ate wake of the Philosophical Investigations. Consider Samuel Beckett, whose
great Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) was published ¤rst in
French, then in the author’s own translation into English between 1951 and
- The relationship of the French to the English version of these short
poetic novels raises interesting stylistic questions.^24 It is also the case that
Molloy, say, in the German translation made by Erich Franzen, is quite true
to the spirit of the original. Here is the opening page of what was originally
a French novel—¤rst in English, then in German:
Beckett’s seemingly basic vocabulary, made up largely of personal and de-
monstrative pronouns, and ordinary verbs like “live,” “know,” “give,” “take,”
and “work,” applied to basic nouns like “mother,” “money,” “things,” “pages,”
most of these organized into simple declarative sentences, translates neatly
into German. And yet, like those propositions about “pain” or “colour” Witt-
genstein lays out for us, Beckett’s statements are highly elusive, indetermi-
nate, and mysterious. The reference to the “ambulance” or “vehicle of some
kind” in the fourth sentence suggests that it was at birth the narrator ar-
rived in his mother’s room, and so he has been there ever since, but the ref-
80 Chapter 4
[To view this excerpt, refer to
the print version of this title.]