entry for "Bim and Bom" (p 56) which also refers to them in the plural. James Knowlson in his biography of Beckett, Damned to Fame, suggests that the names may echo Richard Aldington's Enter Bim and Bom, the epilogue to his 1931 novel The Colonel's Daughter, on an English football field to comment upon the degeneration of English society and "became for Beckett emblems of human cruelty, disguised under a comic garb." They first appear in the short story Yellow, then in Murphy (along with Bum), in draft passages deleted from Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Bom and Bem pop up in How It Is before finally bowing out in What Where. Schubert "Beckett adored Franz Schubert's song cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey) … [and ] used to listen spellbound to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's stunning recording of the songs … He also knew about his connections with the town of Graz [Schubert had stayed there for a time] … In the Schubert Lieder, the traveller in the opening poem, Gute Nacht (Good Night) has lost his love and journeys disconsolately from May into snowy winter … [This] provided Beckett with the formal structure of his play, moving from spring to winter … suggesting death." Thomas Moore In his notes for the German TV production, Beckett wrote "'For PA [i.e. playing area] the light of other days'. And he admitted that he expressly associated this play with Thomas Moore's poignant poem, Oft, in the Stilly Night, which includes the lines 'Sad memory brings the light / Of other days around me'." James Joyce Earlier in his career, Beckett—a disciple of Joyce in his younger days—had previously contributed the essay, "Dante...Bruno.Vico..Joyce" in the critical anthology, Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a work meant to prepare the reading public for what would be the final phase in Joyce's writing. It is possible that Beckett may have been inspired to name his characters from the sixth verse of the so-called "Ballad of Humpty Dumpty" in Finnegans Wake: So snug he was in his hotel premises sumptuous But soon we'll bonfire all his trash, tricks and trumpery And'tis short till sheriff Clancy'll be winding up his unlimited company With the bailiff's bom at the door, (Chorus) Bimbam at the door. Then he'll bum no more. Notice that, just as "Bum" is the only unspoken name in Beckett's "last five," so too