SOURCE: Rothenberg, John. “Nathalie Sarraute Changing Genres: From ‘dissent les imbeciles’ to Elle est lá.” Australian Journal of French Studies 35, no. 2 (May-August 1998): 215-27.

[In the following essay, Rothenberg concentrates on the similarities between Sarraute's prose and theatrical works, first outlining the differences between the two genres and then comparing two of Sarraute's texts as examples of very complex, but complementary themes between the play and fiction.]

It is generally accepted that Nathalie Sarraute is pursuing the same interests in her plays as in her novels and in the later fictions which she sees as on the border of novel and poetry. In 1978, when her first five plays appeared in a collected edition,¹ she told Lucette Finas: “J'ai mis du temps à m'en apercevoir, à remarquer que mon théâtre continuait mes romans.”² She was agreeing here with Finas's comment on the theatricality, the “grossissement optique” of the novels, but she also agreed that both plays and novels developed the same essential themes, and focused on the miniature dramas, the “tropismes” that take place beneath the surface of everyday life. Nathalie Sarraute began writing plays in 1963, as a result of a commission from Radio Stuttgart, when her reputation as a novelist and essayist was already well established.³ This has led to a certain critical neglect of her theatre, often seen simply as an extension of her work as a novelist.

The question I wish to raise in this article is to what extent genres as radically different as the novel and the theatre can produce similar effects. Can the shifting inner world of tropisms, central to the fiction, maintain its subtlety and ambiguity when transferred to texts intended for the public and social medium of performance, whether for radio (the first four plays), or in the theatre? Or does the change of genre bring about a change of emphasis? The author herself implies that there is no essential change; if the glove is “inside out” as she has put it, it remains the same glove. She is also, however, clearly in agreement with the many critics who emphasize the importance of form and style in her fiction, telling Arnaud Rykner in 1990 “c'est un peu comme des textes poétiques”.⁴ In the same interview Rykner suggests a more precise relationship between her works, each play growing directly out of the preceding novel: “A chaque fois elles en développent un passage, un chapitre”.⁵ Sarraute's politely non-committal reply, “je n'en suis pas du tout consciente” seems to leave the question open, and the relationship suggested by Rykner has not been the subject of any detailed study. In this article I briefly review some of the intrinsic differences between the genres before considering the evidence for complementarity between one of the most complex of the late fictions and the play which follows it.

One difference between the genres, of particular importance in Sarraute's case, is the loss of the narrative voice or voices in the theatre. The shifting and indefinable voices in her fiction are a feature which can have no equivalent on stage, although there are moments in her first radio play, Le Silence, when the voices are deliberately detached from the individual characters to express the feelings of a group.⁶ The fact that we can normally distinguish clearly between the voices of the radio play or the actors on stage is a basic feature of theatre which Sarraute sometimes seems to regret, since she feels any awareness of characters as individuals, with physical and social characteristics, is a distraction from her central concerns.⁷ Other relatively basic genre features are the treatment of time and space in the theatre. We experience theatrical actions as taking place in sequence, even when this sequence is not chronological, and we are aware of a specific place of action, even when, as in En attendant Godot, this place is openly presented as the stage itself.⁸ At a more fundamental level Jean-Louis Barrault suggests, in a discussion of his own staging of adapted novels, that

la vision poétique du théâtre prend racine dans le comportement du silence. Celui-ci se ramifie sur le plan social sous forme de dialogue … et sur le plan individuel par le soliloque ou le monologue. Pour plus de simplicité, je dirai: il y a la surface, il y a le “dessous” et il y a le fond.⁹

In the novels of Sarraute all the essential interest is focused on this fond, and the ramifications “sur le plan social” are reduced to less and less significant details. In this inner world time has no meaning, and for the novel this challenges all the reader's expectations of a linear narrative. The world of the theatre, however, is in any case a world, as Barrault says, “qui ne peut se vivre que dans le présent”,¹⁰ so that even Sarraute's plays which are expansions of a single tiny moment, create their own present world, with its successive interactions.

I have chosen to examine disent les imbéciles because it is a form of fiction which appears to be even more distant from theatre in its treatment of time, place and narrative voice than Sarraute's earlier novels and so raises the problems of genre switching in a particularly striking form. As Monique Wittig points out, the works after Les Fruits d'or tend to take place in an “abstract” fictional space: “any unspecified place where one speaks or else, perhaps, a mental space with imaginary interlocutors”.¹¹

In disent les imbéciles (1976) the absence of conventional novel features is underlined in the prière d'insérer of the Folio edition:

C'est aux racines mêmes de l'être, là où se forme notre appréhension du monde, là où naissent, où s'implantent en nous les idées, que se placent les nouveaux “tropismes” de ce roman, de ce poème de Nathalie Sarraute.¹²

The author has claimed that the novelist always uses the “langage essentiel” of poetry: “Je n'ai jamais … pu tracer les frontières entre le roman et la poésie”.¹³ In disent les imbéciles we have a convincing example of a work which challenges the frontiers of genre, since it is given form not by even a semblance of narrative but by the recurrence of stylistic effects, images, distinct voices, around two related themes. These are defined in the prière d'insérer as: “deux oppositions, liées l'une à l'autre et qui s'enchevêtrent”. The first is the conflict between each individual's feeling that he is “à lui seul l'univers entier” and his awareness that for others he is only, as they are for him, “un personnage qu'on lui impose, ou qu'il impose”, characters who are fixed in hierarchies, classified as “suprêmement intelligents” or “imbéciles”. The second is the opposition between “l'idée libre, vivante, indépendante” and “l'idée enchaînée aux personnages qui la produisent ou la soutiennent”.

That this structure is not self-evident is shown by Pierrot's comment that the novel seems to be “une série de vignettes et de scènes sans rapport apparent”, which prepares the way for the separate episodes of L'Usage de la parole (1980).¹⁴ Valerie Minogue, in the conclusion to her perceptive study of five earlier novels, comments on disent les imbéciles, suggesting that it consists of “variations on the theme of verbal tyranny” and that the ideas theme is linked to this, since ideas, like words, become “the uniforms and weapons of warring selves”.¹⁵

While the two themes are certainly related, the relationship is perhaps more complex than Minogue's brief comments suggest. It is the dual themes and the complex nature of their “enchevêtrement” which no doubt lead André Allemand to conclude one of the few extended analyses of this novel with the comment that “de toutes les œuvres de Nathalie Sarraute celle-ci est sans conteste la plus difficile”.¹⁶ Allemand emphasizes the “ideas” aspect of the theme “l'espèce de terrorisme qui peut s'emparer de la pensée” and links it to the theme of liberty:

L'homme est d'autant plus soucieux de sa liberté qu'il la découvre partout menacée […] “disent les imbéciles” nous introduit au cœur de ce problème inquiétant.¹⁷

He also attempts to link the categorization of others to a political theme: “Il y a ceux qui admettent l'existence des imbéciles; il y a ceux qui refusent toute concession de cette nature parce qu'elle aboutit tôt ou tard au racisme”.¹⁸ Such political interpretations can be defended, but the focus of the work is surely on the personal, and individual aspect of Sarraute's themes.

The opening scene of the novel is not concerned with ideas, but with the opposition between the fixed “personnage” that we are for others and the unlimited possibilities each individual contains. The first paragraph presents a grandmother surrounded by her adoring grandchildren. As Allemand says, “cette première scène semble avoir été conçue pour son charme, pour la poésie qui s'en dégage”.¹⁹ For the reader who has followed Sarraute's work to this point however—and like most fine writers, Sarraute teaches the reader a certain way of reading—the portrait is just too charming, ironically “over the top”: “[des] cheveux […] comme des plumes, comme du duvet”, “la peau soyeuse”, “la chair moelleuse cède docilement”, “air de tendre indulgence”, “bon sourire innocent” (p. 7). The accumulation, in this first short paragraph, of vocabulary with connotations of softness and gentleness creates the perfect stereotype, and this can be seen as a paradigm for the problem explored through many scenes of the novel, the oversimplified images which prevent others seeing us as we really are. The stereotypical creative writer tearing sheet after sheet from his typewriter as he searches for perfection in the opening of Entre la vie et la mort has a similar role, although the effect of caricature is achieved by repetition of the gesture, rather than exaggerated description.²⁰

In disent les imbéciles, as in other works, a voice is soon raised in protest at the hidden implications of the stultifyingly commonplace image being used of a complex individual human being. This is clearly the voice of the “chasseur de tropismes”, the écorché vif who appears in most of Sarraute's texts to disrupt the calm surface, perceiving the complications and dramas which lie beneath it.²¹ Here the principal chasseur character is a favourite grandson. I continue to use the convenient word “character”, although a new terminology would no doubt be more appropriate for Sarraute's fiction, and the term is certainly too traditional for this text. As in other late texts, the “characters” here are little more than opposing voices. These are not entirely abstract voices, since they are distinguished, not only by their attitude to the tropistic events, but also by a few social and relational characteristics. Their principal function in the work, however, is to exemplify a certain reaction to particular linguistic catalysts, and the tropisms that underly them.

Here the words “elle est mignonne” have been the catalyst. The grandson whose protesting voice interrupts the idyllic scene sees these words as a form of imprisonment, and a denial of the other's humanity. By reducing the real woman to the reassuringly commonplace figure of “une vraie grandmère de conte de fées” (p. 14) they make her into an object: “petite porcelaine de Saxe posée sur la cheminée, statuette de Tanagra, ravissante poupée” (p. 20). His protests lead immediately to his separation from the others in the family group, who bring their “système de défense” into action, chosing amongst their linguistic weapons “l'arme la plus facile à manier”, explaining away his objections with the word “jaloux” (pp. 13-15).

In this opening section of the novel, besides the clash of opposing attitudes towards the “other”, around the images of the grandmother, we see the supposed victim herself clinging to her stereotype. Far from accepting the grandson's defence, she prefers the security of her rôle as charming old lady, and we see her returning to it as a refuge: “En sécurité. Dans ce havre où elle est entrée, où […] avant même qu'on ne l'y dirige, elle est allée prudemment, sagement se ranger” (p. 27).²² The first section concludes with a new analysis of the catalyst phrase “Elle est mignonne”, now ironically represented, in a proliferation of sugary metaphors, as completely harmless: “bonbon, caramel délicieux à sucer” (p. 31).

This initial theme is developed around other figures, not directly linked to the grandmother and grandson. The most important of these, le Maître, is indirectly linked in a number of ways. Scenes involving him echo the opposing reactions of the grandson and grandmother, as he appears to be both protesting that he does not fit the stereotypes of the great thinker and writer, yet is tempted to settle comfortably into his rôle. The Master defines more precisely the reasons for refusing the stereotype image, linking it to the essential problem of the nature of the Self, a problem which is explored in much of Sarraute's work: “Moi je suis … Mais justement je ne suis pas […] il n'y a pas de ‘je’ […] il n'y a pas moyen de coïncider avec ça, avec ce que vous avez construit” (p. 83). Alan Clayton refers to this passage as a “mise en garde” addressed to the reader, who becomes

le sosie du chercheur de tropismes, l'un s'efforçant de capter dans le filet de l'abstraction ce que l'autre s'emploie à prendre dans celui de l'analogie.²³

The reader scarcely needs warning, however, since this text has deprived him of the possibility of creating a coherent traditional character. While self-reflexive elements are certainly a feature of Sarraute's work, it seems to me that here she is not drawing the reader's attention to problems of his own response to the text, but focusing on the idea that the Self is fluid, undefinable and unlimited. Other late works also plunge us into the heart of this theme. The clearest instance, Tu ne t'aimes pas (1989), is entirely based on the inner dialogue between multiple selves. In disent les imbéciles the Master oscillates between an idea of himself as “un souffle, une ombre, un vide où tout s'engouffre” (p. 93), and, like the grandmother in her “havre”, a desire to accept the comfort of remaining “à l'abri d'une forme … la sienne … qu'ils modèlent, qu'ils caressent” (p. 86). The two very different figures of simple old lady and “maître à penser” are brought together, not in any narrated meeting, nor in any specified place, but at the point in the text where the Master is preparing what seems to be a definitive acceptance of the comfortably limited image, which sets clear boundaries to the self and the other: “enfermé ici, dans ce corps. Chacun chez soi et tous réunis” (p. 90). The grandson, in the opening section, sees the words which confine his grandmother as an evil spell cast over her: “j'ai essayé de t'arracher à cette forme où tu es enfermée” (p. 28). For the Master, on the contrary, the verb “enfermer” is linked to positive feelings: “Qu'on est donc bien … comme on est en sécurité”, but when he encloses those around him in their fixed images, creating for himself “cette apaisante sensation que lui donnent les vieux portraits … si vrais, plus vrais que nature …” (p. 91), Sarraute's ironical intention is apparent. This is immediately followed by an ironically approving reference to the way in which the group rejected the “fou” who dared to challenge the grandmother's perfect portrait (p. 91).

In a later scene it is very clear that the character who affirms the mobile and limitless nature of the individual is taking an unusual and dangerous stance. He violently rejects the language which would define him:

Aucun de ces mots ne me convient … […] Rien ne peut se fixer sur rien … Je ne suis rien … […] Infini … Sans confins … Et tous autour … comme moi. …

(pp. 157, 158)

This view begins to “contaminate” others, but “les défenseurs de l'ordre” appear to put an end to the scandalous disturbance: “Allons, allons … voix ferme, ton calme des gardiens de la loi” (p. 158).

The second theme proposed in the prière d'insérer, the opposition between “l'idée libre, vivante, indépendante” and “l'idée enchaînée aux personnages qui la produisent ou la soutiennent”, is central to the play Elle est là. In the novel it starts as another variation on the theme of linguistic labels and their destructive power, with a scene where a child who has overheard a schoolmate say that he is not intelligent feels he is condemned for life: “c'est la réclusion perpétuelle” (p. 49). His father rescues him from his “cage” by classifying the schoolmates concerned as “des petits imbéciles” (p. 50). This leads into a series of developments where the relationship of the individual to his own ideas and those of others is more important than the question of language. Characters are tempted to accept or reject ideas on the basis of their relationship to the originator, but the ideal, put forward by one voice, is to consider the idea “seule, séparée de sa source […] Je la veux isolée, à l'état pur …” (p. 56). Sarraute's comments suggest that this is indeed her own ideal: if we accepted the right to say “c'est ce que disent les imbéciles” then it would follow that “on s'inclinerait devant l'idée émise par un ‘génie’ fût-elle faible, on rejetterait sans jugement celle d'un imbécile”.²⁴ The text, however, seems to present the ideal as one which cannot be realized, or only in moments of supreme effort as in the scene introduced by my previous quotation. In this instance the speaker, confronted with an idea which physically revolts him, refuses to say “c'est ce que disent les imbéciles”, and grapples with the idea itself: “Réprimer en soi cette répulsion, s'efforcer d'examiner cela comme font ceux qui analysent des crachats, des excréments” (p. 59). This moment of idealism is the exception, and the sequence ends with the character involved succumbing to temptation, allowing himself to be pushed into defending his own idea with the crude verbal weapon he has previously rejected: “Bon. Vous m'y avez contraint. Je le reconnais: vous êtes des imbéciles” (pp. 76, 77).

The reader is never informed what kind of ideas the characters are attacking or defending since it is only the characters' reactions which are important here, and to what extent they treat ideas as an extension of personality. Neither do we interest ourselves in anything about these characters except as carriers of the emotions provoked by conflicting attitudes to the complex problems at the heart of the novel, problems which are not analysed but shown in terms of the inner drama they provoke.

How does the play which Sarraute wrote next develop or relate to the complex themes and subtle inner dramas of disent les imbéciles? Even a casual reading shows that, as might be expected, Elle est là selects and simplifies, since it depends, as plays must, on creating its essential effects instantly in performance. The play which does not achieve this aim is unlikely to be given a second hearing, and although Sarraute's plays break with tradition in most respects they do not break with this essential constraint. She told L'Humanité: “J'ai écrit toutes mes pièces sauf la dernière pour la radio. Pour Elle est là, j'ai plus pensé à la scène que pour les précédents”.²⁵ This increased awareness of genre is no doubt a factor which led to important changes of emphasis between the two texts.

There are some similarities between the play and the novel in their treatment of character. The four characters of the play are unnamed, but identified in the text as three men and one woman, by simple labels as in Sarraute's other plays: H1, H2, H3 and F. Other information about them in terms of individual characteristics is minimal, since, as in the novel, their function is to convey opposing attitudes and feelings. On the level of function there is a parallel between the central chasseur de tropismes of the play, H2, and the first figure in the novel to present the theme of ideas and our relationship to them. This figure, as I have argued above, attempts to defend his own idea without resorting to the crude rejection of others, typified by the title phrase “disent les imbéciles”. At the end of his first attempt to achieve this aim he appears to accept defeat, renounces contact with others, and retreats into isolation with his idea: “La voici. Ils sont seuls à présent, tous les deux. Ceux qui ne l'ont pas honorée comme elle le mérite, les imbéciles, ont été chassés” (p. 78). In the play H2 is the character who attempts to defend his idea, but here the opposing idea is carried by one specific opponent, F. The fact that, at least from H1's viewpoint, there is a clear, and potentially hostile, focus for the opposition is one of a number of important differences between the way the two texts treat the idea theme. There is, however, a close parallel between the retreat of the “chasseur” in the novel, quoted above, and the ending of the play: “H2: C'est à mon idée à moi, à elle seule, que je pense … […] Qu'on nous laisse seuls, elle et moi. Tout seuls …”²⁶

An important difference in the way characters are presented in the play is the fact that they are seen in the context of a specific social relationship. It sometimes seems, when reading the author's statements about the plays, as if this element has almost imposed itself against her intentions. A comment on Isma, “les personnages sont à la fois personne et chacun de nous” expresses her typical emphasis on what, in the same interview, she calls “cette recherche qui conduit à faire partager ce que chacun a de plus intime, de plus inexprimé, de plus dangereux”.²⁷ In Elle est là, nonetheless, we are given the information that the main protagonists, H2 and F, are employer and employee, and that it is the man who holds the senior position. This must surely affect our response to the situation. Sarraute certainly plays down the social aspect of the relationship when F is first introduced: “H1: Votre collaboratrice? H2: Oui … enfin … mon associée … mais peu importe qui elle est” (p. 36). Almost immediately however H2 and H1 refer to her in a tone of contemptuous superiority: “Sûrement une bonne personne”, “Ce n'est pas un foudre” (p. 36), and later in the play the unequal power relationship is suggested by H3 as a reason for F's apparent submission: “Enfin elle a pu croire que si elle ne cédait pas … elle dépend tout de même un peu de vous …” (p. 55). H2 does not deny the suggested dependence, and his vigorous denial that he will make use of it, like most such denials, only reinforces our awareness of this inequality. It is in any case implied indirectly in other scenes, as when H2 realizes that his first attempt to persuade F is failing, and angrily reproaches himself: “Je suis fou … Voilà ce que c'est … de traiter d'égal à égal … de discuter …” (p. 39).

A further social element is the stereotyping of the female character, which the author sees as an exception in her work. Having told Claude Régy that in general she is scarcely aware of the age or sex of her characters, she admits that

dans Elle est là, au cours du travail, le fait qu'un des personnages soit une femme permettait un certain jeu entre des attitudes stéreotypées à son égard, d'ailleurs aussitôt réfrénées, pour ne s'attacher qu'à l'idée dont elle était la porteuse.²⁸

The final restrictive phrases in this comment are typical of Sarraute's consistent tendency to deny any importance to the social or sexual content in her writing, just as she rejects as irrelevant all attempts to define her writing as feminist or feminine.

It seems to me that the sexual stereotyping, and the “attitudes stéréotypées” of the men in particular, do make an important contribution to comic and dramatic effect in this play. They certainly reinforce the effect of F being at an unfair disadvantage in her conflict with H2. She is alternately patronized and bullied by the men, and although their view of her is obviously influenced by their own stereotypical attitudes to women, her portrayal supports this view to some extent. She is presented as a member of the “weaker sex” in the sense that she is physically vulnerable, and the men appear to play on this. H2 begins his first attempt to persuade F in a timidly hesitant tone—“Je ne sais pas comment … Par où commencer …”—but her resistance immediately produces an angry rejection of her opposing idea as “du brouillard, de la bouillie pour les chats …”. He apologises for this outburst—“j'ai tort de m'énerver …”—but the scene ends with him losing control completely:

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).

(pp. 38-40)

H2's agression was brought out very strongly in Roland Bertin's tooth-gritting 1993 performance directed by Jacques Lassalle, and this interpretation is fully justified by the text, which recurrently suggests the character's barely suppressed violence.²⁹

The undercurrent of violence is central to the scene where H2 and H3 together interrogate F, although the interrogators never openly threaten their victim. Their plan is to keep calm: “Surtout ne pas la braquer. Ne pas éveiller sa méfiance” (p. 44) and stage directions for their speeches include “très doux, doucereux”, “très doux”, “doux”. However, this tone of voice is contradicted at a number of points by their gestural language, as when they physically prevent F from leaving, and try to force her to sit between them (p. 45). Her reactions also suggest that she feels threatened. Early in the scene when H3 asks her if she is frightened she denies it. At the end of the scene, when H2 responds with furious sarcasm to her comment that others would laugh at his ideas, she is well aware that the situation has become unpleasantly threatening: “F: Vous entendez sur quel ton vous dites ça? Rien que de vous entendre … brr …” (p. 48). The two men have deliberately set out to force her into “recanting”, and in this situation the sex of the character is not a matter of indifference. The text generally promotes a view of F as a victim of aggression, rather than as guilty of refusing dialogue.

In this context the social situation implied, the tone of voice, and the physical language of the stage all contribute to the dramatic tension. As a result, although the treatment of a character defending his threatened idea has clear parallels with certain scenes in disent les imbéciles, the overall effect is very different. In the novel the passive “porteur” of the idea which the “chasseur” character wishes to overcome is an undefined and absent figure, so there is really no possibility of reading the conflict of ideas as a conflict between characters. The dramatic aspect of this treatment arises from the inner struggle of the chasseur between his aim of confronting and defeating “l'idée pure” and the temptation of the easy way out. In the play, on the contrary, not only is the “porteur” present, but she is given social characteristics which make it inevitable that the attack on her idea should function dramatically as a personal attack on her.

The social element in the situation is admittedly not an inevitable result of the genre change, and is less important elsewhere in Sarraute's theatre, but the identification of the individual with his idea, and the clearer distinction between characters do seem inherent to the theatre. The selection of material, which limits the scope of the play to one of the more straightforward aspects of the novel, is also appropriate to the change of genre. Both works are concerned with intense conflicts underlying what might on the surface appear to be a mere difference of opinion, but in the novel the violent tropistic emotions which attach to these conflicts, the difficulty or impossibility of restricting such conflicts to the purely intellectual, are related to the need to defend our self-image. This other theme is not important in the play, although it is possible to read H2's obsession as stemming from such a link between idea and self. It seems, therefore, that one can justify presenting the novel as the hypotext in this case, but that the differences between the works are at least as important as the similarities.

It is clear that many of the changes of emphasis and effect noted here are a result of the change of genre. In the novel the constantly shifting viewpoint, and the absence of any precise time or place for the changing scenes, focuses the reader's attention on a complex of questions about the relationship between our inner self and the ideas and words which we expose to the outer world, the contrast between this inner self and the self we are for others. In Sarraute's theatre, including the plays for radio, we seldom doubt who is speaking. The dramatic text, even before its incarnation on the stage, is bound to present feelings which are those of distinct characters, so that in the plays we link the tropistic emotions, enlarged to the theatrical dimension, to particular interpersonal relationships.³⁰

As Sarraute developed her work for radio and theatre she became involved in the production of her plays. She attended rehearsals, clearly not as a silent spectator, and even went to the USA to advise on a student production of Le Mensonge.³¹ As a result she seems to have become increasingly conscious of the contribution non-verbal elements can make to dramatic effect. The plays originally written for radio, although they do not contain the kind of physical theatricality to which I have referred in my discussion of Elle est là, have none the less attracted good directors, such as Jean-Louis Barrault and Jacques Lassalle, and been successfully performed in the theatre.

Any conclusion based mainly on the evidence of two texts must be provisional, but these works provide an interesting study of genre switching, since the author's preoccupations with the most subtle and minute dramas underlying everyday events might seem to preclude presentation through such a public medium as theatre. It seems clear, however, that Sarraute, with her strong sense of form, has instinctively adapted her writing to the essential constraints of genre, producing plays which have a different focus from the novels which precede them, and which are remarkably effective in their own right.

Notes

1. Nathalie Sarraute, Théâtre. Elle est là. C'est beau. Isma. Le Mensonge. Le Silence, Paris, Gallimard, 1978, revised edn 1993. All references in the text are to the revised edition.

2. Interview in La Quinzaine littéraire, 16 déc. 1978, p. 4. I follow Sarraute's example, and refer to her prose fictions as novels, for convenience.

3. “Le Gant retourné”, Cahiers Renaud-Barrault, 89, 1975, pp. 171-178.

4. Arnaud Rykner, Nathalie Sarraute, Paris, Seuil, 1991, p. 157.

5. Ibid., p. 180. Rykner reviews some authorial and critical comment on the question of the relationship between genres in Théâtres du nouveau roman: Sarraute, Pinget, Duras, Paris, Corti, 1988.

6. “Les autres pendant ce temps parlent: bruit de fond” (Théâtre, p. 157).

7. In an interview with the director Claude Régy, she says that she does not visualize her characters: “je ne leur vois ni visage, ni âge, ni sexe ou à peine par souci de contraste” (“Les faits divers de la parole”, Les Nouvelles littéraires, 10 janvier 1980, p. 28).

8. Vladimir says: “En effet nous sommes sur un plateau”, and Estragon cannot escape from this place through the backcloth or the audience. (Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1952, p. 125)

9. “Le roman adapté au théâtre”, Cahiers Renaud-Barrault, 91, 1976, pp. 27-58, see p. 32.

10. Loc. cit.

11. Monique Wittig, “The Place of the Action” in Lois Oppenheim, ed., Three Decades of the French New Novel, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1986, pp. 132-140, see p. 133. Also published in the original French in Digraphe, 32, March 1984.

12. “disent les imbéciles”, Paris, Gallimard, Folio n^o 997, 1978 (my italics). Page references to the novel in this article are to the original edition, Gallimard, 1976. The Folio prière d'insérer is reproduced in André Allemand, L'Œuvre romanesque de Nathalie Sarraute, Neuchâtel, Baconnière, 1980, pp. 393-394.

13. “Ce que je cherche à faire”, in Jean Ricardou, ed., Nouveau roman: hier, aujourd'hui, Paris, U.G.E., 10/18, 1972, 2 vols, II, pp. 25-58, see p. 27.

14. Jean Pierrot, Nathalie Sarraute, Paris, Corti, 1990, pp. 394 and 403.

15. Nathalie Sarraute and the War of the Words, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1981, pp. 188, 189.

16. L'Œuvre romanesque de Nathalie Sarraute, p. 472.

17. Ibid., p. 421.

18. Ibid., p. 433.

19. Ibid., p. 422.

20. Minogue analyses this scene and relates it to structurally significant paradigms in other novels, in Nathalie Sarraute and the War of the Words, pp. 141, 153, 154.

21. Sarraute uses the expression “chasseur de tropismes”, and defines it, in “Portrait d'une inconnue”, L'Arc, 95, 1984, p. 6.

22. I signal cuts in quotations by square brackets, in view of Sarraute's fondnesss for points de suspension.

23. “Coucou … attrapez-moi …”, Revue des sciences humaines, 217, 1990-1991, pp. 9-22, see p. 18.

24. “Portrait d'une inconnue” (interview with Marc Saporta), L'Arc, 95, 1984, pp. 5-23, see p. 22.

25. L'Humanité, 12 mai 1980. Quoted from the Dossier de presse of the Fonds Rondel, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, 4⁰ SW8617. As Arnaud Rykner points out, this excellent resource has been curtailed for lack of funds, and deserves wider acknowledgement (Théâtres du nouveau roman, p. 226). Surprisingly he does not include the dossier quoted here, covering Régy's productions, in his generally comprehensive bibliography.

26. In Théâtre, p. 58. Further page references to Elle est là will be given in the text.

27. Le Monde, 7 fév. 1973. In Fonds Rondel, dossier de presse 4⁰ SW5799.

28. Les Nouvelles littéraires, 10 janv. 1980, p. 28.

29. In a double bill with Le Silence, which inaugurated the restored Théâtre du Vieux Colombier under the auspices of the Comédie-Française.

30. For an opposing view see Valerie Minogue, “Voices, virtualities and ventriloquism: Nathalie Sarraute's Pour un oui ou pour un non”, French Studies, XLIX, 1995, pp. 164-177, see p. 165. Minogue argues that the author does blur the boundaries between characters in this play, as she does in the fictions. I reply to Minogue in: “Distinct Voices or Mingled Ventriloquys in Sarraute's Theatre”, French Studies Bulletin, 57, Winter 1995, pp. 1-3.

31. Of her participation in Claude Régy's rehearsals she said “On s'engueule” (Les Nouvelles littéraires, 10 janvier 1980, p. 28). Claude Senninger describes how helpful she was at rehearsals of Le Mensonge in “Un Mensonge (Le Nôtre) …”, L'Arc, 95, 1984, pp. 84-89.

After this article was submitted an interesting analysis of “disent les imbéciles” appeared. For this different angle on some of the material discussed here see Valerie Minogue, “Nathalie Sarraute, Anti-Terrorist”, Esprit Créateur, 36, n^o 2, Summer 1996, pp. 75-88.