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The title comes from a phrase from the last verse of [[W. B. Yeats|Yeats’s]] near-[[Solipsism|solipsist]] poem,
''[http://www.readprint.com/work-1615/William-Butler-Yeats The Tower]'':
::: Now shall I make my soul,
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“''The Tower'' is a work which discusses history and the past not only in terms of recollection but also as an entire complex of traces, remainders and legacies of which individual subjective memory is only one element.”<ref name="multiref1">Katz, D., ‘Mirror Resembling Screens: Yeats, Beckett and ''... but the clouds ...''’ in ''The Savage Eye / L'Oeil Fauve : New Essays on Beckett's Television Plays'' (Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA:Rodopi, 1995) (SBT; 4), p 83</ref>
“The painful, highly personal question raised by Yeats is: if the poet’s physical powers fail, if his vision and hearing are impaired, can the memory of the sensory world serve as a basis for poetry? Is memory alone capable of stimulating the creative act? … As he draws upon his memory, revisiting scenes both in his life and works, he comes to respond affirmatively to the pessimistic question first raised … The poet’s physical impairments, paradoxically, prove a blessing. Indeed, in the stanza from which Beckett derived his title, Yeats puts the real world in perspective, thereby reducing his own sense of loss.”<ref>Homan, S., ''Filming Beckett’s Television Plays: A Director’s Experience'' (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1992), pp 67,68</ref> In a personal communication Beckett told Eoin O’Brien that this was one of Yeats’s greatest lines.<ref>O’Brien, E., ''The Beckett Country'' (Dublin: The Black Cat Press, 1986), p 352 n 7</ref>
But why this particular line from the poem? Is it to do with the nature of [[cloud]]s? “Clouds seem permanent but are ultimately impermanent; they cannot be touched, yet can be seen; they are nothing more than condensed water, yet remain a [[symbol]] of romance, of the imagination beyond practical measurement – they are, in a phrase, at once here and elsewhere.”<ref name="multiref2">Homan, S., ''Filming Beckett’s Television Plays: A Director’s Experience'' (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1992), p 77</ref>
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