"One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry"
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Sarraute’s line lands like a polite refusal to perform. It’s not elitism so much as a statement about the physics of attention: writing isn’t broadcast radio, it’s a circuit that only closes when the reader brings a certain willingness to the page. The first sentence sounds almost managerial - you can’t “write for all readers” - but the second tightens into something more severe. A poet “cannot” write for people who don’t like poetry because the obstacle isn’t taste; it’s the absence of the very faculty the work is built to activate: patience for ambiguity, pleasure in compression, openness to being moved without being instructed.
The subtext is a defense of difficulty and a warning against cultural demand for universal legibility. Sarraute, a key figure of the French Nouveau Roman, spent her career distrusting the cozy narrative bargain - character psychology neatly explained, emotions pre-labeled, meanings pre-digested. Her fiction hunts what she called “tropisms,” those tiny, half-conscious social impulses under conversation. That project requires a reader who’s game for the chase. If you want plot as comfort food, Sarraute isn’t going to pretend her work is that.
Her background in law adds an extra edge: she’s trained in persuasion, in arguing to persuade a skeptical audience. Here she draws the boundary between argument and art. Courts aim for the broadest intelligibility; poetry doesn’t. The line asserts an ethic of audience selection, not audience conquest - and, by implication, a critique of markets and institutions that treat “for everyone” as the highest compliment.
The subtext is a defense of difficulty and a warning against cultural demand for universal legibility. Sarraute, a key figure of the French Nouveau Roman, spent her career distrusting the cozy narrative bargain - character psychology neatly explained, emotions pre-labeled, meanings pre-digested. Her fiction hunts what she called “tropisms,” those tiny, half-conscious social impulses under conversation. That project requires a reader who’s game for the chase. If you want plot as comfort food, Sarraute isn’t going to pretend her work is that.
Her background in law adds an extra edge: she’s trained in persuasion, in arguing to persuade a skeptical audience. Here she draws the boundary between argument and art. Courts aim for the broadest intelligibility; poetry doesn’t. The line asserts an ethic of audience selection, not audience conquest - and, by implication, a critique of markets and institutions that treat “for everyone” as the highest compliment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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