The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Here by Nathalie Sarraute
Renée Kingcaid

Nathalie Sarraute. Here. Trans. Barbara Wright. Foreword by E. Nicole Meyer. George Braziller, 1997. 165 pp. $22.50.

As a scholar of French literature, I rarely recommend a translated novel over the original. But the fact is that Nathalie Sarraute has been here, and done this, before. The infinite slowness of perception and psychological response to stimulus was the governing principle of her earliest works, most notably the 1937 Tropismes, which became one of the founding works of the Nouveau Roman when reprinted by Minuit in 1957. Sarraute published Ici (Here) in France in 1995; by the age of 95, she had earned the right to have her prose sound tired, but the more fundamental problem here is the achronicity of the novel. Sarraute’s trademark is the elaboration of the nanosecond of response—by what torturous routes does a forgotten word return to memory?; how can “they” say “that” to “me”?; why is such and such an expression not exactly appropriate to the situation I wish to describe?—but in the information age, the nanosecond seems no longer worthy to be explored. Indeed, it is more likely to be deplored, as we expect our internet connections to deliver information instantaneously: we don’t dissect the nanosecond any more; we drum our fingers impatiently through it.
In her preface to the English translation, E. Nicole Meyer writes that “continual movement distinguishes this text where words can exert vast power.” I agree with her that Sarraute remains true to her belief in the power of words, but I find the French text of Here static and tedious, difficult to stay with for long. Barbara Wright has translated three previous novels of Sarraute’s, and, indeed, has written about problems of translation in a recent issue of this journal. It is in her version only that the text seems indeed to have “movement.” She captures well Sarraute’s continuously interrupted prosody and takes justified liberties with the text in order to preserve Sarraute’s reliance on phonetic association to structure the book. Wright’s translation, ironically enough, harks back to the original freshness of Tropismes; I suggest, therefore, that if one wants to go “here” where Sarraute is in this more recent book, it is better to go “there” instead with Barbara Wright. [Renée Kingcaid]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Here by Nathalie Sarraute Renée Kingcaid Nathalie Sarraute. Here. Trans. Barbara Wright. Foreword by E. Nicole Meyer. George Braziller, 1997. 165 pp. $22.50. As a scholar of French literature, I rarely recommend a translated novel over the original. But the fact is that Nathalie Sarraute has been here, and done this, before. The infinite slowness of perception and psychological response to stimulus was the governing principle of her earliest works, most notably the 1937 Tropismes, which became one of the founding works of the Nouveau Roman when reprinted by Minuit in 1957. Sarraute published Ici (Here) in France in 1995; by the age of 95, she had earned the right to have her prose sound tired, but the more fundamental problem here is the achronicity of the novel. Sarraute’s trademark is the elaboration of the nanosecond of response—by what torturous routes does a forgotten word return to memory?; how can “they” say “that” to “me”?; why is such and such an expression not exactly appropriate to the situation I wish to describe?—but in the information age, the nanosecond seems no longer worthy to be explored. Indeed, it is more likely to be deplored, as we expect our internet connections to deliver information instantaneously: we don’t dissect the nanosecond any more; we drum our fingers impatiently through it. In her preface to the English translation, E. Nicole Meyer writes that “continual movement distinguishes this text where words can exert vast power.” I agree with her that Sarraute remains true to her belief in the power of words, but I find the French text of Here static and tedious, difficult to stay with for long. Barbara Wright has translated three previous novels of Sarraute’s, and, indeed, has written about problems of translation in a recent issue of this journal. It is in her version only that the text seems indeed to have “movement.” She captures well Sarraute’s continuously interrupted prosody and takes justified liberties with the text in order to preserve Sarraute’s reliance on phonetic association to structure the book. Wright’s translation, ironically enough, harks back to the original freshness of Tropismes; I suggest, therefore, that if one wants to go “here” where Sarraute is in this more recent book, it is better to go “there” instead with Barbara Wright. [Renée Kingcaid]

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