Tropisms

by Nathalie Sarraute, Maria Jolas (Translator)

Considered one of the major French writers of our century, Nathalie Sarraute is the author of several novels, plays, and essays, as well as of Childhood, her autobiography. A pioneer of the nouveau roman (or "new novel"), a literary movement that sought to free the novel from the confines of plot, characterization, and time, she was recently honored by the presentation of her complete works in the prestigious Pliade series (other authors in the series include Honor de Balzac, Ernest Hemingway, and Franz Kafka). George Braziller is delighted to have been publishing all of Sarraute's work in America since 1958.

Genres: France, Fiction, Short Stories, French Literature, Classics, Literature, 20th Century

72 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1939

About the author

Nathalie Sarraute (July 18, 1900 in Ivanovo, Russia – October 19, 1999 in Paris, France) was a lawyer and a French writer of Russian-Jewish origin.

Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo (then known as Ivanovo-Voznesensk), 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 (although she frequently referred to the year of her birth as 1902, a date still cited in select reference works), and, following the divorce of her parents, spent her childhood shuttled between France and Russia. In 1909 she moved to Paris with her father. Sarraute studied law and literature at the prestigious Sorbonne, having a particular fondness for 20th century literature and the works of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, who greatly affected her conception of the novel, then later studied history at Oxford and sociology in Berlin, before passing the French bar exam (1926-1941) and becoming a lawyer.
In 1925, she married Raymond Sarraute, a fellow lawyer, with whom she would have three daughters. In 1932 she wrote her first book, Tropismes, a series of brief sketches and memories that set the tone for her entire oeuvre. The novel was first published in 1939, although the impact of World War II stunted its popularity. In 1941, Sarraute, who was Jewish, was released from her work as a lawyer as a result of Nazi law. During this time, she went into hiding and made arrangements to divorce her husband in an effort to protect him (although they would eventually stay together).
Nathalie Sarraute dies when she was ninety-nine years old. Her daughter, the journalist Claude Sarraute, was married to French Academician Jean-François Revel.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tropisms is a set of fleeting studies… a collection of ephemeral etudes… As if Nathalie Sarraute were peeping at the world through a keyhole of her consciousness and describing her impressions.

Not before him above all, not before him, later, when he will not be there, but not now. It would be too dangerous, too indecorous to talk about that before him.
She kept her ears open, intervened so he would not hear, kept on talking herself, tried to divert his attention: “The depression… and this increasing unemployment. Of course, to him that was clear, he being so conversant with these matters… But she didn’t know… However, she had been told… But he was right, when you thought about it, everything became so obvious, so simple… It was curious, heartbreaking to see the naïveté of so many worthy people.” Everything went well. He seemed pleased. Drinking his tea the while, he was explaining things in that indulgent way of his, quite sure of himself, and from time to time, wrinkling his cheek and pressing his tongue against his back teeth to dislodge a bit of food stuck in them, he would make a peculiar noise, a sort of whistle which, with him, always had a little satisfied, carefree note.

Moods… Nuances of the mood… Changes of the mood… Catch a moment… A moment of sadness… A moment of solitude… Moments of shyness and secret adoration… Instants of acquiring knowledge about the world and life.

In the most secret recesses, among the treasures that were the best hidden, she rummaged about with her avid fingers. Everything “intellectual.” She had to have it. For her. For her, because she knew now the real value of things. She had to have what was intellectual.
There were a great many like her, hungry, pitiless parasites, leeches, firmly settled on the articles that appeared, slugs stuck everywhere, spreading their mucus on corners of Rimbaud, sucking on Mallarmé, lending one another Ulysses or the Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, which they slimed with their low understanding.

What is our life if not a sum of brief moments? The entire wide world consists of the tiny fragments of existence.

[Ilse · Rating 5 out of 5]

And there, when he went walking at nightfall, in the quiet little snowy streets that were filled with a gentle indulgence, he would run his hands lightly over the red and white bricks of the houses and, clinging to the wall, sidewise, through fear of being indiscreet, he would look through the clear panes into downstairs rooms in which green plants on china saucers had been set in the window, and from where, warm, full, heavy with a mysterious denseness, objects tossed him a small part—to him too, although he was unknown and a stranger—of their radiance; where the corners of a table, the door of a sideboard, the straw seat of a chair emerged from the half-light and consented to become for him, mercifully for him, too, since he was standing there waiting, a little bit of his childhood.

Usually I tend to struggle with writing that is regarded as experimental, even in case the eloquence, erudition or playfulness of it stuns me. A few years ago I pencil-marked lots of lush sentences in the amazingly poetical Passages by Ann Quin because they resonated with me aesthetically, but I was relieved when arriving at the last page of the book, finding it hard to make sense of it and postponing a re-read, assuming a revisit wouldn’t bring much reading joy. So why Sarraute’s fragments, without continuing narrative or plot, without names or identifiable characters - a character could as well be a china doll, a marionette as a human being, there are children, a grabby family friend, a grandfather who holds a grandchild’s hand teaching it how to cross a zebra crossing, cooks, servants, housewives devouring chocolate éclairs in tearooms, only denoted by personal pronouns,‘they’, ‘he’ and ‘she’ – elicited the kind of reading rapture that prompted me to read it a second time within a month after I finished it ?

I was charmed by the lyricism of some of Sarraute’s fragments and the wild variety in moods (unsettling, menacing, tender, pensive, slight disquiet). The evocation of how one bends oneself under expectations of others, of one’s family, especially as a child touched a chord (several fragments reminded me of her autobiographical Enfance, the child sitting on her bed in a room, contemplating, her intellectual greediness). Sarraute opens windows where there are none, observing the characters as living dolls moving around in doll’s house, offering the reader the position of a privileged outsider who can look through the walls of an apartment block and observe how life is lived intensely within the rooms at view, showing slices of life in slow motion, the succinctness of the vignettes intensifying and enlarging the exteriorised inner experience of every day drama. In Sarraute’s own words: “What I tried to do was to show certain inner “movements” by which I had long been attracted; in fact, I might even say that, ever since I was a child, these movements, which are hidden under the commonplace, harmless appearances of every instant of our lives, had struck and held my attention.”



The changes in perspective, the shape and the observing angle found in these fragments reminded me of some of the few short stories of Virginia Woolf I have read, essentially A Haunted House - Virginia Woolf and The Lady in the Looking-Glass. Sarraute named Woolf as one of her influences and particularly the way both writers conjure up the feeling of being in a room, a subtle sense of how one’s body relates to other bodies, objects, furniture and the intensity and precision of the prose when gracefully evoking detail. However Sarraute’s exploration on the edges of consciousness is a darker and more haunting one, the recurrent dissonances which surface in the fragments in the form of slightly disconcerting animalistic metaphors (jellyfish, hungry pitiless parasites, leeches, slugs stuck everywhere, spreading their mucus on corners of Rimbaud) are as many caveats for the readers not to let themselves soothe asleep. The weight of expectations on children, the burdening pressure to conform, the menace undercutting the false security ostensibly offered in the bosom of the family is tangible in most fragments in which Sarraute outlines the muted inner screams provoked by the everyday madness within the bourgeois family.

A sense of power struggle and subdued domestic violence and oppression pervade some of the fragments. Even a hand gesture speaks volumes, a motionless sitting becomes significant and softness means menace, forcing one to dance to the mute tune of the sitter, a suffocating presence needs to be appeased.
He felt that she should be set straight, soothed, at any cost, but that only someone endowed with superhuman strength would be able to do it, someone who would have the nerve to remain there opposite her, comfortably seated, well-settled in another chair, who would dare to look her calmly in the face, catch her eye, not divert his own from her squirming.

The interior responsiveness of characters to others which Sarraute likens to the natural phenomenon of tropisms, in which organisms move in response to an external stimulus such as sunflowers twisting toward a light source, resembles the interacting of dancers in an intricate choreography of push-pull movements, captured in the words which dance on the pages:

How exhausting is all this effort, this perpetual hopping and skipping about in his presence: backwards, forwards, forwards, forwards, and backwards again, now circling about him, then again on his toes, with eyes glued to him, and sidewise and forwards and backwards, to give him this voluptuous pleasure.

The rhythm, the cadence, the dark undercurrents of emotions give the impression that the twenty-four fragments stand on the pages as prose poems, an impression enhanced by the copious use of white space in the edition I read. The lack of narrative arch, some of the pieces seem in close connection to each other, mirroring, enhancing each other, having whispering conversations with each other, reflecting for instance contrasting movements, as in counterpoint, the stillness and powerlessness while sitting on the bed, waiting in fragment V is followed by a hectic power struggle chasing the ones present in fragment VI around. Characters are chirping like birds in an aviary, thoughts patter, shuffle, push away.

When sharing thoughts on a poetry collection, I am often tempted to single out a favourite poem I cherish; trying to do the same with Tropisms, reading it a second time makes it harder to choose just one, as the resonance of the fragments seems to grow reading them once more.



One of my favourite, more mellow, fragments (XVI) describes an older couple and the little they need:

Now they were old, they were quite worn out, “like old furniture that has seen long usage, that had served its time and accomplished its task”, and sometimes (this was coyness on their part) they heaved a sort of short sigh, filled with resignation and relief, that was like something crackling.

On soft spring evenings, they went walking together, “now that youth was finished, now that the passions were spent”, they went walking quietly, “to take a breath of fresh air before going to bed”, sit down in a café, spend a few moments chatting.

They chose a well-protected corner, taking many precautions (“not here, it’s in a draught, nor there, it’s just beside the lavatory”), they sat down – “Ah! These old bones, we’re getting old. Ah! Ah!”- and they let their cracking be heard.

The place had a cold, dingy glitter, the waiters ran about too fast in a rough, indifferent manner, the mirrors gave back harsh reflections of tired faces and blinking eyes.

But they asked for nothing more, this was it, they knew it well, you shouldn’t expect anything, you shouldn’t demand anything, that’s how it was, there was nothing more this was it, ‘life’.

Nothing else, nothing more, here or there, now they knew it.

You should not rebel, dream, hope, make an effort, flee, you had only to choose carefully (the waiter was waiting) whether it was to be a grenadine or a coffee? With milk or black? While accepting unassumingly to live – here or there – and let time go by.

No wonder this magical work seem to have inspired the name-giving of a bookshop in Brussels.

My edition included as an extra the fragment VI that Sarraute originally published in the 1939 edition but chose to eliminate in the 1957 edition because she thought it too dated by its references to past events.

Powerful and brilliant, the joy of new musical details vibrating in delicate turns of phrases to discover with each reading, Tropisms feels very much as a book to be read again and again.

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This first book contains in nuce all the raw material that I have continued to develop in my later works.
-Nathalie Sarraute

How often we read books which change our perception, the very concept of literature itself, the way it is written, the way it is being read, in fact, what we call literature. The genres in literature have come to life due to such shocking pieces of literature. If we talk about fiction itself, new forms of fiction, novels have evolved over the years due to such authors who, time and again, have produced such books of non-conformity. We have numerous examples of such authors if we look back at the history of literature, in chronological order, right from days of great Greeks to Dante Alighieri to highly influential Shakespeare to Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Franz Kafka to Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce to Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus to post-modern authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon to contemporary greats such Laszlo Krasznahorkai, though the list may not be exhaustive but these are some of the great examples of such authors who changed the very essence of literature. In this regard, during the 1950s, some French authors were classified under ‘nouveau roman’, which broke off the classical literary genre, the authors who were believed to experiment with style in each of their novels were considered under ‘nouveau roman’, Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute is regarded as the precursor to ‘nouveau roman’. It would be an understatement to say that tropisms changed the literature, the better statement would be to say that it had transformed the literature, for it was anything except what was regarded as conventional literature.



link: source

What could be written about a book which is not anything we know as literature. The plot, characters and omniscient narrator have been rejected here in order to reflect the essential nature of our experience. For, the author believes that there should be nothing that may distract the attention of the reader so neither plot nor characters are required here. We see that authors like Maurice Blanchot believe that they put their literary theories into practice through their novels, in a way, these novels may be referred to as ‘laboratory experiments’, as mentioned by the author in the foreword to Tropisms. However, Sarraute says that no literary work can be a mere illustration of principles, however convincing.


‘Tropisms’ where has been this term brought from, how has it come into being? These are some of the questions which juggle on your cerebral space. Well, the term, refers to motions of plants and organisms prompted by external stimuli. Sarraute uses the term here to observe and express the unconscious movements of us, our existence, these movements slip us through on our unconscious space as undefinable rapid sensations. Though they are behind our gestures, actions, words, experiences, feelings but we hardly seem to notice them. The author says that they seem to her the secret source of our existence, in what might be called its nascent stage.



link: source



The short book has twenty-four short pieces or rather vignettes as they are more correctly the scenes in details focused upon vivid imagery and meaning rather than plot. The book is more like some impressionist painting with each vignette representing our various moods, emotions, gestures, feelings, and actions. The author rejects the traditional realism in support of something which may convey our existence more accurately, the text which may be humane in its treatment. She says that tropism requires a force or partner to bring out it to being, which could be a person, object, situation, so in way, tropisms could be relations between external stimuli and our subconscious reactions to those.


Traditionally, our literature deals which our life from an external point of view rather than interior or conveying our true existence, as we see that normally characters and plots are given to the readers to play with, whom they react only on the surface, such texts may not be able to portray our complex nature, our subtle movements, our behavior, our very existence. Nathalie Sarraute reduces the characters and replaces them with our sensations which may be unconscious too. The motive of her text to force the reader not to think about the characters or people per se, rather it is to focus upon their emotions, moods, actions as if those characters are forces or emotions themselves, we need to see below the surface of the characters where lies our desires, hate, love, impulses, our emotions, our unconscious stimuli which exist somewhere and are responsible for our actions. For that, the author presents us with just a glimpse of the characters by using pronouns such as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ and other unnamed characters, represented by their professions. The barely visible anonymous characters are being used to serve as mere props for the movements which are inherent in everybody and can place in anybody, at any moment of time.



link: source

Unlike the conventional texts, here, the reader has to be actively involved with text and the author to produce and understand these vibrating sensations we call ‘tropisms.’ Sometimes, one reading of the text may not be enough for that as these vignettes are too extract that on each reading or through any order, they might produce different sensations. They are like sensory experiences we feel every time we read the text, however, these experiences are so fragile and mysterious that they reveal themselves only during our interaction with the text somewhat like electron pairs, whose spins are revealed only when observing them. It is like these vignettes have been refined and distilled from the longer stories with characters to produce these abstract, oblong but potent pieces of literature.


These texts do not necessarily be connected, the reader who seeks themes, meanings, underlying emotions which connect these vignettes, will be disappointed as these short pieces stand alone. The author pushes here the writing into some other realm, the writing itself becomes sensing and not the reporting of what is sensed, which makes me think of Maurice Blanchot who used to write self-reflective texts, and of Jean-Paul Sartre too, as her writing are truly existential in nature, have beings of their own, Sartre also admired it greatly and reportedly said of Sarraute’s work, “it is existence itself” as it somewhat an ‘anti-novel’ like Sarte used to call exposing the ‘bad-faith’ of characters who crumble to take false values under external pressure.


These short vignettes are too fragile to translate as well since the exact impulse and emotions have to be conveyed in the translated language as well, perhaps that’s why she is not too famous among the English language readers. She sometimes uses simple words in an unconventional way to produce an uncommon effect. It is around eighty-one years since its publication but it continues to unnerve and interrogate our readerly expectations. It’s the first time I read anything by the author, thanks to Fionnuala, whose great write-up immediately urged me to buy this.

4.5/5

[Fionnuala]

Imagine you write a novel about a group of people similar to your own circle and living where you live and in your own time: bourgeois Paris in the 1930s.

Then you leave it aside for a while.

Later you come back to it and see that your novel is too banal, the story has been told before in many different, perhaps better, ways.

So you begin to dissect it.

First you lift away the outer layer, things like names, time, locations.

Then you take your knife to the plot, the bones of the story as it were, and carefully remove the linking elements that relate each scene to the others.

You examine what you're left with: a mass of separate character consciousnesses, some touching each other, others lying in isolation, but all pulsating with their own inner life.

You think: this is what I wanted to convey at the beginning but I didn't know how. This gets to the core of the fragility I see in people, how each person pulsates with inner life, can exist in isolation, yet is aware they need others to survive. They allow the contacts that are necessary, but pull back when their own consciousness seems threatened. Sometimes they can't pull back quickly enough when danger looms, and even though they might try to squeeze through a space that opens up, they become trapped, and the more powerful consciousness sits on them, stifles them. They become absorbed into the other, losing their own definition.

Some remain absorbed, some succeed in separating into isolation, though unable to regain their former shape.

Tropismes is the startlingly rendered description of such experience.

…………………………………………………

I actually have no idea how Nathalie Sarraute went about writing this unusual book—I've simply tried to imagine the process she might have gone through. The reading and the thinking about it afterwards have been so enjoyable that I'm now reading another of her books.

[Sawsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

بدأت الكاتبة الفرنسية ناتالي ساروت كتابة "انفعالات" عام 1932 وصدر الكتاب عام 1939
كتابة سردية مختلفة في شكل نصوص قصيرة
في كل نص تحكي أو تُصور حدث ما, تصرُف أو انفعال لشخصيات بدون هوية محددة
وصف لمشاهد ومواقف مختلفة بأسلوب مكثف وموجز ومعبر عن إحساس الشخصيات وأحوالهم

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another very strange reading experience, especially because I went into it completely unprepared. Sarraute offers 24 short pieces, vignettes, often only a few pages long, and which do not seem connected by any storyline, the seem to exist separately. I read this in French and I immediately noticed how melodious her writing style is; it spontaneously made me switch to reading aloud, and then it seemed as if the sounds had a life of their own, separate from the content. But that content demanded some wrestling. Only upon a second reading did I notice that she almost always starts from an observation: of things, of people (not mentioned by name), of situations, which she seems to describe impartially, objectively, neutrally. She immediately connects it to a certain reaction that is provoked by what has been described, and which she then registrates and analyses. And then a very complex world emerges of actions and reactions, actions connected to emotions (sometimes very intense) and vice versa, but always viewed as a kind of automatisms, and the people (again, no names) involved almost as automatons.

Very intriguing, but also very chilly, as if you were watching the endless movements in an anthill or a bee's nest. This book certainly makes a quite an impression, but I must honestly admit that it did not really resonate. I fully understand that this genre of 'dehumanized' literature was the fruit of the inhumane developments in the 20th century (it first appeared in 1939, but only broke through after the edition of 1957), but it spontaneously arouses resistance in me. Perhaps I wrongly close my eyes to how inanimate many of our actions are, the fruit of (unconscious) automatisms, and I cherish too much the illusion of humanistic interaction. But it is good that Sarraute presented an other way of looking at this.

[Jola · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still in a flurry of thoughts and impressions, busking in the awesomeness of what 'Tropisms' has done to me.
'If to the moment I shall ever say:
"Ah, linger on, thou art so fair!"'
Review to come.

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful short prose poems written in form of vignettes on characters bearing no relation to each other trying to catch impulses as fleeting impulses - V. Woolf style (whom author quotes as a great influence). The little collection made it to Le Monde's list of 100 best books of 20th century.

[Carlos]

What is there to write about a book so engaging and so deep in human perception? My first encounter with Tropismes was about eighteen years ago. As I put it down that first time, I new the book would stay with me for many years to come. And it has held its initial promise to marvel me every single time. With this book I’ve done things I’ve never done before. I have memorized chapters. I have read the book starting at the end and finishing in the beginning. I have read one chapter a day over twenty-four days, then two chapters over twelve days, then three over eight, and so on. I have read it from beginning to end five times in a row in a single day. I have let it rest for a year or two. I have fallen asleep while holding it next to my chest. I have gone to a bookstore, take it from the shelf, sit comfortably and read it right there and then put it back and leave. I’ve read it outside, inside, while riding the subway or on a plane. I've read it at the Dentist, loosing my place on the list of patients, and annoying the secretary, because I had to finish it first. "You have to have more respect for the Doctor", the secretary told me when I said I was ready. "But I have a lot of respect for Tropismes", I answered. The secretary thought that was the Dentist's nickname and smiled while leading the way.

I learned French to be able to read such a book, and even if I did not know of its existence when I was learning the language, the moment I read it, I knew right away it was because of Tropismes that I had embarked in the adventure. I’ve dreamed about being inside Tropismes, wandering through its pages, feeling the texture of its phrases against my skin. Once I read it over the phone to convince a friend to read it. At the end of the call my friend was speechless. When I next saw her, a few years later, I was not surprised to learn she had done the same things I had with the book. She looked different. She had been transformed by Tropismes.

Tropismes is a torch that goes from one hand to the other to light the way.

Tropismes is a book like no other. Tropismes is a door to a universe of perception. A garden, just like Borges imagined it, with twenty-four bifurcations, leading to a changing place, because every single time you read it, you’re reading a different book.

I have very often thought of how meaningless stars are to attempt to rate a book. Even the word RATE seems completely superfluous at times:

Tropismes is twenty four stars shining the length of a lifetime.


_____

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was nothing to be done about it. Nothing to be done.
*
He felt that she should be set straight, soothed, at any cost, but that only someone endowed with superhuman strength would be able to do it, someone who would have the nerve to remain there opposite her, comfortably seated, well-settled in another chair, who would dare to look her calmly in the face, catch her eye, not divert his own from her squirming.
*
But they asked for nothing more, this was it, they knew it well, you shouldn't expect anything, you shouldn't demand anything, that's how it was, there was nothing more, this was it, 'life'.
Nothing else, nothing more, here or there, now they knew it. You should not rebel, dream, hope, make an effort, flee, [...]
*
time passes fast, oh! it's once you're past twenty that the years begin to fly by, faster and faster, isn't that so?
*
Ah! here we are at last all together, good as gold, doing what our parents would have approved of, here we all are then, well-behaved, singing together like good little children that an invisible adult is looking after, while they walk gently around in a circle giving one another their sad, moist little hands.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is short, only 80 pages, including an introduction by Nathalie Sarraute. She explains, that all of her subsequent writings come back to these initial observations which she describes as 'Tropisms'.

The word is used in biology - meaning a response, usually in reference to plants, which is that they respond to stimuli - light, water etc, a response which - obviously is not conscious, but one that is controlled by plant hormones. And so, Sarraute is pointing out that people behave in a similar way - in a way over which they don't apparently have conscious control, although of course they are completely conscious - as in awake. But yes, I agree with her. All those moments when you open your mouth and what comes out is what you can hear your mother saying; or that deadening sense of being programmed, or something primordial, in our genes.

Sarraute demonstrates this quite beautifully with XXIV short, elegant, little sketches of what I can perceive is mostly family life, and other people that Sarraute no doubt studied on social occasions and outings etc. Some of the sketches interested me more than others and some I thought - ah yes, I recognise that or I know that. Some could almost be tiny short stories - one where the grandfather, holds the child's hand, and is conscious not to crush the little hand in his own, but then he crushes the child in another way, berating it over the rules of crossing the road, or insisting that the child feel something about his death drawing closer and closer - not something an old man would do in the company of the child's parents of course, but on his own - another story.

Or a husband and wife quarrelling, each of them knowing that neither is seriously annoyed with the other - it's just a sort of familiar routine, which probably hides more significant differences, but which they don't have the ability, or energy to analyse.

A number of the sketches take the perspective of an aloof observer, but most in fact are internal, from a particular character's viewpoint; a wife, harrassed with the responsibilities of her household; a bossy, indignant mother; a mother filled with ennui and loneliness; a content old granny; a subdued dependant spinster; a tired husband; a domineering patriarch; a self-congratulatory professor aware of how he simplifies his subject matter, a child frightened in the night, or a young debutante, solicitous to old men. Sarraute has projected herself into others' sensibilities.

Here is one I liked - number XXII

Sometimes, when they were not looking at him, to try and find something that was warm and living around him, he would run his hand very gently along one of the columns of the sideboard . . . they would not see him, or perhaps they would think that he was merely "touching wood" for luck, a very widespread custom, and after all, a harmless one.
When he sensed that they were watching him from behind, like the villain in the movies who, feeling the eyes of the policeman on his back, concludes his gesture nonchalantly, gives it the appearance of being offhand and naive, to calm their apprehension he would drum with three fingers of this right hand, three times three, which is the really effectual lucky gesture. For they were watching him more closely since he had been caught in his room, reading the Bible.

Your mind, more or less starts to automatically fill in the bits that are missing - is this a young man who having declared perhaps not to his immediate family that he is thinking about following the ministry, has been criticised; or a family, themselves not interested in religion but are concerned that one of theirs does not stray. It's the idea of unspoken pressures - what hasn't been said. The feeling or sensations that most of us pick up on and which form a very real 'dialogue' over and above any actual conversation or discussion.

I like Sarraute's focus, but I cannot say that this is new. I mean this is the area in which Elizabeth Bowen reigns supreme - and the other Elizabeth - Taylor. Many writers are masters of what remains unspoken, those small gestures or facial expressions, the toss of a head, a slammed door, the pots rallied in the sink. What Sarraute is first to coin, however, is the word 'Tropisms' - in application to those aspects of human behaviour that we feel go unheeded, or seem unimportant, and yet somehow 'they' catch what is at the heart of things.

Another one I liked - number X

In the afternoon they went out together, led the life that women lead. And what an extraordinary life it was! They went to "tearooms," ate cakes, which they picked out daintily, in a slightly greedy manner: chocolate elcairs, "babas," and tarts.
All about them was a chirping aviary, warm and gaily lighted and decorated. They remained there, seated, pressed closed together around their little tables, talking.

And of course the aviary - could be an actual bird cage, but I think also the women are like birds in an aviary - their chatter and talk, and vivacity but also contained.

Again most of the sketches have something of a dark side. Number VIII:

When he was with fresh, young creatures, innocent creatures, he felt an aching, irresistible need to manipulate them with his uneasy fingers, to feel them, to bring them as close to himself as possible, to appropriate them for himself.

That's the one with the grandfather, pretending to be a nice old, fatherly person to his grandchildren.

There were one or two that I found difficult to understand. Allow me to include one where I was not certain, where I couldn't quite understand the thread of the connections: Number XXI

In her black alpaca apron, with her cross pinned every week on her chest, she was an extremely "easy" little girl, a very docile, very good child: "Is this for children, Madam? she would ask the stationery woman, if she was not sure, when buying a comic paper or a book.

(and then it skips to) Now she was grown, little fish grow big, yes, indeed! time passes fast, oh! it's once you're past twenty that the years begin to fly by, faster and faster, isn't that so? They think that too? And she stood there before them in her black ensemble, which goes with everything, and besides, black always looks well doesn't it? . . . she remained seated, her hands folded over her matching handbag, smiling, nodding her head sympathetically, of course she had heard, she knew that their grandmother's death had been a lingering one, it was because she had been so strong, they weren't like us, at her age, imagine, she still had all her teeth . . . And Madeline? Her husband . . . Ah! men, if they could give birth to children -

I can recognise a funeral and an elderly member of the family or perhaps a retainee (a servant) gossiping about the family she works for - and the child at the beginning is now grown.
But it is quite difficult to follow - the topics range far and wide over the family's history and we of course have no idea who this family is. If I read it a few times, it might fall into place.
(I see that the child with the cross is also the old lady gossiper and also somehow the now grown child of the bereaved family - sort of blended together, because they are both now grievers, both in black.)

So - to sum up. An enjoyable collection of snippets of people behaving in very realistic and recognizable patterns. My only caveat, is that most of us are so used to reading novels, or short stories or even poems; that these slight, and delicate sketches can also be somewhat mystifying or enclosed - little worlds complete unto themselves. They hold far more questions that their slight nature would seem to allow for. I'm aware that I do like reading for closure. One of the reasons the novel format is so successful is that readers like to be lulled into the sense that LIFE makes sense, that someone, somewhere knows what is is all about. (Author as in Authority - one who knows). Here Sarraute busts wide-open that false, comfy zone that novels and their readers like to inhabit. Sketches I to XXIV offer both recognition and also unease.

[Vesna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Sarraute’s first book and, as she explains in the Foreword, it “contains in nuce all the raw material that I have continued to develop in my later works.” It consists of 24 short prose pieces in which different nameless figures (“he”, “she”, and “they”) are in ordinary daily situations, be it in the cafe, on the street, at home alone or having a daily conversation, which trigger the flow of thoughts and inner reactions, barely emerging from their unconscious depths. She called them “tropisms” to describe the inner “movements, of which we are hardly cognizant.” They

slip through us on the frontiers of consciousness in the form of undefinable, extremely rapid sensations. They hide behind our gestures, beneath the words we speak, the feelings we manifest, are aware of experiencing, and able to define. They seemed, and still seem to me to constitute the secret source of our existence, in what might be called its nascent state.

Sarraute presents different “tropisms” in 24 vignettes with the precision and style that had an almost hypnotic effect. I find it impossible to explain what drew me to them, some more than others, but overall all with a lingering effect well past finishing the book (I can see that it can work variably on each reader though).

It reminded me of the moment I saw the “inner light” in a painting by Mark Rothko which escaped me on the pages of art history books until I saw it in the gallery. Until then I saw only the rectangles in different colors with blurred edges but the inner life or light behind them, which Rothko achieved with his unique skills, came alive once I encountered them in person. It did take some time of looking at the layered colors that created an indescribable luminosity, as it did with Sarraute’s writing. This is a short book, but certainly not a page-turner. Like Rothko, who abandoned the figurative narrative and forms (otherwise, those would only be orange, yellow or red rectangles) to achieve the purity of “inner light”, Sarraute also moved away from the plot and characters to look instead at the inner reactions awoken in everyday situations.

There are no themes in particular, but I felt the contrast between childhood and old age, often taking dark and even sinister undertones, was explored more frequently than others. Some tropisms were disturbing, others revelatory, all quite dramatic while hidden beneath the surface of innocuous daily life.

Sarraute created something original and dramatic despite the plotless stories and nameless “characters.” I have the feeling that I read something so seminal that I’m baffled that she is not as well known as some of her contemporaries, at least not to a general reader like myself. Thanks to a fascinating series of recent reviews of her writings by a GR friend, I’m thankful to have discovered, albeit belatedly, this important writer.

4.5/5

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarraute accomplishes more with these brief vignettes than most authors ever even scrape with their entire oeuvres. Despite the 'rule-setting' proposition, this is deeply-affecting. But Sarraute always was a unique gemstone in the nouveau roman setting. A flawless, cutting diamond of work.

[Ben Loory · Rating 5 out of 5]

okay, nathalie sarraute is officially my new favorite writer. or at least one of them, i guess. she actually reminds me a lot of w.g. sebald, even though they are total opposites. sebald is all about thoughts and history and physical reality and individual lives and famous people, while sarraute is just all about internal movements, experiences and feelings-- but of a universal character. maybe it is because they both write in really long sentences, though sebald’s are razor-sharp and linear, while sarraute’s sort of wash back and forth and have lots of commas and half-phrases and repeats. both are really hypnotic and dreamlike and vivid, though. i guess that’s the connection.

nathalie sarraute is the shit.

UPDATE: i just read it again and it got even better.

here is number 19:


"He was smooth and flat, two level surfaces-- his cheeks which he presented first to one then to the other, and upon which, with their pursed lips, they pressed a kiss.

They took him and they crunched him, turned him over and over, stamped on him, rolled, wallowed on him. They made him go round and round, there, and there, and there, they showed him disquieting painted scenery with blind doors and windows, towards which he walked credulously, and against which he bumped and hurt himself.

They had always known how to possess him entirely, without leaving him a fresh spot, without a moment’s respite, how to devour him to the last crumb. They surveyed him, cut him up into dreadful building lots, into squares, traversed him in every direction; sometimes they let him run, turned him loose, but they brought him back as soon as he went too far, they took possession of him again. He had developed a taste for this devouring in childhood-- he tendered himself, relished their bittersweet odor, offered himself.

The world in which they had enclosed him, in which they surrounded him on every side, was without issue. Everywhere their frightful clarity, their blinding light that leveled everything, did away with all shadows and asperities.

They were aware of his liking for their attacks, his weakness, so they had no scruples.

They had emptied him entirely and restuffed him and they showed him everywhere other dolls, other puppets. He could not escape them. He could only turn politely towards them the two smooth surfaces of his cheeks, one after the other, for them to kiss."

[Andrew]

As with so many French novels of the era, it is almost cinematic in its level of imagery. Think little experimental studies, like Chris Marker's "La Jetee" or Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon," or perhaps the Nouvelle Vague films that all these Nouveau Roman writers inspired (turns out there was a lot of newness in France at the time). Sarraute doesn't seem to be as widely known as certain others outside her native country (Robbe-Grillet and Duras, excellent as they were, seem to get disproportionately more press), which is a shame. Tropismes was largely written well before any of those trends began, in the 1930s, and it's a remarkably prescient novel. It took the rest of the world 30 years to catch up to where Nathalie Sarraute was.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, this totally kicked Robbe-Grillet's ass, to the point where I am considering going back and docking him a star because, having read this, he should be able to see what is actually possible. Where his text is all static angles and shadows and tree-counting, this little book is actually about things -- there is movement and relations between people and instinct and emotion and intensity -- even though it, likewise, is described without recourse to certain types of traditional technique (James Wood would hate it). As a result, this book is consistently engaging and often strikingly beautiful. This is a person who knows what she is doing when she builds things from language.

[Bloodorange · Rating 4 out of 5]

The association I had was with description of Zodiac signs, or medieval character types, but presented through situations and impressions rather than direct character description. A very interesting book, very aptly titled - one has a sense of the stimuli one shuns from and the stimuli one gets drawn to; self preservation, thriving and attraction, playing out on a very deep level.

[Sweet Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarraute θεάρα.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally got around to re-reading this book, which has left an indelible mark on me and my writing. It's been with me since the very beginning of my serious attempt at a writing career. My awareness of Tropisms and its author Nathalie Sarraute must have come in the Nouveau Roman course I took in college, taught by Surrealist great Nanos Valeoritis at San Francisco state University in the early '80s. For whatever reason, I didn't then read it, but I owned a copy and thus it ended up in my shoulder bag when I quit my job, sold pretty much everything I owned, and took off for Europe in 1986, dreaming of living something like the life Henry Miller describes in Quiet Days in Cliche.

I don't exactly recall when I read it--perhaps even in the airport or on the plane to Brussels, or later in Paris, or perhaps still later in Rome, where I settled in that summer to write my first novel. But I do remember vividly its impact, it's uniqueness, the inspiration and feeling of the freedom to experiment myself by writing briefly and to the heart of things that these short, abstract narratives offered me as I began penning the fragments of my own endless satori as I traveled, saw the history I'd dreampt of back in the USA, and began collecting those fragments and a longer narrative together into my first novel Inbetween.

Now, having read I believe five later Sarraute novels, as well as her essays on novel writing, my understanding of her project is perhaps more clear, but the sheer beauty and impact of these short narratives, these Joycean epiphanies if you will, devoid of character (in the traditional sense) or plot, is still largely the same. Yes, there is a kinship here with Joyce's concept of that inner shift, that moment in which the essence of a character is revealed to others or themselves, even if Sarraute has gone him one step further by stripping away most of the exposition, description, background, and the small narrative that make the Dubliners stories still partially resemble the classic short story form.

True to the saying that less is more, I find the raw impact here even greater, at times, than the also awesome beauty of Joyce's tales. For me this is an essential fiction. I should re-read it far more often than I do. It's just exquisite.

----------------------------------

I gave this another reread as I just presented it to students, along with Marguerite Duras's Hiroshima, Mon Amour in my Literature and Gender course. As non-literature majors all they were a bit mystified, but I hope to have peaked their interest. It appears I will always love and return to this book as a wonderful re-imagining of what literature could be.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es gibt eine kleine Anzahl von Büchern, bei denen der Inhalt in den Hintergrund tritt und die Form und der Stil das einzig bleibende darstellen. Zu dieser Kategorie gehören manche Werke von brillanten Stilisten, wie d'Anunzio oder Herta Müller oder experimentellen Autoren von Pessoa über Cela, Boroughs oder dem von mir sehr verehrten Milorad Pavic. Manchem ist das nicht genug denn insbesondere die Autoren der Kategorie Form neigen dazu, es hinsichtlich der Länge ihrer Werke völlig zu übertreiben. Dieses Werk gehört zweifellos zu den gelungeneren Beispielen der Bücher, die ohne Inhalt glänzen. Ich könnte weder die Handlung beschreiben, noch wirklich die Erzählperspektive fassen oder einen Protagonisten benennen. Dennoch hat mich diese kurze Novelle angezogen und berührt. Der Form nach könnte man daran denken, Parallelen zu Kurzgeschichten zu ziehen - und viele Rezensenten scheinen dies auch zu tun. Ich sehe die Parallele zum einen zu Celas "Bienenkorb" und zu einigen Exponenten des poetischen Expressionismus, etwa dem Frühwerk von Johannes R. Becher.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barthelme is renowned as the master of the short story, seducer in his short-prose prowess. Sarraute seduces not. She wounds.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am slowly getting around to logging a bunch of books that have been sitting on my desk, meaning that some of these have been there for a couple of weeks. This book has definitely waited its turn, which means that the details are fuzzier. It’s a library book, so I didn’t score it (but others fucking did!!!!!! Don’t you worry about that!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The book I hold in my hand is mine and that means no one is ever going to use it again YES YES YES YES let me draw a dick in it! WITH A PEN). Seeing as it deals with the intentions and premonitions just underneath the surface of encounters social and intrapersonal, I would have thought it would rank a lot higher. It didn’t, and that is probably entirely down to the depth of reading. I didn’t engage with this properly. It’s short enough that I will most likely do another read of it.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of last spring semester, I asked Mademoiselle Weiner for book recommendations in French to read both over the summer and to supplement my next French classes (201 and 202, which I'm taking during the same semester because I say so and my academic advisor is silly). Tropismes is the second novel she recommended.

(The first was The Stranger, which I tried to read in English in high school and didn't finish, as I give less of a fuck about Meursault than Meursault gives about other people I do own a French language copy of it, but I figure if it wasn't interesting enough to read in English, it would be pure masochism to attempt in French. Besides, the only reason every French student is forced to read it is because it's written entirely in the past tense.)

So, before departing on my summer escapades, I hit up the university library and snagged a French copy of Tropismes.

If you're a French learner looking for a good first novel: read this. Tropismes is written in the past tense and is made up of very vague, bitter, beautiful vignettes. The vignette lengths range from two to five pages long, the perfect size, as they allow you to take small bites out of the book every day so you get your daily dose of reading, vocabulary, and grammar practice (so long as you read attentively). Sarraute does have a few favorite words that recur (lisse, échapper, et tendu par exemple), so certain vocab is picked up automatically.

This novel also has stunning, thought-provoking content about people and life itself. There is no doubt that Sarraute has a masterful command of word craft-- some of the images in the text struck me so hard that I had to set down the book for a moment because I could see them so vividly in my mind. In fact, I've copied down almost entire vignettes from the novel, just so I can have them with me when I need to return the library book.

My only warning is to concur with other reviewers here that, while Sarraute denies any connection with Nouveau Roman, this is definitely a book that forces the reader to do work. This is not an easy read as it rejects typical novel conventions like plot. But letting the reader fill in the blanks is what makes this novel so powerful and unique.

If you can read it in the original French-- get your hands on a copy. Right. Now. If you're an English reader, grab a translation and go! I guarantee that at least one vignette will speak deeply to you as a person, even if you hate all the others. I really enjoyed Tropismes and can't wait to read more Sarraute!

[أحمد شاكر · Rating 4 out of 5]

انتحاءات؛ هذه هي ترجمة عنوان الكتاب. واالإنتحاءات إشارة إلى الأسلوب المستخدم في عملية الكتابة، لا إلى الموضوع. ومعناها: الحركة الغير ملحوظة والتي يتفتح بها النبات وينتشر. وهذا النص هو أول ما نشرته ناتالي ساروت.
والكتاب صغير الحجم، مهمل، ولوحة الغلاف، للفنان العالمي فان جوخ (ليل نجومي). وقعت يدي عليه، يوم اقتنيت (عوليس)، من مكتبة مدبولي بوسط البلد. قرأت عوليس وتركت (انتحاءات) أو قل ابعدته مرات عدة، حتي قررت مؤخرا قراءته. حيث كنت أرغب في قراءة شيء، مغاير ومختلف، يخرجني من حالة الرتابة التي قد تسببها متابعة القراءة في كتاب كبير الحجم، أو عسير الفهم، فمنذ فترة وأنا أقرأ في (تاريخ الجنون في العصر الكلاسيكي) لـ ميشيل فوكو، وكتاب آخر لبول ريكور. ولم يخب ظني في تلك النصوص التي كتبتها ساروت بحس مرهف، وذوق عال جدا. إنها نصوص مختلفة ومميزة، أشبه بقصائد نثر أوبمنمنمات يومية، تعكس حركة الأشخاص، وتصرفاتهم، واندفعاتهم وسط بحر الحياة. أشخاص عاديون يعيشون أيامهم؛ يحبون ويعملون ويأكلون ويهرمون وينتظرون ويمارسون حياتهم بصور عادية جدا. لكن الفكرة كلها هي القبض علي تلك اللحظات العادية، وتصويرها، بروح الشعر، وعذوبته.

[Gert De Bie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nathalie Sarraute was haar tijd ver voorruit. Begin jaren '30 schreef ze haar Tropismes, die uiteindelijk pas in 1957 hun weg naar het grotere publiek vonden (na een amper opgemerkte publicatie eind jaren '30) en toen - in eerste instantie minachtend en smalend - bij de 'nouveau roman', gerekend werden; een strekking waarbij het niet altijd meer rechttoe-rechtaan om plotlijnen of uitgewerkte personages ging en waar de literaire wereld niet meteen een weg mee wist.

In Tropismen krijg je als lezer 24 stukjes voorgeschoteld die literair prikkelen en waarmee de auteur "innerlijke roerselen" probeert vast te leggen "die snel naar de grenzen van ons bewustzijn glijden".

Het resultaat is een smakelijk lappendeken aan teksten die de ene keer vanuit het niets de essentie van het leven lijken te willen vatten, de andere keer de kern van literatuur proberen te grijpen of soms gewoon stilistische, net niet grijpbare pareltjes zijn. Hier en daar proef je toch een welhaast afgewerkt kortverhaaltje.

Speels, verrassend en op een vreemde manier zelfs coherent. Mooi.

[سلطان · Rating 3 out of 5]

مجموعة قصصية بعيدة عن الكلاسيكية رغم قدم تاريخ كتابتها "تعود إلى الثلاثينيات، إلا أن رائدة الرواية الفرنسية الجديدة في فرنسا تقدم فيها قصصا قصيرة تدعو للتأمل ومفتوحة التأويل.
تضم المجموعة المترجمة مقدمة مهمة عن الرواية الجديدة في أوروبا

[Hux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine watching a scene with people and places and events. Now imagine watching it again but through a veil of meshed curtain, where everything is blurred, vague, and almost ethereal in nature. Well, that's this book and that's Saraute's writing style. There is no story, only the impression of a story, there are no characters, only pronouns such as 'they' and 'he.' There are no actions or events, only a sense of things, a feeling of something taking place. It's all very delicate and fragile.

You will either like that kind of experimental writing or you won't. For me, it was mostly unengaging, and left me with a feeling of frustrated uncertainty. I generally don't like that kind of navel-gazing and, truth be told, tend to find it has a very female energy. The whimsical and dainty, the reflective, the pensive, the woman standing by the pond looking at the lilies and thinking about her lost love, 'the autumn leaves, the lilies, the war, the lilies... oh, the lilies.' It all rather boring if you ask me. I've encountered this kind of writing from a lot of female writers over the years and was immediately reminded of 'Good Morning, Midnight' by Jean Rhys. That too irritated me with all its delicate pondering and wistful banality. The truth is only women who swan about cafes and live in country estates write like this. Get them working down the mines for a decade and they'll soon lose interest in the lilies on the pond.

I'm being a little harsh. But it's not for me. Though it's well written and delightfully short. Definitely worth a read.

[Laura Brower · Rating 5 out of 5]

This definitely fits the definition of tropism, which is "the turning of all or part of an organism in a particular direction in response to an external stimulus." As Sarruate will write about small moments in large crowds as they react like organisms, finding flowery language to describe these minor events, like looking at society through a microscope, and analysing small expressions in the most epic language

[Solange te parle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Je suis (hélas !) vraiment passée à côté de celui-ci. Je garde un grand souvenir de "L'usage de la parole" et tenterai "Enfance" bientôt.

[The Reading Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ecrits dans une prose éthérée, Tropismes est un ensemble de vingt-quatre vignettes dépeignant l'éphémère du moment. Un bijou de sensibilité.