Endgame/Fin de Partie.

Question

Could anyone who knows more French than I do tell me if "Fin de Partie", the original French title of Beckett's play "Endgame" is a literal equivalent or has other nuances? Looking around the web, I've become confused - finding things like:
Chess allusion
partie: game, skirmish, â??partyâ?
End of civilization? Orâ??to paraphrase Churchill and Eliot, the â??beginning of the endâ??â??is the beginning of the play the beginning of the end or already the end (â??Finishedâ?);
The endgame is the last part of a chess game, I think, in which there is no way out for a player, or maybe in which the Queens have gone (I don't play chess). I presume "Fin de Partie" is the French term for this. But is there also an implication of "party"? (The end of the party.) ""Game" doesn't really have that implication, on the whole: a game isn't a party. Why isn't the French version "Fin de Jeu"? I'm sure there are good reasons.

I like the idea of "Fin de Partie" meaning "end of the party" as well as "end of the game", which broadens the life metaphor. I won't bore anyone by going into why I'm interested in this, but I'd be grateful for any comments.

Cheers.
Peasemarch.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

The endgame is the last part of a chess game, I think, in which there is no way out for a player,
or maybe in which the Queens have gone (I don't play chess).
I wonder if there is some confusion here between 'endgame' and 'end play'. As someone familiar with chess, but not an expert, the endgame happens at the end, when only pawns and a few minor pieces remain on the board (and the kings of course). The outcome can still be very much in doubt, or it may be known to be a theoretical win but still require intense concentration to pull it off. Most high level games are resigned by the loser before reaching this stage. The usage may be different in military settings.
'End play' is a bridge term which does match your "no way out" meaning. For example, a defender is given a trick near the end of the hand, but has no good leads available: if the defender leads a heart then declarer gets a free finesse, if the defender leads another suit then declare can ruff. The defender has to do something, but everything will lead to a bad result.
Interesting fact: neither term appears in my AmHer1969.

Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]The endgame is the last part of a chess game, I think, in which there is no way out for ... Queens have gone (I don't play chess). I wonder if there is some confusion here between 'endgame' and 'end play'.[/nq]
~~snip~~
[nq:1]Interesting fact: neither term appears in my AmHer1969.[/nq]
For what it's worth, Collins has both of them and confirms your definitions but spells them both as single words: "endgame" and "endplay".

Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)

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[nq:1]Could anyone who knows more French than I do tell me if "Fin de Partie", the original French title of ... metaphor. I won't bore anyone by going into why I'm interested in this, but I'd be grateful for any comments.[/nq]
WordReference.com is a pretty good site for translating French, German, Spanish, and Italian; it gives you a dictionary-like result that lists multiple meanings. So, for "partie":
partie (pa?ti)
nom féminin
(généralement) part
(= profession, spécialité) field; subject
(JUR etc) (= protagonistes) party
(de cartes, tennis etc) game
(emploi figuré) (= lutte, combat) struggle; fight
une partie de campagne/de pêche an outing in the
country/a fishing party ou trip
So, yes, you get your association there of the parties in a legal proceeding, and also a game. I don't see a political party, nor a celebratory feast, however. Putting "party" into the English side, I find that the political kind is a "parti", and the celebration is any of four things, including "fête."
The historical French dictionaries at ARTFL show that "partie" has been used in the past to mean a great many more things, I couldn't begin to understand them all.

Best Donna Richoux

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Thanks. I did actually look at that dictionary, as well as others. The difficulty for me, only having a grade 'C' in A Level French, is knowing which meanings are legitimately implied, and whether by "Fin de Partie" Beckett only means "Endgame", in the English or chess sense, or whether he intends other meanings.
There is a phrase in English "the party's over", and. tless commont, "the end of the party". It's true that, as you say, the above definitions don't include a festivity meaning for "partie". On the other hand, the idea of a festive party is clearly derived, in English, from the idea of a party or group of people having a get together.
One of Beckett's reasons for writing in French was to clear his language of too much extraneous implication, but it strikes me that "Fin de Partie" is actually a more resonant term than "Endgame".
Peasemarch.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]On 27 Jun 2004, Richard Maurer wrote[/nq]
[nq:2]The endgame is the last part of a chess game, ... in which the Queens have gone (I don't play chess).[/nq]
It's nothing to do with whether there is a way out for one or the other, or not.
It is the final part of the game, where most pieces are gone and the kings start taking an active part in the game.
It is also the part of the game where there are few enough pieces left so that positions with similar
characteristics are likely to have been studied
before and will be covered by existing endgame
theory. There are huge amounts of theory on chess
endgames.
Not all chess games include an endgame. Some are
decided long before reaching that stage.
CV

Usenet · Answer

Richard Maurer:
[nq:1]As someone familiar with chess, but not an expert, the endgame happens at the end, when only pawns and a few minor pieces remain on the board (and the kings of course). ...[/nq]
Think of it as the scene when all bad guy's henchmen have been killed off, the hero's assistants incapacitated, and the superweapons disabled or exhausted, and now it's just down to the two of them fighting it out hand to hand, and it won't last much longer. That part of a chess game.
[nq:1]'End play'[/nq]
As noted elsewhere in the thread, that's "endplay".
[nq:1]is a bridge term which does match your "no way out" meaning. For example, a defender is given a trick ... defender leads a heart then declarer gets a free finesse, if the defender leads another suit then (declarer) can ruff.[/nq]
That is, can ruff in one hand and discard an otherwise unavoidable loser from the other. A ruff by itself is just taking a trick he could already win.
A player in such a situation where any lead gives up a trick often will describe their situation as "being endplayed" whether it was set up on purpose or not. Thus "endplay" is really a misnomer; it is possible to be endplayed at any time during play, even on the opening lead. And even when an endplay is deliberate, it doesn't have to be the last thing that happens.

Mark Brader, Toronto > "What we're looking for is the correct misnomer." (Email Removed) > Rodney Boyd

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]WordReference.com is a pretty good site for translating French, German, ... and the celebration is any of four things, including "fête."[/nq]
[nq:1]Thanks. I did actually look at that dictionary, as well as others. The difficulty for me, only having a grade ... too much extraneous implication, but it strikes me that "Fin de Partie" is actually a more resonant term than "Endgame".[/nq]
AFAIK there's not a lot on record of Beckett explaining what his work was about. I think he was a fairly committed member of the 'It speaks for itself' school of authorship.
That said, we can infer from the lengthy time he spent in France and the fact that he wrote some of his major works in French that he was fluent in French and that he 'thought' in French when writing 'Fin de Partie'. He is described as 'translating' 'Fin de Partie' into 'Endgame' which suggests (a) English wasn't on his mind when he wrote it and (b) that he thought 'Endgame' was a fair translation of 'Fin de Partie'. I think we have to accept that, if he was going to refer to a party-type party in French he would have used fête like everyone else. The English may have adapted 'party' = 'group of people' into 'party of pleasure' = 'group of people set on having fun' and thence to 'party' = 'people having fun' but the French didn't.
'Partie' has, as posted elsewhere, all manner of other meanings, any or all of which might be adduced from the text of the play. But Beckett doesn't really have a rep as an allusive author, for all his commentators like to see symbolism piled upon metaphor. When he writes a play about people waiting for some undetermined fate, it's safest, IMO, to treat it as a play about people waiting for some undetermined fate.
John Dean
Oxford

Usenet · Answer

He is on record, though, as saying that he wrote in French in search of more clarity.
I don't quite agree with your deduction above, because there are signs that he was thinking in English terms when he wrote in French. For example, he calls a character "Hamm", which is a theatrical reference as well as an allusion to Hamlet and many other things. And "Finie la rigolade" must surely be "our revels now are ended". Also, there are words in the English version that have their own resonance, like "corpsed". I Beckett mistrusted some of the rich fluency of his own tongue and enjoyed the greater starkness of the French.
[nq:1]I think we have to accept that, if he was going to refer to a party-type party in French he ... = 'group of people set on having fun' and thence to 'party' = 'people having fun' but the French didn't.[/nq]
Given all his other nuancing, though, might he not have intended "Fin de Partie" to mean something to English readers and not to the French - who might not even, as far as I can find out, think of chess, first of all, in respect of that phrase? I think you might be right about the limitation of that phrase in French, though.
[nq:1]'Partie' has, as posted elsewhere, all manner of other meanings, any or all of which might be adduced from the ... for some undetermined fate, it's safest, IMO, to treat it as a play about people waiting for some undetermined fate.[/nq]
Wow. Ooh, I don't know. I saw "Endgame" in London recently, and it was almost too rich to digest. Shakespeare, Dante, chess, the War: it's all there.

Cheers.
Peasemarch.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]He is on record, though, as saying that he wrote in French in search of more clarity.[/nq]
I'd be obliged for a cite of that record. Various quotes are attributed to Beckett explaining 'why' he wrote in French, including one where he says one can write in French 'without style'. And anyone who has ever written about Sam has their theory of 'why he wrote in French'. You rarely see the theory that, at the time he started creating in French, he had been living in France among French people for 8 years almost continuously and it might have been as natural to him as English.
[nq:1]I don't quite agree with your deduction above, because there are signs that he was thinking in English terms when ... calls a character "Hamm", which is a theatrical reference as well as an allusion to Hamlet and many other things.[/nq]
There's the problem. It might* be all kinds of things. Without Sam's definitive statement that, yes, Hamm = Hamlet (or Hamnet, or Ham 'n' eggs or Walter Hammond or whatever) you can't *assert the significance of the character's name. After all, countless thousands have been trying to pin '***' on 'Godot' for a long time.
[nq:1]And "Finie la rigolade" must surely be "our revels now are ended".[/nq]
'must surely'? I think that's reaching. I wouldn't see 'rigolade' as a translation of revels personally ('rigolade' = joke, 'revels' = merrymaking) but all you have to do is produce a pre-war French translation of the Tempest using that phrase and your argument is much reinforced.
[nq:1]Also, there are words in the English version that have their own resonance, like "corpsed".[/nq]
Hardly avoidable that words in the English version have their own resonance. Words in your post have their own resonance. I wouldn't build too much on 'corpsed' - it had been theatrical slang for a century.
[nq:1]I Beckett mistrusted some of the rich fluency of his own tongue and enjoyed the greater starkness of the French.[/nq]
Maybe, maybe not. Any of us can guess. What we can, however, see, is that Beckett was capable of writing quite stark English as well as richly fluent French. I don't myself believe that an artist of that calibre (in both languages) needs to write in one language or the other to force any particular style on himself.
[nq:2]I think we have to accept that, if he was ... to 'party' = 'people having fun' but the French didn't.[/nq]
[nq:1]Given all his other nuancing, though, might he not have intended "Fin de Partie" to mean something to English readers ... in respect of that phrase? I think you might be right about the limitation of that phrase in French, though.[/nq]
'readers'? He wrote a play for performance. Why would he care what the name meant to English audiences when the play was produced in France? And vice versa. The French might not think of chess first, but it seems probable they would think of it. No reason why English audiences would think of chess first, but they would also think of it eventually.
[nq:2]When he writes a play about people waiting for some ... as a play about people waiting for some undetermined fate.[/nq]
[nq:1]Wow. Ooh, I don't know. I saw "Endgame" in London recently, and it was almost too rich to digest. Shakespeare, Dante, chess, the War: it's all there.[/nq]Sure, a production can put all kinds of layers onto a play. Most commonly seen with Shakespeare (Richard III as Oswald Moseley, Sebastian and Viola as asylum seekers, Macbeth as Al Capone and many more) but not unusual with other great writers. And any member of the audience might take inferences that were not even intended. I saw a production of King Lear done as a piece set in the Dark Ages and was irresistibly reminded, by the rhythms and emphases, of C20 Big Business mergers and acquisitions.

That's why this stuff is great, it can be related to so much of the human condition. You know the theory that Endgame is set in a skull, right? That the two big windows are eye sockets? You want interpretation - look what they say about Pinter. But when they asked the Great Man his own self what his stuff was about, he said 'The weasel under the cocktail cabinet'. Which, if you think about it, it is.
John Dean
Oxford

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I Beckett mistrusted some of the rich fluency of his own tongue and enjoyed the greater starkness of the French.[/nq]This always brings me up short. I think even great writers can talk nonsense about the language they use: English can be vague if you want it to be, or very stark indeed (don't look even at Hemingway or the AV: stay with Beckett himself). And we are all quite likely to be victims of our own cultural stereotypes. The Germans like to think of themselves as romantic forest creatures: Albert Schweitzer, I suppose the greatest man of the twentieth century though not a great writer, said writing in German was like wandering through the woods, and he wasn't being original; but you can punch a point home as hard and clear in German as in any other language, and he could.

The French think of themselves as supremely both earthy (l'esprit gaullois) and rational (and in many ways they are), and we've bought the parallel myth they've attached to their language: but it's still a myth, and silly: French has shown itself to be, as well as a tool of precision, a perfect language for filling page after page with impressive emptiness. French philosophy or literary theory of our age can seem a meaningless waste of time.
Was Beckett really saying whether he knew it or not simply that you concentrate your thought and your effort more when you're writing your second language? The triumphant clumsiness of Conrad is perhaps a case in point: sometimes I think he succeeds where Henry James fails because he can't afford to go on too long (against myself, I also suspect that he was sometimes cloudy when he didn't want to be).

I'd even very tentatively I don't, of course, claim this as an original idea suggest that this greater concentration may even happen for some writers whose first language was once not that of his people. I think of the power of the English written under the faint wings of (to pick just two) Indian and Irish ghosts. I think too of the utter boringness of British English poets of our time, and the vigour of the West Indians; the Alexandrian cleverness of Martin Amis (but who cares?) versus the much-less-skilful Vikram Seth or Arundathi Roy (we want to know).
Mike.

Endgame/Fin de Partie.

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