Natalie Sarraute b. 1900
Golden fruits (Les fruits d'or)
Novel (1963)
At one of the exhibitions, in small talk, the topic of a new, recently published novel accidentally comes up. At first, no one or almost no one knows about him, but suddenly interest in him awakens. Critics consider it their duty to admire “Golden Fruits” as the purest example of high art - a thing self-contained, superbly polished, the pinnacle of modern literature. A laudatory article was written by a certain Brule. No one dares to object, even the rebels are silent.

Having succumbed to the wave that has overwhelmed everyone, the novel is read even by those who never have enough time for modern writers.
Someone authoritative, to whom the weakest “poor ignoramuses”, wandering in the night, stuck in the quagmire, turn to with a plea to express their own judgment, dares to note that for all the undeniable merits of the novel, there are also some shortcomings in it, for example in the language. In his opinion, there is a lot of confusion in it, it is clumsy, even sometimes heavy, but the classics, when they were innovators, also seemed confused and clumsy. Overall, the book is modern and perfectly reflects the spirit of the times, and this is what distinguishes true works of art.
Someone else, not succumbing to the general epidemic of delight, does not express his skepticism out loud, but assumes a contemptuous, slightly irritated look. His like-minded woman only dares to admit in private that she also does not see any merit in the book: in her opinion, it is difficult, cold and seems to be a fake.
Other experts see the value of “Golden Fruits” in the fact that the book is truthful, it has amazing accuracy, it is more real than life itself. They strive to unravel how it was made, savor individual fragments, like juicy pieces of some exotic fruit, compare this work with Watteau, with Fragonard, with ripples of water in the moonlight.
The most exalted ones beat in ecstasy, as if pierced by an electric current, others convince them that the book is fake, this does not happen in life, and still others climb to them with explanations. Women compare themselves with the heroine, suck up the scenes of the novel and try them on themselves.
Someone tries to analyze one of the scenes of the novel out of context; it seems far from reality, devoid of meaning. All that is known about the scene itself is that the young man threw a shawl over the girl’s shoulders. Those who have doubts ask staunch supporters of the book to clarify some details for them, but the “convinced” recoil from them as heretics. They attack the lonely Jean Laborie, who is especially careful to remain silent. A terrible suspicion hangs over him. He begins, hesitatingly, to make excuses, to reassure the others, let everyone know: he is an empty vessel, ready to accept whatever they want to fill him with. Those who disagree pretend to be blind and deaf. But there is one who does not want to give in:
It seems to her that “Golden Fruits” is mortal boredom, and if there are any merits in the book, she asks to prove them with the book in hand. Those who think like her straighten their shoulders and smile at her gratefully. Maybe they saw the merits of the work themselves long ago, but decided that because of such smallness they cannot call the book a masterpiece, and then they will laugh at the rest, at the unspoiled, content with “thin gruel for the toothless,” and will treat them as children.
However, the fleeting flash is immediately extinguished. All eyes turn to two venerable critics. In one, a powerful mind rages like a hurricane, and will-o’-the-wisps flash feverishly from thoughts in his eyes. The other is like a wineskin filled with something valuable that he shares only with a select few. They decide to put this imbecile, this troublemaker, in her place and explain the merits of the work in abstruse terms, further confusing the listeners. And those who for a moment hoped to go out into the “sunny expanses” again find themselves driven into the “endless expanse of the icy tundra.”
Only one of the entire crowd comprehends the truth, notices the conspiratorial glance that the two exchange before triple-locking themselves from the others and expressing their judgment. Now everyone slavishly worships them, he is lonely, “having grasped the truth,” he is still looking for a like-minded person, and when he finally finds them, those two look at them as if they are mentally retarded, who cannot understand the intricacies, laugh at them and are surprised that they are still discussing “Golden Fruits” for so long.
Soon critics appear - such as a certain Monod, who calls “Golden Fruits” “zero”; Mettetad goes even further and sharply opposes Breye. A certain Martha finds the novel funny and considers it a comedy. Any epithets are suitable for “Golden Fruits”, it has everything in the world, some believe, it is a real, very real world. There are those who were before the “Golden Fruits”, and those who are after. We are the generation of “Golden Fruits,” as others will call us. The limit has been reached. However, voices are increasingly heard calling the novel cheap, vulgar, an empty place. Loyal supporters claim that the writer made some shortcomings on purpose. They are objected to that if the author had decided to deliberately introduce elements of vulgarity into the novel, he would have thickened the colors, made them richer, turned them into a literary device, and hiding shortcomings under the word “on purpose” is ridiculous and unjustified. Some people find this argument confusing.
However, a crowd of those thirsting for truth asks a benevolent critic to prove its beauty with a book in his hands. He makes a weak attempt, but his words, falling off his tongue, “fall into limp leaves,” he cannot find a single example to confirm his laudatory reviews and retreats in disgrace. The characters themselves are surprised how they happen to be constantly present at the incredible changes in attitude towards the book, but this already seems quite familiar. All these causeless sudden hobbies are similar to mass hallucinations. Just recently, no one dared to object to the merits of “The Golden Fruits,” but soon it turns out that they talk about them less and less, then they completely forget that such a novel ever existed, and only descendants in a few years will be able to say for sure whether it is whether this book is true literature or not.

Nathalie Sarraute

Childhood- translation by L. Zonina and M. Zonina (1986)

The Bizarre Worlds of Nathalie Sarraute - Alexander Taganov

Nathalie Sarraute's books evoke a mixed reaction among readers for the simple reason that they are far from the canons of mass entertainment literature, are not programmed for success with the public, do not promise “easy” reading: words, phrases, often fragments of phrases, advancing on each other, connecting dialogues and internal monologues, saturated with special dynamism and psychological tension, ultimately form a single intricate pattern of text, the perception and understanding of which requires certain efforts. The element of Sarrote’s artistic word exists according to its own internal laws, the efforts spent on comprehending them are invariably and fully rewarded, for behind the external hermeticity of Sarrote’s texts, amazing worlds are revealed, fascinating with their unknownness, constituting the vast space of the human soul, stretching into infinity.

The same age as the century, Nathalie Sarrott (nee Natalya Ilyinichna Chernyak) spent her first childhood years in Russia - in the cities of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where she was born, Kamenets-Podolsky, St. Petersburg, Moscow. In 1908, due to family troubles and social circumstances, Natasha, her father and stepmother left for Paris forever, which would become her second hometown. (The writer talks about this and other events of the early stages of her life in the autobiographical story “Childhood”). Here, in Paris, Sarraute entered great literature, which, however, happened completely unnoticed. Sarraute's first book, Tropisms (1), which appeared in 1939, did not attract attention either from critics or from readers. Meanwhile, as the author himself noted somewhat later, it “contained in embryo everything that the writer “continued to develop in subsequent works” (2). However, the inattention of literary criticism and readers to Sarraute’s first work is quite understandable. In the complex atmosphere of the 1930s, saturated with disturbing socio-political events, “engaged” literature, involved in the vicissitudes of the historical process, came to the fore. This largely explained the success of the works of Andre Malraux, and somewhat later of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Sarraute, acting as if contrary to the general aspiration of public consciousness, turned to realities of a completely different plane. Small artistic miniature novellas, outwardly reminiscent of the genre-lyrical sketches that made up Sarraute’s book, were addressed to the hidden depths of the human psyche, where the echoes of global social upheavals were hardly felt. Borrowing from the natural sciences the term “tropisms,” which denote the reactions of a living organism to external physical or chemical stimuli, Sarraute tried to capture and designate with the help of images “inexplicable movements” that “glid very quickly within the limits of our consciousness” that “lie at the basis of our gestures.” , our words, feelings,” representing “the secret source of our existence” (3).

All of Sarraute’s subsequent work was a consistent and purposeful search for ways to penetrate into the deep layers of the human “I.” These searches, manifested in the novels of the 1940s and 1950s - “Portrait of an Unknown” (1948), “Martero” (1953), “Planetarium” (1959), as well as in a book of essays called “The Age of Suspicion” (1956), - brought Sarrotte fame, forced people to talk about her as the herald of the so-called “new novel” in France.

The “new novel,” which replaced “biased” literature, reflected the state of consciousness of a person of the 20th century, who experienced the most complex, unpredictable, often tragic turns of socio-historical development, the collapse of established views and ideas due to the emergence of new knowledge in various areas of spiritual life (theory Einstein’s relativity, Freud’s teachings, the artistic discoveries of Proust, Joyce, Kafka, etc.), which forced a radical revision of existing values.

The term "new novel", coined by literary criticism in the 1950s, united writers who were often quite different from each other in both the style of their writing and the themes of their works. Nevertheless, the grounds for such a union still existed: in the works of Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Claude Simon and other authors classified as part of this literary movement, the desire to abandon traditional artistic forms was clearly outlined, since they, from the point of view of the “new novelists,” are hopelessly outdated. Without belittling the importance of the classical, primarily Balzacian heritage, the transformers of the genre at the same time spoke quite categorically about the impossibility of following this tradition in the 20th century, rejecting such familiar genre attributes of the novel as an “omniscient” narrator telling the reader a story that claims to be authentic, a character -character, and other firmly established ways of creating artistic conventions that clothe real life in the forms of established rationalistic stereotypes.

“Today’s reader,” Sarraute wrote in her book “The Age of Suspicion,” “first of all, does not trust what the writer’s fantasy offers him” (4). The fact is, the French novelist believes, that “lately he has learned too much and he cannot completely get it out of his head. What exactly he learned is well known; there is no point in dwelling on it. He met Joyce, Proust and Freud; with the intimate current of internal monologue, with the limitless diversity of psychological life and huge, almost as yet unexplored areas of the unconscious (5).

Sarraute’s first novels fully reflected the distrust of traditional forms of artistic knowledge inherent in all “new novelists.” In them (novels), the author abandoned the usual clichés. Rejecting the principle of plot organization of the text, moving away from the classical schemes of constructing a system of characters, socially determined, given by moral and characterological definitions, bringing out extremely impersonal characters, often designated only by the pronouns “he”, “she”, Sarraute immersed the reader in the world of common banal truths that make up the basis of mass mentality, under the heavy layer of which, nevertheless, the deep current of the universal primary substance of “tropisms” was discerned. As a result, an extremely reliable model of the human “I” arose, as if initially and inevitably “sandwiched” between two powerful layers of elements that constantly influence it: the universal matter of the subconscious, on the one hand, and the external social and everyday environment, on the other.

The characters of Sarraute’s already mentioned books are a certain anonymous “I”, with the meticulousness of a detective following the elderly gentleman and his daughter throughout the novel, trying to unravel the mystery of their relationship (“Portrait of an Unknown Man”), Martereau, the hero of the work of the same name, and the people around him, placed in the most banal everyday situation associated with the vicissitudes of buying a house, Alain Gimier and his wife, involved in an equally banal “apartment” adventure and trying to take possession of their aunt’s apartment (“Planetarium”), could well become participants in the usual novel stories presented through traditional genre forms: detective, psychological or social novel. However, Sarraute resolutely refuses the beaten path (it is no coincidence that in the preface to “Portrait of an Unknown” Jean-Paul Sartre called this work an “anti-novel”). Events filled with true drama, not inferior in their intensity to the tension of situations in Shakespeare's or Balzac's works, unfold for the French novelist primarily at a different level of existence - at the level of micropsychic processes.

In the 60s - 80s, no less famous and “sensational” works by Sarraute appeared - the novels “Golden Fruits” (1963, Russian translation - 1969), “Between Life and Death” (1968), “Do You Hear Them?” (1972, Russian translation - 1983), “Fools Speak” (1976), as well as the autobiographical story “Childhood” (1983, Russian translation - 1986), in which the author, with amazing tenacity, while avoiding thematic and other monotony, again and again trying to break through the superficial layer of banal everyday life, through the husk of familiar words and frozen stereotypes of thinking to the deep layer of life, to the anonymous element of the subconscious in order to highlight in it the universal microparticles of mental matter that underlie all human actions, deeds and aspirations.

The novel “Golden Fruits” and the story “Childhood”, presented in this publication, are largely dissimilar works and, at first glance, seem to belong to the pen of different authors: they are different from each other in thematic, genre terms and in incomparably different degrees of personal involvement the author of two works to the depicted.

However, upon closer comparison of these works, they very quickly and unmistakably reveal the methods of structural organization of the text common to all Nathalie Sarraute’s books, the specific tonality inherent only in her artistic style and the special intonation coloring. And the very object of artistic research in them remains generally unchanged, although at the same time the scale of creative potential hidden in Sarraute’s artistic system turns out to be strikingly wide and impressive.

The semantic center of the novel “Golden Fruits” is the fate of a book with the same name, written by the initially unknown Jacques Breuer. The struggle of opinions unfolding around her, reflected in the peculiar “Sarrotian” dialogues and internal monologues belonging to anonymous, maximally impersonal characters, constitutes the main event plan of “Golden Fruits”. It must be admitted that Sarraute is rather merciless in her book towards the reader. It deprives it of all support, completely eliminating the author’s narration from the text with life-saving tips, characteristics and comments for the reader that set a certain perception and understanding of the text. The reader of “Golden Fruits” finds himself in the position of a person who accidentally finds himself in the midst of a street crowd that is discussing an incident that has just happened, and who is trying to understand its meaning, listening intently to the chorus of voices reaching him, snatching individual phrases from it and trying to follow them restore the truth. However, in such a construction of the novel, I think, the highest degree of trust and respect of the author for his reader, who receives from him the opportunity for co-creation, is also manifested.

It is quite obvious that for Sarraute the non-event side of the discussions unfolding around Breuillet’s book is important - we will not learn anything about the novel itself, its content, its advantages and disadvantages until the end of the book. Its main goal is to create a model of the mechanism of collective consciousness, functioning according to the laws of a closed cycle (for, relying on ready-made stereotypical ideas, it creates on their basis more and more frozen cliche concepts) and at the same time experiencing a powerful onslaught of impulses emanating from the sphere of the subconscious, which make their own adjustments to the mode of functioning of the public mentality.

The model presented by Sarraute is extremely accurate and comprehensive. For all its external isolation and intimacy (“the new novel” unambiguously proclaimed the need for a refusal to understand social reality), it, as we see, affects not only the hidden layers of human existence, but also the sphere of external existence. It is no coincidence that in literary critical works devoted to the “Golden Fruits”, their satirical sound is unanimously noted, manifested in a very subtle transfer of the process of formation of literary fashion.

Another book by Sarraute - “Childhood” - brings her to a topic that has the richest traditions in world literature, including Russian (just remember the names of L. Tolstoy, Bunin, Gorky). The experience of contact with Russian culture, by the way, is evident throughout Sarraute’s work. In the story “Childhood”, due to the very specifics of the work, it is felt especially clearly - both in the peculiar imagery filled with Russian signs, and in the very meaningful fabric of the work, saturated with the realities of Russian reality (Russian songs and fairy tales, Russian nanny, “endless white plains”, “ wooden huts, white birch trunks, spruce trees under the snow”, “lace of narrow carved wooden frames” of a house in Ivanovo and much more).

In itself, the appeal to autobiographical prose may seem unexpected and illogical for Sarraute, since it would seem that no place can be found here for the depiction of the favorite object of her artistic research - the extremely impersonal universal primary particles of psychic matter, “tropisms”. Moreover, immersion in the element of memories of one’s own childhood years inevitably implied a movement towards temporal, personal, everyday, historical concretization - a movement towards those traditional literary forms that at one time were rejected by the novelist. Didn’t all this mean that the author of “Childhood” abandoned the aesthetic principles characteristic of her work?

Indeed, in Sarraute’s book, her main character, Natasha (Tashok, Tashochek) Chernyak, her mother, father and other people connected with her fate and depicted no less convincingly and reliably appear before us very clearly and vividly, so that there is a temptation to speak about this book, using the usual terminology applicable to traditional literature: realism, life-like characters, etc. However, in this book Sarraute remains true to her aesthetic credo. She uses the experience of her own life primarily to comprehend the universal human psychological depths that come into contact with the abysses of the subconscious, from which waves of psychic energy rise, giving rise to complex movements at other levels of spiritual life. True, in the story “Childhood” Sarraute, to a much greater extent than in her other works, is interested in something else - how the interaction of the universal subconscious mental layer with individual personal consciousness occurs and what bizarre formations can arise from the collision of these two principles.

Sarraute's book has a definite chronology, but there is no chronologically defined, sequential narrative. Individual, if desired, chronologically arranged, but scattered life episodes of the story reflect bursts of memory, the memory of a child, recorded by an adult. The vital material that arises in this way turns out to be extremely valuable for Sarrotte’s further research into the structure of the human “I”, the complex relationship between the external manifestations of human nature - at the level of words, behavior - with its hidden fundamental principles. Hence the complexity of the process of remembering in Sarraute, its psychological tension and ambiguity, outbreaks of uncertainty about the adequacy of translating images-memories into the language of words-concepts (“Resurrect childhood memories...” these words somehow make me feel awkward...”, “. ..how everything floats, changes, slips away... you move blindly, always groping, reaching for... what is this? It doesn’t look like anything... no one ever talks about it... it breaks out, you cling to it with all your might, push... where? It doesn’t matter, as long as it ends up in a favorable environment, where it will develop, where, perhaps, it will be able to live..."). Hence the unusual manner of narration-dialogue with oneself - constant self-testing for the accuracy and truth of one’s judgments and confessions. This also explains, finally, the harsh, truthful, merciless tonality of the book, in which, using episodes of his life as a kind of experimental material, Sarraute shows how from the anonymous faceless element of “tropisms”, as if from the primeval in the throes of self-knowledge the human personality is born.

Alexander Taganov

Childhood

Translation by L. Zonina and M. Zonina (1986)

So, will you really do it? “Resurrect childhood memories”... These words somehow make you feel awkward; you don’t like them. But you must admit, they are the only ones suitable. You want to “revive memories”... Don’t pretend, that’s exactly it.

Yes, I can’t help it, I’m attracted to this, I don’t know why...

Because, perhaps... doesn’t it mean... sometimes you just don’t realize it... Probably because your strength is running out...

No, I don't think... at least I don't feel...

And yet, what you want... to “revive memories”... doesn’t that mean...

Oh please...

No, you have to ask yourself - doesn't this mean retiring? come to your senses? to part with the elements, in which it is still bad or bad...

That's it, for better or worse...

Perhaps, but only in this element could you live... she...

No, why? I know her.

Is it true? Have you really forgotten how everything was there? how everything floats, changes, slips away... you move blindly, groping all the time, reaching out... towards what? what it is? it doesn't look like anything... no one ever talks about it... it breaks out, you grab onto it with all your might, push... where? it doesn’t matter, as long as it finds itself in a favorable environment, where it will develop, where, perhaps, it will be able to live... You see, you just need to think about it...

And you immediately become pompous. I would even say arrogant. Is it not from fear... Remember, it invariably takes possession of you when you find yourself in front of something that is still formless... What remains from previous attempts always seems to us more valuable than what is still trembling somewhere somewhere in the vague distance...

Exactly, I’m afraid this time it won’t tremble... or it won’t tremble enough... this is now fixed once and for all, it has become “clearer than ever” - everything is ready...

Don’t worry, you still can’t take it with your bare hands... everything is still just a glimmer, not a single word has been written about it, not a single word has been said, everything seems to be just faintly pulsating... beyond words... like fragments of something still alive ... and I would like, before they disappear yet... let me...

OK. I’m silent... However, we both know - if you really get into it...

Yes, and this time, believe it or not, but it was you who prompted me and have been pushing me for a long time...

Yes, you, with your comments, warnings... you cause this... you immerse me...

- “Nein, das tust dunicht”... “No, you won’t do this”... here are these words again, they are resurrected, they are alive again, they are as persistent as in that moment, a long time ago, when they entered into me, they press, press with all their strength, with all their powerful weight... and under their pressure something just as strong, even stronger, appears in me, rises, rises... the words fall from the tongue, bear it out , they hammer in... “Doch, ich werde estun.” “Well, I’ll do it.”

“Nein, das tust du nicht”... “No, you won’t do this”... - the words come from a figure almost erased by time... all that remains is the feeling of someone’s presence... the presence of a young woman sitting in chair in the salon of the hotel where my father and I spend his holidays, in Switzerland, in Interlaken or Beatenberg, I must be five or six years old, and a young woman was hired to tutor me and teach me German... I can hardly distinguish her features. .. but I clearly see a needlework basket on her lap and on top of everything there are large steel scissors... and I... I can’t see myself, but I feel as if I’m doing it now... I suddenly grab the scissors and squeeze them in my hand ... heavy closed scissors... I extend them forward with the tip to the back of the sofa, upholstered in lovely silk in patterns, blue, a slightly languid color with a shiny tint, and speak in German... “Ich werde es zerreissen” (6) .

In German... When did you manage to learn it so well?

I don’t understand it myself... But I’ve never uttered these words since then...” “Ich werde es zerreissen”... “Now I’ll cut it”... there is something whistling, ferocious in the word “zerreissen” , another second - and this will happen... I will cut, rip, spoil... it will be an encroachment, an attempt... criminal... but unpunished, as it could be, I know, I will not be punished... is it possible? that they will scold him a little, the father will look dissatisfied, slightly alarmed... What have you done, Tashok, why? and the indignation of the young woman... but I am still held back by fear, stronger than the fear of an unlikely, unimaginable punishment - of what will happen in a minute... irreversible... impossible... incredible... something that is not they do what they shouldn’t do, what no one allows themselves to do...

“Ich werde es zerreissen”... “Now I’ll cut it”... Keep in mind, I’ll cross the line, I’ll jump out of this decent, lived-in, warm and cozy world, I’ll break out of it, I’ll fall, I’ll fall into something uninhabited, into emptiness...

“Now I’m going to cut it”... I have to warn you to give you time to stop me, to hold me back. “Now I’ll cut it”... I’ll tell her this very loudly... maybe she’ll shrug her shoulders, bow her head, carefully peering at her needlework... Shouldn’t we take childish threats and teasing seriously? and my words will flutter, melt, my limp hand will fall, I will put the scissors in their place, in the basket...

But she raises her head, looks into my eyes and says, emphasizing each syllable: “Nein, das tust du nicht.” “No, you won’t do this”... exerting soft, and strict, and persistent, and unquestioning pressure, something like what I later felt in the words and intonations of hypnotists, trainers...

“No, you won’t do this...” - these words are like a thick heavy stream, what it carries within itself penetrates me and suppresses everything that moves in me, tries to get up... and rebels under its pressure, stands up even stronger, even higher, pushes and furiously throws out the words from me... “But I’ll do it.”

“No, you won’t do this...” - words surround me, squeeze, tie me up, I fight back... “But I’ll do it”... Finally I free myself, excitement, frenzy strain my hand, I thrust with all my might the tip of the scissors into the silk, it gives in, breaks, I cut the back from top to bottom and watch how something flabby, grayish crawls out of there... falls out of the crack...

In this hotel... or another similar Swiss hotel, where my father again spends his holidays with me, I am sitting at a table in a bright room with wide window openings, behind which one can see lawns, trees... This is the dining room where children eat under supervision of their bonnes and governesses.

All the children are sitting as far away from me as possible, at the other end of the long table... some of their faces are caricaturedly distorted by huge swollen cheeks... I hear them snort with laughter, I see how they secretly cast mocking glances at me, I can’t discern well, but I can guess what the adults are whispering to them: “Well, swallow, swallow, stop your stupid game, don’t look at this girl, don’t you dare imitate her, she’s an obnoxious child, an abnormal child, some kind of maniac...”

You already knew these words...

Oh, yes... I've heard enough... But not one of these words, fraught with a vague threat and humiliation, no persuasion, no pleas could force me to open my mouth and allow a piece of food to be put into it, impatiently looming on the fork, right here right next to my clenched lips... When I finally unclench them, letting this piece in, I immediately stuff it behind my cheek, already stuffed, swollen, stretched... into the pantry, where he will have to wait for his time to come. turn to move to my teeth and be chewed and chewed until it becomes liquid like soup...

“Thin like soup” - these are the words spoken by the Parisian doctor, Doctor Kervili...

It’s strange that his name immediately appears in your memory when you try in vain to remember so many others...

Yes, I myself don’t know why, among the many disappeared names, his name appears... My mother took me to him for an examination, I don’t remember why, just before I left for my father... It turns out that she was living then together with me in Paris, which means I was not yet six...

“Did you hear what Dr. Kervili said? You must chew the food until it becomes liquid, like soup... The main thing is, don’t forget it there, without me, they don’t know it there, they will forget about it, they won’t pay attention to it, you have to think for yourself about this, remember what I punished you... promise that you will do it... - Yes, I promise you, mom, don’t worry, don’t worry, you can rely on me... “Yes, she can be sure, I will replace her next to me, she will not part with me, everything will be as if she were still nearby, protecting me from dangers that they have no idea about here, and how would they know? only she can know what I need, she alone can figure out what is good for me and what is harmful.

In vain I talk to them, I explain... “It’s thin like soup, it’s the doctor, it’s my mother who told me, I promised her...” They shake their heads, grin, don’t believe... “Okay, okay, but still hurry up.” , swallow...” Yes, I can’t, I’m the only one here who knows this, I’m the only one who can judge... who else can decide for me here, let me... it’s still early... I’m chewing with all my might, I assure you, my cheekbones hurt, I hate to keep you waiting, but what can I do: this is not “thin like soup” yet... They are losing patience, rushing me... Why do they care what she said ? She doesn't count here... no one here except me takes her into account...

Now when I eat, the children's cafeteria is empty, I eat before or after the others... I set a bad example for them, some parents complained... so be it... I'm still here at my post... I offer resistance... I firmly hold the pieces of land where I raised my mother’s banner, where I drove the pole of her flag...

These images, these words could not form in your head then...

Of course no. But, by the way, in the head of an adult too... I felt it, as usual, beyond words, I felt it at all... But these words and images allow me to barely grasp my feelings, to hold them...

If I give in, if I swallow my piece before it becomes liquid like soup, I will do something that I will never be able to admit when I return there, to her... I will forever have to bury this betrayal, cowardice.

If she were with me, I would have long ago stopped thinking about it and swallowed without chewing, as usual. And my mother, as far as I knew her, was frivolous and absent-minded, she herself would probably quickly forget about everything... But she’s not here, she told me to take this with me... “Liquid, like soup...” that’s me received from her... she ordered me to keep it, and I must faithfully preserve it, protect it from encroachment... Well, is it really already “liquid, like soup”? Isn't it still too hard? No, really, it seems to me that I can already allow myself to swallow this... and then pull out the next piece from behind my cheek...

I regret that with my behavior I upset this woman, so sweet and patient, and risk upsetting my father... but I came from afar, from a place foreign to everyone, where they have no access, they do not know its laws, with which I can have fun there for the sake of and neglect, it happens that I violate them, but here my conscience obliges me to obey them... I courageously endure reproaches, ridicule, excommunication, accusations that I do this out of spite, and the anxiety of adults that my madness inspires in them, and guilt. But all this is nonsense compared to what I would have to experience if I had not kept my promise, trampled on the words that had become a sacred oath, lost all sense of duty, responsibility, behaved like a weak child and still swallowed a piece, before it becomes "thin like soup."

Nathalie Sarraute

Childhood - translation by L. Zonina and M. Zonina (1986)

The Bizarre Worlds of Nathalie Sarraute - Alexander Taganov

Nathalie Sarraute's books evoke a mixed reaction among readers for the simple reason that they are far from the canons of mass entertainment literature, are not programmed for success with the public, do not promise “easy” reading: words, phrases, often fragments of phrases, advancing on each other, connecting dialogues and internal monologues, saturated with special dynamism and psychological tension, ultimately form a single intricate pattern of text, the perception and understanding of which requires certain efforts. The element of Sarrote’s artistic word exists according to its own internal laws, the efforts spent on comprehending them are invariably and fully rewarded, for behind the external hermeticity of Sarrote’s texts, amazing worlds are revealed, fascinating with their unknownness, constituting the vast space of the human soul, stretching into infinity.

The same age as the century, Nathalie Sarrott (nee Natalya Ilyinichna Chernyak) spent her first childhood years in Russia - in the cities of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where she was born, Kamenets-Podolsky, St. Petersburg, Moscow. In 1908, due to family troubles and social circumstances, Natasha, her father and stepmother left for Paris forever, which would become her second hometown. (The writer talks about this and other events of the early stages of her life in the autobiographical story “Childhood”). Here, in Paris, Sarraute entered great literature, which, however, happened completely unnoticed. Sarraute's first book, Tropisms (1), which appeared in 1939, did not attract attention either from critics or from readers. Meanwhile, as the author himself noted somewhat later, it “contained in embryo everything that the writer “continued to develop in subsequent works” (2). However, the inattention of literary criticism and readers to Sarraute’s first work is quite understandable. In the complex atmosphere of the 1930s, saturated with disturbing socio-political events, “engaged” literature, involved in the vicissitudes of the historical process, came to the fore. This largely explained the success of the works of Andre Malraux, and somewhat later of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Sarraute, acting as if contrary to the general aspiration of public consciousness, turned to realities of a completely different plane. Small artistic miniature novellas, outwardly reminiscent of the genre-lyrical sketches that made up Sarraute’s book, were addressed to the hidden depths of the human psyche, where the echoes of global social upheavals were hardly felt. Borrowing from the natural sciences the term “tropisms,” which denote the reactions of a living organism to external physical or chemical stimuli, Sarraute tried to capture and designate with the help of images “inexplicable movements” that “glid very quickly within the limits of our consciousness” that “lie at the basis of our gestures.” , our words, feelings,” representing “the secret source of our existence” (3).

All of Sarraute’s subsequent work was a consistent and purposeful search for ways to penetrate into the deep layers of the human “I.” These searches, manifested in the novels of the 1940s and 1950s - “Portrait of an Unknown” (1948), “Martero” (1953), “Planetarium” (1959), as well as in a book of essays called “The Age of Suspicion” (1956), - brought Sarrotte fame, forced people to talk about her as the herald of the so-called “new novel” in France.

The “new novel,” which replaced “biased” literature, reflected the state of consciousness of a person of the 20th century, who experienced the most complex, unpredictable, often tragic turns of socio-historical development, the collapse of established views and ideas due to the emergence of new knowledge in various areas of spiritual life (theory Einstein’s relativity, Freud’s teachings, the artistic discoveries of Proust, Joyce, Kafka, etc.), which forced a radical revision of existing values.

The term "new novel", coined by literary criticism in the 1950s, united writers who were often quite different from each other in both the style of their writing and the themes of their works. Nevertheless, the grounds for such a union still existed: in the works of Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Claude Simon and other authors classified as part of this literary movement, the desire to abandon traditional artistic forms was clearly outlined, since they, from the point of view of the “new novelists,” are hopelessly outdated. Without belittling the importance of the classical, primarily Balzacian heritage, the transformers of the genre at the same time spoke quite categorically about the impossibility of following this tradition in the 20th century, rejecting such familiar genre attributes of the novel as an “omniscient” narrator telling the reader a story that claims to be authentic, a character -character, and other firmly established ways of creating artistic conventions that clothe real life in the forms of established rationalistic stereotypes.

“Today’s reader,” Sarraute wrote in her book “The Age of Suspicion,” “first of all, does not trust what the writer’s fantasy offers him” (4). The fact is, the French novelist believes, that “lately he has learned too much and he cannot completely get it out of his head. What exactly he learned is well known; there is no point in dwelling on it. He met Joyce, Proust and Freud; with the intimate current of internal monologue, with the limitless diversity of psychological life and huge, almost as yet unexplored areas of the unconscious (5).

Sarraute’s first novels fully reflected the distrust of traditional forms of artistic knowledge inherent in all “new novelists.” In them (novels), the author abandoned the usual clichés. Rejecting the principle of plot organization of the text, moving away from the classical schemes of constructing a system of characters, socially determined, given by moral and characterological definitions, bringing out extremely impersonal characters, often designated only by the pronouns “he”, “she”, Sarraute immersed the reader in the world of common banal truths that make up the basis of mass mentality, under the heavy layer of which, nevertheless, the deep current of the universal primary substance of “tropisms” was discerned. As a result, an extremely reliable model of the human “I” arose, as if initially and inevitably “sandwiched” between two powerful layers of elements that constantly influence it: the universal matter of the subconscious, on the one hand, and the external social and everyday environment, on the other.

Nathalie Sarraute

"Golden Fruits"

At one of the exhibitions, in small talk, the topic of a new, recently published novel accidentally comes up. At first, no one or almost no one knows about him, but suddenly interest in him awakens. Critics consider it their duty to admire The Golden Fruits as the purest example of high art - a thing closed in on itself, superbly polished, the pinnacle of modern literature. A laudatory article was written by a certain Brule. No one dares to object, even the rebels are silent. Having succumbed to the wave that has overwhelmed everyone, the novel is read even by those who never have enough time for modern writers.

Someone authoritative, to whom the weakest “poor ignoramuses”, wandering in the night, stuck in the quagmire, turn with a plea to express their own judgment, dares to note that for all the undeniable merits of the novel, there are also some shortcomings in it, for example in the language. In his opinion, there is a lot of confusion in it, it is clumsy, even sometimes heavy, but the classics, when they were innovators, also seemed confused and clumsy. Overall, the book is modern and perfectly reflects the spirit of the times, and this is what distinguishes true works of art.

Someone else, not succumbing to the general epidemic of delight, does not express his skepticism out loud, but assumes a contemptuous, slightly irritated look. His like-minded woman only dares to admit in private that she also does not see any merit in the book: in her opinion, it is difficult, cold and seems to be a fake.

Other experts see the value of “Golden Fruits” in the fact that the book is truthful, it has amazing accuracy, it is more real than life itself. They strive to unravel how it was made, savor individual fragments, like juicy pieces of some exotic fruit, compare this work with Watteau, with Fragonard, with ripples of water in the moonlight.

The most exalted ones beat in ecstasy, as if pierced by an electric current, others convince them that the book is fake, this does not happen in life, and still others climb to them with explanations. Women compare themselves with the heroine, suck up the scenes of the novel and try them on themselves.

Someone tries to analyze one of the scenes of the novel out of context; it seems far from reality, devoid of meaning. All that is known about the scene itself is that the young man threw a shawl over the girl’s shoulders. Those who have doubts ask staunch supporters of the book to clarify some details for them, but the “convinced” recoil from them as heretics. They attack the lonely Jean Laborie, who is especially careful to remain silent. A terrible suspicion hangs over him. He begins, hesitatingly, to make excuses, to reassure the others, let everyone know: he is an empty vessel, ready to accept whatever they want to fill him with. Those who disagree pretend to be blind and deaf. But there is one who does not want to give in: it seems to her that “Golden Fruits” is mortal boredom, and if there are any merits in the book, she asks to prove them with the book in hand. Those who think like her straighten their shoulders and smile at her gratefully. Maybe they saw the merits of the work themselves a long time ago, but decided that because of such smallness they cannot call the book a masterpiece, and then they will laugh at the rest, at the unspoiled, content with “thin gruel for the toothless,” and will treat them as children. However, the fleeting flash is immediately extinguished. All eyes turn to two venerable critics. In one, a powerful mind rages like a hurricane, and will-o’-the-wisps flash feverishly from thoughts in his eyes. The other is like a wineskin filled with something valuable that he shares only with a select few. They decide to put this imbecile, this troublemaker, in her place and explain the merits of the work in abstruse terms, further confusing the listeners. And those who for a moment hoped to go out into the “sunny expanses” again find themselves driven into the “endless expanse of the icy tundra.”

Only one of the entire crowd comprehends the truth, notices the conspiratorial glance that the two exchange before triple-locking themselves from the rest and expressing their judgment. Now everyone slavishly worships them, he is lonely, “having grasped the truth,” he is still looking for a like-minded person, and when he finally finds them, those two look at them as if they are mentally retarded, who cannot understand the subtleties, laugh at them and are surprised that they are still discussing "Golden Fruits" for so long.

Soon critics appear - such as a certain Monod, who calls “Golden Fruits” “zero”; Mettetad goes even further and sharply opposes Breye. A certain Martha finds the novel funny and considers it a comedy. Any epithets are suitable for “Golden Fruits”, it has everything in the world, some believe, it is a real, very real world. There are those who were before the “Golden Fruits”, and those who are after. We are the generation of “Golden Fruits,” as others will call us. The limit has been reached. However, voices are increasingly heard calling the novel cheap, vulgar, an empty place. Loyal supporters claim that the writer made some shortcomings on purpose. They are objected to that if the author had decided to deliberately introduce elements of vulgarity into the novel, he would have thickened the colors, made them richer, turned them into a literary device, and hiding shortcomings under the word “deliberately” is ridiculous and unjustified. Some people find this argument confusing.

However, a crowd of those thirsting for truth asks a benevolent critic to prove its beauty with a book in his hands. He makes a feeble attempt, but his words, falling off his tongue, “fall into limp leaves,” he cannot find a single example to confirm his laudatory reviews and retreats in disgrace. The characters themselves are surprised how they happen to be constantly present at the incredible changes in attitude towards the book, but this already seems quite familiar. All these causeless sudden hobbies are similar to mass hallucinations. Just recently, no one dared to object to the merits of The Golden Fruits, but soon it turns out that they talk about them less and less, then they completely forget that such a novel ever existed, and only descendants in a few years will be able to say for sure whether it is whether this book is true literature or not.

At one of the events, the conversation turns to a published new novel. People begin to talk about him with undisguised interest. Critics express their opinions about “Golden Fruits” by admiring the work. Succumbing to the general hype, even those who do not pay much attention to modern literature are reading the novel.

Some try to analyze one of the scenes. It seems far from real perception and devoid of any meaning. The scene itself tells that a young man throws a shawl over the girl’s shoulders. Doubters ask book experts to clarify some points, but they recoil from them. They question a lone man, Jean Laborie, who tries to keep his questions quiet. Many begin to suspect Jean of understatement. He speaks stutteringly and begins to make excuses, calming the others. Jean says that he is like an empty vessel that can accept everything that is filled with it.

However, one girl appears who does not want to give in to the developing hype. In her opinion, "Golden Fruits" is a boring work. And if there are any worthwhile moments in it, then she asks experts to show them to her. Those who are of the same opinion smile at her with gratitude. It seems that they have long seen the merits of the book, but do not consider it a masterpiece of literature, and then they will laugh with undisguised feeling at others who are content with only little. But the fleeting flash, which should have planted the seed of doubt, is immediately extinguished. And glances turn to two famous critics.

In one of them, a great mind becomes clear, from the thoughts of which his eyes sparkle with a feverish light. The other is like a wineskin that has valuable contents. But he shares his knowledge only with a select few. These critics decided to put in place the woman who decided to sow trouble. They explain the merits of the work from their point of view, further confusing the surroundings. And those who for a moment hoped to understand the essence again found themselves driven into hopeless darkness.

Soon there were critics whose views were radically opposite. Mono calls the book a complete zero. Mettetad argues very sharply with Breuer. And Martha generally finds the novel funny and classifies it as a comedy. However, more and more voices are heard calling the novel a vulgar and cheap work. Soon, a serious dispute breaks out.

One of the critics points out the beauty of the story, and the crowd craves proof. He makes a feeble attempt, but cannot find sufficient words to explain his hypothesis. In the end he leaves.

In the end, the novel becomes forgotten, and only subsequent generations will be able to accurately determine whether this book was a true masterpiece or not.

Nathalie Sarraute

Childhood - translation by L. Zonina and M. Zonina (1986)

The Bizarre Worlds of Nathalie Sarraute - Alexander Taganov

Nathalie Sarraute's books evoke a mixed reaction among readers for the simple reason that they are far from the canons of mass entertainment literature, are not programmed for success with the public, do not promise “easy” reading: words, phrases, often fragments of phrases, advancing on each other, connecting dialogues and internal monologues, saturated with special dynamism and psychological tension, ultimately form a single intricate pattern of text, the perception and understanding of which requires certain efforts. The element of Sarrote’s artistic word exists according to its own internal laws, the efforts spent on comprehending them are invariably and fully rewarded, for behind the external hermeticity of Sarrote’s texts, amazing worlds are revealed, fascinating with their unknownness, constituting the vast space of the human soul, stretching into infinity.

The same age as the century, Nathalie Sarrott (nee Natalya Ilyinichna Chernyak) spent her first childhood years in Russia - in the cities of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, where she was born, Kamenets-Podolsky, St. Petersburg, Moscow. In 1908, due to family troubles and social circumstances, Natasha, her father and stepmother left for Paris forever, which would become her second hometown. (The writer talks about this and other events of the early stages of her life in the autobiographical story “Childhood”). Here, in Paris, Sarraute entered great literature, which, however, happened completely unnoticed. Sarraute's first book, Tropisms (1), which appeared in 1939, did not attract attention either from critics or from readers. Meanwhile, as the author himself noted somewhat later, it “contained in embryo everything that the writer “continued to develop in subsequent works” (2). However, the inattention of literary criticism and readers to Sarraute’s first work is quite understandable. In the complex atmosphere of the 1930s, saturated with disturbing socio-political events, “engaged” literature, involved in the vicissitudes of the historical process, came to the fore. This largely explained the success of the works of Andre Malraux, and somewhat later of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Sarraute, acting as if contrary to the general aspiration of public consciousness, turned to realities of a completely different plane. Small artistic miniature novellas, outwardly reminiscent of the genre-lyrical sketches that made up Sarraute’s book, were addressed to the hidden depths of the human psyche, where the echoes of global social upheavals were hardly felt. Borrowing from the natural sciences the term “tropisms,” which denote the reactions of a living organism to external physical or chemical stimuli, Sarraute tried to capture and designate with the help of images “inexplicable movements” that “glid very quickly within the limits of our consciousness” that “lie at the basis of our gestures.” , our words, feelings,” representing “the secret source of our existence” (3).

All of Sarraute’s subsequent work was a consistent and purposeful search for ways to penetrate into the deep layers of the human “I.” These searches, manifested in the novels of the 1940s and 1950s - “Portrait of an Unknown” (1948), “Martero” (1953), “Planetarium” (1959), as well as in a book of essays called “The Age of Suspicion” (1956), - brought Sarrotte fame, forced people to talk about her as the herald of the so-called “new novel” in France.

The “new novel,” which replaced “biased” literature, reflected the state of consciousness of a person of the 20th century, who experienced the most complex, unpredictable, often tragic turns of socio-historical development, the collapse of established views and ideas due to the emergence of new knowledge in various areas of spiritual life (theory Einstein’s relativity, Freud’s teachings, the artistic discoveries of Proust, Joyce, Kafka, etc.), which forced a radical revision of existing values.

The term "new novel", coined by literary criticism in the 1950s, united writers who were often quite different from each other in both the style of their writing and the themes of their works. Nevertheless, the grounds for such a union still existed: in the works of Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Claude Simon and other authors classified as part of this literary movement, the desire to abandon traditional artistic forms was clearly outlined, since they, from the point of view of the “new novelists,” are hopelessly outdated. Without belittling the importance of the classical, primarily Balzacian heritage, the transformers of the genre at the same time spoke quite categorically about the impossibility of following this tradition in the 20th century, rejecting such familiar genre attributes of the novel as an “omniscient” narrator telling the reader a story that claims to be authentic, a character -character, and other firmly established ways of creating artistic conventions that clothe real life in the forms of established rationalistic stereotypes.

“Today’s reader,” Sarraute wrote in her book “The Age of Suspicion,” “first of all, does not trust what the writer’s fantasy offers him” (4). The fact is, the French novelist believes, that “lately he has learned too much and he cannot completely get it out of his head. What exactly he learned is well known; there is no point in dwelling on it. He met Joyce, Proust and Freud; with the intimate current of internal monologue, with the limitless diversity of psychological life and huge, almost as yet unexplored areas of the unconscious (5).

Sarraute’s first novels fully reflected the distrust of traditional forms of artistic knowledge inherent in all “new novelists.” In them (novels), the author abandoned the usual clichés. Rejecting the principle of plot organization of the text, moving away from the classical schemes of constructing a system of characters, socially determined, given by moral and characterological definitions, bringing out extremely impersonal characters, often designated only by the pronouns “he”, “she”, Sarraute immersed the reader in the world of common banal truths that make up the basis of mass mentality, under the heavy layer of which, nevertheless, the deep current of the universal primary substance of “tropisms” was discerned. As a result, an extremely reliable model of the human “I” arose, as if initially and inevitably “sandwiched” between two powerful layers of elements that constantly influence it: the universal matter of the subconscious, on the one hand, and the external social and everyday environment, on the other.

The characters of Sarraute’s already mentioned books are a certain anonymous “I”, with the meticulousness of a detective following the elderly gentleman and his daughter throughout the novel, trying to unravel the mystery of their relationship (“Portrait of an Unknown Man”), Martereau, the hero of the work of the same name, and the people around him, placed in the most banal everyday situation associated with the vicissitudes of buying a house, Alain Gimier and his wife, involved in an equally banal “apartment” adventure and trying to take possession of their aunt’s apartment (“Planetarium”), could well become participants in the usual novel stories presented through traditional genre forms: detective, psychological or social novel. However, Sarraute resolutely refuses the beaten path (it is no coincidence that in the preface to “Portrait of an Unknown” Jean-Paul Sartre called this work an “anti-novel”). Events filled with true drama, not inferior in their intensity to the tension of situations in Shakespeare's or Balzac's works, unfold for the French novelist primarily at a different level of existence - at the level of micropsychic processes.

In the 60s - 80s, no less famous and “sensational” works by Sarraute appeared - the novels “Golden Fruits” (1963, Russian translation - 1969), “Between Life and Death” (1968), “Do You Hear Them?” (1972, Russian translation - 1983), “Fools Speak” (1976), as well as the autobiographical story “Childhood” (1983, Russian translation - 1986), in which the author, with amazing tenacity, while avoiding thematic and other monotony, again and again trying to break through the superficial layer of banal everyday life, through the husk of familiar words and frozen stereotypes of thinking to the deep layer of life, to the anonymous element of the subconscious in order to highlight in it the universal microparticles of mental matter that underlie all human actions, deeds and aspirations.