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FUN de PARTIE Puns and Paradigms in Endgame
FUN de PARTIE Puns and Paradigms in Endgame
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FUN DE PARTIE:
Puns and Paradigms
inEndgame
Chris Ackerley
Beckett's bilingual texts and self-translations raise awkward questions as to
how two 'different'works can be equally parts of a greater whole or comple
mentary aspects of the 'same' text. In thispaper I consider how puns, allusions
and other linguistic paradigms constitute points of resistance, particularly when
sentiments originally written in one language seek expression in another. By
describing the 'machinery' of the pun in terms of 'sameness' and 'difference,'
I seek to identify its role in the dialectic of 'equivalence' and 'mis-matching'
implicit in thebinary relationship ofFin de partie and Endgame.
Q: Is lifeworth living?
A: Depends
on the liver.
in the French
Returning from his entretien with Father Ambrose, Moran
a
to
in
Martha's
home
in
vile
seek
solace
humour
arrives
stew,
Molloy
Re
but in vain: "Le stew me degut. Ou sont les oignons? m'ecriai-je.
Jeme precipitai dans la cuisine, a la recherche
duits, repondit Marthe.
des oignons que je la soupgonnais d'avoir enleves, sachant combien je
les aimais. Je fouillai jusque dans la poubelle. Rien. Elle me regardait,
cried. Gone
stew was
because
in the bin.
ing, of course, is the entire Proustian world called up by the words, "a
In his later self
the madeleine.
la recherche," the onions mocking
translation, Beckett makes no attempt to capture this echo, and the Eng
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316
Chris Ackerley
Tess of the
the echo of Thomas Hardy's
is speculative";
as
in
invoked
short story
Beckett's
previously
(chap. 35),
two
to
at
adds
the
translation
least
intertextual
(1972, 158),
"when pain
D'Urbervilles
"Yellow"
elements not present in the original. Poetic equilibrium has been, per
haps, restored, but the experience of reading the two texts is clearly
somewhat
association
of internal echoing
and external
...
M. Krap. ma FEMME.
Cette catastrophe.
(1995a, 57)
M. Krap.
... I have a
feeling my wife draws near.
That catastrophe.
(1995b,52)
said likea fool 'I wonder how you could translatethat?' Still she said
nothing. Then:
'it is absolutely
necessary
317
nevertheless
elements
(words)
can express
the
quite literallyinfinite
varietyof human experience,thephysical and all
other possible worlds. The three systems of language, phonology,
grammar and lexis, interact in complex ways, and since every sentence
or utterance conforms to the patterns of all three it has three structures
or
the language (linguisticambiguity),or outside language (referential
use
situationalambiguity).The essentialprinciple is thatof the infinite
or that
inDe Sophisticis Elenchis why thismust be: "For names are finite, and
so is the sum-total of formulae, while things are infinite in number.
Inevitably, then, the same formulae, and a single name, have a number
of meanings"
(165.a. 10-13). Redfern puts itmore simply: "The fact that
people and trees and elephants and cars all have trunks just proves that
there are more things than there are words"
(7). Puns come in many
shapes and forms, including the non-linguistic, but in this essay I shall
assume themost obvious manifestation:
that a word or utterance is am
biguous when
it is the 'same'
representa
who
word foie
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318
Chris Ackerley
is by no means
identical. Disjunc
similar, but the linguistic machinery
tion is inevitable, because different languages (1) resolve the continuum
of sound into different phonemes
(French has about thirty-five, most
Proustian
play;
German Endspiel more readily echoes the French. And yet, while the
three titles are in some respects different, they are equally 'the same';
to
[dezert]; English,
(pronounced
"Desert!"). When Hamm wishes
a baragouine?"
she blathering
know, "Qu'est-ce
qu'elle
("What's
about?"), Clov reports: "Elle m'a dit de m'en aller, dans le desert" (39,
'to desert'
(to abandon, to desert), that is, she is telling him to leave, per
to
leave
Hamm, as throughout the play Clov threatens to do; but
haps
this form of the verb corresponds closely with the noun, le desert (pro
nounced [dezer], English,
'the desert'). English offers almost the same
deserter
(accented
on the second
syllable)
and the
trochaic. Consequently,
but more
is impossible.
Consider
Hamm's
afflic
319
or scrutinized
"C'est
more
is not so easily
ambiguity
However,
head
Beckett's
have been
dropped,
retained: "Es
tropft, es tropft in
meinem Kopf' (1960, 33); which adds a poetic echo to themore pro
La vache!
Tu
l'aseue?
On dirait. (// lache le carton et arrange ses vetements.) A
moins qu'elle ne se tienne coite.
HAMM.
CoYte! Coite tu veux dire. A moins qu'elle ne se tienne
CLOV.
coite.
Mais
voyons!
InEndgame thisbecomes:
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(51)
320
Chris Ackerley
CLOV.
The bastard!
he's
HAMM.
doggo.
Lying you mean. Unless
laying
Laying!
he's
lying doggo.
HAMM.
Use
laying we'd
be
bitched.
(34)
In the English text, the distinctionbetween coite (coitus) and coite
(tranquil, silent) is not exact, but Beckett has found a stunning equiva
lent in the grammatical distinction between "laying" and "lying," which
in
accentuated. Endgame,
for instance, in this passage, offers in
the English text echoes that are not present in the original and which
testify to a greater complexity: "bastard," invoking God as the bastard
(or swine)who does not exist (55); "Use your head" as a reiterated
motif (53); and referencesto dogs thataremore insistentthan in the
French:
"Depuis
ma
naissance"
(28)
becoming
"Ever
since
I was
considerations
the following
complicate
largely ab
pun.
sequence:
NAGG. Ma bouillie!
HAMM.
Maudit
progeniteur!
NAGG. Ma bouillie!
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321
HAMM.
qu'a
Ah
9a!
(23)
NAGG. Me pap!
HAMM.
Accursed
progenitor!
NAGG. Me pap!
HAMM. The old folksat home!No decency left!Guzzle, guzzle,
that'sall theythinkof.
(9)
is equivalent,
present
phonic
present
in the one
half-echo
World War
nes";
way
popular Stephen Foster song, and thereby intimates its chorus, "All de
in a way that the original does not. In
world am sad and dreary...,"
are contrived by cultural reference,
two
the
effects
instances
these
rather than by linguistic means.
A
further complication
of the bilingual
pun concerns
the mirror
English elements of the text, each as seen from the perspective of the
the English
other tongue. The name Godot, for instance, combines
a moot
"god" with the French diminutive "-of9; it remains
morpheme
or French,
point as to how one whose primary language is English,
'nails'
the
While
to
effect.
the
portmanteau
responds emotionally
the
Clov (clou),Nell ('nail'), andNagg (Nagel) - retaina triangulation,
'hammer'
of Hamm,
the alienation
322
Chris Ackerley
as a Player King
(Hamlet)
royaume pour
(in
'garbage collector' or a 'road sweeper'
or
removes
a
one
chess
who
but
rather
(in
French),
night-soil
English),
board Knight. Beckett said that this echo was unintentional, but was
willing to accept the pun, and, indeed, pointed it out to others (Gontar
5.4.7),
to intimate not a
is in the French original, but the rhythm is similar and royaume invites
the intertextual echo; certainly, the English translation makes the allu
sion more determinate than the French phrase would be on its own.
as such;
yet a
echoes were
are complementary,
each needing
English textwould be inferior, "a poor substitute for the original" (qtd.
inGontarski, xxiii). Curiously, at least until the later,more truly bilin
gual works, the translations into French of Beckett's English originals,
such as Murphy and Watt, are much inferior, whereas
those texts writ
323
for as Gontar
translation of Shakespeare's
line, "Das Fest
by substituting Schlegel's
ist jetzt zu Ende," for Tophoven's
translation of the original French,
to get into the Theat
"Der Spass ist zu Ende." (The gremlins managed
rical Notebooks
textual notes with an unintended pun, "Das Fest is jest
zu Ende.")
a nos oignons, that is, let us get to the heart of themat
"In the beginning was the pun." He
says inMurphy,
further reflects, "what but an imperfect sense of humour could make
such a mess of chaos?" (65). Enter the element of irrationality, so cen
Revenons
ter. As Beckett
author can exploit the potential for multiple meaning, using the pun to
corral and control wild and whirling words and force them to behave; as
with
respect
to the way
that E. D. Hirsch
into conjunction,
and Gontarski,
553),
324
Chris Ackerley
human significance
essence of the pun, like that of itsOther, themetaphor, is to be found in
the irrational dialectic of 'same' and 'different,' themetaphor affirming
by analogy the 'sameness' of the diverse constituents that it unites, but
the pun accentuating the 'difference' of elements forced nilly-willy into
a shotgun marriage
compelled
by
linguistic coincidence.
To
translate
thepun is to further
attemptthe impossible; for thebest thatcan be
of 'equivalence'
and 'mismatching'; but even as that dialectic
the interdependence of the two texts (here, the French
acknowledges
Fin de partie and the English Endgame)
it asserts, in a manner com
dialectic
Works
Cited
(Paris: Minuit-Double,
1999).
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This content downloaded from 190.245.105.211 on Wed, 08 Jul 2015 16:50:42 UTC
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