Lines retrieved from Beckett’s Malone Dies:
Now my sex, I mean the tube itself, and in particular the nozzle, from which when I was yet a virgin clouts and gouts of sperm came streaming and splashing up into my face, a continuous flow, while it lasted, and which must still drip a expect to see my sex again, with my naked eye, not that I wish to, we’ve stared at each other long enough, in the eye, but it gives you some idea. 235
This cannot possibly last much longer. It was sometime in the afternoon, imposible to say more, for hours and hours past it had been the same leaden light, so it was very probably the afternoon, very. 239
And without knowing exactly what his sin was he felt full well that living was not a sufficient atonement for it or that this atonement was in itself a sin, calling for more atonement, and so on, as if there could be anything but life, for the living. 239
But between him and those grave and sober men, first bearded, then moustached, there was this difference, that his semen had never done any harm to anyone. So his link with his species was through his ascendants only, who were all dead, in the fond hope they had perpetuated themselves. 241
And but for the company of these little objects which I picked up here and there, when out walking, and which sometimes gave me the impression that they too needed me, I might have been reduced to the society of nice people or to the consolations of some religion or other, but I think not. 248
What tedium. I have missed the ebb. Did I say I only say a small proportion of the things that come into my head? I must have. 253
To be buried in lava and not turn a hair, it is then a man shows what stuff he is made of. To know that you can do better next time, unrecognizably better, and that there is no next time, and that it is a blessing there is not, there is a thought to be going on with. 254
No matter, any old remains of flesh and spirit do, there is no sense in stalking people. So long as it is what is called a living being you can’t go wrong, you have the guilty one. 259
To the lifelong promised land
Of the nearest cemetery
With his Sucky hand in hand
Love it is at last leads Hairy.
He had time to compose ten or twelve more or less in this vein, all remarkable for their exaltation of love regarded as a kind of lethal glue, a conception frequently to be met with in mystic texts. And it is extraordinary that Macmann should have succeeded, in so short a time and after such inauspicious beginnings, in elevating himself to a view of this altitude. And one can only speculate on what he might have achieved if he had become acquainted with true sexuality at a less advanced age. 262-263
For, when you come to think of it, in virtue of what possible principle of justice can a flower in the hand fasten on the bearer of the crime of having gathered it? Or was the mere fact of holding it for all to see in itself a felony, analogous to that of the receiver or fence? And if so would it not have been preferable to make this known, quite plainly and frankly, to all concerned, so that the sense of guilt, instead of merely following on the guilty act, might precede and accompany it as well? Problem. But nicely posed, I think, very nicely indeed.
Malone Dies 276
