Nathalie Sarraute's Accent: The Poetry of Tropismes

Abstract

This article explores the basis for Nathalie Sarraute's insistence that her work be classified as poetry rather than prose. The article shows that the roots of this preference can be found in her theoretical writings, which are put into practice in her creative works. Their ‘poetic’ quality is analysed using the tools of prosody, specifically on extracts from her collection of prose poems, Tropismes. This exercise throws up interesting theoretical resemblances between Sarraute and Proust: they share an extreme sensitivity to the aural aspect of written texts. The prosodic analysis also offers a new method of exploring the Sarrautean tropism, that is to say in terms of poetic accent: the nature of the tropism is reconsidered in the context of late nineteenth-century theories of speech rhythms, and compared with the notion of the ‘accent d'impulsion’.