WHY WRITE ? Jean Paul Sartre

WHY WRITE?

Jean Paul Sartre

Critical summary by Dr. S. Sreekumar

Biographical note

Sartre is known for his famous philosophical work—Being and Nothingness—which expounds atheistic existentialism. [Atheistic existentialism (of Sartre and Camus) excludes all metaphysical and religious beliefs. Sartre and Camus believed that there is nothing that transcends (that is beyond) human existence].

Sartre thought that the individual is autonomous (a self -contained being who/which does not need either God or Nature for its existence) and at the same time responsible for his actions.

Sartre’s relationship with the Communist Party had been stormy and contentious. But he was always a man with extreme left ideologies. The present piece, ‘Why Write’, is the second chapter of his What is Literature. In ‘Why Write’ Sartre adopts a phenomenological view of a work of literature as existing by virtue of an agreement between writer and reader. 

WHY WRITE?

Some believe that art is a form of escape.  Others see it as a means of conquering. Sartre says that there are other means of escape than through art. For example, a person can escape into a hermitage or can escape into madness or death. [Madness and death are seen as ways of escaping from the world]. Similarly, one can conquer through arms.  Thus Sartre believes that for escaping from the world or for conquering it, art is not necessary.  He believes that there is a deeper motive behind the aims of authors.

Sartre adopts the phenomenological attitude in his discussion of the relationship between human beings and nature. Consciousness is central to our awareness of the world.  ‘..man is the means by which things are manifested’. Our presence in the world (our consciousness) creates a relationship between different things. Our acts reveal new things about the world. We are the directors but not the producers.

It is we who set up a relationship between this tree and that bit of sky. Thanks to us, that star which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and that dark river are disclosed in the unity of a landscape. It is the speed of our auto and our airplane which organizes the great masses of the earth.

 If we turn away from the landscape it will sink into insignificance. It will not be destroyed. We may disappear from the earth in the course of time, but the earth will remain. It will remain in its lethargy until another consciousness emerges to awaken it.  Thus we are ‘inessential’ to the earth. [Even after all Humans perish, the earth will remain. The dinosaurs became extinct, but the earth remains]

v  Artistic creation helps us to feel that we are ‘essential in relation to the world’. Sartre feels that this is one of the chief motives of artistic creation.

If I fix on canvas or in writing a certain aspect of the fields or the sea or a look on someone’s face which I have disclosed, I am conscious of having produced them by condensing relationships, by introducing order where there was none, by imposing the unity of mind on the diversity of things.

[What Sartre says here is quite interesting. In Nature, there is no order or arrangement. The artist who paints a natural scenery selects certain aspects and ignores others (This is true even in realistic art). Thus the artist imposes the unity of his mind on Nature and produces a work of art. The true diversity of Nature is seldom reflected in such a work. A painting is different from a photograph.]

Thus the creator becomes essential to the creation. But at this point the created object escapes the creator. The creation is inessential because what is important is the creative activity. Sartre explains this point further. He says that the created object [a painting, a poem, a statue, etc.] is always in a state of suspension. It is never complete. The creator can always change a shade or a line here or there. Thus there is no finality in an artistic product. We have many examples of creative writers going on altering/ modifying their works any number of times.

[William Faulkner maintained that an author could not create a perfect story. (Please remember that he won the Nobel and two Pulitzers for literature). He said once: “In my opinion, if I could write all my work again, I am convinced that I would do it better…” Thomas Hardy admitted that there were two endings for The Return of the Native because of “certain circumstances of serial publication”. He left it to the reader to choose between the two endings. Thus works of art are never complete. ]

Sartre says that we are more conscious of our ‘productive activity’ than about the thing produced. In carpentry or poetry, we work according to ‘traditional norms’ with tools ‘whose usage is codified’. (In poetry or carpentry there are fixed norms and fixed tools. In carpentry, we have fixed tools like a chisel, hammer, etc. The shape and purpose of these tools cannot be modified beyond a certain point. Similarly in poetry, we have fixed linguistic norms like the meaning of words, syntax, grammar, etc. which cannot be modified beyond a certain point. If they are too radically altered, very few can comprehend what is written. Students may recollect the difficulties they encounter when they read Hopkins or Dylan Thomas)

·         ‘..it is Heidegger’s famous they [refer notes for Heidegger] who are working with our hands’. Heidegger believed that ‘human existence consists not in being oneself’, but ‘in being they’. (We realize our existence always in relation to others. We evaluate our actions based on standards set by others, and not by ourselves.  Our behavior/thoughts are always based on social norms or what others think.).

·         When we do as others do, the results may appear strange to us. [The thoughts/actions of others are removed from us and when we follow them the results may be strange. The results may appear objective, as it is removed from our thoughts/actions, in our perspective]. “ But if we ourselves produce the rules of production, the measures, the criteria, and if our creative drive comes from the very depths of our heart, then we never find anything but ourselves in our work”. Sartre adds, “It is our history, our love, our gaiety that we recognize in it”. What we receive when we go through them is the love or gaiety we have put into it. Hence the results we have got in canvas (painting) or paper (writing) never appear objective to us because we are very familiar with the process that created it. “These processes remain a subjective discovery, they are ourselves, our inspiration, our ruse, and when we seek to perceive our work, we create it again, we repeat mentally the operations which produced it, each of its aspects appears as a result”.   Here Sartre points out a contradiction of ideas: in the process of creating a work of art, the object (the work of art) may appear essential and the process (subject) may appear inessential. The inessential subject seeks ‘essentiality’ in the creative process and gets it. Then the object (the work of art) becomes inessential.

Sartre asserts that this contradiction is apparent in the art of writing.

        ‘…the literary object is a peculiar top which exists only in movement. To make it come into view a concrete act called reading is necessary, and it lasts only as long as the act can last. Beyond that there are only black marks on paper’. [A work exists only when we read it. When we stop reading, the work has no existence. It becomes mere black marks on paper]. The irony is that the writer cannot read what he writes unlike a shoe maker who can put on the shoes he has made or an architect who can live in the house he has built. [This point is explained below, after two paragraphs].

Sartre stresses the phenomenological view of reading as one composed of a ‘host of hypotheses, of dreams followed by awakenings, of hopes and deceptions”. [Refer to “Reading Process: A phenomenological approach” by Wolfgang Iser included elsewhere in this blog]  Readers are always ahead of the sentence they read. They foresee the end of the sentence they read. They foresee the next sentence, the next page etc. They may even foresee the end of the book they read. The sentences in the next page or next chapter may confirm or disappoint the foresights of the reader. With the act of reading progressing from one page to another, the literary object gets a moving horizon. Sartre says that the waiting and ignorance we confront in reading is part of the objectivity of the literary object.

In the operation of writing, says Sartre, there is an ‘implicit quasi-reading’. [By the term ‘quasi-reading’ Sartre means a ‘pseudo’ or ‘mock’ reading. It is implied (‘hidden’, ‘unspoken’) only. He says that because of the ‘quasi’ reading, real reading becomes impossible. In the paragraph, he explains the term further. 

v  ‘When the words form under his pen, the author doubtless sees them, but he does not see them as the reader does, since he knows them before writing them down’. [The writer is never surprised like the reader. He knows beforehand what he is going to write. The writer may also read what he writes but his attitude to what he reads is different from that of the reader. The writer’s purpose in reading what he writes is to regulate the material and find out slips of pen if any.]

v  ‘The writer neither foresees nor conjectures: he projects’. If he does not know what is going to happen to his hero, it only means that he has not thought about that. He might not have decided on that issue.

v  ‘The future is then a blank page’. [because the writer has not decided what is going to happen in the work he creates]. But the future of the reader is right in front of him in the form of hundred or more pages filled with words which separate him from the end. ‘Thus the writer meets everywhere only his knowledge, his will, his plans, in short, himself’. The object he creates is out of his reach in the sense that he can read it. [Agatha Christie could never read her novels with the suspense needed to enjoy them. All the ‘cliff-hangers’ are ‘cliff-hangers’ only for the readers; not for the writers.  ] He has not created it for himself. ‘He can judge it, not feel it’. Sartre gives an example: he says that Proust never discovered the homosexuality of Charlus because he had decided about that even before he started writing the novel. [Baron de Charlus, is a fictional character in the seven-volume novel Remembrance of Things Past; also translated as In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust.]

v  The writer has to forget about the work he had written to enjoy it with objectivity. Sartre says that this happened in the case of Rousseau when he re-read Social Contract towards the end of his life.

‘Thus it is not true that one writes for himself’. The writer is not simply giving ‘a languishing extension’ to his emotions when he writes them down on paper. The work is not a faithful medium to reflect the writer’s emotions. The extension of emotions to the pages in a work is ‘deteriorating’, ‘ailing’. It is not a healthy way to express emotions.

·         ‘The creative act is only an incomplete and abstract moment in the production of a work’. The writer is not alone. He cannot write as much as he likes, but has to think about the reader at every juncture. If the work is not published, the writer will despair or stop writing altogether. ‘…the operation of writing implies that of reading as its dialectical correlative and these two connected acts necessitate two distinct agents’.

·         Any work is a work of the mind. It becomes concrete with the joint effort of the writer and the reader. Both are necessary for the realization of the work. ‘There is no art except for and by others’.

       In reading there is a coming together of perception and creation. By perception, Sartre means the insight and sensitivity of the reader when he reads a work. Both the subject (reader) and the object (the work) are necessary for that.

·         The work is necessary because it is transcendent. [A work goes beyond the normal experience. Its words, sentences etc. acquire different meanings other than the ordinary ones. 

      We know that metaphorical use of language (‘ a heart of stone’] takes it beyond the purview of the normal meaning]  . It imposes a structure in the mind of the reader. The reader has to wait for the work and observe it.

·         The reader is also necessary. The reader is a means to disclose the work and its nature. [Without him reading, the work has no existence].  The work exists because of the reader. He is conscious of disclosing the work and creating it. It is creation through disclosure.

·         Reading is not a mechanical activity. The signs on a paper do not create an impression in the mind of the reader (as light does on a photographic plate). If the reader is tired or stupid most of the meaning/significance of what he reads will escape him. On the other hand if he is attentive and efficient, he could ‘project beyond the words’ a synthetic form.

·         The meaning is not ‘contained in the words’. It is the reader who allows the ‘signification’ of each word. The literary object gets a concrete shape through language. But it is ‘never given in language’. Sartre says that it is through silence we comprehend a work. This silence is an ‘opponent’ of the word.

·         Sartre explains this argument thus: the hundred thousand words aligned in a book can be read one by one. The meaning of the book will not emerge. The reader must put himself into silence to comprehend the meaning the aligned words communicate. This operation is re-invention or discovery. The re-invention is as original as the first invention.

·         The author is not familiar with silence. His silence is subjective. It is ‘anterior to language’. It is the absence of words. But the silence produced by the reader is an object. In the interior of this silence, there are more silences. What Sartre means is that any text communicates more than one meaning. It is these silences that give density to a work. 

·         The Silences are ‘unexpressed’. Sartre says that instead of the term ‘unexpressed’, we must use ‘inexpressible’. These silences are ‘everywhere and nowhere’.

·         As for examples, Sartre cites three— the ‘quality of the marvelous’ in Alain-Fournier’s The Wanderer (Le Grande Meaulness), the ‘grandiosity of Armance’, and the ‘degree of realism and truth of Kafka’s mythology’ (refer notes). It is the task of the reader to invent them all ‘in a continual exceeding of the written thing’. The author will guide the reader, but it is only guidance that he will give. The reader must go beyond the ‘landmarks’ set up by the author. ‘…reading is directed creation’.

Sartre says that the substance of the literary work is the subjectivity of the reader. He cites the example of Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. ‘Raskolnikov’s waiting is my waiting which I lend him…. His hatred of the police magistrate who questions him is my hatred…’ [In the novel Raskolnikov is represented as a dual personality. He waits for many days after taking the decision to kill the money lender.  Nobody suspects him.  He goes on waiting for the police to suspect him. Finally, after many days he confesses to the murder. Porfiry Petrovich is the police investigator.  Raskolnikov has a pathological dislike of all police officers].    

Sartre’s views on language are also quite interesting. He says that words are traps that ‘arouse our feelings’ and ‘reflect them towards us’. Words give a shape to the feelings in our mind. But these feelings are attributed to an imaginary character who lives with those feelings. This character has no other substance than our feelings. He ‘confers objects, perspectives, and a horizon upon them’.

Thus for the reader ‘all is to do and all is already done’. The work is there but he can enjoy it only to the limit of his capacities [intellectual, emotional, linguistic].  He knows that there are more things in the work beyond his capacities. The work seems to him ‘inexhaustible’. All literary work ‘is an appeal’, according to Sartre. He explains his statement thus: ¾    The creation ‘finds its fulfilment only in reading’, ¾    The author has to hand over the job of accomplishing what he has begun to the reader, ¾    Only through the reader’s consciousness can the author regard himself as essential to his work. Therefore all literary work ‘is an appeal’. Then a question comes up as to what the author is appealing. The answer for this question is simple. ¾    The reason for the appearance of the work is never found in the work or in the author’s mind. ¾    The appearance of the work is a new event which cannot be explained by ‘anterior data’.  ¾    The artistic creation is an ‘absolute beginning’ [total, outright]. It is brought about by the freedom of the reader. ¾    ‘Thus the writer appeals to the reader’s freedom to collaborate in the production of his work’. It can be argued that we can use all tools according to our will.  Tools are instruments of ‘possible action’. In that sense the work of art is not a special tool. We are free to use a hammer to hit our neighbour or nail up something. Here the tool serves our freedom. On the other hand, ‘the book does not serve our freedom, it requires it’. We can attain this freedom by ‘recognizing it, having confidence in it, and finally requiring of it an act, an act based on the confidence that one gives it’. A tool is a means to an end. The book is not a tool in that sense. The end (aim) of the book is the reader’s freedom. [The reader has freedom to decide the aim of the book]. Kant said that art is ‘finality without end’. Sartre feels that this is an ‘inappropriate’ expression to describe a work of art. The expression is inappropriate because it implies that the artistic object presents only ‘an appearance of finality’. Again it implies that the only role of the artistic work is soliciting the free and ordered play of imagination. ¾     The imagination of the reader/spectator has not only a regulating function but also a constitutive [built-in, inborn, innate] one. The work is called upon ‘to recompose the beautiful object beyond the traces left by the artist’. [The author leaves out hints and traces in the work. From these the reader can recompose the work taking it to directions beyond the wildest imagination of the author]. ¾     For a work there is ‘finality without end’. But the finality is different for different readers. The work may have a finality but we cannot fix it. ¾     Kant wants us to compare the beauty of a work of art to that of a flower. A flower has symmetry, harmonious colors, and regular curves. Hence we try to see them ‘as means at the disposal of an unknown end’. ¾     However, Sartre feels that the Kantian view is an error. The beauty of nature can never be compared to the beauty of a work of art. Kant thought that the work of art existed at first as a fact and then it is seen by us. Sartre differs. He says, ‘…it exists only if one looks at it….’its existence is pure exigency (required in a particular situation). ¾     The book is a task to be discharged. ‘You are perfectly free to leave that book on the table’. But if you open it, it is your responsibility to read it. The book has no subjective functioning. To enjoy it is ‘a creative act required by an imperative’ (necessity). Now Sartre explains ‘the value’ of a work of art. ‘This absolute end, this imperative which is transcendent yet acquiesced in, which freedom itself adopts as its own, is what we call a value. The work of art is a value because it is an appeal’.

[When a reader opens a book to read, it becomes his responsibility. On the other hand, if he keeps it unopened, it is not his responsibility. The reader has the option to do both. The book when kept unopened has freedom but this freedom is purely subjective. The book gets it real freedom, when the reader starts reading. Reading is a creative act. It is an imperative (a necessity) because without it neither the reader can create nor the book can gain its real freedom. A book exists as a book only when it is read. It is the absolute end of a book (the aim of its existence). This necessity of being read is transcendent as the reader goes beyond (transcends) the limits of the book when he reads it. He will be reading newer and newer significance into it as he reads. In this sense, reading is a transcendent activity. However the fact that a book is to be read by somebody or other is acquiesced (tacitly or passively accepted) in the very concept of a book. This can be termed the value of a book. Thus the work of art is a value because it is basically an appeal to be read and transcended]

(Scholar’s note: - hope this explanation is satisfactory. Sartre, as you can see from the language employed by him, is very abstract. Some of the difficulties arise from the translation. For certain French expressions, there are no English equivalents).

The reader has complete freedom in the act of reading. (He can keep a book always closed or he can willingly take it up for reading). The writer has no way to appeal to the passivity of the reader. There are authors who communicate fear, desire or anger to the reader. They have ‘sure-fire’ means of evoking these feelings in the reader. [Remember that even Shakespeare tried to create fear in the mind of the spectators. His ‘sure-fire’ means were witches or ghosts.] But they are often condemned for this. The reader’s freedom disappears when he is under the above passions. The book becomes a means to evoke hate or desire. Sartre says:

The writer should not seek to overwhelm; otherwise he is in contradiction with himself; if he wishes to make demands he must propose only the task to be fulfilled.

[The writer’s task is to give complete freedom to the reader. The writer must not try to create base instincts such as fear, hatred or desire in the minds of the readers. Such emotions will distract the reader from the true end of the work of art]

The writer must allow the reader to entertain ‘a certain aesthetic withdrawal’. Genet calls this the ‘author’s politeness towards the reader’. Sartre makes it clear that the artist is not appealing to some sort of abstract freedom. The aesthetic object is created with feelings embedded in it. If it is touching, we shed tears, if it is humorous we laugh.

The reader renders himself credulous, easily believing the things the writer puts forward. [This is the tacit understanding a writer has with the readers. If the reader refuses to believe the writer, then the act of reading will never take place. Coleridge called this ‘willing suspension of disbelief’]. This credulity encloses the reader like a dream [A Midsummer Night’s Dream?]. He can shake of the dream at any given moment. Thus he is always conscious of being free. ‘…reading is a free dream’.

 The reader’s feelings are never dominated by the object. He is not conditioned by any external reality. In the case of Raskolnikov, [protagonist of Crime and Punishment] Sartre asserts that, the character lives because of a mixture of repulsion and friendship we feel for him.  These feelings of repulsion and friendship are not there in Raskolnikov (who is nothing but an imaginary object). But these feelings are there in us and we give them to the character.

Thus the reader’s feelings are never dominated by the object, and no external reality can condition them, they have their permanent source in freedom; that is they are all generous—for I call a feeling generous which has its origin and its end in freedom. Thus reading is an exercise in generosity, and what the writer requires of the reader is not the application of an abstract freedom but the gift of his whole person, with his passions, his prepossessions, his sympathies, his sexual temperament, and his scale of values.

[Sartre seems to recommend the total surrender of the reader’s individuality during the act of reading].

The passivity of the reader becomes an act. Sartre calls it an activity of the ‘highest degree’. ‘That is why we see people who are known for their toughness shed tears at the recital of imaginary misfortunes; for the moment they have become what they would have been if they had not spent their lives hiding their freedom from themselves’. 

[Some of the world’s toughest leaders and Generals were keen literary enthusiasts. Napoleon Bonaparte was a voracious reader. He always travelled with books and had life-long interest in the classics, Plutarch, Homer and Ossian. Similarly, Lenin’s love of Tolstoy and Goethe is well known].

‘Thus the author writes in order to address himself to the freedom of readers, and he requires it in order to make his work exist’.  The author’s existence is connected to the freedom of the readers. But, according to Sartre this freedom is reciprocal. The readers have to give freedom to the author also. They must recognize the creative freedom of the author.

Even when the author is delighted by a landscape, he knows that he has not created it. But without him the relations ‘among the trees, the foliage, the earth, and the grass’ will not exist. He can give no solid reason for their existence. ‘Yet it exists…’ We can speak of any existence only when a thing exists—‘I can make there be being only if being already is’. The author may believe in God and say that He made everything for the author to enjoy. But such a position will create more questions than answers. Is the blending seen in Nature between blue (sky, water) and green (trees, plants etc.) deliberate? He (or we) has no means to find out. ‘The idea of a universal providence is no guarantee of any particular intention…’ The green of Nature and the blue of water/sky can be explained (better) through scientific laws or principles.

All the relations we establish remain hypotheses (assumptions, conjectures); no end is proposed to us in the manner of an imperative, since none is expressly revealed as having been willed by a creator. Thus our freedom is never called forth by natural beauty.

The relationship the author tries to establish between the tree and water or between the sky and land becomes just a ‘caprice’ (an unpredictable, unmotivated notion or action). When the author tries to establish relationship between the objects in Nature, he becomes subjective. When he muses about certain motifs, (dominant idea or central theme) Nature becomes ‘a pretext’ for his musings. [Nature becomes an excuse to hide the real intention or state of affairs].  When he transmits his musings to other men, he is intervening between ‘natural spectacles and the gaze of other men’. (The author transmits his views to other men and tries to influence their view of the same Nature). Nature is ‘finality without end’. When the author tries to transmit it to other men it becomes ‘human’ by transmission (the quality of ‘finality without end’ is over). When the author has ‘captured this illusion in flight, since he has laid it out for other men and ‘have disengaged it and rethought it for them’, they can consider it ‘with confidence’. It has become intentional. But the author remains ‘on the border between the subjective and the objective without ever being able to contemplate the objective ordonnance’ (arrangement) he has transmitted.

 [The author’s position relating to what he has conveyed becomes problematic. The objective reality he wanted to convey becomes subjective when he conveys them]

However, the reader experiences no confusion between the subjective and the objective. He progresses through a work in security guaranteed by the author. He may go far beyond the confines of the book, but he could do so because the author had gone farther.

Whatever connections he may establish among the different parts of the book—among the chapters or the words—he has a guarantee, namely that they have been expressly willed….The creator has preceded him along the way, and the most beautiful disorders are effects of art, that is again order.

[Sometimes, artists infuse their creations with chaos. Bacon said that he believed in ‘deeply ordered chaos’. In fact, there is a ‘chaos theory’ in fashion designing. Shoppers spent hundreds on what were considered ‘ugly’ in fashion once].

Sartre says that ‘Reading is induction, interpolation, extrapolation…’ [Refer notes]. The basis of all these activities rest on the reader. ‘A gentle force’ accompanies him from the first page to the last. This does not mean that it is easy to guess the intentions of the author. Intentions are ‘objects of conjectures’ [estimates, assumptions, surmises]. But there is a great certainty that the beauties which appear in a book are never accidental. In nature the harmony between the tree and the sky is sheer chance only. On the contrary, if the protagonists of a novel find themselves in a tower or in a park, it is not by chance but because of the intention of the author. The causality in a novel is only appearance [superficial, feigning, exterior]. Sartre calls it ‘causality without cause’. It is the ‘finality which is the profound reality’.

If the reader suspects that the artist has written something ‘out of passion, and in passion’ his ‘confidence would immediately vanish’. Here the author would be supporting causes with ends in his mind. [To propagate his ideas, the author may support causes (with the ends in his mind). But if the ‘subterfuge (stratagem, ploy, ruse) arises the suspicion of the reader’, he may immediately reject the work]. The writer might have been passionate or have thought about the work under the influence of some passion. But when he sits down to write, he must have withdrawn from his passions as the reader does when he reads the same. Sartre calls this ‘an attitude of generosity.’

Thus reading is a pact of generosity between author and reader. Each one trusts the other; each one counts on the other, demands of the other as much as he demands of himself.

When the reader reads a book, he makes demands. In the process of reading he makes more and more demands. The author too demands more and more from the reader. Thus the freedom of the reader reveals the freedom of the author.

Sartre asserts that causality is an illusion whether the art is ‘realistic’ or ‘formal. He takes the example of the post-impressionist French painter Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) to illustrate the point. A tree in the painting of Cézanne [refer notes] may appear as part of a causal chain. But Sartre differs. He says that the painter has willingly put it there and it is part of the deep structure of the painting. Its basis is human freedom—the creative freedom of the artist. As for realistic art, Sartre takes the example of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). [Vermeer painted realistic pictures using very expensive pigments]. Though his paintings may appear photographic, ‘the splendor of his texture, the pink and velvety glory of his little brick walls’ etc. show that the paintings are not merely realistic. Their finality is in the ‘materialistic imagination’ of the artist himself.

With this realist we are perhaps closest to absolute creation, since it is in the very passivity of the matter that we meet the unfathomable freedom of man

[Sartre says that the realistic paintings of Vermeer are not realistic in the real sense of the term. The artist’s imagination plays a part in the paintings. The paintings are passive, but that passivity evolves from the artist’s freedom]       

The painted, sculptured or narrated object [a painting, a sculpture or a book] is never limited to that alone. We see them against the background of the world, the objects represented appear against the background of the universe.

If the painter presents us with a field or a vase of flowers, his paintings are windows which are open on the whole world. We follow the red path which is buried among the wheat much farther than Van Gogh has painted it, among other wheat fields, under other clouds, to the river which empties into the sea, and we extend to infinity, to the other end of the world, the deep finality which supports the existence of the field and the earth.

The creative art aims at ‘a total renewal of the world’. ‘Each painting, each book, is a totality of being’. What the author/ artist creates gains objectivity only in the eyes of the reader/spectator.

The writer (like all other artists) likes to provide aesthetic pleasure to the reader. Sartre prefers the term ‘aesthetic joy’ to aesthetic pleasure. If the reader gets this feeling, the work has achieved its aim. This pleasure is denied to the author. It is part of the aesthetic consciousness of the reader.

v  Sartre’s ideas in the following paragraphs are difficult to comprehend and may pose considerable difficulty to average students of literature.

Sartre admits that it is difficult to explain this ‘aesthetic joy’. He says that this feeling is ‘identical with the recognition of a transcendent and absolute end’ which ‘suspends the utilitarian’ ends. [Aesthetic joy has no utilitarian purpose (art for arts’ sake). It is the recognition of something beyond and complete in itself. Sartre means that in enjoying a work, we go beyond the work to something complete in itself [Nature/God/Destiny/Man or some such similar candidate] Sartre says that it is a complex feeling and is difficult to explain. It has to be experienced] It is an ‘appeal’ or a ‘value’ which is connected to individual freedom. The individual freedom is a transcendent requirement to feel aesthetic joy.

Reading is ‘creation’.  Freedom is not only ‘pure autonomy’ but also a ‘creative activity’ [it is not limited to giving itself its own law (autonomy), but is constitutive (having the power to enact or establish) of the object. It is a ‘creation wherein the created object is given as object to its creator’. (Reading is creation. When a person reads a particular work, it becomes different from what the author might have meant when he wrote. In that sense the book when it is read by another becomes an object different from what the author meant. The creator of the work gets another object quite different from what he created.] The creator gets enjoyment from the work he has created when he comes across the different objects created from the same work by different readers. The positional consciousness created by the work (consciousness from the different positions of the author and the reader) is an essential part of the structure of aesthetic joy. Aesthetic joy is experienced by the author and the reader from their different positions. The work is essential for the aesthetic joy experienced by the author and the reader. But the work has a non-positional consciousness. This non-positional aesthetic consciousness of the work provides a feeling of security. Thereby even the strongest aesthetic emotions acquire a ‘sovereign calm’. [The emotions generated cannot transcend a certain invisible boundary set up in the work] In this condition of ‘sovereign calm’ there is ‘strict harmony between subjectivity and objectivity’.

·         Sartre further adds that the aesthetic object is the world, which is aimed through the imaginary. [What he means is that the writer creates a world which (though based on the concrete realities around him) is his own imaginary world. Remember Sartre’s earlier statement that even in photographic realism, there are things more or less idealized through the writer’s imagination].

·         The ‘aesthetic joy accompanies the positional consciousness that the world is a value’, ‘a task proposed to human freedom’. Sartre calls this the ‘aesthetic modification of the human project’ because the world is ‘our horizon’. It is the horizon of our situation. The world is a synthetic reality, an undifferentiated ensemble (collective, group) of obstacles and implements. [Please remember what he said in the beginning of this essay: ‘It is we who set up a relationship between this tree and that bit of sky. Thanks to us, that star which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and that dark river are disclosed in the unity of a landscape. It is the speed of our auto and our airplane which organizes the great masses of the earth.’ Thus, as he repeats here, the world is a ‘synthetic reality’; something artificial or fake created in the imagination of the perceiver].  

·         The world is not there as a ‘demand addressed to our freedom’. The world will still be there even if we do not aesthetically use it through our freedom. [The world existed even during the Cambrian Period when no humans existed to aesthetically appreciate it].

·          Aesthetic joy reaches the ‘level of consciousness’ where the writer recovers and internalizes that which is ‘non-ego par excellence’. The world for Sartre is ‘non-ego’ (not a conscious thinking subject) but it is ‘par excellence’ (better or more than all others of the same kind). The world which is there right in front of us is transformed by the writer into something of vital importance. The fact (the existence of the world) becomes a value (something desirable, worth, beneficial, advantageous etc.).

·          ‘The world is my task’. The universe is a ‘unique’ and ‘absolute’ (complete) object. The essential function of the writer is to make the universe ‘come into being’ (come into existence) in his work in an ‘unconditioned way’ (a way which is his own, which is not conditioned (habituated) by either his contemporaries or his predecessors).

·         Reading is a ‘pact’ between the reader and the writer. It is a pact between human freedoms. Reading is a ‘confident and exacting recognition of the freedom of the writer’.

·         Aesthetic pleasure is absolutely exigent—something which is absolutely necessary, without which the whole process of reading (and of writing as well) will become meaningless. This pleasure is felt by every man (though in different ways) who reads the work.

·         Thus ‘all mankind is present in its highest freedom’. Reading and writing sustain the ‘being of a world which is both its world and the external world’. [In reading and writing the reader and the writer together create a world which is the world of the work as well as the world which is experienced by both the writer and the reader. Through aesthetic pleasure it becomes the world of all mankind.]

·         In aesthetic joy ‘the positional consciousness is an image –making consciousness of the world in its totality both as being and having to be’. [Earlier in the essay, Sartre has maintained that the positional consciousness created by the work (consciousness from the different positions of the author and the reader) is an essential part of the structure of aesthetic joy.

·         Aesthetic joy is experienced by the author and the reader from their different positions. The work is essential for the aesthetic joy experienced by the author and the reader]. Here he says that the positional consciousness is an image-making consciousness. The author and the reader create images (imitation) of the world ‘in its totality both as being and having to be’ (as it exists and as it evolves).

·         This world is full of paradoxes. It is at once our world and at the same time foreign. It is the world we have experienced, but coming from the author, it appears as totally new to us. This novelty is an important feature that attracts us to a work of art. [Please refer to what Coleridge wrote in Biographica Literaria Chapter 14 about the ‘loveliness and the wonders of the world before us’. We do not see the ‘inexhaustible treasure in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude; we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand’].

·         The stranger this world becomes, the more ours it becomes. [If the world depicted in a work is familiar to us, we lose interest in that. On the other hand if the world depicted is strange to us then we become more attached to it. [May be one of the reasons for the apparently ever-lasting popularity of fairy tales, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream.]

·         The non-positional aesthetic consciousness of the work ‘envelops the harmonious totality of human freedoms’ [freedoms of the author, readers etc.] since in the process of writing and reading an object which has ‘universal confidence and exigency’ [necessity] is created. [ the work created has ‘universal confidence’ in the sense that the aesthetic pleasure generated from the work is for the whole world] [Moreover every work is born at a time when there is a necessity for the same].

Sartre summarizes his arguments in this concluding part of the essay.

·         To write is thus both to disclose the world and to offer it as a task to the generosity of the reader. [The writer never exists without the reader. The reader has to open the book and start reading. Then only the book will come alive. If he/she keeps the book closed, the book can never fulfil its destiny [that of giving aesthetic pleasure]. Thus the ‘generosity’ of the reader is of paramount importance in the destiny of a work]

·          Writing is to have recourse (route) to the consciousness of others in order to make one’s self ( personality) be recognized as essential to the totality of being. [In simple terms this means that through writing a writer becomes essential to the universe]

·          It (to write) is to wish to live this essentiality by means of interposed (interpolated, interjected) persons [ here, two interpretations are possible for ‘persons’— i. readers, ii. persona [characters] created by the writer] ; but, on the other hand, as the real world is revealed only by action, as one can feel himself in it only by exceeding it in order to change it, the novelist’s universe would lack thickness if it were not discovered in a movement to transcend it. [An active novelist must try to overcome the limits of the universe. In this attempt he may fail but his work will get ‘thickness’ (depth)].

·         ‘.. an object in a story does not derive its density of existence from the number and length of the descriptions devoted to it, but from the complexity of its connections with the different characters. The more often the characters handle it, take it up and put it down, in short go beyond it towards their own ends, the more real will it appear’. [Students of Thomas Hardy may remember the skill with which the author makes inanimate objects come alive. Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native offers a typical example. Egdon is a fictitious place but the novelist makes it real through ‘the complexity of its connections’ with different characters in the novel].

·         In this connection, Sartre points out what he calls the ‘error of realism’. Realism believed that ‘the real reveals itself to contemplation’ and one could ‘draw an impartial picture of it’. ‘How could that be possible’, asks Sartre because our observation of anything is only partial and our ‘naming’ it is ‘already a modification’. The writer who wants to become essential to the universe, becomes essential to the injustices in it. [The genius that created Desdemona cannot absolve itself from the responsibility for creating Iago].

·         Though the writer creates injustices, he goes ‘beyond them towards their abolition’. [It is true that Desdemona suffers and dies, but Iago is not spared. He too is punished.]

·         Along with the writer, the reader also is responsible for creating and keeping alive an ‘unjust world’.  The author’s whole art was ‘bent on obliging me to create what he discloses’. Hence the reader has to compromise himself. He has to accept what the writer has given him.  [In spite of his dislike he has to be a participant in the creation of Iago]. ‘So both of us bear the responsibility for the universe’.

·         Thus the universe is supported by the joint freedoms of the writer and the reader. The author integrates this freedom ‘into the human’ and human freedom becomes ‘its end’. If it does not become the end, it at least is a stage along the way towards the end. 

·         However bad and hopeless the humanity which a work portrays, ‘the work must have an air of generosity’. [This ‘generosity’ is explained subsequently]. Interestingly, Sartre explains how ‘generosity’ must be expressed in a work.

·         It must not be expressed through ‘edifying discourses’ (Enlightening sermons) or virtuous characters. [Such as the ones we come across in 18^th century British fiction— Richardson’s, for example.]. ‘Fine sentiments do not make fine books’.

·         On the other hand, ‘generosity’ must form the ‘warp and woof’ of a work. It must be ‘the stuff out of which the people and things are cut’. Whatever be the subject of the work, an ‘essential lightness’ must appear everywhere. [D. H. Lawrence’s novels and short-stories are noteworthy for the lightness with which the novelist deals with his themes].   We must be made to remember that the work ‘is never a natural datum, [data is the plural. Datum is singular. = something given or admitted especially as a basis for reasoning or inference] but an exigence [that which is required in a particular situation] and a gift’.

·         There are many injustices in this world. That does not mean that the writer has to contemplate them coldly [without the warmth of normal human emotion, friendliness, or compassion, detached, indifferent]. But the writer must ‘animate them’ with his/ her ‘indignation’. The writer ‘must disclose the injustices and create them with their nature as injustices’, as ‘abuses to be suppressed’.

·         ‘The writer’s universe will only reveal itself in all its depth to the examination, the admiration, and the indignation of the reader…’ The ‘generous love’ [which a reader displays to the characters and situations etc.] ‘is a promise to maintain’ [ the same in real life], and the ‘generous indignation [ which a reader feels towards the characters and situations etc.]  ‘is a promise to change’ [ attempt to change the same if it exists in real life] and ‘the admiration a promise to imitate’ [ the same in real life] . 

·         At the same time Sartre makes it clear that no one to one equation between morality and literature is possible. ‘ .. literature is one thing and morality a quite different one’. But ‘at the heart of the aesthetic imperative’ we can see the ‘moral imperative’. [Art which is amoral, which is indifferent towards or which disregards morality is not at all genuine].  The writer recognizes the freedom of the reader.   That is why he chooses to write. The reader recognizes the freedom of the writer. That is why he chooses to open the book. Thus ‘the work of art from whichever side you approach it, is an act of confidence in the freedom of men’.

·         Readers and authors recognize this freedom. This freedom is manifest in the work itself. Hence ‘the work can be defined as an imaginary presentation of the world in so far as it demands human freedom’.

·         From this Sartre comes to the conclusion that there is no ‘gloomy literature’ [Like the novels of Thomas Hardy—Tess of the d'Urbervilles, or The Mayor of Casterbridge? Both these novels are noted for their pessimistic tone.]. Sartre points out that ‘however dark may be the colours in which one paints the world, he paints it only so that free men may feel their freedom as they face it’. Thus, there are ‘only good novels and bad novels’.

·         The bad novels try to please the reader through ‘flattering’. [Perhaps what Sartre means by this statement is that the bad novel caters to the taste of the readers. It tries to flatter their self-esteem.]   The good novel is an exigence (that which is required in a particular situation) and an act of faith. [The good novel is in synchrony with the zeitgeist or the ‘general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era’.]

·         ‘But above all, the unique point of view from which the author can present the world to those freedoms (of the readers) whose concurrence (agreement, consensus) he wishes to bring about is that of a world to be impregnated (saturated) always with more freedom. Sartre adds that ‘the unleashing (releasing) of generosity’ by the writer could not be used to ‘authorize an injustice’.  Similarly the reader could not ‘enjoy his freedom while reading a work which approves or accepts or simply abstains from condemning the subjection of man by man’.

·         Sartre provides us with an example. We can imagine ‘a good novel being written by an American Negro’ [The term ‘Negro’ was a respectable one in the 1940s. Hence its use by Sartre]. Sometimes the hatred for the whites may be ‘spread all over it’. But this hatred is there because the writer wants the freedom of his race. The reader, in his freedom, can never identify with ‘a race of oppressors’. ‘Thus, I require of all freedoms that they demand the liberation of coloured people against the white race and against myself in so far as I am part of it’. Nobody must imagine to write a good novel praising anti-Semitism.

·         The writer, ‘a free man addressing free men, has only one subject—freedom’. Hence any ‘attempt’ on the part of anybody ‘to enslave’ the readers threatens the very art of writing.

·         ‘ A blacksmith can be affected by fascism in his life as a man, but not necessarily in his craft; a writer will be affected in both, and even more in his craft than in his life’.

·         Sartre points out the example of the Nazi-inspired writer—Drieu la Rochelle. He was one of the writers who called for fascism with sincerity. But he and similar others who supported fascism were ‘smitten with sterility at the very moment when the Nazis were loading them with honours’. 

Drieu la Rochelle [(1893-1945), was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays. He was born, lived and died in Paris.  He became a proponent of French fascism in the 1930s, and collaborated with the Germans during their occupation of France. He believed sincerely that Fascism would help to reduce the decadence of Europe: “I am a Fascist because I have measured the progress of decadence in Europe. I have seen in Fascism the sole means of limiting and reducing that decadence’].

Drieu la Rochelle ‘reprimanded, rebuked, and lectured his countrymen. No one answered him because no one was free to do so. He became irritated, he no longer felt his readers’.             He became ‘more insistent’, but nobody showed any sign of understanding him. Rochelle became disoriented because of the utterly silent attitude of his readers. He became distressful and complained to the Germans. ‘The moment arrived when he struck his breast; but no echo except among the bought journalists whom he despised’. He resigned and then withdrew his resignation. ‘Finally, he kept still, gagged by the silence of others’.

..the freedom of writing implies the freedom of the citizen. One does not write for slaves… The art of prose is bound up with the only regime in which prose has meaning, democracy. When one is threatened the other is too. And it is not enough to defend them with the pen. A day comes when the pen is forced to stop, and the writer must then take up arms…literature throws you into battle. Writing is a certain way of wanting freedom, once you have begun, you are engaged, willy-nilly.

Sartre concludes this piece with two questions: What type of freedom has to be defended—the ideal one or the concrete, everyday freedom? He says that this question is tied up with another simple question, which nobody ever has asked: ‘For whom does one write?’

NOTES

Martin Heidegger was a German existentialist philosopher who greatly influenced the thinkers and writers of 20th century. Leading philosophers of the twentieth century like Sartre, Derrida, and Foucault were influenced by Heidegger’s ideas.

The Wanderer by Alain-Fournier: - The Wanderer [Le Grand Meaulnes] is a novel by the French author Alain-Fournier. The novel borders on the marvelous. The protagonist Augustin Meaulnes chances on a magical costume party where he is enchanted by the girl of his dreams, Yvonne de Galais. He wants to meet her again but could not as he fails to find her place again. Meaulness embodies the romantic ideal, the search for the unobtainable, and the mysterious world between childhood and adulthood. [From Wikipedia]

Armance is a romance novel  by French writer Stendhal, published anonymously in 1827. The protagonist is Octave de Malivert. He is a brilliant young man who is in love with Armance Zohiloff. A series of misunderstandings keep the lovers divided. There are suggestions in the novel that Octave is impotent as a result of a severe accident. When the pair marry, the slanders of a rival convince Octave that Armance had married only out of selfishness. Octave leaves to fight in Greece, and dies there of sorrow.

Franz Kafka was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia (presently the Czech Republic), Austria–Hungary. His unique body of writing—much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously—is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature.

His stories include The Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony, while his novels are The Trial, and The Castle. [from Wikipedia]

It is said that Kafka's fictional works, like the ancient myths, do not explain or analyse. As in those legends, the attitude is one of total acceptance. Several entries in Kafka's diaries and notebooks show what a fascination the ancient myths had for him. He writes and re-writes his versions of them, clearly looking for some meaning, relating them to his own experience

Paul Cézanne (US: /seɪˈzæn/ or UK: /sɪˈzæn/; French: [pɔl sezan]; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavor to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

Induction, interpolation, extrapolation

Induction is the process of inducting / initiation. Reading is an initiation into a work. Interpolation is insertion or addition. In the process of reading, the reader comes across more and more ideas, thoughts etc. Reading is never in a straight line. As it progresses, the consciousness of the reader branches out into newer and newer things. Extrapolation involves prediction of the future course of action in a work. This projection is always based on past experience.

Scholar’s comments:-

v  The language used in the essay is not gender neutral. Sartre might not have been familiar with the concepts of gender neutrality. The notes faithfully follows the ideas and expressions of Sartre. Anybody who finds the language obnoxious from a gender point of view may please bear with the blogger.

v  Sartre is repetitive in his positions. There seems to be a lack of organization in the ideas expressed.

Disclaimer

Scholar’s please note:

This critical summary is a modest attempt to make Indian students familiar with the complex ideas expounded by Sartre. The explanations are not original in any sense but taken from various sources. This summary is offered with the sole intention of helping students and research scholars with a quick overview of Sartre’s ideas. The post may be used by the students to further their studies of Sartre.

Dr. S. Sreekumar