A holograph manuscript page from Samuel Beckett's "Stirrings Still".

No individual’s handwriting quite resembles any other. In critical literature studies, manuscript examination is an attempt to follow a work from its ultimate appearance in print back to its original expression: to trace the path of aesthetic imagination from inspiration to dissemination. The false starts, the revisions — all of these provide a window into the means by which the artist uses his craft to shape the original vision. The ease of composition in the flow of the inked line; the difficult attempt to create a shadow of a creative epiphany for the contemplation of others: these speak to the nature of the creative personality. The study is not the biography of the person, but the biography of a single expression. As the author revises, the vision is purified, criticized, rotated to examine all of its surfaces, some of which are ultimately considered effluvia of the vision and therefore discarded, others of which are polished to a high sheen. Often, in revision, there is a two-fold responsibility placed on the artist: first to erase the unique characteristics of the self that enter the work unconsciously in the process of composition, second to render it more communicable. In using pen-and-ink, the author mediates the vision through mechanics, and it is not the personality of the individual but the personality of the imagination that we find on the page. This study may tell us more about the internal life of a work than about the person who wrote it, and provide a window to the human imagination. In his book The Shakespeare Wars, Ron Rosenbaum discusses the importance of this kind of textual study not only to critics, but to directors and individual readers as well, and those interested in an extended discussion of this importance can turn to that book; we have absolutely no holograph manuscripts of any of Shakespeare’s plays, and Rosenbaum makes an excellent case as to why they continue to represent a Holy Grail of Shakespearean studies.

This is the same, but in a more complicated manner, with the typewriter. I have a friend who sends me letters through the mail that he composes on his typewriter. The mechanical mediation, as I say, may be far more complex than that of a hand-held writing instrument — the levels of mechanical mediation are more numerous — but criminal forensics experts also know that each typewriter, too, has its unique personality. Small chips and imperfections in individual letters and small line misalignments permit these experts to trace a document back to a unique mechanism that produces it. Like handwriting styles, no two typewriters are exactly the same. When I receive one of my friend’s letters, I know it’s his, and can’t come from anyone else: it is a small piece of himself, mediated through a unique instrument. From there to digital composition and reproduction is a large step because it eradicates the idiosyncrasies of the mediating technology. A given font can be used by anyone, and it looks precisely the same on every computer, on most printouts. It would take a Walter Benjamin to thoroughly and insightfully explore what this means to the work of art and the means of communication in the age of digital reproduction, and perhaps an Adorno or a Horkheimer to respond to it.

All this just to note a rather wonderful resource that has debuted on the World Wide Web relating to the work of Samuel Beckett. The Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, spearheaded by Beckett scholars Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon, aims to provide an online archive of Samuel Beckett’s holograph manuscripts and typescripts, as well as printed books relating to these studies. As seen in this demonstration page, users are permitted to read Beckett’s manuscripts in his own handwriting; transcriptions are also provided, as well as provenance information on the manuscript itself. The project has launched with two “modules” related to Beckett’s late works Stirrings Still and what is the word. Fortunately, the cost is something of a blessing to independent critics and scholars: the yearly access fee to the project for individuals is € 25 (about $40.00 US). This research provides the resources for a more nuanced and supple engagement with these works: confirming some suspicions and inferences in interpretation, invalidating others. It should prove to be indispensible to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Beckett’s writing.

Thanks to Rhys Tranter for slipping the note under my door.