Nathalie Sarraute

née
Nathalie Ilyanova Tcherniak
born July
18, 1900, Ivanova, Russia
died Oct. 19, 1999, Paris, France
French
novelist and essayist, one of the earliest
practitioners and a leading theorist of the
nouveau roman, the French post-World War II
“new novel,” or “antinovel,” a phrase
applied by Jean-Paul Sartre to Sarraute’s
Portrait d’un inconnu (1947; Portrait of a
Man Unknown). She was one of the most widely
translated and discussed of the nouveau
roman school. Her works reject the
“admirable implements” forged by past
realistic novelists such as Honoré de
Balzac, particularly the use of biographical
description to create full-bodied
characters.
Sarraute
was two years old when her parents were
divorced, and her mother took her to Geneva
and then to Paris. Except for brief visits
to Russia and an extended stay in St.
Petersburg (1908–10), she lived in Paris
thereafter, and French was her first
language. She attended the University of
Oxford (1921) and graduated with a licence
from the University of Paris, Sorbonne
(1925); she was a member of the French bar,
1926–41, until she became a full-time
writer.
Sarraute
challenged the mystique of the traditional
novel in her theoretical essay L’Ère du
soupçon (1956; The Age of Suspicion) and
experimented with technique in Tropismes
(1939 and 1957; Tropisms), her first
collection of sketches. In this work she
introduced the notion of “tropisms,” a term
borrowed from botany and meaning elemental
impulses alternately attracted and repelled
by each other. Sarraute described these
impulses as imperceptible motions at the
origin of our attitudes and actions, and
forming the substrata of such feelings as
envy, love, hate, or hope. Within this
aggregate of minute stirrings, Sarraute
portrays a tyrannical father pushing his
aging daughter into marriage (Portrait d’un
inconnu), an elderly lady enamoured of
furniture (Le Planétarium, 1959; The
Planetarium), and a literary coterie
reacting to a newly published novel (Les
Fruits d’or, 1963; The Golden Fruits). Later
works include Elle est là (1978; “She Is
There”), L’Usage de la parole (1980; “The
Usage of Speech”), and an autobiography,
Enfance (1983; Childhood).