Here are the Best 3 Poems by Samuel Beckett with a short explanation.
Cascando
why not merely the despaired of
occasion of wordshed
is it not better abort than be barren
the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives
saying again
if you do not teach me, I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me, I shall not be loved
if I do not love you, I shall not love
the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words
terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending
I and all the others that will love you
if they love you
unless they love you
Explanation
Cascando is a musical word used to describe a reduction in loudness or speed. In July 1936, Irish author Samuel Beckett uses the same phrase to name one of his most well-known poems. The poet most likely recalls an unrequited love and all the isolation that comes with it. So that the sentiments of agony may be properly expressed, the language is dark and direct. The vocabulary in Cascando alternates between the passionate and the reluctant.
Beckett is able to capture the bewildered and humiliated battle of the lover holding on to his sentiments. A sequence of powerful and serious analogies that depict the misery of love unroll before the reader, leaving them worried. In spite of the text’s use of precise and intimate visuals, everybody may recognise themselves in it. A craving for passion mixes with the agony of impotence.
This poem is intriguing because it uses extremely specific language to describe abstract concepts like love and desire. In the poem’s last lines, Beckett uses straightforward language to incisively dissect the meaning of unrequited love. The agony of love consumes the poet, leaving a trail of unresolved issues and uncertainties in its wake.
It’s important to note that Beckett gave a radio play with music by Marcel Mihalovici the title Cascando, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1964. Calando was the original name Beckett had in mind. Producers brought up the fact that the word “calendos” is slang for Camembert cheese in French. The title selection for the poem may have used the same creative process.
Dortmunder
In the magic of the Homer dusk
past the red spire of sanctuary
I null she royal hulk
hasten to the violet lamp to the K’in music of the bawd.
She stands before me in the bright stall
sustaining the jade splinters
the scarred signaculum of purity quiet
the eyes the eyes black till the plagal east
shall resolve the long night phrase.
Then, as a scroll, folded,
and the glory of her dissolution enlarged
in me, Habbakuk, mard of all sinners.
Schopenhauer is dead, the bawd
puts her lute aw.
Explanation
I’m not sure what the “magic” of this “Homer dusk” is all about. However, I also believe that occasionally Beckett talks fairly matter-of-factly, suggesting that he/she may simply be reading Homer someplace in Dortmund when he/she comes across the “red spire of sanctuary,” maybe referring to the way that the sky’s crimson light reflects off a nearby Church. The claim that the poet “nulls” the “royal hulk” of the Church appears to imply that religion itself is being “nulled” (or put away).
It’s intriguing that Beckett refers to the church as “she,” using an archaic pronoun, because he subsequently moves on (or “hastens”) to the “violet lamp” and “K’in song of the bawd,” who is standing in front of him in the “bright stall.” To put it simply, he chooses the debauched prostitute “she” above the devout “she.” The “dog-tag” or “scarred signaculum” implies that the prostitute/bawd obtained the souvenir from a former client, a soldier.
The fact that it is called “purity quiet,” however, is perplexing because neither prostitution nor war is often linked with these terms. It’s possible that the dog tag/signaculum symbolises the victory that comes after going to battle and coming back victorious. Until the “plagal” (or church note or music) “resolves” the “long night phrase,” the bawd’s eyes are “black,” signifying that the speaker and the prostitute are still under the authority of the church, if not subject to its theology.
It’s also unclear to hear that “Schopenhauer is dead.” Schopenhauer was a proponent of “transcendental ideality,” so perhaps the speaker is just expressing abrupt disenchantment. The night, his mistress has lost her allure for him: “The bawd puts her lute away.”
Untitled
one dead of night
in the dead still
he looked up
from his book
from that dark
to pore on other dark
till afar
taper faint
the eyes
in the dead still
till afar
his book as by
a hand not his
a hand on his
faintly closed
for good or ill
for good and ill
Explanation
There are a number of vague, untitled poems like this. In these, Beckett tends to use shorter, more breathless-seeming pronouncements. They are revisionary, i.e. “a hand not his / a hand on his”, or “for good or ill / for good and ill”, suggesting that the speaker is deliberating AND enunciating simultaneously. Again, it is rather like a certain type of stream of consciousness (the revisionary/repetitive aspect seen in a lot of other modernist/late-modernist poetry as well).
It reminds me moreover of the character (perhaps I should simply call it “the voice”) of The Unnameable, in terms of the poet’s preference for the incessant and for the aporias of everyday self-expression. It seems that the voice is hollow (in the sense that it is negative) and full, suggesting that it is calling out in “the dead of night” (to use a cliché) or maybe into some other form of spiritual emptiness (insofar as it persists).
The infamous final phrase of The Unnamable is, for those who haven’t read it [SPOILER WARNING], “I can’t go on, I must go on, I’ll go on.” This paradox, sums up Beckett’s attitude to literature rather well, both there and in his poetry.