The Grove Press edition is a page-for-page facsimile of the Routledge text and was the only text available on this side of the Atlantic (outside second-hand bookshops) between 1957 and 1963, during which time copies were imported by John Calder. Calder meanwhile acquired the British rights and published Murphy under his own imprint in October 1963 as Jupiter Book 1, which was reissued under the imprint of Calder and Boyars in 1969. This 1963–69 edition – the second English edition proper – derives from the Routledge text, which was entirely reset and corrected in two places; it also corrects two errors of fact that had been corrected in the French and German translations, and introduces a fresh error (into the chess game); a few spellings are normalised. The third English edition proper – entirely reset but deriving from the second edition – appeared in 1973 from Pan Books in conjunction with Calder and Boyars, and the same was reissued in 1977 under the imprint of John Calder in a uniform series of Beckett titles: it has been reprinted several times up to the present. All told, the English editions and reprintings of Murphy that have appeared since 1963 contain fewer textual errors than Calder versions of other titles. Why this is so is unclear; but their significance lies in the number of copies published, and how and where they circulated, rather than in the (mildly) degrading text. Murphy has always been the most immediately available of Beckett’s novels to an English-speaking readership: elsewhere in Europe, the French Molloy and the German Der Namenlose proved more influential, following Godot in establishing his reputation. The reason may have to do with the inherently verbal dimension of the humour, or perhaps the humour itself engages different areas of moral response. Whatever the case, any English, French or German reader can learn, as Beckett did, from what the versions in the other languages perforce omit.
III
The task of preparing a correct text of Murphy goes to the heart of the way the book works on its readers. On the one hand, it is clear that the writing is highly organised and that the intricately devised interconnections – between places and events within the novel, and between the novel and the world outside it – communicate a vision of a meaningful world. On the other hand, it is equally evident that the organisation of particulars is upset by a number of deliberate contradictions and loose ends. The disjunction mirrors what the book is about: a perfection that can exist in the mind but is doomed to be discommoded by contingency. Like Joyce in the composition of Ulysses, Beckett took elaborate care over the working-out of his story, and at the same time took care to ensure that some details did not fit. The first requirement was paramount as he put the story together; the second emerged more strongly after he began to revise it. However, what Joyce habitually did at a relatively late stage, Beckett instinctively did earlier, and the adventitious, the undecidable and the contradictory are integral to the processes of his composition.
In Murphy, there are conscious divagations from fact in descriptions of real locations (Bethlem Royal Hospital) and of characters who incorporate features from people he knew (Henry Macran, Hester Dowden, Austin Clarke). The character Murphy has a great deal of Beckett in him and yet he is not Beckett. A similar ambivalence extends to details of spelling, where a reader is left unsure whether a word has been accidentally misspelled or spelled to allow an unusual, disruptive meaning into the text. Examples in the opening pages are raised by Murphy’s seven scarves (p. 3), by the impossible distance between moon and earth (p. 19) and by the astrological contradictions of Suk’s horoscope. Sometimes the French translation corrects what appears to be such a mistake and the German does not (e.g. p. 154, where ten minutes are corrected to twenty), sometimes vice versa (e.g. p. 155, where the French repeats the mistake of the English, and the German has ‘die Pupillen waren ausserordentlich verkleinert’: the pupils were unusually reduced). Beckett is named as the translator of the French version but not of the German, which masks the fact that he was a collaborator in both instances, if in slightly different ways. Should the English text be adjusted in accordance with his later wishes, supposing them to be the product of experience and wisdom? Or must we assume that texts in translation are not different versions of the same text but different works?
The French and German versions confirm, if confirmation is needed, that the torque Beckett puts on words by discomfiting conventional expectations is deliberate: thus, concave where one might expect conclave (p. 15), glaze where one might expect gaze (p. 17), wrack where one might expect rack (p. 96) and so on. One might also note some deliberately Hiberno-English spellings, old-fashioned Anglo-Irish even in his own day. Take Cathleen na Hennessey (for Ni p. 31), Clonmachnois and Connaught (p. 167): na for Ni is a solecism also affected by W. B. Yeats. Beckett could spell Clonmacnoise correctly as his letters prove, Connaught imports the odour of rugby clubs and the London hotel. It is typical that Dun Laoghaire on p. 76 became Kingstown in the French (the German has misspelt Loaghaire), as if to lean on the point being made. Then there are run-together words (e.g. knighterrant p. 35, corpseobedient p. 119) and possible Irishisms (e.g. took tube p. 77) which, even if not definitely deliberate, give the original text its particular flavour. The same is true of spellings that are deliberately pedantic (e.g. Petrouchka p. 4, katatonic p. 121). These are normalised in the later English (Calder-Picador) editions, levelling the tone.
Details that might look accidental, then, are more often designed, and a number of mistakes are allowed if, in fact, they were not in the first place contrived. Taken together with the circumstances of restricted access to the manuscript draft and the broken line of transmission, it is inevitable that the 1938 Routledge text should possess particular authority. Whatever the difficulty of finding a publisher, Beckett composed his text with particular care and was afterwards moved by considerable regard for the integrity of what he had achieved. One might even reckon the enforced period he spent in hospital while he corrected and revised proofs turned out to the advantage of the text as published, as did the scrutiny it was subjected to when that text became the first of his writings to be translated into French. The assistance he gave his German translator likewise prompted a second, detailed re-reading: different adjustments were made, to be sure, but they serve to confirm the integrity of the Routledge text.
The text that follows therefore revises the first, 1938 edition in only two instances, and both are minor: the correct spelling of the brand name Ballitoes has been substituted for Bollitoes on p. 26, and the word so has been inserted on p. 36 (‘unless she had superlative reasons for doing so’), as it was inserted in the HRC typescript. It happens that the Calder editions incorporate these same two corrections but, as I have said, they also introduce errors and unnecessary minor variations. For all that strikes a reader as unfamiliar or puzzling, odd or simply wrong, I strongly recommend the annotations by C. J. Ackerley published under the title Demented Particulars (Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2004). His book offers help at every turn and supplies further background to most of the references in this short introduction.
Table of Dates
[Note: where unspecified, translations from French to English or vice versa are by Beckett]
1906
13 April Samuel Beckett [Samuel Barclay Beckett] born at ‘Cooldrinagh’, a house in Foxrock, a village south of Dublin, on Good Friday, the second child of William Beckett and May Beckett, née Roe; he is preceded by a brother, Frank Edward, born 26 July 1902.
1911
Enters kindergarten at Ida and Pauline Elsner’s private academy in Leopardstown.
1915
Attends larger Earlsfort House School in Dublin.
1920
Follows Frank to Portora Royal, a distinguished Protestant boarding school in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh (soon to become part of Northern Ireland).
1923
October Enrolls at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) to study for an Arts degree.
1926
August First visit to France, a month-long cycling tour of the Loire Valley.
1927
A
pril–August Travels through Florence and Venice, visiting museums, galleries, and churches.
December Receives B.A. in Modern Languages (French and Italian) and graduates first in the First Class.
1928
Jan.–June Teaches French and English at Campbell College, Belfast.
September First trip to Germany to visit seventeen-year-old Peggy Sinclair, a cousin on his father’s side, and her family in Kassel.
1 November Arrives in Paris as an exchange lecteur at the École Normale Supérieure. Quickly becomes friends with his predecessor, Thomas MacGreevy, who introduces Beckett to James Joyce and other influential Anglophone writers and publishers.
December Spends Christmas in Kassel (as also in 1929, 1930, and 1931).
1929
June Publishes first critical essay (‘Dante … Bruno. Vico .. Joyce’) and first story (‘Assumption’) in transition magazine.
1930
July Whoroscope (Paris: Hours Press).
October Returns to TCD to begin a two-year appointment as lecturer in French.
November Introduced by MacGreevy to the painter and writer Jack B. Yeats in Dublin.
1931
March September Proust (London: Chatto and Windus).
First Irish publication, the poem ‘Alba’ in Dublin Magazine.
1932
January Resigns his lectureship via telegram from Kassel and moves to Paris.
Feb.–June First serious attempt at a novel, the posthumously published Dream of Fair to Middling Women.
December Story ‘Dante and the Lobster’ appears in This Quarter (Paris).
1933
3 May Death of Peggy Sinclair from tuberculosis.
26 June Death of William Beckett from a heart attack.
1934
January Moves to London and begins psychoanalysis with Wilfred Bion at the Tavistock Clinic.
February Negro Anthology, edited by Nancy Cunard and with numerous translations by Beckett
(London: Wishart and Company).
May More Pricks Than Kicks (London: Chatto and Windus).
Aug.–Sept. Contributes several stories and reviews to literary magazines in London and Dublin.
1935
November Echo’s Bones and Other Precipitates, a cycle of thirteen poems (Paris: Europa Press).
1936
Returns to Dublin.
29 September Leaves Ireland for a seven-month stay in Germany.
1937
Apr.–Aug. First serious attempt at a play, Human Wishes, about Samuel Johnson and his circle.
October Settles in Paris.
1938
6/7 January Stabbed by a street pimp in Montparnasse. Among his visitors at L’Hôpital Broussais is Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, an acquaintance who is to become Beckett’s companion for life.
March Murphy (London: Routledge).
April Begins writing poetry directly in French.
1939
3 September Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. Beckett abruptly ends a visit to Ireland and returns to Paris the next day.
1940
June Travels south with Suzanne following the Fall of France, as part of the exodus from the capital.
September Returns to Paris.
1941
13 January Death of James Joyce in Zurich.
1 September Joins the Resistance cell Gloria SMH.
1942
16 August Goes into hiding with Suzanne after the arrest of close friend Alfred Péron.
6 October Arrival at Roussillon, a small unoccupied village in Vichy France.
1944
24 August Liberation of Paris.
1945
30 March Awarded the Croix de Guerre.
Aug.–Dec. Volunteers as a storekeeper and interpreter with the Irish Red Cross in St-Lô,
Normandy.
1946
July Publishes first fiction in French – a truncated version of the short story ‘Suite’ (later to become ‘La Fin’) in Les Temps modernes, owing to a misunderstanding with editors – as well as a critical essay on Dutch painters Geer and Bram van Velde in Cahiers d’art.
1947
Jan.–Feb. Writes first play, in French, Eleutheria (published posthumously).
April Murphy translated into French (Paris: Bordas).
1948
Undertakes a number of translations commissioned by UNESCO and by Georges Duthuit.
1950
25 August Death of May Beckett.
1951
March Molloy, in French (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit).
November Malone meurt (Paris: Minuit).
1952
Purchases land at Ussy-sur-Marne, subsequently Beckett’s preferred location for writing.
September En attendant Godot (Paris: Minuit).
1953
5 January Premiere of Godot at the Théâtre de Babylone in Montparnasse, directed by Roger Blin.
May L’Innommable (Paris: Minuit).
August Watt, in English (Paris: Olympia Press).
1954
8 September Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press).
13 September Death of Frank Beckett from lung cancer.
1955
March Molloy, translated into English with Patrick Bowles (New York: Grove; Paris: Olympia).
3 August First English production of Godot opens in London at the Arts Theatre.
November Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (Paris: Minuit).
1956
3 January February
October American Godot premiere in Miami.
First British publication of Waiting for Godot (London: Faber).
Malone Dies (New York: Grove).
1957
January
First radio broadcast, All That Fall on the BBC Third Programme.
Fin de partie, suivi de Acte sans paroles (Paris: Minuit).
28 March Death of Jack B. Yeats.
August All That Fall (London: Faber).
October Tous ceux qui tombent, translation of All That Fall with Robert Pinget (Paris: Minuit).
1958
April Endgame, translation of Fin de partie (London: Faber).
From an Abandoned Work (London: Faber).
July Krapp’s Last Tape in Grove Press’s literary magazine, Evergreen Review.
September The Unnamable (New York: Grove).
December Anthology of Mexican Poetry, translated by Beckett (Bloomington: Indiana University Press; later reprinted in London by Thames and Hudson).
1959
March La Dernière bande, translation of Krapp’s Last Tape with Pierre Leyris, in the Parisian literary magazine Les Lettres nouvelles.
2 July Receives honorary D.Litt. degree from Trinity College, Dublin.
November Embers in Evergreen Review.
December Cendres, translation of Embers with Pinget, in Les Lettres nouvelles.
Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (New York: Grove; Paris: Olympia Press).
1961
January Comment c’est (Paris: Minuit).
24 March Marries Suzanne at Folkestone, Kent.
May Shares Prix International des Editeurs with Jorge Luis Borges.
August Poems in English (London: Calder).
September Happy Days (New York: Grove).
1963
February Oh les beaux jours, translation of Happy Days (Paris: Minuit). Tophoven) in Ulm.
May Assists with the German production of Play (Spiel, translated by Elmar and Erika
22 May Outline of Film sent to Grove Press. Film would be produced in 1964, starring Buster Keaton, and released at the Venice Film Festival the following year.
1964
March Play and Two Short Pieces for Radio (London: Faber).
April How It Is, translation of Comment c’est
(London: Calder; New York: Grove).
June Comédie, translation of Play, in Les Lettres nouvelles.
July–Aug. First and
only trip to the United States, to assist with the production of Film in New York.
1965
October Imagination morte imaginez (Paris: Minuit).
November Imagination Dead Imagine (London: The Sunday Times, Calder).
1966
January Comédie et Actes divers, including Dis Joe and Va et vient (Paris: Minuit).
February Assez (Paris: Minuit).
October Bing (Paris: Minuit).
1967
February D’un ouvrage abandonné (Paris: Minuit). Têtes-mortes (Paris: Minuit).
16 March Death of Thomas MacGreevy.
June Eh Joe and Other Writings, including Act Without Words II and Film (London: Faber).
July Come and Go, English translation of Va et vient (London: Calder).
26 September Directs first solo production, Endspiel (translation of Endgame by Elmar Tophoven) in Berlin.
November No’s Knife: Collected Shorter Prose 1945–1966 (London: Calder).
December Stories and Texts for Nothing, illustrated with six ink line drawings by Avigdor Arikha (New York: Grove).
1968
March Poèmes (Paris: Minuit).
December Watt, translated into French with Ludovic and Agnès Janvier (Paris: Minuit).
1969
23 October Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sans (Paris: Minuit).
1970
April Mercier et Camier (Paris: Minuit).
Premier amour (Paris: Minuit).
July Lessness, translation of Sans (London: Calder).
September Le Dépeupleur (Paris: Minuit).
1972
January The Lost Ones, translation of Le Dépeupleur (London: Calder; New York: Grove). The North, part of The Lost Ones, illustrated with etchings by Arikha (London: Enitharmon Press).