''Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment'' is a collection of previously uncollected writings by
Samuel Beckett, spanning his entire career. The title is derived from the Latin phrase "disjecta membra," meaning scattered remains or fragments, usually applied to written work.
The essays appear in their original language of composition (English, French, or German), as stipulated by Beckett, since the volume is intended for scholars who should be able to read several languages. Beckett himself did not value these pieces much, seeing them as "mere products of friendly obligation or economic need".
The collection includes Beckett's famous essay on an early version of
James Joyce's ''
Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a bod ...
'' which originally appeared in ''
''.
Contents
* Foreword by Ruby Cohn
Part I: Essays at Esthetics
*
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...
...
Bruno
Bruno may refer to:
People and fictional characters
*Bruno (name), including lists of people and fictional characters with either the given name or surname
* Bruno, Duke of Saxony (died 880)
* Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne, ...
.
Vico..
Joyce – ''essay on Finnegans Wake''
* Le Concentrisme – ''an account of an imaginary poet and the movement supposedly founded by him'' (French)
* Excerpts from
Dream of Fair to Middling Women
''Dream of Fair to Middling Women'' is Samuel Beckett’s first novel. Written in English "in a matter of weeks" in 1932 when Beckett was only 26 and living in Paris, the clearly autobiographical novel was rejected by publishers and shelved by th ...
* German Letter of 1937 (German)
* Les Deux Besoins (French)
Part II: Words about Writers
* Other Writers
**
Mörike on
Mozart
** Feuillerat on
Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous E ...
** Leishmann's
Rilke translation
**
Thomas McGreevy
** Recent
Irish poetry
**
Ezra Pound
**
Papini on Dante
**
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey ( ga, Seán Ó Cathasaigh ; born John Casey; 30 March 1880 – 18 September 1964) was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.
...
** Censorship in the Street
**
Jack B. Yeats
**
Denis Devlin
** McGreevy on Jack B. Yeats
* Self
** The Possessed
** On
Murphy (to McGreevy)
** On Murphy (to Reavy)
** On Works to 1951
** On
Endgame
Endgame, Endgames, End Game, End Games, or similar variations may refer to:
Film
* ''The End of the Game'' (1919 film)
* ''The End of the Game'' (1975 film), short documentary U.S. film
* ''Endgame'' (1983 film), 1983 Italian post-apocalyptic f ...
** On
Play
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* P ...
** On Murphy (to Sighle Kennedy)
** Program note for Endgame
Part III: Words about Painters
*
Geer van Velde
* La Peinture des van Velde (French)
* Peintres de l'Empêchement (French)
*
Three Dialogues
*
Henri Hayden
Henri Hayden, born Henryk Hayden (December 24, 1883 – May 12, 1970), was a Polish painter. Born in Warsaw, Hayden lived and worked in Paris. Hayden studied engineering at the Warsaw Polytechnic from 1902 to 1905, while simultaneously pursuing st ...
Homme-Peintre (French)
* Hommage à Jack B. Yeats (French)
* Henri Heyden
*
Bram van Velde
* Pour
Avigdor Arikha (French)
Part IV: ''Human Wishes''
''A One-Act fragment from an early historical play.''
The play dramatized some episodes from the life of
Samuel Johnson and takes its title from his long poem ''
The Vanity of Human Wishes
''The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated'' is a poem by the English author Samuel Johnson. It was written in late 1748 and published in 1749 (see 1749 in poetry). It was begun and completed while Johnson was busy writ ...
''. The episodes taken dramatize Johnson's relationship with
Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi (née Salusbury; later Piozzi; 27 January 1741 or 16 January 1740 – 2 May 1821),Contemporary records, which used the Julian calendar and the Annunciation Style of enumerating years, recorded her birth as 16 January ...
, and as such, draw from her ''
Anecdotes'' and
Diaries Diaries may refer to:
* the plural of diary
*''Diaries: 1971-1976'', a 1981 documentary by Ed Pincus
*'' Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years'', a 2006 book by Michael Palin
*''OFW Diaries
''OFW Diaries'' is a Philippine television documentary ...
rather than the traditionally more popular ''
Life of Samuel Johnson
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy tran ...
'' of
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer ...
. The play was abandoned after the completion of the First Act.
The only known extant fragment was given by Beckett to
Ruby Cohn. Beckett left it in her Paris Hotel room shortly before the completion of her book of Beckett criticism, ''Just Play'', the first to outline Beckett's dramatic
juvenilia. The fragment was first printed as an appendix to that volume. The fragment was slightly annotated for the Disjecta collection, noting that Beckett produced a "fair copy" of the notebook material. The fragment, however, is only one of the "three full notebooks" that Beckett used while writing the play.
Beckett would reuse some of the dramatic effects, however. Critic
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...
writes in his essay on Beckett in ''
The Western Canon
''The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages'' is a 1994 book about Western literature by the American literary critic Harold Bloom, in which the author defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as ce ...
'' that the fragment, particular the characters' reactions to Leavett's entrance offer the first glimpses of Beckett's much later masterpieces ''
Endgame
Endgame, Endgames, End Game, End Games, or similar variations may refer to:
Film
* ''The End of the Game'' (1919 film)
* ''The End of the Game'' (1975 film), short documentary U.S. film
* ''Endgame'' (1983 film), 1983 Italian post-apocalyptic f ...
'' and ''
Waiting for Godot''.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Disjecta (Beckett Essay)
Books by Samuel Beckett
Essay collections