French Literature Reviews - 2026
Vers l’instant – Lecture de Portrait d’un inconnu
Novel and Narrative Prose
Elin Beate Tobiassen
Vers l'instant – Reading Nathalie Sarraute's Portrait of a Man Unknown
Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Oxford, Wien, 2003. XV, 227 p.
European University Studies: Series 13, French Language and Literature. Vol. 272
ISBN 3-03910-118-8 pb.
sFr. 63. / EUR* 43.40 / EUR** 40.60 / £ 29. / US-$ 40.95
* includes VAT valid only for Germany and Austria
** does not include VAT
Many literary works explore the question of the instant. Renaissance poetry assigns a significant role to the "primordial instant." Stendhal seeks to capture the various elements that constitute the "happy instant." In the 20th century, capturing the instant preoccupies numerous novelists, such as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.
In this study, the author offers a remarkably fresh reading of Nathalie Sarraute's debut novel, Portrait of a Man Unknown (1948), examining this complex text through the lens of the privileged instant. Attentive to narrative details, she approaches the novel's trajectory as a movement directed toward a literally enchanting and oneiric moment. It is toward this instant that Sarraute's text entirely converges, both in its thematic design and formal composition. Contrary to critical interpretations that have largely emphasized the darker aspects of the text, this study highlights the crucial nature of the snapshots—the "treasures"—situated at the core of the novel. Turning toward the future just as they are about to fade, these sparkling "treasures" subtly foreshadow the luminous instant that becomes the object of the narrator's yearning at the end of the work.
About the Author: Elin Beate Tobiassen, of Norwegian nationality, currently resides in France. Holding a Doctorate in Literature from the University of Caen and a Doctor Artium from the University of Oslo, she is involved in developing online French literature courses at the University of Oslo while simultaneously working as a literary correspondent for a Norwegian publication. She has translated several works by Nathalie Sarraute into Norwegian, written prefaces for them, and published numerous articles on contemporary French literature.
The exploration of transient moments and ephemeral experiences has a long lineage in European literature and poetry, engaging writers across centuries who sought to capture fleeting temporal phenomena. In twentieth-century fiction, authors such as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce similarly examined how subjective consciousness perceives and records specific moments in time.
Elin Beate Tobiassen holds a Doctorate in Literature from the University of Caen and a Doctor Artium from the University of Oslo. She has translated several works by Nathalie Sarraute into Norwegian, written prefaces for them, and published numerous articles on contemporary French literature. Readers interested in twentieth-century French fiction may find this study relevant.