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Xerox Univereity Microfilms 300 North Zoob Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 RODRIGUEZ, Fernando, 1933- IHE ART OF CLAUDE SIMON: A DUAL PERSPECTIVE. [Portions o£ Text in French]

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1973 Language and Literature, modem

| University Microfilms, A \ERO\Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

© Copyright by Fernando Rodriguez

1973

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIV ED. THE ART OF CLAUDE SIMON: A DUAL PERSPECTIVE

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio Stare University

By

Fernando Rodriguez, U.S., M #A

The Ohio State University

1973

Approved by

Advisor Department of Romance Languages FOR MY MOTHER TABLE OP CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... ii VITA...... ill

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Chapter I. THE MAN AND HIS WORK...... 7

II. HISTORY, TIME AND MEMORY...... 62

III, THE THEMATIC UNITY OP LE PALACE...... 99 •

IV. SEXUALITY AND THE ETERNAL RETURN...... 157

V. THE CUBIST PERSPECTIVE: "UN GIGANTESQUE

COLLAGE" ;...... 183 VI. LES CORPS CONDUCTEURS: WAITING FOR THE

PALL...... 21^

CONCLUSION...... 2^3

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 252 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to Professor Ana Llorens and the members of the OSU library staff for their gracious help* I wish to thank Professor Pierre Astier for pointing out the numerous inadequacies in thi3 study during its composition. My most sincere thanks and gratitude are extended to my colleagues and friends in the Division of Compar­ ative Literature— in particular Harry Rogers, Wayne Lawson and Lowanne Callander— for their encouragement and support. Thanks also to James Brooks and Yvonne Winthrop for carrying me across the finish line. I also appreciate the critical reading and sympathetic support offered by Professor Charles Babcock and wish to express ray appreciation to Dean Arthur Adams for his support in making my interview with Claude Simon possible. Finally, my most sincere appreciation to Monsieur Claude Simon who gave so generously of his time to make this effort a fruitful one for me. VITA

March 10, 1933 • • • Born - New York, New York 1950-1952 ...... Active Duty - Armed Forces 1958 • • • • * • • • B.S., School of General Studies, Columbia University 1963 ...... M.A., New York University 1963-1966 • •• • , Instructor, Department of Romance Languages, Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware, Ohio 1966-1968 ...... Instructor, Romance Languages, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1968-1973 ...... Instructor, Comparative Literature, Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Romance Languages Old French Literature. Professor Eleanor Bulatkin Old French Language. Professor Stanley Aston 19th Century French Literature. Professor Charles Carlut 20th Century French Literature. Professor Don. L, Demorest INTRODUCTION

Claude Simon*s literary career spans tv/o generations of writers. Chronologically his contemporaries are Beck­ ett, Sartre, Camus and Malraux; literarily, he is a mem­ ber of the "Midnight Novelists": a label given to those writers published in the Editions de Minuit among whom-- are included Alain Robbe-orillet, Michel Butor and Robert Pinget. His work dates back as far as 1944-, and there has been a definite progression toward an individuality in style and theme which marks Simon as one of the most intellectually profound masters of the language in the literary scene today. There are the very clear influ­ ences of Proust, Joyce and Faulkner in the novels; so clear in fact, that certain critics relegated him to the level of secondary writer in the Hew Novelists hierarchy. While this criticism appeared after the publication of two novels in the 1950's, the stigma of pasticheur has remained in spite of very distinct changes in Simon's literary style and structure. The critical lag* in Simon studies will be discussed in Chapter One. In addition to the potential readers who are put off by 2 the idea of reading an " imitator # 11 there is another seg­ ment of potential readers intimidated by the degree of . difficulty attributed to the works of the New Novelists, and especially to the novels of Simon* The purpose of this disseration is to propose two ways of approaching Simon's novels which.are not unfami­ liar to the serious reader* This dual approach will consist of two perspectives which represent the'double nature of Simon's work: the temporal and the Cubist perspectives* The first perspective is immediately apparent as the familiar ground of the Joycean and Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness, and the Proustian regard en arrifere. But as we move quickly to that eso­ teric level of Simon's temporal world which becomes the atemporal conjunction of the heraclitean flux and Eleatic Zeno's paradoxes of motion, his novels reflect the tension of the conflict between mechanical clock time and time perceived through the intellect as con­ tiguous time periods in a present without duration* The Cubist perspective represents Simon's early training in painting under the tutelage of the famous academician of the Cubists, Andr6 Lhote* As Simon's literary production increases, he incorporates more and more of his artistic vision into his work thus creating 3 a unique literary creation rooted in the tradition of the literary masters of his generation: Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, and inspired by the daring innovations of the Cubist painters, Picasso, Braque, and Gris. To Simon's credit he has continued to grow in both directions rather than standing pat and regressing into a literary anachronism. Although he is the second oldest among the Nev/ Novelists, Simon remains intellectually-young and vigorous; while not forsaking his literary and artistic masters, Simon forges ahead in search of the new tradition which speaks to the new generations of readers and artists. He Joins the other literary explorers, Robbe-Grillet, Butor, et al.. who, indepen­ dent of each other, labor for constant growth and re­ newal of their works; and to this endeavor Simon adds the benefit of the painter's eye sharpened by his con­ tinual study of the other avant-garde masters: Magritte, Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg. Simon has been intimately associated with the Tel Quel group and the influence on his work from this experience will be examined in Chapters Five and Six. It will become immediately apparent, however, that Simon's oeuvre defies categorization under any one exclusive rubric. Anyone who has read two or more Simon novels will soon note that temporal or biographical lacunae in one novel will be filled in by another, so that a patient reader will find that the more novels he reads, the more complete the picture he will have of the whole structure. But before we refer to this phenomenon simply as a puzzle, we would do well to note that the pieces— characters, particular events— do not always merge into physically perfect joints. Rather, one piece may suggest several possibilities or associa­ tions— more like a collage than a puzzle. This same construction can be seen on the level of language where the writer unfolds his work word by word, association upon association, in a process which the structuralists call fecrlture. It becomes obvious that the structuralist view­ point cannot be excluded from this study. Therefore, I propose an accomodation which takes into account both sides of the critical spectrum: a conventional approach to an unconventional oeuvre. Chapter One will examine the author and his critics. Ordinarily a biographical r§sum6 of Simon would be ex­ pected, but as the author himself has said, the work and the life of the author are inseparable, so this 5 first chapter will be a composite of the little known facts about Simon's biography, the genius of his work, and the general critical reaction to it. The study of the temporal perspective begins with Chapter Two and the examination of three novels from the period marking Simon's arrival in the ranks of the New Novelists: Le Vent. li'Herbe. and la Route des Plandres. We pursue Simon's temporal perspective in Chapter Three by a close reading of a critically neglected novel, Le Palace: and finally, in Chapter Pour, the less orthodox theme of sexuality in Simon's novels is considered as a universal but necessary complement to Simon's temporal perspective. As stated earlier, the architecture of Simon's oeuvre suggests the configuration of a collage which is pieced together in a non-linear, abstract symmetry; therefore, while the topic of this disseration implies two clear and distinct sections, the nature of Simon's style does not lend itself to such a convenient arrange­ ment. Chapter Pive, then, will serve as an introduction of Chapter Six, bringing into conjunction the Cubist' perspective and the structuralist concept of "bricolage- collage," as defined by Lfevi-Strauss, along with the "nouvelle critique" concept of Scriture. These are 6 elements already present In his earlier works, and to some extent they have been underlined in the first four chapters; in Chapter Five we apply the fine focus to the lenses of our dual perspective. This dissertation concludes with an examination of Simon's latest novel, Les Corns conducteurs. as an illus­ tration of the perfect blending of fecriture and the Cub­ ist perspective. Chapter Six begins with a restatement of Simon's own concept of fecriture and the thematic motif of the blind Orion which serves as the catalyst for the process of.6criture. CHAPTER I THE MAN AND HIS WORK Et si je dis que la curiosite biographique peut dtre nuisible, c'est qu'elle procure trop souvent 1 ’occasion, le moyen de ne pas affronter l'6tude organique d'une po6sie. — ValSry

Claude Simon published his first novel twenty-seven years ago and as yet there has not been a single book- length critical study published about his work, nor has a biographical study of Simon appeared. The number of arti­ cles and individual chapters devoted to Simon has increased in the past few years, but there still remains the task of bringing this material together in the form of a compre-

*1 hensive study of this extraordinary talent. Simon became a member of the "New Novelists" group by default: he was, and still is, mainly published by the Editions de Kinuit. In the winter of I960 a literary journal in the United States published a collection of

A special issue on Claude Simon appeared just this past year in Entretiens (Paris: Rodez, 1972); Professor John Fletcher is working on a book-length study of Claude Simon as yet untitled; and Serge Doubrovsky is preparing a study on the problem on metaphor in the work of Claude Simon,.concentrating on La Route des Flandres. An ex­ tract from his study is included in the above-mentioned issue of Entretiens. "Notes sur la genese d'une ecriture" pp. 51-64.

7 8 o articles entitled the Midnight Novelists devoted to the study of those writers published by the Editions de Min- uit, Included among the articles dealing with the works of the more well known core of Butor, Robbe-Grillet and Sarraute, was one article on Claude Simon, It is through this common association— their publishing house— that this very individualistic and independent group of writers was named "The New Novelists", however, most critics recog­ nize that this is an artificial label, Jacques Guichar- naud, for example, speaks of this heterogeneous collection of novelists as individuals who have "contributed their own discoveries, the results of their own research— each one seemingly unique and outside any particular school or genre— to the creation of one and the same thing: the French novel of today,This distinction of individual­ ity is recognized by the members of the "New Novelists" affiliation themselves. In an essay entitled "Nouveau roman, homme nouveau", written in 1961, Alain Hobbe- Grillet responds to the misconception that the "New Novel" had codified the lav/s for the future novel, or that there

^Y&le French Studies, 24 (Winter, I960), ^Jacques Guicharnaud, "Remembrance of Things Passing: Claude Simon," op. cit.« pp. 101-108, ^Ibid., p. 101. 9 existed "une dcole littdraire" in the strict sense of the terra:

Nous somraes les premiers & savoir qu'il y a entre nos oeuvres respectives— celle de Claude Simon et la mienne, par exemple— des differences considera­ bles, et nous pensons que c'est tres bien ainsi. Quel interSt y aurait-il & ce que nous dcrivions tous les deux, si nous dcrivions la m§me chose.?

These sentiments are still being expressed in 1972 by Jean Ricardou: "Le Nouveau Roman a ete ddtermind de l'exterieur, il n'a pas produit ni manifeste, ni revue: c'est cependant une collectivite (qui pour 1'instant persiste)."^ In addition to his ties with the loosely-knit "New Novelists" confederation,^ Claude Simon has also been closely associated with the journal Tel Quel since its Q appearance in the Spring of I960. While actively engaged

^Published in the collection of essays Pour un nou­ veau roman. (Paris: Galliraard, 1963), p. 144. g Extracts from Nouveau Roman; hier . au.jourd'hui, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, collection 10/1&, 1972;, quoted in Kagaaine Litteraire, no. 71 (December, 1972), p. 54-. ^It was not until 1961 that these writers met with each other personally, as a group, at a meeting arranged by their publisher, Jerdme Lindon. See "Entretien avec Claude Simon," Le Konde. 26 avril, 1967* supplement au num&ro 6932, p. v. Q An excerpt entitled La Poursuite from Simon's novel La Route des Flandres appeared in the first issue of Tel Quel, no. 1 (Spring, I960). Other excerpts which appeared in subsequent, issues of Tel Quel were Correspondences from Histoire in no. 16 (Winter., 1964-) and Propri&tes des rect­ angles. in no. 44- (V/inter, 1971)* 10 in the process of literary criticism from the structural­ ist point of view, Tel Quel also lists under its title the disciplines of Philosophie, Science, and Politique which emphasizes its militantly eclectic approach. The editorial board of Tel Quel includes the names of two act­ ive novelists and literary theoreticiansPhilippe Sollers and Jean Ricardou. The basic political leaning of the journal toward the left produces a substantial number of socio-political articles heavily flavored with Marxist and Kaoist thpught. Also appearing in each issue are an equal number of articles on literary theory contributed by such esoteric critics as Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, and Jean Thibaudeau, as well as a number of the "Hew Novel­ ists", Michel Butor and Alain Robbe-Grillet. This heady mixture of Politics, Literature, Philosophy and Science has produced a rift between the active writer-critics and the conservative academic critics who are generally cate­ gorized by their antagonists under the rubric of "la cri- Q tiaue balzacienne". As we have seen, through his active association with ■ the Editions de Hinuit and the Tel Quel journal, Claude Simon has automatically allied himself with the "New

^Examples of this polarization will be given later in this chapter. A thorough discussion of the subject of the critical reaction to the "New Novel" can be found in Pierre A.G, Astier, La Crise du roman francais et le nouveau realisme (Paris: Debresse, 1969)» PP* 137-1&7* 11 Novelists” and the "New Critics” yet without claiming the * • title of either group. In spite of his association with, a "school” of writers that received an enormous amount of publicity, Simon's literary reputation remained tarnished by the critics' insistence on evaluating his work in terms of "imitations" of the great modern masters Proust, Joyce and Faulkner. Whatever significant changes did take place in his writings were not sufficient to overcome the criti­ cal inertia reflected in Professor John Simon's bibliogra­ phical footnote remarking on the state of affairs— five- years after the popular success of La Route des Flandres: 10 "Claude Simon has provoked little commentary." Some literary historians such as Pierre de Boisdeffre list Si­ ll mon under the heading "Du cdt6 des Spigones.” The epi­ thet "Spigone" is especially ironic since Simon, born in 1913* is the second oldest of this particular group of writers, the oldest of whom is Nathalie Sarraute.

■^"Perception and Metaphor in the 'New Novel1: Notes on Robbe-Grillet, Simon and Butor," Tri-Quarterly« no. 4 (Fall, 1965)., p. 182. ■^Une Histoire vivante de la litt&rature d'au.jourd’- hui 1939-1968 (7th. ed.; Paris: Librairie 'Academique Perrin l^S'S')", p. 2l8, Cf. also, Simon's position under the head­ ing "Some Minor "New Novel" writers" in Helmut Hatzfeld's Trends and Styles in Twentieth Century French Litterature, ^Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1966), p. 260. 12 The density of Simon's novels— the veritable unbroken 12 pages of print which lead critics to complain of twelve page paragraphs and three page sentences— also stifles the curiosity of the critic more at ease with the conventional novel. One example of this antagonism is manifested by the traditionalist critic's concern with realistic detail. In her study of Michel Butor, Fransoise Van Rossum-Guyon^ takes a particular conservative critic to task for his exaggerated concern over the use of a term— tapis de fer ohauffant— in Butor's novel La Modification. The expres­ sion in question describes a heating element used in pre- World War II coaches, now obsolete. The critic— J. B. Barr&re— deplores the fact that future generations of readers will not be familiar with this type of heating 14- device, therefore, an explanatory note will be mandatory. Professor Van Rossum-Guyon appreciates the irony of the concern as she gently chides Barr&re: "Un tel reproche ne

IP Jacques Guicharnaud, op. cit.« p. 101, Also E. Henriot, "L'Herbe de Claude Simon,F Le Monde, 22 October,,. 1958* p* 9. >rDans L'Herbe j'ai relev§ une^phrase de cent soixante-treize lignes— six pages— arcaturee' sur une pesante succession de participe presents...." •^Critique du roman; essai sur "La Modification" de Michel But'or (Paris; Gallimard, 1970}, p. 4-8, ■^The reference is to Barr&re's book, La Cure d'amai- grissement du roman (Paris:- Albin Michel, 1964), pp. 24 and 9T. 13 manque pas de saveur sous la plume d'un adrairateur de

Balzac i1,15

In a similar case, Jean Ricardou responds to a read­ er of his essay "La Bataille de la phrase", who expressed his surprise that the autobiographical significance of the hotel "Gabbia d'Oro", mentioned in Simon's Bataille. de Pharsale. was ignored in favor of its consonantal ig. proximity to the names Oriane and Orion. Ricardou defends his position by insisting on the textual rather than the autobiographical importance of the hotel's name:

Dans La bataille de la phrase, nous avons montrS que le vocable "jaune", premier mot du livre, b&n§- ficie d'une intense aptitude generatrice (ou selec­ tive, si l'on considers qu'un Element g§n6r& est choisi dans 1'ensemble des possibles). C'est cette id6e de ";Jaune", dans sa variante or, qui convoque l'hdtel Gabbia d'Oro. D'autant plus que son adresse, Corso Borsari. contient or deux fois, tandis que le nom Verona, lu & l'envers, on le sait par le voyageur, le contient une fois lui-mdme.l?

^Van Rossum-Guyon, op. cit.« p. 48. This segment of the chapter is aptly entitled "Le Probldme du veri­ fiable." ■^"L'Essence et Les Sens," in'Pour une theorie du Nouveau Roman (Paris: Seuil,. 1971)* P* 200. Ricardou1s essay, },La Bataille de la phrase" is also conveniently included in this same volume.

17Ibid.. p. 203. 14 Ricardou proceeds to build an overwhelming argument re­ versing the priority of the autobiographical emphasis and replacing it with the right of the text to its own 1 R freedom: "ExaltSe, la biographie masque la ’graphobie.1". This rigidity on the part of the conservative critics might well be an expression of apprehension at the nature of the "New Novel" which seems to defy explication in the traditional academic sense:

Si ces tendances de l'§criture se g£n£ralisent, il est clair qu'elles poseront de serieux probl£mes aux critiques et surtout aux enseignants. L'ex- plrience, bien que limit6e, seinble bien prouver qu'on pouvait parler d ’un livre ordinaire, et que leur appliquer la mSthode de '1'explication de textes' ne mene pratiquement & rien.19

Henri Peyre takes a partisan stance and charges that the interest in the "New Novel" is artificially induced by a group of self-serving novelists and critics who have duped PO a naive reading public. Those who favor the new litera­ ture are accused of perpetuating their own "critical fic­ tion" at the expense of the actual work under examination:

18Ibid., p. 204. ^ L § o n Roudiez, "Les Tendances actuelles de l'Scri- ture: presentation et bibliographie," French Review* XLV, no, 2 (December, 1971)» P« 329* ^ French Novelists of Today (New York: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 1967)» p. 384. 15 Unfortunately, many of the 'new.novels' have been talked about more than actually read and the pedan­ try and philosophical pomposity of many of their critical advocates have kept naive readers of good will, but diffident of jargon, at a distance.21

The focus now returns to Claude Simon whose literary, style is praised by Peyre, but at the same time the ques­ tion is asked whether this style of writing fits the cate­ gory and aim of fiction:

The overall impression is that he possesses the greatest prose* gifts of any writer among the modern French since Huysmans and Giono? but hardly those of a writer of fiction, if fiction must engage and maintain a reader’s interest,22

The reader's interest can only be held, it is assumed, by the fiction which takes the basic form of a "roman bal- zacien" with a linear, chronologically correct narrative. Interest fades in inverse proportion to the complexity of the structure of the novel so that we hear Professor Peyre's sentiments repeated in the remark-of a critic who considers Simon, among others, to be a good sort of fellow led astray by demon theory: As for Simon and Pinget, they may be seen as inno­ cents ruined by evil company— potentially great,

21Ibid., p. 588.

22 ' Ibid.. p. 379. 16 warmhearted writers who have made their books un­ readable by forcing good meat through the sausage machine of dogmatic theory.

The food market analogy is carried even further by J.-B, Barrdre who visualizes novelists in terms of items found in the produce counter:

...on a pu appeler I 1auteur de ce dernier roman - La Route des Flandres. Claude Simon, un Proust du pauvre, comme pour souligner au coeur de l'analogie la distance que les separe autant que des poireaux les asperges, precisement iris^es par le pinceau de Proust.24*

This grotesque imagery is inspired by an obsession on the part of the critic to see a literary work as a sort of periodic table of the elements. All the characteristics and properties are known including those of the elements which have yet to be discovered. As nature abhors a vacuum, so certain critics abhor what is not immediately coherent, orderly, and foremost, predictable, M,. Barr&re appears to run afoul of fellow critics when he attacks the "nouvelle critique" point of view and is challenged by Serge Boubrovsky who asks, in an obvious allusion to Barr£re: "Le critique peut-il dtre aussi naLf qu'Oreste

^Vivian Mercier, The New Novel. Prom Queneau to Pinget, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 197l)V~P* 4-1 • -La Cure d 1amaigrissement du roman (Paris: Albin Michel,' 1964;, p. 52. 17 sans §tre aussi coupable et peut-§tre aussi fou que lui?"^ Barr&re had been berating the critics Barthes and Pingaud for admitting openly the ambiguity prevalent in the chain of interpretation from work to critic, to critic of the critic, Barr^re's remarks which appeared in a letter to Le Monde, are quoted in Doubrovsky1s text cited above' recommending that "la palme de la niaiserie satisfaite revient ici & J.-B. Barr£re..." The allusions to the current fiction and the-writers as meat, asparagus, leeks, etc., is doubtless inspired by the term "literature de consommation" used to describe the commercially successful literary production. Simon himself indulges in this glossary of supermarket items in a New Year's Day lecture given at the Sorbonne, in which he categorizes the Sartrian literature of commit­ ment as something which is consumed on the spot like bananas.^ The critical circle is completed by those scholars who, while not daunted by the esoteric, obstinately per­ sonal style of the "new novelists," nevertheless leave a

^ P o urquoi la nouvelle critique: critique et ob,1ec- tivite Xl’sris; Kercure de France, 1966), p. 34-.

^ " L e s ouvrages de 1'esprit, pareils & des bananes, doivent se consommer sur place." in Lettres Francais.es (Jan., 1961), p. 5. 18 certain doubt in one's mind as to whether they ever found a foothold in the works they praise. An example is the following quote which as a conclusion is so ephemeral that it leaves the reader with' no substantial concept of what is represented in the literature:

The world has to be reinvented, to use the famous phrase of Rimbaud. Butor, Sarraute, and Simon are setting new decors, and rediscovering objects, wind and grass. The new novel is not merely a stylistic exercise, a transformation of the fictional genre. It is a discovery of an original freshness in the world.2?

These extreme critical oscillations seem more expli­ cable when we consider the progress of Simon's literary career beginning with his first novel, Be Tricheur. written in 194-1 and published by Sagittaire in 194-5* later by the Editions de Minuit in 194-6. Sixteen years after its publication, the author reflects on his first literary creation in an interview with Denise Bourdet: Un premier livre, on le fait, on le fait dans un etat d'innocence. On ne voit pas les pre­ cipices. on les contourne inconsciemment. Au second lLa Corde raide) on les connait, on y pense, on tombe dedans.28

Ordinarily a first novel such as Le Tricheur would not elicit much critical attention beyond the usual

^Siegfried-Mandel, Contemporary European Novelists (Carbondale: So. Illinois University Press, 1968), p. 62, ^ Revue de Paris. (Jan. 1961), p. 138* 19 recognition of a potential first rate novelist were it not for the appearance, a year earlier, of another first novel, L'Etran&er« of Albert Camus who was born in the same year— a month later— as Claude Simon. The similarity of the heroes in the two novels has prompted some critics to cry "foul:"

...he gives the appearance, at least, of indebted­ ness to Camus as well, Le Tricheur. his first novel, was so reminiscent of LStranger that Simon must have felt called upon to insist that his work was written quite independently,2^

Vivian Mercier goes so far as to say that Simon does not even own a copy of his first work, nor does he have any ■50 desire to reread it or to have it re-published. But Simon has talked about his first novel on more than one occasion and he has even commented on his impressions after re-reading Le Tricheur:

...d'ai constate qu'ft l'6poque oft j'6crivis je possedais d6j& un goftt tres vif de la description, de la chose vue et poss§de'e par la description.51

These certainly are not the words of a man who has for­ saken his first literary undertaking. The reviewers of

^Laurent Lesage, The French Hew Novel (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1962), p. 137* ?Q0p. cit.. p. 280. ^Andr§ Bourin, "Les Techniciens du roman," Nouvelles Litteraires« 29 December, ,1960.» p, 4, 20 Le Tricheur. at the time of its publication, in contrast to Professor Lesage's more recent judgment of the affair, seemed more willing to accept the similarity with L'Etran­ ger as a coincidence:

Le Tricheur. acheve en 1941* eut pu paraitre en m§me temps aue 1 'Etranger. et on eut sans doute ’ en ce moment discute des m&rites respectifs des deux ouvrages. O'est un livre remarquable. De belles pages ne peuvent §tre le fair que d'un grand ecrivain.32

The most satisfactory discussion of Le Tricheur to date is by Ludovic Janvier.^ K. Janvier extracts the central theme of the novel in the form of the question: "LVhomme est-il capable de faire 3on Histoire?"; and he traces this theme through Simon's work up to Le Palace. Xn John Sturrock’s chapter on Simon,^ the formula offered by Janvier is quoted as the key to the direction of the novel in which we see the failure of man's attempt to impose his own will on the course of events. Janvier's formula lists three "temptations" towards the acceptance of fate: gambling, nature, and women; and those who re­ sist these temptations, through trickery, revolution, or chastity can never finally hope to triumph. Sturrock

^%aurice Nadeau, Combat, February, 1946. •^Une Parole exigeante:Le Nouveau Roman (Paris: Ed. Minuit, 1964.). ^ ^“The French New Novel; Claude Simon. Michel But or, Alain Robb'e-Grillet (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 196$), 21 also points out an important Simon trademark: invoking the primary meaning of the key word of a work; in this case, the verb "tricher" in the sense of correcting the operations of chance. For the critics who call this work a "pastiche," there is no need to look further than the gratuitous murder of the priest by Louis. It is too much like the scene on the beach in 1 'Etranger to allow for coincidence. We will have to wait for a close textual study of both works to appear before the argument can be settled for good. The epithet "pasticheur" will haunt Simon again in the fifties with the appearance of Le Vent and L ’Herbe which the critics referred to with disdain as "poor.Faulk­ ner •"

Before this period, however, there are three works which appear and should be mentioned first in order to maintain the proper chronological order of publication. The first work, La Corde raide« published by Sagittaire in 194-7, then by the Editions de Minuit later that same year, can be best described as a biographical essay rang­ ing over a large number of subjects including painting, literature, and the war. Professor Lesage prefers to call this work a novel for some unexplained reason. How­ ever, it can best be described as an autobiographical essay because the author avoids the traditional chronolo­ gical development, bypassing the familiar childhood tales and familiar anecdotes. The work begins in the Proustian manner reminiscent of Combray; the narrator is lying in bed thinking of the past: Autrefois je restais tard.au lit et j'6tais bien. . ..je pouvais voyager et me souvenir des matins ofi l'on se reveille dans des chambres d ’hdtels de villes StrangSres.35 .

There follow a series of recollections of the 194-0 defeat, his travels, and the portrait of an uncle. These vig­ nettes, most often incomplete in themselves, are inter­ spersed with long discourses on art and literature. The book ends abruptly when the author strays once again from his subject after an exasperating conversation on paint­ ing with a mathematician whom he considers a fool. Paced with a narrative that is once again unravelled, the author surrenders himself to the night and the tree outside his •window whose rustling leaves, speak to him with voices of the past, present, and future:

Les branches-passant k travers moi, sortent par les oreilles, par ma bouche, par mes yeux, les dispendant de regarder et la s&ve coule en moi et se r6pand, m'emplitde m§moire, du souvenir des jours qui viennent, me submergeant de la paisible gratitude du sommeil.36

^ La Corde raide. p. 9*

56Ibid., p. 18?. 23 The usual autobiographical details which are contained in a work of this kind are missing. We know that Claude Simon was born in Tananarive, Madagascar, on October 10, 1913* but this simple fact is never stated in the work. Most of the information on his personal life appears later in published interviews. In his late teens, Simon was orphaned and an uncle became his guardian. It was at this point that Simon decided to study painting under the tutelage of the respected academician of the Cubists, AndrA Lhote. The student quickly learned his lesson: "Au fond la peinture ne s'apprend pas, on vous enseigne des trues, des procedAs, reste A trouver soi-m§me sa maniAre."^ In a more candid moment the aspirations of the young artist are revealed in La Corde raide:

Je peux voir des choses, mais pas quelque chose. Et pourtant j'ai cru pendant un moment que je pourrais etre peintre. Mais maintenant plus personne ne peut Atre peintre sans ridicule A cause de Picasso.38

By I 9 6 0 the disarming naivete of the "peintre manquA" is replaced by the self-evaluation of the mature author of the Route des Flandres who sees his transition from painting to literature as "tout simplement parce que j'Atais un de ces innombrables Franqais qui 1Acrivent'.

^Bourdet interview. ot>. cit.. p. 138.

5 8p . 177 . 24 Et j'ai constate que de m'exprimais avec plus d'aisance

par le moyen des mots qu'avec les couleurs."^

Simon met his military obligation in 1934-35 as a member of the 31st dragoons stationed in Luneville. He then returned to Paris and from there undertook a number of trips to Spain, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Russia described in La Corde raide. The trip to Spain brought him into direct contact with the horror which was only a prelude to the cataclysm of 1940* These stages in Simon’s life appear in the form of vignettes interspersed at random in the pages of La Corde raide. As with Le Tricheur. the critical examination.of La Corde raide has been totally inadequate to date,, al­ though most critics recognize the value of its autobio­ graphical sources which serve as material for Simon's subsequent works. This recognition is given grudgingly for the principal reason stated by John Fletcher who notes that "the naivete of most of the utterances in La Corde raide contrasts strangely with the good sense and intelligence revealed in Simon's statements on the art of fiction to journalists and interviewers in more

^Andr§ Bourin, "Techniciens du roman," Nouvelles LittSraires% no. 1739« (29 Dec. I960), p. 4. 40 recent years • * • Simon concurs with Fletcher for in a recent interview, in response to a question asking how he felt about the text itself, Simon said: ...il m'agace par un ton'd'assurance et de provo­ cation qui tient aux circonstances dans lesquelles il a 6te §crit et k l'fige que 3'avais alors, Lors- que I'on est jeune, on n'est pas trSs sflr de soi ni des choses, et l'on Sprouve le besoin de rassurer en affirmant. Plus tard on est encore moins sdr mais on a appris a endurer cette incertitude et k. l'assumer.^l

But apart from the shrill tone of the work which offends both the author and Fletcher, the most significant aspect of La Corde raide is explained by Simon himself in the same interview:

D'une certaine faqon, bien sdr, La Corde raide annonce La Route des Flandres, Le Palace. His-' toire et "meme Pharsale. mais plutdt la faqon d'un 'repertoire, d'un inventaire des th&mes (je dis bien des themes et non pas sujets) dans le- quel o‘'ai ensuite puis6.^2

Almost two .decades after the appearance of the "New Novel," some critics are still put off by the "structure" of what in comparison is a fairly simple work, Vivian Mercierj for example, sees La Corde raide as:

^ New Directions in Literature: Critical Approaches to a Contemporary Phenomenon (London: Caldar and Boyars, 1^66;, p. 117.

^ Entretiens. p. 17* 42 Ibid., p. 17• 26 ...a curious autobiographical work in which Simon has a great deal to say about CSzanne and a cer­ tain amount about Picasso, All this is mingled in a confusing way with reminiscences of the Spanish Civil YJar, a visit to Russia after his return from . Spain, and his experiences as a cavalryman and prisoner during 1939-4-0, . Suffice it to sa.y that La Corde raide is an unsatisfactory, poorly ordered book.. ,'43

In his chapter on Claude Simon, Ludovic Janvier makes generous use of the sources in La Corde raide to 44 develop his thematic study of Simon's opus. John Sturrock has also pointed out the importance of the 45 autobiographical and thematic sources of the work. ^ It is curious that La Corde raide is not even mentioned in the most recent American study published on French 46 fiction containing a chapter on Claude Simon. Seven years after the publication of Le Tricheur. Simon's second novel appeared, Gulliver, published in 1952 by Calmann-L6vy. Vivian Mercier feels that during the five years that elapsed.between La Corde raide and 47 Gulliver Simon had become a professional writer.

^ Op. cit.. p. 280. ^ Parole exigeante‘. pp. 89-110. ^ The French New Novel (London: Oxford University Press, l969J» p. 60. ^Leon Roudiez, French Fiction Today: A New Direc­ tion (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972). ^ Op, cit.. p. 280. 27 Ironically, Simon sees this work as a hiatus in his literary output:

•.,desorient£ par les critiques qui avaient accueilli Le Tricheur, peu stir de moi, j'ai cherche alors £ prouver— entreprise absurdel— que pouvais ecrire un roman de facture tra- ditionnelle. Excellente et fertile erreur au demeurant. Le r§sultat etait 6difiant: je ne pouvais pas!^°

The novel was written after a long respiratory ill­ ness which had kept Simon bedridden in Toulouse for five months. This second brush with death— the first one during the war— inculcated a mania for minutiae of all sorts:

J'§tais avide, si je devais raourir de ne laisser 6chapper aucun detail de ce qui se passait & ma portee, d'emraagasiner les souvenirs.. .4-9

In his section on Gulliver. Fletcher enumerates the essential stylistic devices which herald the distinctive Simon manner; such as the fragmented sentences common in everyday conversation but set off with inverted commas which will disappear in La Route des Flandres; the use of comme si.•. to introduce elaborate illustrations;

Entretiens, pp. 16-1 7 . ^Denise Bourdet (interview, Revue de Paris. Jan. 1961), p. 139. 28 alternation between first and third person narration; and.the extensive use of parentheses.^ The third novel, Le Sacre du printemps. published in 1954, seems to get lost in the critical vacuum created by the Faulkner polemic which followed the appearance of Le Vent and L'Herbe in 1957 and 1958 respectively. The lesson, as Sturrock calls it, in this novel is the fami­ liar one of the defeat of all those who would try to shape the future to their own ends. In this case, the lesson is recited to the prodigal son by his father who- sees chance as synonymous with the wind or with well- synchronized gears. Another important feature of the novel is a whole chapter in the form of a flashback re­ lating the father's experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Keeping in mind Ludovic Janvier's three tempta­ tions mentioned above, it is interesting to note that the father had lost faith in the revolution. According to Janvier, the father in Le Sacre is the young man of Le Palace and thus another link is made between the early works and the mature production of Claude Simon. "The idiots of Dostoevsky and of Faulkner have at last invaded the fiction of the nation which used to

^ Op. cit., p. 119. cf. also Jacques Guicharnaud, "Remembrance of Things Passing: Claude Simon," Yale French Studies, no. 24, pp. 101-108, pride itself on 'seeing clearly into,its heart',

This statement on Le Vent by Henri Peyre sums up the

feeling of one sector of the critical establishment

threatened by the "geometric moroseness" of a Robbe-

Grillet and the "incoherent, nonchalent, impersonal and

destructive work" of the prose of Claude Simon, As the ringing alliterations of Edgar Allen Poe injected un frisson nouveau in the post-romantic poetry of France,

so the spectre of the creator of Yoknapatawpha County .

inspired the "new novelists" to expressed themselves

in a manner unlike that found in the roman engag6 ;

Une oeuvre d'art ne peut §tre r§volutionnaire que si, dans son domaine propre, elle participe de ou participe A cette incessante transformation du monde, c'est-A-dire si elle produit des formes neuves.52

Le Vent, published in 1957* is regarded as "Faulk­ nerian to the point of embarrassment" by Professor

Peyre, who however, feels that Simon redeems himself by showing that "he could be at ease in a chaos and

^ French Novelists of Today, p, 377 • cf. "Un idiot, Voila tout, Et rien d'autre, Et tout ce qu'on a pu raconter ou inventer, ou essayer de d6duire ou d'expli- quer, 5a ne fait encore que confirmer ce que n'imports qui pouvait voir du premier coup d'oeil, Rien qu'un simple idiot," — Le Vent, the opening lines, p. 9.

^Simon interview in Kouvelles Litt&raires, April 1971, P. 6 , 30 haunt us through repetitions."^ Throughout most of the negative criticism there is the echo in the background of the earlier polemic over the Tricheur and 1 'Etranger: the result of these unfavorable reviews caused a setback in the growth of Simon's literary reputation'which is reflected by the unenthusiastic treatment accorded him in a number of literary histories. Certainly we cannot fault the critics for pointing out the obviousj however, by turning their backs on the author after a first read­ ing, it became impossible for some to discover the true talent that lay beneath that familiar Faulknerian con­ text. Jean Bloch-Michel, for example, was still uncom­ promising in his condemnation of Simon's work six years after the publication of Le Vent and three years after the very successful appearance of La Route des Flandres:

...tous les proc§d§s qu'il emploi. il les a trouves dans Faulkner, et plus precisferaent dans les romans de I'epoaue-d'Absalonl AbsalonI Quelle que soit 1'opinion qu'on ait du talent de Claude Simon, on eprouve toujours devant ses romans 1 'impress ion du pastiche.

^"Trends in the Contemporary French Novel," New French Writing (New York: Criterion Books, 1961;, Geo. Borchardt, edT, pp. 73-87.

^ Le Present de l'indicatif: essai sur-le nouveau roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1963)"," p• 29* 31 Bloch-Hichel does temper liis outburst by suggesting that the uncomfortable feeling one experiences reading the work of Simon is due to the newness of the "tradition” and that the archetype is still fresh in everyone's mind. In spite of this concession, the critic feels that the malaise is due to the unforgivable in literature: "son imitation est consciente, d61iber6e, et non, comme pour les autres, involontaire."^ Simon himself is not particularly concerned, nor embarrassed, by the-accusations of "pastiche" by the more militant critics. Simon told me in a conversation^ that it is perfectly normal, as far as he was concerned, to be influenced by a great writer's style while striving to establish one's own stylistic signature. On many occa­ sions, Simon has confessed that he has been influenced more by foreign authors than he has by French writers, with the exception of Proust, of course. He told Denise Bourdet of this natural penchant for Proust in the Revue de Paris interview already mentioned above: ■

A vingt-cinq ans et bien que je n'aime pas Gide, son journal ra'a appris A lire, A lire ces livres relus avec un immense nrofit dont il parlait.

55Ibid., p. 3 0 . ^Paris, 21 December, 1971* 32 Mais A dix-huit ans j'avals d6j& plongS dans Proust. Quel immense g6nie!57

While the critics see Faulkner's influence on a one-dimensional, one-to-one relationship of unadulterated imitation, e.g., the standard formula reads Le Vent equals Absalom! Absalom! and L'Herbe equals As I Lay Lying; Simon sees in Faulkner an amalgam of other great writers:

Ce que je pr§f£re en Faulkner, c'est son c6t6 joycien et proustien. L'ailleurs, chez lui, on retrouve toute la litterature de 1 'Occident, Faulkner, c'est le Picasso de la litterature.58

Nevertheless, the attacks continue as seen in the study by an American scholar, W, M. Frohock, who echoes Bloch-Michel's preceding arguments:

What Simon seems not to have done is to put . Faulkner's devices to serving purposes immediate­ ly distinguishable from Faulkner's, Other 'New Novelists' have been able to adapt rather than adopt... Some of Simon's novels follow Faulkner's so eagerly as to obscure whatever originality they have... 59

In support of the above, Professor Frohock repeats the

-^It is interesting to recall that Proust was not • considered a serious writer by the critics— his first vol­ ume of the Recherche was rejected by the Gallimard editor, Andr4 Gide. ^Interview with Andre Bourin, "Les Techniciens du roman," Houvelles Litt6raires. 29 Dec. I960, , p. 4-. ^ Style and Temper; Studies in French Fiction. 1923- 1960 (Cambridge; Harvard Univ. Press, 1967)i P P • 122 &127• 3 3 main points stressed in the above-mentioned article by Jacques Guicharnaud on Simon's style which leads Profes­ sor Prohoclc to conclude that the stylistic devices found in abundant number in Faulkner.1 s work can also.be found in Claude Simon. The whole argument of "pastiche" seems to revolve mainly around the excessive use of the present participle: the great .neutralizer of Time. Simon justi­ fied this excess to an interviewer by saying that "l'emploi du participe present me permet de me placer hors du temps conventionnel. In a sweeping statement Professor Pro- hock places all of the "New Novelists" under the stylis­ tic spell of Faulkner which seems to leave no room for the possibility of independent invention, creation,, or inspiration:

Faulkner has provided the French with a manner of treating themes and subjects-— matter— not his but theirs; ultimately we have the rare spectacle of French writers altering the syntax of their French because of the way he writes his English.©1

This statement is more of a condemnation than a genera­ lization when we consider that even the "New Novelists" themselves find little in common with each other in a stylistic sense. The purpose here is not to deny the importance of Faulkner1s influence but rather to reduce

fin quoted in Sturrock, p. 101. ^Frohock, p. 121. 3*> the degree to which some critics enshrine the American author at the expense of the'genuine talent of the French authors, V/e might say as a sort of compromise statement that the presence of the work of Faulkner in France has served as a catalyst for two generations of French wri­ ters who were receptive to the idea of experimentation, Simon has constantly been aware of the stylistic problems facing him; and from this concern a radical change in syntax has always been thought of as inevita­ ble. In an essay on L'Herbe. Professor Charles Camproux gives credit to Simon— not Faulkner— for verbalizing the artistic problem confronting a nev; generation of writers:

. ,.je ne suis pas loin de penser que Claude Simon a defini "I1art poetique" du nouveau roman, le nouveau roman se donnant pour t&che de retrouver la reality des choses desordonnees (par rapport Il la langue organisee) malgre 1 'habitude prise dans les livres (et dans la grammaire, et dans les arts de rh^torique) d'ordonner les mots,62

The quest for a style continues with few rewards and much resistance from the institutions that protect posterity from too many rapid changes. After the suc­ cessful publication in I960 of his most popular work to date, La Route des Flandres, there was a segment of the

go "La Langue et le style des 6crivains," Lettres Francaises. 7 May 1959» P* 9. literary community that wondered out loud about the absence of a literary award for the work, Denise. Bour- det supplies the response of one such award-granting institution, Le College Goncourt: "Excellent travail, mais on ne peut r£corapenser l'6l£ve Simon, ce serait ehcourager son mepris de la ponctuation." In numerous interviews Simon has answered to the charges of the Prohocks and the Bloch-Michels:

Comme il reste & l'&crivain de chercher son style, il ne lui suffit pas de savoir la grammaire et la ■ syntaxe. Je ne crois pas faire de fautes de fran- 9ais, mais d'orthographe sdrement...63

This concern which borders on obsession is echoed in Simon's comments over the past twelve years, a period of time during which Simon's stature as a writer in­ creased rapidly thanks to the popular success of -La Route des Flandres. We begin with a I960 interview in which Simon says:

II n'y a pas, & proprement parler, de phrases chez moi. Je ne suis pas un penseur. Je veux . dire que je ne tente pas, que je n'essaie pas de rendre, de d§crire des pens&es, mais de rendre de donner des sensations. Or, la phrase (dans son organisation) convient fort raal & ce que je veux faire.64-

^Bourdet interview, p. 138, ^ Xettres Prancaises, 6 Oct. I960, p. 5. 36 What Simon wants to do is make the public aware that lie is not telling a story with a hero or heroine: "Disons, si vous voulez, que l'aventure, 1&, c'est celle du narra- teur qui cherche et d&couvre & t&tons le monde,dans et par 1 'dcriture."^5 This idea is already nascent in a conversation found in La Oorde raide published, in 194-7 *

On ne sait jamais de quoi on parle avant d'en parler. Dans ces conditions, pourquoi dcrivez- vous? Pour essayer de me rappeler ce gui s'est passd pendant le moment ou j*ecrivais.®°

When asked about his thoughts on being compared constant­ ly to Faulkner, Simon's answer suggested the idea of a progression rather than simply imitation:

Descendre de Faulkner? Cela ne me gdne pas. Nous descendons de quelqu'un, l'art est une succession; on met le pied sur la marche etablie par quelqu'un d 1autre. Faulkner lui-mdme est inexplicable sans Joyce...67

In an article on William Faulkner and the New Novel, Andrd Bleikasten refers to Simon as "souvent plus faulk- ndrien que Faulkner lui-mdme," but in the same breath, so to speak, the critic recognizes the fact that imita­ tion is not an end in itself when considering the efforts of the "new novelists" (including Simon):

^ Kouvelles Ljtteraires. 8 April 1971» P* 6 . 66p. 178. ^Madeleine Chapsal, "Interview avec Claude Simon," L'Express. April 7» 1962, p. 2. 37 L*important, c ’est que ces recherches se fassent: le roman ne saurait se satisfaire de 1 'exploita­ tion de recettes 6prouvees; pour dtre un art vivant, il lui faut se renouveler et prendre des risques. Et k cet egard, 1'oeuvre de Faulkner a gai'de se vale.ur d ’exemple: elle ne se propose pas comme un modele a suivre, elle est une invitation k passer outre.88

It is interesting to read, in light of the above, the judgment of the critics who are duty-bound to remind us all that there are areas of expression which are the exclusive literary domain of a select few. One recent example is a comment by R-M Alb§rds in a discussion of La Route des Flandres and the use by Simon of the syn­ tax of an "illettrS" to express a rapid succession of half-thoughts:

Dans sa volont6 de saisir le r§el avant qu'il soit transforme en discours et en recit, le ro­ man aboutit, dans le detail et dans le style, k la transcription directe en langase §16mentaire telle qu'on la trouvait dej& dans certains pass­ ages de Virginia Woolf, et dans tout F a u l k n e r .

In an earlier essay, another critic, Marcel Thi6- baut, insists on the influence of France's own native- born writers while nevertheless admitting to a certain amount of foreign influence:

^®Faulkner et le Rouveau Roman, Les Langues Mod- ernes, no. 4, (July-August 1966), p. 64. £Q ?Histoire du roman moderne. 4th ed., rev. and aug. (Paris: Albin fclichel, 19713» P* 196. 38 ...il faudrait citer, comme pour tous les tenants du nouveau roman, James Joyce. Mais Proust est 1& aussi et Larbaud surtout, Larbaud dont 1 *influ­ ence s'£tend chaque Jour, Larbaud en l'espece si longuement frequent^ et, cela va de soi, admir6 que j'ai trouve dans certaines pages de 1 'Herbe le rythme exact du Miroir du Cafe Marches! et ailleurs, tous les themes du Vaisseau de Th6s6e ./Q

To round off this brief survey of the Faulkner polemic, letus return to an earlier statement by Professor Fro­ hock; this time using the complete quotation:

Some of Simon's novels follow Faulkner's so eagerly as to obscure whatever originality they have, to the extent that the translation of his work has set American reviewers to crying "Poor Faulkner."71

At this point I shall take advantage of a recent short essay by Simon's translator, Richard Howard.^ In the essay Mr. Howard related a series of coincidences which occurred involving the novel Le Vent. At the time he was reading Absalom! Absalom!, J4r6me Lindon sent him a copy of Le Vent shortly before a chance meeting with the publisher Georges Braziller, who was looking for a translator of Simon's novel* Mr. Howard's revelations

?°Marcel Thi§baut, "Claude Simon," La Revue de Paris (December, 1958)* p. 159. ^Frohock, p. 122, "^Richard Howard has performed the monumental task of translating the works of the members of the Nouveau Roman and Nouveau Critique groups into English. 39 in this curious anecdote seem to give the lie to Pro­ fessor Frohock*s quotation as Simon's translator re­ lates :

Evidemment le livre de Faulkner n'avait pas servl de module & Simon bien que l'on puisse dire qu'il avait fait naitre au m§me titre que le reste de cette oeuvre si intense, une resonance, une basse profonde que Claude Simon avait ecoutee en glanant 9a et Id. Mais ce fut mon modele. II m*offrit le bouclier d'une audace appropriee, audace que J'ac- cueillais volontiers, d'autant que Je redoutais les hasards de la simple ressemblance.73

Mr. Howard elaborates on what must certainly seem like a fantastic tale to the Peyre-Frohock-Bloch-Flichel axis but it is a welcome morsel for the perpetuation of the Faulkner-Simon polemic— that is, until someone decides to read the works in question and settle the issue for good. Mr. Howard continues:

...II y a douze ans Absalom! Absalom! m'est apparu corame un cadeau du Ciel, une bonne aubaine; lors de mes premiers espoirs de reduire la violence qu'il me semblait percevoir dans cette prose & une tonalitd connue, une musique d6J& adoucie en d6pit de son eclat, musique que— vers la fin de cet 6te de lecture, les voix des Compson et des Coldfield s'entremelaient dans mon oreille aigui- s6e— Je savais pouvoir imiter ou du moins rappeler en traduisant Claude Simon, curieux 6cho pyr§n6en du comt§ de Jefferson.7^ Looking back over this problem, it is not surpris­ ing that the American phenomenon had an impact on the

7^Entretiens. p. 163. 7^Ibid., p. 164. 40 "New Novelists;" for the generation of writers that pre­ ceded them were equally influenced by the appearance of . translations of Dos Passos in 1928, Manhattan Transfer* Hemingway and Caldwell, as well as Faulkner, from 1931 to 1937, and also John Steinbeck in 1939*^ The wave has passed, but it is much easier for the lazy critic to fall back on decade-old assumptions by others too close to the works in time to make a proper judgment. -In the meantime the writers have moved on to new areas of ex­ ploration making the old critical formulas obsolete. The passage of time has made the Faulkner polemic something of an academic inside-Joke for some critics as illustrated by L6on Roudiez's parenthetical statement on the Joycean aspect of a passage in Histoire:

It even includes something like a parody of • Joyce's Ulysses as the narrator, remembering indecent^transliterations of Latin responses a schoolboy friend used to make' at .Mass, says when approaching his washbasin in the morning, "Introibo in lavabo." Buck Mulligan is not far behind. (Not too close, either, and this could be no more than a tongue-in-cheek device to estab­ lish a distance from Faulkner, with whom Simon must have become tired of being compared).76

Even a light-hearted remark as the above reveals the very narrow path an author must follow in order not to step

*^See Maurice Edgar Ooindreau, "William Faulkner in France," Yale French Studies, no, 10, n.d. *^L6on Roudiez, French Fiction Today, on. cit..p. 172. 41 into a province claimed by another writer, or rather, claimed by his critics. "Buck Mulligan is not far be­ hind (but) not too close either...," Roudiez is quick to add, lest we set off another polemic. It is as if the critics were saying that only an Irish altarboy is capable of tasteless misusing of Latin responses to the Mass, or that only characters from the works of Joyce, or Faulkner, or Virginia Woolf are endowed with the. gift of interior monologue. The next novel, L'Herbe. published in 1958 by the Editions de Minuit. added more fuel to the Faulkner controversy and elicited the conditioned-reflex com­ parison with As I Lay Dying. Some critics were inspired to suggest that the French title for the work should 77 have been "Tandis que j'agonise."rf Chronologically, it is interesting to note that the action of the .novel takes place after the events of the work which will appear two years later, La Route des Flandres. The balzacian device of reappearing charac­ ters, in addition to the disjointed sequence of events in relation to the order of publications, sometimes seem to confuse even the scholars. Morton Levitt, for

^Bernard Pingaud, Ecrivains d ' au.jourd'hui. 1940- 60, (Paris: Grasset, I960,), p. 472. See also, Henri Feyre, French Novelists of Today, p. 577* example, talks of "...Georges, the cuckolded husband of The Grass, who becomes the questing lover of The Flanders Road..,7^ while on page 51 of the same article, he quotes the dates in the old woman's notebooks which go from 1922 to 1952.79 La Route des Flandres. published in I960 by the Editions de Minuit. is Simon's most successful novel in 80 a popular sense. For those readers who are familiar with Simon's earlier works, it seems apparent that every­ thing that came before was really a trial balloon for La Route. Many of the incidents are familiar ones from La Corde raide. but we must resist the temptation to call La Route des Flandres a story about the war. The usual love affair, a

79"Disillusionment and Epiphany: The Novels of Claude Simon," Critique. Studies in Modern Fiction, vol. XII, no. 1, 1970. ^18,000 copies in regular edition; 25»000 in pocket book. Figures quoted in Le Monde. 26 April 1967» supple, au no. 6932, pp. iv-v. Conversation with Simon, 21 December, 1971* suicide. This novel is probably closest to Simon in a personal sense, even though, as he admits and as is other­ wise obvious, Simon's whole work is autobiographical. It is closest to him personally because it was the first time that he came face to face with death; and a varia­ tion of the ambush scene can be found in all of his novels. It is an experience which keeps coming back to him as he writes in his free-association manner: "Je ne peux pas oublier cette experience, je ne l'oublierai jamais..." The time is 194-0 and Simon is back with his old outfit, the 31st dragoons, north of the Meuse. The inci­ dents are similar to the ones described in ha Corde raide and they appear in later novels also. The French cavalry, cut off from their support elements, find themselves being systematically decimated by the German armor. For Simon the whole setting seemed unreal: "Pendant la campagne de Flandres, je vivais un Western. J'ai crev& un cheval sous moi pour repasser la Meuse."8^ In La Corde raide Simon returns again and again to the same anecdote relating his attempt to regain the

Qp Conversation with Simon, 21 December, 1971* 8^Denise Bourdet Interview, pp. 136-141. 44 French lines. Throughout the nightmarish flight cer­ tain thoughts remain very clear in his mind such as the transformation of the idea of death from something more or less inevitable, a risk, but yet foreign to that mo­ ment when life becomes something already distant and foreign: Un apr§s-midi de printemps, il est arriv§ ainsi que je me suis tout a coup trouv6 tout seul, en train de courir lourdement sur un ballast, .au fond d'une tranchee de chemin de fer du haut de laquelle, un peu en arriere de moi, des types me visaient.“4

Weighed down by the paraphernalia necessary to accomplish his role as a soldier, Simon stopped running from sheer exhaustion; but, instead of throwing away his rifle and raising his hands in surrender, he continued on

. ..je n'arrive pas encore & comprendre pourquoi je ne l'ai pas fait, pourquoi je continuai a. marcher sur ce putain de ballast, telleraent hors de souffle qu'il me semblait que j'allais vomir... 6coutant les balles qui passaient, me disant qu'ils tiraient comme des cochons et attendant avec certitude— Je sentais mon dos terriblement vaste et fantastiquement permeable— le coup qui me dispenserait de continuer.

The German gunners were simply amusing themselves at the comic flight of the soldier, or their aim was

8V . Corde raide. p. 49. ®^Ibid., pp. 49-50. 45 or just poor; in any case Simon survived the rout. A man in a battle situation quite often focuses on what would ordinarily be considered an insignificant object, or inconsequential event. While his attention is fixed in this manner, the mind is thinking in very clear, lucid terms to the point of actually questioning the "reality" of the situation. Simon has two examples he likes to give to illustrate this phenomenon as it should appear in a literary context. The first example is the familiar scene of chaos at the battle of Water- ' loo as viewed through the eyes of Stendhal's Fabrice del Dongo. The second example quoted below, is the descrip­ tion of the crossing of the Saint Bernard Pass:

J'Atais transpercA d'humidite, sans cesse nous Ations g§nes et meme arrdtes par des groupes de quinze soldats qui montaient. Au lieu des sentiments d'hAroioue amitiA que je leur supposai d'aprAs six ans de reveries hAroi- ques, bashes sur les caractAres de Perragus et de Rinaldo, j'entrevoyais des Agoistes aigris et mA- chants, souvent ils juraient contre nous de colAre de nous voir A cheval et eux A pied. Un peu plus ils nous volaient nos chevaux. Cette vue du caractAre humain me contrariait, mais je l'Acartais bien vite pour jouir de cette idee: je vois done une chose difficilej8' 1 'gd' 1 1 ■ It is interesting to compare Andre I-lalraux's exper­ ience in this same battle: while moving forward to engage the enemy, Malraux's tank falls into a tank trap. He and his crew wait for the fatal shell to land on their helpless vehicle but it never comes, I'ialraux, like Simon, reflects on the vulnerability of the human body. Antimemoires. ch. 2 .'.’1 9 4 0 " , "La Tentation de 1 'Occident." ^Stendhal. Vie de Henri Brulard (Paris: Garnier, 1961), pp. 596-397:; 46 These bits of trivia are the most authentic recol­ lections and the larger picture is obscured by a mass of details that become more and more distorted with the pas­ sage of time. Stendhal confesses that his image of the famous crossing is based on a rendering of the event by an engraver rather than the author's own memory:

Par exemple je me figure fort bien la descente. Kais je ne veux pas dissimuler que cinq ou six ans aprds j'en vis une gravure que je trouvai fort resserablante, et mon souvenir n'est ulus que la gravure.88

We might find here part of the response to those critics who find fault with Simon for giving the reader an incomplete "picture" or "story" compounded by a lack of obvious chronology of events. In La Route des Plan- dres, for example, the scene is repeated a number of times describing the cavalrymen coming upon the carcass of a horse. The scenes would appear identical except for the fact that the carcass appears at a more advanced state of decomposition each time. In some of the later novels the time sequence cannot be so easily deduced, but Simon is not concerned with this problem. The original title for La Route des Flandres. "Des­ cription fragmentaire d'un d§sastre," further supports

88Ibid.. p. 397 ^7 Simon's contention that a linear narrative with a begin­ ning, middle, and end, respecting mechanical clock time would be more unreal than any chance combination of •images frozen in a suspension of time and space. In all of his major novels the familiar scenes from the war he experienced appear again and again, Simon explains that once an individual comes so close to death, he cannot forget it, and the memory of it will live with him forever. He also sees a timelessness in the eternal struggle of man against man:

...j'avais la sensation de voir quelque chose, de tr&s typique et qui, si 1'on faisait abstrac­ tion de la forme moderne (avions, tanks, etc, .,,) devait ressembler point par point— feu et sang, cohortes, invasions— dans le fracas du temps et de l'espace s'fecroulant, & ce qui se d^roulait, il y a deux cents, deux mille, ou dix mille a n s . Q 9

Twenty-two years later Simon will illustrate this very theme in his novel, La Bataille de Pharsale. The next novel also covers an important period in Simon's life which occurs, chronologically, just before the events in La Route des Flandres. Le Palace, pub­ lished by the Editions de Minuit in 1962 focuses on the events which took place in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, But we must be careful before we go any fur­

ther because the novel is not exactly about the Spanish

^ La Corde raide, p. 55. Civil War. As Simon said in an interview: "c'est un livre sur'raa1 revolution."^ While not engaged in the fighting to the same extent as Andre Malraux, Simon did actively aid the Republican cause in Barcelona by run­ ning guns for the Loyalists. These events are related- in a fragmented sense in a number of his works includ­ ing La Corde raide. Le Sacre du printemps. Le Palace, and Histoire:

J'avais §te aussi en Espagne et j'avais vu un peu de la Revolution. J'avais eu 1'occasion de m'occuper de contrebande d'armes. J'avais ren­ contre des types epatants et vu aussi d'assez sales choses.91

Just as Simon's role in the revolution differed in thought and action from Malraux's, so each man produced a distinctly different novel inspired by the Spanish experience. Simon's concept of the novel is also con­ trary in form and content to that of the author of Espoir. His impatience with the latter is expressed in the response to the question of whether or not Espoir was "un temoignage sur la guerre d'Espagne":

L'Espoir? Pour moi, c'est un peu Tintin faisant la revolution. C'est une sorte de roman-feuilleton, de roman d'aventures ecrit par un quelqu'un qui est lui-m§me un aventurier, dans le cadre de la revolu­ tion. En plus, il raconte des choses qu'il n'a

^Madeleine Chapsal Interview, op. cit.. p. 52. ^ L a Corde raide. p. 16. *(•9 pas perques lui-meme, c'est le roraancier-Dieu, il est partout: au sol, dans les avions, chez les uns, chez les autres... D'ailleurs, Malraux parle de la guerre d'Espagne, c'est-une guerrier qui decrit des actes de guerre. Mon livre est sur la revolution.92

In Le Palace the hero returns to the "original” scene of his previous adventures in an attempt to piece together what happened fifteen years before. Simon gives us a clue to the movement of the novel as well as to the double theme by using the definition of the term "revolution" as the epigraph to the work:

Revolution: mouvement d'un mobile qui, parcourant une courbe ferm§e repasse successivement par les mimes points.

Discussing La Route des Flandres. Simon refers to a similar image: the spiral which forms the figure eight of the racetrack and the playing card club— le trifle— . described by the movement of the wandering horseman. This spiral, according to Simon, suggests the movement of the baroque: "...c'est & dire le retour de la mime ligne, sur la meme gineratrice, mai3 avec, & chaque fois, un dicalage de niveau. L 1imperceptible differ- ence... 1.93

^Chapsal Interview, op. cit. , p. 32. ^Hubert Juin, "Les Secrets d'un romancier," Lettres Erancaises. (6-12 October, I960), p. 3« 50 It becomes clear from these statements that we are dealing with a changing perspective: the revolution we expect the author to narrate in Le Palace is no longer the story of the Spanish Civil War but rather the re­ turn to the same point but with a "dicalage" in time, and the subsequent perceptible and imperceptible "dif­ ferences’1 that are experienced. It is this "impercepti ble difference" that will haunt the narrator of this very subtle and complex novel. Most of the critics expressed disappointment with Le Palace after the resounding success and promise of better things to come of Simon's previous novel. In an essay castigating the American reviewers who tend to be kind toward the "New Novelists," Henri Peyre exhorts in dark tones: A severer discrimination should probably have admitted that Les Fruits d'or by Mme Sarraute (1964), Le Palace by Simon T1962), and his med­ iocre play La~Separation (1963) represented a sad falling of their talents. Critics should be mentors at times.94- Similar sentiments are expressed by L§on Roudiez who finds La Route des Plandres "several rungs above Le Palace" which, since it follows chronologically, should show greater promise than the previous work. Roudiez

^ Modern Literature: The Literature of Prance. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966>)'' vol• I , p • 201. 51 offers an explanation for this deterioration:

What may have happened is that Simon was becoming gradually more and more interested in textual.mo­ tifs but had not yet. found an effectual way of weaving them into the fictional architecture... The success of La Route des Flandres is in large part the result^of"-Simon's having built a very rigorous architecture for his narrative. He was thus able to achieve a more complex interweaving of thematic elements than the fundamental plot of Le Palace allowed.95

For the thematic interv/eaving in this novel, Simon apparently used a much finer thread through which the critics blindly tore in their attempt to reach the more familiar, coarser strands. The problem of thematic unity in Le Palace will be discussed in Chapter Three of this study. In 1965 Claude Simon undertook his first— and happily his last— attempt at producing a play based on his novel, LjHerbe. The play, La Separation (unpub­ lished), had a very short run and was quickly relegated to oblivion under a rain of hostile criticism. Simon tried his hand at something else during this five year span between novels: the project, less risky than adapt­ ing a novel to the stage, entailed a written commentary

^Roudiez, p. 166. cf. also Bettina Knapp who des­ cribes the plot of Le Palace as a narrative "which re­ lates an episode in~tiie Spanish Civil War, when a revo­ lutionary leader was assassinated..." in "Document: Interview avec Claude Simon," Kentucky Romance Quarterly, vol. XVI, no. 2, 1969. pp. 179-180. 52 to accompany a series of drawings by Joan Mir6. The book, Femmes, appeared in a limited edition in 1966 published . by Maeght# The text of the work— without the illustra­ tions— was published in a recent special issue oh Simon cited above, Entretiens# As we have already noted in the first page of this chapter,^ Simon has been associated with the "New Novel­ ists" group since 1957; however, his reputation suffered— partly due to the label of nasticheur— mainly from the extraordinary success and recognition of his fellow novelists of the Editions de Hinuit: Butor's novel, La Modification, won the "Prix Renaudot" in the same year that Simon published Le Vent (1957); Robbe-Grillet*s films and Beckett's plays were being accorded international re­ cognition, and Robert Pinget received the "Prix Femina" in 1965# Simon missed the "Goncourt" prize in 1$?60 be­ cause of the unorthodox prose style which moved the jury to award the prize to Vintilia Horia, Andre Billy speaks for the judges when he states: Claude Simon aurait probablement eu le prix Goncourt s 1il ne s'6tait ing6nie A rendre son roman a peu pr£s illisible par deux artifices de . presentation qu'il voudrait nous faire croire inseparables de ses intentions profondes: aussi peu d'alin&as et de ponctuation que possible#97

96 7 See page 7 above# ^Quoted in Le Monde# op cit.. p. iv. 53 It is not until 1 9 6 ? that Simon is finally recog­ nized by the literary establishment and awarded the "Prix Nedicis" for his novel Histoire. Jacqueline Piatier underscores the irony of M. Billy's judgment observing that the prose which offended the Goncourt jury had not undergone any substantial change in the award-winning Histoire: Or, cette phrase, nous semble-t-il, est un in­ strument parfaitement adapts— et mieux que jamais dans Histoire— & ce que Claude Simon veut faire et dire. Car il a &~dire, etant sans doute parmi les ecrivains de son groupe, le plus sensible et le plus humain.98

This novel, the longest of his works to date, brings back many of the familiar characters and scenes found in L'Herbe« La Route des Plandres. Le Palace; Perpignan, the Reixach, Plandres and Barcelona in 1938. The gene­ sis of Histoire is similar to the chance encounter that inspired Le Palacethe author finds a number of post­ cards in his mother's drawer and "elles m'ont fait— comment dire?— 'saliver'. In 1 9 6 3 Simon published a fragment in Tel Quel which later grew into the novel.

98Ibid. 9^11 y a trois ans, un soir, du train, j'ai vu deux ouvriers espagnols en train de refaire leurs valises sur le quai de la gare de Narbonne. Et, brusquement, tout 6tait revenu: les odeurs, les images, les,sensations.•• ce que Proust appeLe la 'memoire involontaire'*" Chapsal interview, on. cit.. p. 32. lOOlnterview, Le Konde. 26 April 1967» on. cit.. p. v. 5^ In an interview which was part of the unusual two- page supplement in Le Monde devoted to Simon, the author was asked whether one could consider this novel as a sort of autobiography. His reply was: Je ne crois pas, non, C'est un roman. Sans doute j'utilise mes souvenirs personnels corame premiers materiaux, tnais la dynamique de l'6cri- ture et de l'imaginaire les d6forme.^01 If we examine this novel in the light of Simon's last two novels, it appears that the author has written a grand epilogue to the series covering the Barcelona and Flanders periods. While some of the familiar themes ap­ pear again in the last two novels, Simon acknowledges the change which takes place during the composition of Histoire: ...c'est seulement en ecrivant Histoire que J'ai commence k avoir une conscience plus nette des pouvoirs et de la dynamique interne de 1'ecriture et & me laisser guider plus par ce que 1'ecriture disait— ou "decouvrait"— que par ce aue je vou- lais lui faire dire— ou "recouvrir",102 This quotation is reminiscent of Simon's remark to me during an interview in which he commented on Proust's method of composition: II ne "retrouve" pas, il "trouve",^^ To the student of Simon, Histoire would certainly be

101T>. j „ ibid,#) p * v « •^^Entretlens, op. eft., p. 17. ^■^December 1971* 55 considered a turning point— aside from the author's own revelationsj however, some critics felt that this novel represented a nadir in Simon's output, as did some re­ viewers of Le Palace: Je ne peux pas absolument pas avaler un livre comme Histoire. Claude Simon n'a aucun tempe­ rament 7 aucune gr&ce, aucune subtility,..11 est 1 'arriere-arriere-garde de ce "nouveau roman" qui s'est enfin impose et qu'il est responsable d'enliser dans la complaisance et la negation du talent,104 As in his other novels, the epigraph to Histoire. borrowed from Rilke, confirms Simon's preoccupation with the fragmented perspective of the world as viewed through man's eyes: Cela nous submerge. Nous 1 'organisons. Cela torabe en morceaux. Nous 1'organisons de nouveau et tombons nous-m&mes en morceaux,105 La Bataille de Pharsale (1969) grew out of a minor episode in Histoire where the young man's uncle directed his Latin translation exercises. In typical Simon fashion

■^^Alain Bosquet, quoted in Le Monde« 29 Nov. 1967* supplement au numero 7H6. 105cf. Simon's remarks to Claude Sarraute in an in­ terview after the appearance of La Route des Flandres; "J'ai £te hant& par deux choses: la discontinuity, l'as- pect fragmentaire des Emotions que l'on £prouve et qui ne sont jamais relives les unes aux autres, et en mime temps leur continguity. Ma phrase cherche A traduire cette contiguity." Le Monde, 8 October I960, p. 9. 56 the novel immerses the reader in an atemporal dimension of multiple perspectives from the battlefield at Thes­ saly described by Lucan, to a caf£ in Paris where a man sits looking up at the window of his mistress and see­ ing (or imagining) her in bed with another man. The critics are no longer crying "poor Faulkner" or "pasticheur," but they do wonder whether M. Simon has not reached a plateau, or impasse, as they did when Beckett's Comment c'est appeared. Where do we go from here? La Bataille de Pharsale est sans doute dans l 1 oeuvre de Claude Simon un livre de transition. II precise, cerne devantage certaines images, en debusque de nouvelles, mais secondaires. C'est comme une attente du second souffle. Peut-etre l'exces avec lequel l'ecrivain s'y abandonne & une complexity au'il domine ^06 d'ailleurs parfaitement sera-t-il sans suite.

While the critics wondered whether the author had lost his creative potential, Simon sees his novel as another turning-point in his artistic growth:

Quant & la derniSre partie de Pharsale (autre tournant) elle r£sulte de ce que j 'avais enfin corapris que 1'on n'£crit— on ne dit— jamais que ce qui se passe au present de 1'ecriture.10'

However much this statement may sound like an aesthetic

■^^Franqois Nourissier, Nouvelles Litteraires. 2 Oct. 1969., P* 2. ^ ^Bntretiens. op. cit.. p. 17. 57 epiphany, Simon had already announced the same thought in that peculiar dialogue found near the end of La Corde raide (194-7) where the author says that he writes "pour essayer de me rappeler ce qui s'est pass£ pendant 108 le moment oii d'^crivais." Of course, this concept had yet to be reinforced, as witness in the same work what seems to be a contradictory position: "Je n'explique pas, de constate, et je me borne & raconter ce que j'ai 109 vu," ? This second argument becomes less and less force­ ful as Simon develops his literary skill and begins to articulate the sense of his vision more clearly: C'est ce que d'aime faire, traduire en mots, en langage, ce que Samuel Beckett appelle le "com­ ment c'est," Ou plutdt le "comment c'est main- tenant," Comment c'est desormais dans ma m^moire. "Comment c'6tait," de n'ai pas pu le savoir,-1-1^ In this same interview, Simon evokes a proustian phrase which matches his own thoughts on memory and art as wit­ ness : J'y §tais (Barcelona), mais de suis profond^ment d'accord avec la phrase de Proust qui dit que la r£alit6 ne se forme que dans le souvenir. Bans le moment present, moi de ne vois rien, Le Palace ne peut pas §tre un t£moignage parce au'en aucun cas l'art ne peut §tre un t6moignage.iii Ten years later these words are repeated almost verbatim

•*~Q^ha Corde raide. p, 178. 109Ibid.. p, 158. 110Kadeleine Chapsal Interview, op. cit.. p. 52. i n lbid. 58 in response to a question by Ludovic Janvier: La recherche de Proust ne l'a pas conduit & retrouver le temps, mais a produire un objet £crit qui a sa propre temporality. Je crois que pas plus qu'il ne peut £tre temoignage..., l 1art ne peut etre non plus une entreprise de recuperation.112

The little phrase which Simon is fond of quoting when talking about Proust— "il ne retrouve pas, il. trouve J "— becomes more clear in the light of the preced­ ing observations, V/hen Simon insists that Histoire be called a novel instead of "une manidre d'autobiographie," we understand by this that the author is constructing a collage made up of the endless number of associations evoked by the postcards: an assembly of fictional epi­ sodes, conjecture and fragmented recollections. The insistence on calling this work a novel seems almost arbitrary when we recall an earlier interview in which Simon remarks that there are "romans qui sont des auto­ biographies, des autobiographies qui sont des romans." He is referring to the Memoires d ’outre-tombe of Chateau­ briand and the passage where the author claims to have dived from the ship into the waters off the Virginia coast, swimming among the sharks. Simon defends Chateau­ briand's moment of dramatic exaggeration in the name of

IIP Entretiens. op. cit.. p. 25. 59 making a seemingly real situation more real through the addition of a generous dose of fiction: II s'est trouv£ plus tard un t6moin de la tra- versee qui affirma qu'il ne. fit Jamais rien de pareil. Quelle importance cela a-t-il que Chateau­ briand ait v6cu ou r§ve cet episode, s'il ajoute une touche vraisemblable & son autoportrait ?H 3 In an ironic way, Simon is calling Chateaubriand's auto­ biography a novel when he Justifies adding verisimilitude to a self-portraitJ Histoire is the final panoramic display— a human comedy, so to speak— of the universe of Simon's past from which he drew heavily to reinforce the texture of his novels.11^ La Bataille de Pharsale marks a turning-point in that Simon relies on very little from the distant past and moves closer to the present. While the images are still taken from his immediate surroundings and their effect on his sensory perceptions, and the "intrigue"

113^Denise Bourdet interview, op. cit.t p. 139* • ii/i This is not a capricious label. Serge Doubrouv- sky would like to call Simon the Balzac of the "nouveau roman." See his "Notes sur la genese d'une Scriture," in Entretiens. pp. 51-64. ■^^In the same Denise Bourdet interview Simon says: "Je ne tiens pas de Journal intime, Je ne prends Jamais de notes, Je ne sais pas les 6crire courtes. Mais J'ai retenu assez d'histoires de famille, de ma famille, pour emplir longtemps mes livres." 60 is taken from his own experiences, the distance between the immediate past and the product of "1'Scriture" (Simon's ecriture) has increased. This transition is most obvious in the genesis of his latest novel, Les Corps conducteurs (1971). In 1970 Simon was asked to write a long critical essay for the series entitled Sentiers de la Creation, published by Albert Skira in collaboration with Gaetan Picon. Since Simon has a violent aversion to writing a critical discourse of any kind— especially a lengthy one— he compromised by producing a short hand-written preface on the process of ecriture followed by approxi­ mately eighty pages of text illustrating the process as he conceives it. The text, Orion Ayeugle. consists of free-associations inspired by a number of paintings and drawings included in the book. Just as the body of the text of Histoire grew, so the text of the Orion Aveugle was expanded to novel length. The multiple perspective is provided by Simon's travels of the year before to the Americas so that the "action" revolves around a writer's conference in Chile as well as a series of promenades in a large North American city resembling New York. This is the work which Simon feels approximates most faithfully his concept of §criture and, as a result he feels it is his best work to date. With a wry 61 appreciation of the irony of the situation, Simon told me that his New York publisher, Georges Braziller, de­ clined to publish' the translation of Les Corps conduc- teurs blaming austerity measures brought about due to an economic slump. In December 1971» Simon was at work on another novel, untitled at the time. There are two starting points: a couple making love in a shed, the outside walls of which are covered with advertisements (Simon showed me a picture he had taken of a similar shed sit­ ting in the middle of a country setting), and a group of children looking at the images on a piece of film which had been used as an insulator in an ancient bat­ tery, It remains to be seen whether the critics will see in this novel another aesthetic impasse. CHAPTER II HISTORY, TIME AND MEMORY

II me semble que l'on ne sauve jamais rien de ce qui est perdu, — Claude Simon

An examination of the epigraphs and sub-titles of Simon's novels leads the reader rather quickly to the cjomprehension of the major preoccupation in his works: the nature of Time, In this chapter, the problem will Je discussed in terms of the three novels leading up to iJe Palace: Le Vent. L 1 Herbe and La Route des Flandres, In the epigraph to Le Vent quoted from Val£ry, we ejre reminded of a double nemesis represented by order and disorder: "Deux dangers ne cessent de menacer le monde: iJ'ordre et le d^sordre. In the novel, this active j balance is upset by the appearance of Months whose pre­ sence, rather than any actions on his part, brings about a j series of unhappy and tragic incidents marring the tranquility of a town in southern France:

...tout ce qui venait de se passer pendant cette br&ve periode de quelques raois, les §v£nements qu'il d6clencha, ou plus exactement debrida— et

■^Le Vent

62 63 ceci, serabla-t-il, bien plus que par ses actes, par sa seule apparition, sa seule presence, & la faqon de ces r^acteurs chimiques, de ces ex- citateurs, ou plutdt encore de ces objets charges d*unevertu benefique ou mal6fique et qui n'ont besoin pour manifester leur puissance de faire autre chgse que se contenter d'exister, d'§tre 1& ■ •••

Along with the narrative about the events, caused by this outsider, this catalyst, there is also the pro­ blem of the piecing together of the events. The dilemma is expressed in the opening pages of the novel as the author catalogues the variety of existing recollections in order to construct the events of the seven months which make up the action of the novel. The narration begins with the local notary's version of the story as he tells it for possibly the tenth time based on frag­ mentary, incomplete knowledge:

...faire d'une addition de br&ves images, elles- mdmes incompletement apprehendees par la vision, de paroles, elles-m§mes mal saisies, de sensations, elles-m§mes mal d^finies, et tout cela vague, plein de trous, de vides, auxquels 1 1 imagination et une approximative logioue s'efforqaient de rem£dier par'une suite de hasardeuses deductions— hasar- deuses mais non pas forcement fausses,....5

Of course, this means that there is a version of the story proper to each person who witnessed the events directly or indirectly, and therefore, as the narrator suggests,

^Le Vent, p. 11. ^ Ibid.. pp. 9-10. each is equivalent to the story. Or else, he continues, "...la r6alit§ est dou6e d'une vie propre, superbe, in- dSpendante de nos perceptions et par consequent de notre connaissance.• • This "reality" is compared to those dolls which open up like an egg to reveal a smaller dupli cate inside which in turn contains another similar doll diminished in size until the final piece: which is so tiny and insignificant that it could be thought of as nothing at all. Still another image is offered; this time the dilemma of trying to piece together the totality of something that has happened, something that is over, is compared to the futile attempt to reconstruct a shattered mirror:

...tenter de rapporter, de reconstituer ce qui s'est pass6, c'est un peu comme si on essayait de recoller les debris disperses, incomplets, d'un miroir, s'efforqant maladroitement de les r£ajuster, n'obtenant qu'un resultat incoherent, dlrisoire, idiot,....^

This brings to mind the concept of the novel as "the mir­ ror carried in the roadway" about which Simon states: "II s'agit d'un miroir fixe. Dans le souvenir, tout se g prSsente sur le m$me plan." However much we may think we remember, or however many detailswe think werecall,

Le Vent, p. 10. ^Le Vent, p. 10. Hubert Juin, Lettres Franpaises. I960, op. cit. 65 the fact remains that all of these pieces appear simul­ taneously in the mirror of our memory with no order or reason for their appearance. Our obsession with order prevails and we impose a meaning on what, like the nucleus of the series of dolls within dolls, is "minute, infinites­ imal, insignificant...nothing at all,"

...oft peut-fttre seul notre esprit, ou plutdt orgueil, nous enjoint sous peine de folie et en depit de toute Evidence de trouver ft tout prix une suite logique de causes et d'effets 1ft oft tout ce que la raison parvient ft voir, c'est cette errance,..,?

In the telling of this story, Simon avoids the hero- narrator recollection; instead it is a lyc6e professor who relates the events as he heard them from the notary and Montes himself. The gaps in the narrative are filled in by the professor in the last third of the novel. The story itself is simple enough: Montfts returns to his father's town to claim his inheritance, a town he had never seen, since thirty years before his mother left after only a few weeks of marriage. Her exodus was caused by the husband's premature infidelity with the maid, but not before the wife became pregnant. So the son "returns" to claim the property that was his:

^Le Vent, p. 10, 66 ...en vertu d'un acte nocturne (cette tdnebreuse, obscene, brut ale, et dphemdre sai'llie, penetration, fdcondation d'une chair par une autre) sans tdmoins- et sans suivants— ou presque— et datant de plus de trente ans; un hasard, un malentendu ayant pour quelques semaines accouplds. dans le ra§me lit un homrae et une femme inconnus jusque Id l'un & l'autre et destines par la suite d ne plus jamais se revoir,.

While never really becoming involved directly with the town, Months seems to generate a momentum in those around him which while one might say the events .were inevitable, the presence of Montfes accelerates their movement. The action concludes with a murder-suicide, the orphaning of two little girls, and the passionless deflowering of an aristocratic, attractive young cousin rejected by Montds. However tragic these events, they are quickly buried by the rhythm of life that absorbs all the shocks and strains within its own form of violence:

...tout de nouveau dans l'ordre reformd, indestruc­ tible, jusqu'au vent lui-m§me, de nouveau Id, les premieres rafales du vent d'automne secouant spora- diauement la tente du cafd, la tordant, la gonflant et"la degonflant avec des claquements secs, comme des coups de feu.'

Montds disappears, but the property he had come out of the past to claim perseveres in the form of empty build­ ings and debris:

®Le_Vent, pp. 19-20, ^ Ibid.. p. 240. 67 ...abandonn&s dans l'aveuglante lumi&re, pareils i des ossements se dess&chant, blanchissant, ronges peu b. peu par un 'corrodant dans la compos­ ition duquel la dur6e, le soleil et le vent seraient entres b. parts 6gales pour en faire, comme les pierres des murs, comme l'6corce grise des pins semblable aux 6cailles de sauriens fossilises, quelque chose de par del& le temps, au-del& aussi de la destruction, sans &ge, 6ter- nel,10

As the events of the seven-month period are pieced together into the inevitable imperfect picture by the professor, Simon laces the narrative with images of those forces which exist outside of man's control. The. professor describes Montes' grasp of the past as a "see­ ing" and "registering" without being conscious of it all; ...de sorte que le r£cit qu'il m'en fit fut sans doute lui-ra§me faux, artificiel, comme est con- damne a l'Stre tout r£cit des 6v§nements fait apr&s coup, de par le fait m§me qu'A dtre racont£s les 6v6nements, les details, les menus faits, prennent un aspect solennel, important, que rien ne leur confere sur le moment.H

Months travels with a very expensive camera around his neck and the professor makes an interesting compari­ son between the blind eye of the camera dhd Months' seem­ ing unconscious vision. But memory is what brings back man his misery and misfortune and it would be better for

•^Le V e n t , p. 27 ^1Ibid.,' p. 4-9. him not to have any more capacity for suffering, the professor says, than a camera:

...qu'on puisse k tout moment et aussi souvent que l'on voudrait enlever le couvercle, retirer la bobine impressionn6e, la jeter et la remplacer par une vierge, et qu'il recommence k fonctionner, armement et decile. avec la mime micanique et neuve indifference),•.,12

Montis is able to restore what impressed itself on his retina— the woman and her two children— but this time his recollection is conscious of the emotion accompany­ ing the recall so that the people and the events seem more real than they did in their original context. The story that Montis tells the professor, the way he tells it is the way he lived it, comes through as "...cette incoherence, cette juxtaposition brutale, apparemment absurde, de sensations, de visages, de paroles, d'actes." An analogy is made at this point with a newspaper article as it is discovered on a torn page used to wrap produce; the article in this fragmented form recovers a nev; vital­ ity, and by extension, life itself:

...la vie reprend sa superbe et alti&re indepen­ dence, redevient ce foisonnement d6sordonnfe, sans commencement ni fin. ni ordre, les mots eclatant d'dtre de nouveau separ&s, Iib6r6s de la syntaxe, de cette fade ordonnance,...et que le r^dacteur de

•^Le Vent, p. 50. 13lbid.. p. 174. 69 service verse comme une sauce,...de faqon & lea rendre comestibles, les fragments dphdmdres et disparates de quelque chose d'aussi indigeste qu'une cartouche de dynamite ou une poignde de verre pil§...14

It is interesting to note that in L'Herbe the news­ papers on which rotting pears are piled seem to lose the vitality of the sheets of print wrapped around the pro­ duce; ...des poires et des pomraes rang£es sur les 6ta- gdres, se ridant insensiblement, laissant sourdre comme un relent de mort, de passe rdvolu, sur les vieux Journaux aui leur servaient de lits, avec leurs titrgs relatant des dvdnements morts eux aussi,...I?

Ihe image is actually more complicated since a parallel is being made between two spinster sisters as recalled by their nephew who likened them to two old-fashioned wooden dolls, slowly drying out and dying like the rotting pears and apples on the shelves. The newspaper article, any newspaper article, elicits this same reaction as it is first described in Le Vent as, "...(le terne, monotone et grisdtre alignement de menus caractdres & quoi se 16 r6duit, aboutit toute l'agitation du monde)... Only when seen in a fragmented form, when free of the artifi­ cial coherence imposed by syntax and grammar, does memory

•^^e Vent, p. 175. 15L|Herbe, p. 25. ^ Le.Vent. p. 174. 70 or life become like time itself which, as the professor sees it, appears as:

.,.un mur gris sans commencement ni fin, dScrepi, avec ses vieilles affiches dechir6es aux pans soulev6s par le vent, leurs couleurs fan§es, ou quelquefois encore vives, criardes, leurs carac- t&res d§lav6s, leurs fragments de textes sans commencement ni fin non plus, sans suite, se ^uxtaposant, se contredisant,*.,17

The arcane nature of words is emphasized in all of Simon' novels, both in the context of the work and in the author own thoughts on the process of 6criture. As early as the novel Gulliver* fragments of newspaper headlines appear in the body of the narrative. In L 1Herbe. Georges' father is a professor^ and emphasis is placed on the fact that the professor's father was an illiterate peasant. The two sisters send the young man to college where he becomes a master of that language which his father never learned to read and still less write. Georges' father, Pierre, finally conquers that language, and Simon des­ cribes the conquest in terms of the victor over the van­ quished where the victor, the professor, pulled his victims— the words— apart, stripped them and emptied them of that mystery:

...ce pouvoir terrifiant que poss&de toute chose ou toute personne inconnue, sans ant6c6dents ni

17Le Vent, p. 14-9. 71 pass6, fruits apparents de,quelque g£n6ration spontan§e, myst&rieuse, presque surnaturelle: s '§tant done attach^ & leur decouvrir une ascen­ dance, une g§n§alogie et, partant. & leur pr6dire, leur assigner une ineluctable d£gen6rescence, une ■ senilite, une mort,....1,8

This victory, this conquest, is thought.of as a pious filial vengeance as Simon describes it, in which the pre­ vious illiterate generation is vindicated: "II affirmait 1*invincible preeminence du vieil analphab&te.• • The cycle is completed in another direction also when Georges vilifies the printed word which is the symbol of his fath­ er's profession. It is a contempt which Georges had been harboring long before the action of the novel; in fact, it is revealed when Georges was a prisoner of the Germans in 1940— the incident appears in La Route des Flandres which was written after L'Herbe but whose action occurs before. Georges received a letter from his father la­ menting the destruction of the library at Leipzig:

...1'Histoire dira plus tard ce que l'humanit6 a perdu l 1autre dour en quelque minutes, 1'heri­ tage de plusieurs si&cles, dans le bombardement de ce qui 6tait la plus pr6cieuse bibliothSque «o du monde, tout cela est d'une infinie tristesse,...

The son's reply is filled with scorn for what his scholar- father considers a loss to humanity:

18L'Herbe. p. 44. 1(^Tbia.. p. 44, 20 La Route des Flandres. p. 223* 72 ...si le contenu des milliers de bouquins de cette irrempla9able biblioth£que avait 6t£ pr^cis^menb irapuissant & emp£cher aue se produisent des choses comme le bombardement aui l'a detruite, je ne voyals pas tr£s bien cuelle perte repr£sentait pour 1'human­ ity la disparition sous les bombes au phosphore de ces milliers de bouquins et de papelards manifestment depourvus de la moindre utility.

There follows a list of items considered more essential to the men than the entire contents of the famous library, such as shoes, underwear, chocolate, sausage, etc. These same sentiments are echoed years later as Georges tells his wife that he wished he had never read or known about the existence of a book. Enraged at his father for per­ sonal reasons, Georges attacks the foundation of his father's profession and bemoans the fact that he had been stupid enough to believe that letters on paper meant any­ thing: ...pour croire ceux qui m'ont appris que des caracteres alignes sur du papier blanc pouvaient signifier quelque chose d 1autre cue des caracteres sur du papier blanc., c'est-d-dire trls exactement rien, sinon une distraction, un passe-temps, et surtout un sujet d'orgueil pour des types comme lui.22

In Le Vent, the delicate balance between order and disorder is re-established at the end of the novel. The triptych is partially restored, however imperfectly, re­ vealing the actors as they were, or seemed to be. The

^^La Route des Flandres, p . 224. 22L'Iierbe. p. 152. 73 wind re-appears— the symbol of the eternal return— the actors disappear, their suffering only temporary:

...force d6chaln6e, sans but, condamnSe & s'epuiser sans fin, sans espoir de fin, g£missant la nuit en une longue plainte, comme passag&res et perissables leur possibility d'oubli, de paix: le privilege de mourir.23

As in Le Vent where the action of the characters is undermined by those external forces whose presence we can only suspect >and therefore assign familiar metaphors to, so in L'Herbe. the rhythm of the novel is exposed in the epigraph taken from Pasternak's Doctor Zhivagot

Personne ne fait l'histoire, on ne la voit pas, pas plus qu'on ne voit l'herbe pousser.

The story revolves around the final agony of an old spinster who, along with her sister, denied herself the opportunity to marry in order to help support the brother Pierre's studies. Even in her state of fatal paralysis, Marie overwhelms those around her by the dignity and strength of one who has endured. Pierre has become a mountain of flesh tormented by the hysterically jealous Sabine, his wife, an overpainted, rapidly disintegrated alcoholic. Their son Georges has squandered the family fortune on an incredible scheme— growing pear trees in a region not suited for them. His wife Louise is involved

2?Le Vent, p. 241. 74 with another man and has thought of leaving Georges. The scenario is somewhat reminiscent of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ) but the passion and the violence remain muted. The groans of the dying woman fill the house and her silent speech is translated by the ubiquitous hunchbacked nurse. In this manner Marie is able to pass on to Louise her personal possessions sealed in a tin container. Prom the worthless objects she finds, Louise is able to reconstruct the old woman's innocent past, as well as understand that now she must take her place in the family. The magnificent stature of Marie is duly represented throughout the novel; as she awaits death naturally, those around her seem to be in a state of unnatural, perverse disintegration. The symbols that accompany Marie during her final days represent the eternal and fantastic: the mysterious nurse who attends only the dead; the light passing into her room through the shutters casts a T- shaped outline, "...comme l'initiale m§me du mot Temps, une lettre impalpable et t6tue se tralnant dans l'odeur ou moribonde..•" Marie is a woman who for some seemed never to have lived at all:

Rien qu'une vieille femme. Une vieille fille. Rien d'autre. Une vieille fille simplement en train de mourir de vieillesse dans son lit. Si

24L'Herbe. p. 20. 75 tant est qu'elle ait Jamais v6cu, si tant est que tout ce qu'elle ait connu de la vie ne soit pas autre chose qu'une mort, si tant elle qu'elle ne soit pas deja morte depuis des annees et des ann&es..• 25

Simon, on the other hand, recognizes an inherent wisdom in this simple woman, a parallel between her use of words and an intuitive grasp of time and history. It resembles the corollary in Le Vent cited above between the subtle, treacherous and ephemeral words and the illiterate peas­ ants who are equally so. Louise finds some old notebooks in the container which record the everyday affairs of the two sisters: a sort of bookkeeping ledger. From the simple arrangement of the years written in ascending order, we are invited to see the acceleration of time— as seen from the change of the years written fully: 1922-1925-1924-1925 and 1926 beginning the next line under 1922*— to the reduction of the ciphers to the last two digits: -27* -28, -29•••-52 (p, 119)* The visual association becomes even more com­ plex as Simon examines more closely what to the ordinary eye represents a list of dates on a book cover:

,.,comme une sorte de mur aux elements maqonnfcs ou plutdt assembles, ajust6s sans la moindre fissure, le moindre interstice, quelque chose qui faisait penser & ces vestiges d'antiques constructions p61asgiques ou romaines, et qui semblent non pas avoir resists au temps mais §tre en quelque sorte le temps lui-m§rae,26

^ L'Herbe. p# 26, 26Ibid., p. 119. 76 So as the wall of dates comes to represent time itself, the destructive, crushing power of time is also graphi­ cally described in what now has become a surrealistic calligramme. Simon theorizes on the construction of the "wall" suggesting that the procedure is the reverse; i.e., the base of the wall consists of the most recent dates while the top layer is made up of the oldest dates, as if they had been lifted on jacks and the more recent rows of dates slipped underneath until finally, "...les derniers chiffres traces d'une icriture tremblie, diffi­ cile, comme ecrasie, flichissant sous le poids formidable du tout.-27 Louise (Simon) breaks her reverie on the cover dates and opens the notebook to find, as she sus­ pected, a neat, readable series of entries describing trivial events which Simon corrects parenthetically: ...(et mime pas ivinements: faits, incidents,— et mime pas incidents; le ouotidien, le tout- venant— et mime pas menu: miniscule, insignifi- ant ) ...28

The entries describe the expenses for hiring a man to shovel snow, a trip to Bordeaux, the interest on bonds, the purchase of an umbrella; the sums of money involved are listed under the proper column headed Debit or Credit

^ L'Herbe. p. 120. 28ibid.. p. 122. 77 This massive accumulation of insignificant commonplaces is described by Simon as surging out of the context of time, from oblivion "...& la faqon de jalons plant6s 9& et Ik dans la grise imraensite sans commencement ni fin..."*^ Louise leafs through'thicknesses of time1' as the endless entries read bills paid, return of rela­ tives, departure of relatives, all written at the same level of objectivity:

•..non pas la trag6die, les cris, 1 'accidentel, le spectaculaire, mais ce qui constitue pour ainsi dire la trame mdme de 1'existence, comme si...quelque secrdte connaissance, cette rigour- euse experience qui n'a besoin ni des livres ni de phrases avait conduit la main tout au long des pages, lui avait appris k. ne pas faire de distinc­ tion entre le fait— 1'obligation— de garnir le bflcher, de porter une robe, ou de mourir...30

Immediately following, there is a sample page of the notebook showing the entries for September and between the 18th and the 25th is Eugenie's name— Marie's sister- under the 24th, after the purchase of 6 cases of pre­ serves and port, and before the renewal of the newspaper subscription. Eugenie's name is underlined twice, the second time in red. The next page is headed October; next to the date 16 is the entry for the rental of a field; on the 20th the death of Eugenie is entered in

'Herbe. p. 122.

3°Ibid.. pp. 125-124. 76 pencil followed by entries on the 25th of death announce­ ments, two funeral coaches at 25 francs each and a coffin. The next and final entry on the page lists a bill for a rain gutter and a weathercock on the 29th, Marie's notebook is a graphic representation of the idea expressed in the epigraph of the novel. Time has passed, or rather accumulated, and the last row of dates on the cover of the notebook reflects the physical decay of the author of the ledger: the shaky, broken digits are buried under the weight of past time and they come to an end; Marie too succumbs to this irrepressible force. The record of the ordeal remains behind as an objective, unbiased witness. Earlier in the novel, ignor­ ant of the existence of these notebooks, Pierre— the former professor, now a mountain of living flesh— makes an interesting, bookish speech on the nature of History. His discourse is precipitated by the memory of his sister, an old woman already, who was driven from her home in the 1940 Invasion and forced to travel the length and breadth of Prance to arrive at her brother's house for refuge. Pierre reminds his audience that the nature of History is not that described in the scholarly manuals:

...une s&rie discontinue de dates, de trait^s et de batailles spectaculaires et cliquetantes... 79 mais au contraire sans limite, et non seulement dans le temps...mais aussi dans ses effets, sans distinctions entre ses participants.•.31

He goes on to say that war itself is not waged by the soldier or the "homme d'Etat en pantalon ray6," it is undergone (subi) by them and, by extension, it is under­ gone by children and old women. The speech ends with a peroration in which the "terne" existence of an old wo­ man— who sat calmly on her suitcases for the 70 hours it took to reach her brother through panic-stricken crowds in stations, long stops in the middle of nowhere, and bombings— becomes the personification of History. While the professor's speech may be characterized as pompous and overblown, it is not the first time that we see the apotheosis of the simple peasant, i.e., the "great common denominator." The observation is made this time by the lyc§e professor who is the narrator in Le Vent. as he comments on the passengers of the rural bus line:

...paysans & t§tes craquel6es de hittites, de latins, de wisigoths ou d'arabes: 6chantillons laissfes par chaque passage de peuple, chaque invasion, retenus pour ainsi dire par la terre (ou les femmes, ce qui est la mdme chose), pr6lev§s par elle (ou par elles) comme un droit de peage, une ranqon, chaque vague d ’envahisseurs engrossant,

31L'Herbe. p. 35. fertilisant les hectares de fertiles cuisses ou- vertes au vainq'ueur, comme pour lui d£rober avec sa semence d'importation et par un proc6d§ plus efficace que 1'immolation et 1*ingestion du guerrier, ses forces v i v e s . 3 2

There are the people, the narrator continues, who can be seen on Saturdays and Mondays waiting for the department stores to open. The show windows offer plastic goods on plastic mannequins which, when compared to the sturdy, earthy people, seem destined for a breed similarly plas­ tic in nature, the species that sells such displays:

...sorte de ver blanc et mou de fabrication r§cente, issu— ventre, appfetits, cupidit§, insolence et paresse— non de l'Histoire, du Temps, de la chair f^condle, mais selon toute apparence du colt entre 1'automobile et le radiateur de chauffage central totalement inapte & se mouvoir autrement qu'& l 1aide d'un moteur, & se distraire qu'en technicolor et & se concevoir qu'en monnaie-papier.35

The narrator seems to be saying, as Simon himself seems to be saying in his novels, that these people, by their very nature— rising almost literally from the earth- become timeless, eternal, the very stuff which is History. The intellectual, like Pierre.in L'Herbe. is corrupted, a mass of decaying flesh more dead, in fact, than Marie who has entered the final agony. The alcoholic wife and mother, Sabine, is a grotesque mask: unnatural and barren when

^ Le Vent, p. 103* ^ibia.. p. im . 81 compared to the virgin spinster who is, and had always been, one with the earth. Pierre and Sabine are cast­ offs, debris to be flushed away by History. Their son Georges has been infected by this disease which wastes away the individual; he is rejected by the earth and re­ mains suspended in that timeless limbo until the memory of him slowly disintegrates.^*’ Georges tries to return to the earth by investing in an abortive pear-tree growing venture, but he does not listen to the advice of the farmers and so fails. Frustrated at every turn, he rejects the education of which his father was so proud.^ The contempt was expressed several times in La Route des Flandres: one time in particular a fellow prisoner re­ marked that Georges "talked like a book" to which he replied saying it was his father's doing:

XI voulait & toute force que son enfant jouisse des incomparables privileges de la civilisation occidentale. Etant le fils de paysans analpha- b&tes, il est telleraent fier d'avoir pu apprendre 6 lire qu'il est intimement persuade qu'il n'y a pas de probl&me et en particulier celui du bonheur de l'humanit§, qui ne puisse dtre r6solu par la lecture des bons auteurs,56

The hostility reaches a climax in a scene in L'Herbe where the father and son have a confrontation at the dinner

^These images appear in La Route des Flandres and La Bataille de Pharsale. 55cf. Simon in La Corde raide. pp. 61-62, ^ La Houte des Flandres. p. 222. 82 table. The argument Is over the money spent on Georges' vain attempt at farming; on another level, there is a recognition between father and son— each man knowing that the other knows. Georges.looks at his own. hands on the tablecloth, then at his father's hands, and Simon, anxious to preserve uncertainty rather than face the charge of omniscient author, suggests what might be passing through Georges' mind?

...pensant peut-6tre.••'mon propre raoi...', pen- sant peut-§tre dans le m§me instant Si, pouvant voir du mdme regard sa propre main, repl&te, et m§me bouffie? os, jointures et articulations noyfes, invisibles sous la mqlle couche de graisse, de sorte qu'il ne peut m§me pas savoir comment elle est faite en r6alit6, si elle ressemble & 1*autre, cette peau blanche et lisse qui n'a ja­ mais— ou alors depuis si longteraps— touch6, 6t6 au contact d*autre chose que des livres, c'est- &-dire quelque chose d'aussi d§pourvu de r6alit6 et de consistance que l'air, la lumi&re...37

While Georges stares at those hands which touched only books— that hand which is as deprived of reality and consistency as the air or light— the father focuses his attention on his son's overalls and peasant shirt:

•.•ce que le gros homme contemple maintenant, ce ne sont plus les mains brunies et souillfies, ni le visage, mais la salopette, la grossidre chemise de paysan...38

37L'Herbe. pp. 146-147.

58lbid., p. 149. 83 Pierre recognizes, in the peasant outfit, the de­ feat of his hopes that Georges would follow an academic career. The two men stare across the table in silence, each knowing the other is aware of his thoughts. The silent contest is interrupted by Sabine’s outraged dis­ covery that the maid is pregnant; neither man at the table is impressed by this revelation— neither man be­ ing the cause of the maid's present condition— and Georges leaves the table, the conflict between father and son unresolved. Georges' attempts to restore his link to the earth fails; he is not endowed with the distinction that marks a man, or woman, of the soil like Marie and the people who are the rockbed of the Mediterranean described in le Vent:

...et encore les quatre ou cinq 6ternels arabes affames, doux, lugubres, nostalgiques, hors du temps supprime, sortis des lointaines et ombreuses avenues de l ’Histoire oft semblaient passer les corteges de visages guerriers aux mdmes sombres moustaches aux m£mes regards ardents et tristes, indiffbrents, sur le fond verdoyant et fertile des pays conquis, de cette mdme et rouge campagne arrosee de sang fertile et de fertile sueur.39

While Georges founders in that nightmare very like Dante's sinners in the vestibule of the Inferno— neither dead nor alive, neither in Hell nor out— Louise is picked by the dying woman to succeed her as a daughter of the earth. In her last rendezvous with her lover, Louise lies naked on the cold, wet, evening grass thinking to herself that she was dead as her lover prepared to leave her:

...et elle se taisant toujours, gisant toujours (comme si elle pouvait sentir la. forme— le moule en creux— non seulement de son crdne mais de son corps tout entier imprim6 sur la terre...40

Louise recalls this scene as she listens to her in-laws arguing in the next room, or rather Sabine reciting aloud her husband's infidelities, real or imagined: "Toutes ces femmesJ Toutes ces putainsj" At these words, Louise re­ turns to her thoughts of the last night with her lover, lying in the grass realizing that it would be the last time she would see this man, realizing that possibly she had always known she would not leave with him:

...puis Louise bougea, s'fetira, se retourna sur le ventre: couch^e sur tout son long sur le sol, adh6rant au sol, enfonsant, enfouissant son visage dans l'herbe fralche, comme pour l'y imprimer, respirant longuement l'odeur puissante et dcre d'herbe et de terre melees...respirant simplement, s'emplissant tout entiSre de l'odeur v6g6tale et pure", puis se rel&chant, s ' abandonnant, toujours allong6 e sur le ventre...41

4QL'Herbe. p. 67.

^ ibid.. p. 254. 85 This communion with the earth after the sexual union with her lover is as natural as the dying virgin's tranquility after watching the large farm animals copulate during the season. Both women are children of the soil: eter­ nal in terms of Time and History. The process of restoration of a period of time was undertaken by the lyc§e professor in Le Vent who gathered extant fragments and improvised other pieces in order to complete the puzzle. In L'Herbe. the imperceptible accu­ mulation of a myriad of commonplace happenings creates a history in which the characters have played out roles of which they were unaware. The third novel in this group, La Route des Flandres. finds the hero engaged in a piecing together of the past. The original title of the novel re­ veals the nature of the work more clearly: Description fragmentaire d'un d6 sastre. The herb of the novel is Georges of L'Herbe. and the action takes place before this earlier novel. The sequence of events in La Route des Flandres is much more complex than in any of Simon's earlier novels. The action begins during the 194-0 action in Flandres and the movement of the novel centers around the wanderings of a squad of cavalrymen after an ambush in which their captain has been killed. The narrative itself originates in the thoughts of Georges one night after the war while 86 in bed with. Corinne, the widow of the captain. Hie thoughts shift constantly from the ambush scene, to the prisoner-of-war camp, to anecdotes about Corinne told by Igllsias, the Captain's jockey.and Corinne's suspected lover. It is never made clear whether Igllsias was really her lover or whether it was a fantasy created in the minds of the woman-hungry prisoners by Igllsias' elusive and ambiguous responses. The narrative is made up of a number of scenes from the war to the prison camp to the pre-war fantasies about Corinne. Georges forces himself to re-create the scenes as he thought they should appear, peeking through a hedge, /ip through time, watching Corinne and Igllsia :

Et cherchant (Georges) & imaginer cela: des seines, de fugitifs tableaux printaniers ou estivaux, comme surpris, toujours de loin, & travers le trou d'une haie ou entre deux buissons: quelque chose avec des pelouses d'un vert Iter- nellement eclatant, des barrilres blanches, et Corinne et lui l'un en face de l 1autre...4-5

After the war, Georges attempts to uncover the truth about the past by penetrating the flesh of the widow but for all this effort, Georges1 distracted lovemaking

"Georges pouvant voir remuer leurs llvres, mais pas entendre (trop loin, each! derrilre sa haie, derrilre le temps, tandis qu'il ecoutait,..Iglesia leur raconter une de ses innorabrables histoires de chevaux." La Route des Flandres, p . 49. 45Ibid., p. 48. 87 earns him a violent slam on the side of the head as Corinne leaves him in the grubby hotel room. The mys­ tery is never solved and Georges remains haunted by the kaleidoscope of past events— real and imagined— shifting /i /[ from one scene to another.by hidden associations. There are images of Time and History, in La Route des Flandres which recall similar ones in Le Vent and L'Herbe. Georges remembers a scene when his mother, Sabine, showed him the trunk filled with family papers and documents representing the family history in the form of marriage contracts, deeds, wills, patents, commissions, etc;:

...sillage de d§bris surnageants, morceaux, par- chemins semblables & des fragments d'§piderme tels qu’en les touchant il lui semblait toucher au m§me moment...par del& des ann§es, le temps supprim§, comme l'Spiderme mdme des ambitions, des r§ves des vanit§s, des futiles et imp§ris- sables passions., ,4-5

During a quarrel outside a farmhouse between sev­ eral civilians, the cries of an old woman inside the house are heard; like Marie in L'Herbe. the old woman's

c f • "J'etais hante par deux choses: la discontin­ uity, 1 'aspect fragmentaire des Emotions que l'on £prouve et qui ne sont jamais relives les unes aux autres, et en m§me temps leur contiguity dans la conscience." Claude Sarraute, "Interview de Cl. Simon," Le Monde. 8 Oct. I960. 45 La Route dfts glandresT pp. 54-55* 88 cries are placed in a timeless, universal dimension:

••♦comme une declamation emphatiaue, sans fin, . comme ces pleureuses de 1 'antiquity, comme si tout cela,..ne se passait pas & l'£poque des fusils, des bottes de caoutchouc, des rustines et des costumes de confection mais tr&s loin dans le temps, ou de tousles temps, ou en dehors du temps, la pluie tombant touJours et peut-§tre dejpuis toujours, les noyers les arbres du verger s 'egouttant sans fin,.,4b

The concept of History is touched on again as Georges and his fellow-prisoner, Blum, discourse on the meaning of the word which is compared to the Immaculate Conception: "scintillante et exaltante vision tradition- neJlement r§serv6e aux coeurs simples et aux esprits forts, h S 7 bonne conscience du denonciateur et du philosophe.,." f It is finally concluded by Blum that History leaves be­ hind it only a residue which is re-cycled into an edible pap fit for "official school manuals and pedigreed fami- 48 lies." This corruption of the concept of History as it manifested itself in the • form of Marie in L'Herbe^ appeared earlier in Le Vent with the description of the notary by the professor. A creature like all others of his species with a head and-two arms and two legs, con­ ceived between two sheets like everyone else but not,

46 La Route des Flandres. pp. 63-64, 4 7Ibid.. p. 1 8 7 . 4 ^ b i d . , p. 188. 89 according to the narrator, from the union of two beings of flesh and blood consumed by passion, rather in the sound of a coin being thrust in the slot of a strong­ box. From this grotesque conception of the notary, the manner in which History is recorded has been perverted:

,..1'Histoire n ’est pas inscrite dans les lointains Schos des batailles et des vaines clameurs de foules mais dans les poussi^reuses et himalayennes mon- tagnes de contrats et d'actes redig§s sous la dictSe d 'innombrables P&res Goriot par 1'obscure et vic- torieuse armde d'innombrables notaires semblables i celui, et au pr&d&cesseur du pr6d§cesseur du pr6d6cesseur de celui en face de qui o'6 tais assis.. .4-9

Again, History, like Time, remains as an entity indepen­ dent of man’s consciousness and attempts to render its image in a pure form are futile, . It becomes increasingly difficult, as the novel develops, to tell exactly which disaster is being des­ cribed in this fragmented manner since there are a num­ ber of isolated tragedies occurring within the context of the disastrous 194-0 defeat. The death of Captain Reixach is another reason for Georges* obsession to reconstruct the puzzle of the past; apart from the fact that he and the Captain were vaguely related on Georges' mother's side, there was also the

^ Le Vent, pp. 109-110. 90 suspicion that Reixach intentionally rode into the ambush. The survivors are fascinated by this possibili­ ty and their curiosity is compounded by the fact that one of the Captain's ancestors had supposedly committed suicide— shot with his own gun— in despair over his wife's infidelity. The tale takes on fantastic proportions with the addition of a family portrait of this same ancestor SO owned by Georges' mother, Sabine. What is incredible about this portrait is that the paint had peeled and split at the forehead revealing a layer of red pigment beneath the surface; in effect, it was as if he had been resuscitated by war, violence, and murder in order to be killed a second time:

...comme si la balle de pistolet tir§e un si&cle et demi plus tflt avait mis toutes ces annfces pour atteindre sa deuxi&me cible mettre le point final 6 un nouveau d6sastre...51

The men are haunted by this image of the Captain's aris­ tocratic ancestor as they ride through the twisting lanes between the hedges expecting at any moment to come upon the spectre dressed in the anachronistic hunting outfit

^ There is a similar portrait, in Simon's posses­ sion of an ancestor who is said to have committed sui­ cide. The cracked paint resembling a wound on the forehead is visible. See photograph in Ehtretiens. pp. cit.T p . 1 2 0 , ^ La Route des Flandres. p. 79, 91 of the nobility which he wore for the sitting of the por trait:

...ce portrait oft le temps— la degradation— avait remftdie par la suite...a l'oubli— ou plutot 1 'imprevision— du peintre, posant (et'de la maniftre meme dont s'y etait prise la balle, c'est-ft-dire en faisant sauter un morceau du front, de sorte que ce n'fttait pas une rectifi­ cation par addition, comme eftt procede un second peintre charge plus tard de la correction, mais en ouvrant aussi un trou dans le visage— de faqon ft ce qu'apparftt ce qu'il y avait au-dessous), po­ sant 1ft cette tache rouge et sanglante comme une salissure*. .52

As time works its strange modification of the portrait by the process of deterioration somehow guided by fore­ sight, so the deterioration is also accelerated by the presence of violence:

...as tu remarquft comme tout cela va vite, cette espece d'acceleration du temps, d 1 extraordinaire rapidity avec laquelle la guerre produit des phft- nom&nes— rouille, souillures, ruines, corrosion des corps— qui demandent en temps ordinaire des mois ou des annees pour s'accomplir?55

When this process of rapid disintegration takes place, however, the wreckage of war remains isolated from and unaffected by the living. There is a scene early in the novel describing the four telescoped shadows of the cavalrymen separating and rejoining as they ride past

^ La Route des Flandres. pp. 80-81., ^ La Route des Flandres. p. 205* 92 the debris left behind by the retreating army and the refugees; the shadows pass over the debris:

dans une sorte de va-et-vient immobile, de pi£tinement monotone, tandis que sous elles defilent bas-c6t6s poussiereux, paves ou herbe, comme une tache d'encre aux multiples bavures se d£nouant et se renouant, glissant sans laisser de traces sur les decombres, les morts, l'espdce de trainee, de souillure, dg.sillage d'£pav6 s que laisse derriire elle la guerre.-^-

The troops that ride by seem to be standing still; the key word is immobility and movement becomes an illusion. Time in Le Vent was a wall without beginning or end,

4 covered with torn posters; the progress of Time in La Route des Flandres is invisible, immaterial, without beginning or end, or point of reference.-'-' Georges feels that he too is invisible in the phantom squadron of horsemen, frozen, stiff, on horseback; the pace is described as movement simulated by a rolling backdrop while the characters on stage march in place. The night air and time itself seem to become like cold, icy steel in the very mass of which the troops seem to be caught:

...immobilises pour toudours, eux, leurs vieilles carnes macabres, leurs eperons, leurs sabres, leurs armes d'acier: tout debout et intacts, tels que le dour lorsqu'il se leverait les decouvrirait a travers les 6paisseurs transparentes et glauques,

^ Ibid.. p . . 26. CC Ibid.. p. 30. 93 semblables k une armle en marche surprise par un cataclysms et que le lent glacier k 1 'invisible progression restituerait, vomirait dans cent ou deux cent mille ans de cela...5o

Much later in the novel, as Georges and Blum ride in the cattle car with the other prisoners headed for Germany, this same series of images is repeated, both men trapped in "that thing" which is at the.same time immobile and mobile, and whose sound pursues Georges constantly:

...cette olympienne et froide progression, ce lent glacier en marche depuis le commencement des temps, broyant, ecrasant tout, et dans lequel il lui semblait les voir, lui et Blum, raides et glacis, Ruches avec leurs bottes, leurs Iperons, sur leurs carnes extlnules, intacts et morts parmi la foule des fantfimes debout eux aussi... s'avan9ant tous k la m§me imperceptible vitesse comme un cortege de mannequins...uniformlment englobls dans cette Ipaisseur glauque k travers laquelle il essayait de les deviner...?/

From the preceding descriptions, Time can be thought of in two possible ways: linear, mechanical clock time synonymous with the accumulation of dates on the covers of Marie's notebooks; ’and, the images associated with the surface, the periphery of that monolith which can be called Time Absolute. This surface of Time is usually referred to by Simon as a sort of glue, or gel, or gray­ ish matter in which people, things, and events are trapped

^ La Route des Flandres, pp. 31"?32.

57Ibid., p. 279. 9*4- indefinitely. The prisoners are living in a glue, or grayness without dimensions where one day cannot be distinguished from another so that their point of ref­ erence changes from a temporal to a spatial one: they no longer thought of "day after day," but rather of "from place to place."^® They seem to have been re­ jected by both life and death: "de sorte qu'ils parais- saient maintenant se mouvoir non dans le temps mais dans une sorte de forraol gris&tre, sans dimensions, de n§ant, d'incertaine durSe...^ The order of events, or rather, the lack of order in the novel illustrates the idea of the fragmentary nature not only of our memory but also our consciousness. In the early pages of La Route des Flandres, Georges and Blum are on the prison .train ignorant of their destina­ tion and trapped in the darkness of the cattle car, Georges persists, nevertheless, in trying to maintain a chronological order to his present existence:

,,.cherchant & me rappeler depuis combien de temps nous 6tions dans ce train un jour et une nuit ou une nuit un jour et une nuit mais cela n'avait aucun sens le temps n'existe pas

^8Ibld.. p. 1 3 7 - ^ La Route des Flandres. p, 121, of, also, Sabine's concept of Time elicited by her feeling of being trapped— a prisoner of age and impending death, L'Herbe. p, 203• 95 Quelle heure est-il dis-je est-ce que tu peux r6ussir & voir 1', Bon sang dit-il qu'est-ce 60 que 9a peut foutre qu'est-ce que 9a changera...

The response is what difference will it make to know the time? what difference will it make to see the light and the dirty faces of the cowards, the vanquished, the prisoners? The scene is repeated again near the end of the novel; the passage of time, as well as the loca­ tion, is still uncertain; a clear spot is seen and it is thought to be water and from that conjecture, the argu­ ment is over the name of the body of water which they may or may not have seen;

Peut-etre que c'est la Meuse Ou le Rhin Ou l'Elbe Non pas l'Elbe on l'aurait su Bon alors quoi? Une riviere qu'est-ce que 9a peut faire Quelle heure crois-tu qu'il peut §tre q u ’est-ce que 9a peut faire II doit bien y avoir trois jours qu'on est dans ce „ wagon Alors mettons que ce soit l'Elbe.

The cattle car scene takes place a third and final time with still another variation to remind the reader of the ever-present juxtaposition of past and present. The dialogue begins much as before as the question is asked;

^ La Route des Plandres. p. 20.

6 1 Ibid., p. 2 7 8 . 96 Quelle heure peut-il §tre?. et lui Qu'est-ce que qa peut faire qu'est-ce que tu attends Le jour? qu'est-ce que ca changera Tu as tellement envie. de voir nos sales gueules?®2

What has changed, however, is the action that directly precedes the quotation and the action that directly follows. We recall that the narration of the novel takes place in Georges1 thoughts as he lies in bed with

Corinne and that Georges becomes lost in reverie during the night as often as he gets lost in passionate embraces.

After one such exhausting embrace,; Georges struggles to free his leg from the tangle of limbs, but from the description of the image— "comme une seule b§te apocalyp- tique & plusieurs tdtes plusieurs membres gisant dans le noir..."^ we are no longer looking at two lovers with their limbs intertwined, but at a pile of prisoners stacked on the deck of a cattle car: "de dis Quelle heure peut-il Stre?" Georges struggles against the weight and suddenly awakens in the hotel room asking,

"Qu'est-ce que tu fais?"^ as Corinne gathers her things:

Mais enfin qu'est-ce qui se passe, et elle cherchant toujours son soulier II y a un train & huit heures, et moi Un train? Mais qu'est-ce que...65

fiP ha Route des fflandres. p. 293* 63Ibid.. p. 293. 6Z*~Ibid.. p. 293. 6^Ibid.. p. 294. 97 The fragments of the narrative are not pieced to­ gether in a logical, linear,' chronological progression for our convenience. The novel must be read.as one would look at a painting: all the parts taken in at one viewing, the total picture first, then the individual elements are examined. In he Vent, the missing parts, the transition elements are provided in the last third of the novel devoted to the attempted restoration of the past. L'Herbe provided us with graphic illustrations of the concepts of Time and History. The working of memory is exposed in the final segment of the novel as Louise dips into the past through a series of associations dic­ tated by the sounds coming from the drama in the room on the other side of the wall. The real and fancied events from the past remain confused in the narrator's mind of La Route des Plandres. and even the flesh and blood presence of past illusions fails to embody, or rather, reproduce, the real fantasy Georges believed existed in the past. The paradox of movement— mobility vs, immo­ bility— will be presented in a more sophisticated form in Simon's later novels, especially Le Palace and La Route des Flandres, drawing directly from the Eleatic philosophers. 98 The often-quoted last line of La Route des Flan- 66 dres has led a number of critics to conclude that Simon's work represents a cynical view of man's vain attempt to survive. John Sturrock in particular sees Simon's oeuvre as the description of man's universe the instant before its collapse The purpose of the fol­ lowing chapters' will be to illustrate the absence of a metaphysical or aesthetic collapse.

...le monde arr§t& fig§ s'effritant se d6piautant s'6 croulant peu & peu par morceaux comme une b&tisse aban donee, inutilisable, livr£e'& 1 'incoherent,'nonchalant, impersbnnel et destructeur travail du temps, p. 314. i 6?cf. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Critique (Oct. 1953). ...la nettete anormale avec laquelle~apparaissent, dans les reves les plus anodins, une chaise, un caillou, une main, la chute d ’un debris quelconque...comme si le fragment s'&tait eternise A l'fetat de chute. (Italics minej. CHAPTER III THE THEMATIC UNITY OF LE PALACE In La Route des Flandres. the main action does not take place in the present but rather in the mind of the narrator who is spending the night in bed with the widow of a fallen comrade-in-arms. He recalls not only the events of 1940 but also the period preceding the war, the years of confinement after the defeat, and finally a parallel situation— the questionable death of an offi­ cer: was it suicide or not?— occurring in another cent­ ury to the ancestor of this officer. The whole fabric of the novel seems quite involved and complicated, yet the subject, the surroundings, and the characters sound a sympathetic note in the mind of the reader, and the reader identifies with the situation. The next novel, Le Palace, also begins in the pre­ sent as the narrator attempts to reconstruct past events. While the pattern is similar to La Route des Flandres. the formula elicited a meagre critical response as stated in Chapter One. The following study will deal with this question in the hope of restoring this excellent novel to its proper place in the steady perfection and growth of Simon's oeuvre. t

99 100

Why hapless man, have you left the light of the sun And come here to see the dead and a Joyless place. Teiresias to Odysseus, Odyssey. Book XI, lines 92-94 Le Palace is the least appreciated and least under­ stood of Simon's novels; therefore, we often see it , relegated to the limbo of disappointing works. How­ ever, its position between La Route des Flandres and Histoire is too critical to ignore; the failure in the unity of the novel claimed by the critics is then a failure by them to recognize the most soundly con­ structed Simon novel in theme and structure up to that time. The examination of the novel will be divided into two parts: first, the overall view of the work in terms of the thematic and structural relationships; second, a close study of the "homme-fusil" episode emphasizing a pre-socratic concept of time. The central theme of the novel is Death and the image of Death manifests itself in many ways through­ out the novel. The narrator^ returns to a city filled

As he moves from one time dimension to another, his identity changes according to his perspective, so in the present he is referred to as the man, the man- who-was-a-student, the student, or he becomes the omniscient narrator. 101 with ghosts from the past} in fact, the city itself is 2 also dead. He is an exile searching for the answer to his frustration and despair, lacking a meaning for the past and roots for the present. Though he never expresses this despair openlyj it is voiced in his plaintive, "comment etait-ce?", "comment etait-ce?" and the oracular newspaper headlines, "QUIEN HA MUERTO?" His return to the city of Death can be likened to the descent of Odysseus into the Underworld in search of X the seer Teiresiasy the man-who-was-a-student is looking for the oracular counterpart in Le Palace; the American. This is a novel of disintegration, the fragments held together in the mind of the narrator: time and space on a revolving stage, rapid glimpses at persons, things and events (real and imagined) which appear for an instant in vivid detail only to disappear into obli­ vion a moment later. The same device used in the 'frag-

P cf. James Joyce's allusion to Dublin as the "center of paralysis". -*also cf. Aeneas in search of Anchises; Stephen Daedalus in Nighttown. Morton Levitt, in his discus­ sion of Histoire, suggests the Telemachus-Odysseus pattern again: the wandering father; the son searching for an identity and never knowing himself fully. In effect, this thesis can be used to describe the cen­ tral thesis of Simon's oeuvre. 102 mentary description of a disaster," La Route des Flandres. are visible here: still, film strips, contiguous images of past and present, Time immobilized. But, contrary to the previous novel, the historical event is less familiar, the experience of the narrator more personal and less ob­ vious: the critic of the socio-historical novel has ig­ nored the metaphor in favor of the fragments which remain a puzzle. Simon is very careful to insist on the term "revo­ lution" to describe the event in Le Palace, as opposed to the term "war" which would limit the novel to a one­ dimensional plane. The war, as we see it in La Route des' fflandres. is contrary to the chaos represented by the myriad political groups vying for control in the absence of an external enemy in Le Palace. In La Route des Flandres a series of circular movements is drawn by the v/anderings of the disoriented cavalrymen v/hich pro­ duces the shape of the playing-card club, le trifle; in Le Palace, there is a circular sweep returning to the point of origin which is repeated a number of times but in this case forming concentric circles, or circles with circles, i.e, circles with a common center. If we:think

h Another definition to complement the epigraph of the novel also illustrates this point: revolution— a progressive motion of a body round a center or axis so that any line of the body-remains parallel to and returns to an initial position. Webster’s Seventh Hew Collegiate Dictionary. 103 of the novel in a linear sense, the chapters overlap with the last line of the preceding chapter repeated as the first line of the following chapter; if we transfer this structure to a three-dimensional sphere, it can be thought of as moving in an arc which eventually forms a circle. * The opening chapter of Le Palace, entitled "Inven- taire," enumerates the countless number of objects being displaced by the upheaval resulting from the revolution. The troops are pictured moving the opu­ lent furnishings out of the once elegant hotel and replacing them with the necessary bureaucratic para­ phernalia of the new regime. A full circle is com­ pleted by the end of the novel in the final chapter entitled, "Bureau des objets perdus," where the author discovers the paintings moved out in the first chapter now being used as bulletin boards: ..,il contemplait avec stupeur A auelques doigts de son visage et dans les dtroits intervalles laissds entre les feuilles rondo- typees et colldes sur les verres, les fragments suaves, pervers et dvanescents...des voluptueux fantdmes des bergeres. des nymphes et des mar­ quises devergonddes decrochees des murs lambrissds des appartements pour milliardaires et qui, sus- pendus la, servaient maintenant de support aux bulletins victorieux et illisibles, comme si quelque pudibonde fureur les avait condamndes, tendre, nues, et encore palpitantes d'orgasmes, i dtre peu a peu recouvertes de colle en pot et dtouffdes sous les bureaucratiques entassements 101* de papier en quoi se r&sorbent toute violence et toute r6volte.5

The circle is complete as the paintings and the• revolutionary memoranda coexist in a limbo free from scrutiny: the announcements remain unread and the paintings unseen. The violence of the directives is softened by the decadent representations on the can­ vasses, but both are separated by the glass which for Simon symbolizes a barrier between different worlds and different epochs. This "collage" effect creates a visual representation of the phenomenon Time/History as Simon perceives it in his works. The juxtaposition of disparate elements with no apparent connection in time and space but, nevertheless, each element bears its own individual identity thus attracting attention in its own right. The memos pasted on the glass of the paintings represent a conceptual interpretation of one aspect of "collage": a kaleidoscopic view of time. The unread memos and the hidden painted figures both are detritus from the immediate past; the bizarre bulletin boards which they have become are similar to paintings in a museum: aberrations from the past liv­ ing in the present. There is no longer any real

^Le Palace, p. 197* 105 purpose for either the memos or the paintings, they stand only as testimony to their individual existence. This juxtaposition of dissimilar objects fashions a concept of Time/History which is spelled out vividly in the first chapter by the description of the armed troops moving furniture down the stairs. The incon­ gruity of the scene is punctuated by the protest of the weapons themselves at being relegated to domestic chores by a law which Simon describes as "c.ette loi qui veut que toute entity humaine constitute en troupe armte s'assigne pour t&che premitre le dt- g management systtmatique des maisons conquises..." The weapons fall from the shoulders of the men, crashing into their shins, as if animated by an avenging force calling for the guns to resume their destructive, deadly tasks. This antagonistic duality engenders a process which Simon describes as "les periodiques migrations de matelas et de pendules CquiJ faqonnent peu & peu la mysttrieuse Histoire et les des- tins du raonde,"^ In the next paragraph the narrator offers a sort of corollary to the first law which he conceives of

6 Ibid.« p. 11.

7 Ibid.. p. 12. 106 as a u-tube— vases communicant s-^— in which the level of the contents in each column remains the same, Men vertu de quoi l ’Histoire se constituait au. moyen non de simples migrations mais d'une serie de mutations • 8 internes, de deplacements moleculaires..." This image is immediately transformed into the spectacle of two columns of "conqu6rants-d£m&nageursu descend­ ing and ascending the stairs acting out a ludicrous representation of the activity in the u-tubes:

(pour les uns, ceux de la file descendante) de chiffonniers en marqueterie, de coiffeuses enguirlandees, d'aguichantes nudit6s, croisant (port§ par les autres, ceux de la file montante) 1 16quipement fonctionnel que les besoins de l'Histoire nlcessitaient en lieu et place des 6 l6gants accessoires conqus pour remedier au nostalgicue dgpaysement des milliardaires br£siliens...9

The reappearance of the two phenomena: the simple migrations and the internal mutations, completes the hypothesis expounded in chapter one: the physi­ cal accoutrements change positions but maintain their individual identity. That time has passed is apparent only by the layers of disparate elements

^Ibid.. p. 12.

9 E bii., PP. 1 2 - 1 3 . 107 which partially obliterate the original form.10 The narrator also notices that the long red carpet that covered the hallway had been removed and he muses on the possible alternatives concerning its fate: "Mais sans doute lui ont-ils aussi trouvS une utilisation... Sans doute pour des tentures ou des estrades de meet­ ings. Non, ce serait trop logique. Alors quoi?"*^ Another movement to be traced is that of the nar­ rator who returns to the original point at which he began his adventure fifteen years earlier. There has been a change. However, the point of origin is, and is not, the same. Puis il se vit, c 'est-&-dire des annSes plus tard, et lui, ce rSsidu de lui-m§me, ou plutdt cette trace, cette salissure (cet excrement en quelque sorte) laiss6 derrifere soi.•.ld-bas, tr&s loin, comme dans le petit bout de la lorg­ nette, gesticulant. r6p6tant 6ternellement & la demands de la memoirs (et m&me sans sa demande,../-2

r°cf. description of the posters at the beginning of the last chapter where pieces torn from the top lay­ ers reveal fragments of the underlying posters in their original form. Disparity in size prevents some posters from being covered over completely. The exposed seg­ ment causes an unexpected and sometimes prophetic effect, on the most recent poster, e.g.. the v/ords Dolor Dolor Dolor Dolor showing above the picture of the emaciated revolutionary waving a rifle over his head crying out the legend printed below him: Venceremos. repeated three times,

13~Le Palace, pp. 198-199•

lgIbid.. p. 20 108 Simon describes this phenomenon in Faulknerian terms 'and Faulkner in turn was very much aware of Proust; Simon paraphrases Faulkner on the function of memory:

La m&raoire n'existe pas, dit-il, le cerveau ne reproduit que ce que les muscles cherchent en t&tonnant, ni plus ni moins. Et le total qui en r^sulte est, d 1ordinaire, incorrect et faux, et ne merite que le nom de rSve.1^

The dreams, fantasies, nightmares and aberrations that populate the novel do not unravel in the gentle man­ ner of the Japanese paper balls that expand into a garden under water as we see it happen in Combray. Simon's characters experience recall but the recollec­ tions are often invaded by the present to create a third, totally unreal dimension divorced from both the past and the present. In Le Palace, the narrator is seated on a bar stool; the rivets that secure the shaft of the stool to the floor cause a series of images to be conjured up resembling military equip­ ment :

...par des rivets pareils & ceux d'un blindage, comme si le bar, le restaurant tout entier avec ses cuivres, ses chromes 6tincelants, sa decora­ tion pompeienne de femmes glycines et demi-nues- en faience vernis6e et incomestible avait 6th conqu sur le module d'un tank ou d'un b&teau de guerre en vue ou plutdt en prevision d'eventuels

■^Chapsal interview, op.cit. 109 assauts livres par une meute de corsaires fr&n&- tiques, pouilleux et affam6 s, capables en un clin d'oeil de tout eraporter et devorer, non seulement ce qui pouvait §tre normalement mang&, mais jusqu'au mobilier, acier, moleskine et crin compris. •.

The objects surrounding the narrator suggest a variety of possibilities which transcend mechanical clock time. The restaurant-bar is transformed into a receptacle containing visual suggestions from the present, past, and future: the armament modelled on the past— tanks and armored cars— ready to meet the future assault of pirates. The narrator is spinning in a whirlpool of anachronisms, shifting instantaneously from one time period to another and yet experiencing all time per­ iods simultaneously. The troops carrying away the paintings and furniture from the hotel are no differ­ ent in the role they are playing than the pirates of the past who carried away the booty from a ship or a coastal city. The appearance of the future looters seems to matter little: whether in the guise of pro­ fessional troops or revolutionaries or pirates, their function is the same. In the last chapter of Le Palace. "Bureau des objets perdus," the narrator experiences this same multiple-time-vision when he sees a truck

% e Palace, p. 21. 110 pass by with loads of troops:

...les camions passant et repasaant k toute allure avec leur inchangeables cargaisons de types ddpoitraillds brandissant leurs armes h&teroclites, comme ces gladiateurs de l'anti- quite pourvus par ddrision...de la moitid d'une cuirasse, ou d'une seule jambidre: certains avaient des casques, d'autres dtaient tdte nue, d'autres portaient des bonnets de police..., et peut-dtre dtaient-ce toujours les mdmes tc (les mdmes camions, les mdmes gladiateurs). ?

To borrow a term from photography, we might call this phenomenon a double-exposure in, the visual sense. In this same last chapter the bank— across the street from the bar in the present— and the Palace hotel seem to be present at the same time, but only one of them comes into focus at a time. The truck-load of gladiators/troops passes in front of the bank, but it is the shadow of the hotel that is reaching the narrator's feet at the same moment. The present exists simultaneously with the past as the narrator looks through the window of the bar and sees the bank across the street where the hotel once stood:

...sa faqade troude par les quatre-vingt fendtres ouvertes de part et d*autre sur le ciel mais d'oft semblaient toujours s'dchapper, dans une rude immobile, furieuse et verticals, les fantdmes pdtrifids de flammes geantes— de sorte qu'il semblait maintenant murd,

15Ibid., p. 224. Ill embastill§, comme s ’il continuait & se tenir, monstrueux, beant, tigr6 et invaincu, iram6diate- ment derriere la muraille babylonignne et . revancharde de pierres votlves..

The past is unveiled by a flight of pigeons that is scavenging on the public square, alternating between scurrying on the ground and flying off in a panic to another part of the square:

...les centaines de t&ches claires et fremissantes s 'entrecroisant en dents de peigne sur des plans differents de gauche & droite— les plus pr&s— , et de droite & gauche— les plus eloign^s), comme un rideau mouvant par del& duquel, & travers la glace du bar, il lui semblait le voir, intact, dressant son architecture rocailleuse..

The man sees the hotel decorated with banners bearing slogans and proclamations stretched across the balcon­ ies of the faqade. But no sooner does this image appear than it disappears again behind the curtain of birds:

' ...le frSmissant voile de pigeons ondulant, fl§chissant, retombant, s'affaissant enfin, la muraille froide, et nue de la banque r6ap-,g paraissant de nouveau, geom^trique, carr§e...

In the scene that follows the above, the man attempts to communicate with the bartender but does not succeed. His queries about the past remain

16Ibid., p. 23. 17Ibid.. pp. 23-24. 18Ibid., p, 24. 112 unanswered (or unspoken) as the bartender inquires: "une autre bi&re?" A physical transformation seems to be taking place as the man sees the bartender as in a negative and, through the transfer of light sur­ faces to dark and dark to light, the bartender appears to be dressed in mourning. But the man quickly notes that in some countries the color white represents death, so the bartender appears "comme 1 'officiant, le celebrant de quelque culte macabre veillant sur son §talage d'aliments consacres A des ombres et que venaient sans doute d&vorer, aux heures de fermeture, 19 des squelettes gastronomes..." This apparition triggers the man's senses so that he thinks he per­ ceives an odor rising from the "votive" food:

...comme une faible odeur de marine et de putrefaction semblable A celle aui s'exhale sur les plages de ces choses g&latineuses, grises et luisantes abandonnees par les vagues et puant au soleil dans un essaim de mouches et de pucerons de mer...2®

The bartender continues to ask whether he wants an­ other beer or not, oblivious of his own (the bar­ tender *s) transformation in the eyes of the customer.

19 Ibid., p. 27 20Ibid. 113 The man gets up and runs out with the warm beer sloshing in his stomach "comme une sorte de corps 21 Stranger, inassimilable et pourri." The very next line of the text is indented and a new para­ graph begins— an infrequent syntactic device in Simon's prose— describing an already familiar sight which for the moment makes one think that the action is still going on in the bar:

II y avait des bouteilles de bifcre sur la longue table de r§fectoire au plateau recou- vert de zinc...II y avait aussi plusieurs journaux jet6s en desordre, (et,, 6 vrai dire, par le fait & la fois de la p6nurie et de la quality bon march6 du papier et du contenu, plutdt que des journaux, des sortes de tracts, de proclamations aux titres violents et empha- tiques...22

In the course of the description which continues for the rest of the page, the American who appeared ear­ lier in the chapter is casually re-introduced as the inventory of the objects on the table and around the room continues:

...un empilement dfesordonnfe de journaux, done, achetis, deployes, lus, dig6r§s, replies et repos§s (ou plutdt rejet§s)...et que l'Am£ri- cain dimasqua lorsqu'il se leva, quittant la table sur laquelle il 6tait assis...2 *

21 Ibid.. p. 28. 2 2 Ibid. 2 5 Ibid. It takes a few more pages for the reader finally to adapt to the fact that the action is now taking place in the past; the stench of the food, the fun­ ereal aspect of the bartender and the warm beer in his stomach have propelled the man to a moment fif­ teen years past. The theme of death and decay sug­ gested in the bar-restaurant scene is continued in the transition to the past as the narrator, or rather the student at this point, reads the fragmented head­ lines showing through the piles of newspapers: QUIEN HA MUERTO A COMMAN..., EL COMMANDANTE SANTIAGO GIGANTE DE LA LUCHA, LA QUINTA COLUMNA A LA OBRA: SANTIAGO PZL ASESINADO. The question asked in the headlines, or a variation of it: QUIEN HA MUERTO? is repeated throughout the novel as a leit-motif. The student slowly realizes that the author of the crime was one of the political splinter groups on the Anar­ chists1 side, not the Fifth Column:

...ils avaient m§me 61u un president...le mort...fut son ami et conseiller personnel dont plusieurs des dix-neuf autres qui s' in­ tit ulaient le gouvernement lui avaient demand^ de se s6parer, ce A quo! il s'Atait refusA et ce qui Atait chose faite maintenant, par des moyens dAfinitifs sinon lAgaux..,2^

24Ibid., p. 55. 25Ibid., p. 116. The student also learns that the real fighting is taking place elsewhere and it is to the battlefront that the American— the student's mentor— goes before the student can learn the meaning of it all. The American's speeches express a cynical and bitter grasp of the situation, their situation, which the student is anxious to have explained. It takes more than one careful reading of the novel to follow the movements in and out of the past and present of the man/student. In the five chapters that make up the novel, the man-who-was-a-student travels from the bar to a bench in the public square, then to an underground urinal. The mechanical clock time elapsed for these movements could total anywhere from a few minutes to several hours; the man runs out of the bar in chapter.one suffering from nausea, in chapter three he is on a public bench similar to the one he and the American had occupied:

...pouvant entendre & cdt§ de lui le rire de l'Amfiricain: le m§me banc, les m§mes buissons ps des lauriers, le mdme tapis ocelli de pigeons...

The inventory continues as he sees the familiar young men, and what had been the funeral route of the slain

26Ibid.. p. 128. 116 leader; chapter three began with the student and his comrades watching the funeral procession from a bal­ cony of the hotel. The American had likened the rival factions to the seven good and bad uncles standing in a circle pledging to avenge the murder of a kinsman (whom one, or several, of the uncles had killed), each of the uncles stood in a circle with a dagger behind his back. The schoolmaster— one of the comrades— asks which of the revolutionary factions is the good 2 7 one and the American answers wryly: "Nosotros." f Thirty-one pages later we return to the same moment as if awakening from a reverie: ...disant enfin (l'&tudiant se rendant compte alors qu'il ne s'Stait 6coul6 qu'un instant, quelques secondes peut-6tre, depuis que le maitre d'&cole avait parl§, apr&s que OQ l'Americain avait racont§ 1 'histoire...) "Nosotros?” The schoolmaster quizzically repeats the American's one-word response of the moment before. The pages interposed between the one-word exchange develop as a series of past/present reflections in which everything around the student/man-who-was-a- student seems to be the same now as before. In one particular segment the man on the bench is brought

27Ibid., p. 110. 28_Ibid. t p. 1 M . 117 back to the present as he stares at an old man with a child buying pigeon feed at a sidewalk stall:

, ..le vieillard payant, saisissant un des sacs, reprenant la main de l 1enfant, faisant auelques pas en s'6loignant de la.marchande.,. puis s 1arr§tant, l&chant de nouveau la main de 1 'enfant, ouvrant le sac...29

The old man and the child continue feeding the pigeons as the man-who-was-a-student, sitting on the bench, hears the American's voice again saying, "c'est ce que c'est, non? Est-ce que <$a ne te suffit pas?"^ This statement from the past provokes a query from the man in the present:

Mais comment §tait-ce, comment &tait-ce? Sans doute il y avait-il quelque chose qu'il n*avait pas su voir, qui lui avait Schappe, et peut-Stre alors pourrait-il s'introduite, se loger, res- quiller lui aussi une place dans cette derives tangentielle, comestible et optimiste de la mitaphysique baptisee carpe ou Histoire... grdce a laquelle si l 1on savait s'en servir il §tait parait-il possible de deriver soi- mSme d'une faqon sinon agrSable ou coh&rente du moins satisfaisante ainsi que le d§raontrait cette deriv^e excr&mentielle de la raison bap­ tisee rh§torique...31

In the final chapter the man is still sitting on the bench in a continuation of the scene in chapter three above: "regardant s'Eloigner le vieillard &

29Ibid., pp. 135-134. 5°Ibid., p. 134. 51Ibid. 118 pas miniscules, trainant les pieds (il avait jet6 le sac vide et repris la main de 1'enfantPreceding this scene there is a series of time disjunctions— hours that pass like seconds, and seconds (or split seconds) that require pages of description thereby distorting the nature of their imperceptible duration all of the action taking place within the few hours, minutes, instants spent on the bench by the man after he left the bar# Chapter four (Dans la nuit), for example, relates the long night during which the student waits for morning and a meeting with the American. The student wanders about his room in the still blistering heat searching for ways— familiar to the insomniac— of passing or killing time before the meeting which never takes place# While waiting the student picks up a cigar box and proceeds to examine it meticulously— the description covers six pages of text— as a half-hour passes:

...en tout cas (pensa-t-il reposant l'6tui) cela 1 *avait occup6 un bon bout de temps... puisqu'il entendit sonner (le couple de notes hautes basculant deux fois) la demie, pensant qu'il n'avait pas entendu le quart.#.55

Some critics did not seem to favor this method of

52Ibid., p. 2 2 1 . ^ Ibid# # p# 168, 119 passing the time, for they complained that there is no excuse for devoting so much time to the description of a cigar box. There is another example of the dis­ tortion of clock time during this same wait when the figure of a nude woman appears at a window for a split second:

,..il regards de nouveau, la voyant alors, ijuste une fraction de seconder nue, le bras levi pour tirer complitement le rideau diji. aux trois quarts ferm§...34

The same precision is exercised in reproducing the image of the woman's body as was devoted to the de­ tails of the cigar box. The style is that of an artist appreciating a statue or a painting:

...le corps nu...itroitement encastri entre les deux verticales et mime en partie masaui par le citi gauche du rectangle de la fenitre qui partageait exactement en deux la cuisse droite dans le sens de la hauteur, passait au haut de l'aine, puis sur le bord du ventre et un peu sur la gauche de la pointe du sein droit (un disque assez large, brun) toute cette partie du corps absoluraent a 1 'aplomb...33

We are reminded once again of the instantaneous nature of the vision as the narrator interrupts the descrip­ tion for a moment to ask himself the question which haunts him constantly:

^Ibid,, p• 175* 35Ibid. 120 ...des taches plus sombres et nettes, bitu- meuses, marquaient le pubis, le nombril, les bouts des seins et l'aisselle touffue devoil6 par le bras leve...Mais comment 6tait-ce, com­ ment §tait-ce? Rien qu'un instant, l'espace d'une fraction de seconde §. peine. Puis elle tira le rideau, se supprimant, se gommant, s'effapant elle-m§me, 1 *apparition disparue restant IS. sans doutg par l'effet d'une persis­ tence rStinienne,,

The retention of the image on the student's retina per­ sists until the chapter ends with the clock sounding the hour of ten. The physical progress of the novel— the progress of any novel for that matter from the first page to the last— is in a linear movement. The physical pro­ gress of the man-who-was-a-student in terms of mechan­ ical clock time is in inverse proportion to the recollections and observations of and from the past and present. The novel opens with a scene fifteen years earlier, in the middle of chapter one we switch to the present but always with a spectre of the past looming in the background— at times even moving to the foreground as in the hotel/bank substitution— or the presence of the timeless figures such as the young men lounging on steps and the ever-present pigeons. One time element is superimposed on another—

36Ibid,. pp. 174-175. 121 the present over the past— with the latter almost visible as a ghost at some moments, at others it be­ comes objectified. The flocks of pigeons serve as a curtain for the transitions and in a similar way the woman in the window illustrates this phenomenon. The narrator attributes the prolongation of the.image of the woman's body in his mind to the instantaneous nature of the vision:

...il lui semblait toujours continuer & la voir, la d£taillant (et pas seulement la vue, le dessein, mais cette touffeur, cette moiteur perl6e , cette odeur de nuit, de chair entrou- verte, pathfetique, entrevue, elle aussi sortie du n&ant et retournee & jamais 1 'instant d'apr&s au nlant.«

The spectre of the image is still there— like the magic lantern image projected on the young Marcel's curtain in his room at Combray— while the flesh and blood figure stands behind the curtain, her presence im­ printed on the contours of the curtain after it has been drawn:

...le bas du rideau renvoyfc alors sur le droite par un mouvement pendulaire, un reflux qui l'en- traina jusqu'4 la moiti6 environ de sa hauteur de sorte qu'il d&couvrit progressivement les jambes & partir du bas, les deux genoux, le bituraeux triangle de crins feminins un instant visible, puis le rideau revenant sur le gauche une troisi&me fois, moins tumultueusement,

37Ibid. 122 1 'ombre ondulant encore faiblement see saillies tour & tour protub^rantes ou effaces. puis s 'immobilisant, les contours & peu pres identi- ques alors & ceux du corps lui-m6me, comme caiques sur lui, puis tout s'§teignant...38

This configuration of the simultaneity of past and present follows in the series of other representations such as the persistence of the old hotel within the shell of the bank. In the final chapter a curious variation takes.place as the man becomes two distinct entities, though not representing two different time periods as in the case of the hotel/bank. We see this division in the scene where the student is still try­ ing to reach the American: tired and frustrated by the long wait and the sight of the naked female torso in what he thought was the American's window, the student finally goes up to the room and bangs and kicks at the door. At the same moment the "other part" of him is still in the room, his own room, and the noise of a window opening startles him:

...r§veill§ soudain (ou d&grisq) par le tintamarre du cuivre rebondissant sur le carrelage, de sorte que la partie de lui-m§me qui, l&-bas dans le couloir, s'acharnait contre la porte, cessa brusque ment, se contentant A present de se tenir simple- ment debout en face d'elle comme un peu plus tdt ... la fixant avec une sorte de d£sespoir, de r6volte, pensant: "Non, non, non, non, non, non..."

58Ibid., p. 176. 123 cependant que 1 'autre partie de lui-mdrae, faite de muscles, de chair et d'os, & quatre pattea sur le sol, s'employait & ramasser fSbrilement les m6gots et les bouts d'allumettes §parpill6s...

As the student runs into the street, the man-who-was-a- student seems to be watching from his vantage point on the bench not really knowing whether he had moved from there or not:

...(car peut-§tre n'avait-il pas boug6 , lui, toujours assis sur son m§me banc, avec dans l'estomac, non le cafe huileux et ranee, mais ce verre de hiire trop lourde, impossible & assirailer).•. ^

The student had drunk the oily coffee earlier that morning; it tasted of rancid oil, uet il pouvait le sentir, marron fonc6 et visqueux, inassimilable, et qui, comme l'eau tiSde du lavabo, s'efforqait main- 41 tenant de repasser sa gorge en sens inverse...” The nausea persists and we get our chronological bearings from the cause of the illness: coffee in the past, beer in the present; and, as in the following passage, it begins with beer then both the beer and the rancid oil are to be expelled from his stomach:

...il pouvait toujours sentir au-dedans de lui la bi&re rebelle a toute digestion, inassimilable)

^Ibid., p. 183, 40Ibid., p. 18?. 41Ibid., p. 180. 124 il se rappela au'il n'avait pas dejeune, luttant un moment contre l'envie de se lever, de marcher dusqu'A l'urinoir souterrain, au bout de la place, pour y vomir, s'y d§barras- ser...expulser de lui non seulement la bi£re mais encore la persistante et tenace odeur d'huile ranee ou plutdt de gas-oil... d

As the dual cause of the nausea persists, so the dual nature of the student and the man-who-was-a-student persists. Still looking for the American, the stu­ dent once again experiences a physical and spiritual duality which the man on the bench also recognizes as the same: a viscous, moist pulp enveloping him, not sweat but rather:

...une sorte de cinqui&me Element compose semblait-il & parts egales, des quatre autres...et de la m§me densite que sa chair, ses muscles, sans grande difference de temperature non plus, de sorte que sa peau ne constituait plus une enveloppe, une separation entre lui-et l'univers extdr- ieur mais semblait englober.indistincte- ment comme les inseparables parties d'un mdme tout, le ciel metallique, la mono­ tone et uniforme gangue gaundtre des maisons, les gens, les odeurs, et ses propres os...43

This viscous substance is a physical manifestation of Time which makes it possible for the individual to pass through the curtain that hides the past which

^ Ibid.. p. 222, ^5Ibid., p. 216, 125 tLiL exists simultaneously with the present and future. It is this same substance that allows the man/student to experience a duality in which he sees the universe as an extension of himself. However naive it might seem to some critics, this suspension of incidents and individuals in a sort of jelly is a fascinating image. Simon told me in an interview that he sees Time as a gelatin in which people, events, objects remain suspended in a contiguous, simultaneous exis­ tence.^ This similar image is repeated in the scene in the first chapter where the student tries .to recall the schoolmaster's name without success as he thinks about his fellow revolutionaries: ...plus tard il lui semblera les voir, immo­ bilises ou conserves comme sur une photographie

44- In his article on La Route des Flandres. Bernard Pingaud objects to Simon's personification of Time: "11 y a d'ailleurs quelque naivete & vouloir repre­ senter le temps comme une r£alit6 independante des hommes qui la vivent: les philosophes modernes nous ont appris qu'au contraire, l'homme se temporalisait et qu'en ce sens, le temps etait son oeuvre." Temps Modernes. no. 178 (fevrier, 1961), 1037*

^Simon used this same image when talking about "le temps romanesque" which contrary to "le temps des horloges" is pictured as "une sorte d'englobant, une sorte de gelatine les §l6raents du roman sont enserr6s et dans laquelle ils coexistent, simultan&ment." Bettina L. Knapp, o p . cit. p. 185. 126 dans cette sorte de mati&re fig£e et grisdtre qu'est le temps pass6 , cette esp&ce de gdlatine qui garde indlfiniment les choses et gens.comme dans l'alcool, ldg&rement ddformds sans doute, mais intacts— ou plutdt, en ce qui les concernait, pas tout & fait, parce au'ils ne l'avaient sans doute jamais ete...^6

The image is 'fixed' on the photographic solution, fro­ zen, immobilized in the past. The instantaneous opening and closing of the camera shutter preserves that particular image, including the natural distortion of perspective of the photograph; but, Simon seems to be saying that, like memory, a photograph cannot cap­ ture the total image of something, or someone, that is itself incomplete. Like the woman's figure in the window, a precise description is given but there re- ~ mains the nagging question of whether it was that way or not. The process of the breakdown of visual memory is often illustrated by Simon as a series of frames from an old film that has been so heavily spliced that the movement appears jerky; and at some points there is a loss of transition from one action to the next. Visual recall is imperfect and, at best a very worn, badly spliced film; only the memory of the muscles, or the involuntary senses approximate an authentic recall, but then only fragments appear. The individual

^6Le Palace, pp. 33-34. 12? is not really transported "back" to the past, for it (the past) is contiguous and simultaneous with.the present. A person may never experience the equivalent of a proustian involuntary memory or recall; however, the super-sensitive simonian character seems to will himself into the sempiternal "gel" experiencing all time and all experience. In the closing pages of Le Palace the student/man is immersed in the "gel" for the last time as he des­ cends into the underground urinal— we suppose we are in the present because it is the student who is run­ ning at the beginning of the passage, still looking for the American:

...avisant l'entr^e de l'urinoir il s ’y engouf- fr&t, d&valant les marches, et se tenant enfin lli, dans l'esp&ce de silence puant et aquatique, parmi le froid scintillement des parois vernis- s6es, haletant bruyamment, pouvant sentir. ruisseler de nouveau sur lui cette esp&ce de chose gluante, ti&de et poisseuse, seul main- tenant.•.^7

The student had seen the familiar form of the Italian's bushy hair and his trademark: the long rifle. He tries . to catch up with him and ends up in the underground urinal. What is especially strange about this last segment are the violent shifts in perspective that

47Ibid., p. 226. 128 take place* They occur so rapidly that past and pre­ sent merge into one plane so that rather than appear- . ing as contiguous entities, they become almost indistinguishable. Immediately following the passage quoted above, the tense changes abruptly to the con­ ditional and the place is the hotel; this interruption is introduced by a colon:

...seul maintenant: alors il entrerait, il monterait les trois etages— parce que l'ascen- seur serait toujours en panne, ou toujours bloqu§ une fois pour toutes...^“

In addition to the tense and place change, it also becomes obvious that a shift has taken place from past to present (or to some neutral time zone); he sees his comrades again but the scene is eerie and ghost-like:

.,,ils seraient tous 1&, le maitre d'Scole. l'ltalien, le chauve, l'Am£ricain, avec leurs visages indechiffrables, las, tranquilles et passion^s— peut-6tre un peu dess6ch6s, un peu momifi§s, un peu poussiereux— mais d'ou d'exha- lerait toujours ce quelquechose d'invincible, indestructible...^

The oscillation between past and present produces a resultant force which moves beyond the figurative re­ presentation of the man/student's awareness of his

48Ibid. 49Ibid., pp. 226-2 2 7 . 129 own experience* The reaction of the phantom quartet to the appearance of the student/man is still related in the conditional:

...ils 1 'accueilleraient, sans sourire, sans effusions, sans m§me un signe visible de leur sympathie...comme s'ils Staient toujours atten- dus, m6me apr^s tant d'ann&es, ce qu'il vienne finalement les retrouver*.*50

As the man-who-was-a-student takes his place among his old companions, another shift in tense occurs within the same long— six pages— sentence as they continue to talk about a familiar subject from the past:

*..l'Am^ricain,..disant que ce n'&tait pas 6tonnant qu'il savait que qa devait arriv- er, qu'il avait toujours dit que ce fusil partirait un jour sans crier gare, parce qu'il aurait mieux valu commencer d ’abord par apprendre aux gens & se servir d'une arme, et m§rae simplement & la porter, avant de leur permettre de se trimballer avec toute la journ§e comme un gosse avec un jouet neuf...^1

The American is obviously alluding to the insepara­ bility of the Italian from his rifle, or vice-versa; a characteristic which is reinforced by the epithet

5°Ibid., p. 227* 51Ibid. 130 used to describe the Italian: "l'homme fusil. At least two critics conclude that the man-who-was-a- student committed suicide,^ tv;o others make no conjectures at all on the subject-^ and Simon himself prefers to leave it a mystery, saying that no one really knows whether someone died in that urinal or not. Examining the text more closely we see that in the dream-like passage quoted above, immediately fol­ lowing the words "un jouet neuf...", another transition is made to the present: "Mais de 1'intArieur del'uri- noir cela ne fait pas beaucoup plus de bruit qu'un rat§ de moteur et personne ne s'Ameut, seulement les pigeons Sffray&s...»55 The ubl<3uitous P a e o n s serving as the curtain alternately unveiling past and present, attracting the attention of the people on the square: "et maintenant arrAtAs— vieillard et enfant—

^ A t the beginning of chapter three, the Ameri­ can repeats the exhortation: "qu'il avait dfl lui faire remarquer vingt fois: 'Un jour ce fusil partira tout seul et tu te fera sauter le cafeti&rei', marmonnant entre les dents qu'avant de donner des armes A des gens il vaudrait peut-6tre mieux comraencer par leur apprendre A s'en servir leur apprendre d6jA simplement comment les tenir..." (pp. 101-102). ^Henri Peyre, on. cit. and John Sturrock, on. cit. ^Ludovic Janvier, op. cit. and Leon Roudiez, op. cit. ^ Le Palace, p. 227. 131 la tdte lev§e, suivant des yeux le palpitant plafond d'oiseaux.• . The flight of birds makes a second round of the square and settles on the faqade of the Palace. There is no further mention of a "victim’s 11 body, or of a suicide or accident; the last page of the novel contains a description of the city personi­ fied as a queen, abandoned— alone, because no one is allowed to witness the event— giving birth to "quel- que petit monstre macroc6phale (dit 1 ’Amfcricain), inviable et d6gen§r§... It is interesting that the American is quoted in this passage; does It mean • that the man/student recalls this statement from an earlier time? In the first chapter of the novel, the American is looking at a map of the city with the streets drawn in the form of a regular grid. The American compares the grid to a sewer cover which, if lifted, would reveal the corpse of a still-born infant wrapped in an old newspaper:

...vieux, c'est-d dire vieux d'un mois— plein de titres aguichants...rien qu'une charogne, un foetus a trop grosse t§te langS dans du papier iraprim§, rien qu'un petit maoroc^phale ded§d6 avant terme parce que les docteurs n ’fctaient pas du m§me avis et jet§ aux 6gouts dans un linceul de mots...?8

56Ibid., p. 228. 57Ibid., p. 230. ^ I b i d . , pp. 16. 132 As the American continues with his bizarre, yet very- real fantasy, it becomes'clear that the fantasy is, in effect, a grotesque analogy to their predicaments the infant is the "cause" stifled by the reams of political propaganda which distorts the nature of the conflict for the benefit of interested parties. The momentum of the revolution creates the appearance of unity, but the deadly fighting within the revolution­ ary groups themselves has bled them to death:

.•.une puante momie enveloppAe et Strangles par le cordon ombilical de kilometres de phrases enthousiastes tapAes sur ruban A machine par 1 'enthousiaste armle des correspondents Strangers de la presse lib&rale. Victime de la maladie prS- infantile de la revolution: le parrainage gfc l'estime de l'honorable Manchester Guar...^?

The title of the liberal Manchester Guardian remains incomplete, similar to the newspaper headlines which cry out: QUIEN HA MUERTO A COMMAN..,, names and titles are cut off almost as an afterthought, for there were other newspapers producing an equal amount of news­ print and the interrogative: QUIEN HA MUERTO...? is not restricted to just one victim or one culprit. The macrocephalic still-born infant is expelled in the last page of the novel; in the first chapter

^ Ibid., p. 17* 133 .the infant is found wrapped in what must have been that day's paper, now a month old. On the first page of the novel, in one sense, we find ourselves at the beginning and at the end, at the birth and death of the revolutionary cause. The city/queen is dying slowly and alone after her fruitless labor:

,.,et & la fin tout s 'immobilise, retombe, et elle reste Id, gisant dpuisSe, expirante, sans espoir que cela finisse Jamais, se vidant dans une infime, incessante et vaine hdmorragie: mdme pas dventree, poignard^e, rien qu'un peu de sang suintant, s ’ecoulant sans tr§ve par une mince, une invisible fissure au centre mime de son corps,..60

This episode can also be seen as a repetition, a re­ presentation (or rather the same event in a metaphysi­ cal sense) of a passage in chapter two in which the student and the Italian are being driven into the city by a suicidal driver (or perhaps a chauffeur driving at a high rate of speed hurtling the occupants toward an inevitable catastrophe). During the ride the stu­ dent observes that the outskirts of the city are miraculously unscathed but that signs of damage and destruction increased in proportion to their proximity to the center of the city. The student notes that the

60Ibid., p. 230 13*f signs are not the traces of a battle that had raged there, but rather, a phenomenon described in terms very similar to those of the above quote:

...non pas done une conqudte, un viol (puis- qu'elle n'avait pas eth victime d'une intrusion, assaillie de 1 1ext&rieure), mais comme d6chir6e par quelaue chose qui §tait sorti ou qu'elle avail; arrach§, expuls6 d ’elle-mSme, plutdt (sang et ordure) comme une sorte d'accouchement, ou peut-§tre d 'avortement, dont les effets se repartissaient d'une faqon pour ainsi dire centrifuge...^1

The one term found in this passage which is absent from the preceding one is "avortement" and its colla­ teral suggestions of an unhealthy, unwanted, diseased organism which is capable of killing its host. The apparition of the devastated center of the city in .the student's eyes is more a willful act of self- destruction than a victory or a defeat:

Si bien, pensa-t-il, qu'on ne peut pas exacte- ment dire qu'ils l'aient prise, mais plutdt qu'elle s'est elle-mdme ensanglantSe, barbouill^e de rouge, avec quelque chose secr§t§ par ses entrailles..

To complete the comparison between this image and the one in the final chapter, there remains the des­ cription of the blood radiating from the center of the

61Ibid.« p. 92. 62Ibid. 135 body forming a design identical with the one of page 92 which likens the distribution (or splatter) of the gore to the pattern of debris left by a bomb blast: “...une petite mare bientdt, s'Stendant, s'61argis- sant lentement sur le carrelage de l'urinoir souter- rain,.."^3 The temptation to presume that the man-who-was- a-student committed suicide in the urinal is very strong; after all, one could argue that the student? man? had run down the steps, then the very next des­ cription is that of the man with his comrades in that ghostly scene in the hotel room. However, it is the Italian who is constantly in danger of blowing his head off by accident} furthermore, isn't it the ordeal of the queen that is being described on that last page? That the man-who-was-a-student should experience what seems to be the passage from life to death— Joining the ghosts of his comrades fifteen years later by the suicide perceived by Sturrock and Peyre— is not a major occurrence in the novel.. At one point during that mad ride to the center of the city the student is actually a witness to the vivid scene of a car accident in which all the occupants are killed— the Italian, the chauffeur, and himself:

63Ibid.. p. 230. 136 , ..il lui semblait voir, apr&s que la voiture se serait §crabouill6e... leurs trois corps ou plutdt les fantdmes de leurs trois corps continuer paisiblement, insoucieux, indiffdrents et assis sur rien, & se prdcipiter sans fin b. une effroy- able vitesse dans la ville deserte et illuminde en abandonnant derri£re eux l'amas de tdles broydes et leurs carcasses decliquetdes.•.64-

This fantasy is inspired by the cadaverous aspect of the chauffeur's profile which the student examines in precise detail ending with the driver's long black hair plastered down like a death hood with light re­ flections speeding over the surface of it. While sitting on the bench in the square, the man-who-was-a- student sees the "chevelure de Zoulou" of the Italian, and the rifle barrel moving above the top of.the crowd. The man? student? tries to catch up with him but we never learn whether he does or not. There is an explo­ sion in the urinal— like the sound of a car backfiring— that no one hears, although the pigeons are frightened (by something, but what?) and fly around the square. If the shot did go off in the present, the shoe- shine boys leaning against the walls of the underground passage do not respond or react. They seem rather to stand in attendance at the fatal labor of the queen:

...la cerdmonieuse rang&e de cireurs & cheve­ lure aile de corbeau, tout entiers vStus

^ Ibid.. pp. 90-91. 137 (chemise et pantalon) de noir. align&s, patients, disponibles, terribles et fameliques derri&re leurs petites boites cloutees semblables A d'antiques et myst^rieux petits coffres, de >c miniscules et dferisoires cercueils d'enfants. ?

Like mock pall-bearers, they stand ready with the shoe shine box-coffins more appropriate in size for the tiny corpse than for the Italian or the man/student. As the boys wait for the final moment, so the outside world waits for the sign. In La Corde raide, Simon describes the fleet of ships waiting in the harbor, waiting for the final agony; the ships themselves a deathly spectre:

Ancrfees au large du port, les formes grises des b&timents de guerre des flottes Strangdres attendaient. Comme le symbole sinistre de 1 'ineluctable conclusion, patientes et m6talli- ques, figuration de l'aboutissement d^risoire, inexorablement material, la mort.66

At the beginning of this chapter I suggested that this novel could be considered as the exile’s descent into the Underworld.seeking a solution to his dilemma from the oracle. The man-who-was-a-student has cer­ tainly returned to a dead city; we have seen enough examples to that effect. If it is not a problem to cope with this image of the city as the Underworld,

63Ibid.. p. 2J0 ,

66p- 47. 138 why does Simon go a step further and move a very im­ portant episode into the stifling atmosphere of an underground urinal? One possible answer for this seeming preoccupation with the scatalogical can be found in the definition of the unpleasant image it­ self. Simon once referred to Barcelona as a "cloaque;"^7 and since the author is very careful about his use of terms and their etymological as well as general mean­ ings, another key to the unity of the novel might be found here. The dictionary offers "sewer" and "latrine" among the possibilities for the word "cloaca." In these two words we have the personification of the city as we saw it described in those chapters exam­ ined above: the "latrine" -"urinal"-"city" and the "queen" who also represents the city thereby giving us a double metaphor: a city within a city. The grid over the map of the city becomes a sewer cover and when it is lifted— like a veil or a curtain— the city becomes a sewer personified. The meaning of "cloaca" in the field of Zoology is "the cavity into which the intestinal, genital, and urinary tracts open in verte­ brates such as fish, reptiles, birds and some primitive 68 mammals." If we force our imagination once more and

^Madeleine Chapsal, on. cit. 68 American Heritage Dictionary. 139 think of the city as a primordial, female figure that would classify as a primitive mammal, the analogy of "latrine"-"sewer" as "city," "city11 as "queen," "queen" as common receptacle for waste as well as procreation will hold. Moving a step further we find that in addition to the Latin "cloaca," there is ano­ ther derivative in the form of the Greek: "kluzein:" to wash out, which is also the stem for the word "cataclysm" meaning, literally, "a washing away." The exile, searching for an answer, descends into the Underworld which itself is a living metaphor. Like the Sophoclean hero, the exile cannot "see;" it is not until he descends into the very bowels of the city (queen as city, city as cloaca-urinal) and confronts the same image for the third time, that he "sees."^ He sees the "washing away," the "cataclysm:" the anni­ hilation of the anarchists in the Spring of 1938, "au profit des vieilles fatalitfes de la guerre (discipline, organisation, hifcrarchie) ...

69cf. Stephen Hero on the theory of epiphanies: "...I will pass it (the clock of the Ballast Office) time after time, allude to it, refer to it, catch a glimpse of it. It is only an item in the catalogue of Dublin's street furniture. Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany,"...Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphan- ised," (p. 188) P^La Corde raide. p. 4-7* * 140

The "Homme-ffusil" narrative; Achilles Running Motionless*

Chapter two of Le Palace is the story of an as­ sassination told by "an assassin in a city of assas­ sins."^ The operation is rather simple, i.e., the killing itself is not a complex affairs an Italian shoots another Italian of a rival political group and the time elapsed totals less than the three minutes it takes the assassin to enter the restaurant, take aim and fire, then run out. The narrative itself, however, covers fifty-two pages which raises the critical eye­ brows of those who champion unity and coherence in a p work. The complaint is certainly legitimate; there­ fore, the question is asked why a writer as deliberate and fastidious as Simon should indulge in a digression that amounts to one-fourth of the novel,. In terms of thematic unity, I propose that the "r§cit de 1 'homme-fusil" observes the overall thematic structure of the novel: Death and the Search for Self.

71 f Levitt. on. cit. Actually, the narrative is interrupted constantly by the stop-and-go movement of their— the Italian and the student-— trip by train, then car, to the center of the city. The thoughts of the narrator also alternate with the narrative, thus reducing the actual shooting scene to half the length of the chapter. 141 The answer must lie in the text of the episode as a representation of a larger problem exposed in.the novel. We have seen from the study of Le Palace- in the preceding pages that the Italian was considered a dangerous man with a gun, dangerous not so much to others as to himself. The American, we recall, would harp on the fact that the Italian would "blow, his head off" one day. The Italian stands before his victim, not lack­ ing determination, but confused and puzzled by the scenario of which he alone is the author and the director:

...6tonn6 que ce fUt dejd le moment, presque surpris, d&sorient6 , non pas hesitant mais comme ahuri, paralyse, lui serabla-t-il, pen- sant non pas: "je ne peux pas tuer cet homme", mais: "Je ne sais pas comment le faire.,,"5

The gun goes off more by accident, or rather urgency, due to the advancing waiter and maitre d'hdtel who followed him as soon as he entered the restaurant. The Italian recalls that it is not he who is shooting but rather the gun which is going off in his hand at the end of his outstretched arm:

^ Le Palace, pp, 74-75# Ik2 ...comprenant alors qu'il 6tait bel et bien ' en train de faire' ce que 1 ‘instant d'avant il croyait.,,en train de faire done ce qu'il croy- ait ne pouvoir (jamais arriver & faire, ce que * sa main et son oeil executaient, mais pas lui.,.

The student is bewildered by this "confession" and as the man continues his story, the student thinks to himself wondering why the compulsion on the part of the Italian to tell all:

. ..& moins qu'il esp£re qu'une fois racontS, une fois mis sous forme de mots, tout cela se met & exister tout seul sans qu'il ait besoin de le supporter plus longtemps,..comme s'il essayait d'arracher, de rejeter de lui cette violence, cette chose qui a 6lu domicile en lui, se sert de lui— ce pourquoi il dit que c'Stait seuleraent sa main, son bras, pas lui— le poss§- dant, le consumant...5

The student interprets the Italian's story not as a boast or a show of bravado, but rather a purge, an expelling of a foreign body from himself. It is ironic that this tale is told as the men are hurrying toward the center of the city which shows the physical manifestations of these same images. An-assassin tra­ vels to a city in order to purge himself of a violent act by espousing a revolutionary cause whose momentum is maintained by violence. The city is at the same time experiencing the agony of a violence to be

?4 Ibid.. p. 76. Ibid., pp. 77-78. 6 repelled, or expelled, from within itself* This metaphorical collision can have only one resolution: Death, This same disgust with violence is expressed again in a cynical exchange in chapter four between the American and the bald man which the student witnesses. The argument is precipitated by the American's com­ ment on the sophisticated nature of blood-letting which he describes as "progress" in an obvious allu­ sion to the revolutionary leader whose name they can't remember: "Quel type?" "Est-ce que ce n'est pas quel- que chose comme Santiago?" (a fitting counterpoint to the ubiquitous headline: "QUIEN HA MUERTO?")7 The bald man does not appreciate the American's sarcasm (candor?) and the debate warms up in spite of. the Italian's exhortation to the men: "Merde, Allons- nous coucherl" He is ignored and the American con­ tinues to muse aloud on the assassination victim: on whether he bled at all, or whether the victim was really a "radish"— "Rouge en dehors, blanc par dedans." The bald man becomes enraged as the American suggests that perhaps his interlocutor is also a "radish:"

7^See image of dying queen above, 77Le Palace, p, 155* JM .,.Peut-8tre tu en es un, Peut-§tre. Peut-Stre toi aussi. Peut-dtre moi aussi. Comment savoir? Mais peut-dtre c'est toi. Si, Comment savoir? Peut-dtre en faisant un.trou et en regardant? Qu'est-ce que tu en penses? Peut-dtre. C'est pour 9a qu'on a besoin d'armes.. C'est pour ca qu'on a besoin de tenement d'armes ici. Qu'esr-ce que tu veux dire? Toutes les armes au front, Toutes les armes pour le front, C'est dans tous les journaux, non? Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire? Mais tous les journaux disent aussi que l'arridre c'est plein de radis. a Pourquoi est-ce que tu me dis 9a?

The Italian cuts them off again, this time successfully "Oh merde, Allez, On va se coucherj ...On va se o coucher. Montons.1,7 Throughout the exchange the familiar echoes are there as we hear both the American and the bald man express the query: "Comment savoir?" "Comment savoir?" The weapons which are so prominent in terms of their incongruity in the quiet city, play an impotent role, contrary to their purpose: in chapter one they pro­ test by interfering with the actions of the troops moving furniture. Here in chapter four they are to shoot men who do not bleed, men who are dead from within, the detritus from a shattered cause, making

78Ibid,. pp. 157-158. 79Ibid., p. 158, 145 the appearance of the rifles and pistols more ludicrous than ever. The American leaves for the front that very, night while the student paces his room waiting for morn­ ing to ask the American what he meant by everything he had been saying. The morning comes finally. Fifteen years later. In contrast to the unbroken thematic continuity argued above, the narrative itself is a series of inter­ rupted, at times disjointed, scenes graphically explained by the student describing the Italian's method as: "sans ordre (l'etudiant pouvant reconstituer le tout par assem- OA blage...)." The student compares the narrative style to an electric sign, also familiar to the Italian, depict­ ing a man with a blue face wearing a red turban and Turk­ ish pants, holding a green bottle in his hands: ...le visage seul d'abord s'allumant.,.puis . s'eteignant, puis le turban et le costume qui s 1eteignaient a leur tour, puis la bouteille seule ...qui elle aussi s'lteignait, apr&s quoi 1 'ensem­ ble (le visage bleu, le turban, le pantalon rouge, la bouteille; s'allumant d'un coup, le personnage apparaissant en son entier, puis disparaissant tandis qu'& cdte s'inscrivait dans la nuit en grandes lettres jaunes le mot HHUM, puis cela aussi s 1eteignait.*.81 The cycle is brought to a grand finale when the whole sign lights up again showing the man as well as the complete

8QIbid.. p. 53. 81Ibid.. pp. 53-54. 146 title of the product: RHUM DES ANTILLES. Thus we have a graphic reproduction of the fragmented narrative mak- . ing up this episode, as the Italian stands in the cold night outside the restaurant waiting to make his first move. The events themselves also parallel this type of spastic progression, or else remain frozen in time and space: ...il pouvait voir les gens assis & l'int6rieur des cafes, comme s'ils avaient 6te peints sur les vitres jaunes.. .seuls ou par deux devant les gu&ridons dans des postures fig6es, aussi im- personnels, aussi inhumains que les regiments de chaussures alignees dans la vitrine voisine..,82 The world inside the caf£s seems suspended in a sort of timelessness, while outside there is the frantic activi­ ty of flashing signs, moving cars and everchanging lights and shadows. If we look at this movement more closely, we see that it is not far from becoming motionless in its own right. The clock at the intersection reads nine o'clock when the large hand jerks over two increments to read 9*02, reminding the Italian of the time that had passed: "cette progression bizarre et saccad6e, discon­ tinue, du temps fait apparemment d'une succession de 0 2 (comment les appeler?) fragments solidifies..." 7 The movement of the clock's hand recalls another sign

82Ibid., p. 52. 8?Ibid., p. 53. 14? containing a blue arrow that travelled across the facade of a building, or rather creating the illusion of moving across the building: ...la fleche en rSalitS ne se dcjplaqant pas mais I 1illusion du mouvement Stant cr!§ par le fait que plusieurs fleches en neon disposees sur une lignej l'une touchant 1 'autre, s'allumaient et s'eteignaient successivement, si bien que l'oeil, la conscience abusee, attir£e, captivee, par la lumi&re croyait suivre la course de quelque chose qui ne bougeait j a m a i s . . . 84 This description brings to mind Zeno's third argument, "The Arrow," which purports to prove that a moving ob­ ject is actually at rest: If everything is at rest when it is in a place equal to itself, and if the moving object is always in the present, then the moving arrow is motionless. Of course, Simon has taken Zeno's paradox one step fur­ ther and added a whole line of arrows going on and off in a rapid linear succession which creates the image intended by the original argument, showing the arrow at rest as it progresses through the stages in which it occupies the space equal to its length. The philosopher Zeno presents arguments, the consequences of which are absurd, in the belief that any contrary notions would produce consequences even more absurd than the above,

8Zt~Ibid.. p. 53. ®5Robinson, op.cit. p. 134. 1^8 For Olaude Simon, events remain frozen, solid like a piece of sculpture, Time itself is immobile and in­ ert like the piece of statuary. The disintegration of a statue (or Time) is not due to the erosion brought about by the passage of mechanical clock time but rather by the decomposition of memory, Zeno's arrow never moves; the Italian remains motionless on the sidewalk, in the restaurant and back on the sidewalk again* The narrative is frozen in another sense when the Italian takes out a small notebook and with a pencil stub begins to diagram the incident in the restaurant. As the Italian concentrates on drawing the participants in the drama, represented by lozenges with arrows eman­ ating from them, the student imagines the scene as illus­ trated by the diagram: ,,,il lui semblait voir, se reconstituer 1 'e.ction (la brAve foudroyante et chaotique.succession ou plutdt concentration, superposition de mouve- ments, de tapage, de cris, de detonations et de galopades) sous forme d'une s£rie d 1images fixes, figees, immobiles (comme les diverses fleches lumineuses qui composaient la reclame s'allumant et s'Ateignant A tour de rdle), chacune trop diffArente de la precedente pour qu'il fQt possi­ ble d'Atablir entre elles un Element de continui­ ty...85 Thus, like the Italian's monologue, the schematic drawing of the action suggests movement but each gesture demands

^ Le Palace, p. 66, such concentration in its own right that, along with the phenomenon of retinal persistence, each individual action remains frozen, separated from the next step (or frame) by a void. The student transforms the scene in his mind into a magazine cover with the face and Zulu hairdo of the Italian in the foreground, the perspective exaggerated to suggest that he is hurling himself at the revolving door. The third diner in the victim's party is missing, purposely eliminated by the artist so that we may see, unobstructed, the body face down on the plates and glass­ es, a red stain showing on the back of his dinner jacket, and the female mouth open wide depicting a scream: "les sourcils se rejoignant presque en accent circonflexe pour figurer la peine, la douleur, 1 'effroi,, . The cover drawing, however sensational, is still inadequate to capture the exact scene as it appeared at any given . moment. Each gesture, expression, object, person has its own space to occupy and rdle to act out; being. Therefore, it is impossible to register the whole scene as it looked at any one given moment. The student is well aware of the inadequacy of this pictorial represen­ tation, as well as any other attempt at reproduction:

87Ibid., p. 94. 150 Mais ce n'§tait pas cela. . C ’est-&-dire pas visible. C'est-a-dire que ce qui se passait reellement n'etait pas visibleT impossible & representer par un dessin ou meme une photo- graphie en admettant qu'un photographe de presse ait eu la chance de se trouver 1&...°8 The Italian began his story on the train; it is interrupted by the arrival at their destination where the two men transfer to a limousine which will take them to the center of the city. On the train, the student had begun to wonder why the Italian was telling him this tale. He becomes absorbed with the change of scene as they travel in the car so that the Italian's narrative has been interrupted again for what seems a rather lengthy period of time (from p. 76 to p. 87). Finally at one point in the car ride, the student is surprised by the Italian's voice: ...soit que l'Studiant ait complhtement cess6 pendant un moment de la percevoir, soit que durant le temps oh elle s'etait tue l'ltalien (c'est-h-dire, son esprit, sa memoire) ait con­ tinue le recite pour lui tout seul, soit encore que son esprit ou sa memoire eussent saute sans transition— comme la fleche-— d'une position A l'autre de sorte qu'il manquait un maillon in- termediaire..

Once again the arrow appears as the symbol of fragmen­ tation, immobility; the nature of the arrow itself suggests movement, just as an action suggests a cause

88Ibid.. p. 94. " ibid.. p. 87. 151 and a subsequent reaction. However,.the transition is not evident and so there remains a series of individual "actions" devoid of movement in the static void of dis­ continuity. When the Italian first steps into the radius of the revolving door, he sees the neon arrows in the glass as well as his own reflection pushing against him­ self: ...puis sa propre image, son propre fantdme.., venant a sa rencontre, les deux mains (pour lui la gauche) s'opposant, se plaquant l ’une sur 1 'autre comme s'ils cherchaient (lui et son double) & se repousser mutuellement, la paume du fantdme gldcee contre la sienne: mais ce fut lui qui g a g n a . , . 90 The rest of the scene in the restaurant is played out b y , the actors— the Italian, the maitre d'hdtel, and a wait­ er who tries to intercept the intruder— as if they were running submerged in a pool of water, their actions slowed by the water's resistance, or' like the staccato movements suggested by the arrows emanating from the lozenges in the diagram. The murder itself results in a state of paralysis, petrifaction, which conjures up an Old Testament drama as nature itself is repelled: "I'air lui-mdme dpouvante, change en plomb par l'im- mdmoriale horreur, 1 'immemoriale malediction qui pdtrifia le raonde Si 1 ' instant du premier meurtre..."91

^°Ibid., p. 67. 91Ibid., pp. 96-97. 152 The sensation of immobility is further reinforced by the scene which had been taking place outside on the .side­ walk in front of a nearby theatre. Just before stepping through the revolving door, the Italian noticed a gentle­ man stepping out of a cab accompanied by two ladies; the last image of this particular scene on the Italian's retina was the man stooping over in the gesture of pay­ ing the cabbie. As he rushes out of the restaurant, the Italian sees the same man, the same cab, but the women are missing. He sees them finally as he runs past the theatre entrance. The time elapsed in the restaurant which was trans­ formed into an eternity is now translated into the banal, perfunctory actions describing the payment of a cab fare: ...tout ce qui venait de se passer depuis qu'il s'4tait engage dans la porte tambour...n'avait en r^alite pas dure, ou rempli, plus de temps que de regarder la somme inscrite a un compteur. debou- tonner une pelisse, sortir des billets d'une poche, attendre que le chauffeur ait ouvert son porte- monnaie, compte les pieces, lui en tendre une, et se redresser en rerapochant les autres.^ The student tries to imagine the disparity between the two coexisting worlds in which, or through which, the Italian moved. He tries to imagine: ...cette invisible lamelle de temps qui isolait deux univers (pas la rue d'une salle de restaurant,

^2Ibid., p. 98* 153 mais le monde^familier, la nuit famili&re et maternelle, zebrle de neon et de reclames pour cretins, et celui du risque, du danger, de la violence)...95

Time then, as pictured in this scene, seems-to be the barrier, albeit a weak one, between two states of mind* Instead of passing into the restaurant, the student ima­ gines the Italian crashing through a pane of glass. Once on the other side the Italian perceives that sounds are muffled and that everything and everyone is moving in slow motion. After the shots are fired, he bursts through a partition made of wooden laths hinged togeth­ er in order to avoid the maitre d'hdtel and the passing waiters and to reach the revolving door. The partition which seemed to him like an impenetrable barrier when he first entered the restaurant now collapses against the puny force of this very tiny man: ...il se geta de toutes ses forces, le bras & demi ploye en avant, repoussant vers la gauche, sur le garqon, le paravent qui bascula tout en- tier, degringolant dans un fracas de lattes brisees, et pour lui, dans l'esp^ce d'univers second, lointain, et pour ainsi dire d§colle de • la r6alite oi il se mouvait, cela ne fit, dit-il, pas plus de bruit que le contenu d'une boite d'allumettes en se repandant,..9^ When he hurtles out of the restaurant, the Italian experi ences another kind of separation, or rather, separateness

93Ibid.. p. 96. 94Ibid.. p. 90. 15^ This time it is a separation between mind and body as he flees down the street all the while studying the move­ ments of the man standing next to the cab: ...son corps (ses jarabes, son coeur, ses poumons) continuant k courir pour ainsi dire en dehors de lui (corame s'il lui en avait donn6 l'ordre et ensuite s'en §tait d6sint§ress6 ..•) pendant que son esprit parfaitement calme, immobile* fetait en train de prendra conscience de cela.,,95 The Italian is suddenly aware— through the man paying the cab driver— how little time passed in proportion to the consequence of his act. The narrative ends here as the student and the Ita­ lian sit in the back seat of the car; the student watch­ ing the houses, trees, and intersections surge out of the darkness, hurling themselves at the men in the car:

...comme si elles s 1arrachaient violemraent k 1 *obscurity, k leur imm^moriale immobility de choses pour participer elles aussi de cet uni- vers de violence, de meutre..,9° A familiar note is struck again: there is a universe of inaction, immobility, and one of risk, danger, violence, and death. The glass partition of the revolving door glides easily to the slight pressure applied to it by the diminutive assassin. The reflection in the revolv­ ing door glass of himself as an opposing force is an

95Ibid., p. 98. 96Ibid. 155 illusion, a ghost, shoved out of view and replaced by the arrows from the friendly immobile outside. The s-shaped partition in the restaurant gives only the appearance of an obstacle: the Italian walks around it first, then knocks it over effortlessly in his precipitous exit. The student refers to this division between the two worlds as "ce seuil, ce moment, cette infime pellicule, cette in­ visible lamelle de temps...It becomes clear, then, that the street and the restaurant are not very different from the individual neon arrov/s which are dissimilar enough from each other to create the illusion of discon­ tinuity as they alternately light up and go out. The inside world of the restaurant reveals figures frozen in the windows identical to the shop items in the display cases next door. The outside world of flashing signs and passing cars is also frozen and motionless: the arrows stay in their places and reflections play over the shiny metal skins of the cars, creating an exaggerated illusion of movement. Time exists only when we perceive that we are, and this requires an act confirming our being which in turn means an act involving risk or.danger: this includes

^ Ibid.. pp. 95-96. 156 violence, death, love, and all their manifold ramifica­ tions* By hurling ourselves through this fragile barrier, we too make an impression which remains fixed, frozen, immobile in that sempiternal ".gel," showly disintegrating, to blend in with the other similar forms captured in that same attitude of the "act," simultaneous, contiguous, eternal witnesses to being. CHAPTER IV SEXUALITY AMD THE ETERNAL RETURN The Regret of Heraclitus I, who have been so many men, have never been The one in whose embrace Matilda Urbach swooned. — Gaspar Camerarius, in Deliciae poetarum Borussiae. VII, 16

In Le Temps Retrouvd. the narrator imagines the ac­ cumulated time in a man's life— his past— as a pair of giant stilts which grow even taller as time goes on so that finally movement becomes so difficult the man falls. It is a fall— like Humpty Dumpty's— from which there is no recovery; the narrator of Proust's novel dreads this inevitable fall coming before he has finished his novel. To show his gratitude for a reprieve, the novelist would accord Time a supreme recognition in his work: ...ne manquerais-je pas d'abord d'y ddcrire les homines...comme 'occupant une place si considerable, d cdte de celle si restreinte, qui leur est reservde dans l ’espace, une place au contraire prolongde sans mesure— puisqu'ils touchent simul- tandment, comme des gdants plongds dans les annees d des dpoques si distantes, entre lesquelles tant de jours sont venus se placer— dans le Temps; At the end of the novel, the narrator realizes that he is racing against death at the very moment the project for

^Le Temps Retrouvd (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 1038.

157 158 the work is conceived, Proust barely finished his oeuvre in time, an oeuvre which ends with a beginning, an oeuvre which illustrates the cruel law of art that dictates we must die in order that the grass, not of forgetfulness, but of eternal life, continue growing. Future generations will come and feed on this grass oblivious of those who lie below it.^ The end of Proust's novel is in effect the beginning of the novel he has already written: the regeneration of his being is executed through the work of art. In the work of Claude Simon, there is a double regeneration that takes place: the work of art which is produced out of the experience of the artist, and the internal power of regeneration in the work itself— the seeds of the next novel are already contained in the existing one.^ The figure of eternity is contained in Simon's oeuvre in the form of cycles and tensions which are forever in the state of opposition: man finds himself in the heracli- tean flux of love and war, a tension which breaks down into

^"Moi je dis que la loi cruelle de l'art est que les 6tres meurent et que nous-meraes mourrions en epuisant toutes les souffranees, pour que pousse l'herbe non de l'oubli mais de la vie feternelle, l'herbe drue des oeuvres f§condes sur laquelle les generations viendront faire gaiment, sans souci de ceux qui dorment en dessous, leur 'dejeuner sur l'herbe'," (Le Temps Retrouvd, p, 1038), ^See Chapter I above on the overlapping themes and subjects. 159 disorder only to return full cycle to order again.^ "War is the father of all things" said Heraclitusand the war he speaks of is the titanic struggles within the natural structure of the universe. Man is an insignifi­ cant, helpless creature in the midst of this cosmic chaos. The only way he can seem to make his presence significant is through elevating his own struggle to the allegorical level. One of the most imposing means of expressing this struggle in the work of Claude Simon is through one of man's most natural powers: sexuality. As the forces of nature are made more comprehensible to man by attributing anthropomorphic characteristics to them, including sexual appetites, so man comes into closer harmony with the universe by exercising the di­ vine sexuality in a creditable and laudable manner. This attainment of the divine, or mythological, level by man is transitory at best, an illusion, a presumption

^"La vie du feu nait de la mort de la terre, la vie de l'air nait de la mort du feu, la vie de l'eau nait de la mort de l'air et la terre nait de la mort de l'eau," "la mort du feu engendre l'air et la mort de l'air engendre l'eau. La mort de la terre fait naitre l'eau, la mort de l'eau fait naitre l'air. la mort de l'air en­ gendre le feu. Et inversement•" Heraclite ou Le Philoso- phe de l'Eternel Retour. Jean Brun (Laris: Editions ' """™ • Seghers, 19&9), p. 13&. ^A.H. Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philoso­ phers (3rd., ed., London: Methuen, 1957)» PP» 9-10^ *'No—' where in the universe is there to be found eternal rest, unchanging stability. And not only is there perpetual change, but also perpetual* conflict." 160 bordering on hubris which, after its violent and ecstatic climax, will remind man once again of his mortality, Georges' father, Pierre, stares across the table at his son thinking that he must admit that he had engendered this antagonist— not recalling whether it was voluntary or not— from the original nothingness, The moment of orgasm is also confused in Pierre's mind since it is thought of as a perplexing experience lighting up both the brain and the womb like an explosion: .,.d'oft peut-fttre (fus§e, explosion) l'expression populaire "s'envoyer en l'air", qui semble remonter a ces mythes originels de la Gigantomachie oft des creatures aux noms (Ouranos, Saturne) et aux dimen­ sions de mondes s'accouplent, luttent farouchement sur le fond bleu nuit du ciel encore sans astres.,.6 Even this divine coupling results in a monstrous birth since the giantess twists away at the moment of ejacula­ tion and the seed is spilled on mother earth, Pierre too is forced to recognize this extension of himself, project­ ed outside of himself, this part of himself which will perpetuate him even if it is his negation and/or adversary.*'7

6L'Herbe. p. 145. ^Ludovic Janvier writ.es about the "femme-menaqante" who is the incarnation of the queen-bee with whom procre­ ation is as dangerous as self-mutilation, and coitus is close to castration. "Injure ft la mere et degradation de toutes les mftres dans cette femme qui s'offre. impudique; suicide pour celui qui a encore le desir des'en approch- er: le tableau est sombre," Une parole exigeante. op. cit., p. 93. . 161 We are reminded that in this eternal process of regeneration, procreation, Pierre also issued as the last of the children from a phallus, and he too has a phallus, but in his case the phallus possesses him, uses him: "...& la fa$on d'un vulgaire terreau, enfon^ant en lui Q ses racines, y puisant la force de grandir." The pos­ session is complete, commanding mind and body to care for it and, as Simon tells us, to an illiterate peasant learn­ ing to read— becoming a professor— was one way of caring for this unique organ: . tel point que I1on dit "le" membre de • l'homme comme s 'il n ’en existait pas d*autre, ou comme si celui-ld. les r£sumait, les comman- dait tous: les bras pour travailler et le nourrir, les jambes pour le porter d ’un endroit & 1 'autre), & le pourvoir done du necessaire, au besoin par le rapt, la guerre, la violence et— d'une faqon g§n£rale, sinon de r&gle— la ruse.*..9 Pierre at this point in the novel is an old man weighed down by a mass of flesh that renders him practi­ cally immobile.^ We wonder if Janvier's observation that coitus, procreation with the femme menaoante is not an ac­ curate one in view of Pierre's physical torment: a mass of putrefying flesh and impotence. Nevertheless Sabine

8 L*Herbe, p. 132. 9 Ibid. ^Pierre is never seen in his youthful splendor ex­ cept in old photographs. His presence is always that of a ponderous bulk. Of, also La Route des Flandres. passim. 162 still seems to believe in the supernatural^ force of this "unique member" living an independent existence while appended to the impotent professor. She torments herself imagining the great mischief perpetrated by "the" member—-real or fantasy— through which she enjoys a vi­ carious pleasure. A more sound alternative to the femme-tentatrice- self-mutilation thesis, is offered by Janvier himself in a discussion of the epigraph to the third part of La Route des Flandres i La volupte, c'est l'6 treinte d'un corps de mort par deux §tres vivants. Le "cadavre" dans ce cas, c'est le temps assassin^ pour un temps et rendu consubstantiel au toucher. — Malcolm de Chazal In the violent seizure of physical love, time stands still by the touch of flesh against flesh— but only for an in­ stant-after which the progress of time starts again and the flesh proceeds with the irreversible, inevitable de­ cay. The most striking example of this phenomenon, as 12 Janvier points out, is the old couple: Sabine and Pierre. That man can stop time for an instant, become part of that divine allegory of the eternal flux of the

. ,elle, a non seuleraent enfant^, con9u, soupir6 sous le poids, les assauts, les furieux coups de boutoir de l'homme, mais encore combien de fois gemi, forniqu§ en esprit...L'Herbe. p. 257. IP Une parole exigeante. op. cit. pp. 94— 95. 163 universe, should be consolation enough for the agony of 13 disintegration. ^ The moment of orgasm, accompanied by the procreating ejaculation, is also the instant of total exhaustion, figuratively, death: la petite mort. The allegorical level has been reached: man takes his place alongside the titanic lovers, preserved in an eternal, timeless moment without beginning or end. It should not be taken for granted from the preced­ ing arguments that the individual man is consciously aware of this transition into the figurative level as he "pays his nightly debt" as the V/ife of Bath so aptly put it. There is an intermediary step in this transi­ tion, the man taking on animal characteristics, either dog or horse-like. One critic goes so far as to say that whether making love or war, Simon's characters— in La Route des Plandres-—-are indistinguishable from animals,

^Cf, Jorge Luis Borges, "Today, one of, the churches of Tlbn Platonically maintains that a certain pain, a cer­ tain greenish tint of yellow, a certain temperature, a certain sound, are the only reality. All men in the verti­ ginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who re­ peat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare." "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, eds. D.A. Yates and J.B‘. Irby (New York: New Directions, 1^64), p. 12. 1 Z,"Cf. the image of the lovers who gradually become petrified, as a statue of a couple entwined in an erotic embrace in La Bataille de Pharsale. pp. 266-268, 164- in particular from horses. 1*5 ^ In this same novel Georges, Pierre's son, experiences the total metamorphosis from man to dog to mythical beast as he is making love to Corinne in the tiny hotel room. Scenes from the past speed by Georges' eyes like a poorly-spliced film. He is so intent on capturing all these images that Corinne asks him why he has his eyes closed. Even during sex­ ual intercourse, Georges is distracted by these visions from the past. At one of these moments, Georges and Corinne are copulating dog fashion and Georges' thoughts flash back to his escape from the prison camp as a guard was looking the other way: ...alors Je fus dans le fourre haletant courant A quatre pattes comme une bete A travers les taillis traversant les buissons me dechirant les mains sans ra^rae le sAntir touJours courant galopant A quatre pattes J'etais un chien la langue pendante.. The sentence continues with the subtle transition insert­ ed in the form of tout deux panting like dogs, Corinne's face in the pillow, her mouth exhaling moans. Without a break in the sentence, there is another shift to the

1^Pierre Albouy, Mythes et mythologies dans la litterature francaise (Paris: Armand Colin, 1969)» P* 151 • ^u'ils fassent la guerre ou l 1amour, les personnagea du roman de Claude Simon...ne se distinguent pas des animaux, en particulier des chevaux, et toute humanitA dans ce rAcit devient chevaline...." •^La Route des Flandres. p. 291*

/ 165 dog-prisoner escaping, insensitive, like a beast, to the fatigue and the lacerations; and just as quickly, in one breath so to speak, Georges is transformed into the myth­ ological beast mounted on his partner-dog-mare (m£re): ...j'Stais cet tne de la legende grecque raidi comme un dne idole d'or enfonc&edans sa delicate et tendre chair un membre d'dne je pouvais le voir allant et venant luisant oint de ce qui ruisselait d'elle...je n'etais plus un homme mais un animal un chien plus qu'un homme une b§te si je pouvais y atteindre connaitre I'dne d'Apulee....1? Georges seems intoxicated, not so much with the pleasure and excitement offered him by his partner, but with the discovery of "that" unique member which has the same proportions as the one his father possessed, or rather the one in possession of his father. Georges reaches down and touches Corinne at the spot beneath which 18 "l'arbre sortant de moi etait enfonce." Possessed of this unique member, or possessed by it, as it is thrust in the femme-roenacante-femme-gouffre, we can anticipate, according to Janvier's thesis, the impending deteriora­ tion of Georges. The metaphors imagined by Georges are natural ones*^ but the apotheosis of the sexual act is

1 7 lbid.

^The phallus is compared to a fish, blind from liv­ ing in underground streams and caves: "...au bout cette espece de tete...comme une sorte de bonnet avec sa pente en haut & la fois bouche muette et oeil furieux et mort... exigeant suppliant de retourner aux humides et secretes cachettes, la bouche d 'orab're. •." Ibid. t p. 290* 166 perverted by his search for an answer impossible to at­ tain through carnal union. Corinne perceives that she is being used and rejects Georges who stupidly demands a declaration of love from her as he plunges "the" member into her again and again, as though to intimidate his partner into saying yes through the hard fact of his virility. Outraged and furious, Corinne accuses him of treating her like a soldier's girl, a crude representa­ tion of the female sex scratched on a barracks wall:

...quelaue chose comme ce qu'on voit dessin6 k la craie ou avec un clou sur les murs des casernes dans le pldtre effrit&, un ovale partage en deux et des rayons tout autour comme un soleil ou un oeil verticals ferra§ entoure de oils et meme pas de figure...20

"And not even a facej" Corinne spits at him, as Georges protests that for five years he had dreamt only of her; "Precisely," she responds, vindicated. Georges is unable to appreciate, to comprehend Corinne's outburst; he is hurt but partially recognizes his guilt, certainly he joked and exchanged obscenities, words, sounds with his comrades: "...rien que pour ne pas nous endormir nous 21 donner le change nous encourager l'un 1'autre." Even before this exchange between the lovers, Georges was lost in thought— Corinne beside him— trying to understand the

20Ibid., p. 276 „ 21Ibid., p. 277. 16? reason, the purpose for the pursuit of this woman, The 22 flesh responds in its own language but Georges can see only in terms of his father's language, the artificial, meaningless inheritance which fills Georges with bitter­ ness and renders him spiritually impotent before the arcane symbol of the natural universe: ...qu'avais-je cherch6 en elle esp§re poursuivi jusque1sur son corps dans son corps des mots des sons aussi fou que lui avec ses illusoires feuilles de papier noircies de pattes de mouches des paroles que pronon^aient nos levres pour nous abuser nous-mSmes vivre une vie de sons sans plus de realite sans plus de consistence que ce rideau sur lequel nous croyions voir le paon brod6 remuer....23 Georges sees the signs of the dying season through the window in the form of the falling leaves and rain: "..,les derniers vestiges de l'ete des jours & jamais O tL abolis qu'on ne retrouve ne retrouve jamais.,,," The man rests his head on the inside of the woman's thigh and examines her sex closely; as the color of her flesh becomes darker toward the center, Georges senses the persistence of its primitive origins and violent passions:

"Le maitre dont 1'oracle est k Delphfs ne dit ni ne cache rien, mais seulement signifie." Heraclit© , ed. cit.. J, Brun, fragment 13*

^ L a Route des Flandres. pp. 274— 275. 168 ...la peau tr&s blanche en haut de la cuisse se teintant d'un bistre clair a partir de l'aine, les levres de la fente d'un bistre plus prononc& avant l'endroit ou commence la muqueuse comme s'il restait persistait 1& mal efface quelque chose de nos an- cStres sauvages primitifs sorabres s'etreignant s'accouplant roulant nus et violents et brefs dans la poussiere les fourrSs.... Through her sex Corinne offers the man the passage to the natural universal dimension of Timelessness, also the opportunity to share and participate in that eternal cy­ cle of birth and death reserved only for the gods. Through Corinne1s sex, as through the window, Georges has the opportunity to experience, perceive the vision, however instantaneous, which will make him immortal. He fails, he defiles the altar— somewhat like Oedipus— by lack of vision, by hubris, by debasement: the divine symbol is deformed into a faceless object of derision,

Of" a means to kill Time." Corinne's true nature remains a mystery to the read­ er as well as to Georges throughout the novel. The first mention of her is as the woman— child, rather— whom the Captain married, or as Simon hastily adds, the child v/ho

24Ibid.% p. 274. Ibid., p. 275. 25 ' 1 Another man, de Reixach, had already peered into this oracular shrine, enduring as Simon says: "...cette Passion, avec cette difference que le lieu le centre l'autel n'en etait pas une colline chauve, mais ce suave et tendre et vertigineux et broussailleux et secret re- pli de la chair..." Ibid.« p. 13. 27 married the Captain, f The second image comes as a trans­ itional figure from the description of the virginal steel of de Reixach's saber, to the supposition that it was a pQ long time past since Corinne was' a virgin. As.the cause of her husband's probable suicide— his Passion— Corinne is talked of as the whore present at the man's agony just as one was present at the original crucifixion, for they are as indispensable as women in mourning:"

",.,et putains repenties k supposer qu'il lui ait jamais demands de se repentir ou du moins attendu esp§re qu'elle le fit qu'elle devint autre chose que ce qu'elle avait la reputation d'etre...•"2^ The most incredible description of Corinne is provided by the jockey, Igl6sia, who re­ lates the story of the first time he saw her and had mis­ taken Corinne for a child dressed as a woman. Prom this initial image, the jockey unleashes a flood of images and impressions ranging from Corinne's "previrginal" quality to the sudden realization "qu'elle 6tait non seulement une femme mais la femme la plus femme qu'il edt encore jamais vue, m^rae en imagination.. . . He speaks of her not as a woman he had possessed— or as a woman his fellow

2?Ibid.. p. 12, 28Ibid.. p. 15. 29Ibid. 3°Ibid.. p. 140. 170 prisoners had insisted he believed he possessed— but as an alien creature, alien not so much to himself as to the whole human race, "including all other women." She be­ comes in his eyes a fantastic object: "auxquelles I'homme qui per^oit par leur interm§diaire less manifestations des forces naturelles contre lesquelles il lutte, attri- bue des reactions...humaines...."^ He relates a later scene which takes place at the racetrack and in which Corinne— the child— has metamorphosed into a woman with­ out age, a woman capable of any age whether it total fif­ teen years, thirty, sixty or even thousands of years, a woman exuding a hostility, a resentment, a furor "qui n'ltaient pas les resultantes d ’une certaine experience ou d'une certain accumulation de temps, mais de quelque chose d'autre.. . The belligerent attitude of Corinne made Igl&sia think to himself "Old bitch, old whore," but the vision before him was an angel's face framed with golden hair,,and a young impetuous body, unpolluted, unpollutable.^ • Corinne leaves Georges in the hotel room; he remains in the bed and thinks of the coming autumn as well as the

31Ibid., p. 141. 52Ibid., p. 148. 55ibid. 171 day three months earlier when, during their first meeting, he had put his hand on her arm: ...peasant qu'apr&s tout elle avait peut-Stre raison et que ce ne serait pas de cette faijon c 1 est-li-dire aveo elle ou plutdt & travers elle que j ’y arriverai (mais comment savoir?) peut- §tre 6tait~ce aussi vain, aussi depourvu de sens de r6alite que d'aligner les pattes de mouches sur des feuilles de papier et de le chercher dans des mots.... There is a span of nine years between La Route des Flandres (I960) and the publication of La Bataille de Pharsale (1969); during this span there is a transition to a more stylized representation— both verbal and visual— of the sexual act. In La Route des Flandres the action of the novel revolves around the movement of the lost cavalry­ men forming the design of a playing-card club in their wandering, the carcass of a dead horse lies at the cen­ ter of the design. The production of the images flows from the mind of the narrator as he lies in bed with the widow of Captain Reixach— their numerous sexual unions throughout the night a reality, their spiritual union and consequent illumination a failure. The central image- of the Bataille de Pharsale is a couple engaged in coitus; the narrator this time is on the other side of the door, kicking and banging in a wild rage, certain that he is seeing what he hears:

34Ibid.. p. 295. 172 •..(et croyant entendre, certain d'entendre derri&re le mince panneau de bois les deux respirations les deux corps immobiles)....35

Ecoutant la sueur je veux dire 1'oreille voyant k travers le mince panneau de bois sueur brillante sur leurs membres emndles immobilises comme ces images de filme coinces dans la posture oil b§te k deux dos., .36

...pouvant voir je pouvais entendre leur sueur pellicule peu 4 peu plus froide oreille voyant l'enchevetrement confus de membres comme s 1ils avaient §t& u5ri^e ces couples de creatures mythiques....5/

The familiar ambiguity which has become Simon's trademark serves as the catalyst to drive the obsessed hero toward his equally ambiguous goal. The narrator is haunted by the image of the girl, 0. (with whom he had had a brief intimate liaison), sleeping with his artist friend. Numerous associations deriving directly, or indirect­ ly, from the central image of the entwined lovers, serve as the contiguous narrative elements. The title of the novel derives from tiie narrator's Latin translation assign­ ment which he used to read to his uncle— an episode already introduced in Histoire (1967). He travels to Greece to visit the site of the battle described in Lucan's work, but has no success in finding the actual battlefield:

^ Ibid.. p. 23. 36Ibid.. p. 24. 3?lbid.. p. 25. 173 de toute faqon qu'est-ce que 9a peut faire cette colline ou celle-ld ld-bas de toute fa9on les choses ne se sont jamais passees comme on 1 'ima­ gine ou si tu preferes on n'imagine jamais les choses comme elles se passent en realite et m§me si tu y assistes tu ne peux jamais les voir comme38 This lesson spoken on the elusive battlefield is lost on the man outside the door insisting that he sees what he hears• Prom Pharsalus, the narrator's thoughts return to the familiar Flanders road of 194-0 . The ambush scenes from La Route des Flandres are repeated as well as ver­ batim segments from the early La Corde raide (194-7). A new character is introduced from this era: the giant drunken trooper-gladiator who is the prototype of the central figure of Les Corns conducteur; Orion. There is another warrior who serves as the personification of the narrator's aberrations: he is Crastinus who hurled the first javelin for Caesar's legions against Porapey; • l Crastinus does not survive the battle: "II requt dans la bouche un si violent coup de glaive que la pointe en zq sortit par la nuque."^' These essential images appear in one form or another in the opening pages of the novel: the painting of a naval battle showing one man receiving an arrow full in

38Ibid.. p. 8 8 . ^Plutarch (Caesar. LXIV). 17^ the mouth, lovers frozen in an embrace and the ever­ present representation of the female sex, this time in the form of a riddle suggested by the sight of a cham­ ber pot in a shop window: ...qu'est-ce qui est fendu, ovale, humide et entoure de poils? Alors oeil pour oeil comme on dit,...L'un regardant 1'autre. Jaillissant dru dans un chuintement liquide, comme un cheval. Ou plutdt jument.^O The central theme of the novel is set into motion when the narrator finds an old photograph of himself with a group of students in an artist's studio. Written across the photograph is the epithet "Los Hijos de Putas." Prom this point on the narrator is haunted by the memor­ ies contained in the photograph. The narrator suspects the artist and his model, 0, are having an affair: 41 "modele petite garce qui le trompait avec tout le monde." As the narrator progresses, the appearances of these imag­ es multiply, separated only by those other fragments of the text which do not concern themselves directly with the narrator's dilemma. Instances of oral love are more fre­ quent in this novel, and they are usually accompanied by

La Bataille de Pharsale. p. 10. The squatting posi­ tion is woman's basic position from which she can satisfy all her needs: "...les*oambes repliees, les cuisses pres- sees contre les flanes, les genoux venant toucher les ombreuses aisselles.•.•" If she were turned 90 degrees maintaining the squat position, she would be facing the sky with her back to the earth in the legendary fecunda­ tion position. ^ L a Bataille de Pharsale. p. 20. 175 their corollary: the soldier being wounded in the mouth, or the narrator expressing his pain and suffering at the sight?— or thought— of the particular act: La peau tir§e en arriere formant comme une couronne pliss£e rose vif au-dessous du bourrelet du gland d&couvert brillant de salive quant elle recule sa bouche oreille qui peut voir dents blanches entre les levres humides brillantes elles aussi de la mdme salive d© souffrais comme... . ^ We cannot be sure that this act is actually seen, or whe­ ther it is imagined by the narrator; the key phrase, ’’oreille qui peut voir," alerts us to the possibility of fantasy holding sway. In another scene, the action is reminiscent of the rapid transitions in La Route des Flandres. The narrator recalls an incident from the war in which he has been unhorsed and is crawling on all fours: "ma tdte tiree vers le bas le sol l'odeur d'humus de mousse."^ He feels himself weighing huge amounts as I if he were made of stone, or marble, or bronze, and then he. falls between the woman's thighs: "de m'§crasai elle 6carta les cuisses;" but, no sooner is he in this position that the "ear that can see" substitutes his rival and the narrator resumes his suffering: "Je souffrais comme...." The woman continues the act of fellatio but she is quick­ ly transformed into the victim:

42Ibid., p. 46. 45Ibid. 176 ...et elle suspendue sous son ventre gracile le buvant enfonce dans la bouche un coup de glaive si violent que la pointe en ressortit par.. The narrator's environment becomes filled with ob­ jects that provoke associations and images relating directly to the sexual act between 0 and her real or imagined lover. Even the artist’s paint brush becomes a threat, a phallus: Le pinceau se deplacant horiaontalement sans h&te charge d'un rouge vif assez clair relativement liquide de sorte qu'au fur et & mesure de son avance la couleur degouline en petites bavures le trait epais et sanglant qu'il laisse derri&re lui s ’allongeant s'6tirant presentant sa rigidity de leg£res gonfles de l&geres bosselures... The artist-lover and his model are transformed, objecti­ fied into a work of art representing the act which tor­ ments the narrator.^ As a result of this preoccupation, bordering on obsession, the narrator creates for himself / a museum of living symbols expressing his rage and envy. After the first chapter, the novel itself becomes a sort of catalogue preserving the aberrations of the narrator

^ Ibid. ^ I b i d . , p. 58. /iC Simon includes a reproduction of a watercolor by Picasso of the artist and his model in the Orion Aveugle. The painting shows the dual relationship between artist and model, partners in creation as well as procreation: the two are depicted in a sexual embrace. 177 as well as the subjects which inspired them.^ The sight of Beaux-Arts students reveling in the street captures the narrator's attention. They are in costume and one group is made up of girls wearing Greek dresses being chased by a student brandishing a huge red-tipped dildo, while a nearly naked student whirls a cardboard sword over his head. This scene immediately provokes an image in the narrator's mind of the coupling of Pasiphae and the Bull. The bull is concerned that his enormous size will do the young girl harm but he discovers to his surprise that he might be wanting: ...elle serapprochait avec fr6n6sie et saisissant ma pine a pleines mains elle l'enfon9ait dans une 6treinte encore plus profonde si bien que HerculeJ j'aurai m§me pu croire que pour la faire jouir com^letement il me manquait encore quelque chose

The narrator ends this account with the familiar refrain from the photograph epithet: "rouquin fils de pute HIJO DE PUTA." This self-imposed punishment becomes more signifi­ cant when we learn that the narrator's name is represent­ ed by the same initial as the artist's model: 0. The irony of this coincidence becomes more obvious when the names— initials— are used in the scenes describing the

^See Chapter headings: Lexicon; Chronology of Events. La Bataille de Pharsale. pp. 92-93* 178 amorous embraces of the lovers* 0 stands outside the door listening with the ear that can see to 0 being penetrated by the artist. 0 sits in a cafi across the street and watches the window of the room where 0 is in bed with her lover. The lack of gender in their names compounds the agony for the narrator: the artist's phallus is plunged into 0, just as the arrow, or sword, or javelin is plunged into the soldier which represents the figurative death of 0's love as he is mortally wounded by the on­ slaught of jealousy and envy. The dilemma is embodied in a reproduction of a paint­ ing on a postcard that 0, the narrator, is planning to send to 0, the model. The painting shows the end of a battle between four men— two against two. The victors are standing over the vanquished in stylised poses— all the men are naked. There are women and children witnes­ sing the scene in horror; they are obviously the families of the vanquished. The victors are older and bearded— one has a curly red beard!— and they stand over their opponents ready to strike the final biow. The red- bearded man has a huge cudgel in his hand while his supine victim tries to defend himself in vain with a pitifully thin branch. The title of the painting and the name of the artist are printed on the opposite side of the card: 179 (LUCAS CRANACH d.A) Die Eifersuch— -Envy— La Jalousie^ 0 does not send this postcard; instead he selects the Battle between the Israelites and the Philistines by Pieter Brueghel. In one of the few articles to appear to date on the subject of sexuality in the works of Claude Simon, John Fletcher compares the sense of erotic self-accomplishment in the characters of D. H. Lawrence with the sexual mis­ adventures of Simon's heroes: Mais A la difference des personnages simoniens ils peuvent, sous certaines conditions, se d£passer et s'accomplir dans l'erotisme. Si j'ai bien lu les romans de Claude Simon, cette forme d'approbation ne s ’y discerne point.p O (Che basis for this conclusion is his recollection of the double image of the death of the soldier— the j*avelin is .p* plunged into his wound repeatedly— and 0 experiencing orgasm: pilum frappant entrant et ressortant A plusieurs reprises de la blessure le renflement de sa pointe triangulaire arrachant aux lAvres le sang jaillis- sant par saccades brDlant Elle m'inonde se mit A ■ hoqueter et crier balbutiant des mots sans suite donnant de violents coups de reins.P1 Fletcher states that eroticism in Simon's novels is scarcely optimistic, the contrary of the eroticism

^ La Bataille de Pharsale. pp. 226-228. ^ Entretiens. op. cit. pp. 139-14-0• ^ La Bataille de Pharsale, p . 4-0. 180 described in Lawrence, Durrell and even Robbe-Grillet: c ’est un 6rotisme d6sesp£re, intimement li§, comme chez le Marquis de Sade et ses epigones roraantiques, S. I'idSe de la mort,52 This insistence on the death image is baaed on the French term for orgasm: petite mort. which Fletcher attributes to the writings of Georges Bataille. The desire to experience la petite mort also contains within it the desire to live, a repetition of the familiar natural cy­ cle. I believe Fletcher has misread Simon on this point— as he feared— by seeing in the hero's failure to attain the pure state of sexuality, a sado-masochistic perver­ sion and attraction to death. In La Bataille de Pharsale. the narrator never achieves full sexuality, the memory of his one night with 0. is ruined by the presence of the artist in a sort of grotesque, simultaneous coupling. The narrator does not recall the moment of orgasm; it is the red-bearded hi.jo de puta who achieves climax for him. Just as Georges in La Route-des Flandres perverts the essence of the sexual act, seeking not la petite mort but something else which he himself could not explain, so the narrator of Pharsale forfeits his chance for self-fulfillment by refusing to accept the fact that 0 belongs to everyone else:

52 Entretiens, op. cit. p. 140. 181 ...tu ne peux pas couche avec elle comme tout le monde sans faire tant d'histoires bon Dieu St moi Comment tout le monde? Et lui Oh bon Dieu Et mol Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire Comme tout le monde? Et lui Oh bon Dieu j'ai dit comme tout le monde fait c'est tout de meme pas. la premiere fille que tu sautes une Et moi Coucher avec elle comme tout le monde? Et lui Oh la la avec vos histoires de cul vous me faites suer...53 The women, as they appear in Simon's novels, do belong to everyone else, but not in the vulger sense of the barracks room graffiti: rather in the sense of the sym­ bol of their sex as Simon describes it in his different novels. The woman's sex is open, passive, the altar, the mystery of life; man defiles it through his ignor­ ance and arrogance'. The woman is the self-fecundating female deity in the form of Marie, the dying virgin, the personification of History itself, who engenders Louise who somehow understands her place in this eternal cycle.v5 4 The woman is the ageless, unpolluted child-woman: Corinne whose sexuality is debased by brutes like Iglesia, or unrecognized by the impotent intellectual, Georges. Sexuality in the novels of Claude Simon represents the means to the balance and harmony in the universe: the. . War which is the father of all things. To enter into this harmony man must strip himself of the factitious

^ La Bataille de Pharsale. p. 48. ^See Chapter II, pp. 84 and 85 above. 182 accretions of civilization which smother him. Simon seems to tell us that one way to salvation, one method of stripping away the stifling artifice, the barrier between mechanical existence and union, for an instant, with the universal and eternal cycle is the act of artis tic creation. At the end of La Bataille de Pharsale. the narrator picks up his pen and begins writing the sentence' which is the same as the opening sentence of the book. Was not Proust thinking of this same cycle as he wrote the last line of his novel which announced a new beginning? CHAPTER V

THE CUBIST PERSPECTIVE: "UN GIGANTESQUE COLLAGE"

Der Abfall der Welt dienst mir zur Kunst. -—Kurt Schwitters# 1935

It takes the reader only one sitting with a novel by Claude Simon to appreciate the fact that this is a man who writes in a painterly style. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to examine this perspective in the work of Claude Simon: the Cubist perspective. It is not an original title**' by any means, but it is a legitimate one for two reasons. First,, as was mentioned in Chapter one, Simon began his artistic career as a painter under the tutelage of the Cubist painter and theoretician, Andre Lhote; secondly, the Cubists* in­ vention, the collage, has been translated into the lit­ erary idiom by Simon and some of his fellow "New Novel­ ists". The structuralist critics have adopted the term collage by way of the concept of bricolage introduced by

■^Cf. Elly Jaffe-Freem, Robbe-Grillet et la peinture cubiste (AmsterdamsNieulenkoff, 1966). Using the paint­ ing Echo d*Ath§nes (1913) by Georges Braque as the basis of the study, "on y trouve rassembles et resumes la plupart des themes dans les romans de Robbe-Grillet." p. 3*

183 184 the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. The next two segments of this chapter will be devoted to a careful analysis of these terms from the structuralist viewpoint. In the second segment we shall see how Simon transforme the collage of the plastic arts into the literary medium through the process of ecriture. The third and final seg­ ment of this chapter examines the concept of ecriture- bricolage using the composition of Michel Butor's novel Mobile, as a contrasting model. The term ecriture is most elusive because of its multiple significance.^ It can be broken down into two general definitions: the historical which includes "les ecritures synthetiques, les ideogrammes, 1*ecriture par alphabet"* and the semiological which falls into our area of interest: "designer la particularite d'une rencontre entre parole (personnelle) et institution ou genres litteraires chez un auteur (style). L'ecriture atteste la distinction sociale de 1 'oeuvre." "Par extension, acte

2 Literary structural analysis is the method associated with the group known as the "nouvelle critique" made up of a broad spectrum of disciplines, each concentrating on a particular aspect of the literature. The areas include the sociological study of themes, the psychocritical, phenomeno­ logical, mythic, and linguistic analyses of literatureJ See: "Structuralisme" in Fages, J.-B. et al., Dictionnaire des Media: Technique, Linguistique, Semiologie (Paris: MAMEj 1971)". pp. 274-280. •i The definitions to follow are taken from: Dictionnaire des Media, op. cit. See also Ducrot and Todorov, Diction­ naire encyclopedique des sciences du langage (Paris: Seuil, 1972). : 185 createur de la parole faisant pour ainsi dire des 'variations* (litteraires) sur la base de la langue codi- fiee. En ce cas l'ecriture renvoie d'abord a elle-meme."^ The conceptual ramifications of the term ecriture extend well beyond the scope of this chapter^* the lexicon proliferates in geometric proportions as new terms have to be created to distinguish overlapping meanings* e.g., "la semiologiei science generale des signes qui fonctionnent dans la vie sociale" becomes too broad a concept, so it is reduced to "la science des signifiants (semiologique "qui se rapporte 2. l'expression"), par opposition 2 la 'seman- tique', science des signifies (ou qui se rapporte au contenu)."^ As if this were not sufficient, yet another broader term is produced: la semiotique which includes logical syntax, logical semantics and pragmatism terminating in a dilemma: "••♦tout cela appartient pour d'autres & la semiologie et m§me 2 la semantiquej si bien que 1'accord entre ces disciplines 2 l'heure actuelle n'est pas encore fixe."7

it Dictionnaire des media, op. cit., p. 260. £ ^Cf• "La science de la litterature est possible par la notion d*ECRITURE, laquelle a ses propres rSgles d'engendrement et d'agencement: rSgles typiquement linguis- tiques, ou rSgles logiques des symboles." Ibid., p. 275* 6Ibid., p. 261. 7Ibid. 186 Roland Barthes recommends an accomodation in the hope of establishing order to the confusion* Toutefois il serait tr&s commode d'avoir^deux mots* on pourrait employer "semiotique" pour designer des systSmes particuliers de messages. II y aurait par consequent une semiotique de 1*usage fixe, une semiotique du geste, etc.; on appellerait "semiologie" la science generale qui reunirait toutes ces semiotiques.8 The theoretical polemics and writings are numerous and the members of the Tel Quel group have been in the g vanguard of the structuralist activity. The sense of this type of criticism becomes more clear when applied to the actual textual material, but before we reach this point, it would be profitable to study the genesis of one particular concept from theory to application* from bricolage-collage to ecriture. The examination of these terms will serve as the key to enter Simon's cubist world.

Bricolage The idea or concept of bricolage appears in Simon's preface to the Orion Aveugle 10 in which he describes his

8Ibid. 9 7Among those works published in the Tel Quel collection (Paris* Seuil) are Roland Barthes, Essais critiques; Julia Kristeva, Recherches pour une semanal.vsef Jacques Derrida, L'Ecriture et la difference. See also the collection of essays by the Tel Quel group entitled Theorie d*ensemble (Paris* Seuil, 1968). ■^Geneva; Skira, 1970. 18? writing technique as a process whereby each word calls up several others "non seulement par la force des images qu’il attire H lui comme un aimant, mais parfois aussi par sa seule morphologie, de simples assonances, qui, de mSme que les necessites formelies de la syntaxe, du rythme et de la composition, se revSlent souvent aussi fecondes que ses 11 multiples significations."

The archaic meaning of the verb bricoler was limited to use basically in conjunction with sporting terms in the sense of 'to ricochet, zig-zag, go at an angle'i the m o d e m use of the verb is associated with the idea of working with one's hands, tinkering, fixing or putting together some­ thing like a clock or a machine. The sense of the term suggests that the individual is working with pieces, frag­ ments of a larger whole which may or may not be identifiable.

Simon's pieces are the words which form images and suggest other words and images which, when pieced together, take on an appearance quite different from that vague project originally in mind. This is what Simon finds so fascina­ ting about the process of ecriture.

The term bricolage appears in the famous chapter "La

Science du concret" in Levi-Strauss' study La Pensee 12 Sauvage. In this chapter, he explains the relation

n |bid., Preface.

12Paris: PIon, 1963. 188 between bricolage and mythical thought* Or, le propre de la perisee mythique est de s'exprimer a I1aide d ’un repertoire dont la composition est heteroclite et qui, bien q u ’etendu, reste tout de meme limitej pourtant .il faut qu’elle s'en serve, quelle que soit la tache qu’elle s'assigne, car elle n'a rien d'autre sous la main, Elle apparait ainsi comme une sorte de bricolage intellectuel, ge qui explique les relations qu'on observe entre les deux. ^ The concept of mythic thought, Levi-Strauss contends, is not man turning his back on reality through his "myth- making faculty" but rather the process through which the remains of methods of observation and reflection are preserved, "...des modes d'observation et de reflexion qui furent (et demeurent sans doute) exactement adaptis & des decouvertes d'un certain type* celles qu’autorisait la nature, Il partir de 1*organisation et de1*exploitation <» lty speculatives du monde sensible en termes de sensible." Putting these terms in a more familiar context, Levi- Strauss compares the bricoleur with the engineer, empha­ sizing the fact that while the engineer has a specific set of tools and the raw material for the specific project, the bricoleur who can also perform many tasks, must, however, do with "whatever is at hand", that is, tools and materials which do not necessarily have any specific relationship to the task being undertaken. This set of tools and materials is "...le resultat contingent de

13Ibid., p. 26. ^ Ibid., p. 25. 189 toutes les occasions qui se sont presentees de renouveler ou d'enrichir le stock, ou de l'entretenir avec les residus de constructions ou de destructions anterieures, L*ensemble des moyens du bricoleur n'est done pas defi- nissable par un projet,• » it is defined in terms of potential use and because the material has been collected with the purpose in mind that these elements "may always come in handy". These elements are not so specialized that they have only one specific, limited use; they are flexible, "Chaque element represente un ensemble de relations, 3 la fois concr&tes et virtuelles; ce sont des operateurs, mais utilisables en vue d*operations quel- conques au sein d'un type."^ Going back to Simon's comments in the preface to the Orion Aveugle, we recall his sole desire to "bricoler quelque chose 3 partir de certaines peintures que j'aime". There is no project in mind when the writer sits before the blank page, just the reproductions of these paintings serving as the catalytic agent for the creative process to begin. He is using whatever is at hand— the paintings and the free-associations inspired by them, the words and

15Ibid., p, 27. l6Ibid. 190 and the associations which they conjure up either* through literal or secondary meanings* or morphological or syn­ tactic contexti snatches of memory which serve to give body to an image* Simon states* "Je ne connais pour ma part d'autres sentiers de la creation que ceux ouverts pas a pas* c'est-SL-dire mot aprSs mot* par le cheminement 17 meme de l'ecriture*" r He means this in a literal sense and was annoyed when someone insisted that what Simon meant was that he is led by images rather than by words* He replied, "mais ce n'est jamais assis dans un fauteuil* ou couche dans mon lit, ou pensant 3. des 'images' que d'autres viennent s'agglutiner 3celles-ci, c'est seulement en ecrivant*"^®

Before arriving at the discussion of bricolage in terms of painting, there are two interesting statements by Levi-Strauss which touch on the idea of pieces and fragments just mentioned above* In the first one he quotes a passage from Franz Boas, "on dirait que les univers mythologiques sont destines & Stre demanteles 3 peine formes* pour que de nouveaux univers naissent de leurs 19 - fragments." Levi-Strauss adds to this statement that

17 Orion Aveugle, op. cit** Preface* 18 Entretiens* op. cit*. p. 28* 19Ibid.* p* 31* ‘ 191 in this perpetual reconstruction from the same materials# "•••ce sont toujours d'anciennes fins qui sont appelees a jouer le rSle de moyens: les signifies se changent en signifiants# et inversement." 20 In another statement, he returns to the contrast between the engineer who questions the universe and the bricoleur who " • ■ • s'adresse 5. une collection de residus d'ouvrages humaihs# c*est-&-dire S un sous-ensemble de la culture•••l’ingenieur cherche toujours 3. s'ouvrir un passage et 3 se situer au-del3# tandis que le bricoleur# p i de gre ou de force# demeure en-dec3.« . Levi-Strauss argues further that the bricoleur speaks not only with things but also through the medium of things thus "racontant, par les choix qu'il opSre entre des possibles limites, le caractSre et la vie de son auteur. Sans jamais remplir son projet# le bricoleur y met toujours quelque chose de soi." 22 Looking over these statements# we see some rather interesting parallels contained in Simon's own writingso The quote from Boas above recalls the epigraph to Simon's novel Histoirei "Cela nous submerge. Nous l'organisons. Cela tombe en morceaux. Nous l'organisons de nouveau et tombons nous-mSmes en morceaux." This process is alluded

2la_ Pensee sauvage# p. 31» 21Ibid., pp. 29-30.

22Ibid., p. 32. 192 to in a number of Simon*s works in terms of sub-titles or epigraphs as well as in the structure of the works themselves as we have already seen in the preceding chapters. In the Histoire epigraph Simon seems to be addressing himself "to a collection of oddments left over from human endeavors", trying to put them together into a coherent whole (or rather a whole which can never be complete in itself since it is composed of fragments), only to have the structure shatter again into more frag­ ments which must be reassembled again into more fragments which must be reassembled again but not necessarily in the same proportions or configurations. As the writer continues his task, he too falls victim to disintegration. A substitution seems to have taken place and the "we" is now a part of the "oddments left over from human endeavors", and now it, too, will be subject to the reorganization which will take place ad infinitum since the writer (or the "we", or the bricoleur). has put something of himself into it, has by "inclination or necessity" remained within it. This goes one step further than Levi-Strauss* conten­ tion that "ce sont toujiours d*anciennes fins qui sont appelees a jouer le rSle de moyens* les signifies se 21 changent en signifiants, et inversement." J The writer- bricoleur thus becomes a part of the debris-structure-debris cycle which represents the transformation of our world.

23Ibid., p. 31,

i The critic Gerard Genette proposes another kind of substitution within the contrast between the engineer as one who questions the universe and the bricoleur as one who addresses himself to the remains of human endeavors* Genette substitutes romancier for engineer and critique ^or bricoleur and the process is restated as a paraphrase of Levi-Strausss "Si I'ecrivain interroge l'univers* le critique interroge la litterature, c ' est-3.-dire un univers de signes* Mais ce qui etait signe chez I'ecrivain (1*oeuvre) devient sens chez le critique, comme th&me et •

„ 2k symbole d'une certaine nature litteraire." The formula of Levi-Strauss of the signified changed into the signi­ fying and vice versa is repeated by the dual function of the critical endeavor which is to find the meaning in the works of others while at the same time creating his own work with this meaning. This phenomenon is possible only in literary criticism (art and music criticism being unable to express themselves in form and sound) since it speaks in the language of its objects "elle est meta- langage, 'discours sur un discourses elle peut done §tre meta-litterature, c'est-J-dire *une litterature dont ia litterature mSme est l'objet impose.

Zk Figuress Essais (Pariss Seuil, 1966),p. ikQ* ^ Ibid., p. 146, 19^ In the context of Genette's paraphrase of Levi-

Strauss, he is presenting to the reader an interpretation through which he hopes to show the validity of structur­ alism as a rewarding approach to the aims of criticism*

The nature of Simon#s view of himself as writer-bricoleur would, in Genette's set of substitutions, place Simon the writer in what was originally the engineer's position, and Simon the bricoleur becomes the critic* There results an interesting duality whereby Simon, the writer-engineer, questions the universe (or his experience?) and Simon, the critic-bricoleur questions the universe of signs*

This phenomenon would seem to be acceptable in the struc­ turalist lexicon where "literature" becomes "writing" and "criticism" becomes "literature".

Simon has yet to write any formal criticism although he has spoken freely in numerous interviews about his writing technique and he has expressed his views on any number of literary and aesthetic questions* Simon has a stock response when queried about the absence of any written statement explaining his critical stance* "Je n'ai pas, d'ailleurs, une formation d*intellectual. J*imagine que de telles formations existent, mais ce n'est pas mon 26 cas." in a lecture at the Sorbonne, Simon recited the

26 Hubert Juin, Lettres Franoaises, art. cit*, p* 5* 195 advice of Proust's M. de Norpois to a young author* "Soyez utile, evitez les subtilites de mandarin*• notre epoque, on a le droit de demander h un ecrivain 27 autre chose que d'etre bel esprit." f This apprehension at the thought of being considered writer-critic is still expressed today in spite of the fact that almost without exception his co-writers at the Editions de Minuit have had enviable success in both undertakings— though not always respected by the "traditional academic critics". In reply to a recent question posed by Ludovic Janvier who asked how he "saw" literature of today, Simon replied* "Je ne la vois pas. J'essaie de la faire. C'est dej3L pfi suffisamment difficile." It would seem from the positions expressed over a twelve year period, that Simon, the critic, would not fit in the bricoleur slot in Genette's version of Levi-Strauss formula; however, the nature of the critic in this struc­ ture is in a constant state of flux between critic-writer- critic, and at any given moment a clear identification of the role being played is not always possible especially for the writer-critic who is engaged in the actual process In other words, to paraphrase Levi-Strauss who discusses

27 J. Parot, Lettres Franoaises, art. cit., p. 5* 28 Entretiens, op. cit., p. 28. 196 this problem in an essay on structure elsewhere, the phenomenon can be explained only by the observer who

stands outside of the process; "hence order, or structure

is available for analysis from the outside, but soceity's process or force, can never be grasped because that is entirely within the perspective of the social individual 29 engaged in his own historical becoming*" 7 Thus, Simon returns to the original configuration of the engineer- bricoleur set, rejecting the function of critic* "c'est dejS suffisamment difficile de faire la littSrature."^®

The aim of Genette's argument is to conclude, via his extrapolation of Levi-Strauss' terms, that literary criticism is, in effect, "une activite structuralists

By substituting the names of Butor, Robbe-Grillet,

Ricardou, or Barthes for that of Simon, Genette's modified formula works perfectly. This is not to say that Simon does not understand, nor speak the language of the structuralist; on the contrary, as his interviews and later works have shown, he is well versed in the new theories and the "new criticism", but he has yet to dis­ engage himself from the work of writer-bricoleur in order to embrace the new role of "observer-participant".

29 * Modern French Criticism* From Proust and Valery to Structuralism, ed. John K. Simon (Chicago* University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 376* 30 Kntretiens, op. cit., p. 28. 197 Collage * Shortly after the publication of the Corps conduc- teurs, an admirer called the author to praise the novel as "pur Rauschenberg” * Simon was very pleased with this description and when I asked him in a conversation whether he was really "painting" novels the reply was* "Je ne suis pas peintre. Je fais tout simplement des collages."*^ Levi-Strauss sees the fashion for 'collages* as originating when craftmanship was dying, for it '‘pourrait n*£tre,de son cote, qu'une transposition du 32 bricolage sur le terrain des fins contemplatives*"^ He sees Cubism and Impressionism not as two separate entities but as partners in the same enterprise to prolong a mode of expression (through complementary distortion) whose existence was threatened.*'*'33 Simon warns of the danger implicit in trying to make analogies between painting and writing: "l'ecriture n'est pas la peinture, le pouvoir evocateur de la figuration picturale d'un corps est tout autre que celui de la description scripturale d'un corps, la peinture est surface, simultaneity, l'ecriture est linearite, duree, etc."*' But there is, nevertheless, a common ground

-^21 December, 1971* 320p. cit., pp. 43-W.

•^Ibid., p. 43. ^Entretiens, op. cit., p. 26. 198 between painting and the art of the novel* in both cases# as Simon says, we are dealing with art. In this context#. the activity which has taught Simon a number of things about the art of the novel is the production of collages. In his study one wall is covered with a giant collage which he has constructed from newspapers and magazines and which serves as an illustration of the lesson he learned that proved useful in his making of novels. ...si un element (disons# par exemple# un cheval noir) commande ou attire auprSs de lui d'autres elements & la fois parae que l'on pourrait appeler la morpho­ logic du signe en soi (noir) et par son signifie (cheval), il faut tou.jours sacrifier le signifie aux necessites plastiques# ou# si l'on prefSre, formelles, c ’est-Ek-dire qu'avant toute autre consi­ deration il faut que le noir (et 1*arabesque du dessin) s'accorde (harmonie ou dissonance) avec la ou les couleurs (et 1 'arabesque) des elements avec lesquels il va voisiner sans se demander ce que peut (par exemple) bien faire un cheval dans une chambre k coucher ou encore & cote d'un pape en chasuble plut3t que galopant au bord de la mer ou dans une prairie.35 Simon makes the distinction that in the novel the writer restricts himself to a limited number of themes..Otherwise he would be approximating the automatic writing of the Surrealists which opens a series of parentheses that never* close. The important thing is that a formal sympathetic relationship be established between two signifiers without regard for the signified# producing an uncertain# ambiguous

35Ibid. 199 meaning* "le sens tremble" of Barthes* that goes beyond all original expectations: •••plus riche et generateur (ou charge) de vibrations gue celui que l*on aurait pu etablir entre deux elements choisis seulement en fonction de leurs signifies, cheval-plage ou cheval-prairie, et dont la manipulation a montre, en depit du rapport apparent de ces derniers, 1*incompatibility formelle,3o For Simon this means that there is a "law", an agreement and dependence between the morphologies of the signifiersj however, it does not mean that the signifier cannot function in terms of the signified, but in order to main­ tain the "credibilite picturale ou scripturale", this "law" must be obeyed.-^ These formal "necessites" are in themselves creative and as support for this argument, Simon recalls a statement by Raoul Dufy uttered while Simon watched him paint one day: "II faut savoir abandonner le tableau que I ’on voulait faire au profit de celui qui se fait."^®

Entretiens, op. cit., pp. 26-2?. •^Cf. Suzi Gablick's comments on Magritte’s "Euclidean Walls", 1955* "Sometimes when different images are brought together, they create analogies in the mind with the insis­ tence of indisputable evidence. A sudden fusion of ideas will insinuate into the unconscious many principles and parallels.... Insight is a form of gestalt, involving the sudden active perception of new relationships." Magritte (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1970), p. 100.

This passage has the familiar ring to it of the "cheval noir" example of Simon quoted above, and by the process of substitution the concept expressed by both men becomes more clear. At the one extreme where professional or academic art externalizes the "occasion" which is to be provided by the model, or subject, the horse (cheval) can be substituted as that which becomes a part of the signified. At the other extreme, where primitive art externalizes execution, the accord, or agreement (harmonious or dissonant), with the color, or colors, and the arabesques of the neighboring elements representing purpose (regardless

^ L a Pensee sauvage, op. cit., p. 42. of any seemingly illogical juxtapositions such as the black horse in the bedroom) thus becoming a part of the signifying# The next paragraph by Levi-Strauss is even more interesting in terms of the similar image used by Simon in his explanation of the function of the signifiers* Levi-Strauss observes: "Nous retrouvons ainsi, sur un autre plan, ce dialogue avec la matiSre et les moyens d'execution, par quoi nous avions defini le bricolage# Pour la philosophie de 1'art, le problSme essentiel est de savoir si l'artiste leur reconnait ou non la qualite (iQ d*interlocuteur." He answers the question immediately that doubtless the artist regards them as such but least of all in art which is too professional and most of all in the "raw or naive" art which verges on bricolage, to the detriment of structure in both cases. The danger, points out Levi-Strauss, is to allow any form of art worthy of the name to fall completely under the spell of extraneous contingencies, whether of occasion or purpose# On a different level— writing— Claude Simon also sees a dialogue between the materials and means of execu­ tion: by establishing "un rapport formel *parlant*"

^°Ibid. 202 between the two signifiers, the ideal "ouverture signifi- ante" will appear# providing a much richer vein of possi­ bilities of meaning than the association of two elements 41 selected in terms of the signified (cheval-plage). Simon is also aware of the pitfalls mentioned by Levi-Strauss and restricts himself--in the writing of his novels— to a limited number of themes. This does not prevent him, however, from leaning more heavily toward the "raw or naive art" to which he alludes when he speaks of the desire to "bricoler quelque chose" as another term for writing, or the pleasure of assembling a collage of words or pic­ tures or sea shells. In the Ludovic Janvier interview Simon lists his order of priorities which represent his relationship to his work as he writes it, or in other words, his motiva­ tions: 1. "Ecrire par besoin de faire", 2. "Ecrire pour trouver, decouvrir", 3» "Ecrire pour communiquer", and finally, "Ecrire pour representer", which Simon finds Ll? „ less and less valid as time goes on. Levi-Strauss sees the process of artistic creation as an attempt to communicate either with the model or with the materials or with the user: "En gros, chaque eventualite correspond

4l Entretiens. op. cit., p. 26. Ilo Ibid., p. 16. a un type d'art facile 3, reperer* la premiSre, aux arts plastiques de l'occident* la seconde, aux arts dits primitifs ou de haute epoque; la troisiSme aux'arts ho appliques*" These categories are not rigid* of course, and Levi-Strauss points out that all forms of art are all three aspects, and the particular form of art is dis­ tinguished by the relative proportion of each of these aspects* Looking back at the priorities outlined by Simon in an attempt to find a parallel between them and Levi- Strauss* categories, it can be said that Simon's first category* "Ecrire par besoin de faire," could be inter­ preted as the force which engages the artist in the process of artistic creation* the second priority* "Ecrire pour trouver, d£couvrir," would correspond to the attempt to communicate with the materials and, last, "Ecrire pour communiquer" reaches out to the future user* The least regarded priority: "Ecrire pour representer", corresponds to the attempt to communicate with the model* Moving these substitutions into the next set of larger categories listed by Levi-Strauss, we see that Simon's peiorities fall into the following order, in terms of importance* 1. primitive or early art, 2* the applied arts 3* the plastic arts of the West* As was pointed out above

4-3 * Pensee sauvage, op. c i t *, p* ^f-O* 20k these series of categories and priorities are not to be considered inflexible, but rather are designed to give us an idea of the similarities between Simon*s view of his relative position to his art, and to Levi-Strauss' classification of the artistic strata. The terms used to identify the different categories should not be accepted in a literal sense exclusively, e.g., Levi-Strauss speaks of the "primitive'1 periods of professional painting, and he also states that all the so-called primitive arts can be called applied in a double senses "d'abord, parce que beaucoup de leurs productions sont des objets techniques* et ensuite parce que meme celles de leurs creations qui semblent le mieux a l*abri des preoccupations pratiques ont une destination precise," When we speak of Simon in conjunction with the above categories it must be understood that it is in a figurative sense that we consi­ der Simon a painter. In the broad sense of the term art, we speak of Simon as an artist for he functions in various capacities as painter, creator of collages, and writer. The vision provided by his painter's eye and painter's perspective is translated into his writing, "Je pense beaucoup mieux en termes d'art qu'en termes de litterature*•»mais j'etais un de ces innombrables Prangais qui'ecrivent', Et j'ai constate que je m'expri-

*

^ Ibid., p. kO. 205 mais avec plus d*aisance par le moyen des mots qu'avec les couleurs." Therefore, looking at Simon as a painter in a figurative sense and considering Levi-Strauss* category of primitive or early art in its figurative sense, we can extend the substitutions further, and translate the "plastic arts of the West" into "formal, academic art," and we can extend the "primitive early art" into the "primitive period" in professional painting. This brings us back to his critical stance which is antagonistic toward the academic critic and the academic writer, and his adherence to the belief that he is not an 1+6 intellectual— "je suis un sensoriel". The lessons he learns from working on"collages* (contemplative brico- lage) guarantee a purity in his creative output in the form of timelessness, and a naivete which frustrate any complacent backslide into the "academically acceptable". Levi-Strauss speaks of early art, primitive art, and the "primitive" periods of professional painting as the only ones which do not date* Mils le doivent a cette conse-

^Nouvelles Litteraires. op. cit., 29 December, i960, P* 1+6Of. Joseph Conrad* "All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when express­ ing itself! in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions." Preface to the Nagger of the Narcissus (1897). 206 oration de l'accident an service de 1 'execution done & l'emploi, qu'ils cherchent a rendre integral, du donne t>rut comme matiSre empirique d'une signification.” While a date could be fixed to the action taking place in La Route des Plandres, for example, and while the action which takes place in L»Herbe comes after the events in La Route des Flandres (although L'Herbe was written two years earlier), the linear nature of clock time quickly dissolves into a simultaneity of actions and events. Picking through the fragments of an earlier set of phenomena, or events, or world, Simon "finds” the connecting piece of the puzzle in the same manner as Simon, the maker of "collages”, discovers the "law" Jj-8 which dictates the pattern of the neighboring pieces. The naivete is the attitude with which the artist looks at familiar pieces, an attempts to.see them as if for the first time. It is the naivete to which Picasso alluded when he said that his aim was to paint in the nanner of a twelve year old* the same naivete of a Jean Dubuffet who forsakes the mastery of execution in order to attain the style (and innocence?) of a child.

^Op. cit., p. 43. kg Speaking of Proust's work, Simon said "II ne re- trouve pas; il trouve." Conversation with Simon, 21 Dec., 1971. 207 In this section I have tried to limit the discussion of the term "collage" to the way in which Levi-Strauss uses it in conjunction with the more general term."bricolage". In this context we have seen how Claude Simon recognizes the •structuralist* significance of these terms.. It should be quite apparent by now that Simon's critical language operates on more than one level, and that an apparently innocuous term like bricolage appearing only once in the sole critical preface written by Simon to date (Orion aveugle, 1970), opens onto a whole esoteric structure of criticism. The word "collage" serves a double purpose and from this single simple illustration we can begin to appreciate the difficulty in attempting to examine Simon's critical and artistic perspective in any but a multi-level approach.

Ecriture-collage The idea of collage as an extension of bricolage has been explained above as perceived by one writer, Claude Simon. This same phenomenon is also observed in a very /to unusual work by Michel Butor* Mobile. 7 It is an unorthodox travel book sub-titled "etude pour une representation des

^Paris* Gallimard, 1962. 208 Etats-Unis,” and* as we shall see, for some critics it is rendered more comprehensible by discussing it in terms of collage. The book itself is made up of fifty chapters* which coincide in number with the fifty states and the chronological time covered in the t ext is fifty hours* The dedication is to the memory of Jackson Pollock and in the French edition there is a fold-out map of the United States at the beginning of the volume. The text itself is made up almost entirely of quotes taken from guide books, historical documents, catalogues and newspaper 50 articles* in other words, the text is composed of texts. The fragments are connected thematically by the repetition of certain leit-motifs: automobiles, signs, oppressed minorities, Blacks, Indians, and Howard Johnson’s "28 flavors”. Through the selective juxtaposition of these fragments, the ethos of a civilization is revealed to the reader, and the critic sees the composition of the work as a collage which expresses the work's own autonomy: Au lieu done d'illustrer la th&se selon laquelle I'oeuvre d'art litteraire s'ins&re dans le monde, un rapprochement avec ”le collage” tel qu'il se realise dans les arts plastiques, permet au contraire d'illustrer la th§se...de son autonomie essentielle.51

Cf. Van Rossum-Guyon, Critique du roman, op. cit., p. -65* "Le roman autrement dit 'renonce' a s'affirmer autre chose qu'un roman ou la fiction autre chose que fiction.” 51Ibid., p. ?2. 209 Professor Van Rossum-Guyon also alludes to the concept of bricolage when she describes the method of the authori •'Butor ne decrit done pas* n'explique pas* mais cite* CO enum§re et organise• "'7 The term finally becomes explicit in Roland Barthes* remark that Butor*s work is construite and he calls the working model a maouette which he goes on to explain* •••est plutbt une structure qui se cherche 5, partir de morceaux, d'evenements* morceaux que l*on essaye de rapprocher* d'eloigner d'agencer, sans alterer leur figure materielle; c*est pourquoi la maquette participe It cet art du bricolage, auquel Claude Levi-Strauss vient de donner sa dignite structurale (dans La Pensle sauvage).53 This process of piecing together fragments— bricolage— becomes synonymous with ecriture as Simon defines the eh, term. In each case, however* the size of the fragments differ! Butor uses ready-made quotes* while Simon pro­ ceeds word by word* although he often uses newspaper headlines* descriptions from guide books and even comic strip texts. Postulating on the method used by Butor, Barthes uses the same allusions that Simon is to duplicate

52Ibid., p. 70. 53 - -^"Litterature et discontinu"*• Essais critiques (Paris: Seuil, 1964-)* p. 186, See Preface to Orion aveugle, op. cit. This preface is discussed more fully in Chapter six. 210 later in his own "art poetique": C'est en essayant entre eux des fragments d'evene­ ments, que le sens nait, c'est en transformant in- lassablement ces evenements en fonctions que la structure s'edifies comme le bricoleur, l'ecrivain (polte, romancier ou chroniquerj ne voit le sens des unites inertes qu'il a devant lui qu'en les rapportant: 1'oeuvre a done ce caract&re S la fois ludique et serieux qui marque toute grande questions c'est un puzzle magistral, le puzzle du meilleur possible*55 There is a truth that persists throughout these commentaries and it is that there is no attempt on the part of the writer to try to reproduce, or rather, to imitate "reality". In spite of the documentary nature of the text of Mobile, the work still stands a fiction to be discovered: C'est enfin de 1'organisation des references et des textes cites que surgissent les significations que le lecteur est appele a dechiffrer,.a decouvrir* et dans une grande me sure §, inventer* 5° The introduction of cloth, paper or chair caning in a 57 painting f elicited the belief that the artist is empha­ sizing the real nature of the work of art:

55 Essais critique, op* cit., p. 186* 56 Van Rossum-Guyon, op. cit*, p. 70* Cf* Jean Ricardou, Sur le roman contemporain, op. cit., p* 161, "II n'y a pas lieu de faire de 1 'auteur, de celui qui signe, le proprietaire de son texte." -^See Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning (1912). 211 He has placed it in the world of real objects where it has its own existence as a relationship between real things# rather than as a representation of.a set of relationships in nature which it is intended to communicate in a more or less illusionistic manner.5° Professor Van Rossum-Guyon hesitates to insist on an absolute consideration of Butor*s work, Mobile# as a collage although she does entitle that segment of the

chapter "Le module du collage'1 ,^9 on the other hand the painter# Robert Rauschenberg makes a proclamation which accomodates all of the preceding arguments* II n*y a pas de raison de ne pas considerer que le monde est une gigantesque peinture*60 While from the basic tenets of ecriture qua collage liberate the text from the oppression of "imitation", nevertheless, there is a thematic perspective operating in the context of the work# Butor constructs his collage in such a way that the order of the pieces, and by extension

^Christopher Gray, Cubist Aesthetic Theories (Baltimore* Johns Hopkins Press, 1953)# PP» 125-126# -^Critique du roman, op. cit., p#^73* "Certes, un livre n'est pas un tableau.^ La realite qui peut y Stre integre n*est qu'une realite verbale#" Cf. Aragon,.Les Collages (Paris* Hermann, 1965), p« 122: "Que le collage soit une ecriture inventee en d ’autres temps et c^ue nous regardons souvent comme les hieroglyphs

63 Georges Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor (Paris* Gaillimard, 1967), p. 157* 62Ibid., p. 232. 213 create the illusion of a state of flux evoking the Heraclitean theme of the eternal return. The novel is successful as a collage because it is less contrived visually and physically than Mobile. In the final chapter of this study, we will observe more closely Simon's method of composition in Les Corps conducteurs. In this novel the author has moved farther away from the autobiographical and the anecdotal, into the realm of ecriture. CHAPTER VI LES CORPS CONDUCTEURS: WAITING FOR THE PALL Le style, pour l'ecrivain comme pour lepeintre, n'est pas une question de technique mais de vision. — Proust

The publication of La Bataille de Pharsale led at least one admiring critic to express apprehension about the future of Simon's production in an article pessimis­ tically entitled, "En attendant le grand chambardement.11 The article praises the writer's virtuosity, but Nouris- sier qualifies this judgment by pointing out that the Bataille de Pharsale had to be a transitional work— that the author was waiting for his second wind: L'oeuvre de Claude Simon, a mon estime, devrait s'ouvrir A nouveau apres ce replis et cet enfonce- ment, A persevArer dans la seule direction indiquSe ici. 1'auteur finirait par appauvrir une technique . au'xl a, precisement, conduite jusau'au magnifique enrichissement que nous disions.^ Sans doute y a-t- il dlsormais une etape nouvelle a franchir, un saut A risquer?^- The critic felt that Simon had exhauxted the means to perfect this technique which he had so skillfully mas­ tered, and that the author was in danger of becoming

■^Francois Nourissier, Kouvelles Litt§raires. 2 Oct. 1969, p. 2. 215 trapped in a stylistic impasse. This concern is certain­ ly a legitimate one since Simon's audience is very limited in number in Prance and more so abroad. As I have already mentioned in Chapter One, the only successful novel in a commercial, sense was La Route des Flandres. while the success of the next four novels re­ mained on a very modest plateau. Artistically, Simon's novels became more and more technically polished'and, contrary to what Nourissier says above, I feel that the real stylistic impasse is found in Histoire: i.e., Simon had to move in a new direction. Ironically, Histoire was awarded a literary prize, but it was more a case of guilt feelings than critical acclaim. An award should have gone to La Route des Plandres: the following novel, Le Palace, pleased very few critics and even fewer readers* Therefore, the critics were waiting for a novel that they could justify giving the prize to, or rather, a reason to award a prize to Simon whom they felt had done the neces­ sary penance. Histoire was his longest novel to date, and still is, and Simon won the nrix Hedicis. The novel ■ is a catalogue of Simon devices and themes, magnificently written. However, only an avid follower of Simon's ear­ lier novels could find any direction in this labyrinthian work. Claude Simon himself admitted that he had to change 216 the pace in the last part of the novel in order to extri­ cate himself from his own maze. With the Bataille de Pharsale Simon returns to the paradoxical world of motionless activity and violent im­ mobility developed in Le Palace. And finally in Les Corps conducteurs. we discover the happy marriage of the Heraclitean feternal retour in the theme and. the Cubist perspective translated into Ecriture. In Chapter Five, Simon’s concept of Ecriture was presented as he expressed it in the context of structur­ alist terminology; in the preface to the Orion Aveugle, he expresses this concept of Ecriture in his own words, ignoring jargon, and in terms of his own experience as a writer. Before examining Simon's last work, it would be profitable to review— even at the risk of repetition— his pronouncements on Scritixre in this small but vital p preface. He begins by stating that the only creative paths he is familiar with are those opened up step by

p In my conversation with Simon, he alluded constant­ ly to the ideas expressed in this preface. He quoted some of the lines verbatim— lines which are repeated in almost all of his interviews. It would be safe to assume then that these ten handwritten pages represent a precis of Simon's art poetique. 217 step— i.e., word by word: "par le cheminement de l'ecri­ ture.

Only in writing does something produce itself (se oroduit) — emphasis on the reflexive pronoun, the product is always much richer than the original project; there­ fore, it seems that the blank page and the process of writing— Ecriture— play a role as important as the author's intentions. The slowness of the physical act of writing is important because it allows enough time for the images to collect, but sometimes the images flow so quickly that he is obliged to write them down in the margin. He then asks the rhetorical question: Ou peut-§tre ai-je besoin de voir les mots^corame 6pingles, presents, et dans 1'impossibilite de m'&chapper?...4 Simon dismisses this argument with the observation that v/ords are not materials which exist in themselves such as the stones in a wall, a spot of color which refers only to itself, or bronze which one can touch. Words always refer back to things and from this fact, Simon conjectures that possibly the creative role that words

^Orion Aveugle, p. 1 of unnumbered preface. Simon builds his argument around the image of the "path" in a direct allusion to the title of the series published^by Skira for whom he is. writing, "Les Sentiers de la Crea­ tion. " ^Ibid.. p. 3. 218 p l a y is due to the idea of plurality. In other words, as Simon explains, if words are powerless to reproduce things— if blood does not drip from a torn page on which there is the description of a body, if the word blood is not blood— they do possess "ce prodigieux pouvoir de rapprocher et de confronter ce qui, sans eux, resterait c Spars. What has no apparent relation with mechanical clock time or finite space may find itself in a very narrow adjacency. Simon gives as an example the objects repre­ sented by the words pin, cortege, a bus line, a conspir­ acy, a clown, a State, a chapter: all have one thing in common— a head. The infinite potential for each word is compared to the burst of a roman candle and the pat­ tern it makes in the sky: Ils sont autant de carrefours o\!i plusieurs routes s ‘entrecroisent. St si, plutSt que de vouloir contenir, domestiquer chacune de ces explosions, ou traverser ces carrefours en ayant dej& decide du chemin a suivre, on s'arrdte et on examine ce

Ibid., pp. 5-4*. cf. also the remark attributed to William dames, "The word dog does not bite." In ray conversation with Simon, he quoted a passage from Jacques Lacan's Ecrits which is a delightfully subtle corollary to the above: "RideauJ C'est une image enfin du sens en tant que sens, qui pour se d&couvrir doit se devoiler." 219 qui apparait & leur lueur ou dans les perspectives ouvertes, des ensembles insoupqonn^s de resonances et d'echos se revelent.° The dictates of syntax, rhythm, composition, and other necessary formalities prove as fruitful as the multiple significance of words. It was by way of this process that La Route des fflandres. Le Palace. and more markedly Pharsale. and finally the Orion Aveugle. which consists of the first eighty pages of what eventually developed into Les Corps conducteurs. illustrate the gradual assimilation of the bricolage-collage method. The series for which he wrote the Orion Aveugle is called the Sentiers de la Creation, and Simon makes a subtle parallel between the path the Blind Orion is following and the path opened up by the text: "...ce sentier ouvert par Orion Aveugle me semble maintenant devoir se continuer quelque part."^ The path which Orion.-the- text has chosen to follow is very different from the one

Ibid.. pp. 5-6. cf. also Bricolage segment, Chapter V, above: "The*important thing is that a formal, sympathe­ tic relationship be established between two signifiers without regard for the signified, producing an uncertain, ambiguous incoming...that goes'beyond all original expec­ tations." p. 10. ^Ibid., p. 8, Simon told me that he always has great difficulty writing a text on demand, but once en­ gaged in the writing of the piece, the text seems to grow under its own momentum. When he completed the writing for the Orion Aveugle, Simon realized that he could not leave the text alone and ao the exercise became a novel. 220 travelled by the novelist: . ,.et qui partant d'un 'commencement1 about it & une 'fin.' Le mien, il tourne et retourne sur lui-m§me, comme peut le faire un voyageur 6gar6 dans une fordt, revenant sur ses pas, repartant, trompe...,8 The traveller is confused, tricked (or guided, Simon suggests) by the similarity of certain strange places to familiar ones and vice versa v/hich cause the indivi­ dual to move in a pattern of intersecting curved lines so that at the "end" it is quite possible for the traveller (reader?) to return to the original spot of the "beginning."^ The term given this meandering is "the exhaustion of the traveller exploring this inex- haustable landscape,"'*'® It is at this point that what is called a novel will materialize (Simon qualifies it with a peut-dtre); the reason is that it is a fiction in which characters are drawn into an action. Simon categorizes all novels under this very Aristotelian approximation of "imitation of an action." The preface

8Ibid.. p. 8. ^cf. "La Nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L'Homme y passe a travers des forets de syraboles Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers." — Baudelaire. ^®0rion Aveugle. pp. 10-11. 221 ends with a statement about what this particular novel does not relate: ...pas l'histoire exemplaire de quelque h6ros ou h6roine, mais cette toute autre histoire qu'est l'aventure singuli&re du narrateur qui ne cesse de chercher, decouvrant & t&tons le monde dans et par l'fecriture. H The insistence upon the fact that this novel— or any novel by Simon-— is not the exemplary story (histoire exemnlaire) is.the key to understanding his novels. In a written interview, Simon stated that his early autobiographical essay, La Gorde raide (194-7), served as a repository of themes for future novels; he was very clear to emphasize parenthetically that he meant themes and not subjects. 12 The same idea is stated in a more forceful manner in his New Year's Day lecture at the Sorbonne: "...le sujet en litt£rature n'a d'inter£t que pour les illettr§s.The obsession with the

Ibid., p. 10. When speaking to me about his novel Histoire. Simon made the point that he chose the title in terms of its etymological meaning rather than the familiar "History" and "story." Histoire (Du grec historein: chercher & savoir, raconter, decrire). 12 Entretiens. p. 17*

•^Lettres Prancaises. Jan. 1961, P* 5. 222 "story line" and significance of the, work to give it pedestrian lucidity is equally repellent to Simon as re­ ported by Janine Parot: ...1'adaptation au "sens de 1 ’Histoire"...fausse les vraies perspectives de l'ecrivain par l'insis- tance sur la "signification," la peur du "gratuit." d'oti l'obsession de la logique "qui reconstitue le fil d'Ariane de la chronologie," conduit au "sus­ pense," au d&sir de savoir la suite, & la recherche perpetuelle d'une justification de la situation finale.14 When Simon was asked by a hapless interviewer to give an interpretation of Les Corps conducteurs, he responded:

ce roman...c*est a vous, & la critique, de 1 ’inter­ preter et non 4 moi d ’en faire l'exegese. A chacun, il dira certainement quelque chose de diffSrent.^5 l'he reader is offered a choice, a challenge to react, free from all critical restriction to make his own sense of a • work about a nameless and faceless man who, as Simon tells it, visits a museum, attends a writers' conference, visits a doctor's office, takes a long plane trip, leafs through a,magazine, and spends the night with a woman whom he 16 tries vainly to reach by phone several times. From the perspective of time, another reviewer suggests that the

1^Ibid. •^Nouvelles Litteraires. 8 April, 1971* P» 6* 16Ibid. 223 novel lasts about the fifteen minutes it takes to have a medical consultation or the time it takes for a revolving 1 7 door to stop its turning. ( Simon explains that the title of the novel Corps conducteurs comes from the term in physics describing that which allows a current to 1 R flow. This description recalls the Orion preface and the power of words as conducting bodies in the process of 6criture. The argument that Simon's novels cannot be explicated like the histoires exemplaires becomes more valid. The subject or the plot of any Simon novel one could almost say borders on the insignificant or the banal There are themes and myriad images, but there is very little "story" to tell. The novel also has a subtitle, a reminder that any work by Simon is constructed of more than one layer: "Propriety de quelques figures gfeom&triques ou non." The subtitle prepares the reader for the numerous descriptions of cross-sections of buildings, people and objects; it opens up the visual perspective which is central to Simon' work. It is important to remember that this novel grew out of the response to a number of paintings chosen by Simon. The paintings generated the inspiration which

•^Lettres ffrangaises. 24 June, 1971» P* 30. 18Ibid. 224 then flowed through the conducting (and connecting) bodies until word by word, fragment by fragment, a total picture was created. The ideal way to read this novel— for those who are interested in the technique of construction in the sense of collage— is to begin with the Orion Aveugle which contains the reproductions of the inspirational subjects, then to consider the fragment entitled "Pro- pri§t6s des rectangles,” and finally to turn to the Corps conducteurs.1^ It is a step by step illustration of the concept of "bricolage” in the structuralist sense, and collage in the cubist tradition. This can also serve as a description for Simon's oeuvre: works that build out of other works, a gigantic collage pieced together from frag­ ments found in the very body of the oeuvre itself which in its own right serves as a corps conducteur. If I accept the argument already presented above that Simon's novels cannot be explicated in the standard man­ ner, then I should follow Simon's own advice and tell the reader to make of it what he wants since his impressions would be just as valid as mine, or Simon's. With this problem resolved, we can imagine ourselves a fragment, a piece of paper, a word, and leap into the collage for a view from the inside. At first the plunge is frightening

^ Tel Quel, no. 44 (Winter, 1971)» PP* 3-16. 225 but almost instantly the landscape becomes familiar: the scene is a big city, the landmarks belong to New York, but the city remains anonymous in the novel.^ The shapes that are encountered represent the forms of the buildings described like the sharp geometric planes seen in the paintings of the cubists: ...le fond grisdtre du building qui s'61§ve au coin de la rue et de 1*avenue en lignes paral­ lel's..^!

...des blocs plus dtroits, s6par6s par des Joints en creux, forment des bandes horizontales et paralleles...de fenetres carrees sans balcons ni encadrement et dont la grandeur apparente et les intervalles decroissent progressivement, leur succession dessinant^des lignes de fuite conver- entes interrompues a la hauteur du vingtiSme ft a g e . , , 2 2 A multitude of shapes and sizes are described throughout the novel creating a comfortable, three-dimensional base for the actions.*^ In the center of this design a man is sitting on a sidewalk fire hydrant watching the acti­ vity around him. It is the same man who has been to a writers' conference in South America, taken the long, plane trip, visited the doctor, etc., which was mentioned

^cf. the detailed description of Herald Square and Macy's on pp. 172-176. PI Les Corps conducteurs. p. 9* 22Ibid.. p. 15. ^cf. La Corde raide. p. 97s "Je pense que, pour tout le monde, 1 1 evocation de lignes perpendiculaires et^d1 angles droits, correspond A une certaine idee de stability et de sdcuritd. Le franqais croit aux angles droites et aux accords de couleurs qui eux aussi tombent en angles droits..." 226 above. At the beginning of the novel he is sitting on the hydrant, feeling quite ill and faint, but we do not know where this scene takes place in the chronology of events; this is left up to the reader, The importance of fixing a time is not great, for the reader.is too preoccupied with the signs and images projected all around the sick man, in his immediate environment and in his imagination, in the present and in the paqt, Simon suggested one possibility to me in our conversa­ tion: it could all have taken place in front of a store window, the images rushing through the man's mind making continuous, rapid associations as he looks at the differ­ ent items on display. The important point here is the elimination of the artificial time barrier, the tyranny of mechanical.clock time which is synonymous with reali­ ty, the linear representation of events in chronological order that is the trademark of the literature of another era. There is one particular section in the novel (pp. 15^ 156) that seems to present in miniature the whole movement of the novel. It begins in the familiar surroundings of a bedroom; the man is watching a woman (his mistress) wrapped in a towel. It slips down below her breast; she pulls the towel back up slowly. They keep looking at each other and neither one speaks. The very next line the man is walking in the street: 227 ...la serviette mal nouee glisse, d^nudant le corps tache de sombre. Maintenant l'une des extreraitis coincee sous son aisselle, la femme rattrape. l'autre de sa main libre qu'elle ram&ne sans hate auTdessus du sein et reste ainsi. leurs yeux ne se sont pas quittes. Ni l'un ni l'autre ne parlent, II passe successivement devant une chemiserie, un nagasin de postes de radio et de television... .24- There is no transition from the scene in the room to the man walking in the street; it is like a cut in film-making from one scene to another, the transition executed by a visual connection. The first window the man stops to look at is an optician's display. He sees a huge anatomical chart showing a front and side view of the eye in cross- section. For more than half a page Simon describes the illustration in very careful detail. In the same window there is a photograph of a movie star; a magnifying glass has been set up before one of the eyes so that passersby see a grotesque enlargement of the eye almost covering the face in the photograph like the eye of a cyclops.' The transition from the bedroom to the street is a forceful one. 'tie recall that rather than "looking at each other," as I loosely translated it, the line in French is: "Leurs yeux ne se sont pas quittfcs." There is no way of knowing whether the eyes are seeing or not; neither person is speaking. It is as if their senses, were dead, the same as their affair which is revealed later in the text. The

^ Les Corns conducteurs. p. 15^* 228 first images to confront the man are those of eyes, but they are eyes that do not see. The experience is made more grotesque by the huge magnified eye which is also sightless in spite of its size, V/e should also remember that the figure of the blind Orion appears and reappears in the course of the novel. As the man passes in front of the windows, he feels himself getting weaker and a sharp pain keeps attacking his side. He passes store windows displaying objects that represent events and objects found throughout the novel as well as throughout the man's past and present. The shop windows display typewriters and office supplies- the man is a writer; he passes a toy store— recalling perhaps the child's toy rabbit earlier in the novel, the string used to pull it making serpentine curves on the sidewalk conjuring up images of constellations and moun­ tain ranges seen from the plane: Entre le lapin couche sur le flanc et la main de 1'enfant la ficelle detendue serpente sur le trottoir en courbes molles. Le serpent est une constellation.eauatoriale dont le trac£ est dessin§ par de belles 6toiles..,25 We see the string later, this time in relation to a fea­ ther boa worn by an old woman crossing a hotel lobby.

^ Ibid,, p. 29. See also the photo of the Amazon River in Orion Aveugle. pp. 38-39* 229 The boa slips from her shoulders and falls to the carpet making an S shape• The child's mother picks up the toy rabbit and walks off, the string making a loop shape on her bermuda shorts: La ficelle au bout de laquelle etait tire le lapin pend sur le cfit£, formant une boucle qui frotte contre la cuisse du bermuda, se balanqant. A chaque en'jamb6e.26 The words by themselves would seem to have no relation­ ship to each other: a string, a boa, a river, a constella tion, but Simon reminds us in the preface to the Orion Aveugle of the powej* of words to bring together what with 27 out them would remain disconnected. r The man is still walking, his life has telescoped into a hundred feet of storefronts, and time has acceler­ ated to a point where the man can feel the process of his own physical degeneration taking place, walking along on weak, trembling legs and holding his side. He sees his reflection, his double, passing over the objects in the windows as if to confirm his connection with them in the past. The reflection passes over dictaphones, file cabinets, appointment books, which recall the writers' conference with all the paraphernalia necessary for pro­ per communication: telephones, earphones for simultaneous translations, accoutrements for the preservation of the

Ibid.. p. 67. ^ Qrion Aveugle. p. 4. 230 words of the artist and the bureaucrat. Another inter­ esting connection is made between those whose universe exists only on paper through the list of topics on the program of the conference under the rubric: DIALOGO ENTRE PARLAMENTARIOS Y ESCRITORES 2). La accidn literaria y la funcidn social del legislador. El lenguaje como zona de contacto entre el escritor y el legislador al reflejar ambos una realidad que piensan e imaginan unitariamente•28 The absurdity, the impossibility of this last statement is reinforced by the next set of objects representing man's inability to find any common ground of communica­ tion beyond the primitive: war toys. Early in the novel there is a friendly scene between white European voyagers and the red men of the New World as they greet each other on the beach. The chief is shaking the captain's hand while his men are greeted by broad-hipped, white-skinned beauties who would look more at home in a second empire drawing room, provocatively dressed in feathery cache- sexe. While the scene is a happy one there is still the menacing presence of swords and daggers hanging from the OQ European belts. 7 The next landing scene is a more familiar one of armed men trying to land at the mouth of a river as armed

PQ Les Corns conducteurs. p. 37. 2^Ibid., p. 14. cf. also Orion Aveugle. pp. ?2-73- A lithograph entitled "Christophe Golomb batit une forteresse," by N. Maurin, 1845* 231 red men approach by canoe and on land tpp. 39-4-0). The troops are v/earing helments and breast plates, and carry­ ing crossbows and muskets. There is a gradual progres­ sion through the ages as the v/eapons change and the fighting becomes our own guerrilla warfare: t Queloue fois les ennemis invisibles qui les suivent le dlcouvrent. II peut apercevoir alors, pench&s sur lui, leurs visages empreints d'une somholente cruaut6, leurs yeux aux paupi&res mi-closes. leurs pommettes hautes, leurs epaisses levres superieures qui d&bordent sur la l&vre inf6rieure et leurs cheveux huileux. ...Apr&s l'avoir torturfe ils l'ach£vent de leurs longs couteaux.30

At a South American airport the man watches the tourists buying souvenirs and scurrying through exits and entrances, then se sees two policemen in military uniform: Leurs visages impassibles empreints d'une somnolente cruautfe sont d'une couleur terreuse, les yeux comme deux fentes entre les paupi^res & demi ferm&es, les pommettes hautes, leur l&vre sup§rieure Spaisse d&bordant sur leur l&vre inf§rieure.31

One cannot help but experience an eerie feeling of a race of fighting men rising up like' the race of Cadmus ready to track down their human target. The soldiers and the policemen become one like the people seen inside a store window standing in a line of telephone booths: Les uns apr&s les autres ils glissent lentement sur sa droite, vaguement irrdels, incr6dibles, comme la

3°Ibid., p. 185. 31Ibid.. p. 194-. 232 r6p§tition avec de l&g&res differences d 1expression sur les visages blancs et noirs, d'un seul et unique personnage reproduit k plusieurs exemplaires....32 The apotheosis of the fighting man is finally achieved by immortalizing him on film. The man is at the writers' conference and sees a newspaper on one of the desks which is open to the film page. A picture is shown of a man wearing a beret with a star on the front of it, reminiscent of Ch6 Guevara, with the title printed in bold letters: "El Indomable. The man has just passed the store windov; exhibiting the war planes and troops in camouflaged outfits pene­ trating a miniature jungle. Next there is a blank space for a doorway, and then follows-.another shop window with female dummies wearing very sheer lingerie. This recalls another scene which weaves in and out of the text: the man's short-lived liaison with the woman he keeps trying to reach by telephone without success. During one of the many recollections described in the text, the man and the woman undergo an incredible series of transforma­ tions. It begins with the nude couple lying still in bed. They are compared to the wooden statues of saints carried in processions, statues with a little window in the chest

^ Ibid.. p. 156. 3 2ibid., p. 158 and 148. See also the photo montage in Orion Aveugle. pp. 140-141. 233 to reveal a relic. From the religious statue, without transition, two anatomy dolls are described, male and female, the flesh removed from the chest and abdominal cavities showing the internal organs, the opening covered by a plexiglass mold in the shape of the torsos. A de­ tailed description of the network of veins, arteries and orgEns is given, then we return to the flesh and blood couple. In the next description, the man's hand slips down over the woman's body, sliding slowly over the plexiglass cover revealing the. multi-colored organs, stopping finally between her legs: ...la main...vient A la fin se fixer sur le pubis, l'enfermant, le majeur I6g£reraent engage dans la fente. La respiration de la dormeuse s'acc^ldre. A travers le couvercle transparent, on peut voir la masse pourpre du coeur se dilater et se resserrer A intervalles plus rapides.34- As we look through the plexiglass cover at the increased activity, the focus is shifted to the sinuous, swollen vein on the temple of the old woman standing in the hotel lobby looking at her boa lying on the floor. A similar scene takes place again much later in the novel. It be­ gins with the man and the woman in the apartment. The woman is standing with a towel covering her chest and the line formed by the towel becomes the start of the opening

^ Les Corps conducteurs. p. 69* 23^ of the chest cavity covered by the plexiglass. We note again that there is no transition: ...la serviette ne permet de voir que l'extrAmitA supSrieure de l'ouverture e.n forme de caisse de violoncelle protegee par la plaque de plexiglass derriere laquelle on distingue de gros tubes bleus et rouges....35 Without transition, the next sentence describes the pulse in the woman's neck which is scarcely visible as the blood comes through the vessels just under the surface of the skin. The next sentence begins quite naturally in what seems a continuation of the already familiar net­ work of vessels and such viewed through the plexiglass. However, the change, while a shock at first, comes ulti­ mately as no surprise: D'6troits rubans de couleur blanc, rouge et jaune d' environ deux railli mitres de large indiquent sur 1©,,- plan les trajets des differences lignes de m6tro..,.36 At the bottom of the map a key is given identifying the different colored lines, just as the anatomy chart pro­ vides the names of various numbered parts: "Rubans rouges: IND LINES, rubans bleus: IRT LINES, rubans jaunes: BMT LINES* Pastilles blanches: LOCAL STOPS, pastilles blanches. & centres noirs: EXPRESS STOPS, deux pastilles A centres noirs reliAes par un trait: FREE TRANSFER."^

^Xbid., p. 161. 56Ibid. 5 7 Ibid. 235 Y/e are given no opportunity to recover. Opposite the color key there is a photograph advertising a hotel located in the heart of the city— the phrase is in script and stands out. The next line begins with a description of the anatomy of the heart at the end of which we see the man sitting in the doctor's office looking at a pic­ ture of a young girl on an operating table. The man has finally come to the end of his walk past the shop windows and the last sight he sees is the people lined up behind a glass, confined in the narrow rectangles of telephone booths. The description ends with a very apt paradoxical image relating what is hap­ pening behind the glass partition, as well as in the writers' conference, which follows directly: ,.,chacun poursuivant pour lui seul un interminable discours. passionn&, volubile, dans^une silencieuse et incoherencecacophonie,les d£l6gues autour de la longue table verte parlant et gesticulant maintenant tons k la fois, le petit president essayant de temps,a i autre de lever la main pour reclamer le silence.**^ There is a very conscious emphasis on the working of the body and its relationship to people, objects, and geometric forms. At the very beginning of the novel, the first line describes a dozen female legs lined up symmetri­ cally, foot up, thigh sectioned off at the groin, decorat­ ing a hosiery shop window. The plastic legs remind him

?8Ibid.. p. 156. 236 of prosthetic devices and the scene shifts immediately to a young intern holding a severed leg under his arm, following his instructor along with the other interns, looking more like slaughter house workers than doctors. After the description of their rounds and the visit to the girl on the operating table, whom we have already seen earlier on page 10 (which turns out to be a picture on the wall of the doctor's office), the man focuses on the shiny surface of the plastic legs. The reverie is interrupted by the doctor telling the man to lower his trousers. Throughout the novel the body is dissected, covered with a plexiglass torso, described in textbook style, presented in anatomical charts— whole and in sections— , killed, loved and rejected. By extension, even buildings are presented in cross-section, as well as planes, to show their inner workings.^ The presentation of the human body is so objective, geometrically accurate, that even the sexual embrace of lovers seems to be transformed into the plastic substance of the show windows. What would ordinarily be shocking becomes an amusing contrast as the man walks through the seedy pornographic district

59Ibid,, pp. 217, 222-223. 40cf. Le Vent, p. 104. 237 of the big city and stops in front of one of the windows. The magazines are lined up in the window, the covers showing pictures of men and women in poses that favor the display of the sexual organs, but there is a black rectangle pasted on the covers for the sake of modesty. The magazines on the inside edge of the window are free of the little black rectangles and the genitalia are re­ vealed, but there is no mystery uncovered or any romance promised at the sight of them, and the description that follows freezes these organs in the indifference of ob­ jectivity and repellence as in the case of the female counterpart: ...vulves aux lfevres ouvertes, aux muqueuses humides, roses, lilas ou bistres, entour6es de toisons plus ou moins fournies ou quelquefois ras§es, ce qui leur donne 1*aspect de bubons, saillants et IclatSs, fendus verticalernent, aux chairs gonfl§es et l&g&re- ment enflammdes. Les membres des hommes ont le gland dScouvert et son bourrelet retient une collerette de peau pliss6. Quoique aucun ne soit en Erection ils sont tous de grande taille et leur extremity pend au-dessous de la partie inf£rieure des couilles dont le PQids 6tire la peau en forme de sac 3. demi vide.^1 In the plane the man is reading a magazine article on the action of gonadotrophins which includes a cross-section of the male reproductive organs. The cross-section of the penis is truncated, for the sake of modesty the man

i l l Les Corns conducteurs. pp. 150-151* 238 imagines. The size of the genitalia is out of proportion to the other organs, much the same as the organs dis­ played on the magazine covers, which elicits an amusing admonition: II ne convient done pas d'accorder une signification particulidre au fait que les testicules et la naissance de la verge sectionn&e forment une tache environ deux fois plus grande que celle du cerveau. Le texte explicatif restitue d'ailleurs & ce dernier son importance dans le fonctionnement du systdme.^ The walk back to his hotel is accomplished painfully and as he walks down the corridor to his room, we see a longitudinal cross-section of the rooms: some are empty, others are occupied: certains en train de se laver les mains ou se brosser les dents, d'autres defaisant ou refermant les valises, d'autres fecrivant des lettres, d'autres encore assis dans leurs fauteuils ou §tendus d£- chaussSs sur les lits en train de feuilleter des journaux ou des magazines.43 The rhythm, the activity of life continues around him; the cutaway view of the rooms on his floor shows the ebb and flow within that concrete structure, a view similar to the animated anatomy dolls. The man reaches his room and faints. He recovers enough of his strength to rise up on all fours and remains in that position. He can hear the sound of a plane over the roar of the blood

^ I b i d . , pp. 165-166. ^ I b i d . , p. 225. 239 pounding in his ears. The fuselage .of the plane is cut away longitudinally, showing the passengers and crew frozen in various stages of activity. Following the cross-section of the plane is.a cross-section of the head showing the major parts arid ending with a descrip­ tion of the retina: "sur laquelle les images du monde viennent se plaquer, glisser, l'une prenant la place de l'autre* The man is still on all fours staring at the carpet, discovering the complex designs in it as well as the worn spots that reveal the woof, and end the novel: De microscopiques debris, des poussiferes, des brins de cheveux, des poils roul6s en spirale, des crins, parsement les taches roses, mauves, vert amende, ou jaun&tres striees aux endroits les plus uses par les raies paralleles et grises de la trame mise & nu.4-5 We could stop at this ideal point, the last line of the novel, and consider the■possibilities suggested by the word "trame" which also refers to plot in French. Hov/ever, if we wish to remain faithful to Claude Simon's suggestion, we might do better to go in search of another theme. As our man was stumbling through the asphalt for­ est of symbols, conductors and objects that approximate other objects, there was a figure striding across the

^ I b i d . , p. 226. asked Mr. Simon if he v/as referring to the Henry James "figure in the carpet" image in this last line: "la trame mise A nu," but he said he was not familiar with that particular metaphor. 2^0 stage on another level, in another dimension, and that was the blind Orion. He appeared first as a constella- tion, then depicted in the famous painting by Poussin. The Orion painting appeared in 1658, among a group of late paintings by Poussin called The Late Mythological Landscapes, According to art critic Anthony Blunt, man appears in these paintings, but only in a subordinate capacity: "he never dominates the scene...but serves on ■4 the contrary as a foil to the grandeur of nature, which is the artist's veritable theme. Orion seems to be headed toward a goal, while our man on the street staggers; Orion takes giant steps across the heavens, while our man sits on a fire hydrant. Anthony Blunt describes these deities as being far removed from the frailty of human beings for the gods are "ab­ stract beings existing in a world above love or any other

/(Q emotion..." While the deities may be far removed from these mortal creatures, Simon's man and Poussin's Orion seem to be, if not closer, at least travelling similar paths. One of the transitions from conductor to conductor

^6Les Corps conducteurs, pp. 58, 70-71* 77-79# See also Orion Aveugle, pp. 150-131 for a reproduction of this painting. ^Anthony Blunt, Nicholas Poussin. Bollingen Series XXXV, 7 (New York, Pantheon Books, 1987), P# 313# 48I£id., p. 315. 241 is the one where the man, at the writers' conference, is momentarily blinded by a shaft of light which filtered into the room when someone or something brushed against a curtain. The next sentence describes the blind Orion groping at the emptiness before him: ...qui l'aveugle, Un de ses bras tendus en avant, tdtonnant dans le vide, Orion avance toujours en direction du soleil levant,,..49 We can insist on the analogy further when we recall the earlier scene already discussed above in which the man, rejected by the woman, encounters the eyes that do not see. In a sixteenth century account of Orion's birth*^ it is explained that the birth is an allegorical repre­ sentation of clouds and rain. Through the evaporation of water, Orion violates Aerope and is cast down from this region deprived of his sight. The natural cycle is begun again as Vulcan guides Orion to the rising sun where his sight is restored. In Simon's description of Orion, the figure of the giant is moved from the painting to its place in the sky once again: Tout indique qu'il n'atteindra son^but, puisque A mesure que le soleil s'el£ve, les 6toiles qui

^ L es Corps conducteurs. p. 222. ^°Natalis Comes quoted by Blunt, op. cit.. p. 315. zkz dessinent le corps du g6ant pdlissent, s'Sffacent, et la fabuleuse silhouette immobile k grands pas s'estompera peu k peu jusqu'd disparaltre dans le ciel d'Aurore.51 Simon has effectively reconciled two opposing forces in the transition of Orion from an anthropomorphic earth- bound figure to a heavenly constellation. The Heracli- tean cycle of the eternal return is observed but at the same time, contiguous with this state of flux, we find the paradox of Zeno at work again: instead of Achilles, it is Orion who is immobile with great speed. When the sun sets again, Orion will be travelling that winding path in Poussin's landscape, moving toward the sun while ■ simultaneously he remains immobile with great speed in the heavens, passing over another man who studies the weave left bare on his retina by the parade of images of the world.

^ Les Corps conducteurs. p. 222. CONCLUSION

• This dissertation attempts to provide an introduc­ tion to the literary style, of Claude Simon through the examination of .certain of his novels from the temporal and Cubist perspectives. There is no pretense on my part, nor on Claude Simon's, to claim uniqueness in the first perspective. He follov/s in the footsteps of Proust Joyce, and Faulkner; that is, Simon has read and admired their works and recognizes a debt to their teaching of the art of the novel. The Cubist perspective is also one reached by studying the great modern masters, many of whom he met. Of course, knowing a painter or even studying under one does not guarantee success. Simon chose to write because there is already Picasso. It took Simon forty-eight years to become the Picasso of the novel. In a letter dated 17 December, 1972, Claude Simon informed me that he had just completed the proofs of his latest novel Triptyque« "qui m'ont donne beaucoup de travail." The title alone seemed to justify the atten­ tion paid to the artistic perspective in this disserta­ tion. It also brought to mind the sub-title of Le Vent, the novel which officially brought Simon into the ranks of the "new novelists" in 1957*. In sixteen years we have gone full circle from the "retable baroque" to the "triptych," but with a note of caution: the points in this circle will doubtless be offset in the same manner as the "revolution" of Le Palace. The same year that Les Corns conducteurs appeared, there was an exhibition of the paintings of Francis Bacon at the Petit Palais in Paris. Simon is a great admirer of this painter and he urged me to see the exhib­ it. In addition to the pleasure of becoming re-acquaint­ ed with Bacon's works, I discovered a number of portraits done in the form of triptychs. Each part emphasizes one particular aspect of the subject so that three different views of the face were visible although the total paint­ ing still lacked certain specific features. The viewer became aware that while parts were missing from the whole, the representation of the subject was complete. This technique helps the reader appreciate the nature of Simon'1 s oeuvre in which the . individual novels appear fragmented and disassociated until placed within the framework of the total work. In its biennial survey of North American painting, the Whitney Museum in New York has exhibited a number of paintings emphasizing the use of the polyptych , 2^5 (multi-part picture). Commenting on the effect of this type of structure, the critic observes that "visually, it adds a strong vertical element to a horizontal flow. One of the paintings is a "tetraptych" (four panels) by Jasper Johns which contains many autobiographical ele­ ments rendered in a highly symbolic manner.^ The critic sees this painting as the concern on the part of the painter to preserve memories or re-evoke lost experiences. He goes so far as to suggest a novelistic treatment: The division of the image into four parts facili­ tates a narrative, you could call it a novelistic treatment, in which the artist can preserve ’these fragments I have shored against my ruins'.4* We see that whether by design or coincidence Simon has maintained a novelistic style which parallels the tech­ niques of the "New Painters." That the reading of the

^Thomas B. Hess, "Polypolyptychality," NewYork Magazine, vol. 6, no. 8 (19 February, 1973), p. 73* Ibid., cf. also Chapter VI above, note 23! "Je pense que, pour tout le monde, 1*evocation de lignes perpendicu- laires et d'angles droits, correspond & une certaine id6e de stability et de security." ^Untitled (1972), 72" x 102". The four panels repre­ sent from left to right: bundles of stripes; tv/o panels in the center contain a flagstone motif, white "stones" on white and eight red or black "stones" in each of the two center panels; seven boards screwed to the canvas with plaster cast parts of the human body attached to each board the whole painted flesh color, cf. Orion Aveugle. p. 20, Fernandez Arman, Petites mains— montage— 19b0; Les Corps conducteurs, the shop window, p. 7* h. Hess, op. cit.. p. 73* 246 proofs of his most recent novel required a great deal of effort must mean that Simon has not changed his basic technique: "finding" through Scriture, It is no surprise to find Simon in the vanguard of the novel, as are Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in painting. Simon has always seen himself as, "un sen- soriel" which pre-disposes him to the role of visionary rather than that of a chronicler of society.^ On many occasions he has insisted on the fact that he is not against Balzac but rather against those people who in- sist on writing like Balzac in the 1970's* Sometimes the rejection of the idea that the literary techniques of the past are still valid in the present is interpreted by some critics as an absolute rejection of the past which inspires a revolutionary rhetoric which spills over the bounds of literature. One particular critic goes so far as to say that the textual activity of a number of the“hew novelists" and "new critics" is geared to the

^See Chapter V above, note 46, cf, also Maurice Mer- leau-Ponty: "Sentir, vivre, la vie sensorielle est comme un trfcsor, mais aui ne vaut encore rien tant qu'il n'y a pas eu travail. Le travail ne consiste pas seulement, d'ailleurs, & 'convertir en mots' le vecu; il s'agit ae faire parler ce qui est senti." In: "Cinq notes sur Claude Simon. '* Mediations« no. .4 (Winter, 1961)* p* 8*

Conversation, 21 December, 1971* 24? subversion of "the literary, political, social, and moral 7 structures of Western culture. " r Simon was named among those writing-with the same subversive intent. This charge, was already answered by Robbe-Grillor who in 1961 . declared: II n'est pas raisonnable, d&s lors, de pretendre dans nos roman servir une cause politique, mdme une cause qui nous parait juste, m§me si dans notre vie politique nous militons pour son triomphe.® Claude Simon is the only one of the ’’new novelists1' to v/rite about a particular war or conflict, but even then the focus is not placed on the struggle for the sake of expounding a specific political cause. As we saw in Chap­ ter Three, the revolution in Le Palace is not synonymous with the civil war taking place in Spain; and while the setting of La Route des Flandres is the French defeat of 1940, the real battle in the novel takes place in the narrator's mind .one night several years after the end of the war. Another critic of the "new novel" provides a counter-argument to those who read total revolution pro­ claimed by this group: "The nouveau roman seems to me to be revolutionary in the very best sense, being committed to producing a change in the structures of consciousness

^Roudiez, on. cit,. p. 384. Q "Nouveau roman, horame nouveau," Pour un nouveau Roman (Paris: Les Editions de M.inuit, 1963)* P* 120. 248 rather than any direct change in this or that institu­ te tion or practice." One of Simon's own characters seems to provide the most devastating response when Georges, in La Route des Flaridresfrefuses to be moved by news of the destruction of the venerable Leipzig library: to him generations of books have.done nothing to save man from self-destruction. In one sense I feel that Simon has this view in mind when he rejects the label of intellectual or man­ darin: a writer cannot inspire action; he describes it. The writer's craft is not an act of political engage­ ment; it is rather a voyage of self-discovery which a reader may witness, but whatever the writer's purpose may be, man's eternal follies stand firm, V/hen we consider.again the idea of the dual pers­ pective in the oeuvre of Claude Simon, the sources of his vision go beyond the limits imposed by the conser­ vative critics, who see in his work an unacceptable substitute for the realistic, verifiable, balzacian literature of the nineteenth century. The linear, chronological exact novel of the past century has given way to a fiction in which time becomes an illusion, a symbol., the shaft of light in the shape of the letter

^John Sturrock, The French New Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969J, p. 2^9 'T* in L'Herbe. a long wall with peeling posters in Le Vent, a glacier moving imperceptibly in La Route des Flandres. a gel on a photographic film in Le Palace. There is a great disparity between the narrative- time and the duration of the action in the novel. For exam­ ple, in Les Corps conducteurs the duration of the action might be the instant the man stands before the shop win­ dow. The elapsed time of the actual action in the novel is minute, but the accumulation of time in the form of thousands of insignificant actions represents a destruc­ tive force. It is only through a significant act (vio­ lence, coitus, or revelation) that man is released from the press of time and projected into a sphere of immobi­ lized action. Some critics see a certain finality, a process of disintegration represented in Simon's.novels, with the implication that there will be an inevitable . 10 collapse without a succeeding rebirth. This attitude is negated by the presence of the heraclitean-eleatic dichotomy in the later novels by Claude Simon dating

"...his theme is defeat, defeat not just for the recognizable individual but for the great mass of hu­ manity, without exception." John Sturrockj The French New Kovel, op. cit.. p. 102. cf. also: "His is a lit­ erary structure frozen miraculously at the moment of collapse, an ephemeral moment of equilibrium between the forces of order and the forces of chaos." Ibid., P. 103. 250 from I960 and La Route deg Flandres. A total collapse is impossible in the play between the perpetual re-ordering, re-constructing, returning of the heraclitean universe, and the motion-less world of Parmenides.^ The temporal perspective of Claude Simon transcends the narrow limits imposed on him by those critics who see only an imitation of the temporal worlds of Proust, Joyce, and Faulkner. Simon has reached back to the writ­ ings of the pre-socratic philosophers for his concept of time. It is curious that many critics read only a brood­ ing pessimism in his novels— inspired by the destructive role of time— while Simon the man finds his life con­ stantly renewed in the discovery of self through 6criture The Cubist perspective of Claude Simon— like the temporal— does not find its roots exclusively in the 12 twentieth century. As early as 194-7 Simon expressed his deep passion for the works of Poussin, and it is to

Simon seems to be pursuing a concept which the structuralists also find intriguing in a more political context, cf. Henri Lefebvre, "Claude Levi-Strauss et le nouvel 4l§atisme," Au-delA du structuralisme (Paris: Editions Ant’nropos, 1971)» "pp* 272-273! "Que vise done le nouvel 6leatisrae? II ne veut plus? comme l'ancien, contester le mouvement sensible, le m e r et le rejeter dans l'apparent. II conteste le mouvement dans l'his- toire. II ne se contents plus de nier l'histoire comme science; il conteste 1 'historicite fondamentale con9ue par Marx en la consid£rant comme une ideologie p£rim6e." •^La Corde raide. pp. 121-122. the works of Poussin that the Cubists looked by way of C§zanne.'L^ It is from this respected tradition that Simon has inherited his artist's perspective. It can be said that, in the final analysis, Claude Simon writes with the fervor of the visionary who is ready to communi­ cate his vision to the world: "vision sensorielle est IZl vision de visionnaire.11 Simon has a favorite quote on this subject: My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel— it is, before all, to make you see. That, and no more, and it is everything.^5 It has been my purpose in this study to examine the temporal and Cubist perspectives in the work of Claude Simon in order to propose another dimension for the reader to explore, a dimension which is beyond the con­ fines of one particular "school," in one finite genera­ tion, I have attempted to suggest a greater, more universal scope which is commensurate with the talent of this most extraordinary writer,

■^See Chapter Six above, note 4-7# cf, also Pierre Prancastel, "L*Actuality de Poussin," Mediations, no, 1 (1961), p, 8; "La touche de Poussin, c'est la touche moderne; plus m§me, dirait-on, que la touche de C&zanne." 1Zh-Ierleau-Ponty, op. cit.« p. 5. ■^Joseph Conrad, preface to The Nigger of the Nar- cissus. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OP WORKS CONSULTED SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Works of Claude Simon

Le Tricheur. Paris : Sa^ittaire. 1945. Ed. de Mlnult7'1946. La Corde raide. Paris : Saprittaire. 1947. Ed. de I'iinuit, 15¥7. Gulliver. Paris : Calmann-Levy, 1952. -Le Sacre du printemps. Paris : Calmann-Levy, 1954* — — Le Vent - tentative de restitution d'un retable baroque. Paris : Ed. de Minuit, 1^57• L'Herbe. Paris : Ed. de Minuit, 1958* -La Route des Plandres. Paris : Ed. de Minuit, I960. Palace. Paris’: Ed, de Minuit, 1962. -La Separation. Adapted from L*Herbe. Unpublished. -Femmes. Paris : Maeght, 1966. Histoire. Paris : Ed. de Minuit, 1967* — — La Bataille de Pharsale. Paris : Ed. de Minuit, 1969. — •— Orion Aveugle. Geneva : Skira, 1970* -Les Corns conducteurs. Paris : Ed, de Minuit, 1971#

252 253 Interviews and lectures Juin, Hubert. Interview with Claude Simon. Lettres Francaises* 6 Oct.# I960. Sarraute, Claude. Interview de Claude Simon. Le Monde# 8 Oct., I960. Bourin, Andr6» "Les Techniciens du roman". Nouvelles Littdraires, 29 Dec., I960. Simon, Claude. New Year's Day Lecture at the Sorbonne. Lettres Franchises, Jan., 1961. Bourdet, Denise. Interview with Claude Simon. Revue de Paris, Jan. I96I. Chapsal, Madeleine. Interview avec Claude Simon. L'Express, 7 April, 1962. Piater, Jaqueline. Interview with Claude Simon. Le MQnde, 26 April, 1967. Knapp, Bettina. "Document* Interview avec Claude Simon". Kentucky Romance Quarterly, XVI, no. 2 (1969), pp. 179-180. Anonymous interview with Claude Simon. Nouvelles Litt^raires 8 April, 1971. Rodriguez, Fernando. Interview with Claude Simon. 21 Dec., 1971# (unpublished)• 25*+ Articles Berger* Yves* "L'Enfer, le temps#*1 La'Nouvelle Revue Francaise# 97 (Jan., 1961), pp. 95-109* Bleikasten, Andrd. ’’Faulkner et le nouveau roman," Les Langues modernes, *+ (July-August, 1966), p.""5*+. Peyre, Henre* "Trends in the Contemporary French Novel," New French Writings, ed., George Borchardt. New York* Criterion Books, 1961. pp. 73-87. Camproux, Charles. "La Langue et le style des 6crivaihs," Lettres Francaises, 7 May, 1959* P* 9* Guicharnaud, Jacques, "Remembrance of Things Passing* Claude Simon," Yale French Studies, no. 2*+, pp. 101-108* Hatzfeld, Helmut, "Same [sic] Minor 'New Novel* Writers," Trends and Styles in Twentieth Century French Literature. Washington D.Cot Catholic University of American Press, 1966. Huyghe, Ren6. "L'Art et le monde moderns," La Revue de Paris, Feb. 1970. pp. 1-6* Levitt, Morton. "Disillusionment and Epiphanyt the Novels of Claude Simon," Critique, Studies in Modern Fiction, XII, no. 1 (1970). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. "LVOeil et 1'esprit," Temps modernes, nos. 18^-185 (1961), PP* 193-22?. "Cinq notes sur Claude Simon," Mediations. no. ^ (Winter, 1961), pp. 5-9* Pingaud, Bernard. "Sur La Route des Flandres," Temps modernes, no. 178 (Feb., 1971). Reff, Theodore. "Degas and the literature of his time," Burlington Magazine I (Sept., 1970), pp. 575-589# and *11 (Oct., 1970), pp. 67^-688. Roudiez, Ldon. "Les Tendances actuelles de l'^criture* presentation et bibliographie," French Review, XLV, no. 2 (Dec., 1971)# P* 329* S^nart, Philippe. "Autour des romans," La Revue de Paris, March, 1970, pp. 125-126. 255 Simon, John K. "Perception and Metaphor in the 'New Novel't Notes on Robbe-Grillet, Simon and Butor," Tri-Quarterly, no, 4- (Fall, 1965)* .Thidbaut, Marcel, "Claude Simon," La Revue de Paris (Dec., 1958), P. 159. Wakefield, D.F. "Art Historians and Art Critics— VIIIi Proust and the Visual Arts,” Burlington Magazine., May, 1970, pp. 291-296. Wilhelm Kurt, "Claude Simon als Nouveau Romancier," Zeit- schrift fUr Franz '6 si sc he Sprache und Literatur, LXXV, no. 4 (Dec., 1965), pp. 309-352. 256

Studies

Albdr&s, Rend Marill. Bilan littdraire du XXe sidcle. Paris : Aubier, . Histoire du roman moderne. 4-th ed. Paris : Ilbin Michel, 1971. . Mdtaraorphoses du roman. Paris : Albin Michel. ;— — 1966;------Albouy, Pierre. Myth.es et Mythologies dans la littdra- ture francaise. Paris : Armand Colin, 1969* Astier, Pierre A.G, La Crise du roman francais et le nouveau rdalisnie. Paris 7 Debresse, 1969. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. New York : Orion Press, i9&4-. Barridre, Jean-Bertrand. La Cure d'amaigrissement du- roman. Paris : Albin Mechel, 1964-, Bersani, Leo, Balzac to Beckett. Center and Oircumfer- ence in Prench Fiction! New York, Oxford Univ­ ersity Press, 1970. Bloch-Michel, Jean. Le Prdsent de l'indicatif ; Essai sur le nouveau roman. Paris : Gallimard, 1963. Blunt, Anthony. Nicholas Poussin ; The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Pine Arts. 1958! Bollingen . Series XXXV. 7» New York : Pantheon Books, 196?. Boisdeffre, Pierre de. La Cafetidre est sur la table. Paris : La Table Ronde, 1967* •. Une Histoire vivante de la littdrature 5!1 auli ourTP Hul. Paris : XJerrin, 1964. Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths : Selected Stories and Other Writings. Ed. by Donald "A. Yates"^nd~James is. Irby, New York : New Directions, 1964.

t 257

Brombert, Victor. The Intellectual Hero. Studies in the French Novel. 1680 •• 1955. New York : J. B. Lippincott Go,, 1^61. Brun, Jean. Hferaclite ou le philosophe de 1'Eterne.i Retour" Paris :~Seghers, 1969. Daix, Pierre. Nouvelle Critique et art moderne. Paris : Seuil, 1968. Ehrmann, Jacques, ed. Structuralism. New York : Doubleday, 1970. Fletcher, John. New Directions in Literature. Lon-, don : Gaidar & Boyars, 1968. Fowlie, Wallace. The French Critic. 154-c? - 1967. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1968. Frohock, W, M, Style and Temper. Studies in French Fiction. 1925 - 1960. Cambridge*, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 1967. Gablik, Suzi. Magritte. Greenwich, Connecticut : Nev; York Graphic Society, 1970. Genette, G6rard. Figures. Paris : Seuil, 1966. Golding, John. Cubism. A History and an Analysis. 1907 - 1914-. 2nd ed. Jjondon : Faber & Faber, 1968, Grossvogel, David I. Limits of the Novel. Evolution of a Form from Chaucer to Robbe-Grillet. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1968. Hyman, Stanley Edgar. Standards: A Chronicle of Books for our Time. New York : Horizon Press, 19^6, Hautecoeur, Louis. Littferature et Peinture en franee du XVII au XX si&cle. 2nd. Paris : Armand coiin, ---- - 258 Jaffe-Freem, Elly. Alain Robbe-Grillet et la peinture cubiste. Amsterdam : Meuleriko'ff, 1966. Janvier, Ludovic. Une Parole exigeante. Le Nouveau Roman. Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1964. Kirk, G. S., and J. E. Raven. The Presocratic Philoso­ phers : A Critical History with a Selection of~ Texts. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1 5 5 7 7 ... Lacan, Jacques. .EaritGy *>2 Vbls. ' Paris : Seuil, 1966. Lane, Michael, ed. Structuralism : A Reader. . London Jonathan Cape, l § ? 0 . LeSage, Laurent. The French New Novel. An Introduction and a Sampler. University Park ,: Penn State University, 1962. ______, The Rev/ French Criticism. College Park : Lefebvre, Henri. Au-del& du structuralisme. Paris : Id. Anthropos, 1971. Lfevi-Strauss, Claude. La Pens&e sauvage. Paris : Plon, 1962. Macksey, Richard and Eugenio Donato, ed. The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man ; The Structuralist Controversy. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins, 1970. Mandel, Siegfried. Contemporary European Novelists. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1968. Mansuy, Michel, ed. Positions et Oppositions sur le roman contemporain. Actes etColloques No, 8, Actes du Colloaue de Strasbourg. Paris : Klinck- sieck, 1971. Matthews, J. H,, ed. Un Nouveau Roman? recherches et traditions, la critique fetranglre. Les Lettres Modernes, "Situation" No. 5. I'aris : Minard', 1964. 259 Mauriac, Claude# L'Alittferature contemporaine. Paris : Albin Michel, 1969• Mercier, Vivian# The New Novel, irom Queneau_to Pinget. New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 19/■'I. *arrd iteSeTVihe'Var in d'Ainvelle. Le - ■ - Structuralisme. Paris s Editions UniversXtaire, 1 W > . Morissette, Bruce. Les Romans de Robbe-Grillet. Paris : Les Editions de Minuit, 19&3» Ramnoux, ClGmence. Hferaclite. ou l'homme entre les choses et les mots, Paris : Society d * §dition t'Les Belles Lettres," 1968# Ricardou, Jean. Pour une thfeorie du Nouveau Roman# Paris s Seuil, 1971. . Problfcmes du Nouveau Roman. Paris : Seuil. t967. Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Four un Nouveau Roman. Paris : Editions de Minuit, 1965* Robinson, John Mansley. An Introduction to Early G-neek Philosophy : The Chief Fragments and Ancient Testimony, with Connecting Commentary. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 196S# Rosenberg, Harold, The De-definition of Art : Action Art to Pop tb~Barthworks. New York : Horizon tress, 1972. Rosenblum, Robert. Cubism and Twentieth Century Art. New York : Abrams, I960, Roudiez, Leon S, French Faction Today i A N<*w Direction. New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, 1972. Rousseaux, Andr6. Literature du vingtifeme sifecle. Vol. VII. Paris t. Albin Michel, l96l. . 260 . Sarraute, Nathalie. L ’Er^dn sauncon. Paris : Galli- ®ariy"i,956. Seguier, Marcel, ed, "Claude Simon." Entretiens. no. 31, 2e triraestre, 1972. Simon, John K., ed. Modern French Criticism : From Proust and Valferv to Structuralism. Chicago : University of Chicago, 1972. Sturrock, John, The French New Novel. London : Oxford University Press, 1969* Sypher, Wylie. Rococo to Cubism in Art and L-iterature. New York : Random House, i960. . Loss of the Self in Modern Literature and Art. New York : Random House, 1962. Todorov, Tzvetan. Pofetique de la prose. Paris : Seuil, 1971. ______, ed. Thfeorie de la littferature : Textes des formalistes russes, Paris : Seuil, 1965* Weber, Jean-Paul. Nfeo-critioue et oalSo-critlQUe ou Contre PicarcU Paris : Pauvert, 1966.