‘Echo's Bones’ is a short story by

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

that was originally written in 1933. The Europa Press published a stand alone version of the story in 1935. This edition included 25 copies signed by Becket. The title is an allusion to the myth of

Echo and Narcissus Echo and Narcissus is a myth from Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', a Roman mythological epic from the Augustan Age. The introduction of the myth of the mountain nymph Echo into the story of Narcissus, the beautiful youth who rejected Echo and fel ...

, in the version told in

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

, ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...

'', Book III. In particular, the line "Echo's bones were turned to stone" is in Beckett's ''

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 ...

'' notebook.

Background

Beckett's collection ''

More Pricks Than Kicks ''More Pricks Than Kicks'' is a collection of short prose by Samuel Beckett, first published in 1934. It contains extracts from his earlier novel, ''Dream of Fair to Middling Women'' (for which he was unable to find a publisher), as well as ot ...

'', ten stories in the life and death of one Belacqua Shuah, was accepted for publication by

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business ...

in 1933. The editor asked Beckett for an additional story to help bulk up the physical book. Beckett agreed, and chose to place the new story after the existing ten, and did so by giving an afterlife to Belacqua. His editor, Charles Prentice, quickly rejected the story as too strange: Beckett later (1962) gave the typescript to Lawrence Harvey. The typescript and a carbon copy ended up in Beckett archives, and has been available for study by scholars. Beckett rewrote the ending of "Draff", the last story in ''More Pricks Than Kicks'', taking text from "Echo's Bones". The opening paragraph was published in Chris Ackerley's ''Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy'' (Journal of Beckett Studies, 1998). The title itself was used as the title of a poem, and then for his poetry anthology ''Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates''. The story was finally published in 2014, by

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

in the U.K. and

Grove Press Grove Press is an United States of America, American Imprint (trade name), publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it in ...

in the U.S, edited by Mark Nixon, the director of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading. In addition to the story, ''Echo's Bones'' contains an introduction, extensive annotations (longer than the text), and the 1933 letters from Prentice to Beckett.

Summary

Belacqua finds himself alive again, and spends his time sitting on a fence, smoking cigars. After what seems like forty days, Belacqua is approached and ravaged by Zaborovna Privet,Russian забор (zabor) is a fence, and a

privet A privet is a flowering plant in the genus ''Ligustrum''. The genus contains about 50 species of erect, deciduous or evergreen shrubs, sometimes forming small or medium-sized trees, native species, native to Europe, north Africa, Asia, many in ...

is a shrub commonly used to make hedgerows. and ends up sitting on a fence again. He is then struck by a stray golf ball, hit by Lord Haemo Gall of Wormwood, an impotent giant, whose main concern is producing a male heir. Belacqua is kidnapped for this purpose, but the child turns out to be a girl. Belacqua ends up sitting on his own tombstone. The unnamed groundsman in "Draff" who tended to Belacqua's grave is back, now named Mick Doyle and intending to rob the grave. Belacqua bets Doyle he'll find nothing there. Only stones are found.

References

{{Beckett-prose 2014 fiction books Books by Samuel Beckett Short stories by Samuel Beckett Fiction about the afterlife 1933 short stories 2014 short stories

Background

Summary

Further reading

References