3. Personal Information
Birthdate and birthplace –
July18, 1900 in Ivanovo, Russia
Family life –
Her parents were divorced when she was
two, and her mother took her to Geneva and
then to Paris. From the age of eight, she lived
in Paris with her father, who had settled there.
Occupation –
Nathalie Sarraute was a lawyer and a French
writer of Russian origin.
Death date and location -
October19, 1999 in Paris, France
Education –
Sarraute studied literature and law at
the Sorbonne, spent one year at
Oxford in 1921, and continued her
studies of legal science in Berlin,
before becoming a member of the
French bar (1926-41).
4. About Nathalie
Nathalie Sarraute was a lawyer and a French writer
of Russian Jewish origin.
Nathalie Sarraute was born in Ivanova, Russia. From the
age of eight, she lived in Paris with her father, who had
settled there.
Sarraute studied literature and law at the Sorbonne, spent
one year at Oxford in 1921, , and continued her studies of
legal science in Berlin, before becoming a member of the
French bar (1926-41).
In 1925 she married a fellow law student, Raymond
Sarraute; they had three daughters.
5. Her first book, Tropismes, a collection
of twenty-four brief sketches, appeared
first in 1939, but gained more
understanding when it was republished in
1957. With "tropisms" she referred to
inner movements of the mind, which are
involuntary and which guide our behavior.
In the 1950s and '60s Sarraute
developed the ideas of the new novel in
such works as Portrait d'un Inconnu (1947,
Portrait of a Man Unknown).
Sarraute is constantly questioning
herself: "Try to remember... something
must have happened..." "Be careful, now
you are exaggeration..." The book was
adapted for the stage in Broadway,
starring Glenn Close.
6. L'Ère du soupçon (1956, The Age of Suspicion) is a collection
of Sarrraute's critical essays, in which she attempted to
analyze what she as an author tried to achieve in her work.
Sarraute dismissed the need for a cohesive narrative, and
welcomed the death of the "character" in fiction, to be
replaced by "a matter as nameless as blood, a magma."
Sarraute published L'Enfance (1983, Childhood) when she
was over eighty. It is a partial autobiography, a story of the
childhood of a young girl who divides her time between her
divorced parents in Russia and France.
Sarraute uses short flashes from her past, and torn lines
from discussions, the colors of her memories are faded like in
an old photograph.
7. Since 1964 Sarraute wrote radio and
stage plays,in which she integrated
undercurrents of half conversation into a
commonplace banal conversation.
She was also interested in Paul Valéry
and Gustave Flaubert; her essays on
these writers were republished in book
form in 1986. Sarraute defended in the
essays the novelist's need for formal
experimentation.
Sarraute died on October 19, 1999, in
Paris. Her last novel, Here(1995),
examined the nature of memory, efforts
to be patient, to hope, when reality is
formless and full of holes.
8. Famous Quotes :
• The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the
thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is
reading.
• Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.
• The only normal people are the one's you don't know very well.
• In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love, you want
the other person.
9. By Nathalie Sarraute :
Tropismes (1939) Tropisms
Portrait d'un Inconnu (1948) Portrait of a Man Unknown
Martereau (1953) Martereau
L'Ère du soupçon (1956) The Age of Suspicion
Le planétarium (1959) The planetarium
Dans Entre la vie et la mort (1968) Between Life and Death
Ne les entendez-vous (1972) Do You Hear Them
Le silence et le mensonge (1981) Silence and the Lie
Enfance (1983) Childhood
Tu ne t'aimes pas (1989) You Don't Love Yourself
