The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941-1956 [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

What I remember most from the first volume of letters is how different Beckett was from my expectations. Travelling constantly, unable to publish much, reading voraciously in several languages and deeply concerned with painting. His insecurities and illnesses (or hypochondria) are so painfully described in that volume, and his passion for what he is reading and seeing is so exuberantly described that the letters shine. I simply loved the first volume and have reread parts of it over and over. So I was very excited to read the second volume.

I still give it a 5 star, and it still keeps to the rigorous standard of scholarship in its production, but Beckett himself I find less interesting, more expected. Let me start with the physical book and the editing. Cambridge Press uses a thicker paper for this volume, and that is a great improvement. Photos are also inserted into the pages where relevant instead of being clumped into a small section of small photos in the middle of the book. Again, a helpful improvement.

The multi-volume set of letters is being produced by a conglomerate of various institutions and academics. There are four editors! The result in the first volume was an absurd number of deeply anal footnotes that often swamped the letters themselves. There was no name or reference too well-known or obscure to escape a humorless note. This situation is somewhat improved in Volume 2 by omitting the well-known. This is explained by saying that "the editors can now assume that most readers will have access to the vast resources of the internet." Most? And they lacked that access when Volume 1 was published in 2009? Whatever, I'm glad we've been spared the obvious, but the notes are still less than fun to read. Beckett had a very hard time finding a publisher for Watt, and many letters discuss the frustration and logistics of finding a publisher. Yet obsessively each time this subject is raised we are treated to a footnote explaining the subject. That assumes the intended reader either suffers from extreme attention deficit disorder or the editors do not expect the reader to read the letters in order. Whichever, it is highly annoying. Also the footnotes provide not only an explanation but cite the source for the explanation making for long footnotes. It would have helped readability to add the sources as endnotes, though I realize this is merely a personal preference. But something needs to be done to further lessen the bulk of these leaden footnotes.

A last technical issue. As with the first volume the letters are included in the language in which they were written followed by an English language translation. By the time this volume starts Beckett is living in France with a woman whose first language is French, and the writer is writing his works in French, earning money for French-English translations. Thus a large minority of these letters, including those to Georges Duthuit, the most interesting of this volume, are written in French. The editors have taken the time to add references to footnotes in both the original and translation. I found myself reading the letter in the original referring to the translations for some words and to check the translations of the endless wordplay Beckett engages in, regardless of which language he uses.

Of the letters themselves? Beckett has settled down to life in Paris with a good portion of time spent in the French countryside. He is still interested in painting and can have very perceptive and unusual comments, but there isn't the compulsion to explain that is present in many of his Volume 1 comments on art and literature. That intensity is instead present in his description of nature, which interests me not at all. The facet that did interest me is translation in all the ways it appears in the book. Translations between languages. Beckett switched from writing his novels and plays in English to French and spends an increasing amount of time communicating with people hired to translate his works to other languages, including English. He works with transition magazine and others to translate works between French and English, and his plays are `translated' to the stage. His comments are thoughtful, sometimes grumpy, but always interesting. When asked why he now writes in French, among his explanations are "pour faire remarquer moi" and "le besoin d'etre malarme."

We learn that he doesn't mind someone making an all music (without words) adaptation of his play, but forbids adding music to a production explaining "I do not believe in collaboration between the arts." These and endless other examples provide wonderful insight to the world of Beckett's works, and in his wide ranging and almost hallucinatory letters to Georges Duthuit we see a much freer Beckett describing his world and his art.