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Proust and the New Novel in France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Abstract
All of the characteristics of the New Novel can be found in Proust: a search for an unknown reality, participated in by the reader whose vision of the world is thereby transformed. The unknown reality consists of ordinary events juxtaposed in such a way that they reveal a new truth or reality to the reader. The characters habitually misunderstand one another; the impossibility of really knowing anyone else makes solitude an inherent state of each character, so that any attempt at possession is necessarily absurd. The New Novelist, therefore, tries to grasp the form of society as a whole rather than to describe the life of one individual. This results in a presentation of existences rather than essences.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973
References
1 See Jessie L. Hornsby's article that approaches Proust and the New Novel from the point of view of the traditional novel, esp. pp. 67–68, “Le ‘Nouveau Roman’ de Proust,” L'Esprit Créateur, 7 (Summer 1967), 67–80. Unfortunately, she uses almost exclusively Robbe-Grillet's Pour un nouveau roman, which also speaks of the New Novel in contrast to the traditional novel. This orientation somewhat distorts the interpretation, I believe, and this is also true of H. Bonnet's article in the issue (p. 470) of the Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Marcel Proust devoted to Proust and the New Novel, No. 16 (1966), where Bonnet picks Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet as “les deux représentants les plus remarquables de ce ‘nouveau roman’ ”—though the least Proustian in many respects; likewise Giorgetto Giorgi in the same issue, esp. pp. 478–83.
2 Bonnet, p 470.
3 See esp. R. M. Albérès' “Proust: Roman artistique et roman phénoménologique,” in Métamorphoses du roman (Paris: Albin Michel, 1966), pp. 77–94. See also: M. P.-L. Larcher's presentation in the Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Marcel Proust, 1966, p. 461 ; and Pauline Newman's Marcel Proust et l'existentialisme (Paris: Nouvelles Ed. Latines, 1952).
4 See my article “The Relation of Epiphany to Description in the Modern French Novel,” CLS, 5 (1969), 317–28, and Jane King Sherwin, “The Literary Epiphany in Some Early Fiction of Flaubert, Conrad, Proust, and Joyce,” Diss. Michigan 1962.
5 See also my monograph for a complete treatment of the esthetics of the New Novel : The Aesthetics of the New Novel in France (Boulder: Univ. of Colorado Press, 1968).
6 Jean Santeuil, iii (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 301.
7 See Sarraute, L'Ere du soupçon (Paris : Gallimard, 1956), pp. 108–09, 114–15.
8 Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, ii (Paris: Pléiade, 1954), 549. All references to A la recherche are to this edition.
9 La Convergence stylistique chez Proust (Geneva: Droz, 1957), esp. pp. 64, 75. See E. R. Curtius: “Pour [Proust], tout est relatif signifie que tout vaut, que chaque point de vue est fondé. … Le fait que des points de vue infinis sont possibles ne signifie point qu'aucun n'est vrai, mais que tous sont vrais” (Marcel Proust, traduit de l'allemand par Armand Pierhal, Paris: La Revue Nouvelle, 1928, p. 135). Compare Robbe-Grillet's statement regarding characters in general : “ils pourront eux-mêmes êtres riches de multiples interprétations possibles; ils pourront selon les préoccupations de chacun, donner lieu à tous les commentaires” (“Littérature d'aujourd'hui,” Express, 17 Jan. 1956, p. 11).
10 See Raymond Jean, “Chroniques,” Cahiers du Sud, No. 371 (1963), pp. 134–35, where he defends Proust precisely on this basis.
11 Albert Feuillerat has amply demonstrated this in Comment Marcel Proust a composé son roman (New Haven, Conn: Yale Univ. Press, 1934), esp. pp. 127–28. See also the discussion between Mme Fabre-Luce and Messrs. Cat-taui, Rousset, Mouton, Barrère, etc., in Entretiens sur Marcel Proust, ed. Georges Cattui and Philip Kolb (La Haye: Mouton, 1966), pp. 117–19.
12 iii, 911. Also “[mes lecteurs] ne seraient pas, selon moi, mes lecteurs, mais les propres lecteurs d'eux-mêmes, mon livre n'étant qu'une sorte de ces verres grossissants comme ceux que tendait à un acheteur l'opticien de Combray ; mon livre, grâce auquel je leur fournirais le moyen de lire en eux-mêmes” (m, 1,033).
13 “A quoi servez-vous ?” Nouvelle Critique, 12 (Nov. 1960), 85. Proust and Butor are saying the same thing with one difference: “optique” is typically Proust; “et celle des autres” is typically Butor, so much so that he even explains the termination of Jean Santeuil for this reason. Quoting from Jean Santeuil, he writes: “ ' . . . vous avez vu l'histoire se faire devant vous, c'est-à-dire, à deux générations, l'espèce humaine se transformer.' Arrivé à ce point, Proust a senti la nécessité de refaire son roman . . . afin de ne plus nous montrer seulement la vie et l'évolution d'un personnage, mais, à travers ce personnage, l'évolution de tous ceux qui sont avec lui dans le temps” (“ Jean Santeuil par Marcel Proust,” Monde Nouveau-Paru, 8, 1952, 74).
14 Lecture at Columbia Univ., 8 Dec. 1964.
15 In his Marcel Proust par lui-même (Paris: Seuil, 1953), p. 132.
16 Repertoire II (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1964), p. 90. See also the “prologue” of my monograph cited above for a more complete analysis of this objective.
17 Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns, eds., Philosophies of Art and Beauty (New York: Modern Library, 1964), p. 696.
18 Another example from Proust would be the scene where Mme Verdurin is delightedly eating her croissant while reading about the sinking of the Lusitania (iii, 772–73). A similar analysis could be made of quite a different event: Marcel's mother meeting Swann at the umbrella counter of Aux Trois Quartiers (i, 414), an event which becomes extraordinary for Marcel, though not so much for the reader, it is true, as in the other examples cited. But in this way Proust teaches the reader to see the extraordinary in other common descriptions.
19 (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), pp. 30–31.
20 See Albérès, p. 159, regarding Butor's and Proust's use of juxtaposition.
21 See “Le Roman et la poésie,” Repertoire II, pp. 7–26. A voluminous commentary on other aspects of juxtaposition in Proust already exists, George Poulet's L'Espace proustien constituting the backbone of such commentary, esp. pp. 19, 23–25, 124–25, and the discussion following his lecture published in Cattaui and Kolb, esp. pp. 100–01. See also in Cattaui and Kolb: Jean Mouton, “L'Optique de Proust,” and the ensuing discussion, pp. 35–57, esp. pp. 35, 44, 51, and 57. This article treats the relation of metaphor to juxtaposition as well. Proustian metaphor and analogy often serve the same revelatory purpose that simple juxtaposition of facts, objects, and events serves in the New Novel where metaphor and analogy are almost completely absent. For a discussion of this use of metaphor in Proust, see Stephen Ullmann, “The Metaphorical Texture of Proustian Novel,” The Image in the Modern French Novel (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1960), esp. pp. 124–29, and Juliette Monnin-Hornung, Proust et la peinture (Geneva: Droz, 1951), pp. 45–46.
22 Denise Bourdet. “Alain Robbe-Grillet,” Visages d'aujourd'hui (Paris: Plon, 1960), p. 15.
23 Roger Priouret, “Révolution dans le roman?” Figaro Littéraire, 29 mars 1958, p. 7. See Jean Hyppolite, “L'Objet dans le roman contemporain,” Cercle Ouvert (Paris: La Nef de Paris, 1957), pp. 9–20.
24 Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 23.
25 Marcel Proust: The Fictions . . ., p. 106. See also pp. 107, 110–11, 134–35.
26 I, 19. See also iii, 912, and Bersani, pp. 26–27.
27 Butor, L'Emploi du temps (Paris: Minuit, 1956), p. 187.
28 “ Le Planétarium, le jeu compliqué des paroles et des silences,” Arts, 3 juin 1959, p. 2.
29 iii, 401. See also the comment of Samuel Beckett in his Proust (New York: Grove, 1931), p. 47: “Even on the rare occasions when word and gesture happen to be valid expressions of personality, they lose their significance on their passage through the cataract of the personality that is opposed to them,” etc.
30 Répertoire (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1960), p. 184.
31 L'Ere du soupçon, p. 33. The attempt at possession found in the jealous characters of both Proust and Robbe-Grillet has another similarity: see Proust, iii, 916–17, as a third person narration of the prototype of Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie.
32 The opposite could be argued by implication, at least. In two of Butor's novels, e.g., the narrator, attempting to discover reality and becoming more and more lost in the attempt, apparently misses the chance for a true relationship in love: Jacques Revel loses Rose Bailey and Pierre Vernier will probably lose Michèle.
33 Pour un nouveau roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), p. 33.
34 Répertoire II, p. 225. Gaétan Picon correctly observes that Proust's social world differs from society as presented in the traditional novel because in the latter society is a known factor to which the individual attempts to adjust. In Proust—and this would be true of the New Novel as well—“la réalité [or the social world] loin d'être reçue comme le modèle d'une expérience, est disposée comme l'object d'une expérimentation” (Lecture de Proust, Paris: Mercure de France, 1963, p. 195).
35 Répertoire II, p. S3.
36 See Proust's own analyses in Le Temps retrouvé regarding the importance of relationships and rapports for the structure of his novel, esp. iii, 915, 925, 986, 1, 029–33, 1, 046–47.
37 Frederic C. St. Aubyn, “Entretien avec Michel Butor,” FR, 36 (1962), 20.
38 “ Le Planétarium, le jeu compliqué . . ., ” p. 2.
39 André Bourin, “Techniciens du roman : Nathalie Sarraute,” Nouvelles Littéraires, 25 juin 1959, p. 7.
40 Sarraute, “La Littérature, aujourd'hui—ii,” Tel Quel, 9 (printemps 1962), 52–53.
41 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (New York : Doubleday, 1957), p. 484.
42 The World of Marcel Proust (Boston: Houghton, 1966), p. 232.
43 Marcel Proust par lui-même, p. 137.