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Sartre and the Question of Character in Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Frederic Will
Frederic Will*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin 12
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Extract

L'être et le Néant is a hymn in praise of the insubstantial. In that book the substantial emerges as the great enemy. It is the inert, the viscous, the spiritless. It is the realm of death, both in our conventional, literal sense of that word, and in the broader sense of whatever is not active, vital life at its most “authentic.” Among substantial forms of existence, in this broader sense, Sartre includes “character” or “selfhood.” He does not deny that character and selfhood exist: on the contrary he asserts their existence emphatically. They, and all other substantialities, alone have “being.” But the “being” of selfhood and character is inert, lifeless. We see this in introspection, Sartre says. Our character exists only in the past. As “being” it can never be “becoming.” Character is that essence which is lodged behind, even though in, us. That essence plays no part in the present of consciousness, the moving, insubstantial life which is what we distinctly are as living creatures.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1961 , pp. 455 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 455 Cf., for an analysis of these two plays, as they stand in relation to Sartre's philosophy, Robert Champigny, Stages on Sartre's Way (Bloomington, 1959), pp. 69–132. Champigny is clear and stimulating, though almost systematically unwilling to see weaknesses in Sartre's drama. Also, for another good treatment of Sartre's plays, as they illustrate his overall view of the literary character, cf. Hazel Barnes, The Literature of Possibility (Lincoln, 1959), pp. 85–100, and passim.

Note 2 in page 457 Cf., on this matter, D. J. Conacher, “Orestes as Existentialist Hero,” PQ, xxxiii (October 19S4), 404–17. Conacher, too, sees difficulties in this play of Sartre's, and discusses particularly well the “conventional” conditions, present to Aeschylean drama but absent in modern drama, which made austere, classical tragedy acceptable in antiquity but make it diffcult to accept, on the stage, today.

Note 3 in page 457 Le Diable et le bon Dieu (Paris, 1951), p. 115.

Note 4 in page 458 Cf. the excellent remarks on this novel by Iris Murdoch, Sartre (New Haven, 1953), pp. 11–18. The “philosophical” quality of Roquentin's experience is finely analyzed in this book. Also in Les Sandales d'Empédocle (Neuchatel, 1945), by Claude-Edmonde Magny. Cf. especially pages 105–121. Of La Nausée, Magny writes: “La cohésion intérieure d'Antoine (Roquentin)… lui viendra, non d'une tension mystérieuse de sa volonté, ou des événements qui lui sont advenus, mais de ce qu'il se laisse modeler par ses expériences, c'est-à-dire par quelque chose qui n'est plus absolument intérieur comme la volonté, ni complètement extérieur comme les contingences biographiques” (p. 144).

Note 5 in page 458 La Nausée (Paris, 1938), p. 165.

Note 6 in page 459 La Nausée, p. 163.

Note 7 in page 459 There Sartre writes: “Car c'est bien le but final de l'art: récupérer ce monde-ci en le donnant à voir tel qu'il est, mais comme s'il avait sa source dans la liberté humaine.” Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (Paris, 1948), p. 106.

Note 8 in page 459 L'Âge de raison (Paris, 1945), pp. 16–17.