I’ve been on a tear with misquotations lately, and once I started, I seemed to find them everywhere.
Some are technical. Some are philosophical. Some are lyrical. Some are misreadings. And some I cannot help but call deliberate. Today, we’re looking at one of those.
I don’t know how much of Samuel Beckett’s huge oeuvre actually made it into the zeitgeist. “Endgame” certainly did, “Waiting for Godot” did. But I don’t see too many people reading “Whoroscope”, perhaps for good reason (I too haven’t read it).
The weirdest thing about Beckett for me, however, is that he’s both hermetic and visceral. None of his works seem to make much sense, and he’s still so evocative—and thus eminently quotable.
Some of my favorite quotes of his come from his 1983 prose poem “Worstward Ho”, from his book “Nohow On”, which collects three pieces, among them this bit of quasi-logorrhea (I use the term with the utmost admiration, because it takes a genius to pluck “Somehow on. Till nohow on.” from the aether). The irony of using a run-on sentence to describe his sparse three-word-per-sentence poem is not lost on me, by the way.
My favorite passage, of course, is the oft-cited “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
It’s a beautiful little passage on learning, growing, and picking yourself up again.
No, it isn’t. It’s a passage on the inescapable futility of life, and how it tears at us until we’re not better. We’re worse.
“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
The preceding sentences change the entire meaning. You won’t try anything new. You’ll do the same thing over and over again, and you might get better at it. It doesn’t matter. Nothing will save you from the loop. At the end of the cycle, you’ll be back, with slightly more bruised knees, and slightly more broken.
It gets worse, though, right in the next paragraph.
“Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all.”
Maybe you don’t even get to become better, or learn, in your cycle of futility. Maybe you get worse every time. And you still try.
And it gets worse again.
“All of old. Nothing else ever. But never so failed. Worse failed. With care never worse failed.”
You try so hard, you’re so careful. And still, you fail ever worse.
And even as Beckett’s poem ends, the narrator does not get reprieve. No one ever does.
“At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.
Said nohow on.”
You have to go on.
This, of course, makes for a considerably less fun motivational poster.