Collected Poems in English and French

BOOK: Collected Poems in English and French
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Works by Samuel Beckett published by Grove Press

C
OLLECTED
P
OEMS IN
E
NGLISH AND
F
RENCH

C
OLLECTED
S
HORTER
P
LAYS

(All That Fall, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II, Krapp's Last Tape, Rough for Theatre I, Rough For Theatre II, Embers, Rough for Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio, … but the clouds …, A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht and Träume, What Where)

C
OMPLETE
S
HORT
P
ROSE
: 1929–1989

(Assumption, Sedendo et Quiescendo, Text, A Case in a Thousand, First Love, The Expelled, The Calmative. The End, Texts for Nothing 1–13, From an Abandoned Work, The Image, All Strange Away, Imagination Dead Imagine, Enough, Ping, Lessness, The Lost Ones, Fizzles 1–8, Heard in the Dark 1, Heard in the Dark 2, One Evening, As the story was told, The Cliff, neither, Stirrings Still, Variations on a “Still” Point,
Faux Départs
, The Capital of the Ruins)

D
ISJECTA
:

Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment

E
NDGAME AND
A
CT
W
ITHOUT
W
ORDS

H
APPY
D
AYS

H
OW
I
T
I
S

I C
AN'T
G
O
O
N
, I
'll
G
O
O
N
:

A Samuel Beckett Reader

K
RAPP'S
L
AST
T
APE
(All That Fall, Embers, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II)

M
ERCIER AND
C
AMIER

M
OLLOY

M
ORE
P
RICKS THAN
K
ICKS

(Dante and the Lobster, Fingal, Ding-Dong, A Wet Night, Love and Lethe, Walking Out, What a Misfortune, The Smeraldina's Billet Doux, Yellow, Draff)

M
URPHY

N
OHOW
O
N
(Company, III Seen III Said, Worstward Ho)

P
ROUST

S
TORIES AND
T
EXTS FOR
N
OTHING

(The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, Texts for Nothing 1–13)

T
HREE
N
OVELS
(Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

W
AITING
F
OR
G
ODOT

W
ATT

H
APPY
D
AYS
:

Production Notebooks

W
AITING FOR
G
ODOT
:

Theatrical Notebooks

Copyright © 1977 by Samuel Beckett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Printed in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada

Collected Poems in English and French
first published by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, London 1977

Whoroscope
first published by Nancy Cuard, The Hours Press, 1930

Echo's Bones
first published by George Reavey, Europa Press, 1935

Gnome
first published 1934

Ooftish
first published 1938

Home Olga
first published 1934

All other English poems except the last three English poems in this volume first published by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd 1961, the last three first published in this volume 1977. Poems in French first published by Limes Verlag Wiesbaden under the title
Gedichte
1959 and by Editions de Minuit, Paris under the title
Poèmes
1968

Translations from Paul Eluard first published by This Quarter, Paris 1932

Translation from Arthur Rimbaud first published by Whitenights Press, Reading 1976

Translation from Guillaume Apollinaire first published by Dolman Press, Dublin and Calder & Boyars, London 1972

Translations from Sébastien Chamfort first published by The Blue Guitar, Messina 1975

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77–77855

ISBN: 9780802198440

Grove Press

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

00 01 10 9 8 7 6

CONTENTS

Publishers' Foreword

Part I:
Poems in English

1. Whoroscope

2. Gnome

3. Home Olga

4. Echo's Bones

    The Vulture

    Enueg I

    Enueg II

    Alba

    Dortmunder

    Sanies I

    Sanies II

    Serena I

    Serena II

    Serena III

    Malacoda

    Da Tagte Es

    Echo's Bones

5. Six Poems

    Cascando

    Ooftish

    Saint Lô

    dread nay

    Roundelay

    thither

Part II:
Poems in French with some translations

1. Poèmes 1937–1939

    
elles viennent

    they come

    
à elle l'acte calme

    
être là sans mâchoires sans dents

    
Ascension

    
La Mouche

    
musique de l'indifférence

    
bois seul

    
ainsi a-t-on beau

    
Rue de Vaugirard

    
Dieppe

    Dieppe

    
Arènes de Lutèce

    
jusque dans la caverne ciel et sol

2. Six Poèmes 1947–1949

    
bon bon il est un pays

    
Mort de A.D.

    
vive morte ma seule saison

    
je suis ce cours de sable qui glisse

    my way is in the sand flowing

    
que ferais-je sans ce monde

    what would I do without this world

    
je voudrais que mon amour meure

    I would like my love to die

3. Poème 1974

    
hors crâne seul dedans

    something there

Part III:
Translations from French with the originals

1. From Paul Eluard

    
L'amoureuse

    Lady Love

    
A perte de vue dans le sens de mon corps

    Out of Sight in the Direction of my Body

    
A peine défigurée

    Scarcely Disfigured

    
Seconde nature

    Second Nature

    
La vue

    Scene

    
L'univers–solitude

    Universe-Solitude

    
Confections

    Confections

2. From Arthur Rimbaud

    
Le bateau ivre

    Drunken Boat

3. From Guillaume Apollinaire

    
Zone

    Zone

4. From Sébastien Chamfort

    
Huit maximes

    Long after Chamfort

     
Le sot

     Wit in fools

     
Le théâtre tragique

     The trouble with tragedy

     
Quand on soutient que les gens

     Better on your arse

     
Quand on a été bien tourmenté

     Live and clean forget

     
La pensée console

     Ask of all-healing

     
L'espérance

     Hope

     
Vivre est une maladie

     Sleep till death

     
Que le coeur de l'homme

     How hollow heart

Notes

FOREWORD

This is the most complete collection of poems that Mr. Beckett authorized. It contains all the work published in English before 1977 with the addition of prewar poems and some later ones. The complete French poems are included in the original by arrangement with Les Editions de Minuit, and six of them have been translated by the author. The first one originated in English. The last section contains those translations from French poets that Samuel Beckett agreed to see republished, most of them commissioned by little magazines before World War II, although the Chamfort maxims came later. The translation of
Le Bateau Ivre
was long lost before miraculously turning up in private hands as is explained in the Notes.

The translation made by Samuel Beckett of an anthology of Mexican poetry compiled by Octavio Paz, first published in 1959, is not included here, but is separately available from Grove Press in an edition entitled
Mexican Poetry
. Other translations, many unsigned, made during the thirties with which Mr. Beckett was unsatisfied, exist in old magazines, but he did not want to see them reissued in book form.

The Publishers

PART I
POEMS IN ENGLISH
1. WHOROSCOPE
Whoroscope

What's that?

An egg?

By the brothers Boot it stinks fresh.

Give it to Gillot.

Galileo how are you

and his consecutive thirds!

The vile old Copernican lead-swinging son of a sutler!

We're moving he said we're off—Porca Madonna!

the way a boatswain would be, or a sack-of-potatoey

charging Pretender.

That's not moving, that's
moving
.                                 10

What's that?

A little green fry or a mushroomy one?

Two lashed ovaries with prostisciutto?

How long did she womb it, the feathery one?

Three days and four nights?

Give it to Gillot.

Faulhaber, Beeckman and Peter the Red,

come now in the cloudy avalanche or Gassendi's sun-red

crystally cloud

and I'll pebble you all your hen-and-a-half ones

or I'll pebble a lens under the quilt in the midst of day.      20

To think he was my own brother, Peter the Bruiser,

and not a syllogism out of him

no more than if Pa were still in it.

Hey! pass over those coppers,

sweet millèd sweat of my burning liver!

Them were the days I sat in the hot-cupboard throwing

Jesuits out of the skylight.

Who's that? Hals?

Let him wait.

My squinty doaty!

I hid and you sook.                                                             30

And Francine my precious fruit of a house-and-parlour

foetus!

What an exfoliation!

Her little grey flayed epidermis and scarlet tonsils!

My one child

scourged by a fever to stagnant murky blood—

blood!

Oh Harvey belovèd

how shall the red and white, the many in the few, (dear bloodswirling Harvey)

eddy through that cracked beater?                                   40

And the fourth Henry came to the crypt of the arrow.

What's that?

How long?

Sit on it.

A wind of evil flung my despair of ease

against the sharp spires of the one

lady:

not once or twice but. …

(Kip of Christ hatch it!)

in one sun's drowning                                                     50

(Jesuitasters please copy).

So on with the silk hose over the knitted, and the morbid

leather—

what am I saying! the gentle canvas—

and away to Ancona on the bright Adriatic,

and farewell for a space to the yellow key of the

Rosicrucians.

They don't know what the master of them that do did,

that the nose is touched by the kiss of all foul and sweet air,

and the drums, and the throne of the faecal inlet,

and the eyes by its zig-zags.

So we drink Him and eat Him                                           60

and the watery Beaune and the stale cubes of Hovis

because He can jig

as near or as far from His Jigging Self

and as sad or lively as the chalice or the tray asks.

How's that, Antonio?

In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.

Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?

Anna Maria!

She reads Moses and says her love is crucified.

Leider! Leider! she bloomed and withered,                        70

a pale abusive parakeet in a mainstreet window.

No I believe every word of it I assure you.

Fallor, ergo sum!

The coy old frôleur!

He tolle'd and legge'd

and he buttoned on his redemptorist waistcoat.

No matter, let it pass.

I'm a bold boy I know

so I'm not my son

(even if I were a concierge)                                80

nor Joachim my father's

but the chip of a perfect block that's neither old nor new,

the lonely petal of a great high bright rose.

Are you ripe at last,

my slim pale double-breasted turd?

How rich she smells,

this abortion of a fledgling!

I will eat it with a fish fork.

White and yolk and feathers.

Then I will rise and move moving                        90

toward Rahab of the snows,

the murdering matinal pope-confessed amazon,

Christina the ripper.

Oh Weulles spare the blood of a Frank

who has climbed the bitter steps,

(René du Perron… .!)

and grant me my second

starless inscrutable hour.

1930

BOOK: Collected Poems in English and French
8.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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