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screen_memory 's review for:
Here
by Nathalie Sarraute
The narrative perpetually lingers on the cusp of a word, an expression, a quality; something emanant yet inexpressible or irretrievable, something so nearly lost to memory until...until...yes, the prose slowly, gradually, charms the essence from the abstract - a figure in the midst of formation, emerging from the marble - and, at last...it is on the tip of the tongue, hesitating before the threshold of - of what was it? - ah...experience, or perhaps memory; all things which, if left unexpressed, eventually resigns to the obsolescence of memory, recedes once more into the abstract until...until....
Sarraute's Here seems a meditation on the delicate interstices of language and thought, language and memory, language and consciousness. How does one make sense of experience when language proves its impotence, when all it offers is a cracked and blemished mirror through which to reflect on the past? Hesitations abound; the infrastructure of thought meanders and inevitably collapses before language can reach a resolution..
There is a poetry to Sarraute's prose that I loved and which hooked me immediately; a poetry born of vulnerability, delicacy, and the slow and languid stream of language. You know when you start nodding off during reading and lapse into these momentary spells that are like a dipping of the toes into the surreality of dreams? Naturally, it's time to shift positions or move around a bit to shake off the haze of an approaching sleep and return to reading when you're more mentally present, right? but, funny enough, that teetering state of consciousness complemented the prose, and I allowed myself to enjoy these disparate but separate aesthetic experiences - wading through the tranquil waters of Sarraute's prose in some moments, and floating through the somnolent stream of dreams in others.
Sarraute's Here seems a meditation on the delicate interstices of language and thought, language and memory, language and consciousness. How does one make sense of experience when language proves its impotence, when all it offers is a cracked and blemished mirror through which to reflect on the past? Hesitations abound; the infrastructure of thought meanders and inevitably collapses before language can reach a resolution..
There is a poetry to Sarraute's prose that I loved and which hooked me immediately; a poetry born of vulnerability, delicacy, and the slow and languid stream of language. You know when you start nodding off during reading and lapse into these momentary spells that are like a dipping of the toes into the surreality of dreams? Naturally, it's time to shift positions or move around a bit to shake off the haze of an approaching sleep and return to reading when you're more mentally present, right? but, funny enough, that teetering state of consciousness complemented the prose, and I allowed myself to enjoy these disparate but separate aesthetic experiences - wading through the tranquil waters of Sarraute's prose in some moments, and floating through the somnolent stream of dreams in others.