Posted by joffre on 23/2/2009, 20:37:55, in reply to "Re: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy - This post contains SPOLIERS"
65.12.32.157
: The narrative contains a few things which seem
: objectives correlative to the novel itself: the knot
: in A's hair, the flight of the beetle, the song of the
: second driver.
I'm not sure objective correlative is the right word here. I used it because it's generally understood that R-G disdained metaphor and symbol. Morrissette uses it in that first essay to refer to the centipede, it being an objective correlative of, I assume, the jealousy. Maybe objective correlative always relates to an emotion. In that case those things which seem symbolic of the novel itself would be something else.
The knot of A...'s hair, seen at close range from behind, seems to be extremely complicated. It is difficult to follow the convolutions of different strands: several solutions seem possible at some places, and in others, none.
The beetle: The whorls which it describes are also probably among the more capricious: they include loops, garlands, sudden assents and brutal falls, changes of direction, abrupt retracings....
There is a description of the second driver's song on p. 83.
By the way, that lecture I gave a link to earlier was pretty entertaining. R-G was an amusing speaker. It also made me interested in rereading The Lover.
