[In the following essay, Rothenberg details the use of surface action in Sarraute's plays as a means through which she conveys theatrical depth, using these devices as metaphors that convey several layers of meaning.]

Nathalie Sarraute is best known as a novelist, and for her essays defining the position of the novelist in the second half of the twentieth century. Both the essays collected in L'Ere du soupçon (1956), and the novels have been generally recognised as major contributions to the radical rethinking of novel theory and practise by the “nouveaux romanciers”. Her work for the theatre, which is quite as original, and breaks quite as decisively with traditional forms, came later in her career, and has received much less critical attention, although it has attracted fine directors such as Jean-Louis Barrault and Claude Régy, and been performed by leading French actors such as Roland Bertin, Madeleine Renaud and Emmanuelle Riva.¹

Sarraute's plays share certain characteristics common to the works of the dramatists who led the renewal of French theatre in the post-war period. Like Beckett and the early Ionesco, she dispenses with consistent character and linear plot, but she is quite unlike them in other ways. The metaphysical, the physical and their comic interraction, which are so vital for the dramatists of the absurd are hardly present at all in her theatre. Her plays, like her novels, are concerned with the interpersonal rather than the personal, a fact reflected in her practice of simply labelling most of the characters as male or female, H1, F1 and so on, rather than giving them names. The tensions which make them dramatically powerful do not emerge from a traditional situation of interpersonal conflict either. Instead an apparently insignificant verbal event, a trivial lie, a way of pronouncing a phrase, provokes the revelation of those hidden tensions underlying all human relationships, which Sarraute calls tropisms. There is a constant movement in all the plays between a calm, “normal” social surface which all the characters try to maintain, and the turbulent psychic reality beneath this surface. Sarraute has often asserted that the social aspect of her characters is of secondary importance: “Ils se revêtent de social pour lutter l'un contre l'autre, comme de carapaces”.²

I have argued elsewhere that in fact the social element in her theatre is so brilliantly observed that, whatever the author's intentions, it makes an important contribution to the dramatic impact of the plays.³ In this article my main aim is to examine the movement between the social surface and the depths where tropisms occur. My approach focusses on the play-text, and I am basically in agreement with most other critics that the text is central to dramatic effect in all Sarraute's plays.⁴ Although not all directors have seen these texts as implying minimalist staging, as Rykner points out the predominance of purely vocal stage directions suggests that “la parole porte le mouvement, le mot commande le geste”.⁵ Stylistic effects are likely to be of vital importance in such a theatre, and imagery, in particular, has a very precise rôle to play as Sarraute points out: “la métaphore, seule, constitue un langage suffisamment impétueux, puissant pour transmettre ne serait-ce qu'un aperçu de la violence qu'une légère intonation a provoquée”.⁶ The very simple, and immediately striking images she prefers are particularly appropriate for drama, where, as Pierre Larthomas argues in his wide-ranging study of dramatic language, the striking metaphor is dangerous, “parce que, trop belle, elle attire trop l'attention sur le style et que l'intérêt dramatique en pâtit”.⁷

In the plays imagery is related, as in the novels, to the unseen, and in real life unspoken, dramas beneath the surface of everyday social interaction. In the novels however Sarraute can present whole scenes, in which imagery may not be important, as representations of events which only occur at the level of inner mental activity, the “sous-conversation” which lies beneath the commonplaces of the spoken dialogue, and in the later novels such scenes constitute the substance of the work. In the plays Sarraute suggests that the whole action is in each case at the level of one of these metaphorical scenes, the “sous-conversation” of the novels now spoken as dialogue, the glove turned inside-out.⁸ The clearest example of this is Le silence (1967) where the entire “action” of the play takes place during a brief silence, and ends when the silent character speaks. In the world of the play however, we have a representation of the movement between surface and depths, so that dialogue is charged with representing both the spoken word and the unspoken feelings of the “sous-conversation”. Imagery has a somewhat different function in this context, since it is essential as a marker of the tropistic register, signalling key moments when the characters are aware of the deep feelings beneath the commonplace. It is the aim of this article to examine in some detail this specifically theatrical function of metaphor and simile in Sarraute's work.

To place this examination in context I shall first attempt a more precise definition of the type of conflict around which all the plays are built, before considering individual works in detail. All the plays have certain elements in common, besides the negative elements, absence of plot and of strongly individualised character, which I have already mentioned. They are all constructed around incidents which would be regarded in real life as so trivial as not to count as “incidents” at all. In Le Silence, the unspoken feelings which surge up from the depths during this silence are the subject, but the play ends with a character re-asserting the realist view that nothing has occurred: “Mais quel silence? … Je n'ai rien remarqué” (p. 172). The sub-title of Isma (1970), “ce qui s'appelle rien”, could equally apply to Le Silence and to the surface action in all the other plays. For Le Mensonge (1967) Sarraute deliberately chose to use a lie which will have no effect on the situation or the lives of the characters, as she explained to Claude-Marie Senninger when she was advising her on a production of the play: “il fallait prendre ‘un mensonge anodin et (de plus), celui de quelqu'un qui vous est complètement étranger’” in order to represent “le mensonge à l'état pur”.⁹ The “rien” of Isma is just the way a character has of pronouncing the endings of words such as capitalisme as if they ended isma, C'est beau (1978) shows the conflicts between a son and his parents arising from the speaking of the title phrase, in Elle est là (1978) the drama arises from an unspoken disagreement, and in Pour un oui ou pour un non (1982) two old friends attempt to break off their friendship because of the way one has said to the other “C'est bien … ça”.

The dramatic problem that the author solves in all these plays is the need to move between the banal surface incident and the depths of emotion it provokes, without changing the scene, as often happens in the novels, and without the novelist's possibility of using the shifting narratorial point of view.

In the case of Le Silence the view of the play as an extended metaphor for a moment of social unease is only made available to the audience by the final line “Je n'ai rien remarqué” (p. 172). This ending reveals the absence of any surface event and the minimal timescale on which the play we have seen has been based. The play's opening, however, will probably be seen by the audience as a barely stylised representation of a familiar social situation, where attention focusses on the discomfort felt by the sensitive character H1, when Jean-Pierre reacts to his story by remaining totally silent, and on H1's anger with the other members of the group, for what he sees as their insensitivity to this situation. In this opening the only images are absolutely commonplace images figées such as “les pieds dans le plat”, “le pavé de l'ours” and “ça crève les yeux” (p. 152). As the emotions of H1 begin to “infect” the other characters, and the whole group become aware of the tensions and insecurities revealed by the silence, they attempt to define these feelings, and, at a few key points in this attempt, metaphor is used. First H2 “faisant une grosse voix”, tries to defuse the tension by over-acting his melodramatic solution of the problem: “Prenons le mystère a la gorge, ou plutôt remontons à sa source” (p. 155). For H1 however this is no game, and a few minutes later his voice is “tremblante” as he describes the impossibility of doing what the others recommend, and simply ignoring the feelings which metaphorically weigh him down: “Vous voulez que je coure, et je ne peux pas me traîner, ça pèse cent tonnes … Je suis écrasé, j'étouffe …”. This image raises the emotional temperature, and leads up to H1's first desperate appeal to Jean-Pierre: “(Criant.) Mais parlez enfin, dites quelque chose … vous pouvez me mépriser, me détruire” (p. 158). Later H2 uses metaphor seriously, when he too feels trapped and oppressed by the silence of Jean-Pierre: “Il nous a capturés. Ce silence, c'est comme un filet. Il nous regarde frétiller” (p. 164). This is followed by attempts by the group to escape from the prison, or net of silence, using the most banal social means, trying to keep silent as a game, telling funny stories. When all these attempts fail a final metaphor conveys the despairing sense of insignificance, now shared by the whole group: “F1: Je suis comme vidée … Tout est aspiré … F2: Une petite tache bue par un buvard …” (p. 170). This is followed by a long pause, after which H1 determinedly picks up the threads of the story he had been telling before his first entry, and the play ends with Jean-Pierre speaking at last, in such a banal way that the significance attributed to his silence is placed in serious doubt. This first play provides a clear example of imagery which is used at a few key points in the development to reveal tensions and emotions which underly what is superficially a situation devoid of drama.

Le Mensonge is also structured around reactions to an incident which threatens to disrupt the calm surface of a social gathering. In this case, however, Madeleine, the person who has caused the disruption by her lie, is never seen. The play opens with all the characters discussing the shocking effect, not of the lie, but of the way Pierre drew attention to it. As they go over the incident Pierre re-enacts his attack on Madeleine, who had been complaining about her poverty: “Mais je croyais que vous étiez la petite-fille de Styvers … l'unique héritière” (p. 126). Of course the very fact of mentioning her wealthy grandfather, when she has been talking about rising fares and their effect on “de pauvres bougres commes nous”, is socially shocking. What makes this more than a superficial social clash however is the depths of feeling expressed by Pierre's tone, and this is not left to the actor, but foregrounded by the series of metaphors used to define it: “j'ai explosé”, “c'est sorti comme un boulet de canon”, “ça a jailli malgré moi” (pp. 126, 127).

The play centres on Pierre, the “machine à détecter le mensonge”, as Jacques calls him (p. 127). He is the catalyst who makes all nine characters uneasily aware of the emotions unleashed by the clash between truth and lies, and throughout the play imagery is used in a similar way to convey the violent or cruel feelings beneath the triviality of social interchange. Robert, for instance, demonstrates how he can ignore the lie, by considering the liar as dehumanised, an amusingly contemptible object of curiosity: “Comme si vous taquiniez avec une brindille un insecte” (p. 134). Lucy, on the contrary, cannot bear to see the liar confronted, so when Simone, who has apparently lied about her life during the Occupation, is being begged by her friends to own up to this lie, Lucy sees her first as a hunted animal: “Ils la traquent, ils la pressent, leurs tiges de fer fouillent, elle se terre … un petit animal traqué” (p. 141). Later in the scene, as Simone seems about to confess to the lie, Lucy associates her with the women who were summarily punished for their “treachery” in the post-war purges: “ils vont vous saisir, vous passer la corde au cou, vous raser la tête” (p. 142). This is certainly the most extreme example of the kind of dark experience which may be expressed through the imagery, suddenly welling up from what Jeanne calls “les gouffres de l'âme” (p. 139). The image of the brutally punished collaborator also marks the climax of this scene, after which Simone confesses that her story was not true, using the face-saving formula suggested by Pierre: “Bon, bon, bien sûr je jouais …” (p. 142). The final scene focusses again on Pierre, now isolated with his painful suspicions, expressed in a series of similes: “comme quelque chose qui serait là … planté … et qui gratte … comme un minuscule poil de cactus … c'est comme si j'avais touché une ortie … ça me brûle à peine”. The others reject him, and take Simone's side. They are no longer willing to linger over Pierre's disturbed and disturbing subtleties: “Yvonne: Je trouve que la farce a assez duré” (p. 145).

In Isma we are again in the presence of powerful feelings, which cannot be rationally explained. The central couple, Elle and Lui, reveal their violent hostility to an absent couple, the Dubuit. After much resistance they offer an “explanation” for this hostility: these odious Dubuit pronounce the ending “isme” as “isma”, and the irrational feelings that surface as this is evoked are expressed in metaphor, as the word-ending suggests a poisonous scorpion's tail: “Structuralisma. Cette façon qu'il a de prononcer isma … Le bout se relève … ça s'insinue … Comme un venin” (p. 109). This explains nothing for the other characters. It is probably because much of the play is concerned with their comical attempts to invent alternative, more logical explanations, such as a crime that the Dubuit may have committed, which would “justify” the feelings of Elle and Lui, that imagery is so sparingly used in Isma. Towards the end of the play, however, Elle and Lui admit that their hostility is entirely based on the “indicible. Qui n'a pas de nom”. The function of imagery is to say things which have no name, and at this point the extended metaphor of the scorpion is taken up again, now as a more precise simile: “C'est comme la queue d'un scorpion. Il nous pique … il déverse en nous son venin” (p. 115). It is followed by other similes, as all attempt at hiding the “forbidden” truth is abandoned, and isma is compared to cancer, the plague, evil itself (pp. 116, 117).¹⁰

C'est beau marks some new departures in Sarraute's dramatic technique, and even appears to mark a change in her subject matter, and these changes are accompanied by such a drastic reduction in imagery as almost to exclude the play from this article. It does, however, seem worth considering briefly whether this surprising change in style, with only one live metaphor in the whole text, is related to the other changes.

This is the only play to show the relationships within a family, the main characters being a couple and their son, but this apparent change in subject matter is only superficial, according to Sarraute. When Marc Saporta suggested, in the course of his 1984 “conversation biographique” with the author, that both C'est beau, and the novel which is clearly related to it Vous les entendez (1972), were about “les conflits de générations” she disagreed. She accepts that the novel probably contains “quelques traces de mes conflits avec mon père”, but adds “ce qui m'a intéressée, c'est le heurt de la sensibilité entre gens qui s'aiment. C'était pour le déploiement des tropismes une situation privilégiée”.¹¹ Playgoers and readers, however, may well have their interest caught by the very recognisable, if comically exaggerated, family relationships which are represented in the play and the novel. These elements, in the play especially, seem to be the focus for much of the time, rather than the less immediately recognisable tropisms. The reduction in imagery suggests that if tropisms are present their presence has to be deduced without the powerful stylistic indications used elsewhere in this theatre.

If the question of the play's main subject remains open to interpretation, the change in dramatic technique is more clear-cut. As Rykner points out “les trois pièces les plus récentes privilégient les interventions externes et tendent à isoler … les actants principaux”. While the main characters confront each other on a stage which “semble alors délimiter un ‘ring’”, the secondary characters who were present in the first three plays are now replaced by voices off, imagined scenes, characters who are supposed to have been recruited from the audience, or from the flat next-door.¹² It may be that this clearer focus on the main protagonists is indirectly related to the question of imagery in C'est beau. The imagined scenes with secondary characters, who are not seen on stage, may be seen as replacing the extended metaphor, since they explore underlying anxieties. The couple evoke the reactions of “normal” people to their predicament, and the voices who play out these reactions intensify their fear of being labelled mad, the fear which haunts so many of the characters who are aware of tropistic conflicts society prefers to ignore: “Ils vont nous croire complètement fous” (p. 76). Although the parents' anxieties about their own feelings are expressed in these miniature plays within the play, the intensely violent hostility the father feels emanating from his son is finally expressed through metaphor. The son has compared himself to an octopus secreting black ink, but he says this in a comically exaggerated tone, “voix terrible pour rire” (p. 81): after all his parents are simply uneasy about using the expression “c'est beau” in his presence. The play ends, however, with the father repeating this image in deadly earnest. He cannot even listen to music when his son is there: “je n'entends plus, je ne sens rien … tout se recouvre … une encre noire … Vite, au secours …” (p. 84). This one example of metaphor, followed by a final return to the banal surface, does fit the pattern of the earlier plays.

Elle est là marks another important change in Sarraute's evolution as a dramatist. This is the first text in which non-verbal elements, such as gesture, movement, and direct involvement of the audience make an essential contribution to the overall effect. In particular some of the violent and cruel feelings which were expressed in metaphor are now put across through action. The central conflict, between a man and the woman who works with him, arises from her refusal to agree with ideas he has been discussing in her presence. The ideas themselves are left deliberately vague, which has the effect of focussing attention on the conflict between H2 and F1. H2 responds to the passive resistance of his “associée” with a fury which often comes across as much through his threatening gestural language as through his banal words: “Vous serez forcée de l'écouter. Je le ferai entrer que vous le vouliez ou non. (Crie des mots qu'on distingue mal. Elle se bouche les oreilles. Il lui écarte les mains.) Ça entrera … Même ici, dans cette … cette (il lui frappe le front) … démolir ce qui est là, cette imbécilité” (p. 40). Imagery still has an important function in Elle est là, however, in particular in presenting the struggle between two opposing ideas in violently physical terms. In a series of related images H2 describes his opponent's idea as “une bête nuisible”, “un boa constrictor”, “une force aveugle”, while his own idea is the innocent, defenceless “belle petite idée à nous” which will be “happée, traînée, enfermée là-bas, engluée de bave, aplatie, écrasée” (pp. 37, 49). Such images, together with scenes of physical intimidation, ensure that we see the conflict of “ideas” as an illusion, beneath which is the darkly irrational conflict of tropistic emotions, related to all kinds of fanaticism.

In Pour on oui ou pour un non, although writing for theatre not radio, Sarraute returns to a form where the text is predominant. It has a simple but theatrically powerful structure, building the tension from an apparently minor misunderstanding between two friends, to a climax where both realise that beneath the surface of their long-standing friendship lie deep hostilities and resentments, which they have previously preferred to ignore. The imagery here underpins the structure, building up from metaphors of distance, to images of warring nations and finally to each character's hostile image of the other's world. H1 sees H2 as inhabiting a dangerous, unstable world, “des sables mouvants où l'on s'enfonce”, while for H2 the world of H1 is claustrophobically solid, “un édifice fermé de tous côtés” (p. 28). Because these are tropistic feelings beneath the surface of an apparently perfect friendship, the two realise that society, which lives on the surface, will react to these images with blank incomprehension: “Qu'est-ce qu'ils racontent? … Quels sables mouvants?” (p. 29), and condemn their desire to break off the relationship. The language of imagery is vital here, in showing the impossibility of communicating with those who reject such language.¹³

Imagery is only one element in the varied linguistic texture of these plays, but it does seem to be a particularly important element, reserved for key moments of tension. The stylistic marker acts in the theatre as the change of point of view does in the novel, to structure works in which plot is replaced, as Benmussa says, by the “jeu de rapports et de réactions … comment un mot est lancé par quelqu'un et ce qu'il provoque chez un autre”.¹⁴

Notes

1. All page numbers in the text of this article refer to Théâtre, Paris, Gallimard, 1993. Details of first stage productions are as follows: Le Silence and Le Mensonge, dir. Jean-Louis Barrault, Petit Odéon, 1967; Isma, Espace Cardin, dir. Claude Régy, 1973; C'est beau, dir. Claude Régy, Petit théâtre d'Orsay, 1975; Elle est là, dir. Claude Régy, Petit théâtre d'Orsay, 1980; Pour un oui ou pour un non, dir. Simone Benmussa, Petit théâtre du Rond-Point, 1986 (this was preceded by the New York première of the English version, For No Good Reason, at the Manhattan Theatre Club, 29th May 1985). Dates of first publication are given in the text. Arnaud Rykner, Théâtres du Nouveau Roman, Paris, José Corti, 1988, has a useful chapter on Sarraute and his bibliography covers most previous work on her theatre.

2. Simone Benmussa, Nathalie Sarraute, Qui êtes vous?, Lyon: La Manufacture, 1987, pp. 119, 122. Sarraute is referring here to her last play Pour un oui ou pour un non, but has made similar comments about other works.

3. “The Hunter hunted: social strategies in Sarraute's theatre”, Nottingham French Studies, Autumn 1995.

4. Théâtres du Nouveau Roman (chapter 2, Nathalie Sarraute et le logo-drame), pp. 33-80, gives detailed evidence for this view..

5. Ibid., p. 43.

6. Simone Benmussa, Nathalie Sarraute, Qui êtes vous?, Lyon: La Manufacture, 1987, p. 23.

7. Le Langage Dramatique, Paris, Armand Colin, 1972, p. 350.

8. “Le Gant retourné”, Cahiers Renaud-Barrault, 89 (1975), p. 78.

9. C-M. Senninger, “Un mensonge (le nôtre)”, L'Arc, 95, 1984, p. 86.

10. Denise Goitein comments interestingly on the qualities of the text as a radio play in “A propos d'Isma”, French Studies, xxx, no. 1, Jan. 1976, p. 55.

11. L'Arc, 95, 1984, pp. 21, 22.

12. Théâtres du Nouveau Roman, p. 48.

13. I have analysed this play in more detail in “Imagery in Sarraute's Pour un oui ou pour un non”, French Studies Bulletin, no. 41, Winter 1991/92, pp. 15-17.

14. Simone Benmussa, “Les Paroles vives”, L'Arc, 95, 1984, p. 79.