Abstract

The question of obscurity is raised immediately in the title of Beckett’s text, Ill Seen Ill Said. One of the more intriguing instances of one of those slippages between Beckett in French and Beckett in English precisely raises the questionable status of what is ill seen ill said. The French version reads “Si seulement elle pouvait n’Œtre qu’ombre.” 1 In the English, the sen- tence occupying the analogous position in the text reads: “If only she could be pure figment.” 2 Here we note the appearance of two sentences holding the seemingly equivalent positions within the versions of the text yet which nevertheless refuse simple assimilation to one another. What immediately stands out is this strange leap from “ombre,” in the French, to “pure figment,” in the English. “Ombre” tends to mean shadow, darkness, shade or ghost, whereas “pure figment” means a product of fictitious invention, a fashioned image. What is at issue here in this substitution?