[In the following essay, Harvey examines Sartre's use of obscenity in "The Making of a Leader, "focusing on how it serves to develop character and plot.]

Sartre's collection of short stories Le Mur has received less attention from critics or the public than his other works of fiction. Among the few articles devoted to this early work, a brief review by Jean Vaudal expresses the malaise many may experience on reading the last and longest of the collection, "L'Enfance d'un Chef": "Je ne suis pas sûr que dans 'L'Enfance d'un Chef' l'auteur ait voulu mettre autant de grotesque que j'en vois. Le fait est que, maintenant que je l'y ai vu, plus rien ne l'ôtera."¹ Various aspects of the story are indeed grotesque; examples range from the vaguely scatalogical but amusing description of young Lucien sitting on his potty, straining to evacuate his bowels, while his mother looks on and says: "Pousse, Lucien, pousse, mon petit bijou, je t'en supplie" (p. 155)² to the graphically-detailed description of the homosexual act between Lucien and Bergère which Lucien sums up as he contemplates his toes: "Ces orteils, un homme les avait sucés, l'un après l'autre" (p. 206).

Since Sartre's literary work is a vehicle for conveying his philosophy,³ it is hardly plausible to suggest that such details are intended merely to titillate or attract the reader.⁴ The story chronicles the physical and metaphysical experiences that Lucien Fleurier, the only son of a well-to-do industrialist, undergoes as he grows from infancy to adulthood. It is closely allied thematically to the earlier La Nausée, as it provides a fictitious illustration of the existential basis for man's anguish: Lucien, like Roquentin, may either create his own essence from his existence or may mould his existence to conform to a preconceived essence. In fact, from its ironic title to its concluding words, the story exposes the shams and pretences of the various refuges Lucien seeks in order to avoid creating his essence. As Lucien stands on the threshold of manhood and decides to accept his hereditary "place . . . au soleil" (p. 247), the fifth generation of the Fleurier family to be a leader of society with all the rights and privileges of his station in life, Sartre's condemnation of his "hero's" mauvaise foi is apparent. It is unlikely, then, that those sordid, obscene or scatalogical experiences which give rise to the grotesque are purely gratuitous. They have been characterized as "techniques de provocation" intended to shock or scandalize the reader.⁵ However, in addition to provoking interaction between text and reader, they may well have a role to play in the development of plot or character, or in the elaboration of Sartre's philosophy. There is in all probability an aesthetic or philosophical value to be found in the use of the grotesque.

From the aesthetic point of view, much of the imagery Sartre employs is, at the very least, unconventional. Little Lucien is sitting on his mother's knee, listening to Little Red Riding Hood and to his mother's stories of her childhood. This touching scene of maternal and filial affection is rudely shattered by Lucien's thoughts when his mother laughs: "Elle rit en ouvrant la bouche toute grande, et Lucien vit sa langue rose et le fond de sa gorge: c'était sale, il avait envie de cracher dedans" (p. 154). As an adolescent, Lucien meets Bergère, a self-styled surrealist of about thirty-five, who teaches him a great deal about the shadier aspects of literature and life and who introduces him to homosexuality in a hotel room. It is a distressingly sordid experience for Lucien, affording him no pleasure; on the contrary, the purely animal, depersonalized nature of the act is accentuated by Sartre's imagery: "Une bouche tiède et molle se colla contre la sienne, on aurait dit un biftek cru" (p. 204). Later, on holiday at the family's country home in Férolles, he hesitates to sleep with the attractive seventeen-year-old maid, Berthe, because she smells of sweat and her black blouse is stained under the arms (p. 216). When he sets her on his knee he has to wash his hands, which smell of Berthe's perspiration. Back in Paris, he finally sleeps with Maud, whose favours he has been assiduously courting, but the act he had anticipated for so long is described thus: ". . . il avait approché ses lèvres d'un visage sans yeux, nu comme un ventre, il avait possédé une grosse fleur de chair mouillée. Il revit la bête aveugle qui palpitait dans les draps avec des clapotis et des baîllements velus . . ." (p. 238). In all these situations, the reader's expectations are frustrated or drastically modified. The sentimentality of the traditional mother-and-son relationship in a secure and happy childhood is questioned; the relationship between two young men of sensitive, artistic temperament, culminating in the homosexual act is mocked as a hollow travesty of sexual fulfillment. Although the descriptions of Lucien's initiation to heterosexual experiences are probably not intended as obscene, the imagery can hardly be said to evoke the traditional romantic pictures of young love, with its attendant quickening of the pulse and heightening of the emotions. The customary lyrical description of the charms of the beloved and the passions inspired are replaced by mean and sordid imagery. Any of the conventional elements of romance which do come into play—le visage, la fleur—are juxtaposed with unaccustomed and apparently incongruous attributes.

On a literary level, such substitutions for the traditional "happy-ever-after" ingredients of fairy-tale or romance are usually the essence of parody. However, Sartre's caricatures of person, plot or situation are not merely comic or absurd and his parody indubitably transcends the purely literary. In fact, from the aesthetic point of view it serves a double function: so far as the reader is concerned, the intrusion of incongruous elements is grotesque and serves to confuse his conventional modes of thought. In the context of the story itself, the involuntary intervention of grotesque imagery between Lucien and other people precludes the possibility of happiness by inhibiting Lucien's ability to take pleasure in love. In this way, the parody also fulfills a philosophical function in the story as it conveys Sartre's ideas that neither maternal love, nor homosexual love nor heterosexual love will furnish sufficient justification for Lucien's existence.⁶ Sartre implacably destroys all the refuges Lucien seeks. He will not be allowed to seek oblivion of self in the arms of another; he must be perpetually lucid, conscious of his situation, even though such lucidity is anguishing. Love will not furnish Lucien with an alibi any more than it will the young couple whom Roquentin and the Autodidact observe in a cafe in Bouville: "Quand ils auront couché ensemble, il faudra qu'ils trouvent autre chose pour voiler l'énorme absurdité de leur existence."⁷

Sartre's grotesque imagery is not restricted to the sexual encounters between Lucien and Bergère, Berthe or Maud. Equally disquieting to the reader anticipating a conventional work of fiction is Sartre's use throughout the story of scatalogical details. Why does little Lucien not notice the pretty birds or butterflies but "une mouche à caca" (p. 159)? Why is his most persistent recollection of his elegant cousin Riri the fact that ". . . à sept ans passés, [il] faisait encore son gros dans sa culotte, et qu'alors il marchait les jambes écartées comme un canard" (p. 174)? What is the value, aesthetic or otherwise, of the "excrément parfaitement imité" which the surrealist Bergère has in his room (p. 193)? So far as Riri is concerned, Sartre bursts the bubble of his inflated facade, reminding us that it is the être and not the paraître that counts. Bergère himself suggests the value of the "étron diabolique" as he holds it in his slender fingers and informs Lucien that it is meant to disturb people; it is, he asserts, potentially more destructive than the complete works of Lenin. Exaggerated though Bergère's claim may be, it nonetheless indicates Sartre's intention of using scatalogical detail in the same way as parody: both scandalize the reader, jolting him out of his aesthetic and philosophical complacency.

Analysis of other details reveals further dimensions of the use of scatology within the text itself. During the course of his adolescent search for his essence, Lucien discovers the theories of Freud. Diagnosing himself initially as suffering from an Oedipus complex which he would outgrow, Lucien is outraged when his friend Berliac informs him: "'tu es un anal' et il lui expliqua le rapport freudien: fèces = or et la théorie freudienne de l'avarice" (p. 188). Geneviève Idt has pointed out that the spot diagnosis by the adolescent Berliac may be seen as an obvious parody on Sartre's part of Freudian analysis.⁸ However, although one may dismiss Freudian analysis as outrageous and scoff at Berliac's pretentiousness, the theory of greed remains, serving to underline Lucien's concern with the materialistic trappings of the chef.

From the literary point of view, another dimension is thus added to the characterization of Lucien. Once his concern is recognized, a secondary ironic colour is imparted retrospectively to many of his existential conflicts. Berliac's accusation: "'Tu es un bourgeois . . . tu fais semblant de nager, mais tu as bien trop peur de perdre pied" (p. 197) takes on new meaning; Lucien's need for the comfort and security afforded by his affluent background is apparent in another of Berliac's remarks: "'Tu montes dans les trains, mais tu choisis soigneusement ceux qui restent en gare'" (p. 198). These more conventional images of movement and progression reveal little more than stagnation, clearly demonstrating that Lucien may vacillate but not evolve. The reader's initial sympathy for little Lucien's distress at being mistaken for a girl or being called a "grande asperge" gives way to frustration; antipathy follows when he finds his niche in political terms in the extreme right-wing, anti-Semitic movement known as the Action française: it is an affirmation that he will irrevocably accept what he considers to be his rightful inheritance. Philosophically, his acquiescence in a pre-destined essence seals his fate, for in Sartrian terminology the chef is no more than a salaud.⁹

Sartre's predilection for grotesque, scatalogical or obscene incidents and images has attracted the attention of more than one critic. It is interesting to note that in an otherwise laudatory review of Le Mur, Albert Camus expressed the reservation: ". . . s'il y avait une critique à faire, elle porterait seulement sur l'usage que fait l'auteur de l'obscénité."¹⁰L'Enfance d'un Chef betrays in many respects Sartre's longing for obscenity; it is meant neither to titillate nor corrupt but is intended rather as an antidote to respectability. Furthermore, the "techniques de provocation" Sartre uses to scandalize or disturb his reader's sensibilities are also the medium through which the author conveys literary caricature and parody and existentialist philosophy.

Like some verbal alchemist, Sartre transmutes baser metals into gold. He is fascinated by the uglier side of life and has an intuitive understanding of the dark moments of existence. In Les Mots he tells how his discovery of his own physical ugliness became his "principe négatif, la chaux vive où l'enfant merveilleux s'est dissous."¹¹ This negative principle can be traced through much of Sartre's work, illuminating his analysis of Baudelaire, enhancing his understanding of "Saint" Genêt, and surfacing as sordid, obscene or grotesque images in "L'Enfance d'un Chef," provocative in their complexity but never gratuitous.

Notes

¹ "Le Mur, par Jean-Paul Sartre," Nouvelle Revue Française (October, 1939), pp. 639-642.

² Page references following quotations from L'Enfance d'un Chef are taken from the Livre de Poche edition of Le Mur (Paris, 1967).

³ Cf. Pierre-Henri Simon: "Non que la littérature soit, pour l'auteur de L'Être et le Néant, une diversion ou un jeu gratuit: elle est une autre voie pour rejoindre les mêmes sommets ou plonger dans les mêmes profondeurs" (L'Homme en procès [Neuchâtel et Paris: La Baconnière, 1950], p. 53).

⁴ In his book Sartre (1962; Edinburgh and London: Oliver & Boyd, Ltd., 1965), the British critic Maurice Cranston recalls that the English publishers promoting the translation of Le Mur would frequently quote the words of a Punch reviewer who wrote that "it leaves Lady Chatterley's Lover asleep at the post" (p. 24).

⁵ The expression is used by Geneviève Idt in Le Mur de Jean-Paul Sartre, Collection thèmes et textes (Paris: Larousse, 1972), p. 147.

⁶ Idt shows yet another dimension of Sartre's parody: ". . . l'agressive odeur d'autrui rappelle aux moments les plus émouvants que l'autre n'est qu'un corps . . . toutes ces odeurs dégradent le pathétique d'une scène angoissante ou le lyrisme des idylles . . . De telles indications fonctionnent comme des marques de sordide, destinées à réduire au trivial toute action et tout sentiment que valorise l'idéalisme" (op. cit., pp. 149-150).

⁷La Nausée (1938; Paris: Livre de Poche Université, 1968), p. 158.

⁸Op. cit., pp. 197-200.

⁹ The identification is authorized by the well-known passage in La Nausée, in which Roquentin visits the portrait-gallery of eminent past citizens—or chefs—of Bouville and concludes his visit with the words: "Adieu, beaux lis tout en finesse dans vos petits sanctuaires peints, adieu, beaux lis, notre orgueil et notre raison d'être, adieu, Salauds" (op. cit., pp. 135-6).

¹⁰ The article —Camus' last critical text of Sartre's work, published in Alger républicain, 12 March 1939,—is entitled "Le Mur de Jean-Paul Sartre," and is reproduced in Camus' Essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1965).

¹¹ Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 210.