VICTOR CARRABINO

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL NOVEL

OF ALAIN ROBBE - GRILLET

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THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL NOVEL

OF ALAIN ROBBE - GRILLET

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 VICTOR CARRABINO

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL NOVEL

OF ALAIN ROBBE - GRILLET

 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

PP: Phenomenology of Perception

FNN: For a New Novel
LO: « Literature objective »
SNS: Sense and Non-Sense
DA: Deshumanizacion del arte
PN: Problemas de la novela
oS : == I x csa 5 owx
 INTRODUCTION

Since 1953, the year of publication of Alain Robbe-Gril-

let’s first novel Les Gommes, the coinage Nouveau Roman has
become a familiar expression for anything which appears under
the pen of those most representative of the movement, such as
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute, and
Robert Pinget. The term itself, Nouveau Roman, has provoked
a great deal of speculation as to the definition which closely
defines this new literary movement. It has been proposed for
example to call this new form of narrative Nouveau Roman,
L’Ecole du refus, L’Ecole du regard, L’Ecole chosiste, Anti-
Roman. Despite these multiple classifications, the one com-
mon element which essentially stands out for its paramount
importance in this new narrative is, in fact, the narrator’s
consciousness through which reality is filtered and by which
reality is presented in a narrative form. For this emphasis
on the subject’s consciousness, and for other traits which wiil
be discussed later in this book, the parallelism between the
Nouveau Roman and phenomenology is more than evident.

15
Both the phenomenologist and the New Novelist stress man’s
consciousness as the point of departure for any perception.
Both understand consciousness as a resonance chamber where
realities are sifted and molded according to the evanescent
moods of the subject.
This new narrative technique stresses the point-of-view
narration which the New Novel has preferred to other archaic
forms in which the author is always present in the novel. In
fact, one should note that at the very beginning of the century
there is an increasing preoccupation to investigate the nature
and the structure of the novel itself. These new forms of
narrative art are opposed to the omniscient, deterministic,
and naturalistic expression of the previous century. Novelists
such as Stendhal, Flaubert, Balzac, and Zola — to cite the most
representative of the 19th century French novel — were mostly
preoccupied with the social role of man and the effects society
played on man. The dominant third person narration alienated
the reader from the work itself thus depriving him of the
author’s and the character’s experience. Instead the author
was placed in such an olympian omniscient status that char-
acters moved before the reader’s eyes like marionettes. It
was not, however, until Gide and Proust that we find any
interest for a new narrative form which definitely paved the
path followed by novelists later in the century.
The cause-effect narration, an obsolete practice of the
realist and naturalist school has made way, since the turn
of the century, for two important innovations in the novel:
1) the disappearance of the omniscient author and 2) the role
of the reader as co-maker of the novel. In contrast with his
role in the familiar novel form, the modern novelist is no
longer the omniscient being who controls his caracters. The
character has no freedom to « become », to use a Sartrian
expression. Also an increasing preoccupation with the role of
16
the reader has intensified both the author’s and the reader’s
effort to create the novel. The already - made world, the au-
thor’s omniscience, the organized cosmos dissectable through
the fostering faith in science, has deprived the reader of the
freedom of creative participation in the novel. As Jean-Paul
Sartre comments in « Qu’est-ce que la littérature »:

The creative act is only an incomplete and abstract mo-

ment in the production of a work. If the author existed
alone he would be. able to write as much as he liked; the
work as OBJECT would never see the light of day and
he would have to put down his pen or despair. But the
operation of writing implies that of reading as its dialec-
tical correlative and these two connected acts necessitate
two distinct agents. It is the conjoint effort of author and
reader which brings upon the scene that concrete and
imaginary object which is the work of the mind. There is
no art except for and by others (Situations II, p. 93).

Since reality is inexhaustible — multi-faced — the nar-

rator’s vision of reality is limited to his point of view. This new
point-of-view narrative suggests a subjective narration. How-
ever, the new author’s preoccupation is centered mainly on an
objective vision of reality not omnisciently maneuvered but
presented in its mutiple aspects without the author’s interfer-
ence. Reality is reported in a matter-of-fact way. This tech-
nique describes reality with the impartiality of a cinematograph-
ic camera—by presenting exactly what is seen without any
interpretation or analysis. It is a description of pure temporal
and spatial exteriorization of human behavior. While it is
true that a camera is objective if no one points it, the camera,
once directed by someone, assumes an element of subjectivity.
But modern novelists do not deny this subjective element in
any cinematographic vision of the world. They do not totally
reject the narrator’s presence. They stress the importance of

17
a new objective description divorced from any psychological
analysis. This means that the selection is subjective but the
description of that subjectively-selected-reality is objective. The
narrator does not interpret what he sees. He simply describes.
This method consists, therefore, of a subjective approach to
objectivity.
However, this shift in narration toward a new descriptive
narrative did not originate ex-nihilo. It is a concomitant phe-
nomenon with new discoveries promulgated by modern phys-
ics, psychology, Bergsonian theory of time, philosophy—espe-
cially phenomenology, artistic discoveries by the Impressionist,
Dadaist and Surrealist school, and above all by the invention
of the seventh art — the cinema — which hasa particular ap-
peal to contemporary novelists, especially the New Novel repre-
sentatives. The French New Novel movement is, accordingly,
the literary correspondent of these discoveries. Alain Robbe-
Grillet, the most prominent figure in the French New Novel, has
dedicated several treatises to this new literary descriptive
preoccupation in the genre. He is imbued with contemporary
discoveries, especially those achieved by phenomenology. Phe-
nomenology has in fact influenced modern perception of real-
ity. Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are two pro-
minent phenomenologists who have devised new methods for
achieving a clearer perception of the world. This book will then
analyse Robbe-Grillet’s novel within the framework of the phe-
nomenological method and hence study Robbe-Grillet’s novel
as the prototype of the phenomenological novel.
Critics of the New Novel have not yet been able to pre-
sent a clear and exhaustive study on Robbe-Grillet’s novels.
Although all are aware of the phenomenological penchant
in Robbe-Grillet’s novels, they have devoted brief and sketchy
studies to the phenomenological aspect of Robbe-Grillet’s nar-
18
rative. Their cursory study has not, for example, encompassed
the epoché technique which is the most inherent element of
the phenomenological method. No critic has thus far attempted
to incorporate this technique in the study of Robbe-Grillet’s
novel. Since it is quite explicitely stressed that Robbe-Grillet’s
novel shares with phenomenology the same aesthetic experience,
it is important that the epoché technique be used in the
analysis of the text. Thus, keeping in mind that Robbe-Grillet’s
vision and depiction of reality is within the consciousness of the
narrator, and that phenomenology’s main concern is the
description of the formal structure without any interpretation
or evaluation, the coinage phenomenological novel seems to
be the most appropriate one to Robbe-Grillet’s novel.

19
WHAT IS PHENOMENOLOGY?

According to phenomenology, the world exists. Man has

no control, direct or indirect, over it, nor has he any innate
knowledge of the world around him. The world simply is.
Man should not try to impose a new meaning on the world,
nor should he begin his perceptive effort with any prejudices.
Man should look at the world, trying to describe it as he
sees it.
The phenomenologist does not, however, deny the subjec-
tive element of any perception. Since it is always a man that
sees, the egological presentation of the phenomenon cannot
be obliterated. But what the phenomenologist also underlines
is the fact that man and the world are not totally divorced.
The world can be seen as quelque chose, a complement of
consciousness. When Husserl states that « any state of conscious-
ness is, in general, in itself consciousness of something » (Carte-
sian M editations, p. 28), he stresses. the intentional experience on
the part of the subject. This intentional experience is under-
stood in the sense that each act of consciousness is necessarily

20
 intentional, i.e. it has a reference outside itself—towards the
object. Husserl proposes, therefore, a theory which accentuates
‘the importance of the factual world in relation to man’s
consciousness.
The phenomenologist argues that truth does not liein the
_inner_part_of man. As Merleau-Ponty states, the world can
be known through an externalization of man in the world.
Man needs the world to understand reality, and the world needs
man to have any meaning. Innate ideas are banned from
phenomenology.
As for the origin of phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty states
that « it [phenomenology] has been long on the way, and
its adherents have discovered it in every quarter, certainly in
Hegel and Kierkegaard, but equally in Marx, Nietzsche and
Freud » (PP, p. viii). It is, however, accepted that modern
phenomenology is attributed to the German theoretician and
father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl.
Husserl’s task is analogous to that of Descartes, accord-
ing to whom philosophy had to start from the elimination of
scholastic philosophy by a form of methodical criticism and
methodical skepticism. Descartes wished to unify inductive
science and philosophy by extension of the scientific method.
His penchant for the « cogito » introduced the transcendental
subjectivism in philosophy into western thought. The Cartesian
method (which stresses the individualism of structure in phi-
losophy) is, therefore, an affirmation of a more secularized
form of thinking philosophy. Husserl’s homage to Descartes
is an indication of the former’s predilection for the scientific
method which is the basis for the phenomenological investi-
gation. Phenomenology can then be called neo-Cartesian
philosophy:
René Descartes gave transcendental phenomenology new
impulses through his Meditations; their study acted quite

21
 directly on the transformation of an already developing
phenomenology into a new kind of transcendental philos-
ophy. Accordingly one might almost call transcendental
phenomenology a neo-Cartesianism, even though it is
obliged—and precisely by its radical development of
Cartesian motifs—to reject nearly all the well known
doctrinal content of the Cartesian philosophy (Cartesian
Meditations, p. 1).

The radical attempt of Husserl to combat scholastic disci-

plines parallels Descartes’ wish, for Descartes « in fact in-
augurates an entirely new philosophy. Changing its total
style, philosophy takes a radical turn: from naive objectivism
to transcendental subjectivism » (Cartesian Meditations, p. 1).
Phenomenology, as Husserl explains, in many ways is essen-
tially a « pure descriptive discipline in the light of pure in-
tuition » (Ideas, p. 160). The descriptive element in Husserl’s
method necessitates stressing the scientific approach to reality.
However, if Descartes gave a great radical impetus to
start a new philosophy, it was, nevertheless, Kant who first
talked of phenomenology. For Kant the content of knowledge
comes a posteriori from sense perception: its form is deter-
mined by a priori categories of the mind. Husserl recognizes
his affiliation with Kant’s system when he states: « The first
to perceive it truly is Kant, whose greatest intuition first
became quite clear to us after we have bought the distinctive
features of the phenomenological field into the focus of full
consciousness » (Ideas, p. 166).
As a counterpart to Kantian formalism, the first philoso-
pher to characterize his own approach to philosophy as phenom-
enology was Hegel. He argues the absolute autonomy of the
mind. For him, thinking is making freely autonomous reality.
Reality is, therefore, all mental and every postulate (thesis)
evokes in itself its natural opposite (antithesis) which results

22
in a unified whole (synthesis). As Quentin Lauer points out,
beginning with the simplest form of sense perception, Hegel
arrives, through the consciousness of the Self, to reason where
reality is reduced to unity. Since the ultimate self is all reality,
to be fully conscious of the self is to be fully conscious of
reality. Existence is a complete subjectivity; therefore, there
is no thing in itself. To think is simply to determine freely
on a priori reality. To think will eventually end up in Dynamic
monism of a mental type.
Phenomenology as it appears before Husserl is also latent
in the positivism of Ernst Mach and of the Vienna Circle.
Their main concern was not reality « qua » reality, but they
were interested in describing consciousness, based mainly and
necessarily on description rather than expression. This descrip-
tive element is a very essential element of phenomenology.
We can categorically state then that phenomenology,
as it is understood today, refers to Husserl who opposing the
dichotomy of Descartes, the dualism Noumenon-Phenomenon
of Kant, the « constructionism » of Hegel, claims that, although
phenomena are the only given things, nevertheless, it
is in the individual phenomenon that we find essences. Es-
sence, for Husserl, is contained in the individual phenomenon,
and the necessity of observational intuition of the phenomenon
will entail the absorption of the phenomenon in question.
Husserl’s method consists then of a description of essences
on the level of consciousness.
The descriptive search of intentional experience was, how-
ever, first presented by Franz Brentano (under whom Hus-
serl studied). According to Brentano the point of departure
for any phenomenological investigation is to examine the phe-
nomenon after one has made its meaning his own. For Bren-
tano intentional experience implies consciousness of something,
for as Quentin Lauer points out, « Intentionality is that and
23
only that, (an objective relation) with the addition that...
its term is eminently real since as term it is that which
exists outside consciousness and independently of consciousness,
as reality to which consciousness is intentionality related »
(Phenomenology..., p. 55).
For Brentano intentionality signifies little more than the
linguistic relationship which the mind has to some
external reality. Husserl, on the other hand, understands inten-
tionality as being not only to the relation between mental and
external reference, but also to the term of that relationship,
which is as intramental as is the operation itself. In the in-
tentional act the object is immediately present to consciousness
upon which reflexion can turn to its mode of consciousness,
to the potential modes of existence, and to the aspects of
the subject which are not given at first observation. The
intentional act is explained by Husserl in the noesis-
noema relationship. The noesis is «the intentional act looked at
as a real subjective operation, while the noema is the same
act looked at as intentional structured » (Cartesian Meditations,
p- 93). We can say that noesis refers to the subject who per-
ceives, thinks, wants, remembers, judges, while the noema is
the perceived, the thought, the wanted, the remembered, or
the judged because the « stream of phenomenological being
has a twofold bed: a material and a noetic » (Jdeas, p. 230).
Noesis and noema are not different and alien to each other.
They are the two sides of the intentional act. Noetic gives
meaning and noematic contains meaning. This notion is clear
if we understand that objective structure is included in the
subjective structure: « Every intentional experience, thanks
to its noetic phase, is noetic, it is its essential nature to
harbour in itself a « meaning » of some sort, it may be many
meanings, and on the ground of this gift of meaning, and
in harmony therewith, to develop further phases which
24
through it become themselves « meaningful » (Ideas, p. 237).
The difference between objects resides more in the noesis
than in the noema, for to grasp an intentional act is to grasp
the object completely since that act is directed toward the
object. The object is then the transcendent guide for the
noesis-noema analysis. To grasp an intentional act is
then to grasp its object. This is why Husserl constantly
states that we should always go «back to things». It should be
clear that in this noesis-noema relationship the phenomenol-
ogist does not create a new object, he simply clarifies it to be-
come truly objective.
Since the main interest in Husserl’s method is to see es-
sences, separated from contingent affiliation, intentionality
is therefore an essential step for his method of description.
Consciousness cannot be understood in the sense as natural-
ism or positivism objectify the world of objects. It is not a
grasp of consciousness in the sense of a grasp of spatio-tem-
poral knowledge, but by introducing doubt as one necessary
element, Husserl has nullified the world of objects. Conscious-
ness lives itself in a world divorced of contingencies and
dogmas, a world of purity, much different than the objects
of natural sciences because it would be evident, says Husserl,
that « the Being of consciousness, of every stream of experience
generally, though it would be inevitably modified by a nulli-
fying of the thing-world, would not be affected thereby in its
own proper existence » ([deas, p. 137). The world of objects is
then the arena of investigation of the phenomenologist but not
the world of objects as it appears in contingent reality but in
their status as phenomena »f consciousness.
Another phenomenologist of important stature greatly
influenced by Husserl’s thought is Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
25
 In his major work Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-
Ponty elaborates his interest in the world of facticity. He
wishes to reconcile the subjective structure (noesis) with the
_ objective structure (noema) through the corps-sujet (subject)
as_an intermediary function.
Merleau-Ponty presents a new facet of phenomenology
emphasizing perception as a primordial tool for discovering
the meaning of exterior reality. Merleau-Ponty, in the tradition
of Husserl, refuses to use the word « essence ». He prefers
to use instead «significations ». For Merleau-Ponty phenome-
nology is the basic opposition between the human
body and
the inanimate world — the world outside man. The body is
essential as a point of departure to give meaning to the world
that surrounds man. It is rather for Merleau-Ponty the prob-
lem of total subjectivity of the body facing the world which
already has a new meaning, given already without relation
to the subjectivity of the human world. Merleau-Ponty argues
that the phenomenon can only be considered within its exis-
tential condition, which alone can permit its full revelation.
To understand the phenomenon, Merleau-Ponty maintains, is
to grasp its essences. The very facticity of the world is the
source of any phenomenological reflection: any phenomenon
is phenomenon only in relation to its facticity. To experience
a phenomenon is to experience its essence at the same
time:
« Phenomenology is also a philosophy which puts essences back
in existence, and does not expect to arrive at an understanding
of man and the world from any starting point other than
their « facticity » (PP., p. vii). This facticity of is found
in theobjective world, in the opaquene
ofss
the phenomenon,
in the changeable world with an existence as meaning.
All knowledge for Merlea u-P has
onttobe
y presented
through the world and the perceiving object. This concern
‘with ‘subjectivity and objectivity indicates ~Merleau
-Ponty’s
26
 shift from the original meaning of phenomenology. He_at-
tempts to combine the subjective with the objective
approach through what one might call a « bipolar phenome-
nology », as Mary Rose Barral suggests. Merleau-Ponty has
in fact foes a new form of phenomenology, a form of exis-
tential phenomenology. His main interest lies in existence,
in the subjective. Man is in the world and it is in the world
that man can be known. Phenomenology for Merleau-
Ponty is also «a poosophy for which the world is always
«already there » before _ reflection begins —as_an_in
— alien-
able presence; and all its efforts are concentrated upon re-
achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world, and
~endowing that coniract—witha_philosophical status » (PP.,
p. vii.). Thus one can see how reluctant Merleau-Ponty is to
accept any reflexive analysis of the phenomenon. What he advo-
cates is a pure and naive description of the world as it appears
before any perceptive effort, a representation of the pre-
objective world, divorced from any conventionalities, knowl-
edge, or scientific speculations. His interest in the exterior world
is accentuated when he asserts that: « The world is there before
any possible analysis of mine, and_it would be artificial to
make it the outcome of _a series of syntheses» (PP., p. x).
The world-exists_before_any. dependence on_the subject’s con-
sciousness. The world is there as man is there. They are two sep-
s. The world Merleau- Ponty continues, is a «closely
arate entities.
woven fabric. It does not await our judgement befor incor-
‘porating the most surprising phenomena, or before rejecting
the most plausible figments of our imagination » (PP., p. x).
Perception is for him the fundamental tool in any field of
knowledge.
For Merleau-Ponty av world is thus the arena of any
phenomenological inquiry. Any perceptive effort will haye to
have a meaning in reference to the world. Man is in the world

27
consciousness_is
as in the world. To know the world is toknow
the intricacies of man’s consciousness. Exterior _reality is for
Merleau-Ponty like a carrefour through which all things have
meaning. ;
The interrelationship between the Object » and the‘(subject)
is also of great importance for Merieau-Ponty. As a true exis-
tentialist, Merleau-Ponty builds his philosophical quest on the
presence of man in the world. It is a question of concentrating
on the actual, singular. human. being or on the singularity
‘of man. To this approach Merleau-Ponty introduces the theory
of the corps-sujet (subject, body), as the center of his phenom-
enological investigation... He wants to stress the wholeness_of
man, a unity in himself.
Yet the world and man need one another to be understood
as a unity. As Remigius Kwant elaborates, the body is for Mer-
leau-Ponty the source of any knowledge; the body is immersed
in the world of facticity. The corps-sujet should then be un-
derstood as a unity, not as a man.

28
ROBBE-GRILLET AND THE NEW NOVEL
 CHAPTER I

ROBBE-GRILLET AND THE NEW NOVEL

Since the term New Novel may be somehow misleading,

we will limit ourselves here to the New Novel as seen and
elaborated by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The new novelists do in fact
differ from one another. Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor,
and Alain Robbe-Grillet—the most prominent representative
of the New Novel — vary considerably in their narrative tech-
niques. One novelist may not be as belligerent as another vis-a-
vis the classical novel. Michel Butor, for example, is much
more aware of the innovations in Balzac’s universe. Nathalie
Sarraute, on the other hand, does not reject the classical novel
entirely, as she points out in her theoretical work Age of
Suspicion. It is the analysis of psychological reactions which
she rejects. Her characters are psychological, but presented
at the level of sub-analysis. Alain Robbe-Grillet, finally, rejects
Balzac’s narrative techniques and the author’s omniscience.
Since literature is experiencing another Querelle des anciens
et des modernes, the new novelists reject vehemently the
classical theory by offering a new approach to realism, in their
case, a new type of_psychological realism of phenomenological
31
nature.
Robbe-Grillet refuses to call his movement « school ». He
prefers to talk of « explorations », i.e., he prefers to call the
New Novel movement an open spiral, open to new visions,
to an ever-changing conception of exterior reality, as opposed
to a closed circle, since once classification has taken place,
there is no room for innovation. As he points out during an
interview with Claude Sarraute: « First of all, it is not a
school. We are a group of writers who have the feelings of
working in the same direction. However, no one of us has
enacted any rule neither for himself nor for the others. The
New Novel is not a theory; it is an exploration » (Le Monde,
13 mai, 1961). By exploration Robbe-Grillet means quest,
research, pursuit, inquiry, investigation, examination and scru-
tiny — all of which stress the importance of the glance. The
optical element in perceiving reality is in fact the main trait
of Robbe-Grillet’s New Novel: « On the other hand, the visual
or descriptive adjectives, the world that contents itself with
measuring, locating, defining, indicates a difficult but most
likely direction for a new art of the novel » (FNN, p. 24).
This emphasis on vision, perception, on the optical represen-
tation of reality on the part of the author marks a definite
shift from classical realism in which the author controlled
the novel by pulling visible strings. Robbe-Grillet’s New Novel
deals with a new type of realism as opposed to nineteenth
century realism. In fact, all the new novelists, with the excep-
tion of Michel Butor, oppose Balzac’s vision of reality in the
novel. They revolt against the omnipresence of the author.
They wish to do away with the traditional French rationalism.
Their aim is to reproduce a concretized human consciousness.
The new novelist is no longer interested in the novel of the
individual as promulgated throughout the nineteenth century.
The psychological novel, which continues even in the twentieth
32
century, does not appeal to the novelist of the new vogue. If
the classical psychological novel presents exceptional characters,
exceptional for their social status or for their higher intelli- n\:\
gence, the New Novel stays at the human level. Man is por-
trayed but he is portrayed amid the world of objects. The Vo

bourgeois _vview of reality, with its analytical approach to the

interior reality, has been replaced by a new accent on exterior
reality.
The author of the New Novel no longer penetrates into
the psyche of each character. To the contrary, he presents
the character’s interior reality through phenomenological de-
scription. In this new descriptive technique the novelist « has
eliminated all judgement or commentary. By limiting himself
to an objective description of the character’s actions and to
a stranscription of the character’s word before a given sit-
uation, « he has avoided narrating the feelings or ideas of his
character » (Goytisolo, Problemas de la novela, p. 20). The
traditional novel instead treats a closed world where char-
acters move within circles as marionettes, maneuvered by
the skillful strings of the author. They seem to be free
without realizing that they move and think as their author
wants them to move and to think. In short, « the novel of
characters belongs entirely to the past, it describes a period:
that which marks the apogée of the individual » (FNN, p. 28).
‘Robbe-Grillet’s penchant is to destroy the myth of psy-
chological depth. This myth represents man as living in the
interior of himself and implies a definite interior reality.
Contrary to the classical theory that reality was thought to
be all interior, and only interior reality mattered, Robbe-
Grillet argues that the opposite is true in the New Novel.
Reality is first exterior and it is from this exteriority that | (v\.|
any investigation on reality should start. Robbe-Grillet holds
Christianity (for which the exterior world had no meaning)
33
 partially responsible for having turned man from the exterior
to the interior. Man’s individuality was responsible to give
meaning to the world, but this individuality was not a move-
ment toward the exterior but to the interior of man in order
to find the truth. In the realm of psychology, the death of
this exteriorization resulted in a vain exploration of the inte-
rior. Psychology has proven that man has felt driven towards
the exterior. In the realm of the novel,aman, continues Robbe-
picsacted taieocote

Grillet, has been a forciori expelled from the inside not only
toward his own exterior but also toward those manifestations,
so-called superficial (on the surface), which surround him.
_ A sociologist who would like to study contemporary society
should concentrate not so much on the confessions offered by
the people but he should stress the exterior manifestations
_ of man, the contigent reality that overwhelms man and the
4< surface of things as they appear to the perceiver. This socio-
; logist should be more aware of the cities themselves, posters,
newspaper advertising, photographs, clothes fashion — all of
which have been created by man and which offer contemporary
man with pladitinous surfaces. The sociologist as the new
novelist should be discouraged to infer any hypothetical inside.
(Robbe-Grillet, Notes on course offered in New York, May
1972).
Adhering to his theories, Robbe-Grillet concentrates in his
novels on exterior reality, the realm of objects, where psy-
chology and sociology are deleted. This reification of experience
in Robbe-Grillet’s narrative (as in the New Novel in general)
gives the object a new presence, a new meaning. Therefore,
a new aesthetic sensibility is born. As Ortega y Gasset has
already anticipated, a new type of fictional character has been
created. In our « age of suspicion »: (to borrow Sarraute’s
term), the new French novelists are indeed suspicious of the
omniscience of the author as seen in Balzac’s novels:
34
 We have truly come to the age of suspicion: we
don’t trust any longer the characters presented to
us; we don’t believe any more in their intrigues. The
novelists themselves have also stopped to take their
own readings seriously. As for us, literature, the
novel, is a serious matter (Interview with Bourin,
22 janvier, 1959).

If in the classical novel objects served to support the char-

acter, in the New Novel objects have a life of their own.
Balzac, as one knows, gave a new accent to objects. His
preoccupation with fictional surroudings gave a new tone to
French literature. Objects in Balzac’s novels support and ex-
press the character’s emotions, feelings, moods, social status
and even his thinking:

With Balzac, Flaubert, Baudelaire, even Proust...

the object is a carrier of melodrama: it degrades
itself, disappears, or finds a final glorification, in
short, it participates in a true eschatology of matter
(Barthes, LO, p. 588).

With Balzac the character is surrounded by objects for sup-

port. This new literary phase in the novel is expressed mainly
in Balzac’s preoccupation with the meticulous description of
objects. These objects are then parallel to the characters, a
parallelism made possible by the control of the author.
Although Robbe-Grillet concentrates mainly on objects
with the same meticulousness of Balzac, contrary to Balzac —
for whom objects serve as crutches for the character — objects
in Robbe-Grillet are there, annihilating and threatening the_
characters. They try to displace the human element in them
by reducing them to mere beings with only the faculty of
seeing left. Ortega y Gasset’s prophecy is then materialized.
Objects, however, have meaning only by the perception of the
35
human eye: « The objects in our novels never have a presence
outside human perception, real or imaginary » (FNN, p. 137).
Our literature, insists Robbe-Grillet, abounds in objects; these
objects will no longer have secrets and passions, they will not
play psychological, sociological, anthropological or political
roles. They will be there, before they can be anything. Hence
one arrives at the elimination of anthropomorphism. This dis-
anthropomorphizing of the external world stresses the impor-
tance of the subject’s perceptions. It is only upon the perceiver’s
effort that the objects will have a meaning. The author of
the New Novel, unlike the classical novelist, should never
attribute any anthropomorphic qualities to objects. The New
Novel, according to Robbe-Grillet, should describe instead
the world of objects without trying to penetrate into the core
of the object and force an essence upon it:

While essentialist conceptions of man met their de-

struction, the notion of «condition » henceforth
replacing that of « nature », the surface of things
has ceased to be for us the mask of their heart, a
sentiment that led to every kind of metaphysical
transcendence (FNN, p. 24).

One can now understand why at this point Robbe-Grillet has

no direct affiliation with any previous school of fiction. A
new univers romanesque is born which concentrates on the
« destitution of the old « myths of depth » (FNN, p. 49).
Although Robbe-Grillet has never mentioned his affilia-
tion with Jean-Paul Sartre nor Sartre’s influential theories as
expressed in Situations II, the fact that Robbe-Grillet descends
from the Sartrian literary school cannot be overlooked. One
can almost say that while Husserl and Merleau-Ponty have
been for Robbe-Grillet the fathers of phenomenology, Sartre

36
has been the literary patriarch. Situations II is the opus ma-
gistra which has inspired the new novelists to investigate and
explore further the possibilities of the novel, its form, its
content, its structure, and its realism. It is in this treatise,
especially in « What is literature? » that Sartre accentuates
the role of the reader as co-maker of the novel, the importance
of a new form in the novel, the necessity to further explore
the possibilities of human consciousness, hence present the
modern reader with a new fresh form of realism. Robbe-
Grillet has materialized what Sartre himself could not achieve
in his own novels, i.e. the role of the objects, the concomitant
effort of the reader in making the novel, the phenomenologi-
cal transcription of the character’s consciousness. But if inno-
vations were only theories in Sartre’s treatise, the new Sar-
trian theories constitute the main tool for modern French
novelists. However, among the new French novelists, only
Robbe-Grillet goes one step further than Sartre in abolishing
from the novel all character analysis and interpretation. The
new component in Robbe-Grillet’s descriptive technique is
the point of view of the narrator who relates and describes
incidents and behavior as they appear to him. The world can
be understood through description, for « to describe things,
as a matter of fact, is deliberately to place oneself outside
them, confronting them. It is no longer a matter of appro-
priating them to oneself, or projecting anything into them »
(FNN, p. 70).
Robbe-Grillet’s novel will no longer have a plot, a chro-
nological story. Contrary to the definition of the novel as a
story told by someone, the New Novel can be defined as the
world of objects perceived by someone. Since Robbe-Grillet
agrees that the world continously changes, the novel has to
change also. Evolution fostered by technological advances has
in fact brought emancipation and freedom in the perception
37
of the world. Each one sees the world from a different angle;
each one has a different interpretation of the world: « Each
speaks of the world as he sees it, but no one sees it in the
same way » (FNN, p. 158).
Any point of view is relative to the perceiver’s position.
In the realm of art, for example, Cézanne has largely stressed
this new perceptive discovery as opposed to the perception
of Renaissance art. For Cézanne the point of view and the
exact representation of appearances are of paramount impor-
tance. The object is presented as it appears to the viewer’s
eyes. As Merleau-Ponty comments in Sense et Non-Sense,
Cézanne’s painting portrays objects presented to us in our
immediate perception. Cézanne can in fact be called the most
revolutionary artist who has been able to break away from
the baroque movement, the equilibrium of colors and light
as found in classical paintings. He has been able to free the
object from the anthropomorphic quality which man gen-
erally attributes to it. The same revolutionary change in mod-
ern aesthetics has taken place in the New Novel. Merleau-
Ponty’s comment on Cézanne can easily be applied to Robbe-
Grillet’s theories on the novel, and we can, therefore, see
that both Cézanne and Robbe-Grillet are not too far from
one another. Merleau-Ponty states:

We live in the midst of man-made objects, among

tools, in houses, cities, and most of the time we
see them only through the human actions which
put them to use. We become used to thinking that
all of this exists necessarily and_ unshakeably.
' Cézanne’s painting suspends these habi of thought
ts
and reveals the base of ‘inhuman nature upon which
man has installed himself. This is why Cézanne’s
people are strange, as if viewed by a creature of
another species (SNS, p. 16).
38
The same comments could easily be applied to Robbe-Grillet’s
novel, for he describes in his novels reality divested of any
anthropomorphic connotations. The geometric quality of
Robbe-Grillet’s narrative, stripped of any colorful metaphors,
is indicative of the phenomenological penchant in Robbe-
Grillet’s method. The novelist is not omnipresent and omni-
scient. The new narrator, in a world of constant flux, cannot
be God, for only God is the omnipresent and omniscient
Being. This is in effect what Sartre criticizes in Francois
Mauriac’s novels. In Robbe-Grillet’s view:

It is God alone who can claim to be objective. While

in our books, on the contrary, it is a man who sees,
who feels, who imagines, a man located in space and
time, conditioned by his passions, a man like you
and me. And the book reports nothing but his expe-
rience, limited and uncertain as it is. It is a man
here, now, who is his own narrator (FNN, p. 139).

The new novelist does not possess any attributes of divinity

in his creative work. He cannot visibly control his characters
like puppets. His presentation should be divorced from any
analysis. Since Robbe-Grillet has eliminated all psychological
analysis and since he has renounced omniscience, he cannot
impose upon the reader a novel already made. To tell a story
is to take a certain position. The story can be told from several
points of view, depending upon the position chosen by the
narrator. In Robbe-Grillet’s novel the story will create itself
through the common effort of the author and the reader.
The New Novel, according to Robbe-Grillet:

...is not a tool at all. It is not conceived with a

view to a task defined in advance. It does not serve
to set forth, to translate things existing before it,

39
 outside it. It does not express, it explores, and what
it explores is itself (FNN, p. 160).

The reader will, accordingly, play an important role in the

making of the novel. Since the novel is written for the reader,
it is the reader’s collaboration, as Sartre constantly empha-
sizes, that will fulfill the artistic achievement. The modern
reader cannot be presented with de facto reality. Reality will
have to be described necessarily by a man who is present
and who simply reports.
The new presentation of reality is indeed phenomeno-
logical. The new novelist as the phenomenologist presents real-
ity as the phenomenon appears in the narrator’s consciousness.
This reality is stripped of any anthropomorphism. The im-
portance of the perceiving subject is the main constituent of
the phenomenological method. The new novelist feels he
should start anew and simply describe phenomena.
When Robbe-Grillet writes that « there is today a new
element...it’s the destitution of the old myths of depth », he
is echoing the phenomenological preoccupation with the world
of phenomena. Just as the phenomenologist stresses the im-
portance of the perceiver’s consciousness and the description
of the phenomena, Robbe-Grillet presents in his novels a re-
porting conciousness (voix narratrice — a reporting voice
— as Robbe-Grillet calls it) which does not interpret. It
simply describes.

40
THE NOVEL AND PHILOSOPHY
 CHAPTER II

THE NOVEL AND PHILOSOPHY

Stendhal’s observation on the novel as a mirror of society

is still applicable to the twentieth century novel, for the modern
novel is even today a reflection of modern ideologies. Man is
no longer the master of the universe. He is, as the world of
objects is. He is deprived of any omniscient qualities with
perception as the only faculty left. Only through man can the
world of facticity be known. This emphasis on the subjective
perception is correlative to contemporary philosophies, such as
existentialism and phenomenology. It is not until the twentieth
century that literature and philosophy join hands in their
aesthetic presentation of reality. An attempt to define the link
that unites philosophy and novel is to ask the old perplexing
question about art and philosophy. If the novelist was thought
to be endowed with what Pascal calls the « esprit de finesse »,
and the philosopher with the « esprit de géométrie », both in
the twentieth century and most definitely in the New Novel
movement, the attempt to classify both disciplines is vain.
It is not until the twentieth century that we experience
philosophers writing novels using the narrative form as the
43
most effective one to expose their philosophical speculations.
The novelist, on the other hand, is no longer thought as a
moralist following the French moralist tradition, for he ap-
proaches reality with the same skepticism, inquisitiveness, and
interest as the philospher. We may even call the contemporary
novelist novelist/philosopher, for it is difficult to separate, for
example, Proust from Bergson’s philosophical influence, Gide
from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Sartre and Camus from
existentialist thought, the new novelist from phenomenologists
such as Husserl and Merleau Ponty. As Merleau-Ponty views
modern literature: « For a long time it seemed as if there were
between philosophy and literature not only different modes
of expression but also different objects as well. However, since
the end of the century, the ties between them have been getting
closer and closer » (SNS, pp. 26-7). Literature is indeed the
reflection and the translation of the epoch in which it is writ-
ten. As Ortega y Gasset adds: « Art is a reflection of life, it
is nature seen through a mood; it is the representation of the
human element » (DA, p. 367). The novel, since it is the most
flexible genre in literature, « as a work of art, it must be cor-
relative to the sensibility of the epoch in which it is written »
(PN, p. 33).
A great novelist cannot divorce himself from philosophi-
cal preoccupations contemporary to him. As Merleau-Ponty
points out when he defines a great novel: « The work of a
great novelist is always expressed by two or three philosophical
ideas ». The task of the novelist is « to make ideas exist before
us as things » (SNS, p. 26). According to Merleau-Ponty, it
is at the end of the nineteenth century that a symbiosis between
the novelist and the philosopher takes place. Consequently,
« metaphysical literature » has replaced « moral literature ».
Both the novelist and the phenomenologist share the intention

44,
« of formulating an experience of the world, a contact with the
world which precedes any thought about the world » (SNS, p.
28). In this respect « the task of both literature and philosophy
cannot be separated, states Merleau-Ponty, for « philosophical
expression assumes the same ambiguity as literary expression »
(SNS, p. 28). Robbe-Grillet, the new novelist that concerns
us in this study, in this respect is an offspring of his time,
for his task is similar to that of the phenomenologist whose
main concern, adds Merleau-Ponty, is to « formulate an expe-
rience of the world, a contact with the world » (SNS, p. 28).
However, to say that Robbe-Grillet’s characters are di-
vorced from anthropomorphism does not deny the fact that
those characters are perceiving men. While their act of vision
is subjective, the presentation of this vision is objective. The
character is left alone in his perceiving effort and no attempt
at analysis or judgement on the part of the author is made.
The character is a man who perceives and who simply reports
to us what he sees from his own point of view. Since phenom-
enology is interested in the description of a consciousness
that perceives, sees, describes, the presentation is, conse-
quently, very objective; it is almost as if the characters see the
contingent world with cinematographic lenses. Modern technol-
ogy has indeed fostered this new vision of exterior reality.
Perception is increasingly stressed. It is to perception that
Maurice Merleau-Ponty has dedicated a whole volume Phenom-
enology of Perception.
Although Husserl is considered as the father of modern
phenomenology, the affinity between Merleau-Ponty’s phenom-
enological presentation of reality and Robbe-Grillet’s report-
ing consciousness is more striking. Robbe-Grillet even resorts
to the same terminology of the phenomenologist in order to
argue the need for innovation in the literary domain. As Mer-
leau-Ponty finds it necessary to achieve a tabula rasa in philos-
45
 ophy, Robbe-Grillet sees also the need for innovation in mod-
ern narrative: « Therefore, nothing must be neglected in this
mopping-up operation » (FNN, p. 57). Both philosopher and
novelist start from the basic statement that neither one should
take into account any a priori judgement or reflective analysis
on reality. Both Robbe-Grillet and Merleau-Ponty deal with
the realms of facticity and man—man as the center of the philo-
sophical network. As Merleau-Ponty states: « All I know of
the world, even my scientific knowledge, I know it from my
point of view...1 am the absolute source » (PP, p. viii-ix).
Man is accordingly the only point of departure of any inves-
tigation. Only through man can « being-conscious-of » have
) any meaning, for as Robbe-Grillet adds: « Man is merely, from
his own point of view, the only witness », because « we must
still proclaim that man is everywhere » (FNN, pp. 58, 53).
Robbe-Grillet, as much as Merleau-Ponty, constructs his
whole theory on the paramount importance of sight. The nov-
elist’s interest in pure description is subordinated to the per-
ceiver’s perception: « The sense of sight appears immediately
in this perspective as the privileged sense...the sense of sight,
if it seeks to remain simply sight, leaves things in their re-
spective place » (FNN, p. 73). The representation and appear-
ance of any reality in the subject’s consciousness can only be
made meaningful by the perceptive effort, though it is a per-
ception devoid of any pre-reflexive connotations; consequently,
« the sense of sight remains, in spite of everything, our best
weapon, especially if it keeps essentially to outlines » (FNN,
p. 74). This method based on the sense of sight attempts to
describe the pre-objective world, the world as it appears to the
individual divested of any analysis,:for as Merleau-Ponty as-
serts: « The real is to be described, not constructed or formed.
Which means that I cannot put perception into the same
46
category as the syntheses represented by judgements, acts or
predications » (PP., p. x). Since the world does not depend
upon man for its existence, the task of the novelist as well
as of the phenomenologist is to look at the world and man
with a new fresh approach. The world and man are two sep-
arate entities whick do not depend on each other for existence:
« The world is there before any possible analysis of mine, and
it would be artificial to make it the outcome of a series of
syntheses which link, in the first place sensations, then aspects
of the object corresponding to different perspectives, when both
are nothing but products of analysis, with no sort of prior
reality » (PP, p. x). For Merleau-Ponty « the world is always
there before any reflexion » (PP, p. vwvii). This statement
could be placed as an epitaph to Robbe-Grillet’s novelistic
treatises since, according to him, the new novelist should take
into account that any novelistic presentation should consider
that « the world is neither meaningful nor absurd. It simply
is. That, in any case, is the most remarkable thing about it.
... Things are there » (FNN, p. 19). Merleau-Ponty’s remark
that « the world is there before any analysis » parallels Robbe-
Grillet’s statement that « in the future universe of the novel,
gestures and objects will be there before being something »
(FNN, p. 21). Accordingly, the new narration should consist
of a report or description of perceptive currents which will
tie the object and the subject in a unique nexus.
In Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological position as in Robbe-
Grillet’s procedures, the descriptive operation constitutes the
principal way of approach to a recognition of the world very
close to the ontological state. This ontological state is under-
stood in a subject-object continuum. To arrive at this onto-
logical state made possible by perception it is necessary to
practice a sort of elimination since the act of perception is
engendered or blocked by other surrounding objects. By placing
47
certain objects in abeyance and by eliminating the external,
social, anthropomorphic qualities of the object, one can arrive
at the point where « things are there ».
For Merleau-Ponty phenomenology is « a philosophy for
which the world is always « already there » before any reflection
begins—as an inalienable presence; and all its efforts are con-
centrated upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with
the world, and endowing that contact with a philosophical
status » (PP, p. vii). Naked reality is then the starting point
for Merleau-Ponty. Robbe-Grillet, likewise, echoes Merleau-
Ponty, when he states that « instead of this universe of « sig-
nification » (sociological, phychological, functional), we must
try to build a world both more solid and more immediate...
In this future universe of the novel, gestures and objects will
be there before being anything » (FNN, p. 21). But in order
to achieve their task, both Merleau-Ponty and Robbe-Grillet
have to limit themselves to a meticulous description of the
world of objects. It is, therefore, the effort of a « direct de-
scription of our experience as it is, without taking account
of its psychological origin and the causal explanations which
the scientist, the historian or the sociologist may be able to
provid » (PP, p. vii).
This description of one’s consciousness can only be pos-
sible through the perceiving subject. As Robbe-Grillet points
out, there is a man that sees and only through his eyes can
the reader share a certain vision: « Man is present in every
page, in every line, in every word » (FNN, p. 137). It is,
therefore, not so much a question of objectivity, but rather
a problem of pure subjectivity. Reality as presented to the
reader is not then crude, naked reality, but a reality clothed
with passions, feelings, emotions, ‘all of which affect the per-
ception of a certain reality. Robbe-Grillet’s novels can then be
understood as a descriptive investigation of international ex-
48
periences, as clearly expressed by Brentano. The investigation
begins from the presentation of reality as it appears in the
subject’s consciousness. We are presented then with a reality,
or a slice of reality, as seen and filtered, first through the
eyes of the author, and second through the eyes of the per-
ceiver/narrator. The New Novel deals, therefore, with the
field of psychical phenomenology, the naive representation of
psychic experiences. This is the reason why Robbe-Grillet
claims that to describe a thing is to place oneself outside of it.
Once the object is perceived, it already has a mental existence,
and to describe it, one has to describe it objectively, without
any prejudices.

49
CORPS-SUJET AS PERCEIVING CONSCIOUSNESS
 CHAPTER III

CORPS-SUJET AS PERCEIVING CONSCIOUSNESS

Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the corps-sujet (perceiving con-

sciousness) stresses the primordial importance of man as the
only media of communications between the interior and the
exterior world. For Merleau-Ponty the most adequate interpre-
tation of reality is the coming back to subjectivity, a reduction
to the first person. The corps-sujet is then the subjectivity
endowed with perception, immersed in the exterior and tem-
poral world. It is the only vehicle of any gnoseological inter-
pretation of the world around man. For the phenomenologist
the world is as man also is. But as it is true that the perceived
acquires meaning through the perceiver, it is equally true that
the perceiver acquires meaning only in relation to the perceived.
According to phenomenology, man must return to the things
themselves, for « to return to things themselves is to return
to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge
always speaks » (PP, p. ix). Phenomenology is then seen
as a perceptiveness borrowed from opticals. As Merleau-
Ponty states: « Perception... is the background from which all
acts stand out and is presupposed by them. The world is not
53
an object such as I have in my possession the law of its
meaning; it is the natural setting of, and the field for, all my
thoughts and my explicit perceptions » (PP, p. xi). The per-
ceiving consciousness which stresses the importance of the
subjective regard is necessary to give meaning to the perceived
phenomenon. Consciousness cannot be understood as objectified
in the sense that naturalism and positivism objectify the
world of objects. It is not by a grasp of consciousness, in the
sense of spatial-temporal knowledge, but by introducing doubt
as one necessary element, that the phenomenologist nullifies
the world of objects.
Nullifying the world does not, however, mean to postulate
Non-Being, since for the phenomenologist consciousness has
traits of Non-Being, insofar as it is Non-Being (Non-Existent)
in the spatio-temporal world. Non-Being in this sense simply
means mental or psychical Being.
It is for this reason that the phenomenologist has to
doubt the world of exterior reality. To doubt existence of
something is to discover whether that particular existence
really exists or not. Moreover, one is more aware of a mental
reality than of a contingent reality. This commerce between
the perceiver and the perceived emphasizes the two-fold aspect
of reality: mental and extra-mental. Mental reality though
shaded with subjectivity (wish, passion, sentiment, pathological
preoccupation, imagination, memory) is the reality which one
finds only in the consciousness. Since, as Husserl states, to
be conscious is to be conscious of something, the context of
this consciouness is an extrapolation of the exterior reality—
the world of objects (extra-mental reality). The constant va-et-
vient between these two states will enable one, phenomenolog-
ically, to penetrate into the perceived phenomenon, since the
object in question is seen from several points of view. Husserl

a4
explains this continuous shift between mental and extra-mental
reality as an integral element of the phenomenological method.
He further elucidates this gratuitous transition between the
two realities by his personal experience in trying to represent
to himself what he had seen at the Dresden museum:

...the glance can wander also from level to level,

and instead of simply passing through them all, is
rather directed with fixating effect upon what is
given each in turn, and that either in a « straight-
forward » or in a reflecting line of vision.
In the example cited above, the glance can remain
at the level of the Dresden Gallery: we go back « in
recollection » to Dresden, and walk through the
gallery. Again, still immersed in recollection, we
can get absorbed in the pictures, and now find our-
selves in the picture-world. Then, in a picture-con-
sciousness of the second level we turn to the painted
picture of the gallery, and gaze at the pictures paint-
ed within it; or our reflexion, passing from level to
‘level, is turned up on the noesis and so forth (Ideas,
pp. 271-72).

This act of referring to internal reality constitutes the phenom-

enological reduction since the perceiver’s effort is to represent
and reconstruct to this consciousness what in fact appears or
has appeared before his line of perception. In any reconstruction
and representation of reality Husserl recommends that as a
point of departure:

We shall start from the standpoint of everyday life,

from the world as it confronts us, from conscious-
ness as it presents itself in psychological experience,
and shall lay bare the presuppositions essential to
this viewpoint. We shall then develop a method of
« phenomenological reduction » according to which

39
 we may set aside the limitations of knowledge essen-
tially involved in every nature-directed form of inves-
tigation, deflecting the restricted line of vision prop-
er to it, until we have purified phenomena, and
therewith the field of phenomenology in our special
sense of the term (Ideas, p. 39).

Thus the perceiving subject becomes the fabricator of any

new meaning given to exterior reality. Starting from any naive
observation of the world, the subject will indulge in a phenom-
enological reduction by casting away any form of analysis
and preconceived ideas of the object perceived. The mental and
the physical point of view is accordingly one of the primary
constituents in any phenomenological reduction.
In the realm of literature, Robbe-Grillet has also given
special attention to the point of view and to the optical aspect.
In his novels the reader is faced with a reporting consciousness.
The element of subjectivity in Robbe-Grillet’s novels is derived
in fact by the will of the author who stage manages the subjectiv-
ity by allowing a description which unfolds in the narrator’s
consciousness. In his novels the phenomenon perceived can
only be presented confined to the consciousness of this per-
ceiving consciousness. Thus, the aesthetic preoccupation of the
new novelist is to devise a new form, a new technique so that
the phenomenon perceived could be reported in its multiple
aspects. In addition, the new novelist allows the reader to
enter the narrator’s consciousness. This new technique stresses
the subjective realism advocated by Sartre:

Also for us, the phenomenon appears only through

a series of subjectivities. .. Therefore, our technical
problem is to find an orchestration of consciousness
which would allow us to transcribe the myriad of
dimensionalities of the phenomenon. Moreover, by
 giving up the fiction of the omniscient narrator, we
are obliged to abolish any intermediaries between
the reader and the point-of-view subjectivities of our
characters. It is a question of making the reader to
be included, as in a mill, in these consciousness; he
must coincide successively with each one of them.
Thus we have learned from Joyce to discover a sec-
ond kind of realism: the raw realism of the sub-
jectivity without neither medidation nor distance
(Situations IT, p. 327).

What the reader sees and is presented with, is only what the
perceiver allows him to see. Not only is the reader presented
with the perceiver’s point of view, but, moreover, he is trapped
in the laboratory of the subject’s consciousness (mill, to borrow
Sartre’s term).
For Robbe-Grillet, as also expressed by Merleau-Ponty,
man is a subjective entity. The character in his novels can be
defined in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s corps-sujet. Paralleling
the method of the phenomenologist, Robbe-Grillet seems to
have adopted the same Cartesian doubt: tabula rasa. The
world as it appears to the perceiver is a world divested of any
psychological analysis. The perceiver describes the world as
he sees it. In Robbe-Grillet’s novel the metaphor has almost
disappeared since, according to the author, the metaphor dis-
torts the immediate appearance, the surface of the object,
and clothes the object with moral and social values. For both
phenomenologist and novelist, the subject is the only means
to any meaning-giving existence. Perception is only attributed
to the subject. In Robbe-Grillet’s novel one always finds a
human eye, a perceiving man, whose passions and emotions
appropriate subjectively the object perceived. Robbe-Grillet
states that: « It seems to me that we should notice also the
fact that these descriptions are always done by someone. Noth-
57
ing of the world is presented except what the character sees
or imagines » (Interview with Claude Sarraute, p. 9). The
interior and the exterior worlds are then fused and endowed
with meaning through the perceptive effort of the subject.
Robbe-Grillet, contrary to some accusations, does not wish to
separate the world of objects and the world of man. He sug-
gests instead a distinct notion of the world where one should
not say « the world is man » but rather « things are things
and man is man » (FNN, p. 21). In the first statement Robbe-
Grillet sees a limitation of the « human » quality of man. To
state that the world is man, is to say that man creates the
world. Such a statement deprives man of individuality and lim-
its his point of view. Robbe-Grillet does not, however, deny
that his characters are for the most part « sick » characters.
Living in a corrupted and «sick » society, these characters
are a product and a true manifestation of our times. But these
characters are, nevertheless, perceiving characters. Even a
sexual pervert or a jealous husband is still a man, in spite of
individual moral aberrations. What is reported to the reader
by this individual (stage-managed by the author) is in fact a
pure subjective narration in which the author is, as Joyce
said, « refined to existence ». Subjectivity is highly stressed by
Robbe-Grillet when in his discussion of Jealousy he argues with
Claude Sarraute:

... this character that describes the world is in real-

ity the least objective, the least impartial witness.
He is, for example, a sexual pervert, or a husband
whose suspicion borders delirium. And the passions
which he feels are so compelling that in fact suc-
ceed in deforming his: vision. It is, therefore, a
matter of description entirely subjective, whose sub-
jectivity is even larger than the traditional novel,
where the narrator seems to be, for the most part,

58
 outside the story he tells, outside the world itself,
a sort of demiurge (Interview with Sarraute, p. 9).

Subjective narration is then the main trait of Robbe-Grillet’s

novel. If his novel is « dehumanized » it only means that the
narrator does not look at the world with an innate knowledge
of the object perceived. The new « dehumanization of art »
stresses the prominent presence of man as a perceiver: « As
a character, as an individual being animated by torments and
passions, no one will even reproach him with being inhu-
man, even if he is a sadistic madman or a criminal—the con-
trary, it would seem » (FNN., p. 52). If it is true that Robbe-
Grillet’s novels are novels of objects in which the presence of
objects is important, the man who perceives them is even
more important. Erroneously labelled as objective (since the
world is presented with obsessive monotony), Robbe-Grillet’s
narration is purely subjective. This literary preoccupation cor-
responds to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological stress on the
subject as the basis of any perception.
As the phenomenologist, Robbe-Grillet also wishes to abol-
ish any analytical discoveries resulting from previous philosoph-
ical and literary movements. Starting from a neutral basis,
the new novelist, according to Robbe-Grillet, should « reject
our so-called « nature » and the vocabulary which perpetuates
its myth, but propose objects as purely external and superficial »
(FNN, p. 57). Robbe-Grillet also stresses the fact that « no-
thing must be neglected in this tabula-rasa operation » (FNN,
p- 57). In this method of tabula rasa perception plays an im-
portant role. Since man is facing the world, the eye is the
organ that puts forth the greatest effort. All narration depends
upon perception, a subjective perception whereby the object
is perceived, assimilated, and distorted according to the per-
ceiver’s emotions, moods and prejudices. Robbe-Grillet’s point
59
of view is also present in the novel to the extent that he has
chosen for his narrator a distorting lens. This narrator in turn
imposes a meaning to the object perceived according to his
own needs. One has, therefore, a classical example of pragma-
tism of the phenomenological reduction, for « the relative sub-
jectivity of my sense of sight serves me precisely to define
my situation in the world » (FNN., p. 74). The perceptive
effort is, nevertheless, the most useful tool to any representa-
tion of reality for: « the sense of sight immediately appears
in this perspective as the privileged sense, particularly when
applied to outlines and contours (rather than colors, intensities,
or transparences). Optical description is, in effect, the kind
which most readily establishes distances » (PNR, p. 81). For
Robbe-Grillet « the sense of sight remains, in spite of every-
thing, our best weapon, especially if it keeps evclusively to
outlines » (FNN, p. 73). In fact, Robbe-Grillet’s novels deal
with certain psychic adventures. All that is reported takes
place in the narrator’s consciousness, and the reader is invited,
although at times inadvertently, to participate in the making
of the story—hence the novel in created.
However, this narrator (a subject) cannot be absolute
reality because he is constantly molded and modified by the
surroundings. Nevertheless, he is a privileged individual since
all that he sees has meaning for him, satisfying his sexual
and psychological appetites. Since the reader is commited to
the character’s point of view, it follows that the more intense
the perceiver’s point of view, the more intense is that of the
reader for: « We remain walled up in the narrator’s con-
sciousness, never permitted to consult with the author or to
depart even momentarily to get an,outsider’s look at the situa-
tion » (Le Sage: The French New Novel, p. 27). The reader
is confined to the character’s point of view. Both wander
through the same labyrinth and in the same consciousness.
60
Both doubt reality.
The same doubt, as expressed by Husserl in philosophy,
is carried in Robbe-Grillet’s novels by the numerous examples
of shifts of narration of one object to the other in a certain
order, when suddenly, without any warning, the reader is
presented with similar scenes in the past or future. In this
subjective fiction, realities are juxtaposed upon realities, for
Robbe-Grillet states: « Reality cannot appear in a unique
story, but in a juxtaposition of uncertain stories » (Interview
with Jacques Breener, p. 12). The reader cannot know exactly
when the first description begins. This presentation of objects,
of external reality, comes, however, from the interior conscious-
ness where characters mentally perceive exterior reality. As
Renato Barilli points out, it is rather a kind of « an analogism
for which certain microrhythms, even if born in the narrow
walls of the living room (consciousness), at once unfold in a
macroscopic space, dilated, and immense, according to the
technique completely unedited, used, at times, though awkward-
ly, in cinematographic art » (Barilli, « Robbe-Grillet », p.
66). This technique of analogism is pervasive in Robbe-Grillet’s
novels. One gesture, one sound, evokes different gestures and
different sounds, serving as a catalyst to the mind’s shifting
into another entirely new scene. Often, without any warning,
and in the surrealistic manner a new image is achieved. The
passage between different scenes is skillfully attained within
the framework of psychic time as opposed to mechanical time.
The character can go back and forth in time without barriers:
hence a scene in the past may be juxtaposed to a future or a
present one. What is important, however, is the fact that in
order that the new image be materialized, it has to be connected
with the previous sound, word, or image. Since Robbe-Grillet’s
novels are a product of the narrator’s consciousness, the phe-
nomenological transition is achieved through stylistic devices.
61
Consciousness and its content are described with the maximum
microscopic scrutiny. Bearing the traits of phenomenology,
this transition is materialized by a perceiving consciousness,
a subject, a corps-sujet, enriched by its own volitions, wishes
and passions. But if the subject betrays himself by making a
mistake in his identification of perceived objects, the corps-
sujet (the perceiving element) will eventually and successively
cancel the previous perceptions by juxtaposing another, fresh,
new and more convenient scene to the previous one. One
arrives then at a construction of a new subjective reality which
the character has tried to build for himself.
Consider, for example, the case of The Erasers (1953)
where we are faced with a story maneuvered and presented
from different points of view. The assassination of - Daniel
Dupont is either imagined, reconstructed, or relived; but every
time the story is repeated in its various versions, something
has been omitted. This constant change of perspectives can
only be explained by the subject, the perceiver, or the reporting
consciousness that a particular time narrates or invents reality
to fit its own needs. The narrators—whowever they may be,
either the café manager, the professional murderer Garinati,
Madame Bax, Dr. Juard (who is covering up the death of
Dupont, hence camouflaging reality), the businessman Marchat,
the police commissioner Laurent, the special agent and main
character Wallas—these narrators present each in his own way
a subjective view of reality. What is peculiar in this novel is
the fact that reality, due to its amorphous quality, acquires
multiple interpretations. Reality is presented not as it is, but
as one would like to see it. The detective-story quality of The
Erasers accentuates the mysterious entity of reality distorted
every time it is reported. In The Erasers we are then dealing
not so much with a linear description of events — a practice
common to the traditional novel — but with a novel that

62
makes itself but at the same time negates itself. All the
reader knows of the assassination is what each character allows
him to see. As in the traditional detective novel each character
in The Erasers, due to his powerful mastery of distorting reality,
does not allow any hypothetical answers to solve the dilemma
that surrounds Dupont’s assassination. We live twenty-four
hours of travelling through the labyrinth of each character’s
consciousness, until seven-thirty, twenty-four hours later when
the novel completes its full circle. Wallas, the special agent
who has come to this kafkaesque city (engulfed in a mytholog-
ical Corinthian setting) becomes himself the murderer. As
the circle has finally been completed, life continues to roll
once again. The city in which we find ourselves wandering,
in the most kafkaesque way imaginable, is nothing else but
the different avenues that we traverse (and in which, at times,
we get lost) of the character’s conciousness. This penchant for
mystery, uncanny labyrinths, explains Robbe-Grillets’ predi-
lection for further investigation on innovative narrative tech-
niques and description of thought processes of man’s con-
sciousness.
Although The Erasers is the first novel published by
Robbe-Grillet, where the author’s narrative innovations are
still in the embryonic stages, the narrator’s phenomenological
description marks Robbe-Grillet’s penchant for this new nar-
rative form to present various levels of reality. Wallas has
been sent by the central government to investigate on the
assassination of Daniel Dupont who is believed to have been
murdered by a group of terrorists. The reader is, however,
presented with an investigation of Wallas’ or the other charac-
ter’s consciousness. For example, let us cite a passage where
we have a good example of phenomenological reduction:

Fabius, having closed the garden gate behind him,

63
 inspects the premises but he does not look as if that
is what he is doing; he is an ordinary insurance
agent leaving his client’s house and looking up at
the sky to the right and to the left to see from what
direction the wind is coming... Suddenly he notices
someone odd watching him behind the curtains at
a third-story window. He immediately looks away,
to avoid arousing any suspicion that he has noticed,
and walks at an ordinary pace toward the parkways.
But once he has crossed the bridge, he veers right,
taking a winding course that brings him back, in
about an hour, to the Boulevard Circulaire; without
wasting any time he crosses the canal, taking the
footbridge at this point. Then, furtively keeping to
the base of the houses, he returns to his point of
departure, in front of the apartment building at the
corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs... (Erasers, p.
103).

For a while we may believe it is the author who is telling

the story, unfolding it in the third person. But it is not until
the end of the description that the author informs us — a
device never repeated in his later novels — that it is in Wallas’
consciousness that this reality is unrolling like a film strip.
Robbe-Grillet adds: « Wallas smiles at this thought » (Erasers,
p- 104). What is peculiar is the fact that not only the char-
acter is building a story in the most phenomenological sense,
but that a similar scene, a mental reality, is starting to live in
the reader’s own consciousness, but this time, obviously, from
a different point of view.
In another passage where Madame Bax reports the iden-
tity of the man who was seen to have entered the house of
Dupont, is indeed a exemplary case of Robbe-Grillet’s technical
devices to hide the truth and to present a phenomenological
transcription of Madame Bax’s consciousness. She can, and in
fact, does change the story without hesitation:
64
 Last night a man in a raincoat tore something out
at the gate. It was hard to see because it was getting
dark. He stopped at the end of the spindle-tree
hedge, took out of his pocket a small object which
might have been pliers or a file, and quickly stuck
his arm between the last two bars to reach the top
of the gate inside... It only took half a minute:
he pulled his hand out immediately and went on
his way, with the same casual gait (Erasers, p. 106).

A few paragraphs later we read another version of the same

incident:

Last night a man in a raincoat did something to

the gate and since this morning you cannot hear the
automatic buzzer when it opens. Yesterday, a man...
No doubt she’ll end up telling him her secret. More-
over, she does not exactly know what it is restraining
her (Erasers, p. 107).

Once again another version of the same incident is repeated

but, this time, by Wallas, through the indirect discourse:

Unfortunately Madame Bax was unable to furnish

a more detailed description: a man in a raincoat with
a light gray hat. As for his impromptu traveling
companion, she thought she had passed him fre-
quently in the neighborhood; in her opinion, he
was probably well known in all the bars in the
vicinity (Erasers, p. 109).

Reality incessantly takes a shape every time the character finds

it convenient for him. The chameleon-like reality, its precar-
iousness, its relativity, is accentuated as we continue in the
novel but this time it is the Commissioner Laurent who, seated

65
at his desk, is trying to solve the mysterious puzzle of the
assassination (p. 133).
How can the reader be certain that this is Laurent’s
conscioussness? It is once again Robbe-Grillet who leads us by
the hand (certainly a poor method by which the reader is not
offered the opportunity to think for himself). The author or
perhaps Wallas himself—for it is conceivable that it is Wallas
who is allowing us to enter into his consciousness where reality
is phenomenologically reported—states:

Here Laurent stops; there is still something that is

not clear: did Dupont die immediately, or not? (Era-
sers, p. 135).

However, in this attempt to structure the assassination of Da-

niel Dupont Laurent is aware of Wallas’ presence. After all, he
is the stranger in the city who, like Joseph K. of Kafka’s The
Trial, wanders physically and mentally to find a clue to the
mystery. Could there have been a mistake? Could Wallas be
in fact in the city to investigate on the behavior of Laurent?
From Laurent’s consciousness we are then taken to the labo-
ratory of Marchat’s consciousness where another version is
reported. These examples, though few, are exemplary of the
character’s juggling of phenomenological reductions, not of
contingent reality, but of a reality divested of any possible
affiliations, and immersed and filtered in the narrator’s con-
sciousness to fulfill his wishes and emotions.
In The Voyeur (1955) when Mathias (the man reporting
in the novel) first sees the girl on the boat, she appears in a
certain position because this particular position is part of a
ritualistic performance which excites Mathias sexually. Mathias
is then projecting an exciting position onto an innocent
position:

66
 Slightly to one side, the little girl seemed to be for-
saken. She was standing against one of the iron
‘ pillars that supported the deck above. Her hands
were clasped behind the small of her back, her legs
braced and slightly spread, her head leaning against
the column; ... (Voyeur, p. 14).

A similar scene occurs several times in the novel and each

time it is presented, the reader has difficulty in distinguishing
if the scene is real or imaginary or if it pertains to exterior or
psychic reality. In another passage concerning a photograph
the reader is faced with the same dilemma. The reader has
no logical way of telling whether or not Mathias really sees
or remembers the picture. One presumes, however, that Ma-
thias is deforming the photograph of Jacqueline (an innocent
photograph) onto his favorite sado-sexual daydream. One may
think Mathias must be seeing the photo which in turn touches
off the deformations including the substitution of « Violette »
for « Jacqueline »:

Violet’s legs are spread, though still in contact with

the trunk—both heels touching the bark at the roots,
separated by half the circumference of the tree (about
sixteen inches). The cord holding them in that po-
sition cannot be distinguished because a clump of
grass is growing in front of the tree. Her forearms
are bound together behind the small of her back,
each hand in the crook of the opposite elbow. Her
shoulders must be attached to the tree, too, probably
under her armpits by means of thongs, though it
is difficult to see these. The child looks exhausted
and tense at the same time; her head is bent to the
right, in fact the whole body is slightly twisted in
this direction, the right hip higher and projecting
beyond the other, only the front part of the right foot
resting on the ground, and the right elbow out of

67
 sight, although the other protrudes beyond the trunk
(Voyeur, pp. 68-9).

Violet appears in another important scene at the end of the

first part of the book, where a possible murder is skillfully
described. The reader supposes that the murder actually takes
place but one can equally state that the whole scene could still
be one of Mathias’ imaginary projections. For example, one
can clearly see that Jacqueline is not totally burned but that
she is simply tied to the tree: « At the foot of the pine tree
the dry grass began to blaze, as well as the hem of the cotton
dress. Violet twisted at the waist and flung back her head,
opening her mouth. Finally, however, Mathias succeeded in
taking his leave » (Voyeur, p. 70). This is indeed a construction
of a certain reality which the character, Mathias, is trying to
build for himself. Since reality is only a matter of subjective
perception, i.e., mental reality, one must transform it, change
it, or study it according to different points of view. In the
case of Mathias a murder has possibly been committed. It is up
to Mathias to reconstruct reality to fit his own purpose.
Flash-backs and moving objects are also abundant in
Robbe-Grillet’s novels. In the case of Mathias, for instance,
one can clearly see how one scene sets off another scene—a
product of the transformative power of the consciousness where
there are no spatial temporal bounds. Mathias is in the process
of selling a watch. This same scene triggers the rape of the
girl and the murder scene (or the wish to murder):

Over her shoulder, he saw her fingering a gold-

plated watch strap, then the case itself, more slowly.
Twice once in one direction, then in the other—her
middle finger followed the circular shape. She was
slender and graceful, bending her neck at nape-under
his eyes—within reach of his hand (Voyeur, p. 128).

68
Similar examples of the panneau-réclame and the picture where
the young girl is leaning against the pole, suffice to verify
Robbe-Grillet’s technique:

In thinking it over he wondered if he had heard only

moans, inarticulate sounds; had there been indenti-
fiable words? In any case it was impossible for him
to remember what they were. Judging from the qual-
ity of her voice—which was pleasant, and not at
all sad—the victim must have been a very young
woman, or a child. She was standing against one
of the iron pillars that supported the deck above;
her hands were clasped behind the small of her
back, her legs braced and slightly spread, her head
leaning against the column. Her huge eyes inordi-
nately wide (wheareas all the passengers were squint-
ing because the sun had begun to break through), she
continued to look straight ahead of her, with the
same calmness with which she had just now looked
into his own eyes (Voyeur, p. 20).

These technical devices can be found in almost every Robbe-

Grilletian novel. The novel unfolds and uncoils itself in the
narrator’s consciousness which the author has placed tempo-
rally and spatially. If in The Voyeur the reader is presented
with a certain aspect of reality as represented by the obsedé
sexuel, it is a jealous narrator in Jealousy (1957) who juxta-
poses scene after scene. Here the time element is once again
eradicated. The reader is in the mind of a husband in whom
fictitious and erotic images are created. One must remember,
however, that it is only through the presence of the husband,
a body, that such scenes are manifested.
However, a possible paradox arises since it has been pre-
viously stated that Robbe-Grillet eliminates psychologism. Yet
the reader deduces that the novel, Jealousy, may possibly be
69
centered around the phallic symbol of the centipede. It is the
reader who attributes to the centipede the Freudian connota-
tion since the husband in the novel never mentions any erotic
or sexual objects. Hence, when the husband is looking through
the « jealousy » in his mind he is fabricating the possible modes
of reality applicable to the possible sexual relation in the
hotel room between A..., his wife, and Franck, a friend with
whom she has left for a nearby town in order to go shopping.
In French, « Jalousie » has two connotations which seem to
apply also to the novel: 1) emotion, jealousy; 2) Venetian
blinds. These Venetian blinds play an important role in the
book since the husband is constantly looking through them.
His vision is distorted by the shutters of these blinds. The
reader is then inadvertently taken into the narrator’s patho-
logical laboratory where the milles-pattes stimulates the image
of the hair strokes; the hair strokes stimulate the image of
fire; the fire in turn stimulates the palpitation of the sexual
act between A... and Franck:

The pantry door is closed. Between it and the door-

way to the hall is the centipede. It is enormous: one
of the largest to be found in this climate. With its
long antennae and its huge legs spread on each side
of its body, it covers the area of an ordinary dinner
plate. The shadow of various appendages doubles
their already considerable number on the light-col-
ored paint.
The body is curved toward the bottom: its anterior
part is twisted toward the baseboard, while the last
joints keep their original orientation ... The creature
is motionless, alert, as if sensing danger. Only its
antennae are alternately raised and lowered in a
swaying movement, slow but continuous.
Suddenly the front part of the body begins moving,
executing a rotation which turns the creature toward

70
the bottom of the wall ... while its mandibles rapidly
open and close in a reflex quiver...
The sound is that of the comb in the long hair. The
tortoise-shell teeth pass again and again from top
to bottom of the thick black mass with its reddish
highlights, electrifying the tips and making the soft,
freshly washed hair crackle during the entire de-
scent of the delicate hand—the delicate hand with
tapering fingers that gradually closes on the strands
of hair.
The two long antennae accelerate their alternating
swaying. The creature has stopped in the center of
the wall, at eye level...
Franck, without saying a word, stands up, wads his
napkin into a ball as he cautiously approaches, and
squashes the creature against the wall. Then, with
his foot, he squashes it against the bedroom floor.
Then he comes back toward the bed and in passing
hangs the towel on its metal rack near the washbowl.
The hand with the tapering fingers has clenched
into a fist on the white sheet. The five widespread
fingers have closed over the palm with such force
that they have drawn the cloth with them: the latter
shows five convergent creases... But the mosquito-
netting falls back all around the bed, interposing the
opaque veil of its innumerable meshes where rectan-
gular patches reinforce the torn places.
In his haste to reach is goal, Franck increases his
speed. The jolts become more violent. Nevertheless
he continues to drive faster. In the darkness, he
has not seen the hole running halfway across the
road. The car makes a leap, skids... On this bad
road the driver cannot straighten out in time. The
blue sedan goes crashing into a roadside tree whose
rigid foliage scarcely shivers under the impact, de-
spite its violence.
The car immediately bursts into flames. The whole
brush is illuminated by the crackling, spreading fire.

71
 It is the sound the centipede makes, motionless again
on the wall, in the center of the panel.
Listening to it more carefully, this sound is more
like a breath than a crackling: the brush is now
moving down the loosened hair (Jealousy, pp.
112-14).

This proliferation of objects and juxtaposition of scenes upon

scenes can only be achieved in a novel by the skillfull stage-
managing of an author who lets reality unfold before the con-
sciousness of the character. This vision of reality is indeed
clothed with subjectivity since what one sees and hears is
only what the jealous husband allows one to see and hear.
Similar juxtaposition of scenes upon scenes takes. place
in Robbe-Grillet’s fourth novel In the Labyrinth (1959). The
description begins with a painting, a painting that the narrator
is seeing, or more likely, that he remembers:

The six men in long frock coats who are standing in

front of the bar, under the eye of the bartender
whose thickest body, leaning toward them, is support-
ed on his hands that grip the inner edge of the
bar, on top of which are set the six glasses, still full,
belonging to the customers momentarily distracted
from their thirst by a discussion doubtless full of
excitement and noise—a fist raised in anger, a head
thrown back to shout the swear words which the
mouth shapes with violence, and the other men in
the group approving, punctuating the remark with
other solemn gestures, all talking or exclaiming at
the same time—the ones who first catch the eye.
(In the Labyrinth, p. 203).

Thus continues the meticulous description of the painting which

is nothing but: « a full length photograph of her husband,
taken the morning he left for the front during the first days
72
of the offensive, during the period when everyone behind the
lines was convinced of an easy and rapid victory » (In the
Labyrinth, p. 205). Even imaginary dialogues take place which
the narrator (in this case the author or the doctor/narrator
himself) constructs at his own volition: « Then you think he’s
a prisoner? » « “Yes’, he says, “probably”, which does not
commit him to much, for unless he is dead the husband will
soon be a prisoner in any case » (In the Labyrinth, p. 205).
At this point the scene stops and the reader is faced with a
shift of reality:

It is at this moment that the lame man has come

into the room, through the half-open door to the
next room, advancing without any evident awkward-
ness among the various obstacles, maneuvering his
wooden crutch with agility. And the boy has soon
reappeared at the other door (In the Labyrinth, p.
206).

The reader can follow the soldier through the various shifts
of reality. In a phenomenological representation of reality one
cannot escape the subjective point of view of the narrator. No
interpretations are allowed to the reader. He is trapped in the
walls of the labyrinth of the narrator’s consciousness. This
method of juxtaposing or distorting reality, achieved only
through the narrator’s point of view, is materialized through
the passage from one mental reality (absent and oblivious of
chronological time) to the exterior reality where objects take
a new shape and coincide with the mental representation.
In The House of Assignation (1965), the murder of a
certain Edouard Manneret, who is believed to be dead (or at
least there was an attempt to murder him) there are all the
elements of a detective novel—a penchant which can be traced
back to Robbe-Grillet’s first novel The Erasers. This inclina-

73
tion explains also Robbe-Grillet’s proclivity for the film, for
the film is the best domain of the subjective and the imaginary.
Everything is possible on the screen. The passion for a de-
tective novel is evident when Robbe-Grillet, commenting on
the « hero » of the new novel, states:

Whereas the -traditional hero is constantly solicited,

caught up, destroyed by these interpretations of the
author’s,... the future hero will remain, on the
contrary, there... Exhibit X in any detective story
gives us, paradoxically, a clear image of this situa-
tion. The evidence gathered by the inspectors—an
object left at the scene of the crime, a movement
captured in a photograph, a sentence overheard by
a witness—seem chiefly, at first, to require an expla-
nation, to exist only in relation to their role in a
context which overpowers them. And already the
theories begin to take shape: the presiding magistrate
attempts to establish a logical and necessary link
between things; it appears that everything will be
resolved in a banal baundle of causes and conse-
quences, intentions, and coincidences (FNN, p. 22).

However, in The House of Assignation, each version of the

story is not limited to two perceiving consciousnesses as we
have seen in In the Labyrinth where the doctor/narrator or
the soldier’s vision of reality alternates in a more systematic
fashion. In The House of Assignation there is indeed a rendez-
vous of multiple « I’s » who present the disappearance of Man-
neret from multiple points of view. If in In the Labyrinth
we were lost insofar as we could not in fact establish at first
the identity of the doctor, in The House of Assignation, in
addition to the labyrinthian quality of the novel, set in an
oriental kafkaesque city, we are trapped in a dead end street.
No effort is made on the part of the author to clarify the

74
opacity that surrounds the characters. Many are indeed the
consciousnessess which present a different version of the same
incident. If one character attempts to build his own version,
another consciousness fades in the narration and totally annihi-
lates the preceding one.
A certain Johnson, an american, a wanderer from the
stock of Wallas (The Erasers), Mathias (The Voyeur), the
narrator (Jealousy) — although his movement is more psycolog-
gical than physical, and the doctor (In the Labyrinth) seem
to manipulate the narration, trying to report to the reader or
to himself what took place during the evening at Lady Ava’s
house of delights. The sudden shift from a street scene to a
studio scene, staged scene, is achieved with such an alacrity
and smoothness as it is precisely done with the fading tech-
nique in the cinema. A film like Rashomon can come close to
the cinematographic technique used in The House of Assig-
nation as to the precariousness, elasticity and cameleon-like
quality of reality itself. Let us cite some examples:

She climbs to the second floor without seeing a thing,

or to the third. She knocks on a door and goes in
at once without waiting for a reply. It is not the
agent who is there to receive her today, but the man
of whom all she knows is a nickname « The Old
Man » (though he is probably only in his sixties),
and whose name is Edouard Manneret. He is alone.
He has his back to the door through which she has
just entered the room, and which she has pushed
to behind her, remaining with her back against the
closed panel. He is sitting in his armchair, at his
work-table. He is writing. He pays no attention to
the girl, whose arrival he does not seem to have
noticed, although she has taken no special precaution
to avoid making any noise; but her movements are
naturally silent and it is possible that the man has

75
 not really heard anyone come in. She does nothing
to indicate her presence, waiting for him to decide
to look up, which probably takes quite some time
(House, p. 43).

In another related scene we have additional representations

of the same reality:

The third picture shows him standing again; but

this time Kim is half lying near him on the edge
of the rumpled divan. (Was the divan already visible
in this room before?) The girl is still wearing her
sheath—dress, slit at the side in the Chinese style,
whose thin white silk, probably worn next to the skin,
forms at the waist innumerable tiny creases in the
shape of a fan produced by the very marked torsion
of the long, supple body .. . Ina final tableau Edouard
Manneret is shown lying on the ground dressed in
his dark suit, which shows no sign of disorder, be-
tween the impeccably orderly divan and the work-
table where the page has been begun and left incom-
plete. He is lying at full-length on his back, with his
arms stretched out on either side of his body, slightly
away from it, in a symmetrical manner (House,
p-. 44).

To determine which version is correct is to limit perceptions

of reality to one particular point of view. The fact is that all
three versions are real since they are different mental realities—
the truest form of reality for Robbe-Grillet as he stated in
his discussion of the mental image of the seagulls and the
physical seagulls he went to see on the shores of Brittany,
while writing The Voyeur. Perhaps these three forms are ver-
sions of the same consciousness, of two consciousnesses, or
even
of three consciousnesses but they are all different from one
another for we have in this case a representation of a phenom-
76
enological nature.
In Project for a Revolution in New York (1970), the
last published novel by Robbe-Grillet, we have a rendez vous
of almost all characters previously presented in earlier novels.
In this novel the author’s insistance on a multiple-point-of-
view narrative gives to this work the detective-story quality
which has already been extensively used in The Erasers, In
the Labyrinth, and in The House of Assignation. This detec-
tive element in the novel adds more mystery, confusion, and
total subjectivity. The novel is a subjective report of multiple
points of view immersed in sado-masochistic, homosexual, les-
bian, fire, bestiality scenes, troilism, black masses—the evil
which according to Robbe-Grillet constitutes the myth of modern
revolution. As one narrator (the doctor/narrator, Robbe-Gril-
let himself, a narrator perhaps representing one member of
the Black Panthers movement) states:

Crime is indispensable to the revolution. Rape, mur-

der, arson are the three metaphoric acts which will
free the blacks, the impoverished proletariat, and the
intellectual workers from their slavery, and at the
same time the bourgeoisie from its sexual complexes.
(Project, p. 128).

As in The House of Assignation the actual assassination of

Edouard Manneret could have been staged in Lady Ava’s
living room, the rapes, the sado-sexual scenes which consti-
tute an integral part of Project for a Revolution in New
York, could in fact be part of the detective novel which Laura
is reading. Or one can always infer that the various scenes
could indeed serve as the essential stuff for Robbe-Grillet’s
novel, for many could be the points of view:

To be specific: no one except me, which is to say,

77
 neither Sara nor Doctor Morgan, for I have noticed
in skimming the novel, that all of the three elements
of the secret in the heroine’s keeping, one was known
by the reader, the second by the narrator himself,
and the third by the book’s author alone (Project,
pp. 74-5).

As we know, contingent reality is of no interest to Robbe-

Grillet, for mental reality is the true representation of reality
since it is a product of consciousness. For example, the sado-
sexual scene of the girl been tortured and raped is reported
several times either by Ben Said, by the voyeur, by the author
himself, by Franck, by the doctor/narrator, or even by the
reader himself who in turn would try to reconstruct the scene
in his consciousness:

The victim, still shaken by charming contortions

although already losing some of her strength, con-
tinues bleeding a little at the six points at which she
has been tortured: the ends of both feet which seem
to have been deliberately mutilated, the breasts whose
milky globe is intact but veined by a whole network
of red trickles which come from the gradually torn
nipple and then flow down to the region of the hips
and the navel, finally the genitals where the saw has
penetrated deeper and deeper at each of the patient’s
movements, tormenting the flesh and severing the
pubic region, smeared with sperm, much higher than
the top. of its natural orifice... Blood has flowed
at such abundance from this last wound that it has
stained the anus and the belly, spattered the viscous,
opaline substance with reddish streaks, with still
shimmering layers covering the mound of Venus...
(Project, pp. 156-57).

However, in another scene, the girl is shown from a different

point of view:

78
 The girl is then seized by violent, periodic spasms,
producing a kind of shifting, rhythmical contraction
which extends from the inner surface of her thighs
to the navel, whose precise folds form, in intaglio,
a miniature rose just beneath one of the excessively
tight strands of the cord, which narrows the waist
still more, making a deep curve above the hips and
belly.
... Then, the girl remains motionless and slack, like
one of those Japanese slave-dolls sold in the souvenir
shops of Chinatown, abandoned to every whim, the
mouth permanently silent, the eyes fixed (Project,
p- 167).

However, the reader has no other way to accept the scene

except in the manner in which it is presented by this corps-
subjet, who immersed in the present tense, reports to us a
transcription of his consciousness. As one character states: « I
am making my report, that’s all there is to it. The text is
correct, nothing is left up to chance, you have to take it as
it is given » (Project, p. 160), Proliferation of scenes upon
scenes, juxtapositions of frames upon frames, all these tech-
niques are indicative of Robbe-Grillet’s preoccupation with
man’s consciousness.
This proliferation and juxtaposition of scenes can only
be achieved through the corps-sujet. If the character wants
to see anything he only needs to shift his body to assume the
correct ocular position. He may also shift his mental position,
in which case, the scene reported, changes according to the
new shift. It is the novelist’s role not to interfere with the
shifting of realities, not to interpret acts and word—a method
which the new novelist seems to have learned from the phenom-
enologist. According to Merleau-Ponty:

The novelist’s task is not to expound ideas or even

79
 analyse characters, but to depict an inter-human event,
ripening and bursting it upon us with no ideological
commentary, to such an extent that any change in
the order of the narrative or in choice of viewpoint
would alter the literary meaning of the event (PP,
p- 151).

It should be clarified that this description of the internal

regions of the corps-sujet has or could have in Robbe-Grillet’s
novels the form of imagination, fantasy, memory, dream or
repressed wishes which are found in the perceiver’s conscious-
ness. The perceived object does not have to be a concrete and
material object, but it could take the shape of a gesture, or
an act which are in turn reified in the perceiver’s consciousness.
It is through the manipulation of the character’s consciousness
that the object triggers into something else. This shift is pos-
sible since it takes place in mental reality.
The description of this mental reality seems to have the
imprint of the stream of consciousness or the Joycian mono-
logue. But if Joyce still believed in consciousness as psychic
stratification, observed from gestures, acts and words, for
Robbe-Grillet the world should be perceived at the surface
level. The object should be observed from all points of view.
Thus Robbe-Grillet’s literary method may be understood as
an adoption of the phenomenological reduction. In the Robbe-
Grilletian novels once a character has life, he lives only accord-
ing to the volition and the mechanism admittedly decided
by the author. Actions are reported with the utmost accuracy
and. subjectivistic scrutiny. As for the reader he cannot par-
ticipate in the novel without the presence of the narrator—a
perceiving subject. The corps-sujet is then the center of mean-
ing, a rendezvous for all extrinsic impulses and reflexes:

That the body is a subject, a meaning-giving exis-

80
 tence, is deduced by Merleau-Ponty from the fact
that there are many forms of meaning which, on the
one hand, do not have the character of us both, on
the other, do not result from a free and conscious
giving of meaning. It follows therefore that man
must already be a meaning-giving existence on the
preconscious and not-yet-free level, on the level of
bodily existence (Kwant, Philosophy, p. 21).

The walking consciousness which records, shapes and shuffles

at its own will, is indeed the main characteristic of Robbe-
Grillet’s novels. His novels do in fact live up to the Husserlian
statement: « Every state of consciousness is consciousness of
something ». In this statement a demarcation between objectiv-
ity and subjectivity is drawn.
The phenomenon is, therefore, subjectively treated by the
perceiver who fabricates new meanings. But the consciousness
is also a part of the world since man lives in this world.
According to Merleau-Ponty truth does not lie in the interior
realm of things. Both man and the world live independently
and any meaning attributed to either one is made possible only
by the subject. In the realm of philosophy, this is attained
by the dialectic argument between the subject and the object.
In the realm of the novel this is the function of the narrator,
the character who invites the reader to share with him moments
of mental epiphany.

81
 ae al
a <i Ie

=5 i es a 7
JEALOUSY AND THE THEORY OF THE EPOCHE
 CHAPTER IV

JEALOUSY AND THE THEORY OF THE EPOCHE

Although any of Robbe-Grillet’s novels could serve as a

prototype for a discussion of the epoché, the epiphany between
mental and exterior reality appears to be most accentuated in
Robbe-Grillet’s third novel, Jealousy.
The description of a reporting consciousness is the most
evident element in Jealousy. If The Erasers and The Voyeur
are two exemplary works that show Robble-Grillet’s propensity
for eliminating the plot or characterization found in the tradi-
tional novel, the narrator, the perceiving corps-sujet, is not
totally free in his description of reporting consciousness. Wal-
las and Mathias are two perceiving consciousnesses but they
are also skillfully maneuvered by the author. They are not
as autonomous as the jealous narrator in Jealousy. This nar-
rative innovation is achieved by Robbe-Grillet in Jealousy by
the method of « pure » subjective narration. In the works
before Jealousy, the perception of the character was not limited
to the character alone. In The Erasers and The Voyeur one
still feels the author’s presence. Wallas and Mathias still have
a proper name. An element of objectivity is achieved by the

85
partial intervention of the author in the presentation of the
characters and the narrative technique inherent to the structure
of the novel. Wallas and Mathias do not perceive quite
freely or independently—both characters still depend upon
the manipulation of the author to place them at a certain
point in time and space. In Jealousy this aspect of the char-
acter’s relative dependency is absent. One cannot deny the
author’s subjective creation of any character, but it seems that
in Jealousy, contrary to the two previous novels, it is easier
to enter into the character’s consciousness. The character ac-
cording to the classical definition has also disappeared, for
there are in this novel three characters, two of which are pre-
sented by the third one, the reporting consciousness. The
narrator’s presence is also evident in the description of the
dinner table around which there are three chairs; three glasses
and three plates set on the table also indicate the trilogy of
the characters, Franck, A... and the anonymous narrator. In
The Erasers and The Voyeur the physical presence of the
narrator is evident; in Jealousy the narrator is reduced to a
pure consciousness, a corps-sujet, but a hidden corps-su jet, mys-
terious and jealous. The reader is consequently forced to accept
this man’s point of view, since it is the only one reported.
Everything in the novel is a description limited by the needs
and anxieties of the narrator. Since the narration unfolds
in
his consciousness, chronological movement is eliminated,
hence
time is eradicated. In Jealousy the reader is then fully
aware
of the narrator’s presence (perhaps the husband’s) since
all
that is reported comes filtered through his personality.
The
reality presented by him is thus distorted. Consequently,
more
than being invited, the reader is forced to share the
husband’s
point of view.
In proceeding from The Erasers and The Voyeur
to Jeal-
ousy Robbe-Grillet has gradually advanced towar
ds a more
86
subjective presentation of reality. As in Last Year at Marienbad,
«it can be here a question only of a subjective, mental,
personal ocurrence ». (FNN, p. 153). This subjective (per-
sonal and mental) element in Robbe-Grillett echoes the phe-
nomenological epoché. Since it is in fact a description of inner
state and feelings which constitute Jealousy, Robbe-Grillet’s
literary technique and narrative devices share the descriptive
element with phenomenology. In this novel gestures, actions,
movements, even words, are not reported to be interpreted
(not interpreted a priori in the Joycian sense), they « are
there » before being something. In Jealousy Robbe-Grillet at-
tempts to describe a certain presentation of reality, not as a
product of interpretation or psychological analysis but as it
appears in the narrator’s consciousness. This is why it has
been stressed that Robbe-Grillet has aimed to achieve in
Jealousy a pure descriptive narration. Since it is the perceiv-
ing consciousness (the husband (?) that determines which
gestures and objects are perceived or remembered, « it is
therefore, a description perfectly subjective, subjectivity even
greater than the one we find in the traditional novel ». (Inter-
view with Claude Sarraute, p. 9).
This new subjective description is the main device for
any phenomenological reduction. In perception the act of
perceiving is endangered by prior feelings or reflexive analysis
because the object being immersed in the contingent world
is anthropomorphized. But as Merleau-Ponty states: « Noth-
ing is more difficult than to know precisely what we see ».
(PP, p. 58). The phenomenologist is not interested in con-
tingent reality but in extrapolated and internalized reality
divorced from any exteriority. It is reality, as it appears to
the subject’s consciousness, that has value and meaning for
the phenomenologist. If an act perceived, remembered, and
described had to be stripped and presented to the consciousness
87
of the narrator, then an effort to suspend these events, acts,
and objects is mandatory. The act should not be interpreted
but merely reported in its original presentation to the con-
sciousness. Contrary to Joyce, Proust, Kafka and even Beckett,
Robbe-Grillet has made a conscious effort to eliminate—as
phenomenologists do—any psychological analysis and reflexive
interpretation. He is preoccupied with phenomenological psy-
chology—a new interpretation of naked facts without prior
interpretation. Joseph Kockelmans defines, for example, phe-
nomenological psychology as « an a prioric, eidetic, intuitive,
purely descriptive, and intentional science of the psychical as
such, which science must remain necessarily within the realm
of the natural attitude ». (A First Introduction to Husserl’s
Phenomenology, p. 311). .
In any phenomenological reduction Gestalt psychology,
behavioral psychology, or the theories of the behavioristic
school are meaningless because, according to Husserl, they
imply a direct bond between acts and thought. To achieve a
pure state of description of the phenomenon, the phenomenol-
ogist introduces the theory of the epoché: a primary and im-
portant step in any phenomenological reduction. It consists
mainly of suspending any reality that appears to the subject’s
consciousness. In order to exercise a kind of subjective freedom
and to enter into the ontological state made possible by per-
ception, description, and presentation, one must practice a
type of Cartesian doubt. Phenomenological epoché is in fact
closely related to Cartesian doubt, for without ceasing to believe
in the phenomena:

One should put one’s belief in them out of action.

In this suspension of conviction, consciousness itself
will become heightened, the mere appearance of
houses, trees, men, etc., being tantamount to the

88
 existence of one’s awareness of them (Encyclopaedia
Britannica, p. 701).

Reality as it appears to the perceiver should be doubted, even

questioned. Since we live in an « era of suspicion » (to borrow
Nathalie Sarraute’s expression), reality should be suspended,
bracketed, and placed in parentheses. As Husserl states, phe-
nomenological epoché is the discovery of a « new scientific
domain, such as might be won precisely through the method
of bracketing which consists in putting out of action the
general thesis which belonged to the essence of the natural
standpoint » (Ideas, p. 99).
To arrive then at a pure subjective perception of the
phenomenon, one needs to eliminate any possible existential
affiliation the phenomenon may have with the exterior world.
To place an act, a word, a gesture, or any other slice of reality
in brackets merely means to externalize them in the conscious-
ness of the subject. Thus epoché means to disconnect the event
from the world, by a process of Cartesian doubting, and then
raise it above every possibility of doubt by inserting it in pure
consciousness. A secondary step will then consist of an attempt
to understand and describe what is suspended or bracketed.
Since phenomenology deals essentially with the description of
consciousness, it is in this consciousness that the phenomenon
is presented, put in abeyance, and then reported or described.
The epoché will then have to be constantly operative since to
discontinue the bracketing is to immerse the phenomenon in
the exterior world. The object—or whatever appears to con-
sciousness—should be reported, described or presented phenom-
enologically as it appears in the most naive and pure state,
divested of any cultural interpretation. Epoché in this process
« simply assures that no foreign element shall be admitted
into the analysis » (Lauer, Phenomenology, p. 50). Through
89
epoché the subject can report the phenomenon in its primor-
dial state. Since reality is elusive, any knowledge of it is sub-
jective because it has to be filtered through the mind. The
theory of the epoché will then accentuate the relativity of
reality itself. This judgement will bring us to the subjective
point of view, which is the point de depart for any phenom-
enologist.
To place any phenomenon in parentheses, whatever its
nature may be, does not mean to negate the phenomenon. The
technique of the epoché seems in fact to fall in the realm of
negativity since it eliminates all the contingencies of the phe-
nomenon. But to eliminate the factual existence is not, accord-
ing to Husserl, to « deny the world », but he continues: « I
use the “phenomenological” epoché which completely bars me
from using any judgement that concerns spatial-temporal exis-
tence ». (Ideas, p. 100). Existence is then placed in paren-
theses and nothing can be said about it except that it exists in
the new fashion—bracketed. The existence of the subject or of
the act is modified in the sense that it is understood as « real »,
neutralized in its new position in order to weaken all links
between the objectivity of consciousness and contingent reality.
Husserl explains that:

We are dealing now with a modification which in a

certain sense completely removes and renders power-
less every doxic modality to which it is related, but
in a totally different way from that of negation, which
in addition, as we saw, shows in the negated a posi-
tive effect, a non-being which is itself one more being.
It cancels nothing, it « performs » nothing, it is the
conscious counterpart of all performances: its neu-
tralization. It lies enclosed‘in every « withholding of
performance », « setting our of action », « bracket-
ing », « leaving postponed », and so « having post-
poned », « thinking oneself into » the performance,

90
 or «merely thinking » what is performed without
« helping to bring it about ». (Ideas, p. 282).

In this respect, one can say that Husserl eliminates any form
of psychologism, for to place anything in abeyance is to sus-
pend it in a new form of existence, a mental existence, in
the realm of consciousness. To bracket the phenomenon is to
disconnect it from all possible positions and bonds which unite
it with the natural world. Since man lives in the world, argues
Husserl, man is confronted with it constantly. Man can discern
other words only if he places himself in a certain position
which emphasizes a new point of view. To be engaged in a
phenomenological reduction, Husserl states that:

We should start from the standpoint of everyday

life, from the world as it confronts us, from con-
sciousness as it presents itself in psychological expe-
rience, and shall lay bare the presupposition essential
to this viewpoint. We shall then develop a method
of « phenomenological Reduction, » according to
which we may set aside the limitations to knowledge
essentially involved in every nature-directed form of
investigation, deflecting the restricted line of vision
proper to it, until we have eventually before us the
free outlook « transcendentally » purified phenome-
na, and therewith the field of phenomenology in our
own special sense of that term. (Ideas, p. 39).

It is the real world—the objective world—wich is of primary

concern to a phenomenologist, for man’s thought is normally
channeled toward this exteriority. It is the effort of the phenom-
enologist not to be restricted to the exterior world but to justify
the objectivity of knowledge. No viewpoint will either destroy
or deny the phenomenon; it simply places it in brackets.
The bracketed phenomenon is then freed of any spatial-
91
temporal affiliation since it is in the subject’s consciousness
that such a manifestation takes place. Man’s consciousness is,
therefore, of paramount importance since both phenomenol-
ogist and new novelist deal with a description of the subject’s
consciousness. Robbe-Grillet’s prime concern in the novel is to
describe and report any current of perception which ties the
narrator to the object. This is what Husserl and Brentano call
the theory of intentionality. Intentionality encompasses the
noesis (subject) and the noema (object) and consists mainly of
an orientation of the mind to its object.
For the phenomenologist (as for the narrator in the case
of the novelist) the subject encounters the phenomenon in his
line of perception. Since it is a subjective effort, the phenom-
enon is then bracketed, suspended from any contingency.
The subject selects only certain aspects of perceived reality
(since that reality has to be filtered through the perceiver’s
own personality). He then reports and describes the phenom-
enon in a new form, in a new existence. He has stripped the
object of any previous interpretation and presented it from a
new subjective point of view. This subjective effort constitutes
the phenomenological epoche.
Jealousy is particularly interesting from the point of
view of the phenomenological epoché since it is the narrator’s
reporting consciousness that constitutes the whole novel. The
reality he presents is strictly subjective, mental and personal.
It is rather a reality which, once perceived and bracketed, is
filtered through the narrator’s own personality. The myste-
rious, omnipresent narrator (husband) internalizes the exterior
environment, systematizes it for himself, and then his con-
sciousness begins to report. Contingent reality does not coin-
cide at times with the extrapolated form of existence in the
narrator’s consciousness, since reality or a portion of it has
been suspended from the exterior world. Mental reality, how-
92
ever, holds more value and meaning for Robbe-Grillet than
does exterior reality. As in the case of the seagulls in The
Voyeur Robbe-Grillet states that the imaginary sea-gulls were
more real since, having come from the exterior world, they
have been internalized, rendered more plastic, and systematized
according to his own perception. The seagulls he saw in
Brittany, the real ones, were immersed in the world, where
prejudices and preconceptions are attributed to objects and
men. The phenomenological epoché acts in the same way for
perceived reality. Objects, gestures, words or events suspended
in the subject’s consciousness are more real than their contin-
gent equivalents, since they have been put in abeyance and
have now areality of their own. This reality is pure, stripped
of any anthropomorphism. This bracketing is possible and
« it is because we are through and through compounded of
relationships with the world that forus the only way to become
aware of the fact is to suspend the resultant activity, to refuse
it our complicity... to put it ’out of play” » (PP, p. xiii).
The phenomenological epoché « renders “pure’ conscious-
ness accessible to us, and subsequently the whole phenomeno-
logical region » (Ideas, p. 103). The phenomenological re-
duction is then mainly based on the subjective effort to describe
and to report any slice of reality which has been internalized
in the subject’s consciousness. In the realm of the novel, the
reader has no other choice but to accept the phenomena re-
ported from the narrator’s point of view. The reader, in turn,
must recreate the novel according to his own manner of per-
ceiving these same reported phenomena.
Although the emphasis on subjectivity can be felt in
Robbe-Grillet’s novels previous to Jealousy, for the purpose
of illustration, Jealousy lends itself to a detailed treatment of
this device. In subsequent novels, Robbe-Grillet’s proclivity for
a pure subjective narration is finally established. In Jealousy
93
the story is told through the narrator’s consciousness. As Re-
nato Barilli also states:

Both The Erasers and The Voyeur present in fact

a protagonist who cannot be understood as a charac-
ter. He is presented in objective narration, referred
to in the third person, and with a proper name (Wal-
las, Mathias). In other words, the thought currents
have not yet become completely independent. This
protagonist needs a « person » to handle and to ma-
neuver him, to shift his point of view, to strategi-
cally place him in those places which need to be
selected, as it is customarily done with a spotlight.
Contrarily in Jealousy, following the intrinsic logic
of its own structure, the current of perception abol-
ishes any remainder of objectivity, and it also elim-
inates whatever was left of what was normally
understood as character (My translation).

The main « character » in Jealousy never explains anything.

The reader is faced only with a report of what goes through
the character’s consciousness. The novel is then controlled by
the perception of this one man’s vision and interpretation. It
is the jealous narrator who presents episodes, slices of reality,
compares them, questions them, and above all, modifies them
according to his own evanescent moods. The reader cannot
really describe him since no exterior description of the character
is given. Yet the narrator does exist, although in the most
kafkaesque way imaginable. The reader is told how one object
is moved, that nobody is at home at a certain time of the day.
He is aware, however, that this narrator is there because he is
actually the only one who reports the presence or absence of
any person. Robbe-Grillet states that Jealousy is a novel of
interior not exterior reality, a story that unrolls in the con-
sciousness of the narrator:
94,
 ...it was absurd to suppose that in the novel Jeal-
ousy, published two years earlier, there existed a
clear and unambiguous order of events, one which
was not that of the sentences of the book, as if I had
diverted myself by mixing up a preestablished calen-
dar the way one shuffles a deck of cards. The nar-
rative was on the contrary made in such a way that
any attempt to reconstruct an external chronology
would lead, sooner or later, to a series of contradic-
tions, hence to an impasse (FNN, p. 154).

The reason one may arrive at an impasse in the reconstruction

of the data given is that the novel is skillfully constructed by
the author. The reader cannot really apply the content of his
reading to any familiar circumstances. The novel is what the
narrator offers the reader: it is the narrator’s own story, and
of the subjective narration. The reader in turn reconstructs
(or re-creates) and perceives the phenomenon, thereby sug-
gesting another narration, this time the reader’s own phenom-
enological presentation.
In Jealousy A... ’s husband (?) is always present. He is
a « voyeur » and at the same time a psychological « resonance
chamber » where perceptions of the phenomena, as sights,
sounds, and smells acquire a new shape. Actually, there are
in Jealousy two parallel series of interpolated scenes: first, the
scenes which unfold more or less at the same time as the nar-
rator presents them to the reader; second, the events which
are a product of the narrator’s imagination, his sick mind,
and his memory triggered by the perceived object. This type
of narration fits properly Robbe-Grillet’s preoccupation with
a new kind of narrator in modern narrative technique:

...a new kind of narrator is born: no longer a man

who describes the things he sees, but at the same
time a man who invents the things around him and

95
 who sees the things he invents. Once these hero-
narrators begin ever so little to resemble « charac-
ters », they are immediately liars, schizophrenics, or
victims of hallucinations. (FFN, pp. 162-63).

As the imagined seagulls in The Voyeur were more real for

Robbe-Grillet than the real ones he saw in Brittany, the new
narrator can invent or imagine events and describe them with
the utmost simplicity of detail. The object described is indeed
real, real insofar as it has a mental existence. All gestures,
acts, words or movements of the characters in Jealousy are
internalized by the perceiving husband and made his own.
The theory of the epoché is then viable in the sense that the
narrator in Jealousy is trying to impose a certain meaning on
certain behavior—a slice of reality in the Husserlian sense.
By extrapolating this reality in his consciousness, the narrator
is attempting to give a new interpretation to any gestures he
sees around him. Obviously, what he reports is clothed in
personal emotions; it is indeed a very subjective report of
events and phenomena. In Jealousy, the narrator presents
events from different angles of perception and then blends
them. His shifting point of view is not literally physical
(spatial) but mental. Since the story is a report of mental
existence—hence devoid of any contingency and chronologi-
cal time—this shifting point of view in the narrator’s conscious-
ness is made possible by the elimination of time and space
in the narration by the presence of another object in the
narrator’s consciousness. Since all that matters is the conscious-
ness, mental reality is more meaningful. The reader is con-
sequently presented with a myriad of realities superimposed
upon realities, for in mental reality the subject can oscillate
to any past, present, or future event. This multiplicity of
realities is triggered by an accident, an event, a gesture or even
96
a sound. The narrator’s experience in Jealousy is a result of
a kaleidoscopic vision and interpretation of his experience.
The incident of the centipede could clearly show such oscil-
lation in the jealous narrator’s consciousness: « A blackish
spot marks the place where a centipede was squashed last
week, at the beginning of the month, perhaps the month
before, or later » (Jealousy, p. 47). The reader is consequently
confronted with an oscilloscopic presentation of thought cur-
rents in the narrator’s consciousness. These thought waves
never really materialize into linguistic forms: there is, instead,
a representational transcription of them through indirect dis-
course skillfully handled by Robbe-Grillet. For example:

She herself, questioned as to her news, limits her

remarks to four or five pieces of information already
known: the road is still being repaired for five or
six miles after the first village, the « Cap Saint-
Jean » was in the harbor waiting for its cargo, the
last three months, the municipal road service is still
' unsatisfactory, etc. (Jealousy, p. 81).

Since these events and phenomena are living in a secluded

mental existence, doubt—the Cartesian-type doubt mentioned
as an integral part of the phenomenological epoché—is implied
in Jealousy by the constant use of the « perhaps ». Mental exis-
tence is constantly wed to exterior reality. For this reason,
it is difficult at times to distinguish between the two realities—
mental and exterior—in the course of the narration. For exam-
ple, in the phrase « now the house is empty », the narrator
may simultaneously be referring to a particular moment in
the chronological time. But these elements of reality are so
skillfully fused, that it is unimportant to Robbe-Grillet’s pur-
pose in the novel whether they are « real » or « imagined ».
Mental reality is as valid as exterior reality, if not more real.
O47
Robbe-Grillet, accordingly, has the same idea of reality as the
phenomenologist. For both novelist and phenomenologist, sus-
pended reality is pure reality, purer than the extrinsic reality
of everyday life. Then bracketed objective reality is stripped
of its anthropomorphic qualities and is reported with a fresh
view. An act or a word, being a part of reality, can be treated
in the same manner. Why was the word pronounced? Why
was the paper in Franck’s pocket? Such questions arise in the
narrator’s mind, as typical indications of his doubtful, sus-
picious and jealous disposition. However, the object, the
pivot between external and internal reality, has primordial
importance in Robbe-Grillet’s narrative.
In Jealousy the centipede appears as a constant obsession
in the narration of the jealous narrator. He constantly refers
to the centipede as the following examples will indicate:

Suddenly the creature hunches its body and begins

discending diagonally toward the ground as fast as
its long legs can go, while the wadded napkin falls
on it, faster still. (p. 65).

On the bare wall, the traces of the squashed centipede

are still perfectly visible. Nothing has been done to
clean off the stain, for fear of spoiling the handsome,
dull finish, probably not washable. (p. 78).

It is at this moment that she notices the Scutigera

on the bare wall in front of her. In an even tone of
voice, as if in order not to frighten the creature, she
says: « A centipede ». (p. 81).

There are, however, times when the emotionally charged black

spot leads to a mental association with another emotionally
charged black spot since in the consciousness of the narrator
there are no limits as to the time element. The narration,
98
associated mentally by the narrator, and presented in a gra-
tuitous sequence to the reader, may leave an impression of
confusion, an almost surrealistic confusion in the latter’s mind.
One object leads to another, a direct transition in the narrator’s
consciousness: « A large black spot contrasting with the dusty
surface of the courtyard. This isa little oil which has dripped
out of the motor, always in the same place » (p. 95). But
once perceived and internalized in the narrator’s conscious-
ness, the centipede is divested of its physical traits and be-
come a phallic symbol. The centipede, as critics have already
accepted, acquires a sexual meanig. However, while the notion
that the centipede as a female sex image is generally accepted,
I believe that the centipede increasingly acquire a male sex
image. The narrator, victim of a serious case of inferiority
complex—possible sexual impotence—unconsciously wishes to
be as aggressive and masculine as Franck who is the only one
who kills the centipede whenever—though repetitiously—the
scenes occur. In this case the centipede becomes Franck’s
erected penis: « The spot begins by growing larger, one of its
sides bulging to form a round protuberance itself larger than
the initial object » (p. 95). « Only its antennae rise and fall one
after the other, in an alternating, slow, but continuous move-
ment » (p. 96) — surrealistic image of the oscillation of
the penis. « The two long antennae accelerate their alternating
swaying » (p. 113). At times the centipede is even « enormous ».
Thus, the centipede, wrongly associated to a female sex image,
suggests instead a sexual stimulation in A... upon seeing the
animal: « Her mouth is not quite closed, and may be quivering
imperceptibly » (p. 65). « A... seems to be breathing alittle
faster, but this may be an illusion. Her left hand gradually
closes over her knife. The antennae accelerate their alternate
swaying » (p. 65).
The relationship between the centipede and Franck be-
99
comes more evident when the tempo of the centipede’s pace
becomes the acceleration of Franck’s sexual act which culmi-
nates into the lovers’ orgasm: « In his haste to reach his goal,
Franck increases his speed. The jolts become more violent.
Nevertheless, he continues to accelerate » (p. 113). By im-
mersing the scene in a surrealistic background Robbe-Grillet
has in fact described a sexual intercourse. Even the insects
around the lamp become lovers: « Around the kerosene lamp
the ellipses continue to turn, lenghtening, shortening, moving
off to the right or left, rising, falling, or swaying first to one
side then the other, mingling in a increasingly tangled skein
in which no autonomous curve remains identifiable » (p. 108).
Apart from this association between the centipede and Franck’s
sexual organ, a study of the graphic representation of the
first letter of Franck’s name « F », when placed sideways,
may graphically represent a man lying on his back with an
erection. A... ’s name could also be graphically explained by the
female pubis, when this letter A is seen upside down in a
triangular shape. All these associations are indeed possible
since every scene is in fact a phenomenological transcription
of the narrator’s consciousness. The relationship between A...
and Franck is parenthetically bracketed in the jealous hus-
band ’s (?) mind. He is trying to discover the possible link
between the two lovers.
This subjective process parallels the phenomenological
epoché. This narrative invites the reader to participate in
the narrator’s mental reality. Since in the New Novel the
reader moves with the narrator, the narrator’s mental reality
is presented as if in a « still ». It can, like the projectionist,
go back to past shots, and it can, in addition, even anticipate
certain events. In Jealousy the scene where the centipede is
killed is able to evoke or anticipate in the mind of the nar-
rator multiple scenes, as the dinner, the hotel, the old stain
100
and the veranda scenes.
Contrary, however, to what he finds in previous novels,
in Jealousy the reader is aware of the constant oscillation of
spatial and temporal position in the mind by the frequent use
of the « now ». What is peculiar in Jealousy is the fact that
the reader is taken in by the subjective narration. He has
no criterion for judging whether the narrator is telling the
truth or not. He can, however, share with him a certain
subjective reality, a certain reality which he has doubted,
bracketed, and then integrated in the narrator’s own mental
reality. He has internalized it to discover for himself the
true essence and motivation of the act, the gestures, the
spoken or the unspoken word. The reader participates in the
narration and at the same time attempts to reconstruct real-
ity—both contingent and mental—just as much as the jealous
narrator. The phenomenological reduction takes place simul-
taneously in the narrative effort and in the reconstruction
of the novel’s multiple realities by the reader. Jealousy also
takes place within the reader’s consciousness since he has
been admitted into the narrator’s mental laboratory where
fantasies and realities are created. The novel then is not a
simple one: it is interlaced with many incidents, although
nothing really heroic happens. Events are reported, events
present in the narrator’s consciousness at the level of sub-
analysis. But in the process of disguising the essence of the
relation between Franck and A..., a novel is created, a novel
held together by the powerful mastery of the narration: « The
very unfolding of a story, which had no other reality than
that of the narrative, an occurrence which functioned nowhere
else except in the mind of the invisible narrator, in other
words of the writer, and of the reader » (FNN, p. 154). Since
the narration is a report of the narrator’s consciousness, the
only movement which the reader can find in an unchronolog-
101
ical movement where past, present and future are blended is
an eternal epiphany. «

102
THE THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL TIME
 CHAPTER V

THE THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL TIME

Saint Augustin once wrote in his Confessions: « I know

what time is, if one asks me, but if I try to explain it to one
who asks me, I no longer know ». Many centuries have elapsed
since this Augustian statement, yet it could be placed as
the epitaph to modern sciences, philosophies and even liter-
ature. Since things change, the passage of time is a central
fascination to man. From the scholastic philosophy of Her-
aclitus to the phenomenological philosophy of Merleau-Ponty,
time has always been the main preoccupation of philosophers.
No matter which interpretation has been given to time, still,
the notion which scholars form of time seem to diverge farther
and farther from each other.
In the historical development of the concept of time,
especially psychic time, Henri Bergson occupies an important
position. According to Bergson there is a clear difference
between mechanical time, that is physical time, and inner
duration of psychical time. For Wildon Carr the main portent
of Bergson’s philosophy seems to be:
105
 The fundamental notion on which it is based is that
the human mind, raised to self consciousness, and
seeking truth, finds itself dogged by an illusion con-
trived to serve, and splendidly serving, the practical
need of life, but an illusion that change is conditioned
by things which are changeless. (Proceedings of the
British Academy, 1917-18, p. 333).

Bergson’s notion of time—on which are based all his other

philosophical excursions—is rather complex. Physical time—
real time—is expressed by Bergson as homogenous and mea-
surable. Psychical time, on the contrary, is understood as heter-
ogenous and unmeasurable. Bergson tries to clarify the cus-
tomary notion man has of time, that is, of measuring time
in terms of space. For Bergson space and time are two different
entities, for time does not depend necessarily on space. Pure
time exists outside space and is not restricted to any spatiality.
Physical time, argues Bergson, as one knows from the physical
sciences, is not true time since it is embedded in space. Space
and time are both homogenous, but while space is awareness
of side-by-sideness, time is awareness of succession. The prob-
lem then arises whether the two media are identical. Instead
of the concept of time ordinarily held, Bergson introduces the
idea of Real Time which he calls « duration ». According to
Bergson, time is a material and not a formal element of the
world. Time is pure quality which is the condition of quantity.
Mechanical time, or false time, as Bergson calls it, is actually
space. Our intelligence unconsciously substitutes for real du-
ration a geometrical schema—homogenous time—conceived as
a one dimension continuum. In so doing, our intelligence re-
fuses to face the true nature of concrete invention. Real time,
or duration, as Bergson states, is not limited to any dimension,
and is not conceived spatially.
In the realm of the novel, Bergson’s theory of time has

106
been adopted by the stream-of-consciousness novelists such as
Proust, Richardson, Wolf, and Joyce (*). This idea of time is
understood as the « flux ininterrompu » which Edouard Dujar-
din first developed. This uninterrupted flux is immersed in
mental time in which events and scenes are liberated from the
exteriority of mechanical time. The mental aspect of this time
limits the perception of the individual point of view. Although
past, present and future have no boundaries in the mental
reality, there is still in Bergson’s theory of duration this
element of succession and continuity. Psychic time is, however,
relative because each person has a different mode of perception.
But the concept of relativity immediately evokes the name of
Kinstein. However, Einstein’s theory of time concerns predom-
inately physical time—chronological time—and this is not
the preoccupation of the phenomenologist. Einstein’s concept
implies also a relativity in the perceiver. But the distinction
is that Einstein is more interested in the perception of relative
spatial time and Bergson is more interested in psychic time
not contingent on either space or physical time. Bergson
considers that the Einstein’s theory of simultaneity is appli-
cable to physics in which it seems to work well. However,
according to Bergson, the philosophical signification of this
concept remains to be established.
Time, as apprehended by the phenomenologist, is sub-
jective time-consciousness, since it is in the subject’s con-
sciouness that time is « regarded as the first and basic form,
and as the presupposition of all connections which establish
unity » (Farber: Aims of Phenomenology, p. 84). Husserl is
interested in the temporal element of any phenomenological

(*) Part of this chapter has been taken from my article: « Robbe-
Grillet and Phenomenological Time », Research Studies, XLI, I
(March, 1973), 42-51.

107
experience. He focuses his attention on cosmical time since
this cosmical time cannot be measured by any mechanical
instruments. As Husserl states:

The same time, which belongs essentially to expe-

rience as such with the modes in which its intrinsic
content is presented—and derived from these the
modally determined now, before and after, simul-
taneity, succession and so forth—is not to be mea-
sured by any state of the sun, by any clock, by
any physical means, and generally cannot be mea-
sured at all. (Ideas, p. 215).

While Bergson, for example, considers time as a living or-

ganism—perceiving and interpreting—Husserl conceives the
perceiving consciousness as an entity devoid of any psycholog-
ical approach to the problem of time, for he is interested in
« primitive formations » of time-consciousness. Since any expe-
rience is embedded in time and has meaning only insofar as
it appears to the subject’s consciousness, the subjective element
in any phenomenological investigation is of paramount im-
portance. Husserl’s concept of time is the binding element of
all possible experience since it has a transcendental nature:
« The essential property of the term “temporality” expressed
in relation to experience generally indicates not only something
that belongs in a general way to every single experience, but a
necessary form binding experience with experience » (Ideas,
p. 217). The psychological explanation of time is not of any
appeal to him since « the question of the empirical origin is
a matter of indifference to him... Reality concerns him insofar
as it is meant, perceived, or conceived » (Farber, pp. 84-85).
Any experience, to be a true experience, has to be perceived
and conceived by the subject endowed with consciousness. Since
the experience is embedded in time and has only significance
108
insofar as it appears to the subject’s consciousness, the
subjectivistic view of time cannot be denied:

Every single experience can begin and end and there-

with bring its duration to an end—for instance,
an experience of joy. But the stream of experience
cannot begin and end. Every experience, as temporal
being, is an experience of the pure Ego. (Ideas, p.
217)
It is then clear that any complete descriptive analysis of the
process of experience must be understood only through the
subject in order to achieve an adequate theory of time. Husserl
continues: « The Ego may direct its pure personal glance to
this experience, and grasp it as really being, or as enduring in
phenomenological time » (Ideas, p. 217).
If it is Husserl who introduces this new subjectivistic
view of time, it is, however, Merleau-Ponty who translates
Husserl’s intricate thought. Merleau-Ponty reduces the concept
of time to puré subjectivity. Time is not, therefore, an inde-
pendent factor deprived of any human concomitance: « Time
is, therefore, not a real process, not an actual succession that I
am content to record. It arises from my relation to things »
(EP p-412).
Time is also relative to the subject and cannot have any
meaning outside the subject. This subject in fact is temporal-
ity, for Merleau-Ponty affirms that: « We are the upsurge
of time » (PP, p. 428). It is in the important chapter on
« Temporality » that Merleau-Ponty, blending Husserl’s and
Heidegger’s theory of time, establishes temporality as the
meaning of existence. There is no such thing as objective time
for Merleau-Ponty, for time is understood only in relation to
the subject. Time « arises from my relation to things », insists
Merleau-Ponty. Since everything is explained in terms of
109
man’s subjectivity as a perceiving consciousness, time is sub-
jective, not objective:

The objective world is too much of a plenum for

there to be time. Past and future withdraw of their
own accord from being and move over into subjectiv-
ity in search, not of some real support, but on the
contrary, of a possibility of non-being which accords
with their nature (PP, p. 412).

The subject—a coherence of life—is also a temporal coherence:

Even as the subject stretches out toward the world,

so also does he stretch out toward his own past and
his own future. The subject does not look at the
dimension of time from the standpoint of a new
dimension lying outside time but his own tempo-
rality. (Kwant, Phenomenological Philosophy, p. 61).

The subject is then for Merleau-Ponty, as he has repeatedly

emphasized, the unity of life consisting in the plurality of
events. Since the subject exists in the world, in a temporal
line, so events live also in this temporal line which is the
present.
It is, however, the American George Herbert Mead who
largely stresses the value of the present. For him past and
future are no longer meaningful: the past is a retrogressed
present, and the future is a present to come: « The present
of course implies a past and a future, and to these both we
deny existence » (Mead, Philosophy of the Present, p. 1).
Merleau-Ponty seems at times to echo Mead’s philosophy, for
Mead underlines the paramount importance of the present:

Durations are a continual sliding of presents into

each other. The present is a passage constituted by

110
 processes whose earlier phases determine in certain
respects their later phases. Reality is then in a
present. (p. 287).

Thus the past and the future are insignificant for Mead. It
is the eternal present, the constant becoming that has promi-
nence. This explanation of the importance of the present in
philosophy and in the perception of reality can be undestood
with an example, which Mead offers:

When one recalls his boyhood days he cannot get

into them as he then was, without their relationship
to what he has become; and if he could, that is if
he could reproduce the experience as it then took
place, he could not use it, for this would involve
his not being in the present within which that use
must take place. A string of presents conceivably
existing as presents would never constitute a past.
If then there is such a reference it is not to an
entity which could fit into any past, and I cannot
’. believe that the reference, in the past as experienced,
is to a something which would not have the function
or value that in our experience belongs to a past.
We are not referring to a real past event which
would not be the past event we are seeking. Another
way of saying this is that our pasts are always mental
in the same manner in which the futures that lie
in our imagination ahead of us are mental. (p. 29).

Temporality and events immersed in temporality do not, there-

fore, have any importance except as they are relative to the
present—the only medium through which one experiences
anything. It is in reference to the present experience that
past or future experiences are significant. But Merleau-Ponty’s
theory of temporality is more concretely manifested insofar
as the subject is entrenched in present-time consciousness. This
cit
is explained by Merleau-Ponty by a means of a diagram,
which is in fact an elaboration of Husserl’s « Zeitbewstsein ».
Since it is « consciousness that unfolds or constitutes time »,
temporal dimension cannot be understood outside the subject’s
presence: « When [I call a remote past, I reopen time, and
carry myself back to a moment in which it still had before
it a future horizon now closed, and a horizon of the immediate
past which is today remote. Everything, therefore, causes me
to revert to the field of presence as the primary experience
in which time and its dimensions make their appearance
unalloyed, with no intervening distance and with absolute self-
evidence » (PP, p. 416). In the following diagram Merleau-
Ponty explains the theory of time by the Husserlian theory of
retention:

Past A B Cc Future

The horizontal lines represent a series of present moments.

The oblique lines represent a « Abschattungen » (retention,
reflexion, dim remembrance) of the same moments seen from
an ulterior present moment. The vertical lines represent the
successive « Abschattungen » of one and the same present
112
moment. Merleau-Ponty comments upon the diagram by add-
ing that:

With the arrival of every moment, its predecessor

undergoes a change: I still have it in hand and it
is still there, but already it is sinking away below
the level of presents in order to retain it, I need to
reach through a thin layer of time. It is still the
preceding moment, and | have the power to recapture
it as it was just now; I am not cut off from it, but
it would not belong to the past unless something had
altered. It is beginning to be outlined against, or
projected upon, my present, whereas it was my pres-
ent a moment ago. When a third moment arrives,
the second undergoes a new modification from being
a retention it becomes the retention of a retention,
and the layer of time between it and me thickens.
(PP, pp. 416-17).

As the present is of primary importance for Mead, it is also

important for Merleau-Ponty. Past and future can only exist
in the present. A subject is characterized as « the plenitude
of being ». « The past, therefore, is not past, nor the future
future. It exists only when a subjectivity is there to disrupt
the plenitude of being in itself, to adumbrate a perspective ».
One must, therefore, « understand time as the subject and
the subject as time » (PP, pp. 421-22). To describe this par-
ticular quality of the subject as the main source of temporality,
Merleau-Ponty borrows Heidegger’s expression when he speaks
of it as an « ecstatic » property. This means that « subjectiv-
ity is not in time because it takes up or lives through time,
and merges like the cohesion of a life » (PP, p. 422). This
«exstase», this projection of an indivisible power into an out-
come which is already present to it, is subjectivity » (PP, p.
426). Since temporality can be explained only through the
113
subject (since the subject is temporality), Merleau-Ponty finds
that Bergson’s theory differs from his. He rejects Bergson’s
theory of time explained by continuity: « Bergson was wrong in
explaining the unity of time in terms of its continuity, since
that amounts to confusing past, present and future on the
excuse that we pass from one to the other by imperceptible
transitions; in short, it amounts to denying time altogether.
But he was right to stick to the continuity of time as an
essential phenomenon » (PP, p. 420). Bergson’s theory of
time implies continuity—past, present, and future—which dif-
fers from Merleau-Ponty’s theory in that there is no real
continuity of time as far as Merleau-Ponty is concerned. There
is only one time, and past and future are only explainable in
terms of the present. While Merleau-Ponty and Bergson agree
that mental reality and psychic reality are the only real time,
Merleau-Ponty once again stresses the necessity of a subject as
a « meaning-giver » and temporality as a by-product of the
subject’s efforts of consciousness: « There is only one single
time which is self-confirmatory, which can bring nothing into
existence unless it has arleady laid that thing’s foundations
as present and eventual past, and which establishes itself as
a stroke » (PP, p. 421).
Before we proceed any further in this discussion on time,
we need to ask what are the theories connected to this pre-
sentation of philosophical thought, in respect to the New
Novel. Robbe-Grillet has also commented on the topic of time.
In his article « Time and Description in Fiction Today » pub-
lished in 1963 and reprinted in For a New Novel, Robbe-
Grillet treats in various instances the problem of time. He
bases his theories on the subjective view of the temporal ele-
ment. As he has previously advocated an innovation of literary
techniques, the abolition of the omniscient author, and the
divorce from psychological analysis, he now states that a new
114
concept in the novel in respect to time is needed: « It is no
longer a question here of time passing, since gestures para-
doxically are on the contrary shown only frozen in the moment.
It is matter itself which is both solid and unstable, both present
and imagined, alien to man and constantly being invented
in man’s mind » (FNN, p. 148). Merleau-Ponty’s subjectiv-
istic theory comes at once to mind since his philosophizing
parallels remarkably this statement by Robbe-Grillet. Robbe-
Grillet’s position about a subjective narration and a subjective
presentation of time echoes Merleau-Ponty’s subject-temporal-
ity. If for Merleau-Ponty « consciousness unfolds or consti-
tutes time », Robbe-Grillet states similarly that: « It can only
be here a question only of a subjective, mental, personal oc-
currence. These things must be happening in someone’s mind »
(FNN, p. 153). He adds that « in the modern narrative, time
seems to be cut off from his temporality » (FNN, p. 155).
The concept of time is not understood by Robbe-Grillet as the
psychological time of Bergson, where present and future are
still dominated by the succession of temporal events. He seems
to stress that for him temporal events are cut off from the
temporal duration, and it is only in the character’s conscious-
ness that time is meaningful.
Time represented as time-consciousness becomes an im-
portant factor in the novels of Robbe-Grillet precisely because
it negates the concept of conventional chronological time and
Bergsonian duration. Man’s consciousness serves here as nexus
without regard to mechanical time. Contingent reality is extrap-
olated to the narrator’s consciousness and divested of all
passion and prejudices, bracketed in an existence of its own,
without involving an awareness of physical time: « Why try
to reconstruct chronological time when our story is concerned
with human time? » (Robbe-Grillet: « The Case for a New
Novel », New Statesman, Feb. 17, 1961, p. 263).
115
 In The Erasers, time plays an important role. Linear
time as found in the Balzacian novel has disappeared. As
Robbe-Grillet emphatically stresses in the prologue: « Soon
unfortunately time will no longer be master. Wrapped in
the aura of doubt and error, this day’s events however insig-
nificant they may be, will in a few seconds begin their task,
gradually encroaching upon the ideal order, cunningly intro-
ducing an occasional inversion, a discrepancy, a confusion, a
warp, in order to accomplish their work: a day in early winter
without plan, without direction, incomprehensible and mon-
strous » (Erasers, p. 7). This temporal incoherence and reversal
of events can only be explained by Wallas, the perceptive
consciousness in the novel.
Wallas has been sent by the central government to inves-
tigate the assassination of a certain Dupont. Having arrived
at the city, Wallas notices that his watch has stopped. It is
at this point that chronological time reaches a dead end: « He
glances mechanically at his watch and notices that it has not
started again; it stopped last night at seven-thirty, which has
not made things easier for his trip or for anything else... It
[the watch] is unpredictable, which is rather annoying at first,
but you can get used to it » (Erasers, pp. 41-4). Time, as
Wallas has pointed out, is capricieux. This capriciousness of
time is not an inherent structure of temporality. It is rather
the free subjectivity of Wallas which makes the passage of
time depend upon his own anxieties and personal preoccu-
pations.
What is peculiar is the passage of time with respect to
the twenty-four hours between the false assassination and the
real killing of Daniel Dupont. One can almost say that these
twenty-four hours may have never existed. Physical time—
world time—stops for one full day because the mechanical
instrument (the watch) used to measure it stops. Dupont seems

116
to be, however, the victim of time. Whatever he does to be
less suspicious, to simulate his death, does not work. He is to
die at seven-thirty. It is for this reason that Robbe-Grillet
quotes Sophocles: « Time that sees all has found out against
your will ». (Erasers, p. 6). All Dupont’s alibis, escapes, and
efforts to mask reality serve as a catalyst for his own death,
which finally takes place twenty-four hours later.
What happens in the missing twenty-four hours Robbe-
Grillet does not allow the reader to know. Both Dupont and
Wallas are responsible for the discrepancy in respect to the
time element. Since the subject is temporality, any character
in the novel can make time at his own will. Wallas, for exam-
ple, is trying to reconstruct the assassination of Dupont. He is
constantly on the road tryng to disclose—in the most kafkae-
sque way imaginable—the opacity that surrounds Dupont’s
death. Wallas, in turn, can omit from his report any portions
of information that do not fit into his scheme. He can then
be understood as the subjective time-consciousness, for accord-
ing to Kwant, Merleau-Ponty maintains: « The subject... is
unity of life consisting in the plurality of events. The subject
itself has a past and a future... There is only temporal line,
for the subject exists in temporality, precisely because permeat-
ed with subjectivity, it is the life-story of a subject. This
subject is temporality as gathering-itself-together » (Kwant,
The Phenomenological Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, pp. 61-
62).
If in The Erasers time has been stopped for twenty-four
hours, in The Voyeur it is a matter of abolishing from the
narration the hour during which Mathias may have raped
Jacqueline. Mathias attempts to construct an alibi, a means
of justifying his stay on the island where ironically enough
he is trying to sell watches, a symbol of mechanical time.
Chronological time is consciously abolished by Mathias in The
Lil
Voyeur more so than by Wallas in The Erasers. Only through
Mathias can time in the novel have any meaning for the reader.
The strain produced by the incompatibility of psychic and
chronological time is clearly summarized in one sentence in
The Voyeur: « There was still a hole in his schedule » (Voyeur,
p. 172).
Mathias, the main character in the novel—although one
can always say that time plays the most important role—goes
in circles attempting to fill the void of the single hour during
which the murder may have taken place. This is the missing
hour reflected by the blank page of the book. Like Wallas in
The Erasers, Mathias is a man who travels. He never stops,
and the reader can follow Mathias through the narration,
interpretation, and omission of perceived reality. The Voyeur
is then built around Mathias’ attempt to reconstruct what
actually happened during the missing hour. An objective re-
construction would be possible only if the narration were not
a phenomenological report of Mathias’ consciousness. The
subjectivistic narration of the novel limits then any penetration
into the essence of the missing hour. Mathias is not immersed
in temporal circumstances; he makes time, just as he sells its
symbol, watches. After each pause he again continues his
physical and psychic itinerary. His subjectivistic report of the
missing hour is justified and understood by the multiple
excuses he offers to cover the missing hour. He budgets time
to sell watches, to go to the island, and even to make several
mental excursions: « He therefore had six hours and fifteen
minutes at his disposal—that vould make three-hundred-sixty
plus fifteen, three-hundred-seventy-five minutes. Problem :
if he wanted to sell his eighty-nine watches, how much time
could he allow for each watch? Three-hundred-seventy-five
divided by eighty-nine... By using ninety and three-hundred-
sixty the result was easy: four times nine, thirty-six—four
118
minutes for each watch... Mathias tried to imagine his ideal
sale which would last only four minutes » (Voyeur, p. 25).
One might say that as « there was no jeweler on the
island » (Voyeur, p. 39), time is also absent from the island,
because of the subjective skillful manipulation and omission
of time by Mathias. The reader seems to follow Mathias close-
ly during his sojourn on the island. But at the culminant
moment of the novel—the possible murder—Robbe - Grillet de-
prives the reader of the experience which the author seems
to share only with Mathias. However, the skillful omission of
a certain reality—the murder—gives more emphasis to the
subjective time-consciousness created by Mathias.
In Jealousy, time is totally absent. Any trace of objective
or mechanical time as seen in previous novels is eliminated.
The reader is faced with pure subjective time. However, it
is a time « extraordinarily empty of events. It is a static,
unchanging time which stretches out with a monotonous exten-
tion. Ultimately, it does not go too far from the focal point
to which the space of the novel is reduced » (Barilli, « Narra-
tiva », p. 31). The narrator, the only perceiving and reporting
consciousness in the novel, offers to the reader a phenome-
nological description of phenomena as they, like thought waves,
pass through his consciousness. Past and future events are
reported only in the inexorable present. One can almost witness
Mead’s philosophy of the present put into action, for the latter
states: « The present of course implies a past and a future,
and to these both we deny existence » (p. 28). The narrator’s
consciousness is, in Jealousy, separated from any link of exter-
nal reality and has created, or in the process of creating, a
reality which is immersed in subjective time. As Georges
Poulet states: « Separated from the duration of things, and
even from that of the modes of existence, the human conscious-
ness finds itself reduced to existence without duration. It is
119
always of the present moment » (Poulet, Studies in Human
Time, p. 13). It is, however, from Merleau-Ponty that Robbe-
Grillet seems to have derived his interest in phenomenological
time. Merleau-Ponty adds that: « The remote past has also
its temporal order, and its position in time in relation to my
present, but it has these insofar as it has been “in its time’
traversed by my life, and carried foward to this moment »
(PP, p. 416). It is in the epiphany of the present that events,
past or future, are lived. Past and future are inherent in the
present. They can have meaning only insofar as they are
related to the present. Merleau-Ponty writes: « “In” my pres-
ent, if I grasp it while it is still living and with all that it
implies, there is an ex-stase towards the future and towards
the past which reveals the dimensions of time, not as conflicting,
but as inseparable: to be present is to be always and forever.
Subjectivity is not in time because it takes up or lives through
time, and merges with the cohesion of life » (PP, p. 422).
Robbe-Grillet assumes this element of immediacy in Jealousy
by the repeated use of the temporal adverb « now » which
exemplifies a description of phenomenological nature:

Now the shadow of the column . . . (p. 39).

Now the shadow of the southwest column (p. 50).
Now the voice of the second driver
reaches this central section of the
veranda . . pit ae ere et ean
Now the house is empty oh OL ete ao Ces
Now the shadow of the column falls
across the flagstone . . . . . . (p. 134).

This continuous repetition of « now » is indicative of

the elasticity of subjective time. Speaking of Jealousy, Robbe-
Grillet defends the theory of subjective time by stating: « Sim-
ilarly, it was absurd to suppose that in the novel Jealousy...
120
there existed a clear and unambiguous order of events, one
which was not that of the sentences of the book, as if I had
diverted myself by mixing up a preestablished calendar the way
one shuffles a deck of cards. The narrative was on the contrary
made in such a way that any attempt to reconstruct an external
chronology would lead, sooner or later, to a series of contra-
dictions, hence to an impasse » (FNN, p. 154).
In In the Labyrinth, time is also totally absent. The main
narrator is a doctor who creates the novel. He presents the
story of the soldier who has returned from the war and is
carrying a box with insignificant objects—the necessary ingre-
dients to create the novel. The reader meets the narrator/
doctor in the first pages of the novel. Throughout the novel
the reader is taken to wander through the various labyrinths
of the perceiver’s consciousness until the narrator/doctor ap-
pears once again at the closing pages of the novel. However,
the novel has unity represented by the internal structure of
the narrator’s consciousness. The narrator attempts to create a
novel, and the reality reported is molded and sifted through
his consciousness which does not allow any exteriority. A
closer scrutiny of the following passage should suffice to em-
phasize the reduction of time to almost a zero degree, to
borrow Barthes’ terms:

I am alone here now, under cover. Outside it is

raining, outside you walk through the rain with your
head down... Outside it is cold, the wind blows
through the leaves... Outside the sun is shining.
...The sun does not get in here, nor the wind, nor
the rain, nor the dust. ... Outside it is snowing.
Across the dark asphalt of the sidewalk the wind is
driving the fine dry crystals which after each gust
form white parallel lines. ... Outside it is snowing.
Outside is has been snowing, it was snowing, outside
it is snowing (In the Labyrinth, pp. 141-144).

121
The constant shift between the various tenses, as for example,
« Outside it has been snowing, it was snowing, outside it is
snowing », is indicative of the fact that the reader is presented
with a reality as it appears in the narrator’s consciousness, a
reality which is constantly molded and in the process of being
created by the narrator/doctor.
The reader, on the other hand, forced to stay within
the circle subjectively created by the narrator/doctor, is taken
on a gratuitous tour of the room where first one meets the
doctor and then becomes aware of the objects which will serve
as pivotal elements in the creation of the novel. The description
of the painting « La défaite de Reichenfels » clearly illus-
trates both the petrification of time and the metamorphic
quality of the objects. One may even add that what constitutes
the painting is the proliferation and metamorphosis which
all the mentioned objects undergo. Since all the verbs are con-
jugated in the present tense, stress is laid on the theory of
phenomenological or subjective time, where all scenes and
events are immersed in immediacy. An element of simultaneity
is in fact achieved by the multiple temporal indications offered
by the narrator who is limited to the maintenant. Time has
indeed lost any element of temporality. As Robbe-Grillet states:
« Present investigations seem on the contrary to be con-
cerned, more often, with private mental structure of ‘time »
(FNN, p. 152). Robbe-Grillet, however, stresses his penchant
for immediacy when he writes in the introduction of Last
Year at Marienbad, « in this labyrinth... time, it seems, is
abolished » (p. 8). Any narration unrolls then in a succession
of presents.
To suppose that the soldier in In the Labyrinth is another
narrator is to introduce a second point of view in addition to
that of the narrator/doctor. But the novel is so hermetically
structured that any additional insight would reduce the sub-
122
jective creation of the doctor’s point of view. If one encounters
another narrator who reports in the first person, this narrator
is in turn a product of the creative power of the narrator/
doctor, hence a subjectivity within a subjectivity. The death
of the soldier brings the novel to an end. All that is left is the
painting and the work of art—the novel. Time itself is being
made as the novel is being created.
In The House of Assignation Robbe-Grillet presents the
reader with a novel created by multiple points of view. The
pervasive «I » is the only element which gives unity to the
novel. This omnipresent « I » controls the narration, and any
variants of it found throughout the novel are a product of
the narrator’s consciousness—a device already introduced in
In the Labyrinth. A multiplicity of scenes constitutes the novel,
but every time a scene recurs something has been changed,
omitted— a practice which, starting from The Erasers, Robbe-
Grillet has mastered in all his novels. Since the narration is
a transcript of the perceiver’s consciousness, the narrator,
the only one who controls the presentation of reality, can
freely substract any portions of spatial or temporal reality.
This technique in turn gives the novel the ambiance of a
detective story. One can repeatedly see in The House of
Assignation that the narration takes place in the present
tense. It would rather erroneous to discuss the time element
in The House of Assignation in terms of duration, since
there is no continuum in the narration. Scenes are juxtaposed
upon scenes in the eternal present. There is no preoccupation
with time:
Now he is striding through the dark grounds, and
now he is in a taxi which is driving too slowly to-
wards Queen’s Road, and now he is climbing a nar-
row, steep, unlit staircase. And now he is leaning
over a desk littered with papers towards an ageless

123
 Chinaman who is sitting in front of him, or rather
beneath him, his wrinkled face preserving a polite
calm before this dinner-jacketed energumen who talks
fast, gesticulates and threatens. Now Sir Ralph is
going up another staircase, identical with the first,
that leads from one floor to the next in a single
rectilinear flight, with no banister to hold on to,
despite the narrowness and height of the steps. And
now he is in a taxi which is driving rather too slowly
towards Queen Street. And now he is knocking on
a wooden shutter, at the door of a small shop where,
by the pale light of a gas jet, can be read «Exchange»
written in seven languages. (House, p. 53).

It would be more fitting then to discuss the temporal dimen-

sion in The House of Assignation as a continuous repeated
present, with no continuum (duration) in the Bergsonian
sense. This is in fact what constitutes phenomenological time.
Any scene, present, past, or future, is a product of the power-
ful imagination of Robbe-Grillet’s characters. His novels can
then be explained as a film, for various frames can be juxta-
posed one upon the other without altering or lessening the
texture of the novel. His world is a world with no past and
one in which every moment erases the previous one, through
a skillful subjective editing. What Georges Poulet states on
the « instant » could easily be applied to Robbe-Grillet when
the former explains: « Who lives in the instant forgets the
preceding instant. He progresses in a time indefinitely in
pure time » (Poulet, Mesure de l’instant, p. 11). It is, how-
ever, the imaginary quality of cinematography which fasci-
nates Robbe-Grillet: « It is not the camera’s objectivity which
interests them [new novelists], but its possibilities in the
realm of the subjective, of the imaginary » (FNN, p. 149).
The tense that dominates the film is the present tense—a
perpetual present: « The universe in which the entire film
124
occurs is, characteristically, that of a perpetual present which
makes all recourse to memory impossible. This is a world
without a past, a world which is self-sufficient at every mo-
ment and which obliterates itself as it proceeds » (FNN, p.
152). As all films which can be shown in the present tense,
and whose action unrolls in the present, the new novel, ac-
cording to Robbe-Grillet, is limited to the present tense: « The
cinema knows only one grammatical mood: the present of
the indicative. In any case, film and novel today meet in
the construction of moments, of intervals, and of sequences
which no longer have anything to do with those of clocks or
calendars » (FNN, p. 151).
In Project for a Revolution in New York, Robbe-Gril-
let’s inclination toward a cinematographic style is evident.
In this novel, following the penchant already taken by Robbe-
Grillet since Jealousy, time is abolished. Several characters,
corps-sujets, constitute the making of the novel, which is
embedded in the most kafkaesque setting imaginable. The
novel, a subjective report of multiple points of view (immersed
in erotic, sadistic, black mass scenes) appears in fact to be
a script for a film, and as some critics have stated « un film
avorté ». Cinematographic terminology abounds throughout
the novel. Terms like coupure, reprise, and scéne accentuate
the cinematoghaphic quality of the novel.
Time, however, is once again of primary concern. The
novel is free of any chronological affiliation and has a course
of its own, indeed a phenomenological time-consciousness. On
the first page one of the characters—perhaps Robbe-Grillet
himself—states: « There is a gap, a blank space, a pause of
indeterminate length [temps mort] during which nothing
happens, not even the anticipation of what will come next »
(Project, p. 1). The continuous juxtaposition of scene upon
125
scene and the repetition of the same scene from different points
of view destroy any linear time the reader may establish during
his first encounter with the scene. The fact is that while the
story is changed every time it is narrated, time itself is created
and destroyed with each innovation. However, time-conscious-
ness, as progressively shown in all the novels by Robbe-Grillet,
is exemplified in Project for a Revolution in New York by
the cinematographic technique. As one character states: « The
reason, you old phony, that you can’t tell everything at the
same time, so that there always comes a moment when our
story breaks in half, turns back or jumps ahead, or begins
splitting up; then you say “retake” so that the people can tell
where they are» (Project, p. 132). Each presentation is subjec-
tive, interior, a product of a reporting consciousness. Each inter-
ruption during the narration indicates a different perspective
which the narrator’s consciousness has taken in the novel:
« It is a matter of indicating a cut in the course of a narrative:
a sudden interruption necessitated by some material reason,
purely internal or on the contrary external to the narrative »
(Project, p. 162). Often a scene is replayed several times,
and as it is done like the cinematographic editing process, the
narrator in the novel may or may not choose to narrate certain
details of the incident for fear of giving himself away. Time
is edited as scenes are edited. Time is spliced as frames are
spliced.
It is evident, therefore, that Robbe-Grillet does not hesi-
tate to juggle with time. Time is understood as subjective time-
consciousness as elaborated by Merleau-Ponty. Both Merleau-
Ponty and Robbe-Grillet stress the importance of the « instant »
which destroys any temporal chain as seen in the Balzacian
or in the stream-of-consciousness novel. Echoing Merleau-
Ponty’s statement, « If we separate the objective world from
the finite perspectives which open upon it, and posit it in
126
itself, we find everywhere in it only so many instances of
“now » (PP, p. 412). Robbe-Grillet concludes: « Moment
denies continuity » (FNN, p. 155).

127
ON THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
 CHAPTER VI

ON THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF LANGUAGE

Language is one of the dominant problems in any nar-

rative endeavor. Whereas the novelist of past centuries has
adopted the omniscient approach to describe reality, the new
novelist has realized that an anthropomorphic language is no
longer an effective means of portrayal of the inner labyrinths
of the narrator’s consciousness. As the omniscient vision of
reality has been reduced to a narrower subjective point of
view, language has also undergone considerable change and
revision. Linguists now think, for example, that language
alone is not the best tool for a description of complete vision
of reality. As Nathalie Sarraute states: « What in Balzac’s
day was interesting because it was new is now commonplace...
one can no longer describe everything » (New York Times,
July 24, 1970, p. 14). In order to be reconcilied with modern
literature language has to create a new world, different from
the conventional one. Modern literature needs a new lan-
guage, a fresher mode of expression to unfold the complexi-
ties of nature.
If language is, however, one of the main preoccupations
131
of the new novelist, the philosopher is also concerned with
the various paths of the linguistic aura. Merleau-Ponty, for
example, is interested in the performance of contemporary
language. Nevertheless, he pays particular attention to two
major phases in Husserl’s phenomenology of language. First,
according to Merleau-Ponty, in the Logische Untersuchungen
Husserl proposes « the concept of an eidetic of language and
a universal language which would establish the forms of
signification indispensable to every language if it is to be
a language, and which would allow us to think with complete
clarity about the empirical languages as “confused” realiza-
tions of the essential language » (Signs, p. 84). Merleau-Ponty
continues by stating that in a more recent text (Formal and
Transcendental Logic) Husserl understands language as « an
original way of intending certain objects, as thought’s body,
or even as the operation through which thoughts that without
it would remain private phenomena acquire intersubjective
value and, ultimately, ideal existence » (Signs, p. 84-5). Sec-
ond, Merleau-Ponty underlines a more important phase:
Husserl’s phenomenological attitude is oriented towards the
speaking subject. This is the position which has been adopted
by the linguist Saussure. Merleau-Ponty comments that lan-
guage is no longer the result of a chaotic past of linguistic
facts, but a mean enabling one to discover the hidden truth
in nature itself. Language has then a noetiec quality, since it
is to the subject that phenomenology directs its attention.
According to Husserl, when speaking we perform an inner
act of meaning which in turn mingles itself with the words
and at the same time animates them.
Merleau-Ponty approaches then the problem of language
from the phenomenological standpoint in which the subject
is the nexus of any interpretation and meaning. In addition
to the partial approach to language in Primacy of Perception,
132
Merleau-Ponty treats the problem more fully in Signs. In
this work he pays special attention to the literary language.
He argues that the narrator in a novel is incapable of revealing
the multiple perceptions he has of reality. As the narrator’s
vision is limited to his point of view, language is also limited
to its disclosure of reality. For the phenomenologist any per-
ception has meaning only through the corps-sujet as the me-
diator between the worlds: the contingent and the mental.
Language is then another important bridge between the two
states.
It seems, however, that Merleau-Ponty has based his lin-
guistic theories mainly on the discoveries of the linguist Saus-
sure, for whom language appears primarily in the form of
dialogue. The idea or thought is transferred to the other by
means of a common language and it is upon the choice of
selected words that complex concepts can at time be commu-
nicated. Language is the best and easiest medium of com-
munication. In a dialogue the two interlocutors become one
in a form of interplay or interaction. Exchange of words or
multiple variation of word-combinations may bring forth an-
other side of reality which, hidden-before may be perceived
through the langage conquérant, a form of language which
makes us capable of letting the other enter into the uncanny
world of one’s consciousness. Merleau-Ponty implies the need of
a new language when he says of literary language:

What is hazardous in literary communication, and

ambiguous and irreducible to the theme in all the
great works of art, is not a provisional weakness
which we might hope to overcome. It is the price
we must pay to have a literature, that is, a conquer-
ing language which introduces us to unfamiliar per-
spectives instead of confirming us in our own. (Signs,
p. 77).

133
This new « conquering language » is in fact what the New
Novel is searching: a new style of speaking, of writing, of
narrating, of divesting language of any previous metaphorical
and anthropomorphic connotations. In narrating a story the
new narrator cannot simply use common language. He has
to discover new forms of language correlative to his point of
view. This is to say that:

...given a perpetually new natural and _ historical

situation to control, the perceiving subject undergoes
a continued birth: at each instant it is something
new. Every incarnate subject is like an open book
in which we do not yet know what will be
written. Or it is like a new language; we do not
know what works it will accomplish but only that,
once it has appeared, it cannot fail to say little or
much, to have history and a meaning. The very pro-
ductivity of freedom, of human life, far from denying
our situation, utilizes it and turns into a means of
expression (Primacy of Perception, p. 6).

Language is not predictable since the infinite combinations

of its inherent nature allow a certain flexibility and a certain
positivity about any interpretation and description of reality.
In Merleau-Ponty’s view the new novelist indulges him-
self in the new linguistic discovery through an « oblique
action » because « language is never the mere clothing of a
thought which otherwise possesses itself in full clarity » (Pri-
macy of Perception, p. 8). Communication in this new liter-
ature is achieved only through a fresh combination of what
has been objectified in the speaker’s mind and rendered pos-
sible to the listener’s ear through a new selection of linguistic
patterns which convey a new—and up to this point inacces-
sible—meaning. As Merleau-Ponty states: « The writer’s
thought does not control his language from without; the
134
writer is himself a kind of new idiom, constructing itself,
investing ways of expression, and diversifying itself according
to its own meaning » (Primacy of Perception, p. 9).
The problem of constructing itself and making itself
reminds us of Robbe-Grillet’s theories on the New Novel. To
write new novels, adds Robbe-Grillet, the novelist must « re-
ject our so-called “nature’ and the vocabulary which perpet-
uates its myth, to propose objects as purely external and
superficial » (FNN, p. 57). He emphasizes words like optique,
descriptif, instead of interpretation and analysis. Language
cannot be today, as it was in the nineteenth century, the
means to analyze a certain person and his role in society. As
the perception of reality needs innovations, language needs
also new modes of expression. One cannot make use of an
already-formed language to describe the new perception of
the phenomenon:

Taking language as a fait accompli—as the residue

' of past acts of signification and the record of already
acquired meanings—the scientist inevitably misses
the peculiar clarity of speaking, the fecundity of
expression. From the phenomenological point of view
(that is, for the speaking subject who makes use of
his language as a means of communicating with a
living community), a language regains its unity. It
is no longer the result of a chaotic past of indepen-
dent linguistic facts but a system all of whose ele-
ments cooperate in a single attempt to express which
is turned toward the present or the future and thus
governed by a present logic.. (Primacy of Perception,
p- 85).

This search for a new expression in the linguistic realm is

reflected in the new novel’s narrative techniques. A new
language is perhaps the only tool left for literature. As Robbe-
135
Grillet comments:

For this we possess a singular weapon, which is the

body of speech and writing, language... being the
sign par excellence (the representation of all signs),
language cannot also have a signification entirely
outside itself. Nothing, then, can be exterior to it.
Language is not contained in consciousness, but con-
tains it. (FNN, p. 107-8).

This new fiction is consequently forced to create new means

of expression. Language, being the only tool and the only
medium of sabotage for the novel, is the essential component
of any new interpretation of reality. Great books are written,
according to Merleau-Ponty, through a « recreation of the
signifying instrument, henceforth manipulated according to
a new syntax » (Primacy of Perception, p. 9). A book which
still reuses and employs the same technical and linguistic
modulations is not considered then a good book since, as
Merleau-Ponty states:

Great prose is the art of capturing a meaning which

until then has never been objectified and of render-
ing it accessible to everyone who speaks the same
language. When a writer is no longer capable of this
founding of a new universality and of taking the risk
of communicating, he has outlived his time. (Pri-
macy of Perception, p. 9).

For Robbe-Grillet such a change in language is mandatory:

Thus it is the entire literary language that must

change, that is changing already. From day to day,
we witness the growing repugnance felt by people
of greater awareness for words of a visceral, analog-
ical or incantatory character. On the other hand,

136
 the visual or descriptive adjective, the word that con-
tents itself with measuring, locating, limiting, defin-
ing, indicates a difficult but most likely direction
for a new art of the novel (FNN, p. 24).

This single observation echoes the author’s willingness to

rejuvenate the novel. Among the various entreprise de net-
toyage Robbe-Grillet devotes special attention to the innova-
tion of linguistic form that marks in fact one of the main
traits of the modern novel.
Language is then one of the most substantial tools of the
novelist, just as colors are important to the painter. By blend-
ing colors and lines the painter portrays his inner conscious-
ness. By blending words the novelists reveals the inner world
of his characters. The novelist, continues Merleau-Ponty, must
therefore « find a meaning in the development of language,
and conceives language as a moving equilibrium » (Signs,
p. 87). Unlike the painter who mixes colors (a physical ma-
terial already given to him) to create an entirely new structure,
the novelist is limited to those words burdened with their
previous connotations. As Merleau-Ponty points out: «I ex-
press, utilizing all these already speaking instruments, I make
them say something they have never said » (Signs, p. 91). The
wish to attain then a neutral language, devoid of analysis,
metaphors, and anthropomorphism is rendered more difficult
because the novelist must first strip these layers of connotations
from the common language and then create a new language.
This is the main preoccupation both of Robbe-Grillet and the
phenomenologist. Their intent is to arrive at a theoretically
pure language, a zero degree of writing. As Roland Barthes
claims:

Proportionately speaking, writing at the zero degree

is basically in the indicative mood, or if you like,

137
 amodal; it would be accurate to say that it is a
journalist’s writing, if it were not precisely the case
that journalism develops, in general, optative or in-
————E
comparative (that is, emotive) forms. The new neu-
tral writing takes its place in the midst of all those
ejaculations and judgements, without becoming in-
volved in any of them; it consists precisely in their
absence. But this absence is complete, it implies no
refuge, no secret; one cannot therefore say that it
is an impassive mode of writing; rather, that it is
innocent. (Writing Degree Zero, p. 76).

Any description in this new « innocent style » reaches grad-

ually the total phenomenon as the narration progresses and
enlightens some of the dark corners of the narrator’s con-
sciousness. However, objects have meaning only through the
subject. Language is the outside referendum of consciousness.
It is, therefore, in thinking that language is constituted:

Pos defines the phenomenology of language not as

an attempt to fit existing languages into the frame-
work of an eidetic of all possible languages (that
is, to objectify them before a universal and timeless
constituting consciousness), but as a return to the
speaking subject, to my contact with the languages
I am speaking. (Signs, p. 85).

Language is then essential to translate any subjective, mental

image. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language in fact stresses
the importance of language in that he wants to show « the
unbreakable connection between things and speaking, because
such an interconnection reveals the body character of thought »
(Kwant, Phenomenological Philosophy, p. 50). Both Merleau-
Ponty and Robbe-Brillet endeavor to attain linguistic neutrality.
Since « everything is contaminated », Robbe-Grillet adopts.
in the manner of Descartes, the method of tabula rasa. He

138
first attacks the metaphor, expressing his distrust in it. Accord-
ing to him the metaphor superimposes another reality on the
object, hence changing its essence:

Metaphor which iis supposed to express only a com-

parison, without any particular motive, actually in-
troduces a subterranean communication, a movement
of sympathy (or of antipathy) which is its true rai-
son d’étre. For, as comparison, metaphor is almost
always a useless comparison which contributes nothing
new to the description. (FNN, p. 54).

The new novelist must not reuse consumed metaphors, for

this linguistic embellishment was the literary novelty of pre-
vious writers. Actually their reputation was based precisely
on these new linguistic devices. Thus, to disclose a new and
fresh description of reality, the new novelist has to discover
new linguistic patterns. The langue parlée ou vivante, con-
ventional language, has the imprint of social, literary and psy-
chological conventionality: it belongs to the chaine verbale.
This linguistic chain has to be broken, hence new linguistic
techniques must be invented. Apart from flashbacks, repeti-
tions, sudden shift of narration, indirect discourse, Robbe-
Grillet arrives at a new manner of expression by creating a
linguistic labyrinth. Most of his novels have in fact a laby-
rinthian aspect. The reader of these novels is in turn lost
wandering through the blind alleys of the narrator’s con-
sciousness. The reader is, in addition, gratuitously led to this
maze by the egological technique adopted by the author. This
subjectivistic device joins hands with the phenomenological
attitude which stresses the subject, the narrator, as the only
source of meaning. Moreover, by the subjectivistic device
Robbe-Grillet controls the narration limited to the narrator’s
point of view. It is, however, through crude and stripped lan-
139
guage that the novel acquires another literary dimension. A
linguistic labyrinth is created. The New Novel then consists
of an unprecedented language based on a new perspective and
point of view, and most of all, on a filtered perception of
reality. The narration in the first person has the advantage,
of course, of making the reader participate at once in the
narrative endeavor. There seems to be a certain degree of
authenticity in this subjectivistic narration since the reader is
innocently taken into the novel and led by the narrator’s vi-
sion: « The reader of the first-person novel feels therefore a
feeling of authenticity which could never be derived by the
he” (Bernard Pingaud, Esprit. VII-VIII, N. 263-264, 1958,
p- 93). Robbe-Grillet’s characters are, however, limited in their
discursive endeavors. Description takes precedence over dia-
logue. It is, nevertheless, a subjective description of colorful and
deceiving metaphors. We can categorically state that in Robbe-
Grillet’s novels language is reduced to its zero degree. Language
seems indeed a threat to the characters, for at times it
betrays them. An extra word uttered may be detrimental to
the character.
Robbe-Grillet’s linguistic innovations encompass in his
novels the problem of form. His characters are for the most
part «abnormal », for they perceive reality through their
distorted vision. Their language is simple, stripped of con-
ventionalities, although it is clothed with subjective anxieties.
While it is true that Robbe-Grillet’s language is divested of
psychological analysis, the subjective consciousness of his nar-
rators and the subjective point of view have offered to litera-
ture an original mode of expression, a diversified direction
towards unique linguistic and structural explorations.
In The Erasers, Wallas is very careful in his speech for
fear of destroying his own reality. His linguistic uneasiness
and awkward manner of asking questions indicate Robbe-
140
Grillet’s concern with the revelation of the mystery in Wallas’
mind. One can almost say that in fact Robbe-Grillet’s char-
acters always seem to hide something, for they know that a
single word may bea catalyst for the disclosure of their inner
conflicts. Wallas is a proper illustration for this linguistic
uneasiness:

Wallas approaches but he is not sure how to ask his

question: for the moment he has no precise desti-
nation; as for the police station where he is supposed
to go a little later, he is reluctant to mention it,
less from professional discretion than because of his
desire to remain in a convenient neutrality rather
than carelessly inspiring fear or merely curiosity.
(Erasers, p. 50).

The neutrality of language which Wallas wants to maintain

suggests his will to remain incognito—on the objective side
of the mystery. He controls the narration and any additional
information may trap him. He is the key to the mystery.
As for the technical approach of The Erasers, the novel
is written in the third person. The reader is aware, however,
of the character’s presence, for at times the narration is done
by his consciousness. The author refers to him in the third
person. His name is not given until several pages later. There
is, however, a shift in the narrative point of view. The narration
shifts abruptly from the author’s point of view to Wallas’:

« But winter’s coming now », the concierge observes

judiciously.
That doesn’t matter: Fabius knows that perfectly
well, but he is preparing his spring campaign, and,
besides, the winter sun that people worry about least
is all the more to be feared. (Erasers, pp. 103-104).

141
The reader, of course, knows that it is Wallas who is thinking
because the next sentence reveals the intervention of the
author: « Wallas smiled at this thought ». The point of view
is moreover shifted, at times suddenly, from one narrator to
the other:

« We won't talk about it any more, now that it’s

settled ».
But Garinati does not quite understand the meaning
of these words; he insists: he will begin again, and_
this time he will not make any mistakes. Finally
the admission escapes him: he will put out the light,
if this precaution is indispensable, although from
another point of view...
« You didn’t put it out? » Bona asks.
« I couldn’t. Dupont came back upstairs too soon. I
barely had time to recognize things around me ».
« But you saw him come down, and you went up
right after that? » (Erasers, p. 96).

This shifting of point of view between Bona and Gari-

nati is achieved by the author by means of dialogue, indirect
discourse and juxtaposition of linguistic patterns. Although
we may still see in this novel a trace of the classical novel in
that it is written in the third person, the shift of narration in
the consciousness of the character is already appearing, though
in an embryonic stage.
As does Wallas in The Erasers, Mathias in The Voyeur
also gives great importance to his speech. To create his own
alibi and to construct it well, he must be careful with his
language:

The conversation presented no problems for Mathias,

the other man never requiring an answer, even when
he happened to speak in interrogation; on such oc-
casions it was enough to wait until a few silent

142
 seconds had passed and then the monologue continued
as if there had been no interruption... Lest he be
suspected of avoiding the discussion of Violet’s mis-
deeds and their necessary punishment, the salesman
did not dare manifest his eagerness to continue on his
way. (Voyeur, pp. 117, 124).

Once again Mathias is the only key to the mystery in The

Voyeur. Since the narration relies to a large extent on his
own consciousness, language itself is the translation of the
nebulosity which resides in his mind. By constant use of the
flashback, juxtaposed speech, snapshots and indirect discourse,
Robbe-Grillet creates through language another vision of
reality itself. This language is not one that reveals or ana-
lyzes any fragments of reality, but it is a language which
makes itself as the novel makes itself in the course of the
narration.
In The Voyeur Robbe-Grillet has once more presented
a story in the third person. But whereas one can still witness
in The Erasers the presence of the author, Robbe-Grillet has
proceeded in The Voyeur towards a more subjective narration.
Although the narration takes place in the third person, the
hidden « I » can be seen since most of the narration is the
report of Mathias’ narrative consciousness. It is through his
eyes that the author sees, reports, selects, and narrates. Most
scenes in the novel have been filtered by Mathias’ person-
ality. This is an important literary innovation which Robbe-
Grillet again adopts in the subsequent novels in an attempt
to portray pure subjectivity. He finally tends towards a mul-
tiple-subjective-point-of-view-narration.
Roland Barthes’ definition of the « zero degree of writ-
ing » finally finds its fulfillment in Jealousy. The lexical
manipulation of the narrative consciousness reveals Robbe-
Grillet’s interest in creating a new prose. This prose will be
143
a « creation of the signifying instrument, henceforth manip-
ulated according to a new syntax » (Merleau-Ponty, Primacy
of Perception, p. 9). In this novel dialogue is almost absent
due mainly to the narration sifted in the jealous husband’s
consciousness. Indirect discourse, however, prevails:

A...tries talking a little more. She nevertheless

does not describe the room where she spent the
night, an uninteresting subject, she says, turning away
her head: everyone knows that hotel, its discomfort
and its patched mosquito—netting (Jealousy, p. 81).

Robbe-Grillet has been very careful not to use in his narra-

tion any adjectives which may reveal any psychological traits.
It is true that the narrator’s report is clothed in jealousy
but this mood is not the result of any analysis but rather the
outcome of linguistic maneuvering on the part of the author.
The narrator’s chagrin is apparent throughout the novel; the
reader experiences this sensation only through the linguistic
and structural egological games. Jealousy is thus a new type
of narration, a new mode of expression in the novel. There
is a form of what Bruce Morrissette calls a « je-néant »
from which objects proliferate to such a paroxysm that they
create a kafkaesque world.
In his fourth novel, In the Labyrinth, Robbe-Grillet
presents the reader with a new stylistic dilemma. There is
in this novel a continuous shift from a «I» to a « He».
There is, in addition, a gratuitous shift from one «I» to
another. The first sentence in the novel reads: « I am alone
more now, under cover » (In the Labyrinth, p. 141). At first
the reader expects the novel to continue in the first person
but he is soon deceived because inadvertently the narration
shifts to the third person. This third person is not, however,
indicative of the author’s presence as in previous novels. It
144
is rather the « I » which we find at the first sentence that
controls the entire narration. From this narrative «I » an-
other « I » proliferates, that of the soldier. At the end of the
book one reads: « At my last visit, the third injection was
useless. The wounded soldier was dead » (In the Labyrinth,
p- 266). The final pages proceed again in the third person
until the closing sentence in which the egological element
prevails once more, « ... the entrance door, the series of long
hallways, the spiral staircase, the door to the building with
its stone stoop, and the whole city behind me » (In the Laby-
rinth, p. 272).
The other «I» which appears in the novel does not
have, consequently, any subjectivistic freedom as does the pre-
vailing «I» which refers to the narrator-doctor. Although
the soldier becomes animated and speaks himself, his pres-
ence and subjectivity are objectified by the subjectivity of the
doctor who in fact narrates the story and in whose conscious-
ness the novel unfolds. What puzzles the reader of In the
Labyrinth is not, however, the shifting of point of view since
he has already experienced this stylistic device in previous
novels by Robbe-Grillet. The dilemma arises when the reader
can no longer distinguish which narrator (the soldier or the
doctor) lies behind the « I ». A total nebulosity is created.
When the painting, for example, becomes animated, this meta-
morphosis makes it impossible for the reader to detect the
narrator’s identification. The new mode of expression which
Robbe-Grillet has then created in this novel is a linguistic
labyrinth. The title of the novel in fact suggests a certain
labyrinthian atmosphere.
In The House of Assignation Robbe-Grillet practices a
new form of narration. His stylistic device is oriented towards
a multiple subjective narration. This novel constitutes, in fact,
the paroxysm both of Robbe-Grillet’s stylistic endeavors and
145
his linguistic innovations. More so than in the previous novel,
at the end of The House of Assignation the reader, even after
considerable attention, is left in total nebulosity. This nebu-
losity is the result of the multiple narrators that present the
story. The novel opens with a first person narration. Soon
after the « I » proliferates into a conglomeration of « I’s » who
narrate or try to narrate the possible assassination of Man-
neret. The author’s omnipresence is, however, totally absent.
A selected form of vision by which the reader is also drawn
into the narration is created by the multiple use of the « I »:
« Undoubtedly, women’s flesh has always held a great place
in my dreams... the hair disordered showing the fragile skin
and its blond down, I see it immediately, subject to some
complacency, suddendly excessive... In the gardens, | organize
some parties. For the temples, I arrange ceremonies, I order
sacrifices... Often I delay in admiring some young girl danc-
ing in a ball » (pp. 11-3). What is really difficult at this
point is to determine who is the «I » relating the story. It
is not the same person because the story, although told in
the egological form, shows different points of view, different
« movements » and different preoccupations. As one «I »
says: «I am going to try to tell now about the evening in
Lady Ava’s house, to specify in any case what were, to my
knowledge, the main events which marked it » (House, p.
23). The fact is that this « I » changes personality throughout
the novel. If in the previous novel the reader was lost in the
labyrinth of a city, of a room, of the character’s consciousness,
ending in a linguistic labyrinth, in The House of Assignation
the reader is lost in the labyrinth of Hong-Kong, a city,a villa,
a park, a house of prostitution. In this atmosphere a certain
Manneret has been killed. Who has killed him? Such a ques-
tion arises at the end of the novel. As in a classical detective
novel Robbe-Grillet also hides the truth by the use of the
146
first person narrative. As Barthes comments:

The reader will perhaps recall a novel by Agatha

Christie in which all the invention consisted in con-
cealing the murderer beneath the use of the first
person of the narrative. The reader looked for him
behind every « he » in the plot: he was all the time
hidden under the «I ». Agatha Christie knew per-
fectly well that, in the novel, the « I » is usually a
spectator, and that it is the « he » who is like the
actor (Writing Zero Degree, p. 34).

The must interesting question is then to find out who is

speaking or who is the murderer of Manneret. Robbe-Grillet
has attempted to narrate the story not only from one
privileged point of view, but from several viewpoints. The
assassination then could be an imaginary one. It could also
be a representation on the stage of Lady Ava’s villa, or it
could even be the cover page of a magazine which stimulates
the consciousness and fantasy of the narrators. At the end
of the novel the reader is left with an astonishing perplexity
which can only be explained by the linguistic dexterity and
innovative form of Robbe-Grillet. Reality and imagination are
juxtaposed with such a skill, even to the point of creating an
inaccessible confusion. The detective story element in the novel
cannot be denied. The reader of Robbe-Grillet’s novels finds
himself in the position of a judge who is trying to reconstruct
in vain a crime.
As for Project for a Revolution in New York, it would
be more fitting to discuss the novel as a whole from the cine-
matographic and stylistic innovative techniques which Robbe-
Grillet has adopted in this novel. These innovations are a
result of the author’s penchant (progressively shown through-
out his works) for a cinematographic language. Project for
147
a Revolution in New York can easily be taken as a script for
the shooting of a film where commentative sound, flashbacks,
slow motion shots, travelling shots, panning shots, constitute
the very stuff of the novel. In this novel Robbe-Grillet has
finally reached the paroxysmal level of his filmic stylistic
tendencies in the novel. This increasing attachment for the
camera can be explained by. Robbe-Grillet’s faith in the new
psychology to present reality from the exterior not from the
interior.
Both the phenomenological description and the cinema-
tographic technique are closely related, for just as much as
phenomenology was against the idealism of Kant, the new
psychology (especially the one exemplified by the cinema)
reacts against the analytical psychology. This new psychology
understands the world from the outside, not from the elaborate
and mosaic analysis of the individual’s inner thoughts. As
Merleau-Ponty claims:

Classical psychology considers our visual field to be

a sum or mosaic of sensations, each of which is strict-
ly dependent on the local stimulus which corresponds
to it. The new psychology reveals, first of all, that
such a parallelism between sensations and the ner-
vous phenomenon conditioning them is acceptable,
even for our simplest and most immediate sensations
(SNS, p. 48).

New sensations are, therefore, explained in the behaviorist

manner. A new sensation of man’s world is thus brought
forth by the camera, which explains the new psychology by
which man is not seen as a maker of the world, a world-
meaning giver, but as part of the world. As Merleau-Ponty
comments:

148
 The new psychology has, generally speaking, revealed
man to us not as an understanding which con-
structs the world but as a being thrown into the
world and attached to it by a natural bound. As a
result it re-educates us in how to see the world which
we touch at every point of our being, whereas clas-
sical psychology abandoned the lived world for the
one which scientific knowledge succeeded in con-
structing (SNS, pp. 53-54).

The advantages of the cinematographic technique lies exactly

in the fact that the camera presents us the external behavior
_ of man. The camera could never communicate to us an inner
' idea, for even « psychic facts » are external manifestations, as
it is the case with fear in Sartre’s The Wall. Merleau-Ponty

Anger, shame, hate, and love are not psychic facts

hidden at the bottom of another’s consciousness: they
are types of behavior or styles of conduct which are
visible from the outside. They exist on this face or
in those gestures, not hidden behind them. Psychol-
ogy did not begin to develop until the day it gave
up the distinction between mind and body, when
it abandoned the two correlative methods of interior
observation and physiological psycology (SNS, pp.
52-3).

Phenomenology and cinema—the medium which Robbe-Grillet

has preferred to other forms of narrative, to the point of
coining the term ciné-roman—share the same aesthetic preoc-
cupation. As Merleau-Ponty clearly explains:

This psychology shares with contemporary philoso-

phies the common feature of presenting consciousness
thrown into the world, subject to the gaze of others,

149
 and learning from them what it is: it does not, in
the manner of classical philosophies, present mind
and world, each particular consciousness and the
others. Phenomenological or existential philosophy is
largely an expression of surprise at this inherence of
the self in the world and in others, a description of
this paradox and permeation, and an attempt to
make us see the bond between subject and world,
between subject and others, rather than to explain
it as the classical philosophies did by resorting to
absolute spirit. Well, the movies are peculiarly suited
to make manifest the union of mind and body, mind
and world, and the expression of one in the other.
(SNS, p. 58).
Project for a Revolution in New York reflects these aesthetic
traits discussed by Merleau-Ponty. In this novel Robbe-Grillet
has finally reached the camera-as-fountain-pen style. This is
the most innovative factor of the novel. The pen is to him what
the camera is to the film-maker: both can externally tran-
scribe the narrator’s inner thoughts and any phenomenon that
appears to the narrator’s consciousness.
Finally, both Merleau-Ponty and Robbe-Grillet have ex-
pressed the necessity of a new language, a new form of express-
ing to be correlative to modern thinking and to the new
psychology. The genius of the new novelist is in fact measured
by the intensity of his linguistic innovations and skillfulness.
A writer who can arrive at a new narration is indeed an artist.
He is an artisan since to be a writer, in the modern sense, is
to narrate, to describe, to juxtapose, not to analyze. As Nathalie
Sarraute states: « The novelist is not a sociologist, he is not
a moralist, he is not an educator. The novelist is an artist »
(New York Times, p. 14). If one abides by this definition of
a writer, one can then say that Robbe-Grillet is an artist. The
work of art as continuously seen by Nathalie Sarraute, Robbe-
150
Grillet and other figures of the New Novel is an entirety in
itself. A great book, as Merleau-Ponty states, is not a book
which makes use of old linguistic and narrative modes but a
book which adopts and invents new juxtapositions and inno-
vations of language. A new mode of expression will bring in
turn a new facet of reality. Robbe-Grillet has adhered quite
severely to this necessity of linguistic innovations. In a new
narrative where analysis, clichés, and metaphors are eliminat-
ed, all that is left is reality—a reality which has to be per-
ceived through new linguistic means since « all that remains
is language » (Sarraute, New York Times, p. 14).

151
 7
.
7 a
* a

7 z Py a
 CONCLUSION

In his book Mimesis Erich Auerbach points out that

some twentieth century writers find a method which dis-
solves reality into multiple and multivalent reflections of
consciousness » (p. 487). The stress on consciousness and its
multiple and multivalent reflections parallels the phenome-
nological method’s main concern with the presence of the
phenomenon morphically perceived and analyzed. By elimi-
nating all social, psychological and personal prejudices about
the perceived object, the perceiver suspends the object; only
once placed in abeyance can this object be presented phenom-
enologically. The interior reality of the object is not in-
ferred since « gestures and objects will be there before being
anything else ». An insinuation in the heart of things would
in fact lead one to a scholastic interpretation of exterior
reality. But, as Robbe-Grillet remarks, the world simply is.
In the realm of the novel, for example, Robbe-Grillet main-
tains the maximum objectivity in respect to his characters.
No qualities are given to them. Characters are named with
153
mathematical symbols such as A..., X, N..., ete.
Contrary to the pluralistic analysis of reality, a solipsistic
view of exterior reality stresses the importance of the subject
vis-a-vis the object. Phenomenology insists on a naive, fresh
and new description of the phenomenon. In the statement
« every state of consciousness is consciousness of something »,
Husserl points out in fact the relationship between the subject
and the object, the noesis and the noema. The close rapport
between the two states is indicative of the fact that reality is
still the main preoccupation for philosophers (as it is for
novelists). But if the physical world was the main domain
of previous philosophies, the aim of phenomenology is to
unfold the world of consciousness where individualities are
absent. While scholastic philosophy stresses the importance
of primordial physical existence, phenomenology tends to study
the object and its status as phenomenon of consciousness.
One can describe this attempt as a descriptive search of
intentional experience.
However, if Husserl stresses the importance of essence
to be achieved at the level of pure consciousness, Merleau-
Ponty relies on the facticity of the world as a source of phenom-
| cal reflection. As one has already seen, Merleau-
Ponty does not divorce any form of phenomenological inves-
tigation from the egological element of the perceiver. If
Husserl wishes to make phenomenology a science, Merleau-
Ponty insists on the psychological aspect of the phenomenon.
Merleau-Ponty aims at a naive description of the world as it
appears before the perceiver’s eyes, a_description of the_ pre-
objective world divorced from any conventionalities, knowledge
or scientific speculation. While both philosophers agree on
the descriptive element of the phenomenon, Merleau-Ponty
echoes more completely existentialist philosophers for whom
man is the measure of all things. If Husserl describes essences
“154
 at the level of consciousness, Merleau- -Ponty describes them
-at_the level ofexistence. If for Husserl the contingent reality
is necessary to postulate the essence of the phenomenon,
Merleau-Ponty’s essences are found in the individual exis-
tences. Merleau- Ponty’ s phenomenological approach is then
oriented _toward a more” subjective—interpretation_of_reality,
while Husserl ends up in a sort of idealism: Limiting;-therefore,
the phenomenological description to existence, Merleau-Ponty
does not allow any room for absolute truth. Truth1_for_Mer-

at ic level_of- egret Since essences exist in existence,

argues Merleau-Ponty, and since existenee—is—subject_to—a
constant flux, essences are not absolute. They are relative to™
the Pune point of view. This constarit emphasis on the
subjective element logically suggests the description of the
reporting consciousness in the realm of the novel, particularly
the novel as envisaged by Robbe-Grillet.
In Robbe-Grillet’s novel images unfold in the conscious-
ness of the narrator in a sort of filmstrip bound together by
an eternal « now ». Pshychic time has even disappeared, for
the New Novel is interested not in the dynamism of internal
Bergsonian time limited still to the past-present-future spiral,
__ but in time-consciousness—a time which is being made as the
novel is-beingcreated.
Robbe-Grillet’s novel is indeed an exemplary model of the
phenomenological novel—a_novel_which-evolves from the nar-_
rator’s consciousness. Both phenomenologist and novelist agree
in_perceiving reality « divested of anthropological affiliations.
Both are interested in the egological element of any narration.
The ambition, the method and even the aim of pheno-
menology can ben equated to the New Novel. However, there is
at least an important dissimilarity—and a very important one—
which needs to be emphasized in this examination of the cor-
155
 relation between phenomenology and the New Novel. The main
problem which may bother many readers is that Husserl
stresses the importance of the intimate pursuit of essences.
Merleau-Ponty, however, as we have seen, is interested in the
essences at the level of existences where the corps-sujet acts
as a mediator between contingent reality and consciousness.
The narrator acts as a go-between for the interrelationship
i
, objectivity. and subjectivity. Robbe-Grillet’s aim,‘
though Pitiomenseceal in spirit and in method, is not that
of recapturing any essences or attaining a higher degree of 7
knowledge of the object perceived. He aims at a pure_narra--
tion. He is interested _in_reality, Sor EPTe Heatistie sense,
but.in reality which is described by the reporting conscious-_
ness, hence-a—very_subjective view of the phenomenon. His
characters perceive subjectively any slices of reality. This
method of perceiving the object is concomitant with the phe-
nomenological method even if the outcome of this perception
leads to a different aim. In the phenomenological sense, the
“essence, the absolute essence is the aim of any perception. The
outcome of any of Robbe-Grillet’s perceptions remains close to
the novel of existence, as Merleau-Ponty emphazises. The in-
dividual perception at the level of subjective description is
in fact indicative of the closer relationship between Merleau-
Ponty and Robbe-Grillet than between Robbe-Grillet and Hus-
serl. Both French artists, inbued with the existentialist ideology
promulgated by Sartre, remain on the level of existence. Man _
is the mediator between the exterior and theworld o conscious-
-ness. This-world is the realm of phenomenology.
Therefore, phenomenology and Robbe-Grillet’s-novel jjoin
hands. Both philosophy and novel ultimately achieve different
goals. Husserl’s phenomenology aims at’ pure essences; Merleau-
Ponty aims at existential essences; Robbe-Grillet aims at pure
narration where emotional, social, political, and scientific con-
156
notations to reality and most of all in relation to the object are
absent. His aim is to arrive at a pure description of disanthro-
pomorphized reality.
In conclusion, the accent on the subjective, and on the
description of the phenomenon in the narrator’s consciousness
are a replica and concerns and techniques of phenomenology.
This reporting consciousness and the egological element in
Robbe-Grillet’s novels leads us to classify Robbe-Grillet’s novel
as the prototype of the phenomenological novel. The stress on
the consciousness of the narrator, and in general of man’s
consciousness, translates the modern preoccupation with an
innovation of perception grasped and analyzed in the uncanny
labyrinths of man’s consciousness and reality.

Iq
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Robbe-Grillet, Alain. The Erasers. Translated by Richard Howard. New

York: Grove Press, 1964.
. The Voyeur. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Grove
Press, 1966.
. Jealousy. Translated by Richard Howard, in Two Novels by Alain
Robbe-Grillet. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
. In the Labyrinth. Translated by Richard Howard in Two Novels
by Alain Robbe-Grillet. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
. Last Year at Marienbad. Translated by Richard Howard. New
York: Grove Press, 1962.
. Snapshots. Translated by Bruce Morrissette. New York: Grove
Press, 1968.
. L’Immortelle. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1963.
. For a New Novel. Translated by Richard Howard. New York:
Grove Press, 1965.
. The House of Assignation. Translated by Sheridan Smith. London:
Calder & Boyars, 1970.
. Project for a Revolution in New York. New York: Grove Press,
1972.

UNCOLLECTED ARTICLES BY ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET

Robbe-Grillet, Alain. « Le réalisme, la psychologie et l’avenir du ro-
man ». Critique, No. 111-112 (aoit-septembre, 1966), 695-701.

159
—. «A Fresh Start for Fiction ». Evergreen Review, I, No. 3 (1957),
97-104.
—. «Notes sur la localisation et les déplacements du point de vue
dans la description romanesque». La Revue des Temps Mo-
dernes, V (été, 1958), 256-258.
—. «Le nouveau cinéma et le nouveau roman ». Lettres Frangaises,
No. 837 (18-24 aout), pp. 1, 8.
—. «The Case for the New Novel ». The New Statesman, XLI, No.
1562 (1961), 250-264.
—. «Comment j’ai écrit L’Année derniére a Marienbad ». Les Nou-
velles Litiéraires, VIII (7 septembre 1961), 67-69.
—. «La littérature aujourd’hui ». Tel Quel, XIV (1963), 39-45.
—. « Writers’ Conference ». Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. The
London Magazine, February, 1964, pp. 59-61.
—. « L’écrivain, par définition, ne sait ou il va, et il écrit pour cher-
cher a comprendre pourquoi il écrit ». Esprit, No. 329 (juillet,
1964), 63-65. |
—. « Objectivity and Subjectivity in the nouveau roman ». The New
Hungarian Quarterly, No. 22 (1966), 71-91.
—. « Mon dernier film ». La Quinzaine Littéraire. No. 48 (1-15 avril,
1968), 3-5.
—.«L’ordre et son double ». The Bennington Review, III, No. 2
(1969), 7-14.

REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS

« Entretien with Jacques Brenner Arts (20-26 mars, 1953).
« Entretien » with Jean Carlier. Combat (6 avril, 1953).
« Révolution dans le roman ». Figaro Littéraire (20 mars, 1958).
Interview with André Bourin in « Techniciens du roman ». Nouvelles
Littéraires, VI (22 janvier, 1959).
« Entretien » L’Express (8 octobre, 1959).
« Le nouveau roman et le nouveau cinéma ». Interview with J. Au-
trusseau. Lettres Francaises (18-24 aoit, 1960).
Interview with Madeline Chapsal in « Le Jeune Roman ». L’Express
(12 janvier, 1961), 31-33.
« Interview » with Claude Sarraute. Le ‘Monde, (13 mai, 1961), 9.
« Entretien avec Resnais et Robbe-Grillet », de A.S. Labarthe et J.
Rivette. Cahiers du Cinéma. No. 123 (septembre, 1961), 1-21.

160
« Que photographiez-vous? La photographie vous sert-elle pour ce que
vous écrivez? » Arts (14-20 novembre, 1962), 38-41.
« Moi, Robbe-Grillet ». Interview with Pierre Fisson. Figaro Littéraire
(23 février, 1963).
« Entretien avec Alain Robbe-Grillet et André Frank ». Cahiers de la
Compagnie M. Renaud—J. L. Barrault, No. 47-48 (novembre,
1964), 23-31.
« Le mot de Robbe-Grillet ». Interview with Madeline Chapsal. L’Ex-
press (11-17 octobre, 1965), 92-93.
« Robbe-Grillet prend le train ». Interview with Anne Capelle. Arts
et Loisirs (3-9 aout, 1966), 38-42.
« Les écrivains ne sont plus des hommes de lettres ». Arts et Loisirs (28
septembre - 4 octobre, 1966), 28-31.
« A Voyeur in the Labyrinth ». Interview with Pierre Démeron. Ever-
green Review, No. 43 (October, 1966), 44-49.
« Robbe-Grillet: mes romans, mes films et mes ciné-romans ». Inter-
view with J.J. Borchier. Magazine Littéraire, No. 6 (avril, 1967),
10-20.
« Bréves réflexions sur le fait de décrire une scéne de cinéma ». Revue
d’Esthetique, XX (1967), 131-138.
« Le mensonge entre les mots et les choses ». Opus International, No. 3
(automne, 1967).

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE NOVEL

Albérés, René-Marill. Métamorphose du roman. Paris: Albin Michel,
1966.
Alter, Jean. « Alain Robbe-Grillet and the New French Novel ». Com-
parative Literature Studies, I, No. 2 (1964), 159-163.
—.« The Treatment of Time in Alain Robbe-Grillet: La Jalousie ».
College Language Association Journal, III, No. I (September,
1959), 46-55.
—. « Alain Robbe-Grillet and the "Cinematographic Style” ». Modern
Language Journal, XLVIII, No. 6 (October, 1964), 363-366.
—. «L’humanisme d’Alain Robbe-Grillet ». Kentucky Foreign Lan-
guage Quarterly, XII, No. 4 (1965), 209-217.
—.. La Vision du monde d’Alain Robbe-Grillet. Geneve: Librairie
Droz, 1966.

161
Astier, Pierre. Encyclopédie du nouveau roman. Paris: Nouvelles Edi-
tions Debresse, 1968.
Audry, Colette. « La caméra d’Alain Robbe-Grillet ». La Revue des
Lettres Modernes, No. 5 (été, 1958), 259-269.
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. New York: Doubleday Books, 1957.
Bachelard, Gaston. La Dialectique de la durée. Paris: Voivin, 1936.
—. La Poétique de l’espace, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1957.
—. La Poétique de la réverie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1961.
Barilli, Renato. « La narrativa di Alain Robbe-Grillet ». Jl Verri, Anno
III, No. 2 (1959), 15-36.
—. «Alain Robbe-Grillet: Dans le labyrinthe ». JJ Verri, Anno III,
No. 6 (1959), 64-69.
—. « Chiave fenomenologica per due narratori ». Aut, Aut, Anno X,
No. 57 (1960), 143-161.
—. Una Via per il romanzo futuro: gli scritti teorici di Alain Robbe-
Grillet. Milano: Rusconi e Paolazzi, 1961.
—. «A proposito di ”Marienbad”: una diffida ». Il Verri, Anno VI,
No. 1 (1962), 135-138.
Barnes, Hazel E. « The Inns and Outs of Alain-Robbe-Grillet ». Chi-
cago Review, XV, No. 3 (1962), 21-43.
—. « Modes of Aesthetic Consciousness in Fiction ». Bucknell Review,
XIT, No. 1 (1964), 82-93.
Barthes, Roland. Writing Zero degree. Trans. by Jonathan Cape Ltd.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.
—. « Littérature objective ». Critique, X, No. 86-87 (1954), 580-591.
—. « Littérature littérale ». Critique, XII, No. 100-101 (1955), 820-
826.
—. «La Littérature d’aujourd-hui ». Tel Quel, No. 7 (1961), 32-41.
Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données de la conscience. Paris: Félix
Alean, 1914.
—. La Conscience. Paris: Félix Alean, 1914.
—. Matiére et mémoire. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1914.
Bernal, Olga. Alain Robbe-Grillet: le roman de Vabsence. Paris: Gal-
limard, 1964. /
Blanchot, Mourice. « Notes sur un roman ». Nouvelle Revue F rancaise,
III, No. 31 (1955), 104-112.
—. Le Livre a venir. Paris: Gallimard, 1959.

162
Bloch-Michel Jean. « Nouveau roman et culture des masses ». Preuves,
No. 121 (mars, 1961), 17-28.
—. Le Présent de Vindicatif: Essai sur le nouveau roman. Paris:
Gallimard, 1963.
Boisdeffre, Pierre de. Ou va le roman? Paris: Del Duca, 1961.
—. « Ow est l’avant-garde ». Les Nouvelles Littéraires, No. 200 (30
décembre, 1965), 3.
—. La Cafetiére est sur la table ou contre le nouveau roman. Paris:
Editions de la Table Ronde, 1967.
Boselli, Mario. «II linguaggio dell’alienazione in Robbe-Grillet». Nuova
Corrente, XXI (gennaio-marzo, 1961), 1-16.
Brée, Germaine, « Jalousie: New Blinds or Old? » Yale French Studies,
XXIV (Summer, 1959), 87-90.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. « The Baroque Imagination of Robbe-Grillet ».
Modern Fiction Studies, XV (1965), 404-423.
Butor, Michel. Répertoire I. Paris :Les Editions de Minuit, 1960.
—. Répertoire II. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1964.
Carrabino, Victor. « Robbe-Grillet and Phenomenological Time ». Re-
search Studies, XLI, I, (March, 1973), 42-51.
Carrabino, Victor, « Phenomenology and the “Nouveau Roman”: A
Moment of Epiphany ». South Atlantinc Bulletin, XXXVIII, 4
November, 1973), 95-100.
Castellet, José-Maria. « De la objetividad al objeto ». Papeles de Son
Armadans, XV (junio, 1957), 309-332.
Champigny, Robert. «In Search of Pure “recit”). The American
Society of Legion of Honor Magazine, XXVII. No. 4 (1956-57),
331-434.
—. Pour une esthetique de l’essai. Paris: Minard, 1967.
Charbonnier, Georges. Le Monologue du peintre. Paris: Julliard, 1959.
Dambska-Prokop, Urzula. « Quelques structures syntaxiques dans le
“nouveau roman” ». Kwartalnik Neofilogiceny (Warsaw), III
(1966), 69-77.
—. « Schémas de phrase et quelques moyens de Jes amplifier dans La
Jalousie d’Alain Robbe-Grillet ». Kwartalnik Neofilogiczny (War-
saw), XV (1968), 213-221.
Dort, Bernard. « Le temps des choses ». Les Cahiers du Cinéma, XL
(décembre, 1953 - mars, 1954), 300-306.
—. «Sur les romans de Robbe-Grillet ». Les Temps Modernes, XII,
No. 132-136 (1957), 1989-1999.
—. «Sur l’espace ». Esprit, VII-VIII, No. 263-264 (1958), 77-78.
Dreyfus, Dina. « De l’ascetisme dans le roman ». Esprit, VII-VIII,
No. 263-264 (1958), 60-66.

163
Dujardin, Edouard. Le Monologue intérieur. Paris: Albert Messein,
1931.
Edel, Leon. The Psychological Novel. London: Rupert Hart-Davis,
1961.
Goldman, Lucien. Pour une sociologie du roman. Paris: Gallimard,
1964.
—. Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Georges Lukdcs, René Gi-
rard, Arich Kohler, et Michel Bernard. Bruxelles: Institut de
Sociologie de l’Université Libre, 1964.
Goytisolo, Juan. Problemas de la novela. Barcelona: Brere Editorial
Seix Barral, 1959.
Howlett, Jacques. « Notes sur l’objet dans le roman ». Esprit, VII-VIII,
No. 263-264 (1958), 87-90.
Jaeger, J. Patricia. « Three Authors in Search of Elusive Reality:
Butor, Sarraute, Robbe-Grillet ». Critique, IV, No. 3 (1963-64),
65-81.
James, Henry. The Future of the Novel. New York: Random Fone,
1956.
Kumar, Shiv. Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel. New
York: New York University Press, 1963.
Lecuyer, Maurice. « Réalité et imagination dans Le Grand Meaulnes
et Le Voyeur ». Rice University Studies, LI, No. 2 (1965), 1-51.
Le Sage, Laurent. The French New Novel. University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 1962.
Letchcoe, James. « The Structure of Robbe-Grillet’s Labyrinth ».
French Review, XXXVIII, No. 4 (1964), 499-507.
Magny, Claude-Edmonde. L’Age du roman américain. Paris: Editions
du Seuil, 1948.
Mauriac, Claude. « Alain Robbe-Grillet et le roman futur ». Preuves,
No. 68 (1956), 92-96.
—. L’Alittérature contemporaine. Paris: Albin Michel, 1958.
Mercier, Vivian. « James Joyce and the French New Novel ». Tri-
Quarterly (Evanston), VIII (1968), 205-219.
. The New Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.
Misa. Marina. « II rifiuto della psicologia e il mito dell’oggettivita ».
Aut, Aut, LVII (maggio, 1960), 191- 195.
—. Tecniche narrative e romanzo contemporaneo. Milan: Mursia,
1965.

164
Monnier, Jean-Pierre. L’Age ingrat du roman. Neuchatel: Edition de
la Baconniére, 1967.
Morrissette, Bruce. « Surfaces et structures dans les romans de Robbe-
Grillet ». French Review, XXXI, No. 5 (1958), 364-369.
—. «Vers une écriture objective: Le Voyeur de Robbe-Grillet ».
Saggi e Ricerche di Letteratura Francese. Milan: Petrinelli, 1961,
pp. 267-298.
—. «Oedipus and Existentialism: Les Gommes of Robbe-Grillet ».
Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, I, No. 3 (1960),
47-73.
—: « Roman et cinéma: Le cas de Robbe-Grilet ». Symposium, XV,
No. 2 (1961), 85-103.
—. « The New Novel in France ». Chicago Review, XV, No. 3 (1962),
1-19.
—. « Theory and Practice in the Works of Robbe-Grillet ». Modern
Language Notes, LXXXVII, No. 3 (1962), 257-267.
—. Les Romans de Robbe-Grillet. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit,
1963.
—. « Robbe-Grillet: La Maison de Rendez-vous ». French Review,
XXXIX, No. 5 (1966), 123-124.
—. « The Evolution of Narrative Viewpoint in Robbe-Grillet ». Novel:
A Forum on Fiction, I, No. 1 (1967), 24-33.
—.«Problemes du roman cinématographique ». Cahiers de I’Asso-
ciation Internationale des Etudes Francaises, XX (mai 1968),
25-31.
Murray, Jack. « Three Murders in the Contemporary French Novel ».
Texas Studies in Literature and Languages, VI, No. 3 (1964),
361-375.
—. «Mind and Reality in Robbe-Grillet and Proust ». Wisconsin
Studies in Contemporary Literature, VIII, No. 3 (1967), 407-420.
Paci, Enzo. « Nota su Robbe-Grillet, Butor e la fenomenologia ». Aut,
Aut, No. 2 (1962), 234-237.
Peyre, Henri. « The Study of Modern French Literature: Where do
We Go from Here? » Modern Language Quarterly, XXVI (1965),
16-39.
Picon, Gaétan. « Le Probleme du Voyeur ». Mercure de France, No.
1106 (octobre, 1955), 303-309.
Pingaud, Bernard, « Lecture de La Jalousie ». Lettres Nouvelles, V,
No. 50 (1957), 901-906.

165
—. « Y-a-t-il quelqu’un? » Esprit, VII-VIII, No. 263-264 (1958),
83-85.
—.«L’Ecole du refus ». Esprit, VII-VIII, No. 263-264 (1958), 55-
59.
—.«Je, Vous, Il». Esprit, VII-VIII, No. 263-264 (1958), 91-99.
—. Ecrivains d’ajourd’hui: 1940-1960. Paris: Grasset, 1960.
—. «La technique dans le jeune roman d’aujourd’hui ». Cahiers de
l’Association Internationale des Etudes Francaises, XIV (1961),
165-177.
—. «Le Cinema: Dans le Labyrinthe ». Preuves, No. 128 (octobre,
1961), 65-69.
—. «L’Oeuvre et l’analyse ». Les Temps Modernes, XXI, No. 233
(1961), 638-645.
Ponge, Francis. Le Parti pris des choses. Paris: Gallimard, 1942.
Ricardou, Jean. « Par dela du réel et l’irréel ». Méditations, V «été,
1962), 17-25. |
Nouvelle Revue Francaise, No. 1960 (novembre, 1962), 890-900.
—. «Description et infraconscience chez Alain Robbe-Grillet ».
— . Problemes du nouveau roman. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967.
Salvatores, Maria-Gaetana. « Idee e tecniche nei romanzi di Alain
Robbe-Grillet ». Letterature Moderne, XII, No. 5-6 (1962), 606-
612.
Sarraute, Nathalie. « New Movements in French Literature ». Listener,
LXV (1960), 428-429.
—. «Mrs. Sarraute, 70, unwraps Old Ideas». New York Times,
July 24, 1970, p. 14.
—. L’Ere du soupcon. Paris: Gallimard, 1956.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Situation I. Paris: Gallimard, 1947.
— . Situation II. Paris: Gallimard, 1948.
Simon, John K. « Perception and Metaphor in the New Novel: Notes
on Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon and Butor ». Tri-Quarterly, IV
(1965), 153-182.
Sollers, Philippe. « Le Réve en plein jour ». Nouvelle Revue Francaise,
XI (mai, 1962), 904-911.
Stoltzfus, Ben F. « A Novel of Objective Subjectivity: Le Voyeur ».
Publication of Modern Language Association, LXXVII, No. 4
(1962), 499-507.
—. « Alain Robbe-Grillet and Surrealism ». Modern Language Notes,
LXXVIII, No. 3 (1963), 271-277.

166
—. Alain Robbe-Grillet and the New French Novel. Carbondale, Illi-
nois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964.
—. «Camus et Robbe-Grillet: la connivence tragique de L’Etranger
et du Voyeur ». La Revue des Lettres Modernes, I, No. 3 (1964),
153-166.
—: Robbe-Grillet: L’Immortelle and the Novel; Reality, Nothing-
ness and Imagination ». Esprit Créateur, VII, No. 2 (1967),
123-134.
—. « Robbe-Grillet et le bon Dieu ». Esprit Créateur, VIII, No. 4
(1968), 302-311.
Sturrock, John. The French New Novel. London: University Press,
1969.
Sutton, Howard. « Some Dimensions in the French Novel ». Kentucky
Foreign Language Quarterly, VIII, No. I, 22-29.
Viatte, Auguste. « Robbe-Grillet s’explique ». La Revue de l’Univer-
sité Laval, XIX, No. 2 (1964), 133-138.
—. «Qu le roman classique se modernise ». Revue de l’Université
Laval, XX, No. 8 (1966), 534-540.
Weil Malherbe, Rosanne. « Le Voyeur de Robbe-Grillet: un cas d’épi-
lepsie du type psychomoteur ». French Review, XXXVIII, No. 4
(1964), 469-476.
Weiner, Seymour. « Time and Space in Robbe-Grillet’s Voyeur ».
Langage et Littérature, No. 6 (1962), 269-270.

SELECTED WORKS ON PHENOMENOLOGY

Bannan, John. The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. New York: Brace
and World, Inc., 1967.
Barral, Mary Rose. Merleau- Ponty: The Role of the Body-Subject in
Interpersonal Relations. Pittsburg, Pa.: Duquesne University
Press, 1965.
Bayer, Raymon. Merleau-Ponty’s Existentialism. Buffalo, New York:
Brace and World, Inc., 1951.
Bochenski, I.M. Contemporary European Philosophy. Los Angeles:
University of California, 1969.
Centineao, Ettore. Una Fenomenologia della storia. Palermo: Capucci
& Figli, 1959.
Chiodi, Pietro. I] Pensiero esistenzialista. Milano: Garzanti, 1959.
Chosholm, Roderick. Realism and Background of Phenomenology.

167
 New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1960.
Edie, James, ed. Phenomenology in America. Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1967.
Farber, Marvin. Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmond Husserl.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940.
—. The Foundations of Phenomenology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1943.
—. Naturalism and Subjectivism. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Tho-
mas, 1959.
—. Phenomenology of Existence. New York: Harper Torch books,
1966.
Fischer, Alden. The Essential Writings of Merleau-Ponty. New York:
Harcourt and World, 1969.
Gilson, Etienne. Linguistique et philosophie. Paris: Vrin, 1969.
Gunter, P.A. ed. Bergson and the Evolution of Physics. Se
The University of Tennessee Press, 1969.
Gunn, Alexander. Bergson and his Philosophy. New York: Dutton
& Co., 1947.
Gurwitsch, Aron. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Evan-
ston. Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966.
—. Théorie du champ de la conscience. Bruxelles: Desclée de Brou-
wer, 1957.
Gurvitch, Georges. Les Tendances actuelles de la philosphie allemande.
Paris: Vrin, 1949.
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas. Translated by Boyce Gibson. New York:
Colliers Books, 1962.
—. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Translated by Quen-
tin Lauer. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965.
—. Méditations cartésiennes. Translated by Gabrielle Peiffer. Paris:
Vrin, 1966.
—. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Translated by Dorion Cairns.
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.
Hyppolite, Jean. « Existence et dialectique dans la philosophie de
Merleau-Ponty » Les Temps Modernes, XVII, No. 184-185
(1961), 228-244.
Jeanson, Francis. La Phénomenologie. Paris: Tequi, 1951.
Kaelin, Eugene. An Existentialist Aesthetic. Madison: The Univer-
sity of Wisconsis Press, 1962.

168
Kockelmans, Joseph. Phenomenology. New York: Doubleday = & Co.,
1967.
. A First Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Louvain: Du-
quesne University Press, 1967.
Kwant, Remy. The Phenomenological Philosophy of Merleau- Ponty.
Pittsburg, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1963.
. Phenomenology of Language. Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne Univer-
sity Press, 1965.
Lacan, Jacques. « Maurice Merleau-Ponty ». Les Temps Modernes,
XVII, No. 184-185 (1961), 245-254.
Lauer, Quentin. Phenomenology: Its Genesis and Prospect. New Yor
Harper Torchbooks, 1965.
Lefort, Claude. « L’Idée d’étre brut et l’esprit sauvage ». Les Temps
Modernes, XVII, No. 184-185 (1961), 254-286.
Lévinas, Ruuenel: En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Hei-
degger. Paris: Vrin, 1967.
Luijpen, W.A. Existential Phenomenology. Pittsburg, Pa.: Duquesne
University Press, 1963.
Lyotart, Jean-F. La Phénoménologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1954.
Mead, Georges Herbert. The Philosophy of the Present. Chicago: Open
Court Publishing Company, 1932.
Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin
Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.
—. Humanisme et terreur. Paris: Gallimard, 1955.
—. Les Aventures de la dialectique. Paris: Gallimard, 1955.
—. Signs. Translated by Richard C. McCleary. Evaston, Ill.: North-
western University Press, 1944.
— . Eloge de la philosophie. Paris: Gallimard, 1960.
—. « L’Oeil et l’esprit ». Les Temps Modernes, XVII, No. 184-185
(1961), 193-227. |
—. The Primacy of Perception. Ed. by James M. Edie. Evanston, IIl.:
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 CONTENTS

Introduction : : Pag. 15
Robbe-Grillet and the new novel » 31
The novel and philosophy 43
Corps-sujet as perceiving consciousness 93
Jealousy and the theory of the epoché 85
The theory of phenomenological time 105
On the phenomenology of language . 131
Conclusion 153
Bibliography . 159
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