Samuel Beckett reads two poems from his novel "Watt"

The Nobel prize winner, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) reads from one of his notable novels, Watt.

From Poetry Foundation:

The recordings were made in 1965 by Lawrence Harvey, professor of comparative literature at Dartmouth College, who traveled to Paris to meet with Beckett a number of times from 1961 to 1965 while researching his 1970 book Samuel Beckett, Poet and Critic. At one point during their discussions, Beckett recited several passages from his third but second-published novel, Watt. The book was written in English in the 1940s, mostly while Beckett was hiding from the Nazis in southern France. It's an experimental novel (Beckett called it an "exercise") about a seeker named Watt who journeys to the house of the enigmatic Mr. Knott and works for a time as his servant. "Watt" and "Knott" are often interpreted as stand-ins for the question "what?" and unanswerable "not," or "naught."

He begins with the 4th Addenda, later published as “Tailpiece” in Collected Poems, 1930-1978:

who may tell the tale
of the old man?
weigh absence in a scale?
mete want with a span?
the sum assess
of the world’s woes?
nothingness
in words enclose?


The next poem is the 23rd Addenda. It tells of Watt’s long and fruitless journey through barren lands:


Watt will not
abate one jot
but of what

of the coming to
of the being at
of the going from
Knott’s habitat

of the long way
of the short stay
of the going back home
the way he had come

of the empty heart
of the empty hands
of the dim mind wayfaring
through barren lands

of a flame with dark winds
hedged about
going out
gone out

of the empty heart
of the empty hands
of the dark mind stumbling
through barren lands

that is of what
Watt will not
abate one jot

----Portrait (c) Samuel Beckett, line drawing by Guillermo Contreras