From an Abandoned Work

[3] Translated into French by Beckett with Ludovic and Agnès Janvier, it was published as "D'un ouvrage abandonné" by Les Éditions de Minuit in 1967 and included in Têtes-mortes, a collection of short stories.

He appears unclear in his own head if she is even waving at him – he's already at a fair distance when he notices her – and puts forth the notion, calculated to reduce any significance that could be attributed to her actions, that she may simply have been exercising, her latest fad, and not really trying to communicate anything at all.

Despite his propensity towards violence – or perhaps to find excuse for it – he makes a point of never avoiding things that might exacerbate it whether these be small birds or animals or simply difficult terrain.

He describes being "set on and pursued by … stoats" which – perhaps significantly – he refers to as "a family or tribe"[11] rather than using the more common collective noun, pack.

The man's constant sore throat may well be a psychosomatic condition; he suffers from fidgeting and cites one instance where he collapses in some kind of fit.

[11] This evokes one of the central themes of all Beckett's work: Life may not be death but it is dying ("Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.

"[18] J. D. O’Hara has suggested that the title is actually a pun, the neurotic protagonist having stopped his therapy, "for which the story functions as a kind of anamnesis"[19][20] – a "talking cure".

"[21] Didier Anzieu commented that "[t]he originality of Beckett's narrative writing derives from the attempt (unacknowledged and probably unconscious) to transpose into writing the route, rhythm, style, form and movement of a psychoanalytic process in the course of its long series of successive sessions, with all the recoils, repetitions, resistances, denials, breaks and digressions that are the conditions of any progression.

"[22] A number of authors have looked at From An Abandoned Work from a Freudian perspective: Michel Bernard, notes that the protagonist displays all the signs of oedipal trauma: "The questions that assail him reveal a murderous wish directed toward his father; at the same time, they disclose his fear of being punished by his father and, thus, his secret love for his mother".

[23] Phil Baker claims that the text's "associative monologue about psychic distress still shows an unmistakable relationship to the talking cure".

Beckett biographer James Knowlson observes, for example, that "R. S. Woodworth’s Contemporary Schools of Psychology provided him with the general framework that he needed.

[8] There is no narrative, actual or implied; just a series of encounters and departures – with and from places, landscapes, natural phenomena, animals and, marginally, human beings.

While Bill, swearing and sweating, stopped to rest under pretence of admiring the view"[37] his son took the opportunity to try to explain Milton's Cosmology[38] to him.

"During breaks in Foxrock in January and April 1935, he himself linked the return of his night sweats and his ‘periods of speechless bad temper’ with his presence back in the family home.

[42] On first hearing a repeat of the BBC radio broadcast "Beckett [found he] was very impressed and moved by the cracked quality of Magee’s voice, [‘strangely déclassé][43] but still indubitably Irish’[44] which seemed to capture a sense of deep world-weariness, sadness, ruination and regret ... A few weeks later he began to compose a dramatic monologue",[45] especially for him.

Called initially simply "Magee Monologue"[46] it was originally conceived as "another radio play"[47] and was again firmly rooted in events from his own life; what resulted was Krapp’s Last Tape.

In 1978, the play was produced at the Stratford Festival with actor Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey) in the lead role.

[48][49] In 1980 the American actor-director Joe Chaikin expressed an interest in adapting the piece for the stage and sought advice from Beckett during a visit to Paris.

In the mid-1960s Beckett suggested the following set-up to Shivaun O’Casey who wanted to present the work in a similar fashion to Play: "A German translation appeared in a trilingual text (Stuttgart, Manus Presse, 1967), with original lithographs [printed at the Visat Studio, Paris, 1965] by Max Ernst.

"In 1987 Samuel Beckett gave artist Diarmuid Delargy[52] approval to create a number of etchings based on From An Abandoned Work.