1. Nathalie Sarraute, "disent les imbéciles" (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 9. Further page references, given in parentheses in the text, are to this edition.
2. Some early reviewers saw in the novel no more than intellectual chit-chat. Jacques-Pierre Amette, for instance, reviewing the novel in Le Point (October 4, 1976) outlined its subject as "la conversation fin de soirée, la fausse nonchalance,"
... [Show full abstract] but others were quick to realize its seriousness. Viviane Forrester, in a short but perceptive review of this "livre étonnant, terrifiant"—in "Nathalie Sarraute dénonce le but meurtrier de la bêtise langagière," Le Livre de la Quinzaine (October 1, 1976): 4-5—recognized the gravity of its exploration of language as an instrument of terrorism, deploying the codes and hierarchies "dont on sait qu'ils aboutissent à nos univers concentrationnaires."
3. Jean Pierrot, Nathalie Sarraute (Paris: José Corti, 1990), 81, points out that characterizing labels constitute for Sarraute "une sorte de racisme larvé: celui par lequel on s'efforce d'enfermer des individus, en leur collant une étiquette, infamante ou non, dans un ghetto psychologique dont désormais ils ne pourront plus sortir."
4. Quoted by Viviane Forrester, p. 4.
5. André Allemand, L'Œuvre romanesque de Nathalie Sarraute (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1980), 472.
6. References range, for instance, from La Fontaine fables, well-known proverbs, fairytales and games, to Spinoza as a recognized authority, Descartes as a recognized intelligence, Gulliver as giant, and so on. There are also some intertextual references —as for instance in the mention of "les feuilles d'or" (132), which harks back to a comment of Rimbaud on Baudelaire, cited in Portrait d'un inconnu, or the "Debout les morts" sequence, which repeats an episode of Entre la Vie et la mort. There is also a mention of Maupassant's Une Vie. André Allemand discusses (447) the oblique references to Gide's La Porte étroite in the "signe d'un amour mort-né" (139), and to Dostoievsky's Smerdiakov in The Brothers Karamazov in the fork that lifts food to the eye for inspection (148).
7. Jean Pierrot, for instance, describes the novel as "une série de vignettes et de scènes sans rapport apparent, et mutuellement indépendantes" (394).
8. Anne Lagardère, in Critique (December 1976): 82, comments on the way Sarraute "a su abolir les frontières entre roman et poésie."
9. Gérard Genette, Figures III (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 223.
10. The point is well made by Raymond Aron: "Resistance to any form of totalitarianism runs the risk of being discredited by the argument: 'In order to resist, you destroy the reasons for resisting' [...]. It is important to recognize the dangers. Resistance inevitably shares intermittently in the vices of what it resists, but that does not destroy the reasons for resisting." See "Democracy and Totalitarianism: A Discussion with Raymond Aron, Jacques Maritain and Others," Salmagundi 65 (Fall 1984): 30-50 (40).
11. For instance, in light vein, the cumulative rhythm and rhyming of "quand on s'est mis dans un si mauvais cas, quand on a fait un si dangereux faux pas, quand on a été, ainsi, fait comme un rat," which gives such deliriously comic effect to the thumping break of rhythm and absence of rhyme in the final cliché: "on ne sait plus à quel saint se vouer" (175-76).
12. In discussion with Viviane Forrester, Nathalie Sarraute commented: "'C'est ce que disent les imbéciles': C'est une phrase typiquement fasciste. La pensée ne peut être combattue que par quelque chose de la même espèce. Pas avec une insulte" (4).
13. It is indeed of much the same order as the "C'est bien ça," which causes such ructions in Pour un oui ou pour un non.
14. It is from the "nothing," which emerges from the bright eyes of the grandmother, and the "nothing" which provokes the protest "N'y touchez pas" that the text emerges.
15. Post-mortem discussion of a "Great Man" uncovers all sorts of contradictory traits: he will not cohere into a unified character. But one verse of his poetry carries its reader magically into "la lumière...