Peintres de l’empêchement. Sharper and terser than its predecessor, this essay on the van Velde brothers was commissioned by Derrière le Miroir, publication of Galerie Maeght in Paris, where it appeared in June, 1948.
Three Dialogues. The best known of Beckett’s writings on painting was published in transition December, 1949, and it was subsequently translated into French by its author. In whole and in part, in the original English and in French translation, it has been widely quoted.
Henri Hayden, bomme-peintre. Written in January, 1952, for a private showing of Hayden’s paintings, this piece was published in Cabiers d’art of November 1955. Although no other painter is mentioned in the piece, Beckett ‘reads’ Hayden’s landscapes and still lives as impersonal, tragicomic notes on the subject-object crisis, rather than on the new ground of Bram van Velde.
Hayden. This brief anonymous note was written in June, 1960 for a Hayden exhibition at Galerie Suillerot in Paris.
Hommage à Jack B. Yeats. Published in Us Lettres Nouvelles (April, 1954), this tribute was written for a Paris exhibition of the eighty-three year old Irish painter. The extraordinary translation was published in a catalogue of Yeats’ paintings edited by James White.
Bram van Velde. This paragraph is the introductory epigraph to the deluxe edition of Bram van Velde published by Pozzo Brothers in Turin, 1961.
Pour Avigdor Arikba. Written in 1966 for a Paris exhibition of Arikha’s drawings, this lyric of criticism was translated by Beckett in 1967 for Arikha exhibitions in England and the United States.
Part IV
Human Wishes. Although Beckett filled three notebooks with material for a play on the relationship of Dr Samuel Johnson and Mrs Thrale, only this scenic fragment of 1937 was actually composed. Pauses, repetitions, and formal patterns are strikingly prophetic of his drama to come. This scene was first published in Ruby Cohn’s Just Play: Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980.
1. La ‘généreuse avance’ en question se montait, je crois me rappeler, à 25000 anciens francs.
2. Il s’agissait d’En attendant Qxktt a Paris. Ies theatres refuserent longtemps cette pièce ou il n’y avait ‘ni femme, ni communiste, ni curé’. La genérale eut lieu finalement en janvier 1953.
3. Les Temps moderns en avaient interrompu la publication après la première livraison. Cette nouvelle parut sous le titrc ‘La Fin’ dans Nouvelles et Textcs pour rien.
4. Georges Lambrichs était alors secrétaire du comité de lecture des Editions de Minuit. ‘Le Calmane est également pani dans Nouvelles et textes pour rien.
5. De fait, ces tentatives parurent ensuite sour le titre Textes pour rien.
* Beckett’s fair copy ends here, but the holograph continues to Taylor.’
Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment Page 17
