I’ve never known a review to have had so many false starts. I finished Mercier et Camier a month ago and was full of ideas for the review, some of which I scribbled in the back of the book. Then I went on a trip and the book was left behind along with the ideas. I set about writing the review again when I got back two weeks later but the ideas I had scribbled in the book no longer made sense so I gave up and wrote a review of a book I’d read in the meantime instead. A couple of days later, I began the review of Mercier et Camier again. A paragraph of nonsense resulted and I abandoned it and reviewed yet another book I’d read since. It seemed that Mercier et Camier and my review of it were destined to keep missing each other. Today, I was determined to stop beating about the bush and to finally keep my appointment with Camier and Mercier, the two characters whose journey is the theme of this book. I thought I’d simply start at the beginning of their story and tell you of the excitement they felt at finally setting out on their long-planned trip, an excitement that was however a little spoiled by them missing each other at the rendezvous point and then because they were further delayed by a rainstorm so that they had to put off the trip till the next day. But they did set out eventually, after a few other false starts, and took a bicycle, a raincoat, an umbrella and a bag of food along with them. Any or all of these items may have been stolen because our heroes may have been thieves in a former life. The bicycle gets left behind near the the first pub they meet on the way, the bag is abandoned soon after and, well, you’ll have to read it yourself to find out about the adventures of the raincoat and the umbrella, which was a kind of divining rod, I might add, in the sense of a coin to toss. That’s a new idea isn’t it, tossing an umbrella to decide whether you’ll go in this direction or that direction. But that’s what they did, although the umbrella suffered in the process and was repaired by Helen, the 'any port in a storm’ person in this story. Helen isn’t a character in the real sense, she just gets mentioned, and you’re not surprised by that, are you, because really, when does a woman ever have a speaking part in a Beckett book? The answer is, as in the bible, not often. As for speaking parts, Mercier and Camier have quite extensive ones in this novel because it is very like a play, and not just any play, no, it is very like Waiting for Godot in that the two heroes come and go a lot, and sit around quite a bit too, philosophising. And there’s a third person, a kind of Godot/Christ character who is never quite present but is not absent either. In fact, it is he who narrates the entire thing. The first line of the book says: The journey of Mercier and Camier is one I can tell, if I will, for I was with them all the time. But he is never mentioned again! Or perhaps he is. Watt, you ask? Yes, Watt is mentioned at the end and there’s a possibility he may be the third person. I have yet to read all of Watt so I don’t know for certain. But if it came to the toss of an umbrella, I’d bet on it pointing at Watt.....................................................................................................The original title of Mercier et Camier was ‘Le Voyage de Mercier et Camier autour du pot dans les bosquets de Bondy’ (Mercier and Camier's journey spent beating about the bushes in the Bondy woods (or something to that effect)). Bondy is a real forest near Paris famous for highwaymen in the past - it is implied that the two heros themselves have been thieves in a former life. The English translation of the title was to be ‘The Pointless Voyage of Mercier and Camier into the Den of Thieves’ but Beckett didn’t like that version (it entirely misses the wordplay of the French title) and he shortened both titles to the present versions. This book was the first of Beckett’s work written originally in French. He said that he switched to French because for him, writing in French made it easier to write without style. Perhaps this was an exercise in stripping his writing down even further than he had before but perhaps it was also a recognition that French publishers were slightly more interested in his work than were English ones. He started Mercier et Camier in 1945, soon after finishing Watt. He had spent most of the war years living in the French countryside, and Mercier et Camier reflects that; it is full of descriptions of rural areas, once the two heroes finally get clear of the city they set out from. The really important fact about Mercier et Camier that you should know, yes you, the invisible third presence in this review alongside me and the book, is that it is very funny, perhaps the funniest of Beckett’s works - certainly the funniest I’ve read so far. There, I’ve done beating about the bush and have come to the point, finally.
Весьма парадоксальная личность...."— Велосипед видите? — сказал смотритель.— Я не вижу ничего, — сказал Камье. — Мерсье, ты видишь велосипед?— Ваш? — сказал смотритель.— Что-то, чего мы не видим, — сказал Камье, — существование чего утверждают только ваши слова, как мы можем говорить, наше это или чье-нибудь еще?— С чего ему быть нашим? — сказал Мерсье. — Разве эти собаки наши? Мы видим их сегодня в первый раз. А вы еще будете настаивать, что велосипед, если предположить, что он существует, наш? Но собаки не наши.""— У меня голод прошел, — сказал Камье.— Нужно есть, — сказал Мерсье.— Не вижу смысла, — сказал Камье.— У нас впереди еще долгий и тяжелый путь, — сказал Мерсье.— Чем скорее наступит конец, тем лучше, — сказал Камье .— Действительно, — сказал Мерсье.""— Ты мне больше мешаешь, чем помогаешь, — сказал Мерсье.— Я и не пытаюсь тебе помогать, — сказал Камье. — Я пытаюсь помочь самому себе.— Тогда все нормально, — сказал Мерсье.""— Я лягу на полу, — сказал Мерсье, — и буду ждать рассвета. Картины и лица будут проходить передо мной, дождь, словно когтями, будет стучать по стеклянной крыше, а ночь — перебирать свои оттенки. Мной овладеет страстное желание выброситься из окна, но я с ним справлюсь. И он проревел еще раз: — Я справлюсь!""— Добрый вечер, детки, — сказал Мерсье. — Проваливайте-ка отсюда!""— Мы, случаем, ничего не оставили в карманах? — сказал Мерсье.— Пробитые билеты всех сортов, — сказал Камье, — горелые спички, газетные клочки, на полях у которых стершиеся планы неотменимых рандеву, классическую одну десятую тупого карандаша, комки использованной туалетной бумаги, несколько дырявых гондонов, пыль. Жизнь, одним словом.— И нам ничего не может понадобиться? — сказал Мерсье.— Ты что, не слышал, что я сказал? — сказал Камье. — Жизнь .""— Что мы такого сделали Богу? — сказал он.— Отрицали его, — сказал Мерсье.— Только не говори мне, что он до такой степени злобен, — сказал Мерсье."
What do You think about Mercier And Camier (1994)?
Now we must choose, said Mercier.Between what? said Camier.Ruin and collapse, said Mercier.Could we not somehow combine them? said Camier.Dominated as it is by its despairing comedic dialogues and voyages to nowhere, I took this (seeing the 1970 publication date) to be something of a Godot rehash. On the contrary, its a pre-hash, composed just after Watt in 1946, Beckett's first in French, with the goal of erasing style. Yet the mastery of style seen in Watt was part of what drew me to it. Mercier and Camier does exude a style of its own, dismal/playful flouishes, some marvelous gags and descriptions, but it still isn't quite up to the ambition of Watt before it or the focus of Godot afterwards. But Beckett is Beckett, as always, and that is enough.
—Nate D
originally written in French as a sort of unconscious warm-up to Godot. Undderrated for its sort of lost status within the Beckett constellation. Satire for its peckish, peevish, acid humor(s). It's got a little bit of the 'big dumb, rather guileless guy' w/ 'short, fat, sharp, rather amoral guy' dynamic we see so often in narratives across the board- Flaubert's "Bouvard et Pecuchet", "Dumb and Dumber", Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress", Laurel and Hardy, Ralph Cramden and Norton, R2D2 and C3PO, Senor Quixote and his man Sancho- Estragon and Vladimir, for that matter. You get the drift.Exactitude and existential anorexia vie over the landscape of the narrative- it's how the characters have no real backgrounds to speak of, not much motivation or 'rounded-ness', the plot such as it is is also an aspect of tension and complexity in itself. It's got that tremulous approach to being that so much of the existential school contains, as does its literature- the best of it, I should say. The titular characters are very much exiles, from where is unclear and to where is dubious at best.The tension which propels the narrative onwards is that of the peevish, dryly hilarious conversation which exists between two sentient individuals almost by necessity. To live, in this text, is to squirm and wince, make resolutions and forget them the next instant, ache for something barely articulated, and to wander exacerbatedly in a foreign city (for what place is home?) in clothes that don't fit (what is the soul that it clangs against the flesh?) in a prickling rainfall. Merciless, hilarious, limpid, and dimly lit, agate-like with remorse(less)(ness)... "Fuck life!" Of course.Hell yes.Absolutely.What, are you crazy?Ah, forget it.Why?Why bother?Who cares?#We do.Indeed.There's a lot more where that came from.As always. As usual.Thank G......
—matt
Один из самых смешных текстов на всем белом свете. В очередной раз дивишься, до чего же надо было ненавидеть то, что делаешь (я о Е-Баевской), чтобы так его испортить. Вот здесь (http://spintongues.msk.ru/Beckett2.htm) лежит версия Михаила Бутова, в которой, при всех ее несовершенствах и отсутствии вменяемого редактора, жизни все же больше. А эта сага еще и потому универсальна, что легко адаптируется к любым условиям и временам. Попробуйте, например, читать ее как набор статусов фейсбука (включая призыв «только не сны») (шутка) (настоящие соображения будут позже).
—Max Nemtsov
