“SO LITTLE IN DOUBT”? Revisiting

Abstract

In letter Georges Duthuit, composed on 1st of June 1949, Beckett admits doing one thing that I had never happened do before: I wrote last page of book I am working on, whereas I am only on my 30th. While he acknowledges that he is proud of himself, he also defends action with rationale that the is already so little in doubt. He will arrive at this outcome by whatever [tortillements] that lie between and it, of which I have only vaguest of ideas (2011, 162).1 The editors of Letters usefully gloss this with reference date on which Beckett began composing L'Innommable, given in Carlton Lake's No Symbols Where None Intended as 29th of March that same year (163). Beckett's certainty about his and his comparative uncertainty about tortillements qui m'en separent (160) suggest that, if we are eager identify textual open-endedness in L'Innommable we should concentrate more on its development than on apparent thesis of that development: il faut continuer, je ne peux pas continuer, je vais continuer (Beckett 1953, 211).2 Although narrator of L'Innommable 'concludes' with this phrase, Beckett had already determined that he would do so: Beckett's writhings are determined retroactively by his ending. This appraisal, of course, rests on premise that outcome Beckett predicted Duthuit was this famous final phrase, which was not.Dirk Van Hulle, in his examination of notebooks of L'Innommable, has observed that first notebook has two loose sheets pasted on last page. Van Hulle notes that these sheets were written by Beckett around time when he had written 22 pages in first notebook, which, though not 30th page specified in letter, does suggest that Beckett had material ending written, and is not simply referring metaphoric preconception of what end would be (see Van Hulle's contribution in this volume). As Chris Ackerley noted as early as 1993, this ending is not traditional il faut continuer, je ne peux pas continuer, je vais continuer (Ackerley 1993). The passage is incorporated into main text from Ma La voix. until:A moins que je n'essaie encore fois, derniere fois, de dire ce qu'il faut dire, sur moi, je sens que c'est sur moi, c'est la peutetre ma faute, pour n'avoir plus rien dire, plus rien entendre, d'etre mort.(1953, 175-77)Ackerley has traced differences between manuscript and published versions, including definitive amplification of M. Mahood, but I would like emphasise theoretical implications of concluding, even provisionally, novel with phrase avant d'etre mort (Ackerley 1993, 56). For, while refrain of une derniere fois remains false reprieve from narrator's inevitable continuing on, is finality of death that is ultimately excluded from any symbolic reality in final novel.Dying has rarely been more than stop-gap for Beckett. Echo's Bones, provisional finale More Pricks than Kicks, resurrects Belacqua. Faced with either making death a frank climax or keeping subdued in Murphy, Beckett decided on latter (1984, 102). Molloy wishes to speak of things that are left, say [his] goodbyes, finish (2009b, 3). Malone shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all (2009a, 3). While death is, at best, subdued, qualified form of ending for Beckett, is still used by characters denote finitude in novels before L'Innommable. This form of resolution is no longer adequate for narrator of L'Innommable, since cannot live and therefore cannot die. In The Unnamable, we read of dying that it has happened many times already, without their having granted as much as brief sick-leave among worms, before resurrecting me (55-56). Moreover, moment of death is not just inappropriate but foreclosed in endings of L'Innommable/The Unnamable, when death is wholly absent from imperative continue, inability continue and decision continue. …