{"id":26324,"date":"2025-04-07T17:51:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T15:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/?p=26324"},"modified":"2025-04-11T09:52:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T07:52:00","slug":"samuel-beckett-lettre-a-axel-kaun-1937","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/2025\/04\/samuel-beckett-lettre-a-axel-kaun-1937\/","title":{"rendered":"Samuel Beckett, lettre \u00e0 Axel Kaun, 1937"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alors que j’erre sur internet \u2014 et ailleurs \u2014 , je tombe1<\/a><\/sup> sur un court extrait d’une lettre de Beckett en allemand, \u00e9crite en juillet 1937, suffisamment saisissant \u2014 il y est question de d\u00e9chirer la langue, de la trouer, de la discr\u00e9dire \u00e0 d\u00e9faut de l’imm\u00e9diatement d\u00e9truire \u2014 pour que je veuille la chercher et trouve alors dans sa traduction anglaise. Il y est aussi question du mot, de Gertrude Stein (pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e \u00e0 Joyce) et de sa m\u00e9thode \u00e0 la Feininger :<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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9\/7\/37 6 Clare Street Dublin IFS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cher Axel Kaun,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Il m’est en effet de plus en plus difficile, pour ne pas dire absurde, d’\u00e9crire en bon anglais. Et de plus en plus, ma propre langue m’appara\u00eet comme un voile qu’il faut d\u00e9chirer pour parvenir aux choses (ou au N\u00e9ant) qui se cachent derri\u00e8re. La Grammaire et le Style. Pour moi, ils me paraissent devenus aussi incongrus qu’un costume de bain victorien ou le calme imperturbable d’un vrai gentleman. Un masque. Esp\u00e9rons que viendra le temps – Dieu merci, il est d\u00e9j\u00e0 venu dans certains milieux – o\u00f9 l’on usera de la langue avec le plus d’efficacit\u00e9 possible l\u00e0 o\u00f9 \u00e0 pr\u00e9sent elle est le plus efficacement d\u00e9tourn\u00e9e. Comme nous ne pouvons pas \u00e9liminer la langue d’un seul coup, nous ne devrions au moins ne rien n\u00e9gliger qui puisse contribuer \u00e0 la faire sombrer dans le discr\u00e9dit. A la percer trou apr\u00e8s trou, jusqu’\u00e0 ce que ce qui se cache derri\u00e8re – que ce soit quelque chose ou rien – commence \u00e0 s’\u00e9couler au travers ; je ne peux imaginer de but plus \u00e9lev\u00e9 pour un \u00e9crivain d’aujourd’hui. Ou bien la litt\u00e9rature doit-elle rester seule dans les vieilles habitudes paresseuses abandonn\u00e9es depuis si longtemps par la musique et la peinture ? Y a-t-il quelque chose d’une paralysante saintet\u00e9<\/strong><\/strong> dans la nature vicieuse du mot, que l’on ne retrouve pas dans les \u00e9l\u00e9ments des autres arts ? <\/strong>Y a-t-il une raison pour que cette terrible mat\u00e9rialit\u00e9 de la surface du mot ne puisse \u00eatre dissoute, comme par exemple la surface sonore, d\u00e9chir\u00e9e par d’\u00e9normes pauses, de la septi\u00e8me symphonie de Beethoven, de sorte qu’\u00e0 travers des pages enti\u00e8res, nous ne puissions plus percevoir qu’un chemin de sons suspendus dans des hauteurs vertigineuses, reliant d’insondables ab\u00eemes de silence ? Une r\u00e9ponse est demand\u00e9e. Je sais qu’il y a des gens, des gens sensibles et intelligents, pour qui le silence ne manque pas. Je ne peux que supposer qu’ils sont malentendants. Car dans la for\u00eat des symboles, qui n’en sont pas, les petits oiseaux de l’interpr\u00e9tation, qui n’en n’est pas, ne sont jamais silencieux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bien s\u00fbr, pour l’instant, nous devons nous contenter de peu. Dans un premier temps, il ne peut s’agir que de trouver, d’une mani\u00e8re ou d’une autre, une m\u00e9thode qui nous permette de repr\u00e9senter cette attitude moqueuse \u00e0 l’\u00e9gard du mot, au travers des mots. Dans cette dissonance entre les moyens et leur usage, il sera peut-\u00eatre possible de sentir un murmure de cette musique finale ou de ce silence qui sous-tend le Tout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avec un tel programme, \u00e0 mon avis, la derni\u00e8re \u0153uvre de Joyce n’a rien \u00e0 voir. Il semble plut\u00f4t y \u00eatre question d’une apoth\u00e9ose du mot. A moins que l’Ascension au Ciel et la Descente aux Enfers ne soient en quelque sorte une seule et m\u00eame chose. Comme il serait beau de pouvoir croire que c’est le cas. Mais pour l’instant, nous voulons nous en tenir \u00e0 la simple intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Les logogrammes de Gertrude Stein <\/strong>sont peut-\u00eatre plus proches de ce que j’ai \u00e0 l’esprit. Au moins la texture du langage y est-elle devenue poreuse, ne serait-ce, h\u00e9las, que par hasard, et \u00e0 la suite d’une technique proche de celle de Feininger<\/strong>. La malheureuse (vit-elle encore ?) est sans aucun doute toujours amoureuse de son instrument, mais de la fa\u00e7on dont un math\u00e9maticien est amoureux de ses chiffres ; un math\u00e9maticien pour qui la solution du probl\u00e8me est d’un int\u00e9r\u00eat tout \u00e0 fait secondaire, et \u00e0 qui la mort de ses chiffres doit para\u00eetre tout \u00e0 fait redoutable. Mettre cette m\u00e9thode en rapport avec celle de Joyce<\/strong>, comme c’est la mode, me para\u00eet aussi insens\u00e9 que la tentative, dont je ne sais encore rien, de comparer le Nominalisme (au sens de la Scolastique) avec le R\u00e9alisme. Sur le chemin de cette litt\u00e9rature du non-mot<\/strong>, qui m’est si d\u00e9sirable, une certaine forme d’ironie nominaliste<\/strong> pourrait \u00eatre une \u00e9tape n\u00e9cessaire. Mais il ne suffit pas que le jeu perde un peu de son s\u00e9rieux sacr\u00e9. Il doit s’arr\u00eater. Agissons donc comme ce math\u00e9maticien fou ( ?) qui utilisait un principe de mesure diff\u00e9rent \u00e0 chaque \u00e9tape de son calcul. Un assaut contre les mots au nom de la beaut\u00e9.<\/strong> En attendant, je ne fais rien du tout. J’ai seulement la consolation, de temps en temps, de p\u00e9cher bon gr\u00e9 mal gr\u00e9 contre une langue \u00e9trang\u00e8re, comme j’aimerais le faire en toute connaissance de cause et intentionnellement contre la mienne – et comme je le ferai – Deo juvante.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avec mes cordiales salutations Dois-je vous renvoyer le volume de Ringelnatz ? Existe-t-il une traduction anglaise de Trakl ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traduit avec DeepL.com (version gratuite)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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9\/7\/37 6 Clare Street Dublin IFS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear Axel Kaun,2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is indeed becoming more and more difficult, even senseless, for me to write an official English. And more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it. Grammar and Style. To me they seem to have become as irrelevant as a Victorian bathing suit or the imperturbability of a true gentleman. A mask. Let us hope the time will come, thank God that in certain circles it has already come, when language is most efficiently used where it is being most efficiently misused. As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should at least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its falling into disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it \u2014 be it something or nothing \u2014 begins to seep through; I cannot imagine a higher goal for a writer today. Or is literature alone to remain behind in the old lazy ways that have been so long ago abandoned by music and painting? Is there something paralysingly holy in the vicious nature of the word that is not found in the elements of the other arts? Is there any reason why that terrible materiality of the word surface should not be capable of being dissolved, like for example the sound surface, torn by enormous pauses, of Beethoven\u2019s seventh Symphony, so that through whole pages we can perceive nothing but a path of sounds suspended in giddy heights, linking unfathomable abysses of silence? An answer is requested. <\/strong>I know-there are people, sensitive and intelligent people, for whom there is no lack of silence. I cannot but assume that they are hard of hearing. For in the forest of symbols, which aren\u2019t any, the little birds of interpretation, which isn\u2019t any, are never silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Of course, for the time being we must be satisfied with little. At first it can only be a matter of somehow finding a method by which we can represent this mocking attitude towards the word, through words. In this dissonance between the means and their use it will perhaps become possible to feel a whisper of that final music or that silence that underlies All.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With such a program, in my opinion, the latest work of Joyce<\/strong> has nothing whatever to do. There it seems rather to be a matter of an apotheosis of the word. Unless perhaps Ascension to Heaven and Descent to Hell are somehow one and the same. How beautiful it would be to be able to believe that that indeed was the case. But for the time being we want to confine ourselves to the mere intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the logographs of Gertrude Stein are nearer to what I have in mind. At least the texture of language has become porous, if only, alas, quite by chance, and as a consequence of a technique similar to that of Feininger. The unfortunate lady (is she still alive?) is doubtlessly still in love with her vehicle, albeit only in the way in which a mathematician is in love with his figures; a mathematician for whom the solution of the problem is of entirely secondary interest, indeed to whom must the death of his figures appear quite dreadful. To bring this method into relation with that of Joyce, as is the fashion, strikes me as senseless as the attempt, of which I know nothing as yet, to compare Nominalism (in the sense of the Scholastics) with Realism. On the way to this literature of the unword, which is so desirable to me, some form of Nominalist irony might be a necessary stage. But it is not enough for the game to lose some of its sacred seriousness. It should stop. Let us therefore act like that mad (?) mathematician who used a different principle of measurement at each step of his calculation. An assault against words in the name of beauty. In the meantime I am doing nothing at all. Only from time to time I have the consolation, as now, of sinning willy-nilly against a foreign language, as I should love to do with full knowledge and intent against my own \u2014 and as I shall do \u2014 Deo juvante.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With cordial greetings Should I return the Ringelnatz volume to you? Is there an English translation of Trakl?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samuel Beckett, lettre \u00e0 Axel Kaun, 1937, Disjecta : Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment<\/em>, Ruby Cohn (\u00e9d.), New York, Grove Press, 1984.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Beckett logoclast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\u00ab\u00a0In a letter to Mary Manning Howe from 1937, written shortly after the letter to Kaun, Beckett suggests that his approach is the linguistic equivalent of iconoclasm<\/strong>: \u201cI am starting a Logoclast\u2019s<\/strong> League [\u2026] I am the only member at present. The idea is ruptured writing, so that the void may protrude, like a hernia.\u201d Logoclasm, or ruptured writing, is related to what Beckett in the letter to Kaun terms \u201cGertrude Stein\u2019s Logographs.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Differentiating with approval Stein\u2019s \u201cnominalistic irony<\/strong>\u201d from Joyce\u2019s \u201capotheosis of the word,\u201d he nonetheless still thinks that her approach to literature has not sufficiently shed its \u201cheiligen Ernst,\u201d its sacre seriousness. <\/strong>\u201cAufh\u00f6ren soll es.\u201d \u201cThe fabric of the language [in Stein] has at least become porous, if regrettably only quite by accident and, as it were, as a consequence of a procedure somewhat akin to the technique of Feininger.\u201d The problem with Stein, according to Beckett, is that she remains \u201cin love with her vehicle, if only, however, as a mathematician is with his numbers.\u201d The death of language, like the death of number to the mathematician, must seem to her \u201cindeed dreadful.\u201d Beckett differentiates his own method from both that of Joyce and Stein as a matter of \u201cverbally demonstrating this scornful [mocking] attitude towards the word [h\u00f6hnische Haltung dem Worte gegen\u00fcber w\u00f6rtlich darzustellen<\/strong>].\u201d Beckett calls this grinding of the teeth of language a \u201cliterature of the non-word.\u201d Ending the letter with a remarkable summons: \u201cLet\u2019s do as that crazy mathematician who used to apply a new principle of measurement at each individual step of the calculation. Word-storming<\/strong> [Eine W\u00f6rterst\u00fcrmerei] in the name of beauty.<\/strong>\u201d In Dream of Fair to Middling Women<\/strong><\/em>, Beckett\u2019s first unpublished novel, he speaks of this introduction of the immeasurable or incommensurable into the number line as the insertion of a \u201cdemented\u201d interval<\/strong>, a unit that violates unity. In other words, there is nothing to unify the story line, the development, nothing to rationalize the count, to render consistent the passage from 0 to 1. There is no story to tell and nobody to tell it, because there is nothing to provide the story or character with a measurable, countable unity. Both story and character have been atomized. Neither subject matter (the action or plot), nor the presence of the subject, i.e., the character, provide the unit of measure.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00ab\u00a0Horror and Hilarity in the Work of Samuel Beckett\u00a0\u00bb, Alexi Kukuljevic<\/strong>
https:\/\/www.crisiscritique.org\/storage\/app\/media\/2023-17-11\/alexi-kukuljevic.pdf<\/a>

\u00ab\u00a0Dans Dream of Fair to Middling Women<\/em>, premier roman in\u00e9dit de Beckett, il parle de cette introduction de l’incommensurable dans la droite des nombres comme de l’insertion d’un intervalle \u00ab d\u00e9ment \u00bb, d’une unit\u00e9 qui viole l’unit\u00e9. En d’autres termes, il n’y a rien pour unifier la ligne de r\u00e9cit, le d\u00e9veloppement, rien pour rationaliser le compte, pour rendre coh\u00e9rent le passage de 0 \u00e0 1. Il n’y a pas d’histoire \u00e0 raconter et personne pour la raconter, parce qu’il n’y a rien pour donner \u00e0 l’histoire ou au personnage une unit\u00e9 mesurable, d\u00e9nombrable. L’histoire et le personnage ont \u00e9t\u00e9 atomis\u00e9s. Ni le sujet (l’action ou l’intrigue), ni la pr\u00e9sence du sujet, c’est-\u00e0-dire le personnage, ne fournissent l’unit\u00e9 de mesure \u00bb.\u00a0\u00bb
<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Beckett, Stein, Feininger<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is the only extant reference to Stein in Beckett\u2019s writing and it comes at a crucial point in Beckett\u2019s development as a writer; a period when, as Mark Nixon argues in Samuel Beckett\u2019 German Diaries, \u2018there is [. . . ] a sense in which he [Beckett] was mentally shaping the aesthetic and creative direction his work was to take\u2019 (Nixon, 2011c, 2). Unlike the work of Franz Kafka, where Nixon observes \u2018there is no evidence\u2019 (Nixon, 2011c, 50) of Beckett encountering his work during the 1930s, the above excerpt indicates that by the late 1930s Beckett had encountered enough of Stein\u2019s writing to form a definite opinion of this specific aspect of her \u0153uvre. Furthermore, it suggests that by 1937, dissatisfied with the latest work by Joyce, Beckett had begun to admire the work of an author not only removed from, but entirely at odds with, the Joyce circle. <\/strong>This is evinced in Beckett\u2019s choice of Stein, the so-called Mother Goose of Montparnasse, as the artist whose aesthetics of writing (as he understands them) are close to his idea of the \u2018highe[st] goal for today\u2019s writer\u2019; a significant statement, coming as it does in July 1937, less than two years before the publication of James Joyce\u2019s Finnegans Wake. Beckett\u2019s identification with Stein\u2019s work is, admittedly, a guarded one. He appears not to know if Stein is alive or dead \u2013 Stein died in 1946 \u2013 and refers to her as an \u2018unhappy lady\u2019 whose innovative use of language was developed<\/strong> \u2018regrettably only quite by accident\u2019 (SB to AK, Beckett, 2009c, 519). These comments indicate that Beckett was careful to avoid making too strong a connection between his own aesthetic and the work of Stein (her work is \u2018perhaps [. . . ] closer to what I mean\u2019). For a writer who, in 1931 apologised to Charles Prentice for the \u2018stink\u2019 of Joyce in \u2018Sedendo et Quiescendo\u2019 and wrote of his desire to \u2018endow\u2019 his work with his \u2018own odours\u2019 (SB to Charles Prentice, 15 August 1931; Beckett, 2009c, 81), such a connection risked merely replacing the \u2018stink\u2019 of Joyce (a scent he was actively working to deodorise) with that of Stein. Nevertheless, Stein\u2019s work is certainly closer to Beckett\u2019s proposed \u2018literature of the non-word\u2019 than \u2018the most recent work of Joyce\u2019 which, Beckett notes in the same letter has \u2018nothing at all to do with such a programme\u2019 <\/strong>(SB to AK, 9 July 1937, Beckett, 2009c, 519). As pointed out in the annotated notes to this letter, Stein never used the term \u2018logograph\u2019 when referring to her writing<\/strong> (Beckett, 2009c, 521 n.8). The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term \u2018logograph\u2019 in its first derivative as a word \u2018used erroneously for logogriph<\/strong>\u2019 and in its second derivative as \u2018a character or combination of characters representing a word\u2019. \u2018Logogriph\u2019 is defined as \u2018a kind of enigma, in which a certain word, and other words that can be formed out of all or any of its letters, are to be guessed from synonyms of them introduced into a set of verses.<\/strong>\u2019 This definition is strikingly similar to what Wendy Steiner, in her analysis of the cubist nature of aspects of Stein\u2019s work, aptly describes as \u2018literary cubism\u2019 (Steiner, 1978, 131):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For just as the cubists translated reality into geometric relations which were not only in harmony with the medium of their art but were also the principles governing that medium, Stein translated her subjects into grammatical categories with the same double relation to her medium, language. (Steiner, 1978, 136)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Steiner notes, Stein frequently drew \u2018explicit parallels between cubist painting and her own writing\u2019 (<\/strong>Steiner, 1978, 131) and several of her works can be said to operate under the strictures of \u2018literary cubism.\u2019 6 That Beckett refers to Stein\u2019s work as logographic is therefore highly appropriate, as Stein\u2019s technique of translating objects (and people) into \u2018grammatical categories\u2019 <\/strong>(Steiner, 1978, 136) is, effectively, the logographic representation of a word in \u2013 or through \u2013 other words. This analogy between logography and cubist writing is therefore useful in relation to identifying the \u2018source\u2019 text or texts from Stein\u2019s \u0153uvre that led Beckett to form this very specific opinion of her work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an annotation to Beckett\u2019s equation of Stein\u2019s logographs with the work of Feininger, the editors of Beckett\u2019s letters classify Feininger\u2019s technique as \u2018cubist\u2019 (Beckett, 2009c, 521n.8). This is perhaps an over-simplification as Feininger\u2019s technique, like Stein\u2019s, was more versatile than the \u2018cubist\u2019 label suggests. 7 His range was expansive and extended from German Expressionism to the (Weimar) Bauhaus, frequently displaying a synthesis of cubist and expressionist techniques.<\/strong> In his essay \u2018Images of Beckett\u2019, James Knowlson refers to Feininger not as a Cubist, but as an Expressionist painter whose work Beckett was \u2018keen\u2019 on and had encountered in the house of his uncle \u2018Boss\u2019 Sinclair in Kassel and later during his six-month tour of Germany (Knowlson, 2003, 59\u201361). Knowlson argues that Beckett\u2019s personal diaries from his time in Germany \u2018contain some of his most precisely formulated aesthetic judgements\u2019 (Knowlson, 2003, 61). Beckett\u2019s entry on Feininger<\/strong>, quoted in the following passage from Knowlson\u2019s essay, is a prime example of these observations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the collection of modern paintings that he saw in Halle in 1937, Beckett was most intrigued by the unusual perspectives that he found in some of Feininger\u2019s work exhibited there: \u2018All about 1930, and technique perhaps less interesting than the out-and-out \u201cplane\u201d technique of earlier Feininger, of which some examples here also.\u2019 (Knowlson, 2003, 89)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This passage helps explain the connection Beckett establishes between the procedures that gave rise to Stein\u2019s logographs and the work of Feininger. 8 By definition, logographic writing involves the imposition of an unusual perspective on a given word in order to re-present it in other words.<\/strong> A reading of logography in the style of Feininger would thus incorporate the communication of emotional experiences associated with Expressionism. This synthesis between the planar and the emotional or esoteric presents us with a reading of Stein\u2019s work that acknowledges Stein\u2019s attempts at redefining words (through expressing them in other words) while also accommodating the private or esoteric nature of aspects of her writing. What initially appears to be an anomalous or offhand<\/strong> (\u2018The unhappy lady (is she still alive?)\u2019) reference to Stein <\/strong>is in fact a significant, well-developed aesthetic formulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Ill buttoned\u2019 : Comparing the representation of objects in Samuel Beckett\u2019s Ill Seen Ill Said and Gertrude Stein\u2019s Tender Buttons, https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/26471216?read-now=1&seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. A vrai dire, je n’arrive pas \u00e0 reconna\u00eetre que je \u00ab\u00a0tombe\u00a0\u00bb sur cet extrait de lettre dans une production r\u00e9cente de l’ECF, l’Ecole de la Cause freudienne, dont les positions vis-\u00e0-vis de la Palestine m’ont bless\u00e9e mortellement. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. D\u00e9but de la lettre de Beckett \u00e0 Kaun :
    Many thanks for your letter. I was on the point of writing to you when it arrived. Then I had to go on my travels, like Ringelnatz\u2019s male postage stamp, albeit under less passionate circumstances.
    It would be best if I told you immediately and without beating about the bush that Ringelnatz, in my opinion, isn\u2019t worth the effort. You will surely not be more disappointed to hear this from me than I am to state it.
    I have read through the 3 volumes, have selected 23 poems and have translated 2 of these as samples. The little they have of necessity lost in the process can naturally only be evaluated in relation to what they had to lose, and I must say that I have found this coefficient of loss of quality very small, even in those places where he is most a poet and least a rhyme coolie. It does not follow from this that a translated Ringelnatz could find neither interest nor success with the English public. But in this respect I am totally incapable of arriving at a judgement, as the reactions of the small as well as the large public are becoming more and more enigmatic to me, and, what is worse, of less significance. For I cannot free myself from the naive alternative, at least where literature is concerned, that a matter must either be worthwhile or not worthwhile. And if we have to earn money at any price, let\u2019s do it elsewhere.
    I have no doubt that as a human being Ringelnatz was of quite extraordinary interest. But as a poet he seems to have shared Goethe\u2019s opinion: it is better to write NOTHING than not write at all. But even the Grand Ducal Councillor would have allowed the translator to feel himself unworthy of this high Kakoethes. I should be happy to explain to you my disgust with Ringelnatz\u2019s rhyming fury in greater detail, if you feel inclined to understand him. But for the time being I\u2019ll spare you. Perhaps you like funeral orations as little as I do.
    I could also perhaps advise you of the poems I\u2019ve selected and send you the sample translations.
    I am always glad to receive a letter from you. So please write as frequently and fully as possible. Do you insist that I should do likewise in English? Are you bored by reading my German letters as I am in writing one in English? I should be sorry if you felt that there might be something like a contract between us that I fail to fulfill. An answer is requested<\/strong>.     \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Alors que j’erre sur internet \u2014 et ailleurs \u2014 , je tombe1 sur un court extrait d’une lettre de Beckett en allemand, \u00e9crite en juillet 1937, suffisamment saisissant \u2014 il y est question de d\u00e9chirer la langue, de la trouer, de la discr\u00e9dire \u00e0 d\u00e9faut de l’imm\u00e9diatement d\u00e9truire \u2014 pour que je veuille la chercher… Poursuivre la lecture Samuel Beckett, lettre \u00e0 Axel Kaun, 1937<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":26329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"A vrai dire, je n'arrive pas \u00e0 reconna\u00eetre que je \\\"tombe\\\" sur cet extrait de lettre dans une production r\u00e9cente de l'ECF, l'Ecole de la Cause freudienne, dont les positions vis-\u00e0-vis de la Palestine m'ont bless\u00e9e mortellement. \",\"id\":\"b1eb3090-a536-4d0e-86a2-77d8396cd276\"},{\"content\":\"D\u00e9but de la lettre de Beckett \u00e0 Kaun :
    Many thanks for your letter. I was on the point of writing to you when it arrived. Then I had to go on my travels, like Ringelnatz\u2019s male postage stamp, albeit under less passionate circumstances.
    It would be best if I told you immediately and without beating about the bush that Ringelnatz, in my opinion, isn\u2019t worth the effort. You will surely not be more disappointed to hear this from me than I am to state it.
    I have read through the 3 volumes, have selected 23 poems and have translated 2 of these as samples. The little they have of necessity lost in the process can naturally only be evaluated in relation to what they had to lose, and I must say that I have found this coefficient of loss of quality very small, even in those places where he is most a poet and least a rhyme coolie. It does not follow from this that a translated Ringelnatz could find neither interest nor success with the English public. But in this respect I am totally incapable of arriving at a judgement, as the reactions of the small as well as the large public are becoming more and more enigmatic to me, and, what is worse, of less significance. For I cannot free myself from the naive alternative, at least where literature is concerned, that a matter must either be worthwhile or not worthwhile. And if we have to earn money at any price, let\u2019s do it elsewhere.
    I have no doubt that as a human being Ringelnatz was of quite extraordinary interest. But as a poet he seems to have shared Goethe\u2019s opinion: it is better to write NOTHING than not write at all. But even the Grand Ducal Councillor would have allowed the translator to feel himself unworthy of this high Kakoethes. I should be happy to explain to you my disgust with Ringelnatz\u2019s rhyming fury in greater detail, if you feel inclined to understand him. But for the time being I\u2019ll spare you. Perhaps you like funeral orations as little as I do.
    I could also perhaps advise you of the poems I\u2019ve selected and send you the sample translations.
    I am always glad to receive a letter from you. So please write as frequently and fully as possible. Do you insist that I should do likewise in English? Are you bored by reading my German letters as I am in writing one in English? I should be sorry if you felt that there might be something like a contract between us that I fail to fulfill. An answer is requested<\/strong>.\",\"id\":\"e4166a36-d2c6-4cec-87ab-a96f63e54111\"}]"},"categories":[1],"tags":[1927,2517,2180,1591,727,1048],"class_list":["post-26324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classe","tag-beckett","tag-feininger","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-ironie","tag-joyce","tag-nominalisme","entry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-content\/uploads\/Feninger-Blue-orange-Feininger-1024x618-1.webp?fit=1024%2C618&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26324"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26437,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26324\/revisions\/26437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/iota\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}