Anonimni svijet novog romana. Književna teorija i praksa Nathalie Sarraute
Anonymous world of the new novel. Literary Theory and Practice of Nathalie Sarraut

Summary/Abstract: After a brief outline of the general features of the French New Novel, the paper concentrates on Nathalie Sarraute's literary theory and practice. In her essays Nathalie Sarraute objected to the novelists of the European Modernist Movement - above all to Proust and Virginia Woolf - that they were still creating characters as fixed entities with definite qualities which were easily indentifiable. The New Novel, as conceived by Nathalie Sarraute,should be more subtle, it must not carry on the tradition of round »realistic« characters which are repetitive behind a smokescreen of delusive variety. The New Novel should focus on the processes in human consciousness when we speak and think, it should present some kind of protoplasma of humanity, without any attempt to individualize or create aut hentic characters. The paper traces the development of Nathalie Sarraute's art as seen in her fiction, starting with the early Tropismes. The author considers her Planetarium as the end of her early phase in which her art reached a point of maturity, balance, and coherence. In the novels after Planetarium the »action« covers a longer time span, tvhereas in her latest work, Vous les-entendez?, time has been apparently brought to a halt until wc reach the end of the book and realize that once more the work has spread out over an extensive time period. The paper finally tries to answer the question as to why the characters in Nathalie Saraute's fiction (and not only in hers) are so amorphous, and mediacre. The author accepts the explanations by Lucien Goldmann, Saul Bellaw, and R. l. Lifton to the effect that values in contemporary Western civilization have been reduced to material considerations and that the encroachments of public life upon man's private existence have become so powerful that the individual feels increasingly paralyzed and helpless.

• Details
• Contents