Dream of Fair to Middling Women Read Free Page A

exuberant wealth, a full-blown “rhapsody of energy”, indeed, as Be-lacqua says. Harvey, most appropriately, alludes to the “verbal exuberance”, the “undisciplined fantasy” and the “intellectual virtuosity” to be found in
Dream.
The young Beckett delights in words, he is exhilarated by the use of several languages, inebriated by the sheer joy of inventing new words and coining new phrases which abound “scurrying and plunging towards exitus “. Much of the very lively wealth of
Dream
lies in that turmoil of language, in that inventiveness which is far from being merely clever intellectual gymnastics, but much more essentially the expression and deep imprint of Samuel Beckett's vital sense of humour.
Dream
is a book of humour—of “laffing and laffing”—which, like so much of his later work, already belies the serious misconception that his work is only of the dark and gloomy side.
    A few words need here be said about the editing of
Dream.
The first is to express the debt I owe my co-editor, Edith Fournier, a life-long friend of Samuel Beckett whohas translated some of his works from English to French. Without her help I would have been unable to complete the task of editing which became a much more complex assignment than I had originally envisaged. Precisely on account of the verbal exuberance and inventiveness of
Dream,
we had not only to be obsessional in proofreading—not as straightforward a task as might usually be the case—but, more importantly, we had to discuss nuances that might have been typographical errors made by Samuel Beckett or intentional word-playing and word-coining, precious “margaritas”, not to be lost in the proceedings. In
Dream,
Samuel Beckett crossed the barriers of language from English—and English as used by the Irish—to French, from German to Italian and Spanish, and he resorted quite often to Latin. He also experimented with words and deliberately flaunted grammatical convention at times outrageously so that in truth there were occasions when only he could have said what was intended. In such instances we had to rely as much on our knowledge and understanding of Samuel Beckett, the man, as of his writing. If we have failed him, the responsibility is ours.
    We were faced with a decision to delete short pieces of text only twice, when of two almost identical passages, one was obviously the weaker preliminary draft of a later improved version. This replication served no purpose and Samuel Beckett, we believe, would have done as we did had he been reading the proofs. First, the passage on pp. 68-70 (“Ne suis-je point pale?” down to “helmet of salvation”) was retained in preference to a shortened, but essentially similar passage which had followed the paragraph ending with: “… she was the living spit of Madonna Lucrezia del Fede” on p. 15. Secondly, the Dartmouth manuscript contains two versions of the novel's ending, the finalpart of the subsequent version being hand-written by Samuel Beckett. We have chosen the latter, which does not differ in meaning but is so much better in expression than the earlier version.
    We have also been careful not to distort through correction Samuel Beckett's idiosyncrasies of punctuation and spacing. In his typescript, he emphasised intervals of time, interludes, and changes of mood by varying the conventional line-spacing and indents. The subtlety of this contrivance might easily be overlooked but we believe it important that it be retained, unusual though it may seem at times.
Dream,
after all, is an unusual book.
    In the same way we have been faithful to his use of italics, none where none intended. Wisely, because of the profusion of various languages, Samuel Beckett desisted from applying to foreign words the usual italics which he reserved solely for the purpose of emphasis.
    The manuscript we relied upon was the original one in Dartmouth