[In the following essay, Rothenberg reviews varying critical opinions regarding Sarraute's stance about the non-importance gender has in her writing, theorizing that despite the author's denials, the intended gender exclusions from her work make the issue even more central to her writing.]

Nathalie Sarraute's own position on the question of women writers suggests that she might object to being studied in the context of a special issue devoted to women. She also strongly denies that gender has any importance in the area of human experience which she is exploring. Admirers of her work cannot always follow her on this however, and there have been a number of feminist studies of the novels which argue that she has not in fact been able to exclude the issue of gender and sexual identity, whatever her intentions. In this article I shall briefly review the critical debate which the author's public stance has provoked, before looking at her theatrical practice, where the use of characters who are often only distinguished by gender labels (Homme, Femme) and numbers makes the intended exclusion of gender issues even more debateable.

Interviewing Sarraute in 1994, Isabelle Huppert asked: “Est-ce que vous pensez qu'il existe une spécificité d'une littérature féminine?” Sarraute replied: “Rien au monde ne me fait horreur autant que cela!”¹ While not always expressed so energetically, this has been a consistent position in response to such questions. Here she goes on to argue that the qualities sometimes assigned to women writers are also to be found in Henry James or Balzac. This refusal to be categorised as a woman writer is only part of a more general rejection of rigid categories. Sarraute stresses the importance of this more general theme at the end of a paper given at a colloquium on the nouveau roman in July 1971. While accepting the possibility of multiple interpretations of her work, she gently reproaches the critic Micheline Tison-Braun for allowing herself to move away fom textual study, transposing the novels into “un langage qui n'était pas le leur et où ont réapparu les définitions, les catégories psychologiques, sociales, morales que mes textes s'étaient efforcés de saper”.²

One could argue that by rejecting or undermining conceptual categories Sarraute, while proclaiming the irrelevance of theoretical and feminist approaches to her work, does in fact come very close to the post-modernist position of many French feminists, who, as Toril Moi argues, “reject labels and names […] even feminism and sexism […] because they see such labelling activity as betraying a phallogocentric drive to stabilise, organise and rationalise our conceptual universe”.³ Sheila Bell, in her critical bibliography, sees this kind of argument as a feature of attempts in the 1980s and early 1990s to “claim Sarraute as feminine/feminist writer”. As she says, “ultimately the denial of difference is construed—with reference to Kristeva—as a feminist strategy.”⁴ In a detailed study of seven novels which appears to follow this line, Sarah Barbour argues that the author's appeal to the feminist reader is that she “opens up a space beyond the frozen shells of gender that continue to bind women and men personally and critically”.⁵ She traces a progressive elimination of gender, which parallels the elimination of character in these works, from Tropismes (1939) to disent les imbéciles (1976). In her conclusion she argues that Sarraute's works encourage her reader to read as a feminist of the third generation, in Kristeva's sense of the term.⁶

Barbour's analysis of the evolution of the novels focuses on the progressive blurring of all the boundaries which might allow the reader to assign an origin or a specific context to the voices who speak, with no independent narratorial intervention in the later works. We might expect to find a similar evolution in Sarraute's theatre, since she does not change her preoccupations or her intentions when writing plays, and there is a good deal of intertextuality between her theatre and her fiction. In “Le gant retourné” she describes how, when she was asked to write a play for Radio Stuttgart, she initially refused and then discovered that she could, after all, treat her material in this new form, although the change of genre entailed representing in dialogue the subterranean movements represented “à l'aide d'images et de rhythmes” in the novels.⁷ After the publication of the first two plays, Le Silence (1964) and Le Mensonge (1966), she alternated fiction and theatre in her publications until the last play to date, Pour un oui ou pour un non (1982). She was involved from the first in discussions with directors of the plays, and followed rehearsals with interest. Clearly she is well aware that writing for performance involves particular problems for her view of character, and she also seems aware that her view of an essential human nature which is androgynous at the deepest level may not come across in a medium where she provides parts for male and female actors to perform.

Her statements on this problem, which may be a problem for the author rather than for the audience/reader of the plays, are not always consistent. On the one hand she claims that her theatrical characters are not to be read as characters: “Le dialogue est porté par une conscience, pas par un personnage que je me représente en écrivant.” In this interview she goes on to say, logically enough, that if she intervenes in rehearsals it is only at the level of the text, the voices: “c'est cela qui importe, et non quelle tête ont les personnages … si c'est un monsieur de soixante-dix ans ou une dame de trente ans qui s'exprime.”⁸ On the other hand she feels the need to have characters who are male and female, and despite saying sexual difference is unimportant, paradoxically prefers to use male characters because they are “neutral”: “Je prends le plus souvent des personnages masculins d'âge moyen, afin qu'ils soient le plus neutres possible.”⁹ Perhaps she considers that within the conventions of a patriarchal society the male is not seen as defined by his sexuality. When she was advising on an American university production of Le Mensonge, she firmly rejected the suggestion that women should play some of the male roles. Her objection was based on the fact that in the theatre the effect of female or male actors is different because “la femme est sexuée”, again seeming to imply that the man is not so defined.¹⁰ In fact both male and female characters in her plays sometimes conform to sexual stereotype. In discussion with the director Claude Régy, she recognises one clear instance of stereotyping in Elle est là, while typically playing down the importance of this element: “au cours du travail, le fait qu'un des personnages soit une femme permettait un certain jeu entre des attitudes stéréotypées à son égard, d'ailleurs aussitôt réfrénées, pour ne s'attacher qu'à l'idée dont elle était la porteuse.”¹¹ Naturally Sarraute wishes to direct her audience's attention to her central theme, the presence beneath the surface of our lives of barely perceptible experiences which escape the net of logical discourse, but which her works attempt to communicate. From this angle, questions of sexuality are seen as irrelevant, and a potential distraction.

When we turn to the play-texts themselves there does seem to be an evolution in the treatment of gender and character. In Le Silence (1964) the central figure, Jean-Pierre, is silent until the last minutes of the play, and the dramatic tensions arise from the conflicting emotions and interpretations his silence provokes beneath the surface of an everyday social situation. Jean-Pierre, then, is an empty character, invisible as well as silent of course in the original radio concept, but he is not entirely empty, since he does at least have a sexual identity. As Rykner suggests, his function is to be “un catalyseur des émotions”,¹² and some of these emotions are discussed by the female characters in ways which show awareness of the gender stereotype of the strong silent man:

F3:
Eh bien moi, non, j'avoue, les gens silencieux … Quand j'avais quinze ans, j'étais amoureuse d'un monsieur … de loin, bien sûr, j'avais quinze ans, c'était un ami de mon père, il fumait sa pipe en silence … Je le trouvais … Mais … fatal!
F1:
Moi aussi, à cet âge … mais depuis, je vous assure que ça m'est passé …(13)

Clearly this figure is referred to ironically as an immature fantasy, and to further deconstruct the concept, Sarraute brings in a counter example a few moments later in the scene. Here F3 is still admiring the power of Jean-Pierre's silence—“c'est très fort ce que vous faites là”—but F2 refers to the silences of the female, sexually ambivalent Georges Sand: “Vous savez que George Sand … C'était son charme. Il paraît qu'elle n'ouvrait pas la bouche” (p. 163). This scene is fairly typical of the way stereotypes are treated in the play. When H1 recounts his unhappy love affair he says the woman was “aussi forte que je suis faible” (p. 161). These are in any case superficial elements of a dialogue which only becomes dramatic because of the deeper anxieties about contact with others which the silence provokes.

It is the principal male character, H1, who is most sensitive to the possible implications of the silence. He is a key figure because he represents a special kind of sensitivity which will reveal the tropisms, the underlying tensions and movements which are masked both by the surface conventions of society and by the “lieux-communs” which are inherent in the social medium of language.¹⁴ Sarraute has called such a character a “chasseur de tropismes”. Referring to her first novel, Portrait d'un inconny, she says this is the role with which she identifies: “Je suis plutôt cet observateur, qui se passionne pour ce qui se passe d'encore inconnu […] et qui est ‘chasseur de tropismes’.”¹⁵ Such characters, though not always so clearly distinguished from the others, appear in all the plays, as well as in most of the early fiction. In Le Silence, H1's sensitivity soon begins to affect the other members of the group, and this central tension is experienced by all the characters in the same way. The others mainly react as a group, in classical terms a chorus, echoing each other's views regardless of gender. Occasionally lines are not even assigned to individuals but to the group as a whole, with stage directions such as “voix diverses” (p. 161). The men and women in the group echo each other in scenes where at first they are mocking H1 for his exaggerated reactions to Jean-Pierre, but later join H1 in his anxiety. The play ends when Jean-Pierre finally speaks, and it is only at this point that, as H1 denies having even noticed the silence, we realise that everything we have heard represents the unconscious drama provoked during the silence itself (p. 172). From the point of view of performance however, the play certainly creates the effect of moving between a recognisable, and comically banal, conversation, and the underlying drama where F3, having caught H1's strange illness, feels “oppressée” and H2 says they are all “emprisonnés”, “capturés” in the net of silence (p. 164).

This movement between surface and depths occurs in most of Sarraute's work, although some of the recent prose fiction appears to take place entirely at the level of the tropisms, which Sarraute has also called “des actions intérieures”.¹⁶ Lucette Finas suggested to the author: “vos personnages, qui disent ce que d'ordinaire on tait, cherchent à entraîner leurs ‘semblables’ dans cette plongée. Ceux-ci résistent pour se maintenir à la surface.” Sarraute agreed: “Oui. Si bien que mes romans et mes pièces évoluent sans cesse entre haut et bas.”¹⁷ I would argue that in the theatre this movement itself forms part of the dramatic interest, and it is dependent on an acutely observed and convincing surface. This is not to deny the importance of the depths, simply to point out that in the moment by moment development of a theatrical reading, the surface dialogue inevitably attracts attention in itself.

Le Mensonge (1966) is closely linked in form and theme to Le Silence. We again have a social group which faces the disruption caused by a chasseur character. Pierre breaks the social conventions by drawing attention to a lie, deliberately chosen by Sarraute to be “insignifiant […] un mensonge à l'état pur”, in order to focus on the reactions provoked by the lie, rather than its content.¹⁸ Fracturing the smooth social surface is something the others are desperate to avoid, aware that only this surface protects them from those moments when, as Jeanne says, “les gouffres de l'âme s'entrouvrent … Des vapeurs délétères montent … on est asphyxié …” (p. 139). If it had not been for Pierre, the lie would have been passed over, just as the silence might have been ignored if it had not been for H1. The central chasseur is again masculine, but it is his sensitivity to the lie which distinguishes him, and his gender appears irrelevant to the development of the play. The other characters seem more individualised than those in Le Silence, and perhaps the fact that they are designated by names rather than letters is not irrelevant. However, there are again moments when the lines are simply attributed to unassigned “voix” (pp. 138, 139), and there is a similar feeling that all the characters except the chasseur function dramatically as a group. As Rykner points out in his notice to the Pléiade edition, “Sarraute s'attache à chaque fois à matérialiser la présence obsédante de la communauté au sein de laquelle prennent place les mouvements microscopiques qu'elle met en scène.”¹⁹ Jacques, Jeanne and Lucie, for instance, all attempt to persuade Pierre that he should believe Simone, although he is sure she is lying about her wartime experiences:

JACQUES:
Attendez, je vais vous aider. Regardez-la bien. Il n'est pas possible qu'elle mente. […] Observez son air franc, son beau regard droit.
JEANNE:
Oui, Simone, on vous donnerait le bon Dieu sans confession.
LUCIE:
C'est vrai, est-ce qu'elle aurait cet air-là?

(p. 138)

Similarly Juliette, Jeanne and Jacques echo each other as they appeal to Robert for an explanation of his personal method of handling liars without “le moindre malaise” (p. 130). In the final scene, four characters join in condemnation of Pierre, who now risks being definitively isolated from the group (pp. 143, 144).

As in Le Silence, gender roles are not a focus for the dramatic tensions which arise from the group situation, but there is certainly some use of gender stereotype within the group. More importantly, the surface dialogue reproduces a very conventional bourgeois group dynamic, in which the men appear eager to take the lead, while the women echo or support their initiative, as in the examples quoted above. Jacques and Robert function as dominant figures, suggesting solutions to the problem posed by Pierre's attitude. This is no doubt one of the elements which caused the first production of the play to be received as “sensiblement plus traditionnel”.²⁰ This aspect of the play is not foregrounded, however, but simply part of the satirically observed superficiality beneath which lurk dangerous and unrecognised forces.

Discussing her next play, Isma (1970), the author states that “les personnages sont à la fois personne et chacun de nous”.²¹ It is true that we again have brief passages where the characters respond to the situation as a group, the lines being distributed at the discretion of the director (pp. 91, 92, 97). However there is a change in the presentation of the surface situation, in that at least four of the characters are now clearly in conventional heterosexual relationships. In the first two plays there are only passing references to precise social relationships, and in the 1978 edition, Sarraute deleted the most obvious of these, the reference in Le Silence which motivates F1's indignant defence of Jean-Pierre, by making her his aunt. F1 remains something of a leading female figure, but in cutting the expression “mon neveu” and an associated stage direction, the author probably, as Rykner suggests, wished to eliminate “toute détermination (sociale, familiale, etc.) qui risquerait de nous faire croire à l'existence de personnages”.²² It would hardly be possible to eliminate retrospectively such elements from Isma, where the central role of chasseur is played by a couple, designated Lui and Elle. The play is certainly not focused on the interpersonal relationship of the couple, but they are presented in a way which clearly suggests a traditional patriarchal family unit. In the first lines of the play, Lui assumes the dominant role, speaking for his wife as he accepts H1's criticism: “Oui, c'est ça: dénigrement. Cétait du dénigrement ce que nous faisions là. […] Nous nous y attendions tous les deux” (p. 89). Elle simply agrees, in a much shorter opening speech, and it is Lui who then attempts to initiate a more acceptable activity for the group: “Eh bien! Qu'est-ce qu'on attend? […] Allons, voyons, un peu de bonne volonté” (p. 90). It is also Lui who is given a long speech where he defines the role of “lieux communs” in covering up the threatening emotions beneath the surface, which are of course the central source of dramatic tension (p. 95). In the final scene Elle fantasises about a situation where the inexplicable “rien”, which has provoked the drama, the way the Dubuits pronounce “isme” as “isma”, will be a punishable crime, “connu, classé, nommé”. Lui responds by bringing her back to reality, mocking her “weakness” whenever she is faced by the real Dubuits: “Tu m'amuses. […] Tu es là à te gonfler … et il suffirait qu'ils soient devant toi […] tu serais là à t'interposer … la vraie mère poule” (pp. 116, 117). Again his superior attitude is not challenged by Elle.

Around this central couple, and sharing their quest for an understanding of the hostile feelings provoked in them by their apparently inoffensive acquaintances the Dubuits, are a group equally divided between men and women. As in the first two plays their main dramatic function is to act as a group. Here they are attempting to invent clear reasons, facts or recognised psychological motivations which would explain, or explain away, what Elle and Lui experience. Within the group, however, traditional gender roles are again in evidence. These are presented satirically and contribute to the impression of a very conventional surface situation. For instance, F1's refusal to leave when her husband decides it is time to go is treated, both by her husband and by Lui, as an unpardonable revolt, H1 saying “Yvonne, je t'en conjure, réfléchis à ce que tu fais. Je ne te le pardonnerai pas” (p. 97).

In C'est beau (1975), society, which was present in the first three plays in the form of the chorus/social group, is represented by offstage voices. The only characters are a conventional nuclear family, mother, father and son, and the element of satire in their presentation caused a number of critics to see the main interest of the play as a generational conflict. When one such reader, Marc Saporta, asked Sarraute whether the play, and the novel Vous les entendez which is clearly its hypotext, were based on family relationships, and perhaps reflected her own experiences as a daughter and a mother, she did not entirely reject the suggestion. However, while accepting that there may indeed be “quelques traces de mes conflits avec mon père” she emphasised that for her the interest lay in “le heurt de la sensibilité entre gens qui s'aiment” because “c'était pour le déploiement des tropismes une situation privilégiée”.²³

The father in C'est beau conforms closely to the stereotype of an authoritarian head of the family, and as in Isma but much more clearly, Elle appears to accept her role as submissive wife and mother. In the opening scene Lui puts Le Fils firmly in his place—“Tu te moques de moi! … Comment oses-tu? Espèce de petit vaurien”—and sends him off to do his homework. With the son safely subjugated, Lui turns to Elle and boasts of his firm discipline, which he contrasts with her passivity. Her response, which contains no hint of irony, seems to confirm her submissive role: “C'est vrai. Veux-tu que je te dise: je t'ai admiré. J'ai admiré ton courage, ta force …” (pp. 66, 67). She is equally submissive when Lui denies his responsibility for the failures of parenting which must, of course, be at the root of their present problems: “Ce n'est pas moi qui l'ai langé comme on lange un paquet. Pas moi qui, en le changeant, ne lui ai pas assez parlé” (p. 68). She accepts all his reproaches and even adds her own self-reproach about her feelings while pregnant. The satirical overplaying of these parts is a source of comedy, but a dark comedy since neither character is aware of overplaying, they simply live out the gender roles constructed for them by society.

The director, Claude Régy, was clearly faithful to Sarraute in avoiding anything in the first stage production which might suggest realism, or psychological depth in the characters. Dominique Jamet, reviewing this production, says: “Ces trois figures, dessinées ou plutôt stylisées, de façon que l'on reconnaisse immédiatement leurs noms et leurs rôles: le Père, la Mère, le Fils, mais sans que nous soit donnée en somme aucune précision supplémentaire qui leur enlèverait si peu que ce soit de leur généralité contemporaine.”²⁴ Régy wrote a synopsis and “avertissement aux acteurs” to accompany the first publication of C'est beau. In this text, while warning of the danger of staying on the surface of a dialogue which is “dangereusement facile à parler juste”, he also mentions the very recognisable stereotypes employed. In the first scene, for instance, where the off-stage voices are appealed to, “on avoue que le père (l'homme, le monsieur, le phallus, le sexe fort, l'autorité) menacé, a voulu détruire le fils.”²⁵ Régy is clearly aware that this is an aspect of the play which actors and audience cannot ignore.

In Elle est là (1978), the male characters conform even more clearly to a phallocratic stereotype. The principal male character H2 cannot live with an unspoken disagreement which he senses in his female associate F, and the play is structured around a series of attempts, frequently agressive and threatening in tone, to “persuade” F that she is wrong. Sarraute was consciously playing with the “attitudes stéréotypées” of the men towards F.²⁶ She nonetheless continues to think of her male character H2 as a chasseur, concerned to make contact with F, and she rejects as a “contresens” the view, which she has found most readers share, that this is a play about intolerance.²⁷ At one one point H3 underlines that F's function is simply to carry the idea, so that she personally should not be involved: “pas d'agression contre le porteur … enfin contre la porteuse, puisque c'en est une en l'occurrence … […] Ce qu'il faut c'est détruire son idée” (p. 53). This implication that the gender of the carrier is irrelevant is contradicted by the comfortably sexist discussion between the two men in an earlier scene, in which H2 suggests F would not be a problem if she were his wife: “Les idées, vous savez, c'est comme le domicile conjugal: jusqu'à présent d'ordinaire les femmes suivent” (p. 48). With male characters like these it is likely that the audience response to a scene of “persuasion” where F is physically confronted by the two men and prevented from leaving the room will be to see her as a victim of agression, rather than guilty of refusing dialogue. The direction for movement here “H2 et H3 se lèvent et lui barrent le chemin” is only apparently contradicted by the vocal indication “très doux, doucereux” since the two men have decided on this “douceur”, as a tactic, and it does not prevent F from feeling under threat (pp. 45, 46). Sarraute is here writing for the first time with stage, rather than radio, performance in mind. The gestural language she has imagined for the men and her blackly comic presentation of their attitude to F are dramatically effective, but seem likely to interfere with our intended focus on the theme of tropistic interaction.

In the last play to date, Pour un oui ou pour un non (1982),²⁸ the emphasis is firmly back on the tropistic undercurrents. Here the surface which is fissured by the bringing to consciousness of these tropisms is that of a longstanding friendship between two men. A couple of neighbours are brought on stage for a moment, from the audience in most productions, to represent in caricatural form the reactions of “normal” people to the subtle concerns of the main protagonists. Basically however, as Rykner says, “plus personne ne peut interférer efficacement dans l'échange […] qui met ainsi aux prises celui qui est sensible aux arrière-plans de la parole et celui qui ne l'est pas.”²⁹ It is perhaps possible to agree here that H1 and H2 are “neutres”, and characterised mainly in terms of their attitude to the tropistic “arrièreplans de la parole”. There are various indications which type H1 as more conventional, since he is married, with a family and a regular job, whereas H2 is not and claims to be happy in a life which excludes these things. However, neither man conforms clearly to any stereotypical gender identity, and such issues seem largely irrelevant here.

The treatment of gender in Sarraute's theatre does not, then, parallel the evolution of her fictions, where she is able to blur all personal boundaries with her use of shifting voices and multiple perspectives. In the first radio plays she seems to be attempting to achieve similar effects, but the theatrical genre resists such attempts. We are aware in all the plays of tropistic tensions underlying the dialogue which are in no way related to gender or socio-sexual identity, but we are also aware, especially in performance, of a surface scene in which these aspects are important. This surface is that of a conventional bourgeois society, and Sarraute observes the gendered relationships and stereotypes of that society with wry and critical amusement. This sharp observation, together with her acute ear for dialogue, contributes to the effectiveness of these very subtle and distinctive plays.

Notes

1. “Rencontre avec Nathalie Sarraute”, Cahiers du Cinéma 477 (mars 1994), 8-14 (p. 9).

2. “Ce que je cherche à faire”, in Pléiade Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), pp. 1694-706 (p. 1706). This edition will be quoted as Œuvres in further references.

3. “Feminist Literary Criticism”, in: Modern Literary Theory, ed. A. Jefferson & D. Robey, 2nd edn (London, 1986), pp. 204-34 (p. 219). Moi goes on to say that in her dialectical view “such conceptual terms are at once politically crucial and metaphysical”, and that they should cease to be categorised as “masculine”.

4. Sheila M. Bell, “The Conjurer's Hat: Sarraute Criticism since 1980”, Romance Studies 23 (Spring 1994), 85-103 (pp. 90, 91).

5. S. Barbour, Nathalie Sarraute and the Feminist Reader (Lewisburg, 1993), p. 22.

6. S. Barbour, p. 270. Barbour refers to Kristeva's 1979 essay “Le Temps des Femmes” where this “third generation” approach is defined.

7. Œuvres, p. 1708.

8. “Entretien avec Nathalie Sarraute” in A. Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute (Paris, 1991), pp. 181-2.

9. Ibid., p. 181.

10. Claude-Marie Senninger, “Un Mensonge (le nôtre …)”, L'Arc 95 (1984), 83-9 (p. 88).

11. “Les faits divers de la parole”, Les Nouvelles littéraires, 10 janvier 1980, 28.

12. “Notice”, Œuvres, p. 1992.

13. Théâtre (Paris, 1993), p. 159. All further page references to the plays are in brackets after quotations. Dates given are those of publication.

14. “Pour nous atteindre les uns les autres, nous n'avons pas d'autre moyen que ce lieu commun du langage”, Sarraute interview in A. Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute, p. 175. Similarly H1 in Isma says: “lieu commun, c'est le lieu où l'on se rencontre” (p. 94).

15. Interview with Marc Saporta in “Portrait d'une inconnue”, L'Arc 95 (1984) 5-23 (p. 6).

16. “Une solitaire aux portes de la Pléiade”, interview in Le Monde, avril 1993 (free special issue distributed to celebrate the opening of the renovated Vieux Colombier Theatre), 4. This is a recent restatement of her consistent interest in what she calls, in the same interview, “ces mouvements aux limites de la conscience qui sont sous le language”.

17. “Nathalie Sarraute: ‘mon théâtre continue mes romans’”, La Quinzaine littéraire, 16 décembre 1978, 5. It is naturally the chasseurs who try to involve their “semblables” in a dangerous exploration of the depths.

18. Introduction to the play in Cahiers Renaud-Barrault 54 (avril 1966), reprinted in Œuvres, p. 2004.

19. Œuvres, p. 2001.

20. See Rykner's account of the critical reception, Œuvres, p. 2005.

21. Interview in Le Monde, 7 février 1973, accompanying a review of the first production, Œuvres, p. 2013.

22. Œuvres, p. 1998, variant a.

23. L'Arc 95 (1984), 5-23 (pp. 22, 23).

24. Review in L'Aurore, 31 octobre 1975, reprinted in Œuvres, p. 2019.

25. Cahiers Renaud-Barrault 89 (1975), 80-9 (pp. 80, 83).

26. As Sarraute herself explained in the interview with Claude Régy, “Les faits divers de la parole”.

27. La Quinzaine littéraire, 16 décembre 1978, 5. The interviewer takes this further, suggesting that if there is an appearance of intolerance in H2's attitude it can be blamed on F's refusal of dialogue. Sarraute agrees.

28. Ouvrez (1997) consists of a series of short texts, entirely in dialogue, in which the protagonists are words, but it is not obviously intended for performance, and certainly not for stage performance.

29. Œuvres, p. 2029.