Beckett fact no. 78.
In Dream Belacqua savours the phrase ‘black diamond of pessimism’ as an example of the ‘little sparkle hid in ashes, the precious margaret and hid from many.’
His Dream Notebook shows what a hoarder of such sparkles in the ashes Beckett was. John Pilling has produced a fine edition of it for the Beckett International Foundation, tracing all the various arcane sources, but, source-free, here are ten little sparkling black diamonds, in a mini-exercise in Beckett flarf:
The Chinese emperor was so intolerably moved that he requested the zither to be pruned
a dizard, a whifler, a funge
a fine round soft pap gives an excellent grace
Janisary Jesuits, that dissociable Society
I ran against the Lord with my neck, with the thick bones of my buckler
Firminius & the slave new born to his father’s impious doting butty
She ripped a fairly white cockade from her Bourbon bloomers
Mr Hemmerde, the poltroon in the poltrona
bloodied rafflesia in sombre Sumatra
Keep your bake shut
1 comment:
Thanks for the Beckett facts. I am enjoying.
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