Samuel Beckett Questionnaire

JEK A/1/2/4

1972

with Beckett's holograph manuscript replies to questions put to him by James Knowlson, a card from Samuel Beckett to James Knowlson 1972 and draft of a talk by James Knowlson on Happy Days 1972 James Knowlson note: These includes some fascinating answers, including that he much preferred Barlach's plays to his sculptures, that he was 'more concerned with W.B. Yeats's plays as writing than as theatre', that he had read Antonin Artaud 'for the odd blaze', as well as his usual 'all gone from mind'. There are also his attributions to detailed sources of all the French quotations in 'Oh les beaux jours' ('Happy Days'). There are seven pages of queries and answers. This is not on the original list and is a gift to the Beckett Archive at UoR. There is also Beckett’s original letter to James Knowlson of April 1972 in which he is asked about one of the quotations (W.B. Yeats' 'the eye of the mind') in 'Happy Days'. This is where he writes: 'I simply know next to nothing about my work in this way, as little as a plumber of the history of hydrology. There is nothing /nobody with me when I'm writing, only the hellish job in hand. The 'eye of the mind' in H.D. does not refer to Yeats any more than the 'revels' in Endgame to The Tempest, they are just bits of pipe I happen to have with me' etc. This important letter was not part of the original acquisition either. This letter was quoted in ‘Beckett’s “bits of pipe” ‘, a talk given by JK at the Ohio State University Conference on Beckett in May, 1981 and published in Samuel Beckett: Humanistic Perspectives, ed. S.E. Gontarski et al. There is a draft and a proof of this talk and details of the conference programme in a folder with these manuscripts.

2 folders

file

copies of Beckett's questionnaire and letter are available