‘Echo's Bones’ is a short story by

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

that was originally written in 1933. The Europa Press published a stand alone version of the story in 1935. This edition included 25 copies signed by Becket. The title is an allusion to the myth of

Echo and Narcissus Echo and Narcissus is a myth from Ovid's ''Metamorphoses (poem), Metamorphoses'', a Roman literature, Roman classical mythology, mythological epic poetry, epic from the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan Age. The introduction of the ...

, in the version told in

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

, ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin Narrative poetry, narrative poem from 8 Common Era, CE by the Ancient Rome, Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its Cre ...

'', Book III. In particular, the line "Echo's bones were turned to stone" is in Beckett's '' Dream of Fair to Middling Women'' notebook.

Background

Beckett's collection '' More Pricks Than Kicks'', ten stories in the life and death of one Belacqua Shuah, was accepted for publication by

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his busines ...

in 1933. The editor asked Beckett for an additional story to help bulk up the physical book. Beckett agreed, and chose to place the new story after the existing ten, and did so by giving an afterlife to Belacqua. His editor, Charles Prentice, quickly rejected the story as too strange: Beckett later (1962) gave the typescript to Lawrence Harvey. The typescript and a carbon copy ended up in Beckett archives, and has been available for study by scholars. Beckett rewrote the ending of "Draff", the last story in ''More Pricks Than Kicks'', taking text from "Echo's Bones". The opening paragraph was published in Chris Ackerley's ''Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy'' (Journal of Beckett Studies, 1998). The title itself was used as the title of a poem, and then for his poetry anthology ''Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates''. The story was finally published in 2014, by

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...

in the U.K. and

Grove Press Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United S ...

in the U.S, edited by Mark Nixon, the director of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading. In addition to the story, ''Echo's Bones'' contains an introduction, extensive annotations (longer than the text), and the 1933 letters from Prentice to Beckett.

Summary

Belacqua finds himself alive again, and spends his time sitting on a fence, smoking cigars. After what seems like forty days, Belacqua is approached and ravaged by Zaborovna Privet,Russian забор (zabor) is a fence, and a

privet A privet is a flowering plant in the genus ''Ligustrum''. The genus contains about 50 species of erect, deciduous or evergreen shrubs or trees, with a native distribution from Europe to tropical and subtropical Asia, and with one species each ...

is a shrub commonly used to make hedgerows. and ends up sitting on a fence again. He is then struck by a stray golf ball, hit by Lord Haemo Gall of Wormwood, an impotent giant, whose main concern is producing a male heir. Belacqua is kidnapped for this purpose, but the child turns out to be a girl. Belacqua ends up sitting on his own tombstone. The unnamed groundsman in "Draff" who tended to Belacqua's grave is back, now named Mick Doyle and intending to rob the grave. Belacqua bets Doyle he'll find nothing there. Only stones are found.

References

{{Beckett-prose 2014 fiction books Books by Samuel Beckett Short stories by Samuel Beckett Fiction about the afterlife 1933 short stories 2014 short stories

Background

Summary

Further reading

References