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.