Introducing Alain Robbe-Grillet

Abstract

I!':TRODUCI!':G ALAI!': ROBBE-GRILLET Ben Stolrzru5 is 1I ProfC'ssor Emcrillls ofFrC'lIch a d Comparati\'C' LileratllrC'. t;l/in'YS;')' o/Ca/i/omia. Ri,'C'rsidC'. All lilerali know that Alain Robbe-Grille! is onc of Francc's le:!ding New Novelists and avant-garde cincmatoh'Taphcrs. that his works have redefined Ihe novel and the cinema as genres. and that his art hilS left an indelible imprint on the twenlieth- century. Less well known. perhaps. is the fact thai he likes to work with other :lr1ists and that he has collaborated with painters. photographers. and musicians such as Paul Dclvau.x. Robert Rauschenberg. Jasper Johns. David Hamihon. Irina Ionesco. and Michel Fano. In 1961. before he himself became a film director. his association with Alain Resnais produced L :-II/I/{;(> derniere Mariellbad. an intemational film success. After the death of Rene Magritte. Robbe-Grillet illustratcd onc of his novels. La Bf!l/e captive (1975). with seventy-seven paintings by the Belgian surrealist painter---paintings from the collection of Georgene Magrittc. his wido\\'. It is most appropriate. therefore. that Robbe-Grillet be the keynote speaker for an interdisciplinary conference on lilerature and the ans entitled Camera 01/ Stylo: A Problematic Dialogue? . One critic. when speaking of Robbe-Grillefs style in La Jalollsie. alluded to the descriptions of things and people in this 1957 novel as Ie srylo-camera. Already_ there is a clear and direct relationship befween image and writing even before Robbe-Grillet became a film director and began collaborating with other artists. Because space and time preclude a detailed presenlation of Robbe-Grillet's oeuvre. I will use La BC'I/C' capli\Y! to illustrate his ongoing dialogue using the written text and its visible counterparts. t\loreovcr. the coming together of Magrine and Robbe- Grillet is arguably not problematic because both men opposc Ihe natural b)' highlighting thc artificial. They both believe that art exists. not to mirror nature. but to mirror itself. For them. art functions as a specular system. and its emphasis is not on the writing or painting of a story. but on the story of writing or painting. Furthermore. the opposition between nature and art engenders a theatricalization of languagc. be it verbal or pictorial. In Ecrirs comp!(!ts (686). Magrine notes aptly that painting is the visible description of thought and. in literature, with reference to Robbe-Grillet. the dramatization of language privileges the signifier over the signified. Such :lrt. insofar as it speaks primarily of itself. devalues mimesis as a rcpresenlational system, However. unlike the nonobjective art of Kandinsky or Mondrian, r l agriue's paintings arc both mimetic and anti·mimctic. Similarly. Robbe-Grillet's fiction is both referential and self-reflexive. In 1985. La BellC' capti\'c (the pictono\'c1. nOI the film by the same name) had been remaindered and you could buy it in a Left Bank bookslore for fifty fmncs. I bought one copy. bUI after leaving the store. and while walking loward the Luxembourg Gardens, I decided that I needed another onc, The salesperson looked at me with a smile of complicity on her lips and SOlid: ··Ah. vous voulez une deuxieme belle caplive! And so I did. which roises the question: what or who is the beautiful captive? Obviously. it's the tille of the book. and the title derives from six pictures of seascapes and landscapes painted by Magrine. all of them entitled La Belle capl;I'C', However. despite the connotation. there is no woman in the paintings. I a