Théâtre

by Nathalie Sarraute

Nouvelle édition augmentée de Pour un oui ou pour un non en 1993

Genres: France

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

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

[emmarps · Rating 5 out of 5]

je suis tombée amoureuse du théâtre de Sarraute, qui prolonge, à mon sens, toute l'entreprise de neutralisation entamée dans son œuvre romanesque. Le personnage ce n'est plus rien, une lettre, un chiffre, un genre, c'est tout. Ce qui prime toujours c'est ce qui se dit, le drame d'un langage perforé par les lieux communs et surtout entre silences et mensonges le règne de l'ère du soupçon.

[Shira]

I would have really liked a preface or afterword to these collected plays. To have someone's words as a kind of guide to how to read Sarraute's plays, for, I don't really know how to read them except to follow the words. And maybe the person writing the preface or afterword would have also written so, for maybe they too would have needed someone having written a guide to how to write a preface or afterword to Nathalie Sarraute's plays, and for lack of such a guide, they too would merely advise: Follow the words.

Follow the words, that is in fact really helpful when thinking of these plays. It helps if you really, but really, want to think about them. Or, want to dissect them. I'm not sure if that's really what I want. What I know is that appreciating these plays is somewhat complex to me. For, these words, these plays, there are just words. But words that function as some kind of a cover-up. As a blanket holding a ghost. Only it's a real ghost. The ghost, or, spectator, of the inner workings of a person's self. Or, multiple peoples self's. Maybe these words are thus rather like drones carrying some kind of fancy (scary) device able to penetrate the soul of the workings of social interactions. Not easy to interpret for I'm not sure that I am able to decipher what this device shows - all the more reason for these plays to come together with a preface or afterword, preferably both.

All the same, maybe I should just trust that what is under these words, I do get. I do feel, in some way. And as such, maybe this reads just like poetry. I can kind of be sure that I 'get' it, but not entirely sure, but I think I am sure, yet, I'm not. (This in fact is something I say because I did read an interview in which Sarraute herself said that, to appreciate/read her work, one probably has to approach it as if it were poetry. If I agree, I don't know.)

Leafing through the plays I think I have found something to say: These plays often lay bare some hidden urge/instinct/feeling, often somewhat shameful, that is not or hardly talked about or pointed out while in a social interaction. And here they are in fact talked about, for once, but as such they cannot really be talked about after all. But these characters in the plays do try, a lot. And in this trying do maybe after all, manage, to show that something - that lies beneath.

[IO · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Sarraute's "Collected Plays" was a heady experience. All five plays seem to deal with the things that gnaw our thoughts but could never bring out openly to discuss. Thoughts that we would usually keep to ourselves. Somehow Sarraute was able to give these ideas form and voice through these collected plays.

The first play, for example, entitled,"It is there" tackles with the struggle of having to deal with someone, a carrier, who shows slight disagreement with one's beliefs, the numerous devious thoughts that goes through one's head to subdue and win this other person over, the painful restlessness and discontent that plague one with the other's easy surrender, and the realization that truth is bigger than anyone's existence.

All five plays seem to be a dissection of human nature, the motivations behind certain behaviors, digging deeper for reasons for unreasonable behavior. Sarraute is not only a doyenne of nouveau roman but of unmasking human nature.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dating from 1967 to 1980, Nathalie Sarraute's plays feel incredibly "now" dealing as they do with intellectual bullying, the slippery nature of truth, and even gender wars. I really appreciated her tenacity when dealing with gaslighting ("The Lie") or the irrational desire we have to align with the viewpoints of the next generation ("It's Beautiful"). At times extremely cerebral, her plays remind me of Albee's "A Delicate Balance" or "Tiny Alice." She's just as formidably disturbing... so why have I only learned of them because I found a tattered copy of this collection in the street!