Mirlitonnades

BC MS 2460

1977

Samuel Beckett was born in Foxrock, County Dublin on Good Friday, 13 April 1906. Although throughout his life he had the reputation of being sombre, mysterious and reclusive, this popular myth hid a very private, yet immensely generous, gracious and caring person. On entering Trinity College, Dublin, Beckett developed his interest in art, music and literature. He was a gifted linguist who also enjoyed vaudeville theatre and the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. An academic career seemed to be the obvious option on graduating but, after spells teaching in Paris and Dublin, Beckett realised he was more suited to the artistic lifestyle he had encountered in Paris in the company of James Joyce. Having witnessed the intolerance of the Nazi regime towards writers and artists in Germany in 1936, Beckett famously decided that he preferred France at war to Ireland in peace, opting to live in France for the rest of his life. However, this bold decision was more than a mere gesture. Beckett was forced to spend much of the war on the run from the Nazis in the South of France working with the French Resistance, for which he was later awarded the Croix de Guerre. The end of the war marked a burst of literary activity for Beckett, who began writing, in French, a dense prose trilogy comprising Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. As a relaxation from this project, between October 1948 and January 1949, Beckett worked on a play entitled En attendant Godot - the work which brought him international fame and recognition and which redefined modern theatre. Further literary success ensued, culminating in him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. As the years progressed, Beckett's prose and drama decreased in length, as he found increasingly successful ways to express the inexpressible. Yet throughout his career, he remained a bilingual author, creating French and English versions of almost all his work. During the 1970s Beckett directed his major stage plays in Berlin in German, exhibiting another side of his character. His success in this field led him to direct his own plays created specifically for television - a medium which seemed perfect for the stark, imposing images of these later, minimalist pieces. Samuel Beckett died on 22 December 1989 and was buried in a private ceremony in the Cimetière de Montparnasse in Paris.

Manuscript with handwritten alterations by the author.First item lists 28 poems which Beckett planned to publish as the Mirlitonnades ; verso lists a further 6 poems.35 of these poems were published in: Poèmes ; suivi de Mirlitonnades / Samuel Beckett, Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit, 1978.Former reference number: BECKETT COLLECTION--MSS POETRY/MIR 01-03Large envelope marked ‘MIRLITONNADES’ in black ink, in Beckett’s hand. Contains thirty-six irregularly shaped scraps of paper which feature manuscript drafts of the brief ‘mirlitonnades’ (being a set of child’s brightly coloured ribbons, associated with fairgrounds) first published by Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1978 (although the sample here does not match exactly the published selection). Also contains six-leaf typescript of the poems, marked up ready for printing, 30 x 21 cm. Brown envelope, 23 x 16 cm, with listing in Beckett’s hand of ‘titles’ of these poems. Listing headed Poèmes courts 77, which is then deleted and, above it, ‘MIRLITONNADES’ added. The sequence on this list is different from that found in the published version. Envelope which contains all these items, 32 x 23 cm. These brief poems are written in black ink, with some in pencil and red felt-tip. The manuscripts are a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Types of paper used include pieces of card, variously coloured pieces of notepad paper, diary pages, the back of letters to Beckett which he has torn into mall squares, cheroot packets, part of a cardboard box which contained a bottle of whiskey, squared exercise-book paper and an air-mail envelope. These fragments contain original manuscript drafts and compositional sequences of the mirlitonnades. They are virtually all dated and located by Beckett. There is a French poem dated June 1980 and a single English piece dated Paris, 9 September 1981, but the great majority of the poems in this sequence are dated between February and July 1977 and located to Paris, Ussy or Tangier. Each fragment of paper contains the full draft sequence of the individual mirlitonnade it carries. The consistency of ink or pencil used in each individual item suggests that each poem was composed in its full draft sequence at a single sitting. This is reflected in the specific dating and locating of each leaf by Beckett. There are only three exceptions to this, in which black ink, red felt-tip and pencil notes mix. One of these is a poem dated 5 July 1979. Beckett used red felt-tip for the main work; a single draft and the date are in black ink. On the verso of the poem ‘fleuves et océans’, dated Ussy, Toussaint, 1977, are notes relating to what appears to be an initial draft of A Piece of Monologue (q.v.). There is a lengthy explanatory noted from James Knowlson, in a separate envelope inscribed ‘SAMUEL BECKETT MIRLITONNADES’ in Beckett’s own hand, reporting that this item was given to him by Samuel Beckett in Paris, September 1982. This note also lists the first lines, which function as titles, of each of the manuscripts of the mirlitonnades in this item, in the order in which they appear in Poèmes suivi de mirlitonnades (Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1978) and Collected Poems 1930-1978 (London, John Calder, 1984). Note is made of those missing from the manuscript sequence, the first lines of the unpublished poems and the dates of all the separate manuscripts within this item. He six-leaf printer’s typescript of the text of the mirlitonnades contains all thirty-five poems. They are separated by a small ‘+’ symbol. The poems are uncorrected.

36 items.

French

file

The copying of any of Beckett’s handwriting and sketches, or any unpublished letters, typescripts, manuscripts or draft versions of his work that differ from the final published version is not permitted.

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