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La Belle Captive
"It begins with a stone falling, in the silence, vertically, immobile. It is falling from a great height, a meteor, a massive, compact, oblong block of rock, like a giant egg with a pocked, uneven surface.""
The opening sentence of "La Belle Captive" introduces a dreamworld where the conventions of the traditional novel have been overthrown. Objects move through space without regard to laws of nature, characters move through the text in a maddening complex of events.
Published in 1975, Alain Robbe-Grillet's "nouveau roman" is illustrated with 77 paintings by Rene Magritte. Robbe-Grillet uses Magritte's paintings as pretexts for the novel, letting them generate themes for an imaginary discourse that parallels their imagery, glosses them, contradicts them. Simultaneously, he comments on Magritte's paintings while taking advantage of them to parade his own favorite themes: play, eroticism, subversion. Robbe-Grillet gives us a plot that frustrates expectations yet shares his pleasure with the mysterious and poetic in Magritte's art, and with the cultural myths that painter and novelist both parody.
The book includes a critical essay by novelist and translator Ben Stoltzfus on the pictorial and linguistic affinities between Magritte and Robbe-Grillet. Stoltzfus explores the image of the beautiful captive not only in her mythical and erotic dimensions, but also as a metaphor for the artistic process.
The opening sentence of "La Belle Captive" introduces a dreamworld where the conventions of the traditional novel have been overthrown. Objects move through space without regard to laws of nature, characters move through the text in a maddening complex of events.
Published in 1975, Alain Robbe-Grillet's "nouveau roman" is illustrated with 77 paintings by Rene Magritte. Robbe-Grillet uses Magritte's paintings as pretexts for the novel, letting them generate themes for an imaginary discourse that parallels their imagery, glosses them, contradicts them. Simultaneously, he comments on Magritte's paintings while taking advantage of them to parade his own favorite themes: play, eroticism, subversion. Robbe-Grillet gives us a plot that frustrates expectations yet shares his pleasure with the mysterious and poetic in Magritte's art, and with the cultural myths that painter and novelist both parody.
The book includes a critical essay by novelist and translator Ben Stoltzfus on the pictorial and linguistic affinities between Magritte and Robbe-Grillet. Stoltzfus explores the image of the beautiful captive not only in her mythical and erotic dimensions, but also as a metaphor for the artistic process.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
Alain Robbe-Grillet
104 books436 followersScreenplays and novels, such as
The Erasers
(1953), of French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, affiliated with the New Wave movement in cinema, subordinate plot to the treatment of space and time; directors, such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut, led this movement, which in the 1960s abandoned traditional narrative techniques in favor of greater use of symbolism and abstraction and dealt with themes of social alienation, psychopathology, and sexual love.
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire in Nuremberg where he worked as a machinist. The initial few months were seen by Robbe-Grillet as something of a holiday, since in between the very rudimentary training he was given to operate the machinery he had free time to go to the theatre and the opera. In 1945, Robbe-Grillet completed his diploma at the National Institute of Agronomy. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.
His first novel The Erasers (Les Gommes) was published in 1953, after which he dedicated himself full-time to his new occupation. His early work was praised by eminent critics such as Roland Barthes and Maurice Blanchot. Around the time of his second novel he became a literary advisor for Les Editions de Minuit and occupied this position from 1955 until 1985. After publishing four novels, in 1961 he worked with Alain Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous published theoretical writings concerning the novel. From 1966 to 1968 he was a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French (Haut comité pour la défense et l´expansion de la langue française). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la littérature) at the university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.
In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually formally received by the Académie because of disputes regarding the Académie's reception procedures. Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Académie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire in Nuremberg where he worked as a machinist. The initial few months were seen by Robbe-Grillet as something of a holiday, since in between the very rudimentary training he was given to operate the machinery he had free time to go to the theatre and the opera. In 1945, Robbe-Grillet completed his diploma at the National Institute of Agronomy. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.
His first novel The Erasers (Les Gommes) was published in 1953, after which he dedicated himself full-time to his new occupation. His early work was praised by eminent critics such as Roland Barthes and Maurice Blanchot. Around the time of his second novel he became a literary advisor for Les Editions de Minuit and occupied this position from 1955 until 1985. After publishing four novels, in 1961 he worked with Alain Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous published theoretical writings concerning the novel. From 1966 to 1968 he was a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French (Haut comité pour la défense et l´expansion de la langue française). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la littérature) at the university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.
In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually formally received by the Académie because of disputes regarding the Académie's reception procedures. Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Académie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 10, 2010
This unusual work is a 1975 "collaboration" between nouvelle roman author and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet and surrealist painter Rene Magritte. Despite the latter having been dead for seven years and having had no knowledge of the project, the 77 Magritte paintings reproduced here have a fitting resonance with Robbe-Grillet's text, interacting in deeper ways than mere illustration.
I love it. Surprisingly so. La Belle Captive is completely absorbing, often in a peculiar pure-aesthetic manner that I don't think I've associated with reading before. Not because this quasi-mystery-story was integrated with (or against, or across) a series of large plates of Magritte paintings, but through the sheer strength of Robbe-Grillet's prose, simultaneously simple and concrete yet insubstantial, precise yet inconclusive, constantly in smooth slide* through chronology, setting, and narrative perspective like a far more dissociated version of the mobile narrator of To the Lighthouse.
That is not to say that the paintings do not enhance and amplify the effect, because they certainly do. Their contributions act directly upon the mood and upon the reader: forcing associations, undermining assumptions, echoing and bolstering, at one hilarious moment even commenting directly on the reader (the obvious humor here, the sheer playfulness, makes it a refreshing break and inconsistency in Robbe-Grillet's aesthetics. His writing, for all its innovation, is never stuffy here, feeling sleeker and clearer than the gauzy misdirection of The Voyeur 20 years earlier.)
That's also not to say that this is plotless. In places the plot became almost alarmingly engaging in its clinical-calm/lurid descriptions of the preparation of a murder, for instance (post-modern disavowal of distinction between high/low art, perhaps). Rather, it's an open plot that urges reader involvement and mediation between word and image, and remains forever elusive. As does the Belle Captive herself -- she fades almost entirely from the narrative, an absence as disconcerting as her failure to appear in any of the paintings Magritte chose that title for.
Strangely, the entire text of this book (minus visual accompaniment) also comprises parts of the two other books Robbe-Grillet wrote around this time (ie the mid-late 1970s): Topology of a Phantom City and Recollections of the Golden Triangle. Though the story here was satisfying enough in its way, I should certainly like to see how the narrative echos about between this and those two novels, and shall soon do so.
*I've seen these referred to as "glissements" by another reader, a term I think I will borrow henceforth, as it is aptly drawn from another Robbe-Grillet work.
I love it. Surprisingly so. La Belle Captive is completely absorbing, often in a peculiar pure-aesthetic manner that I don't think I've associated with reading before. Not because this quasi-mystery-story was integrated with (or against, or across) a series of large plates of Magritte paintings, but through the sheer strength of Robbe-Grillet's prose, simultaneously simple and concrete yet insubstantial, precise yet inconclusive, constantly in smooth slide* through chronology, setting, and narrative perspective like a far more dissociated version of the mobile narrator of To the Lighthouse.
That is not to say that the paintings do not enhance and amplify the effect, because they certainly do. Their contributions act directly upon the mood and upon the reader: forcing associations, undermining assumptions, echoing and bolstering, at one hilarious moment even commenting directly on the reader (the obvious humor here, the sheer playfulness, makes it a refreshing break and inconsistency in Robbe-Grillet's aesthetics. His writing, for all its innovation, is never stuffy here, feeling sleeker and clearer than the gauzy misdirection of The Voyeur 20 years earlier.)
That's also not to say that this is plotless. In places the plot became almost alarmingly engaging in its clinical-calm/lurid descriptions of the preparation of a murder, for instance (post-modern disavowal of distinction between high/low art, perhaps). Rather, it's an open plot that urges reader involvement and mediation between word and image, and remains forever elusive. As does the Belle Captive herself -- she fades almost entirely from the narrative, an absence as disconcerting as her failure to appear in any of the paintings Magritte chose that title for.
Strangely, the entire text of this book (minus visual accompaniment) also comprises parts of the two other books Robbe-Grillet wrote around this time (ie the mid-late 1970s): Topology of a Phantom City and Recollections of the Golden Triangle. Though the story here was satisfying enough in its way, I should certainly like to see how the narrative echos about between this and those two novels, and shall soon do so.
*I've seen these referred to as "glissements" by another reader, a term I think I will borrow henceforth, as it is aptly drawn from another Robbe-Grillet work.
January 26, 2016
A text RPG based on Robbe-Grillet’s writing would rule.
>You awaken in a darkened room, similar to a prison. All that you can see in the room is a broken mirror, a doll in a pink dress, and a mysterious portrait in the northwest corner. You can hear the sound of footsteps in the distance.
>Look doll
>The doll is not old, it seems to have been forgotten by its owner in the past few hours. It resembles the woman you caught a glance of at the café yesterday... was it yesterday? Earlier today? A week ago? All time seems to be relative to you now... Regardless, you think the woman is now closer to the center of this case than you previously assumed.
>You awaken in a darkened room, similar to a prison. All that you can see in the room is a broken mirror, a doll in a pink dress, and a mysterious portrait in the northwest corner. You can hear the sound of footsteps in the distance.
>Look doll
>The doll is not old, it seems to have been forgotten by its owner in the past few hours. It resembles the woman you caught a glance of at the café yesterday... was it yesterday? Earlier today? A week ago? All time seems to be relative to you now... Regardless, you think the woman is now closer to the center of this case than you previously assumed.
March 26, 2020
An open investigation?
January 4, 2024
more:
by-
Jealousy & In the Labyrinth
The Erasers
Last Year at Marienbad
Voyeur
La Maison de rendez-vous
Project for a Revolution in New York
La Belle Captive
Topology of a Phantom City
Recollections of the Golden Triangle
Djinn
Repetition
A Regicide
A Sentimental Novel
francaise-
La Jalousie
Dans le labyrinthe
Les Gommes
L'année dernière à Marienbad
Instantanés
on-
For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
Generative Literature and Generative Art: New Essays
Alain Robbe-Grillet: The Body of the Text
The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films
Inventing The Real World: The Art of Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
November 14, 2007
They don't mention it, but the novel is fully illustrated by Rene Margritte. And when you have cool text in conjunction with the uber cool artist - watch out! Dry wit, distain for the normal, and very 'New Wave."
August 27, 2017
One of the most unusual and attention absorbing novels I have ever read.
Actually, I have read it three times already.
Dream-like, enjoyably disturbing in a fascinating way, non-linear and logic-goes-out-the-window type of novel.
I enjoyed reading this one.
Actually, I have read it three times already.
Dream-like, enjoyably disturbing in a fascinating way, non-linear and logic-goes-out-the-window type of novel.
I enjoyed reading this one.
February 1, 2014
The editors define La Belle Captive as a metafictional work. It uses what is considered unconventional and experimental techniques and devices. Two of these is an unconventional plot and a meandering storyline. If it were not for the art work, unfortunately, not in color, of Rene Magritte it would be an easy work to put down and never pick up again. There are also good chapter summaries at the end of the book. The art work carries the book, which otherwise would rate an optimistic three stars.
February 1, 2013
Fascinating juxtaposition of art and literature on a relationship to women dealing with the fine line between adoration and misogyny.
October 23, 2013
I thoroughly enjoyed the selection and progression of magritte works but couldn't get as into the "novel"-text part, though there were moments of peaked interest.
April 30, 2017
Surreal murder mystery! Oh dear god this is dreamy and bizarre and pairs Magritte paintings rather brilliantly with the text.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews