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metaphysics, even morals, exist, all
these are in the first instance con–
veyed by objects." To which the
critic Robert Kanters sensibly re–
plied: "I have never yet seen glass–
es which looked all by themselves,
that is, without someone looking
through them."
In fact, the achievements of
those who have arrived, or who
have attempted to arrive, at what
Roland Barthes calls "the zero de–
gree of writing," show such diver–
sity that it would seem that the
problems they raise are not pre–
cisely the same. Only Alain Robbe–
Grillet is faithful, entirely faithful,
to his doctrine. The result is books
that are difficult to read for two
reasons: the first is that we are
not used to a literally meaningless
literature, at least when it is de–
liberately so. The second is that
Robbe-Grillet, according to one
critic, ends by "competing with
the land-registry." Claude Mauri–
ac, examining the case of Robbe–
Grillet in his book,
"L'
Aliterature
Contemporaine"
(Contemporary
Aliterature)
, quotes this passage
from
Le Voyeur:
"There was then,
beginning with the window and
turning towards the left (that is,
counter-clockwise) : a chair, a sec–
ond chair, the dressing-table (in
the corner), a wardrobe, a second
wardrobe (extending to the second
corner), a third chair, the cherry–
wood bed placed lengthwise against
the wall; a very small table.. . ."
Let us stop. The writer himself
has no more reason to stop than
to continue. Every description of
this type can always be continued.
Furthermore, one wonders, what
is the principle behind such prose?
Why say "a wardrobe" and a
"cherrywood bed"? Of what wood
was the wardrobe made? And the
chairs? What color were they?
Once evocation is replaced by de–
scription, the latter becomes end–
less. Besides, apart from the au–
thor's theoretical statements, it is
hard to see in what way these ob–
jects can "convey" feelings, psy–
chological movements, etc.
What Sartre calls the "anti–
novels" of Nathalie Sarraute are
more interesting, although they are
based on an equally rigid and ar–
bitrary notion. This author also
shuns psychology, but she replaces
the limitless description of objects
by an absolute respect for the ap–
parent banality of human relation–
ships. Her characters exist only by
what they say and they say noth–
ing, even when they speak. As
Sartre says in his preface to
POT–
trait d'un Inconnu,
Natalie Sar–
raute "makes us see the wall of
the inauthentic; she makes us see
it everywhere. And behind this
wall? What is there? Well, pre–
cisely,
nothing."
To sum up, the experience of
this avant-garde- has been that of
all preceding ones. It made an im–
portant discovery: the object, the
extended domain of the meaning–
less. It is true that no person has
ever spoken like the heroes of Bal–
zac, who speak only words full of
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