Book Covers: Company | Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett, complete works, 2009
Faber & Faber, London
Cover design & bespoke typefaces

For she shook off your little hand and made you a cutting retort you have never forgotten.

The voice comes to him now from one quarter and now from another

. . . Thus for example clear from above his upturned face, You first

saw the light at Easter and now. Then a murmur in his ear, You are

on your back in the dark.

And whose voice asking this? Who asks, Whose voice asking this?

And answers, His soever who devises it all. In the same dark as his

creature or in another. For company.

The voice alone is company but not enough. Its effect on the hearer

is a necessary complement.

Were your eyes to open they would first see far below in the last

rays the skirt of your greatcoat . . . till it vanishes . . . Vanishes from

your sight. Moonless starless night. Were your eyes to open dark

would lighten.

Being has a form. Someone will find it someday. Perhaps I won’t

but someone will. It is a form that has been abandoned, left behind,

a proxy in its place.

From:
‘Company’
by Samuel Beckett