonous girl in a sentence that ends, "and, last but not least, the skirt, which beginning at the waist continued with hardly a break at the waist continuing with hardly a break..." (55-57). Just as the initial "continuing" was a way of getting back in harness, this last use of the

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term was Beckett's way of preparing for what would follow when he and his wife would be settled in their next shelter. They found that shelter in Roussillon after a harrying voyage in November. According to the notebook, it was on the 18th of that month that he took up pen again to write on page 57:

Continuing then again, continued with hardly a break

Note that he began by reshaping the formula, using the participle before repeating the earlier phrase. As planned, he tried to complete the develop ment, but the trick failed this time. Perhaps he realized that there was not that much left to do with the behavior of the sloven and that he had no plan for what would follow.

Others have suggested that he had some sort of breakdown at that point, and the fact that he abandoned the novel for three and a half months seems to confirm that view. Another possibility is simple discouragement. After all, the Becketts were not really settled during their stay at the Hotel Escof ier. Not only was the next development in the novel unclear, but Beckett may have temporarily lost confidence in his fiction. We should not forget that he had never been a 'successful' writer. What could have stimulated him to continue writing under those conditions?

When he did get back to the manuscript on March 1, 1943, they must have been settled in their new house. He began writing with evident enthu siasm. Clearly, he had made a decision. Rather than return to his treatment

of Mary, he would use his formula to pick up the thread of Arsene's remarks. Visibly registering his excitement, he wrote the following in what amounts to bold face: "Continuing then again, to the words 'we had done better to sleep" (ibid.). The wording suggests that he was addressing himself and alluding to his own phrasing and strategies. In any case, the formula was

enough to set the narrating Watt off on a fresh comic riff toward the first version of Arsene's "short statement".

Further conclusions The question I faced when studying this development was, what happened when Beckett typed up these and other 'continuing' passages? The answer

surprised me. As mentioned earlier, the first batch of typed pages had been finished when Beckett left his Paris apartment abandoning there his type writer. It had to be at least five months later when, having located another machine in Roussillon, he transcribed the material written in Vanves mak

ing the necessary adjustments. I was surprised to find on the very first of the new format pink pages the words "Continuing then, the song had been so

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slow".2 (Beckett's page 113; HRHRC pagination 227*). More suggestive is the fact that when it became time to reproduce the transitional text for the servant's tale, he found a way to accommodate in his new text the sentence

written and abandoned on November 18. However, before he typed on page

235,3 "Continuing then again, winter and summer.[Becketts's ellipses]" he typed up, composing as he went, some new text.

The holograph manuscript had described without a pause the condition of Mary's dress. The typescript, omitting much of what preceded, breaks off at the beginning of another approach in which we learn that the tale is not

only narrated by the housekeeper, Ann, to the new servant who is named

Jane. It is also interpreted by a male speaker:4

Now, after a moment's silence intended in all probability to allow Ann to recover her surprise resumed the head waiter or corresponding secretary, now with regard to Mary's limbs, ahem, of which I think I am correct in saying no mention as yet has been made, winter.[Beckett's ellipses] Continuing then again, winter and summer.[Beckett's ellipses]

This could be interpreted as a quirky move, but I suggest that, for Beckett it may have been something more: a poignant reminder of the circumstances behind the transitional moment. Note, however, that he did not retain "con tinued without a break", though he could have done so without difficulty. By contrast, when he typed up the "Continuing then again, again" (adding a

pointed "again") on March 1st, he made only minimal changes. Among these, one detail deserves mention. Whereas previously he had been typing "we" for the narrator, at this precise moment he began typing "Watt". This did not com

plete the switch to third person narration so crucial to the development of this novel, a move that culminated in the radical unmooring of narrative procedures that contribute so much to the eeriness of the narrative message. He had sim

ply substituted a 1st person singular "Watt" for the 1st person plural "we". It was also at about this time, specifically on page 237 of the typescript,

that he began changing Quin to Knott, a practice that he did not follow through with. In the holograph both the name Watt and the third person stance were late developments, a fact that helps date the typescript. Knott's name appeared in the manuscript even later than Watt's, a fact that should help date the revision of the typescript.

Continuing again The next time Beckett used his formula was when he wrote the dual para graph of Chapter III, perhaps in mid-1944.5 At that time 'continuing'

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served no transitive function. Instead it appears to have served Beckett as a

tribute to the earlier moment. The passage in question reads like a kind of master myth growing out of the image of Watt walking, stumbling, backward unmurmuring toward his home or oblivion. It still begins, "Continuing then" (Watt, 213), just as it did when Beckett deliberately substituted these words from an initial intransitive "And" (Notebook IV, 170).

It is of course Watt who 'continues', but the passage "Continuing then, when he had told me this, then he loosed my hands from his shoulders6 and backwards through the hole went back" gives special point to the formula. Note the mimetic phrasing here. Perhaps Beckett law the alteration in rela tion to the pre-existing "when".

Given this revision, can it be a coincidence that the formula is repeated at another strategic point in that narrative? Perhaps, but listen. On page 234 of Notebook IV (Watt, 32), he included it, or rather added it to the description of Watt's reactions to the blow he received from Lady McCann's stone. We are told that Watt decides "continue us though he had fallen off his bicycle". Then we learn that he "had not continued very far when, feeling weak, he sat down"... I should add that within this passage there is a clear reminder of an abandoned passage. At one point in the first version of the encounter

between Watt and Arsene, the two clowns dance until Arsene's brace buttons

snap. Here, we learn that the injured Watt tended to react to such events as

the stoning no differently than he would "if his braces had burst". Yet another, admittedly oblique, use of continuation merits mention

here. A striking feature of the primitive narrative is the encounter of the householder, Mr Quin, with an intruder, a hunchback whose hard won

name, Mr Hacked, already resonated with Beckett's. The passage was writ ten as part of the characterization of Mr Quin, whose persona later van

ished behind the aura of Knott, but Beckett rescued the major outline of the Hackett encounter when he wrote what is now the opening passage of Chapter I.

In Notebook IV, 207-209, following immediately after the conclusion of Chapter III, in the midst of the Hackett-Nixon conversation (Watt, 20), we find a curiously premonitory variant on continuing. During the discus

sion of Watt's possible moves, Mr Hackett proposes a scenario, suggesting that Watt had already made up his mind not to leave Dublin. Then he sug gests that Watt left the tram because "it is useless to go on". Mr Nixon

responds "But he went on..." (my italics). Mrs Nixon, in a reprise of the

manuscript development, says, "He may be fast asleep in Quin's Hotel at the present moment". The novel, even in its manuscript, may have forgot ten its roots; Beckett had not.

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Postscript: an aftershock So much for Watt and the manuscript record. Whether or not my last example is convincing, it should be clear that continuing was not an innocent process for Beckett. Its expression in words was a powerful reminder of a moment as difficult in his life as it was in the evolution of Watt. I suggest that the Paris-Roussillon move was so painful that Beckett continued to register its

impact, which would explain why he implicitly relived it later, much later. Among the most memorable sequences in Beckett's oeuvre is the end

ing of The Unnamable. The reader, after fighting the good fight with the anguished but whimsical voice, wins through to what should be, could be, but won't be a conclusion. For an instant it would appear that there is even a self for the I-saying voice that early on says "it's not I, that's all I know".

Paradoxically, nothing could be more satisfying than the terminal ambigu ity. True closure would, after all, be an affront to all our effort. True con

tinuation would be both useless and unbearable. The fullest, most absolute

expression of indeterminacy and ambiguity was what was needed. Since I cannot claim to have studied the manuscript of that novel, I don't fully understand that move. Still, I believe that Beckett felt there could be no more fitting exit from the position of the absolute than its absolute frustra tion. No more fitting end than one that both is and is not conclusive.

English speakers must know by heart the final clauses "you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on" with its astonishing end-stopping period. By contrast, French readers know that the original version went, "il faut con

tinuer, je ne peux pas continuer, je continue".7 The power of the French version is undeniable. The power of the English may be more so, given its terse rhythm. Perhaps that explains the choice Beckett made. The original choice strikes me as having been more powerfully personal. On the other

hand, perhaps paradoxically, it is the only one available in French. In the light of our final example from Watt, I think we can assert with confidence that Beckett had already formulated the relationship between 'continue' and 'go on.'

The most striking thing, therefore, from the perspective of Watt and the Watt manuscripts, is the fact that Beckett got there by putting himself in, or taking himself back to that moment of deepest uncertainty and indecision. I would go further. He got there in what could be seen as the register of an unnamable, a Quin/Knott-like, identity, one that derives ultimately from Murphy's encounter with Mr Endon. From our present point of view, in rela tion to the various uses of continuation and their history in the Watt manu

scripts, it is clear that the choices made by Beckett at the time are echoed by the tacit interaction of the French and the English versions of LTnnommable.

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These choices also push the textual engagement with creativity back to the manuscript evidence of that engagement, back to what may have been Beckett's crucial and most fortunate reengagement in the seemingly thank less but psychologically unavoidable task of spilling himself into language and onto the page.8

Notes

*HRHRC stands for Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, Austin, Texas, where the Watt manuscipts and typoscripts as well as a cornucopia of other Beckett material are kept.

1. Beckett eventually reconfigured this narrative in the voice of Arsene (Watt, 50-55).

2. Previously, Beckett typed on one side of watermarked pages. Here, faced doubtless with shortages of both money and paper, he used pink second sheets and typed on both sides. The typeface makes it obvious that he was

using a different machine.

3. I will use the HRHRC pagination since, after a while, Beckett's numbering becomes erratic.

4 Clearly, by this time Beckett had already begun his games with narrative

point of view. Here is our narrator citing another narrator's recitation of a third narrator's account of a fictitious servant's behavior. Later, the narra tives became far more subtly complicated, and more ambiguous. Note that Beckett suppressed the extra layer and the stage business when he revised the typescript.

5. This is in Notebook IV, which bears the date "October 11,1943" on its page 6. That notebook is the largest and most tightly written in the collection and the paragraph in question falls on its 85th page (HRHRC, 170). It seems

reasonable to suppose that it was written and revised at least five months after that date, but this is still just a guess.

6. Beckett's emphasis.

7. This is the third version of the concept of course. The two preceding ones are each buffered by wisps of hope. In that they resemble the Vanves and Roussillon transitions to which the third will put a sort of quietus.

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8. I have argued elsewhere that Beckett's creative behavior suggests that he had a particular sort of paranoid personality, that of the 'St Sebastian'-type. By that I mean that he needed display himself as a target, that he needed and

enjoyed the pain of failure, that he challenged his reader (repeatedly) by deliberately denying what would be expected. Like others with this trait, like

Joyce, for example, be found satisfaction and fulfilment of sorts in a complex play of refusals, and defeats. This does not mean that he did not relish suc

cess, just that be repeatedly thwarted it and was amazed when, after Godot, it

repeatedly came to him. The paradox of his reception has always rested on the

willingness of a masochistic(?) audience to surmount the obstacles placed in its way in order to join a limited group of adepts, to share in Beckett's mind set. The paradox of the message resides in the consummate tact, wit and skill

with which it is delivered, the beauty beneath and within the pain and ugli ness. Beckett the sufferer is also Beckett the seducer. In this too he resembles the St Sebastian. I am simplifying my argument, but perhaps the point is

made. For a fuller treatment of this topic, see Hayman 2000.

Works Cited

Beckett, Samuel, Watt (London: Calders & Boyar, 1963). Hayman, David, "Celine's Ultimate Focalization, or the Two Faces of Paranoia in

'Bagatelles pour un massacre' and 'Feerie pour une autre fois': Toward a

Theory of Paranoid Writing", in Comparative Literary Dimensions, eds. L. Halio and Ben Segal (Newark, Delaware: U of Delaware P, 2000,162-174).

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Article Contentsp. 205p. 206p. 207p. 208p. 209p. 210p. 211p. 212

Issue Table of ContentsSamuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, Vol. 12 (2002) pp. 1-326Front MatterPART 1: PARODY AND PASTICHE Mimtismes minraux : Photos de Sjef Houppermans (Bordeaux - La Haye 2002) [pp. 10, 53, 105, 120, 145, 188-189, 213, 247, 296, 311, 321-325]STYLE AND THE MAN: Samuel Beckett and the Art of Pastiche [pp. 11-20]"CARCASSE ET DERAISON": La Nature Morte [pp. 21-34]THE TASK OF THE LISTENER: Beckett, Proust, and Perpetual Translation [pp. 35-52]LASSATA SED: Samuel Beckett's Portraits of his Fair to Middling Women [pp. 55-70]MOLLOY AUX MILLE TOURS [pp. 71-80]MORAN AS SECRET AGENT [pp. 81-92]PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PARODY: Exceedingly Beckett [pp. 93-104]LES FLEURS ET LES ORTIES: La Parodie des Formes Communes [pp. 107-119]SONS OF DISORDER: Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Beckett, and the Travesty of Great Men [pp. 121-130]"KRAPP'S LAST TAPE" AND THE MANIA IN MANICHAEISM [pp. 131-144]SAVAGE LOVING: Beckett, Browning and "The Tempest" [pp. 147-162]"AN ATROPOS ALL IN BLACK" OR ILL SEEN WORSE TRANSLATED: Beckett, Self-Translation and the Discourse of Death [pp. 163-176]D'UNE SCNE A L'AUTRE: MAY B. de Maguy Marin. Une Chorgraphie de l'Univers Scnique de Samuel Beckett [pp. 177-187]

PART 2: FREE SPACETHE MECHANIZATION OF SEXUALITY IN BECKETT'S EARLY WORK [pp. 193-204]CONTINUING NOW: Crisis Enjambments in the "Watt" Manuscripts [pp. 205-212]"I INQUIRED INTO MYSELF": Beckett, Interpretation. Phenomenology? [pp. 215-234]DISTURBING THE FEASIBLE: Object Representation in "Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit" [pp. 235-246]SILENCE IN JOHN CAGE AND SAMUEL BECKETT: 4' 33" and "Waiting for Godot" [pp. 249-262]DISINTEGRATIVE PROCESS IN "ENDGAME" [pp. 263-279]NAGG ET NELL, TANDEM IMMOBILE: Analyse de Quelques Effects Sonores et Visuels dans Fin de Partie [pp. 281-295]PIM'S PROGRESS: The Trouble with Language in Beckett's "How It Is" [pp. 297-310]GEISTERTRIO: Beethoven's Music in Samuel Beckett's "Ghost Trio" (Part 2) [pp. 313-320]

Back Matter

Documents

David Hayman_CONTINUING NOW: Crisis Enjambments in the "Watt" Manuscripts