Samuel Beckett's The North

Abstract

This essay closely inspects the manuscript cluster relating to The North (held by the Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading) to provide insight into Beckett's collaboration with Enitharmon Press and its publisher, Alan Clodd, on an eponymous livre d'artiste illustrated with three etchings by Avikdor Arikha. It outlines the intricate publication details of a short excerpt from (then unfinished) Le Dépeupleur, which was the first part of the late prose text to be translated by Beckett into English. With the help of Beckett's published and unpublished correspondence with Clodd, Arikha, and Barbara Bray in particular, the essay traces the translation process of both The North and what was to become The Lost Ones. Extending over several months, the translation of the short novel gave Beckett considerable trouble and, as appears from his letters to Bray, her involvement in it was tangible. Beckett's linguistic choices surrounding the image of a crouching woman at the centre of this limited-edition artist's book and the English title of the master text, The Lost Ones, are also considered in relation to other art forms, namely Auguste Rodin's Dante-inspired La porte de l'enfer and the statue extracted from it, La femme accroupie. In addition to that, the publication particulars of the Calder & Boyars edition of The Lost Ones (1972) are discussed in parallel to those of Clodd's The North (1973), unearthing the differences between the two translations as well as contractual obligations that shaped them.