of its constituent elements.
If
one
no longer believes in a society, one
no longer believes in the charac–
ters who constitute it. "Sociologi–
cally," continues Pingaud, "the in–
dividual no longer corresponds to
anything. Psychologically, he has
become a mask: what we know
today of human behavior-and
what the novelists have sometimes
divined before the psychologists
themselves-has done away with
the old notion of the singular char–
acter, sure of his individuality even
in delirium. Betrayed by his so–
cial environment, the character has
also lost confidence in himself: he
can find support neither within
himself nor around him."
Frankly, this reasoning is not
convincing and it is hard to see
why the lack of confidence which
one may feel in a given society ne–
cessarily entails the character's lack
of reality in the eyes of the novel–
ist. We have here, in the thinking
of the new school, a hiatus which
is all the more serious since it lies
precisely at the heart of their the–
ory. But, shaky or solid, what
counts most is to determine where
this theory takes us.
Character and plot having dis–
appeared from the novel, what is
left? The object, replies Robbe–
Grillet. And an object without
meaning. For if the individual,
ceasing to
be
a character, that is
to say, stripped of his psychology,
can become an object, the object
itself ought to
be
deprived of all
meaning, that is, of all depth. In
469
Balzac we can assume that the de–
scription of a waistcoat "means"
something: wealth, elegance, dan–
dyism, or on the contrary, poverty,
humility, etc. In the novels of the
new school, the object is denied
this "pragmatic role." "It is no
longer there in order to signify
material or moral values." We
come then to an "objective" liter–
ature which proposes to create
what Bernard Pingaud calls "the
surface novel."
The truth is, when we examine
this theory-and without passing
judgment on the works which it
has inspired-we find a curious ni–
hilism. For, after all, the develop–
ment of the novel, since the seven–
teenth century, has taken place,
precisely, through successive acqui–
sitions. Before the seventeenth cen–
tury, narrative works involved he–
roes, not characters. In the same
way, they sought to tell not mean–
ingful stories, but merely tales, of
a g!!nerally fantastic nature, the
only object of which was the
amusement of the reader. The
novel, with its character and plot,
successively conquered the moral,
social, historical, and psychological
fields. For some time now, it has
even entered a new domain, that
of philosophical systems or rather
visions of the world. By limiting it–
self to the object, one might ima–
gine that the novel casts off all
these acquisitions. According to
Robbe-Grillet, this is not the case:
"I believe," he says, "that if feel–
ings, psychological movements,
