In this letter to Henry Wenning, Beckett conveys a lack of enthusiasm for the task of translating the play Happy Days: “Nothing but this dreary work and nothing else in sight.”
The French title, Oh les beaux jours was not yet present in this typescript draft. Beckett added the title shortly before publication. He claims that it is a paraphrase of a line in Paul Verlaine’s poem “Colloque sentimental.”