146
PARTISAN REVIE W
geometries," a phrase Sartre revives to characterize two such books:
L'Exphience Interieure
by Georges Bataille and
Le Mythe de Sisyphe
by Albert Camus. Even novelists now feel that they have to reinforce
their stories with philosophical essays--which are occasionally more suc–
cessful and convincing than the stories in themselves, and for which they
serve as a kind of abstract guarantee.
L'Etranger
can hardly be discussed
without considering
Le Mythe de Sisyphe,
in which the theme of that
novel is transposed to the plane of philosophy.
When critics come to pass judgment on
L'Age de Raison,
the first
volume of a trilogy that Sartre intends to dedicate to "liberty" and whose
publication has been held up by political considerations, they will hardly
be able to discuss it without also discussing
L'Etre et le Neant,
also his
plays and novels. Obviously, most of the outstanding writers of today
present two faces to the public. One is stem and intellectual, the other
physical, overcome by emotion and having an irresistible effect on the
feelings of the reader.
Another feature common to all these writers is the deliberate way
in which they ignore the prospective reader. They seem to write not so
much in order to communicate their thoughts as to conceal them. The
studied unreadableness of Maurice Blanchot's two novels is the per–
fect example
of
this. One ought to mention Albert Camus' tract in
this connection, an essay that, on the contrary, is only too readable and
whose seeming transparency perhaps misleads the reader more as to its
real contents than does the manifest and intentional obscurity of Blan–
chot's
Thomas l'Obscur.
Georges Bataille's two books,
L'Experience
Inthieure
and
Le Coupable,
as well as Brice-Parain's
Recherches sur la
Nature et les Fonctions de Langage,
are examples in which estrangement
between the author and his language is as apparent in the content as it
is in the manner of expression. Even a novel like
Les Temps Metes
by
Queneau is literally
unreadable,
if one give the word "reading" the sense
it ordinarily
has~that
of a basically discursive and, if possible, unob–
structed communication between author and reader.
When a work accidentally appears intelligible, it is in reality ambi–
guous, and the innocent reader is left uncertain of the meaning the
writer intended. Such is the case with Jean Paulhan's
Fleurs de Tarbes
and even more so with his
La Cze de Poesie.
Even on the stage, there is
a similar abuse of language, in spite of the presence of an audience;
a similar disjunction between thought and expression, particularly in
the case of Montherlant's characters who affect a grandeur their conversa–
tion never succeeds in reaching. Cocteau's alexandrines in
Renaud et
Armide
constitute a very clever imitation of plain language-we are
always on the point of getting what the two lovers are saying-but then
the illusion fades, the idea slips between our fingers and we are left with
only the appearance of a meaning and the shadow of a theory of love.
