The Making of Samuel Beckett’s Fin de partie/Endgame

This volume of the BDMP analyses the genesis of Fin de partie / Endgame. Described by Samuel Beckett as more ‘inhuman’ than Waiting for Godot and as possessing an ability to ‘claw’, it was his favourite among all his plays and yet also a work the genesis of which was particularly arduous. It took Beckett many years to complete the French version, and about the translation process he complained in 1957: ‘What a losing battle it is always’. This book explores that genesis through an analysis of all the surviving manuscripts and typescripts, retracing Beckett’s difficulty to begin, to continue and, eventually, to end the play. It also brings to light some hidden treasures, such as the dramatic fragment ‘Louis & Blanc’ and the Lord Chamberlain’s copy of the English translation, in which the censor’s pen excises a number of key passages, including the celebrated reference to God: ‘The bastard! He doesn’t exist!’

This volume is part of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (BDMP), a collaboration between the Centre for Manuscript Genetics (University of Antwerp), the Beckett International Foundation (University of Reading) and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (University of Texas at Austin), with the support of the Estate of Samuel Beckett. The BDMP (www.beckettarchive.org) digitally reunites the dispersed manuscripts of Samuel Beckett’s works and facilitates their examination. The project consists of two parts:

a) a digital archive of Beckett’s a manuscripts, with facsimiles and transcriptions, organized in modules;

b) a series of print volumes, analyzing the genesis of Beckett’s works.