Superlatives and Beckett: a dry hole to dig in if ever there was one. I say only that ‘Stirrings Still’, and Beckett’s other short prose leading up to it (from the mid-1950s with ‘Texts for Nothing’ but particularly from the early 1960s onwards), are the height of Beckett’s achievement and the best short prose works written in Europe since the war. I gasp before them, through them. Language gnaws itself to life from its own bones. What else to say about a work that begins:
“One night as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go. One night or day. For when his own light went out he was not left in the dark.”
And closes:
“Then such silence since the cries that perhaps they would not be heard again. Perhaps thus the end. Unless no more than a mere lull. Then all as before. The strokes and cries as before and he as before now there now gone now there again now gone again. Then the lull again. Then all as before again. So again and again. And patience till the one true end to time and grief and second self his own.”
In the words of Winnie (who better to help us dig in a dry hole?):
Marvellous gift. Nothing to touch it in my opinion. Always said so.
First published in a limited edition illustrated by Louis le Brocquy, John Calder, 1988. Now available in Company / Ill Seen Ill Said / Worstward Ho / Stirrings Still, Faber, 2009
A Personal Anthology 