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NATHALIE SARRAUTE: Reactions” That We Sense Inside Us--Those TROPISMS and the Inner Movements Called “Tropisms” by 1 Sarraute--Become Perceptible

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NATHALIE SARRAUTE: Reactions” That We Sense Inside Us--Those TROPISMS and the Inner Movements Called “Tropisms” by 1 Sarraute--Become Perceptible NATHALIE SARRAUTE: reactions” that we sense inside us--those TROPISMS AND THE inner movements called “tropisms” by 1 Sarraute--become perceptible. Briefly, the DRAMA OF LOGOS prelinguistic impulses, which are the basic emotions underlying everyday human 2 Nipaporn Tirasait interrelationships, become the key concept of all her short, intense plays under the form of “logodrama.” Abstract Introduction Nathalie Sarraute created a new style of writing, renouncing the accepted literary Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999), a French forms by discarding conventional ideas novelist, essayist, and playwright, is one of about plot, chronology, and the most interesting female writers of the characterization. Research in this area 20th century. Her works, well known in has consistently shown that, in Sarraute, France, have now been translated into language is at the heart of her drama. more than 30 languages all over the world. However, this essay emphasizes that she Sarraute has been one of the strongest played with the power of words and creative influences on the New Novel or silences to make us hear far beyond the Nouveau Roman movement. In the history social surface of discourse and grasp what of modern French Literature, she is classed is really going on in the minds of the as one of the leading theorists, along with interlocutors. Against the structural Noble prize winners Claude Simon, Alain linguistics of her time, Sarraute Robbe-Grillet, and Michel Butor. But her concentrated on every phoneme, every “interpersonal tropisms” were strongly syllable of a word or an expression, criticized by Robbe-Grillet. For him, the testing and retesting it from all angles myth of interior movements, as a until those extremely rapid “invisible substance of literature, made her work old- fashioned and based on classical psychology. Ideologically, for this 1 This paper is partly based on my doctoral “nouveau romancier,” whose La Jalousie dissertation in French, entitled “Ecriture (Jealousy, 1957) is a very well-known théâtrale de Nathalie Sarraute,” presented at example of the genre, language can be, at The Graduate School of Chulalongkorn one and the same time, both the form and University in 2005. The study is an attempt to understand the theme of Nathalie Sarraute’s the substance of literature. For Sarraute, plays. I am grateful to my thesis director: on the other hand, language is an all-too- Associate Professor Dr. Kachitra human means of communication to which Bhangananda, and my co-director: Assistant we only partly or imperfectly accede. Professor Dr. Walaya Rukapan, whose What interests her is that which remains suggestions greatly improved my work. And ensconced beneath the linguistic surface: most importantly, I would like to thank the not-yet-verbalized sensations or Assistant Professor Dr. Paniti Hoonswaeng feelings. and Dr. Stephen Coote for their valuable and helpful comments. In this paper, I explicate the essential 2 Lecturer, French Section, Department of Western Languages, Faculty of Humanities, elements of her theatre by analyzing three aspects common to her six plays: Naresuan University, Phisanulok, Thailand. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 01:15:55AM via free access Nathalie Sarraute: Tropisms and the Drama of Logos dramatized tropisms, the drama of logos, entirely objective quality. Furthermore, and the roles of interlocutors without according to her beliefs, literature is not a identity. scientific matter emphasizing facts and information. So, it seemed absurd to her The dramatized tropisms to attempt to describe the external world according to the concept of mimesis that A series of brief passages in Nathalie influenced contemporary authors. Jean- Sarraute’s first work, Tropisms (1939),3 Paul Sartre, for example, a great writer and shows that inexpressible human critic of Sarraute’s time, held that a true experiences exist and that these literature reflected the real world and 5 indefinable movements slip through us on aimed to change human life. He admired the frontiers of consciousness. They hide literary works that represented the actual behind our gestures, beneath the words we condition of the world in general and, in speak, but they are the origins of our particular, the struggle of individuals to actions, discourse, and the feelings we define themselves through their manifest.4 responsibilities. In one of her interviews, Sarraute confirmed that she was not Her tropisms also imply that in reality we interested in this kind of Sartrean do not all see the same things or feel the existentialism, especially not in his theory same way. Thus perception is not an of political and social engagement: [. .] what I write has absolutely 3 In the Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 27 nothing to do with social or (1966: 156), tropism refers to the involuntary political events, whatever they tendency of an organism to react to an external might be. No more than in the stimulus, as a sunflower, for example, turns work of Proust. It’s totally toward light. In biology, it is an involuntary movement of an organism or of its parts in removed from that. [. .] This is not response to some external stimulus such as littérature engage. light or chemical agents. The ability to react to (Halicks 1980: 13) 6 environmental influences is a basic and universal characteristic of living organisms. Her writings show how to go beyond the The type of reaction elicited by any given baseline of so-called realism. Against the stimulus is generally adaptive, in that it tends positivist mode of empirical investigation to further the welfare of and perpetuate the and documentary that coincides with the individual. A human hand brought into rise of realism or naturalism, her entire contact with a hot stove immediately and involuntarily moves away from the harmful oeuvre can be labeled sentimental, playing influence. The shoot of a green plant will turn on feeling or on the audience’s emotions toward light, which is the source of the energy involved in its food-manufacturing processes. 5 In his theoretical works, such as Qu’est-ce 4 que la littérature? (What Is Literature? 1948), «Ce sont des mouvements indéfinissables, Sartre investigated the roles of literature and qui glissent très rapidement aux limites de argued that its contemporary function was to notre conscience; ils sont à l’origine de nos change the world. gestes, de nos paroles, des sentiments que nous 6Cf: http://www.Wooster.edu/artfuldodge/inter manifestons» (Sarraute 1996:1553). All translations in this paper, when not otherwise views/sarraute.htm [March 10, 2006]. stated, are mine. 81 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 01:15:55AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities 10.2, 2007 rather than on reason. These qualities According to her, the writer, as an artist, become the unifying thread throughout her “creates a new world which comes to work, where essential questions that probe enlarge known reality and extends the the frontiers of little-understood field further from the visible one” phenomena are presented. (Sarraute 1996: 1619). But the playwright did not tell about interior adventures. She Traditional writers, especially writers of brought them alive through the interaction the late 19th and the early 20th century such between the two poles of the “linguistic as Honoré Balzac7, Emile Zola, and Mark interpersonages,”8 until the stage of the Twain whose works were termed conflict could be skillfully exaggerated. It “realistic” and who took as their subject was not by chance that she chose and put matter the real world (people, places, and in the high-speed negative tropisms. things), believed that an objective picture Although Sarraute asserted that the of the world could be completely tropismic reaction could be attraction or represented with words and typically used repulsion, only negative tropisms were devices such as plot, characters, and emphasized in her plays to better description to accomplish their task. On dramatize the world of her the other hand, Sarraute abandoned these interpersonages. The stage requires conventional notions and called into conflict and violence. question the traditional modes of literary realism. She took tropisms seriously as Here follows her justification in a manifest her subject matter. Thus the literary point of 1990: of view comes from inside the human mind and from sensibility. What was I prefer to take them when there is represented in her plays was the fleeting a state of conflict; that bubbles and powerful emotions with which one more. Otherwise, all is calm. I reacts to other human beings. Sarraute choose the moment when made us enter the preconsciousness of something does not go, something each “character” and taught us to very light, hardly sensitive. I look understand that truth was intersubjective. then at what occurs when one So, in her works, binary oppositions like observes it with a magnifying objective/subjective have little or no glass. meaning. (Rykner 2002:194) Sarraute poised her microscope to observe To let us sense the inner vibrations, and examine these tropisms, which were Sarraute privileged the dynamic plays with hidden in a back corner of the spirit. the mechanism of dialogue and, in particular, with small facts about language: imperceptible silences, the light 7 In her interview, Sarraute underlined that the lie, the abnormal pronunciation or work of Balzac was great for his time but his ridiculous intonation, banal expressions. psychological way of creating the realistic The “characters” feel tiny vibration characters was too simple for our 20th-century world, where many studies have shown that human beings can not be easily described 8 For more details, see Pavis (2002 b). using simplified psychological forms (see Rykner 2002 : 183). 82 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 01:15:55AM via free access Nathalie Sarraute: Tropisms and the Drama of Logos crossing in them. In fact, no words or and approach tropisms just by listening to definitions can describe what they feel.
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