Shelf #1
| Frightful day again & I fürchterlich erkältet. | 05/10/36 Beckett 2003, 12 | Beckett repeatedly struggles with health problems while in Germany. Nevertheless, on this day at the very beginning of his trip, he drags himself to the first of many visits to the Hamburg Kunsthalle. |
| Geld more & more knapp. | 09/10/36 Beckett 2003, 14 | “Scholle in the Fischbrätküche & coffee in Stadtschänke. Then splashed 12 RM odd on Baedekers Deutsches Reich. Geld more & more knapp,“ Beckett writes just a week after his arrival. His mother regularly transfers small sums of money, but he has to use them frugally. In addition to accommodation and food, he spends his money mainly on books. |
| No fliessendes Wasser, no Zentral Heizung, nothing. | 05/10/36 Beckett 2003, 12 | In 1936, not all hotel rooms in Germany had running water. The first boarding house in Hamburg in which Beckett stays, with Otto Lembke at Colonnaden 47, turns out to be a poor choice. „Hardly in room before I began to hate it.” He moves out as soon as he can. |
| …unspeakable Eintopf, pfui! | 13/12/36 Zitiert aus Tophoven 2005, 20 | From 1933, every fourth Sunday during the winter months in National Socialist Germany was declared an “Eintopfsonntag” (Stew Sunday), on which all households were obliged to forgo a proper Sunday roast and donate the difference in cost to the Winterhilfswerk. Beckett learns about this propaganda campaign soon after his arrival in Hamburg and comes to detest the stews on offer in all restaurants. |
| Hundewetter again. | 18/10/36 Beckett 2003, 17f. | The first few days after his arrival in Hamburg, Beckett is welcomed by bad weather. He is, however, not to be deterred: “Out early, trotz dem Wetter.” (19 October). The following day: “Floods im Alten Land the worst ‘seit Menschengedenken’!“ |
Shelf #2
| …even to listen is an effort & to speak ausgeschlossen. | 18/10/36 Beckett 2003, 19
Brief an McGreevy, 9/10/36 Letters I, 375: | Beckett initially finds it difficult to follow the German conversations at Pension Hoppe in Hamburg. He is frustrated: “I am altogether absurd & inconsequential. How absurd, the struggle to learn to be silent in another language.” Shortly after his arrival, he writes to his friend Thomas MacGreevy: “It is nice to be away, but when I have seen the pictures & struggled into the language I don’t think I’ll be sorry to go.” |
| Schadet nicht. | 25/10/36 Beckett 2003, 23 | “Schadet nicht”, Beckett writes at the end of October about his decision to stay in Hamburg a little longer. Just as he notes down German vocabulary while reading, his learning of idioms is reflected in his diary. On 22 October, about his money worries: “Schön ist das nicht.” (21) Although he felt “excited & energetic” throughout the day, he writes on 2 November: “Es ahnt mir nichts Gutes” (30). |
| Crawled down to SS (Stadtschänke, not Saalschutz) | 17/10/36 Beckett 2003, 17 | Beckett’s exercise books and diary capture his impressions of National Socialist language use. His subtle mockery reflects a clear rejection of the clichéd and uniform character of totalitarian language. In Berlin, he notes wryly: “KDF = Kraft durch Freude, not Kaspar David Friedrich.” (qtd. in Tophoven 2005, 92). |
| Der Hund kam in die Küche… | 24/01/37 Tophoven 2014, 348 | While at the Stadthaus in Weimar, Beckett notes: “Hitlerjugend a K.d.F. [= Kraft durch Freude] revelry in next room including Der Hund kam in die Küche...” It is likely that he was already familiar with this recursive joke song from his visits to Kassel. Significantly, the song resurfaces much later in his oeuvre in English translation: the second act of his play ‘Waiting for Godot’ begins with Vladimir singing the whole song. |
Shelf #3
| Zweifel | “Dante, Vico, Bruno, Joyce” SW IV 504 | "[English] is abstracted to death. Take the word ‘doubt’: it gives us hardly any sensuous suggestion of hesitancy, of the necessity for choice, of static irresolution. Whereas the German ‘Zweifel’ does.” In this much-quoted sentence from his 1929 essay “Dante, Vico, Bruno, Joyce”, Beckett describes the appeal of German: to him, it is a transparent, plastic, visual language. He is drawn to words that are “alive” (505). |
| a mixture of rum and Reisefieber | Dream of Fair to Middling Women 29 | Beckett described his novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women, written in 1932 but only published posthumously, as his “German Comedy”. Its setting is based on his stays in Kassel from 1928 to 1932 and his relationship with his cousin Peggy. German compound words, their parodies and phonetic echoes can be found on almost every page, from ‘abgeknutscht’ (80) and “Gedankenflucht” (45) to “Himmisacrakrüzidirkenjesusmariaundjosefundblütigeskreuz!” (239) |
| Beltschmerz | “What a Misfortune”, More Pricks Than Kicks SW IV 166 | The short story collection More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), in which he reworked parts of Dream, shows Beckett's delight in puns and wordplay. In "What a Misfortune", the German word Weltschmerz becomes a very concrete Beltschmerz: ‘when he looked round and saw what they called a poet allowing his bilge to interfere with his business he developed a Beltschmerz of such intensity that he was obliged to leave the room.’ |
| blick from this Punkt | Dream of Fair to Middling Women 160 | Beckett's early essay “Proust” (1931) already shows his preference for German compounds over Latinate vocabulary. In discussing Proust's novel “Albertine”, he remarks: “the multiple aspects (read Blickpunkt for this miserable word) did not bind into any positive synthesis.’ (SW IV, 550). The word reappears in the novel Dream: “He only has to place himself at this centre of focus, […] blick from this Punkt [...] and he shall command an ample perspective.” |
| Wörterstürmerei | Disjecta 52 | While in Berlin, Beckett developed an intellectual friendship with the bookseller Axel Kaun. In July 1937, he drafted a letter to Kaun in German, articulating a poetics he describes as “Wörterstürmerei,” in which language is conceived as a “veil” that must be torn apart in order to reach the “nothingness behind it.” It is for this purpose that Beckett turns to foreign languages, not only German, but especially French, which would become his principal medium of literary expression. |