all that fall
By Samuel Beckett (1956), 1988
All That Fall is Beckett’s first radiophonic play and his first work to feature a woman as the central character. The painting was a poster image for a staging of the play in Rio de Janeiro in 1988. It was a single impulse, the brush flowing on paper intuitively portraying the child and the elderly. The child tries to catch the couple’s attention to return a lost object while they return home from the train station. The road is white; it could be day or night. A blank horizon sits in the distance.
She hears Franz Schubert's Death and the Maiden coming from an old house.
Jerry catches up to them to return a ball that Mr. Rooney has dropped. When pressed by his wife, all he will say is that: "It is a thing I carry about with me” When pushed for details, the boy says: "It was a little child fell out of the carriage, Ma’am … Onto the line, Ma’am … Under the wheels, Ma’am." Though never explicitly stated by Beckett within the course of the play, the fallen child is suggested to be a girl.
"The question as to which Willie is 'after' – Winnie or the revolver – is like the question in All That Fall as to whether Mr Rooney threw the little girl out of the railway-carriage or not. And the answer is the same in both cases – we don’t know, at least I don’t … I know creatures are supposed to have no secrets for their authors, but I’m afraid mine for me have little else." Samuel Beckett to Kay Boyle, 7 October 1961. Quoted in Knowlson, J., ‘'Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'’ (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 485.