Samuel Beckett's notes on Nazi Germany: "Cold, bare & bad food. Trying can do harm"

Long before he wrote the texts that would make Samuel Beckett one of the most celebrated and enigmatic authors of the 20th century, the almost 30-year-old Irishman set off on a journey to National Socialist Germany. Why the later author of “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame” traveled to the young Nazi dictatorship in the 1930s, especially in the icy winter and with almost no money, is unknown. In a letter to the poet Mary Manning, he justifies ex negativo: “It actually turns out to be a journey away from something rather than towards something.”

At that time, young Beckett had just given up his academic career. Although he had just finished writing his first novel, “Murphy,” he was unable to find a publisher for it. Plagued by money worries, he also suffered from bladder problems, anal ulcers and colds on his journey through Germany. On November 7, 1936, he wrote down the following sentence: “The past is a pang of conscience, the present is a burden, the future is an abomination.”

In six notebooks, the young Beckett documents his experiences and observations during the six months in which he traveled from Hamburg through numerous stopovers to Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and finally Munich. It was only after the author's death in 1989 that the notes appeared in the basement of his Paris apartment. They waited another 35 years for publication.

Samuel Beckett: "German Diaries. September 28, 1936 - April 1, 1937". English and German. Translated from English by Gaby Hartel. Edited by Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich. 1,352 pages, 78 euros

“Nothing more than the act of an obsessed neurotic,” Beckett describes his “idiotic diary.” When asked why he doesn't try to publish his travel impressions, he responds with the counter question: "Why is it customary to keep your fly closed?"

Nevertheless, the first publication of the “German Diaries” represents a substantial gain not only for a specialist audience, but also for interested readers. On the 1,350 pages, the English text can be found on the left and its translation on the right, making the Suhrkamp publication also the first publication in the original language.

The diaries are supplemented by a detailed commentary that provides historical classifications and intertextual references. Anyone who is not put off by the volume of the publication will quickly enjoy an endless log full of wordplay and self-irony. For example, the entry from January 8th in Berlin begins with: "Ulcer in crack worse than ever. Sitting, standing, lying down, everything hurts the same. Shitting is torture. May God's blessings happen."

After getting drunk to the point of memory loss the following day, the future Nobel Prize winner writes: "Wake up at 10 in my clothes, shoes and everything. Get to my feet unsteadily & have breakfast. Better crack! Go to Gendarmenplatz, still drunk."

He describes a concert in Café Vaterland as a “horrible band, conducted by a contortion artist with stiff joints”; For a Hamburg restaurant he finds the words "cold, bare & bad food. Trying it can do harm". And from Lübeck Cathedral, Beckett writes that he will never forget it - because of a "blasphemous", "short, strong and quiet" urination in the northern ambulatory.

Despite the physical discomfort, Beckett hunts through Germany's museum landscape and compiles seemingly endless lists of the works of art he sees. His interest in contemporary painting led him to meet the art collector Gurlitt, who gave him insights into his private collection. And in the so-called “chambers of horror of the degenerate” of the aligned museums and in their archives, Beckett studies everything that can still be seen by the German expressionists of the “Brücke art group” around Kirchner and Schmidt-Rotluff as well as by Dix, Kandinsky, Kokoschka, Chagall and many more.

During the six months in Germany, the traveler rather casually records drastic historical events such as the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan or the banning of Thomas Mann's writings and the revocation of his citizenship. Beckett's observations in fascist Germany seem clear-sighted when, in the first week after his arrival in Hamburg, under the impression of Hitler's propaganda speech "blaring" over the loudspeaker, he briefly comments: "Apoplexy. You have to fight (or burst) soon."

Beckett more easily succeeds in exposing “Nazi litany” precisely in its pathetic ridiculousness. Regarding a “never-ending tirade from the Führer” on the radio, he only notes: “Funny how everyone gives up and one after the other goes to bed while the speech is still in full swing.” For him, synchronized art is nothing but “serious kitsch,” and “the terms ‘historical necessity’ and ‘German fate’ make me want to vomit,” as he notes angrily after months in the country.

In many places, the motifs, tone and style of the diaries anticipate Beckett's later literary work. Against this background, the anti-Semitic outbursts of anger of his contemporaries appear through the author's lens as an expression of their existential loss; The “NS Gospel” is nothing but the doomed attempt to save a meaningful metaphysics into the modern age.

“The stranger sees more,” states Oliver Lubrich. The editor of the diaries and professor of comparative literature in Bern researches travel reports in the “Third Reich”. The special thing about Beckett's perspective, says Lubrich, is the lack of any fascination with the self-dramatization of National Socialism: "Grand narratives bore him out." According to the editor, the young author demonstrates the accuracy of “a professional correspondent” in his study of Nazi terms in public spaces.

For despite all the disinterest in the Nazis' self-presentation, Beckett does not miss the ideological changes, which are primarily reflected in the language. At one point, Beckett assesses that Goebbels is to be credited with more credit for building the “new Germany” through “sentimental demagogy” and “brilliant obscurantisms” “than all the others put together.” The young writer consciously used the time during the trip to refine the language and concepts of his art production: “How can I find a language to avoid totalitarianism?” is how Lubrich summarizes the central question of the diaries.

Still unaware of the diaries' studies of totalitarianism, Adorno reads Beckett's later play in his "Attempt to Understand the Endgame" against the backdrop of the Nazi horrors: "After the Second World War, everything, including the resurrected culture, is destroyed without knowing it; humanity continues to vegetate, crawling, following processes that actually even the survivors cannot survive."

Against the background of the diaries, the editor also emphasizes the plausibility of a directly political reading of Beckett, according to which the Godot protagonists Vladimir and Estragon are “two Jews who are waiting for their smuggler”.

After Beckett had the “chamber of horrors” unlocked in Halle, Lubrich added, “it may be that a cultural policy that has problems with certain trends in modern art will set in again in Halle this year.” Against this background, the text, although 90 years old, is certainly relevant today.

When Oliver Lubrich began his research project “Traveling into the Reich” in 2003, the idea that right-wing populism could ever again be a problem in Germany was still abstract. That has now changed. “Beckett’s question of how people who are susceptible to right-wing extremist, right-wing populist conspiracy narratives behave is incredibly topical.”