“Downhill begins this year,” Samuel Beckett announced with grim satisfaction in 1966. Even this may have been a slip, allowing the possibility of there having been an “up” from which to come down.

Faced with the threatening possibility of hope, Beckett liked to get his retaliation in first. Usually his defences were in place in advance: “All I suppose as well as can be expected by one with my powers of expectations.” Thus armoured, he could allow himself to send his version of a cheery wave from holidays in Italy: “Nothing to tell that’s not better untold. Aches worse than in Paris, weather filthy.”

When having serious trouble with his teeth, he reported that speech and eating were almost impossible, adding with relish “But drink and silence unimpaired.”

“Moments here when it’s not as bad as all that to be not quite dead,” SB wrote. “Now such inertia & void as never before. I remember an entry in Kafka’s diary. ‘Gardening. No hope for the future.’ At least he could garden. “

SB said he had “a strong weakness for oxymoron”. And he is a master of minimalism, way before minimalism becoming a fashionable mob.  But in this sumptuous letter (by his standards) to Barbara Bray, who later became his long-term confidante and lover, SB was almost optimistic (again, by his standards):

“Far from being troubled by your letter I am very touched that you should tell me about your great sorrow. I wish I could find something to comfort you. All I could say, and much more, and much better, you will have said to yourself long ago. And I have so little light and wisdom in me, when it comes to such disaster,  that I can see nothing for us but the old earth turning onward and time feasting on our suffering along with the rest. Somewhere at the heart of the gales of grief (and of love too, I’ve been told) already they have blown themselves out. I was always grateful for that humiliating consciousness and it was always there I huddled, in the innermost place of human frailty and lowliness. To fly there for me was not to fly far, and I’m not saying this is right for you. But I can’t talk about solace of which I know nothing. And beyond all courage and reasonableness I am sure that for the likes of you and me at least it’s the “death is dead and no more dying” that makes it possible (just) to go on living. Forgive this wild stuff, I’m not one to turn to in time of trouble. Work your head off and sleep at any price and leave the rest to the stream, to carry now away and bring you your other happy days.”