SOURCE: Rothenberg, John. “Nathalie Sarraute Changing Genres: From ‘dissent les imbeciles’ to Elle est lá.” Australian Journal of French Studies 35, no. 2 (May-August 1998): 215-27.

In the following essay, Rothenberg concentrates on the similarities between Sarraute's prose and theatrical works, first outlining the differences between the two genres and then comparing two of Sarraute's texts as examples of very complex, but complementary themes between the play and fiction.

It is generally accepted that Nathalie Sarraute is pursuing the same interests in her plays as in her novels and in the later fictions which she sees as on the border of novel and poetry. In 1978, when her first five plays appeared in a collected edition,¹ she told Lucette Finas: “J'ai mis du temps à m'en apercevoir, à remarquer que mon théâtre continuait mes romans.”² She was agreeing here with Finas's comment on the theatricality, the “grossissement optique” of the novels, but she...