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Saturday, January 13, 2007

Black Diamond of Pessimism



















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:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Beckett facts. I am enjoying.