Samuel Beckett - Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

References are to my punctuated and paragraphed version, and to the Everyman Trilogy (1997).

1. It, say it, not knowing what. See p.110: And now for the it.

Aporia: the speaker professes to be at a loss what to say (rhetoric).

Ephectic: habitually suspending judgement. (But clearly you can be aware of doing that.)

2. Malone is there. Malone meurt was finished in about August 1948. L'Innommable was begun on 29 March 1949 ( En Attendant Godot came in between). Beckett dated it 1949, but typed it out in summer 1950, in Ireland. His mother died on 25 August 1950.

3. brimless hat. Malone, in Malone Dies , had a hat (I shall put on my hat page 286), but it is not described.

on his feet or on his knees. See Worstward Ho , p.15: Kneeling. Better kneeling.

the first thing. See p. 2: And things? Also p.126: If only there were a thing!

other pits, deeper down. See Malone Dies p. 248: Perhaps there are other vaults even deeper than mine, why not?

Narthex: vestibule (lobby between the outer door and the interior) at the west end of a church.

4. his beard would fill me with pity. No mention of Malones beard in Malone Dies ?

gazing before me like a great barn-owl in an aviary. See p.123: eyes..like the owl cooped in the grotto in Battersea Park

forbears. Misprint for forebears. Or could it mean forbearing forebears?

5. I am relying on these lights. see p.15: the lights, on which I had set such store.

all the fun of the fair. See p.2: bustle of a bargain sale.

6. Molloy. Yes - Molloy!

Enceinte: enclosure wall. See p.12: the enclosure wall.

Hell itself...dates from the revolt of Lucifer. Dante? Milton?

7. feeble cry. See p.68: the little cry.. like a wounded wistit.

pseudo-couple Mercier-Camier. Why pseudo? Mercier et Camier was written in summer 1946.

8. my seat would appear to be somewhat elevated. See p.81: That didnt take long: soon well have him perched on an eminence.

9. 'poison and antidote: sin and redemption.

Basil. Significance of this name?

filled me with hatred. There is little hatred after Basil is renamed Mahood (p. 22).

10. The other: is he the companion to Malone (page 7)?

he brings me presents. See p.11: offerings for me.

12. enclosure wall. See p. 6: the enceinte.

as red as live coals. See p. 9: Basils eyes like cinders.

wonder if the two retinae are not facing each other: wonder if the two eyes are not looking at each other. The other eye would be [blood-]shot with rose.

I am Matthew and I am the angel: the scribe Matthew and the messenger Gabriel.

13. exordia. Exordium: introduction to a formal literary work.

14. the inside of my distant skull. Precursor of later heroes in skulls. Are there skulls, in this sense, in Molloy or Malone Dies ?

old satiated rat. Why satiated?

tester-bed. How is a tester-bed distinct from a cradle?

as in the Caucasus: like Prometheus.

15 Prometheus was delivered twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy years after having purged his offence. Whence the 30,000 years less 30 years?

16. I. Of whom I know nothing. Thus begins the last paragraph.

17. Malone's hat. Again!

Mucilage: a gelatinous substance obtained esp from seaweeds and similar to plant gums.

Puttees: spirally wound leggings in an Indian army uniform.

organs are bodily, not musical: organes, not orgues.

18. let me change my tune. See p 52: I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

19. this voice that is not mine. Is this voice in Molloy or Malone Dies ?

20. Facetiae: humorous witticisms; pornographic items in booksellers catalogues.

21. this venerable organ: this mouth.

22. I'll call him Mahood: Ma+hood. Manhood.

23. Pensum: imposition (in French schools).

24. a whole college of tyrants. See p.9: four or five of them.

bereft of hands. But see p.4: my hands on my knees.

The Carmagnole: a dance (and song) of the French Revolution, performed, inter alia, around the guillotine.

Dansons la carmagnole

Vive le son, vive le son,

Dansons la carmagnole

Vive le son du canon.

26. Satrap: a provincial governor in the Achaemenian empire. The division into satrapies was completed by Darius 1 (522-486 BC).

"They clothed me and gave me money." The first sentence of The End (1946).

Moran's boss (I forget his name). Youdi, in Molloy.

Cases one and two. Case two is never considered, in fact.

I nearly said con- : I nearly said constriction not restriction.

27. everything there being set and settled. See How It Is: our justice.

28. For any old thing.. See p. 29: Not any old thing.

turkey-hen dying. At Roussillon?

29. my next vice-exister will be a billy in the bowl. Billycan?? This looks forward to the next story but one, in the Rue Brancion. See p 70: a billybowl of thorns.

Tellus: Roman earth-goddess who was later identified with the mother-goddess Cybele. But she doesnt seem to hav been thousand-breasted. (The statue of Artemis at the Temple of Ephesus was many-breasted.)

30. Having brought me to death's door (senile gangrene). When he was Malone?

scouring the earth for a hole to hide in. See p. 126: What is it? A little hole. You go down into it.

spinach blue??. (French: cerne d'un bleu epinard.)

that's jam. (French: ca c'est du nanan. Yum-yum!)

31. Naevi: congenital pigmented areas on the skin; birthmarks.

I withdrew my adhesion: I stopped being him.

32. cramp just mentioned. See p 31: the coils which would come to an end for lack of room

Rafflesia: the largest flower known (named after Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore). It is a malodorous parasite on a vine, rootless leafless and stemless. After seven days it becomes black and slimy. It is sometimes called the corpse flower.

my little ones born in my absence. So they were someone elses little ones, and correctly described on p. 39 as little bastards.

33. a small rotunda - windowless, but well furnished with loopholes. A skull?

periods: menstrual periods. (French: les menstrues.)

Ptomaine: the name of little mother. The word was coined by a 19th C Italian physician to describe sickness spread from corpses. Any of various very often poisonous organic compounds formed by the action of putrefactive bacteria on nitrogen-containing matter. Ptoma (Greek) means fall, hence fallen body, hence corpse.

the whole ten or eleven of them. But grandpa, grandma, little mother and the eight or nine brats (above) makes eleven or twelve of them.

35. Ptoto: diminutive of Ptomaine. Toto is the dog in The Wizard of Oz.

I quote Malone. Is there a specific reference to anything in Malone Dies.

Bat-horse: a horse which carried the baggage of an army officer. Bat (French} means pack-saddle. (L'Innommable: une vieille carne de somme ou de trait.)

36. well-supplied with pain-killers. See p.31: to devour a narcotic.

Ellman's Embrocation. Ellman the biographer of Joyce?

38. the bacillus botulinus. Botulism is poisoning by the botulinus toxin which is produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria. It is caused by eating improperly sterilized canned foods.

my adhesion. See p 31.

Infundibuliform: funnel-shaped.

39. beat in retreat. 'beat a retreat?

Isoldes breast. Isolde seems not to be one of the little bastards. She must be grandma!

41. theyve inflicted the notion of time on me. See p.21: years is one of Basil's ideas.

42. First I'll say what I'm not. Somewhere in Beckett there is define God in terms of what he is not.

I'd wish they did: Id wish they did exist.

43. Helicoidal: spring-like.

the statue of the apostle of horses meat. There used to be such a statue in the Rue Brancion. Reference?