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.