Waiting for Godot was first performed on the 5th January 1953, this letter dates from the 17th January.
“Je serais heureux de collaborer à votre revue.”
Beckett apologises for the late reply to his recipient’s “si amiable lettre”, and says that he would be happy to contribute to his publication. He encloses three pieces written - with ten others of similar structure - a year or so earlier (sadly no longer present), which he says were first published in Deucalion (the French philosophy journal). Since that time, he writes that he has struggled to write (“Depuis je n’ai plus essayé d’ecrire”)[Beckett was notoriously ‘blocked’ after completing Textes Pour Rien]. He says, just because his recipient has asked for a contribution, he must not feel obliged to include what he (Beckett) has sent, adding “Je trouverai tout natural que vous les jugiez inutilisables” [trans: “I would find it perfectly natural if you deemed them unusable”], and that the only alternative would be to use an extract from L’Innommable (The Unnamable), “qui ne doit sortie qu’au mois d’avril” [trans: which will not be coming out until April“]. He adds that “Je vous en donnerai un tres volontieres, si cela fait hieux votre affaire” [trans: “I’d be happy to give you one, if that suits you better.”]
Beckett closes by asking his recipient to send his kind regards to Maurice Nadeau. Nadeau started the periodical Les Lettres Nouvelles with Maurice Saillet in the early months of 1953, and it seems possible this letter was to Saillet, although we have not been able to confirm this.
While the letter does not mention Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot - instead referencing other recent work, including his novel L’Innommable (The Unnamable) - it is nice to have a letter so contemporaneous with the first production of what would become Beckett’s best known work, a landmark play of the 20th century, and cornerstone work of ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’.
Page age-toned, otherwise in very good order.
