The French novelist Michel Butor, whose well known creative work titled Passing Time, as translated by Jean Stewart, belongs to the group of creators known as nouveneaux romances or new novelists who include names such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute and Marguerite Duras to name a few. Passing Time is translated into English from the French work Emploc du Temps recalling the style of Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past.
Michel Butor selects a simple theme where he presents a series of experiences and observations of a young man who comes to work in England from Paris devoid of working knowledge in the English cultural life. But he is shown as a person who strives to exist from moment to moment in order to pass time. The name of the narrator is Jacques Revel. He selects his place of living in an industrial town named Bleston and goes on learning English in order to sustain his living.
Export clerk
In the first instance, he feels lonely as a result of his language barrier. But as time passes, he picks up words and phrases of the English-speaking masses that enable him to know what’s happening around him. Gradually he selects a job known to others as an export clerk in an office where he feels very estranged from his colleagues. The writer attempts to capture the inner feelings of the character of the extent that the reader does not feel like reading a narrative.
Instead, a series of decay notes with a vein of pain, delight and frustration. The writer of these dreary notes, the protagonist develops a certain degree of pathos with the reader in the ultimate expression. It is observed that the atmosphere and the human interactions in an Industrial town in England are captured sensitively by the writer Butor via the protagonist he creates.
The creative word does not and is not constructed to a particular conventional pattern. But the main diary entries are subdivided into five main groups in keeping with the various developments in the experiences of the protagonist, Jacques. The very opening division is titled First Steps. In this division, the diary entries are more or less simple observations of people, places and events.
They resemble a series of investigative observations on the part of a foreigner who had visited a particular place devoid of any particular mission. But the series of diary entries reach a certain degree of culmination in the second part titled Protents. Here the reader finds that the protagonist’s development in the awareness of aspects such as human habits and manners.
Diary entries
He is now a person who has gradually attuned to a changing pattern in the attitudes and basic behaviour. One good example comes in the encounter between the protagonist Jacques and a church-going young girl Ann. They go on talking intimately about books. He enters the place of this diary entries and jots down the following words:
“As I spoke the words (with Ann) I realised that my second sentence far from confirming the first, contradicted it and emphasises my interest in the book by disclosing the fact that I had felt impelled to buy a second copy and that my reply, instead of relieving Ann’s embarrassment only increased it, while making my own attitude increasingly...”
What is implied gradually by Butor is a deep sense of affection that arises in a mind. Then the two of them are seen as talking about the author of the book in the discussion. To the reader, the book seems a commonplace murder mystery titled as ‘The Bleston Murder’ written by an unknown author. They go on talking about trying to meet the author concerned for no apparent reason. But the conversation leads to a serene sense of intimacy.
Gradually the reader too comes to grips with the writer cum protagonist Jacques via the human intimacies that pave the way for passing time. In many ways, the title 'Passing Time' rests on several symbolic layers. There is the initial chronological time passage where one sees the passing of days, weeks and seasons. On another layer, it is the passage of time in the growth of a character and intimacies essential for existence.
Impending agonies
Thirdly the passage of time metaphorical and existential. It is the need to spend the time from moment to moment occupied in some function or other in order to avoid the dreariness and the impending agonies. The protagonist jots down episodes where he visits churches, police stations, boutiques at various other places of interest that he had rediscovered.
The third division of the work is titled ‘The Accident’. The protagonist hints a mystery that resembles the events in the murder mystery that he read several days ago. He feels that nothing around him is strange and concocted. Everything rest and fiction become in turn fact and real. This makes how real more and more books relate them to real life. The fourth division or part of the work is titled 'The Two Sister'. The protagonist Jacques comes to know of two females who have developed a sense of intimacy towards him. He now feels that he is no longer aloof or strange to the human situation. He too finds himself in knowing the one about the psychological tendencies of people around him.
Butor makes the reader feel that passing time has reached a climax or a near climax. He is made to be more a contemptible and/or a meditative person than a stranger. The find division is titled Farewell where the writer the protagonist has to leave the place where he had passed time resourcefully.
It is the passing of time resourceful that matters and the intimacies that matter.
Passing Time is not a waste of time for the reader.
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