South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Sartre's Nineteenth Century: A Critique of His Criticism

Author(s): Robert W. Artinian
Source: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jan., 1972), pp. 39-45
Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association
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SARTRE'S NINETEENTH CENTURY:

OF HIS CRITICISM

A CRITIQUE

ROBERT W. ARTINIAN

Universityof Virginia
There can be little doubt that Jean-Paul Sartre is the great
man of contemporaryFrench letters.The enormous impact upon
the age of his philosophy,his plays,his novels,his varied contributions to topical problemshas shown him to be a worthysuccessor
to the traditionof Diderot, Voltaire, Hugo, and Gide. Naturally,
the formalexpositionof his estheticshas aroused a smaller degree
of public interestand yet,in this area also, the influenceof JeanPaul Sartrehas been immense.It is our endeavor to examine the
views of this critic toward the nineteenthcentury,with special
referenceto Flaubert and Maupassant.
The topic was suggestedby the recentbook of Benjamin Suhl,
Jean Paul Sartre: The Philosopher as Literary Critic, published
by Columbia UniversityPress, and by the consequent re-reading
of Situations II. This is supposed to be the centurywhen man
has become for the firsttime fullyand thoroughly"problematic"
to himself.If so, it would only seem natural that literatureshould
be posed as a new and extremekind of problem for literarymen.
Natural and inevitable, too, that this problem should be raised
particularlyby the French, whose literaturehas always been the
most programmaticof all literatures,and the most self-consciously
attachedto criticaltheory.
For some time now French criticshave been talking about a
"crisis"in theirliterature."Crisis" is a violentword,and therehas
possiblybeen some overdramatizationin its use; but there can be
no doubt about the seriousnessof the situationthathas evoked this
word: French literaturesuggestsa countrysideoverrunby generations of industriouscultivatorsuntil the point of diminishingreturns seems reached,where the soil continues to yield crops only
afterexactingverymuch more drasticmethodsof cultivationand
evermorepainfullabor. By the turnof the century,some traditional genres already appeared exhausted,and recentlyFrench critics
have been declaring that the language itselfdemands new means
of expression.
The backgroundof Qu'est-ceque la litterature,
then,is thiscontinuingcrisisin French literature,one which is still apparent on
the contemporaryliteraryscene. For in retrospectit seems clear
that Sartre is not, nor is likely to become, a great writer:clever,
enormously,furiouslyenergetic,he does not possess the authentic

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40

Sartre

creative talent. But in the present case

giftsof a really first-rate
this may be no disadvantage-a greaterwriter,forwhom literature
itselfmight never become a question, might be less sensitiveto
the historicforcesthatnow push the literaryman into such an odd
and difficult
place in the world. And what we can alwayscount on
in Sartreis the prodigiousintelligencewith whichhe plunges into
any problem. In the grand tradition,he divides the problem of
literatureinto threequestions: Qu'est-cequ'dcrire?Pourquoi ecrire?
Pour qui ecrit-on?These questions themselvesbreathe the air of
crisis,fortheyare not the kind of questions that enter the writer's
and overflow;theybecomeurgent
head duringhis periodsof fertility
and sometimesparalyzingonly when he has descended into the
pits of silence, anguish, artisticnihilism; when he exists on the
marginsof literaturewhere language itselfseems to become impossible,a positiondescribedalmost twentyyearslater in Les Mots.
Comingout of thisdouble crisisin the Frenchsituation,Sartre
does not presentus withanyradicallynew theoryof literature:most
of his viewshad theirantecedentsin the Marxist theorizingof the
'thirties,although he gives them a new philosophical color. The
revolutionaryimportof Sartre'smessagelies in his completeacceptance of the conditionsunder which,it appears,the writermay soon
have to work,even thoughto accept theseconditionsmay imply a
radical break with the whole traditionof literaturein France.
He attemptsto give an historicalanswerto the threequestions
thatdivide his book by reviewingthe conditionsof author,public,
and societyduringthe major periods of Frenchliterature.The influenceof Marxismobviouslyformsjudgmentsof taste at certain
points.Thus he undervaluesthe literatureof the seventeenthcenturybecause it was aristocratic,acually preferringthe comedies of
Beaumarchais,for example, which belong to the more democratic
eighteenthcentury,to those of Molibre, and going so far as to
describeMolibre'sLe Misanthropeas a comedydealing only with
the trivalsubjectsof manners.The trouble is not that Sartrelacks
taste-the entire work is evidence of his passionate addiction to
literature-but that the brilliance of his insightson the past is
oftenspoiled by extremeand doctrinairejudgments.
This lack of criticalbalance has its most serious consequences
when Sartreis dealing with the "bourgeois"literatureof the nineteenthcentury.Here his judgmentsare obviously colored by his
though
passionatehatredof the bourgeoisclass itself,and therefore,
he makes some tellingpoints against bourgeoisliterature,theyare
usuallydirectedat its weakestside and hardlydo justice to its main
bulk of significantwork.The erroris the familiarone ot seeking
to convertpolitical and social sympathiestoo directlyinto literary

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SouthAtlanticBulletin

41

judgment,so that he still sees political and cultural realitiesunder

drasticMarxist simplifications.
The facts,however,are always more complex. Flaubert, for

example,has alwaysbeen a targetforSartre,and it is withgreat

anticipationthatthe literarypublic has been awaitinghis promised
book on this author. In SituationsII, and in the recentarticlesof
Les Temps Modernes,Sartreattemptsto justifyhis severityby citing

hisletters
and earlyworks,
longpassagesfromFlaubert,
particularly
thatexpressan aristocratic
hatredof themob.This is all verywell;
but the accusationis renderedmeaningless
when we recall that
has producedin thefewpages
Flaubert,despitehiscorrespondence,
of Un Coeursimplea moreprofoundand sympathetic
pictureof
the poor than in all the thousandpages of Sartre'strilogyLes
Cheminsde la libertd.Moreover,
as Rene Girardhas noted,'there
are strongpointsof resemblance
betweenSartreand Flaubert,a
coincidencewhichmightgo a long way towardexplainingthe
former's
Thus,forexample,bothauthorsrebelagainst
antagonism.
the conceptof heroes:Garcinin Huis clos thinkshe is a hero,
thathe is not.The resultis thecreationof theantionlyto discover
hero,as typified
by Roquentinin his downfall,onlyto be reborn
unsureof his own identity.
Flaubert,who livedin an age of great
romanticheroes,renounceshis formeridols and sublimateshis
desiresto art,writing
of romantic
heroesand how theyare proved
wrong.Both Flaubertand Sartrecould be describedas execrating
the bourgeois.In the formerthis becamea revolt,an obsession
withla betise,and in thelatter,an obsessionwithle salaud. Even
thepersonallivesof thesemen,withtheirbrilliantintellects,
their
even the
voluntaryisolationin orderto writemore effectively,
presenceof an ageingmotherand une amie,all suggestthe close
physicaland metaphysical
rapportwhichexistsbetweenthem.That
Flaubertshould therefore
be so consistently
by
misinterpreted
Sartre,at leastthusfar,suggestsinteresting
and complexconclusions.
There are, to be sure,reasonsforthe Sartrianapproach.His
interestin literarycriticism,
is indirect:His concern
admittedly,
is chiefly
to understand
theconditionof thewriter,
theparticular
wayin whichhe remainsdependenton, but managesto be free
hisdayand place,hispublicand his language.To communifrom,
cate effectively
withhis readera writermust,in Sartre'sview,be
representative
yetoriginal,influenced
by his situationyetable to
asserthisownselfmuchmorethanmostofus areeverin a position
to do. Viewedin sucha way,thesituationof thewriteris a
privilegedinstanceof thehumancondition,
and the studyof it necessarilyoccupiesa considerable
whichis above
place in a philosophy

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42

Sartre

all concernedwith the problemof freedom.At the same time,the

practiceof criticism,in this special sense,enables Sartreto express
his ideas with a bold provocativenesswhich lies happily midway
in stylebetweenhis forbiddingly
abstractrhetoricand the controversialist'sviolent irony. Examples are easy to find.An essay on
Mauriac's novels ended with the peremptorystatementthat "M.
Mauriac n'est pas un romancier."2And in Qu'est-ceque la littdrature?one simple point made was that all literatureof the past is
dead and should be leftwhere it belongs-in those cemeterieswe
call libraries!It is preciselythe factthatSartriancriticismexamines
literaturenot on a strictlyliterarybasis but froma philosophical
point of view that makes reading thiscriticismsuch an interesting
but, on occasion,a frustrating
experience.
Curiouslyenough, the author who has attractedthe brunt of
Sartre'scriticismis Maupassant,who assumesthe role of "whipping
boy for a splendidlysweepingattack on all of nineteenth-century
literature."3Maupassant is accused of constantlypresentinghis
readers with a rigid, unchangingstructurein his short storiesthat is to say, the dull, after-dinnerbanter of the idle rich, an
accusation so rigorouslymaintained that one cannot miss the
emotional forcewith which it is presented.But on examining au
hasard any threevolumesof Maupassant'sshortstories,one rapidly
detectsthe criticalerrorof Sartre.Only fourper cent possesssuch
a structureimmuable."L'ordre triomphe,"he goes on, "l'ordre est
partout."4But how does Sartre account for those savage, violent
Norman stories,or for those brilliantaccounts of the war of 1870
which offersuch a vigorous image of French resistancelater exploited by Sartrehimself?It is as if to judge the literaryoutput of
Sartreone had selected"La Putain respectueuse!"to the exclusion
of such worksas "La Nausde" and "Les Mouches."
Moreover,as in the case of Flaubert,thereare too many striking resemblancesbetween these authors than sheer coincidence
would permit.Thus Sartre'sLe Mur (1939) seems like an index
to Maupassant'sfavoritethemes.The leading story"Le Mur" could
be profitablycompared to Maupassant's "La Mere sauvage," "Le
Phre Milon," or to "Deux amis." Sartre's tale of madness "La
Chambre" mightbe compared to "La Nuit," "Lui?" "Le Horla,"
"Qui sait?"etc.and lastly,thatanalysisofhomosexualityand sadism,
"L'enfance d'un chef," could be compared with "La Femme de
Paul," "Coco," "Le Gueux," etc.
Nor is the resemblanceof a purely thematicnature. Sartre
seems to have appropriatedthe genre directlyfrom Maupassant,
without having concernedhimselfwith those intermediaryshort
storywriterswho, like KatherineMansfield,had wished to replace

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SouthAtlanticBulletin

43

the final,concluding thrustof the tale with the vague atmosphere

of the flow of consciousness.And stylistically,
Sartre is certainly
as
as
incisive
as
and
frequentlyeven
just violent,just
Maupassant,
more cruel and pessimistic.Morevover,the two authors have in
common that they both consider men to be quite differentfrom
what they appear to be. This almost universal literarytrait suggests immediatelythe essential differencebetween these authors.
For Sartre,men betraytheir true existenceby taking refugein a
"mauvaise foi" whichpermitsthemto escape fromthe responsibility
which is their life. While Maupassant and his readers discover a
hidden reality,therefore,
in the case of Sartreit is up to the charactersto regaina lost existence,as in "Les Mouches." It is thuspreciselythe fact that Maupassant does not presenta systematicphilosophy that distinguisheshis work fromthat of Sartrewhich,like
thatof Voltaire and Diderot, is of an overtlyphilosophicalnature.
Sartre startedout with an overridinginterestin phenomenology as a philosophyof what Husserl called the Lebenswelt (le
monde vecu), whichwas to overcomethe dichotomybetweenidealism and materialismas much as that between philosophyand experience. He developed a rigorous analysis of the structuresof
consciousnesswhile feelingcompelledat the same time to elucidate
certainexperiencesin his own mind and to communicatethem in
creative literature.A close examination of his literarycriticism
shows it to be a mediation between his phenomenologyand the
"monde v6cu" of the author under review. Sartre's contribution
consists preciselyin locating the author's way of apprehending
"le monde v6cu," his metaphysics.
But the point is that thesedifferences
scarcelyjustifythe fusillades littdrairesin which Sartreindulges himself.And while Maupassant bears the bruntof the attacks,he is by no means alone. In
describingthe authors of the firsthalf of the nineteenthcentury,
Sartrehas this inormitd: "Aucun d'eux, sauf Hugo, n'a vraiment
marque la littirature."5What does he do with Balzac? Balzac, in
fact,embarrassesSartre; he does not know where or how to place
him. As a bourgeois?But he goes farbeyond the limitsof the bourBut he has reactionaryopinions. Better,
geoisie.As a revolutionary?
therefore,not to treat him at all. Balzac is not mentioned.And
betteromit Stendhal also, to be more prudent.Taine is dismissed
as a cheap pedant!6It is the peremptory
quality of thesestatements
which makes them go galling. As ProfessorHardr6 has demonstrated,Sartrepresentsextremelystimulatingpsychologicalexplanations of the characterof an author,be it Flaubert,Baudelaire, or
Genet,but "we look in vain forsome lighton how that writer,that

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44

Sartre

alchemist,scooped up a handfulof mud and turnedit into a bar

of gold."7
All this bringsus now to the core of Sartre'smessage,which
is his now well-knownconcept of littgra-ture
engagede.His doctrine
is an insistenceupon the reintegration
of literatureinto life,against
the idea of the priesthoodof lettersthat germinatedduring the
whole of the nineteenthcenturyto come to full and finalbloom in
the symbolists. Mallarm6 put it perfectly when he said ". ..

le

mondeest faitpour aboutir'a un beau livre,"8willingto countenance

the inversionof existencethat would subordinatethe man to the
writer.Thus looking back on more than half a centuryof writers
who will eventuallygive theirnames to the twentiethcentury,we
seem to see them in retrospectas belongingalmost to a vanished
culture, so differentwere the conditions of their existence from
those of the period into which we have now entered. If they inheritedthe nineteenthcenturyview of the writeras a separate and
anointed being,a kind of priest,theywere able to hold on to this
role onlywith the tensionsof an ironythatprovided it with a new
human content.Proust,Joyce,Mann, and the others,all exist in
the full plenitude of a traditionof which theysought to lose no
part, so that theirwork in its richnessalready carriesthe seeds of
disorderand dissolution.Probably a momentlike this in literary
historycould not be prolonged any further.Sartre'swork is perhaps the firstconsciousannouncementthat the conditionsof literature must returnto a lower and less ambitious level; but even if
the program did not become conscious, the attitude has already
begun to prevail.We are now able to understandour surpriseat the
evolution of Sartre's career. The discrepancybetween the very
abstractand involved philosophyof the Critique de la raison dialectique and the rudimentaryand plodding fictionis no longer a
puzzle. It was somethingof a shock,afterthe intellectualsophistication and complexityof L'Etre et le ngant,to descendupon the three
volumes of Sartre'strilogyLes Chemins de la libertd,not because
his creativegiftswere lacking but because he was willing to aim
so low in thenovel. But all thisnow appears to have been intentionand
al: The committedwriterdisdains the creationof masterpieces,
even the very concept of the masterpiece,with whateversilence,
exile, or cunning it may exact, no longer seems to have any connectionwith that act of writingthat aims essentiallyat makingan
impact,just as one mightstrikea blow or firea pistol.
Sartre is thereforeentirelyconsistentwith himselfwhen he
proposes that the writerneglectnone of the mass media available,
such as television,radio, and cinema.He noteswithsatisfactionthat
the modern writeris able to reach a much vaster audience than

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South Atlantic Bulletin

45

his predecessorof the nineteenthcentury;for Sartre,this is the

great opportunityin the presentsituation,for,as Oscar Wilde observed,journalism is unreadable and literatureis not read. It is
true that Sartreis aware of the other side of the coin-that when
Gide, for example, becomes known throughthe cinema to thousands who have not read him, the writeralso becomes inseparable
fromthe face of Michble Morgan, or Marcello Mastroianniin the
case of Camus' L'Etranger-but he fails to considerwhat will happen if this process continuesunchecked. The cultural process in
modern societyis preciselythis watering-downof content as the
writerreacheslargermassesof people, and usually not throughhis
own writtenword but throughthe mechanical image that an advanced technologysubstitutesfor the printed page, as Marshall
McLuhan has suggested.Sartre accepts the process,in fact seeks
to assist it; for in his view the writershould aim essentiallyat
which is the total mass of manaddressingthe concretecollectivity,
kind, and eventually this mass is a classless society. This is as
utopian as most of Sartre'spolitics; but programs-and a program
forliteratureis no exception-should deal withpresentpossibilities,
and the contemporary
writerwho seeks to reach this mass audience
will inevitablyfindhimselfrejectinghis own essential difficulties,
his complicationsand subtleties,and indeed the verylimitationsof
personalitythathave in the past definedhis mostauthenticthemes.
Thus we have more than anythingelse the observationthat a literaryperiodhad ended. For thequalities thatdefinemodernliterature
have been in great part the resultof a desperateeffortto preserve
itselfby a deliberateescape froma mass audience.
We should conclude that Sartre's criticismis undoubtedly
characteristicof that of many creative writers-it tells us much
less about the workcriticizedthan it does about the critic.As such,
his criticismis stimulatingand provocative,as is much of his production. But we genuinelyhope that futurecriticswill endeavor
to judge literatureon its own merits,and not by standards
imposed
fromforeigndisciplines.
NOTES
1. Rene Girard, "Sartre and Flaubert," a public lecture delivered at Cornell
University,April 12, 1965.
2. Jean-Paul Sartre,Situations I (Paris: Gallimard, 1947),
p. 56.
3. Edward D. Sullivan, Maupassant: The Short Stories (London: Arnold,
1962), p. 13.
4. Sartre,Situations II (Paris: Gallimard, 1948) ,
p. 180.
5. Ibid., p? 163.
6. Ibid., p. 163
("...

Taine, qui ne fut qu'un

cuistre.

")

7.Jacques Hardrd, "Jean-Paul Sartre: Literary Critic," Studies in Philology,

vol. 55 (1958) , p. 104.
8. Stdphane Mallarme, Oeuvres
complhtes (Paris: N.R.F., 1951), pp. 871-72.

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