JACQUES HARDRÉ

Sartre's critical method is to begin with a search for the original choice made by the author when confronted with his own situation. To clarify this statement it must be recalled that an important tenet of existentialism is that each of us is in a particular situation. We are rich or poor, black or white, healthy or sick, and so forth. Within this situation we have freedom of action and our acts are all-important since they will determine our essence. Equally important is how we are seen, in that situation which is ours, by those around us (the Others, in the existentialist vocabulary). For it is only through the Others that we may be able to realize what we are. (p. 99)

When the individual becomes aware of his situation, he is faced with a choice. Will he accept his situation, and that means, primarily, will he accept himself as the Others see him, or will he react against it and seek to change the image that the Others have of him? This choice, the original choice, is not one which is made once for all. It is one which has to be made over and over again throughout one's life. For if one chooses to be what the Others have decided he is, one must at all times reject, or modify, actions that might change that image…. If, on the other hand, the individual chooses to react against the Others' image of him, he will constantly have to act in a fashion contrary to the one that is expected of him, at least until he is satisfied with his image. The tragedy is that none of us is ever satisfied with the image the Others have of us.

There is, furthermore, another existentialist doctrine that we must remember here: the individual, since he is free, is able by his acts to change his personality as he ages, for his personality is a fluid thing. It is only at death that it becomes solid, unchangeable. But it is only through the Others that the changes in this personality will be apparent and it is the Others, finally, who at the individual's death will be able to label once and for all the sum total of that individual's personality. The latter will not fully know, therefore, what he is until he has ceased to be—which means that he will never know.

Thus Jean-Paul Sartre, literary critic, seeks first to find the original choice made by the individual whose works he is examining. To do that he notes carefully all the significant details that strike him as he reads, details that reveal the author's personality. The words he uses, the way he uses them, the images he creates, the repetitions, the verb tenses, all these reveal much to a practiced eye. From these observations, Sartre delves deeper and deeper into the mind of the author until he is satisfied that he has uncovered the latter's original choice. Then the process is reversed and from the original choice Sartre now works outward to the novel or the poem (the genre is unimportant to Sartre) in order to show how that novel or poem reflects the original choice. The work of art is therefore considered as an actualization of the author's choice, of his attitude towards existence.

This method, which has been adopted by several contemporary critics, ignores what had previously been considered the main concern of the critic, namely, the specifically literary aspect of literature. It makes the task of the critic much more exacting, since he must no longer be content to look at a work of art from the outside, much as one contemplates a statue in a museum, but rather from the inside. He must, if he is to succeed, disengage himself from his own situation and look at the work of art through the author's own eyes, while at the same time keeping a critical attitude lest he forget that he is both judge and re-creator.

The two works which best illustrate Sartre's critical method are Baudelaire, dedicated to Jean Genet, and an essay on the latter entitled Saint Genet, comédien et martyre. (pp. 99-101)

The choice of these two writers is, in turn, quite revealing (if we may psychoanalyze the psychoanalyst) for both belong to that category shown rather romantically as les poètes maudits. Of these two maudits the first, Baudelaire, has assumed in the eyes of the public the image of an unhappy, tormented and persecuted genius who led a life he did not deserve. The second is known more prosaically as a thief, an ex-convict and a sexual deviate, who fully deserved his misfortunes and who is but grudgingly recognized as an artist…. [Baudelaire's] original choice, which he repeated throughout his life, was to exist exactly as the Others saw him. Through a very close examination of Baudelaire's writings, Sartre rectifies an error made, he says, by most critics, that Baudelaire was a revolutionary. In truth, he was not a revolutionary, simply a rebel. The difference between the two is fundamental. Whereas the revolutionary seeks to change the world and to bring it to a new order of values, the rebel is careful to preserve the wrongs through which he suffers, else he would have nothing against which to rebel…. [Thus], it is absolute nonsense to say that Baudelaire did not have the life he deserved. On the contrary, he chose the life he led deliberately…. (p. 101)

In order to psychoanalyze Baudelaire, Sartre could make use only of the poet's works, correspondence and intimate diaries, and of the works written about Baudelaire by other critics. He recognizes, therefore, that the description he draws of the poet is inferior to the real portrait….

With Jean Genet, the method becomes more effective since Sartre could make use not only of the writer's published works but also of a personal acquaintance dating back to 1945. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because of a greater sympathy towards his subject, this study is more solid than the one just considered….

There can be no doubt that Sartre intended the title of his study to suggest that Jean Genet has adopted a role which has led him to martyrdom and that in acting thus Genet has assumed the attitude of a saint. This is, indeed, the theme of his essay. (p. 102)

In his study Sartre shows us the young Genet caught by his foster parents in the act of stealing (though he did not as yet realize what "stealing" meant), branded by the adults as a thief and choosing henceforth to be as the adults see him, yearning to be evil, as the saint yearns to be good. His original choice, then, is quite different from Baudelaire's. The latter chose to be considered by society as an outcast more from a desire to be pitied and noticed than from a genuine attraction to evil. Genet, on the contrary, chose to be evil to defy society. There is in Genet, or was until he became a celebrated writer, a sort of austerity in evil which Sartre compares to the austerity of a saint in his search for good. Genet assumed the role of the evildoer and, like an actor ever seeking to perfect his interpretation, constantly sought to widen the range and perfect the quality of his evil deeds. Having finally decided that an evil deed is not so reprehensible in the eyes of society as the boastful narrative of that deed, he became a writer. Thus all his life until recently has been a systematic elaboration, through a series of deliberate acts, of the essence which he chose for his own. It is an essence, Sartre reminds us, from which most individuals recoil. There are but few delinquents who would choose deliberately and freely to be bad, just as there are but few Christians who would choose deliberately and freely to be martyrs. Thus Genet, comedian, assumes the role of the evildoer and in so doing becomes a martyr.

Sartre, as we have noted, sympathizes with Genet, whereas he was unsympathetic towards Baudelaire. Yet he has to conclude that the former was also on the wrong road. For his comedy and his martyrdom are intellectually understandable only if one subscribes to the moral code of our society. If, like Sartre, one considers it to be merely a weapon in the hands of the "respectable people" with which they condemn those who have dared to do the deeds they themselves have been tempted to commit, then Genet's attitude can only be condemned—not because it is wrong, but because it can lead only to failure. For, if there is no good or evil per se then there can be no saints or martyrs in either camp. Only the comedian is left, playing a useless role.

As Sartre points out, Genet's life has been up to now a conscious search for evil, a deliberate assumption of the role of the evil-doer. Now that his books have made him famous, that his plays have been shown on the Paris stage, that the President of the Republic has granted him a pardon so that he need never return to the prison from which he fled, he is a success. He has won against society. But by winning he has lost, for he has now become himself a "respectable person." He is admired for his talent and in spite of his crimes. Yet all his life had been directed by his desire to make the Others see him as a criminal. (pp. 103-04)

[It should] be clear, from what has been stated above, that these studies on Baudelaire and Genet are much more philosophical than literary. We have, in both, an extremely stimulating and lucid psychological explanation of the character of the writer; but we look in vain in both studies for some light on how that writer, that alchemist, scooped up a handful of mud and turned it into a bar of gold. How can one explain, for example, that the thief, the convict Genet, most of whose life was spent behind bars, could write poems that Sartre compares to those written by Verlaine and by Mallarmé? Is there not here an essence which has nothing to do with evil or original choice or authenticity or with any of the terms that Sartre employs to explain man's actions? An essence which has been shared by a few gifted individuals ever since Man first began to sing and paint and write?

When we turn to the shorter essays that Sartre has devoted to other writers, most of them contemporaries …, we find the same qualities and the same defects. The study of Giraudoux serves to demonstrate that this dramatist has recreated in his plays the world of Aristotle. The demonstration is amusing, but hardly convincing, for Sartre does not deal with the essential aspects of Giraudoux' theater. Mauriac is condemned as a novelist on the grounds that he denies any freedom to his characters and that he has assumed the double role of judge and psychologist. According to Sartre, the characters in a novel should be completely free to act and develop as they wish and the author should take care not to consider these characters first as objects that are described and judged, and then as subjects who reveal their inmost thoughts to their creator. The reader should never be so well-informed about the character of a protagonist that he can predict accurately how the latter will act when confronted by a given situation. If the novelist begins by introducing his character as "a monster of ingratitude" the reader will not have to wonder much about how this character will behave towards his benefactor. He will have lost all semblance of human freedom; he will simply be a marionette dancing around at the urging of the novelist's nimble fingers.

Here again, the theory is interesting, but its application is scarcely feasible. No matter how hard the novelist may try to hide his hand, his characters will live because of him, and they will react to situations he has chosen and in the way he has decided. (pp. 104-05)

It should be said, in conclusion, that Jean-Paul Sartre as a critic has much to offer the intellectually curious reader. It is a rewarding experience to follow the line of reasoning of one of the most gifted philosophers of our time, who has demonstrated his talent in the novel, the drama, the essay, as well as in polemics. Whatever else Sartre may be, he is not dull and he is often inspiring. But insofar as literary criticism is concerned, it is to be fervently hoped that Sartre's method will not prevail and that the critics of today and tomorrow will continue to take into account that spiritual quality that marks the difference between an ordinary mortal and a poet. (p. 106)

Jacques Hardré, "Jean-Paul Sartre: Literary Critic," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LV, No. 1, January, 1958, pp. 98-106.