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Title
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The (re-)composition of Samuel Beckett’s Company / Compagnie
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Author
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Abstract
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| Beckett started writing Company on 5 May 1977. Much of his source material was drawn from ‘The Voice / Verbatim’, an abandoned piece dated to January 1977, which itself has its origins in notes made in the opening pages of the ‘Sottisier’ notebook that same January under the title ‘VERBATIM’ (SN, 01v). The ‘Sottisier’ notes describe a scenario wherein ‘Speech by A [is] overheard By B & described to C’ with the caveat that ‘A, B, C, [are] one & the same’ (SN, 01v). This is identical to the scenario depicted throughout Company and Compagnie where a figure in the dark hears their own voice and imagines it is intended for another. The self is split in three, with ‘devised deviser’, ‘hearer’, and ‘voice’ all facets of the one solitary figure. As Beckett put it in earlier drafts of the ending they are all one figure ‘Alone. All one. All none’ (ET2, 18r). In an effort at devising company, these three facets of the ‘All one’ figure recombine, with Beckett exploring whether company (and by association Company / Compagnie) can be conjured by means of their interaction according to the formula ‘C = A + V + B’: C[ompany] = A [‘hearer – creature’] + V [‘Voice’ / ‘Scenes from Past’] + B [‘devised – deviser’] (EM, 20v). The process by which this companion text for Beckett between the years 1977 and 1980, the text he wrote and kept near his person ‘for company’, eventually became Company, which itself eventually became Compagnie, was examined throughout this study. Taking Beckett’s own schemata for Company, his meticulous devising of a paragraph-by-paragraph structure that weaves voice, hearer, and devised deviser around fifteen scenes from the figure’s past, this study has endeavoured to present Company and Compagnie on their own terms, as companies-in-progress. In the process, this study has read the text of Company as an extended investigation into the relationship between the self and narrative, and specifically between narrative and memory, and the narrativisation of sensory experiences. Company invites us to consider the extent to which all narrative is an act of fictionalisation, with the process of narration itself materially linked to the narrative output, which can prompt revisions to the scenes being narrated (recalled); revisions that, in the case of Company and later Compagnie, leave material traces of their genesis over successive (and overlapping) drafts. This study has also drawn attention to Company and Compagnie’s particular uniqueness in Beckett’s œuvre: the translation is not only published before the original, but it intercedes in the genesis of the English text at key points from ET2 on. We therefore encounter a pairing of texts that challenges the assumed hierarchy between an original text and its translation. In terms of how the translation of Company relates to Beckett’s earlier self-translations, Compagnie again stands apart as a text of unique interest within Beckett’s œuvre for the fact that throughout the translation Beckett eschews certain approaches that had, by 1979/1980, become synonymous with his translation process. What Van Hulle and Weller classify as Beckettian ‘Translation as “unwording”’, an approach to translation that sees Beckett making use of ‘negative affixes’, ‘pejoration – or, to use a Beckettian word “worsening” – through the use of words with a greater negative charge’ (Van Hulle and Weller 2014, 195) is instead replaced with translation as an act of rememberance, of remémoration and recall that, like memory, grants the licence or freedom to build on or modify the scenes being remembered. The translation of Company into Compagnie is, I propose, best read as a continuation of the fable begun in paragraph 1 of Company, a continuation that is materially evident from the cover of the notebook the autograph manuscripts of these texts share, which sees Company segue to Compagnie by means of an em dash. Beckett also records the dates of their composition as ‘all one’, ranging from May 1977 and the onset of the English, to August 1979 and the completion of the French: COMPANY – COMPAGNIE May 77 – August 79 (EM / FM, TP) From here Beckett would go on to create the theatre piece Ohio Impromptu, a play that depicts a ‘Reader’ and ‘Listener’ described by Beckett as being ‘As alike in appearance as possible’ (KLT, 137), and one that therefore has clear conceptual links to Company / Compagnie. The interest shown throughout Company / Compagnie in the relationship between sight and the mind, between what is seen (or has been seen / experienced) and how one articulates this scene (or this seen scene), would be further developed into the prose piece Mal vu mal dit (1981) and its translation Ill Seen Ill Said (1982). In 1989, these texts would be collected and republished by Calder in the trio of English texts called Nohow On, which included Worstward Ho, a text that relentlessly mines the ‘missaid’ (CIWS, 81) in search of the ‘Unlessable least best worst’ (CIWS, 95), and one Beckett found all but impossible to translate. This again highlights the uniqueness of Company and Compagnie in Beckett’s œuvre: Compagnie gained Beckett’s confidence significantly earlier than did its original. Throughout the translation of Company, Beckett eschews the pejorative attitude towards language seen throughout his translation of L’Innommable and throughout Worstward Ho, as though the subject matter of Company (memory as fiction, the fictionalisation of memory) superseded the need to employ techniques of ‘unwording’ (Van Hulle and Weller 2014, 195) used so extensively elsewhere. In Company and Compagnie we have two texts that defy the chronology of original and translation, with Compagnie, a text that arose through a process of remémoration, infusing its presence at key points throughout Company to such an extent that while the figures in each respective texts may be alone, both Company and Compagnie are forever intertwined and keeping each other company. |
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Language
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English
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Publication
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Antwerp
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University of Antwerp, Faculty of Arts
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2020
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Volume/pages
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443 p.
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Note
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Van Hulle, Dirk [Supervisor]
:
Beloborodova, Olga [Supervisor]
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