Final Versions

Introduction:

            Although Irish by birth, Samuel Beckett (1906-89) has earned quite a reputation as a Francophone dramatist. Beckett’s writing process draws much critical attention because of its rich linguistic offerings. The author, who lived in France for long periods of his life (starting in 1937), translated most of his texts himself from their original French (his nonmaternal language) to English.   
            In a creative move away from long novels and theater, Samuel Beckett followed his 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature with the 1971 publication of Le dépeupleur. The short novel depicts a universe consisting of 200 bodies that are enclosed in a flattened cylinder 50 meters in circumference and 16 meters high. Social patterns predetermine activities among the dreadful inhabitants. Some, called “searchers” and “climbers,” access and explore the abode’s niches and tunnels via the use of ladders, upon which they ascend and descend in painstaking, subconsciously regulated harmony, while looking for an exit. Others wait their turn, in correct social order, for the ladders at the base of the cylinder, which is also scattered with “sedentary” and “vanquished” people who have resigned themselves from the relentless movement within the mathematically harmonious space. The bleak atmosphere consists of dim yellow light and radical changes in temperature. As time unravels, after the blind searches subside, all join the vanquished except one. By the end of the novel, this “de-peopled” world has been reduced to its lowest common denominator as all within the cylinder accept the same sedentary human condition.

Revision: A Trimming Act?

            One could consider Beckett’s drafting of Le dépeupleur as its own sort of reductive process. After sifting through various versions of the text, Beckett moves toward minimalism and a desire for stylistic “lessness” (“sans” in French). Compare, for example, multiple versions of the opening of Le dépeupleur.

Version I	Version II	Version III	Published version
Etablir un espace où réunis à demeure les corps pour la plupart {paissent ouvert} à la recherche les uns des autres ou par simple besoin de mouvement. Assez vaste pour permettre {de} chercher longuement en vain le dépeupleur et ce faisant de faire des rencontres. Assez restreint pour qu’à la longue, toute fuite soit vaine. {Bref} l’intérieur d’un cylindre régulier surbaissé ayant 50 mètres de périmètre par exemple et quinze de hauteur environ pour l’harmonie.	Un espace où des corps vont cherchant chacun son dépeupleur. Assez vaste pour permettre de chercher longuement en vain. Assez restreint pour qu’à la longue toute fuite soit vaine. C’est l’intérieur d’un cylindre régulier surbaissé ayant cinquante mètres de pourtour et seize de haut pour l’harmonie.	Espace où des corps vont cherchant chacun son dépeupleur. Assez vaste pour permettre de chercher longuement en vain. Assez restreint pour qu’à la longe toute fuite soit vaine. C’est l’intérieur d’un cylindre régulier ayant 50 mètres de pourtour et 12 de haut pour l’harmonie.	Séjour où des corps vont cherchant chacun son dépeupleur. Assez vaste pour permettre de chercher en vain. Assez restreint pour que toute fuite soit vaine. C’est l’intérieur d’un cylindre surbaissé ayant cinquante mètres de pourtour et seize de haut pour l’harmonie.
* Note: {} designates words that cannot be transcribed from Beckett’s handwriting with absolute certainty.  Please click on the “Browse Notebooks” tab to view Beckett’s original notebooks and handwriting. ** To view transcriptions of all versions (up to 6) of the entire opening passage of the text click on the “Compare Drafts” tab.

This visual representation clearly outlines how Beckett edits by elimination, seeking as an end result to condense language to a minimal state. The opening words of the text serve as a primary example of this tendency. “Etablir un espace,” an infinitive followed by an object, is trimmed down to only the object (“Un espace”) with its indefinite article. Beckett subsequently drops the article, leaving “Espace,” before changing his mind on the word and choosing “Séjour” in its place for the published version. In this fashion, nearly every sentence of the text starts with a long collection of the author’s original thoughts, at times barely articulated, which through time lead to precise lexical choices. Beckett stands apart from other revisers in the fact that he rarely adds words to previous versions of Le dépeupleur.
            In addition, editorial decisions appear to be correlated to Beckett’s desire to create a poetic style within his prose. For example, Beckett seems to edit in a manner that creates more alliteration, a figure of style that dominates the overall text. In the original expression “un cylindre régulier surbaissé,” the “régulier” is edited out in order to make the [s] sound uninterrupted throughout the sentence. This could also explain why, among other well-documented reasons,1 Beckett plays with the cylinder’s height dimension, oscillating from 15 to 16 to 12, and finally sticking with 16 meters in the published version of the text.2 The French word “seize” maintains this proliferation of [s]’s throughout the opening scene.3 In this case, although Beckett significantly trims the text through revision, he does so in a way that enriches its stylistic harmony.

Translation as Further Revision

            One normally thinks of translation as an attempt to reconstruct an imaginative and formal construct indigenous to a particular culture within another cultural and linguistic medium not naturally hospitable to it. Thus, translation consists of labor outside of the original work. As a translator of his own texts from French to English and vice versa, Samuel Beckett, however, occupies a privileged, more inward-looking position. Clearly, he can and most certainly does take greater liberty with his translations, treating them in many cases as fresh treatments of the original subject and new works of art.4 In many situations, as seen with his French revisions of Le dépeupleur, translation continues the reductive work of Beckett’s revisions.

Published French version	Published English version
Séjour où des corps vont cherchant chacun son dépeupleur. Assez vaste pour permettre de chercher en vain. Assez restreint pour que toute fuite soit vaine. C’est l’intérieur d’un cylindre surbaissé ayant cinquante mètres de pourtour et seize de haut pour l’harmonie. Lumière. Sa faiblesse. Son jaune.	Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one. Vast enough for search to be in vain. Narrow enough for flight to be in vain. Inside a flattened cylinder fifty metres round and eighteen high for the sake of harmony. The light. Its dimness. Its yellowness.
* Remember: To view transcriptions of all versions (up to 6) of the entire opening passage of the text click on the Compare Drafts tab.

In the second line of the opening paragraph, Beckett removes the French verb “permettre” (to allow) before reaching his final English translation. In this case, the futile search that obsesses the cylinder’s inhabitants appears to no longer be a choice. Each person now will search rather than being allowed or choosing to search. In earlier French drafts, not the published French text, the search is accompanied with the adverb “longuement” (for a long time), which was probably removed because not all inhabitants roam the cylinder’s tunnels for long periods of time and all but one eventually give up and join the vanquished. In the English translation, all hope of escaping the harsh human condition of the cylinder, especially from the narrator’s perspective, appears to be lost.

Published French version	Published English version
Température. Une respiration plus lente la fait osciller entre chaud et froid. Elle passe de l’un à l’autre extrême en quatre secondes environ. Elle a des moments de calme plus ou moins chaud ou froid. Ils coïncident avec ceux où la lumière se calme.	The temperature. It oscillates with more measured beat between hot and cold. It passes from one extreme to the other in about four seconds. It too has its moments of stillness more or less hot or cold. They coincide with those of the light.
* Remember: To view transcriptions of all versions (up to 6) of the entire opening passage of the text click on the Compare Drafts tab.

            A more radical editorial reduction presents itself in the text’s fourth section (the one starting with “Temperature”). In the French, “une respiration plus lente” appears to be associated with the radical oscillation from hot to cold inside the cylinder. Subsequently, this notion of “slow breathing” is completely removed from the translation, in which only the temperature remains to alternate between extremes. Present research on The Lost Ones has concentrated heavily on Beckett’s obsession with the mechanical world seeping in and dominating the human one.5 The removal of any human notion within the description the motorized confines of the functioning cylinder fits nicely with such criticism. Perhaps Beckett removed the idea of human breathing because he didn’t want human behavior to be included in the description of this mathematically conceived machine, later moving on to physical consequences to beings.

Published French version	Published English version
Sol et mur sont en caoutchouc dur ou similaire. Heurtés avec violence du pied ou du poing ou de la tête ils sonnent à peine. C’est dire le silence des pas. Les seuls bruits dignes du nom proviennent du maniement des échelles et du choc des corps entre eux ou d’un seul avec soi-même comme lorsque soudain à toute volée il se frappe la poitrine.	Floor and wall are of solid rubber or suchlike. Dash against them foot or fist or head and the sound is scarcely heard. Imagine then the silence of the steps. The only sounds worthy of the name result from the manipulation of the ladders or the thud of bodies striking against one another or of one against itself as when in sudden fury it beats its breast.
* Remember: To view transcriptions of all versions (up to 6) of the entire opening passage of the text click on the Compare Drafts tab.

            Another editorial removal occurs in the opening sequences sixth section (beginning “Sol et mur”). In the French, attempts to make noise by crashing oneself against the parameters of the cylinders are done “avec violence.” In the translation, Beckett rids of this emotive descriptor in what appears to be an attempt to further show that despite efforts to mechanically search for an exit the cylinder’s inhabitants do not behave chaotically. They never try to break through the system’s walls, and they follow undeclared but understood laws of nonviolence. Thus, the mention of violence does not seem to suit the text.

Translation as Creative Revision

            Not all of Beckett’s straying from strict literal translation constitutes reductions of Le dépeupleur. In some instances, Beckett uses translation to creatively edit or even re-create the text, depending on how seriously one receives the changes. As a majority of critics have pointed out, Beckett’s translations can be viewed as extension or amplifications of the original.6 In the opening passage, small variations occur, which probably are mere adaptations of Beckett’s stylistic and harmonic tastes.

Published French version	Published English version
Température. Une respiration plus lente la fait osciller entre chaud et froid. Elle passe de l’un à l’autre extrême en quatre secondes environ. Elle a des moments de calme plus ou moins chaud ou froid. Ils coïncident avec ceux où la lumière se calme. … C’est dire le silence des pas. Les seuls bruits dignes du nom proviennent du maniement des échelles et du choc des corps entre eux ou d’un seul avec soi-même comme lorsque soudain à toute volée il se frappe la poitrine.	The temperature. It oscillates with more measured beat between hot and cold. It passes from one extreme to the other in about four seconds. It too has its moments of stillness more or less hot or cold. They coincide with those of the light. … Imagine then the silence of the steps. The only sounds worthy of the name result from the manipulation of the ladders or the thud of bodies striking against one another or of one against itself as when in sudden fury it beats its breast.
* Remember: To view transcriptions of all versions (up to 6) of the entire opening passage of the text click on the Compare Drafts tab.

For example, the French “et” (and) becomes “or”: “The only sounds worthy of the name result from the manipulation of the ladders or the thud of bodies”). And the adverb “too” is inserted to more clearly designate the relationship between oscillations of temperature and light: “[The temperature] too has its moments of stillness more or less hot or cold.”
           The most obvious example of creative translation in this passage, however, occurs with the inclusion of the narrator’s interjection of “Imagine then the silence” in the sixth section of The Lost Ones.

Published French version	Published English version
Sol et mur sont en caoutchouc dur ou similaire. Heurtés avec violence du pied ou du poing ou de la tête ils sonnent à peine. C’est dire le silence des pas. Les seuls bruits dignes du nom proviennent du maniement des échelles et du choc des corps entre eux ou d’un seul avec soi-même comme lorsque soudain à toute volée il se frappe la poitrine.	Floor and wall are of solid rubber or suchlike. Dash against them foot or fist or head and the sound is scarcely heard. Imagine then the silence of the steps. The only sounds worthy of the name result from the manipulation of the ladders or the thud of bodies striking against one another or of one against itself as when in sudden fury it beats its breast.
* Remember: To view transcriptions of all versions (up to 6) of the entire opening passage of the text click on the Compare Drafts tab.

The French “c’est dire” (that’s to say) implies a completely disinterested narrator. Some research has been done on the extradiegetic narrator of The Lost Ones,7 but with his new imperative command to the reader, the English-language narrator approaches his audience more intimately than the French one.
            In other parts of The Lost Ones, the translation seems to be inspired, not by the last of the French versions, but from one or another of the earlier drafts.

Published French version	Published English version
Les muqueuses elles-mêmes s’en ressentent.	The mucous membrane itself is affected.
* Remember: To view transcriptions of all versions (up to 6) of the entire opening passage of the text click on the Compare Drafts tab.

All rough versions of Le dépeupleur contain the following sentence, “Les muqueuses elles-mêmes sont affectées,” which translates literally to “The mucous membrane itself is affected,” the published translation. In published French, however, Beckett chooses “Les muqueuses elles-mêmes s’en ressentent.” The overall meaning of the sentence doesn’t change too much. “Se ressentir” and “être affecté” are closely related synonyms, although “se ressentir” implies the idea of continuation (re-). But “se ressentir” also correlates with Beckett’s obsession with the alliterated [s] in the opening of the text. In English, this alliteration returns with the repeated [m] sound of the phrase, but the alliteration in not as rich as the French one.     

Conclusion: Translation as Final Version?

            Samuel Beckett uses his position as self-translator to perpetuate his process of revision as reduction. Throughout his French drafts, he excises his text to arrive at a minimalist “final” printed version. This published French text undergoes further editorial cutting while going through Beckett’s translating process. Exceptions to this principle appear to be connected directly to Beckett’s fixation with style, in this case, the need for alliteration, or his need to play with narrative voice, as the “Imagine” interjection represents. In the end, the English translation, although closely related to the French final version, stands on its own as a new, creative text from the same author. Le dépeupleur exists as two texts in one infrastructure in its English, plural The Lost Ones.

Last updated: June 30, 2006