Sartre, self-formation and masculinities 9781571817426, 9781571817433

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgements (page vii)
Abbreviations and Notes on Translation (page ix)
Introduction (page 1)
1. The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) (page 10)
2. Violence and Counter-Violence (1917-1920) (page 34)
3. Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) (page 47)
4. Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) (page 65)
5. The Phoney War (September 1939-May 1940): Stoicism / Authenticity (page 90)
6. Sartre's War (June 1940-1945): The Individual and the Collective (page 114)
7. Sartre and Beauvoir (page 128)
8. Sartre's Relationships: To Be or Not to Be Intimate (page 143)
Postscript (page 176)
Bibliography (page 202)
Index (page 213)

Citation preview

SARTRE, SELF-FORMATION AND MASCULINITIES

BERGHAHN MONOGRAPHS IN FRENCH STUDIES

The Populist Challenge: Political Protest and Ethno-Nationalist Mobilization in France Jens Rydgren

French Intellectuals Against the Left: The Antitotalitarian Moment of the 1970s Michael Scott Christofferson

Sartre Against Stalinism Ian H. Birchall

Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities Jean-Pierre Boulé

SARTRE, SELF-FORMATION AND MASCULINITIES

Jean-Pierre Boulé

0

Sebi Ont

First published in 2005 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2005 Jean-Pierre Boulé

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of Berghahn Books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Boulé, Jean-Pierre Sartre, self-formation and masculinities / Jean-Pierre Boulé. p cm. (Monographs in French studies) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-57181-742-5 -- ISBN 1-57181-743-3 (pbk.) 1. Sartre, Jean Paul, 1905- 2. Philosophers--France--Biography. 3. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1905--Psychology. I. Title. II. Series.

[B] 2004046296

B2430.534B67 2004 194--dc22

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

~ ISBN 1-57181-742-5 hardback ISBN 1-57181-743-3 paperback

CONTENTS

ae

Acknowledgements Vil Abbreviations and Notes on Translation ix

Introduction 1

1 The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 10

2 Violence and Counter-Violence (1917-1920) 34 3 Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 47 4 Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 65

Stoicism / Authenticity 90

5 The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940):

the Collective 114 7 Sartre and Beauvoir 128

6 Sartre’s War June 1940-1945): The Individual and

Postscript 176 Bibliography 202 8 Sartre’s Relationships: To Be or Not to Be Intimate 143

Index 213

Blank Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank David Jackson who first suggested I should study masculinities in Sartre; the Department of Modern Languages at the Nottingham Trent University for granting me sabbatical leave for one semester, as well as Veronica Lawrence from the library. I would also like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) for making me an award under their Research Leave Scheme.

Many other people have supported me in different ways: Annabell, Ronald Aronson, Ian Birchall, Robin Bloxsidge, Robert Chenavier, Robert -

Harvey, Richard Johnson, Terry Keefe, Diana Knight, Annette Lavers, Andy Leak, Michel Rybalka, Michael Scriven, Jeremy Tatman, and Zoé.

Blank Page

ABBREVIATIONS AND

NOTES ON TRANSLATION

At times I have changed some English translations of Sartre and Beauvoir in which case page references are to the French edition. In all other cases, references are to the English translation; these can be identified by an English abbreviated title preceding the page number. When no translation was available, I have used my own.

Sartre, J.-P. AR The Age of Reason BN Being and Nothingness CDR — Critique of Dialectical Reason

HN Hope Now

N Nausea

OMW Quiet Moments in a War

SBH Sartre by Himself SIS Sartre in the Seventies

W Words

WD ~~ War Daaries WML Witness to My Life

Beauvoir, S. de

A Adieux

LTS Letters to Sartre

PL Prime of Life

Blank Page

‘Nulla dies sine linea’ (Sartre 1964a: 212)

‘The truth is, I treat my feelings as ideas’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 272)

‘What counts in a vase is the void inside’ Sartre on the band around Being and Nothingness (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 85)

Blank Page

INTRODUCTION

‘A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him’; this sentence closes Sartre’s autobiography, Les Mots. Despite being a literary, political and philosophical icon of the twentieth century, relatively little research has been done on Sartre and gender with specific reference to theories of masculinities, whilst feminists have long studied Sartre.’ In looking at self-formation and masculinities, my purpose

is to bring to the surface internal tensions and desires within Sartre in order to make him more contradictorily ‘real’ and therefore accessible. This in turn may enable us to relate to his writings and philosophy on a deeper level. I will limit the period under study from 1905 until 1945 (chapters one

to six) before looking at Sartre’s relationship with Simone de Beauvoir (chapter seven — centred mostly on the war) and then with men and women, in terms of intimacy (chapter eight — spanning a wider period), tracing how Sartre’s psycho-social processes and masculine subjectivities inform his interaction with others throughout his life. The systematic study is brought to a close in 1945 because by then Sartre had become Sartre.’ Finally, I add a postscript covering the last seven years of Sartre’s life when he is almost blind and can no longer write, starting the postscript with a fleeting glance at the period 1945-1973. It is not my intention to play down his political commitment, especially in the last two chapters

where I look at Sartre’s political pronouncements through the lens of a masculinity discourse, and my analysis falls short of any assessment of Sartre as a political figure.° In the postscript, I argue that Sartre changes significantly after 1973. There is another reason for concentrating so much of my study on the Second World War period. Sartre seems to undergo a significant transfor-

mation during the war years; he changes his personal philosophy from stoicism to a search for authenticity. What does Sartre mean by being authentic? “Io be authentic is to realize fully one’s being-in-situation, whatever this situation may happen to be’ (1995: WD, 54). Sartre’s transformation is underpinned by his emotional state. Being a stoic corresponds Notes for this chapter begin on page 8.

2 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

to being emotionally detached; being authentic is a wish to be more emotionally involved. Sartre comes back from the prisoner of war camp in March 1941 and tells Beauvoir that from now on he will be engaged in politics (Beauvoir 1960: 492).

Sartre will become intellectually hegemonic in the late forties in France, and throughout much of the fifties; this has been thoroughly researched.*

What has not been written about is the fact that, if on the surface Sartre goes from individualism to the collective and to committed literature, this is underpinned by profound emotional turbulences whose keys lie in his childhood and which can be witnessed in the writings he produced at the time. Effective (and affective) change is always personal as well as political.° For Sartre, someone’s life forms a whole that cannot be divided up; the inner and the outer, the subjective and the objective, the personal and the political all influence each other since they belong to the same totality and one can only understand a person by treating them as a social being (1976a: 176). This is a journey towards uncovering some of the multiple, fragmented and contradictory Sartrean selves, and in turn I hope to render his accomplishments all the more remarkable. I shall not concentrate on Sartre’s achievements as a major intellectual figure of the twentieth century; this would be a different project requiring a lengthier volume commenting on the substance of Sartre’s writing. I want to try and bring to light as many layers as possible from Sartre’s emotional life, so that together with all the studies of his intellectual life, it will help us to gain a better understanding of Sartre as an embodied sexual being, and possibly demonstrate a new way of connecting biography with ceuvre. Anyone studying Sartre faces major difficulties. First of all, there is a massive amount of Sartre’s writing in different disciplines: political, philo-

sophical, and literary. There is also a wealth of secondary literature — notwithstanding Sartre’s biography (Cohen-Solal 1985).° In terms of publications, I will concentrate on the period 1936-1945. After his Ecrits de Jeunesse (mostly from the 1920s), Sartre wrote novels, plays and philosophical works, notably L’Etre et le néant, war diaries and correspondence. These works will be used when they throw light on the overall argument rather than studied per se. Ecrits de Jeunesse will receive a more systematic

treatment because it will be argued that Sartre buries in it some of his childhood. Sartrean scholars will no doubt find selective focus in my use of Sartre’s life.

Secondly, Sartre produced an unusual quantity of autobiographical writings, starting with his autobiography, Les Mots, but also many other autobiographical works, including the film Sartre par lui-méme as well as

interviews. Sartre’s autobiography will not be treated as the definitive statement about his life and as authoritative compared to, for example, his fiction. Sartre explained that Les Mots was no truer than La Nausée or Les Chemins de la liberté and that it was also a sort of novel (1976a: 146). Sartre leads the way in L’Idiot de la famille by studying Madame Bovary and argu-

| Introduction 3 ing that some of the hysteria displayed by Charles Bovary can only have come from Flaubert describing it from the inside (1979a: 34). Elsewhere he sums up his belief: “You have to take into account the life of people who write: it is projected in the writing in one way or another, here in breaking it up, in suspending it’ (1979b: 26). He also saw the importance of the body, stating that he would have liked to write a biography of Flaubert, by focusing on his books as a résumé of his entire body (Lévy 2000: 224). He even chal-

lenges critics to find his taste for coffee and his sexuality in his own books.

By using an author’s works and correspondence, Sartre believes that a critic should be able to find out about the author’s personality (1982a: 80). To add to the difficulties, Sartre seems to narrate his life in his autobiography and other interviews with a great deal of irony and detachment. An ironic stance sometimes precludes any connection with one’s world of feelings and emotions: ‘men in particular learn to distance ourselves from our own experience through humour, cynicism and irony, so that we never risk ourselves’ (Seidler 1989: 104).’ There is a danger of a parallel process and the danger is that the critic responds by being detached. It would be very tempting to mirror Sartre’s own tone, but this would be perpetuating

the denial of his pain. I have therefore made a conscious effort to empathise with the young Poulou.® I have tried to avoid perpetuating Sartre’s detachment by acknowledging some of the emotions that his story caused me to experience, whilst at times he keeps his under lock and key. I want to show that Sartre had a ‘fine life’, a concept he defines as follows:

‘a fine life was simply one that dampens the reader’s eyes when it’s recounted by a feeling biographer’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 81). Thirdly, Sartre developed his own concept of existential psychoanalysis,

with his work on Baudelaire, Flaubert and Genet. Inspired by Marxism, it | is based on the progressive-regressive method, involving internalisation and reexternalisation, and also looking for the original choice and project(s)

of individuals. At the root of this concept is the fact that objects of study have to be seen to be individual subjects exercising their own freedom.’ Finally, Sartre was a chameleon. Most biographers of Sartre and people

I have spoken to who knew him have reported that Sartre was a different person to different people. If two people who knew Sartre spoke together, they could have the impression of speaking about two strangers. According to Perrin, a priest who was a prisoner of war with Sartre, Sartre was a

steamroller who also had ‘the milk of human kindness’ (1980: 144). According to Cau, his secretary from 1946 until 1957, the milk of human kindness was not only undrinkable but a drink unknown to him (1985: 251).1° On the other hand, there were also some common traits that people

would recognise readily. For instance, most people who knew Sartre would agree that he was generous." In spite of all the aforementioned sources, a study of Sartre ‘from the inside out’ seems useful. He is an extremely complicated human being, which in turn makes him very stimulating to analyse. How to understand

4 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

the child who was the apple of his mother’s eye and ended up being bullied as a teenager, or the bourgeois writer seen haranguing a crowd of workers, perched on a barrel, on a damp afternoon in 1970? In view of all the difficulties highlighted above, which methods have I chosen to study Sartre? I have been attracted to particular theories because

of their purchase on Sartre’s life and writing. These are masculinities, views about the sel(f)(ves) and some general theories about self-formation. These theories criss-cross each other in my analysis. Masculinities are multiple, rather than singular, and created by specific historical practices within relations of power. Masculine subjectivity is ‘a

process involving constant negotiation of multiple subjectivities, or frag- , ments thereof, in which men have unequal investments’ (Pease 2000: 35). Men (and women!) actively construct masculinities in many different ways, some of these constrained by society, from intellectual competitiveness to body-building (both aspects applying to Sartre, both practices being individual rather than collective). Masculine subjectivities also betray internal tensions: there are no homogeneous patterns but rather contradictory desires and shifting boundaries. Masculinities are not fixed but can be renegotiated

and unsettled. Despite appearing to embody traditional hegemonic mas-

| culinities, Sartre is also a very good example of the internal tensions that betray a shifting sense of masculine self, being forced to exclude and expel versions of himself that are not accepted by the dominant order.

An important aspect of the political meaning of writing about masculinity is the question of power. There is a crucial division between hege-

monic masculinity and various subordinated masculinities. Hegemony signifies ‘a position of power and cultural authority’ (Connell et al. 1998: 59) and it is centrally connected with the institutionalisation of men’s dominance over women (Carrigan, Connell and Lee 2002: 113). Hegemonic masculinity establishes itself partly by its claim to embody the power of reason (Connell 1995: 144). It emphasises being in control and that means controlling one’s emotions (Connell et al. 1998: 60). The very identification of masculinity with reason has tended to blind men to their masculinity as something socially and historically sustained (Seidler 1989: 17). Though the concept of hegemonic masculinities has been criticised by some feminist writers for neglecting gender relations at the expense of masculinity, I believe that it is a useful theoretical tool for my project. Some masculinities are more honoured than others — for example archetypes such as the paratrooper or the sportsman — and some are dishonoured as in homosexual masculinities in society, or marginalised as in masculinities of some ethnic minorities. Hegemonic masculinity is not always the most common form but it is highly visible and, whether we like it or not, at some point or other

all men are ‘measured’ against it, even if it does not reflect the varied nature of men. Masculinity is constantly constructed within the history of an evolving social structure, a structure of sexual power relations. This construction is

Introduction 5

a social struggle that goes on in a complex ideological and political field in which there is a continuing process of mobilisation, marginalisation, contestation, resistance, and subordination (Carrigan, Connell and Lee 2002: 110-11). Violence is important, not only as an expression of subjective val-

ues or of a type of masculinity, but also as a ‘constitutive practice that helps to make all kinds of masculinity ... much of this violence comes from the state’ (Carrigan, Connell and Lee 2002: 106). The latter see social definitions of masculinity embedded in institutions as much as in the per-

sonality of individuals; ‘collective masculinities’ such as in the military and/or as in Sartre’s case at the Ecole Normale.'* Masculinity also takes multiple forms interacting with other identities, so that it become impossible to discuss masculinity as such without taking into account its rela-

tionship to race, class, national, and sexual identifications. Finally, masculinity is a shifting concept over time as society changes in response to economic and cultural developments. How do I relate these theories more specifically to Sartre? Sartre was first and foremost a writer. Writing cuts two ways. It is socially and politically useful, and also a way of accomplishing masculinities and other subjectivities - of ‘doing’ masculinities as we ‘do’ gender, that is we actively construct it by our acts.” The writer can engage in power, domination and seduction which in turn makes him/her part of the intellectual elite and therefore of the ruling order. It would not make sense to argue that writing is synonymous with masculine subjectivity, as it would mean that all writers — male or female — are actively fashioning masculinity! But it is one of the

many ways of accessing the ruling order, a practice that Sartre favours.

Seidler demonstrates how men learn to crush their feeling of need, dependency, and emotionality to achieve a masculine identity: ‘It is not simply that these feelings and emotions threaten the sense of masculine identity, but that the denial of these feelings and desires establishes the very

sense of male identity. Masculinity has to be constantly reasserted in the continuous denial of “femininity” or “feminine qualities”’ (1991: 98-99). Kimmel points out that the notion of anti-femininity is at the heart of conceptions of manhood; masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than by whom one is (1994a: 126). I shall use masculinity and femininity as embodied terms but I do not wish to create rigid categories: these two concepts are fluid; they are both social constructs. A man engages in practices that could be labelled ‘femininity’ and a woman engages in practices that could be labelled ‘masculinity’.!° Relating this debate back to Sartre, Schehr remarks that Sartre has an intricate approach and relation to masculinity and femininity — and also homosexuality and heterosexuality (1995: 70). Sartre himself said in an interview in 1965: ‘But when the day comes, of course, the special qualities of [sensitivity] for which I prefer the company of women will be due purely to chance; sometimes a woman will have them, sometimes a man. They'll cease being a feminine prerogative’ (Gobeil 1967: 178). As unsatisfactory as they are, I shall use the concepts of

6 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

masculine and feminine when I speak about gender practices since, as Connell points out, if we get rid of those terms, we would have to invent other gender concepts performing the same tasks (2000: 17). As Sartre argued above about Flaubert, writing comes from the body

and I shall engage with Sartre’s various bodies. His physical body was small and square, some American friends used to call him ‘Mr Five by Five’ (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 419). In recent studies, the body has become a site of cultural, social and political studies: ‘Bodies cannot be understood as a neutral medium of social practice. Their materiality matters’ (Connell 1995: 58). Bodies are engaged with social and cultural processes. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin argues: ‘Trapped within patriarchal logos, masculinity ultimately may be unknowable, but it can be broached or inferred from the symbolic secret code of the male body’ (1994: 242). We have established that Sartre was a different person to different people and that masculinities are multiple. Applying this to the self, one has multiple selves which are all contingent. We present different selves to different people; hence there is always an interaction between our selves and others: ‘Subjects are dynamic and multiple, always positioned in relation to particular discourses and practices and produced by these — the condition of being subject’ (Henriques et al. 1984: 204). Two notions are particularly useful in my analysis of Sartre; a compromised sense of self, and a more inclusive sense of self. l understand the former concept in terms of recognition, or misrecognition, where significant others only recognise you in particular shapes

and you have to cut or stretch yourself to fit this version, or some other compensatory version. In Sartre’s case, he plays the child prodigy and narrows his range of selves to a writing self. Conforming to this exclusive version of self denies plurality and heterogeneity and often involves violence to oneself. ‘A more inclusive sense of self’ encompasses other subjectivities like excluded and/or subordinated selves. In Sartre’s case, one of the excluded selves would be his ‘femininity’. Having explained these basic theories, I can reveal that in the postscript I argue that during the last seven years of his life, Sartre accesses a more inclusive sense of self, which is why I trace his psycho-social development to its conclusion. In terms of theories about self-formation, I will use the concept of narcissism but do not wish to pathologise Jean-Paul Sartre. ‘Narcissus’ is a myth and psychoanalysis is a power / knowledge relation. However, these

theories seem to throw light on Sartre’s psychic dynamics and troubled life. There are a variety of meanings to the concept, depending on theoretical orientations.” I am not using the concept in its general sense, equating narcissism with self-love. This is the definition I use; the narcissist is some-

one who has buried his self-expression in response to early injuries and

replaced it with a highly developed, compensatory sense of self in response to his/her environment needing the individual to be something substantially different from what he or she is. The young Sartre fell prey to what he calls in his autobiography the ‘family comedy’. It appears that

Introduction 7

both his grandfather and his mother wanted him to be a precocious genius. Hence Sartre acted and performed for other people rather than for himself. He promulgated a narrow sense of self over the expression of a more inclusive sense of self where other selves are not developed. Narcissism is often linked to grandiosity, also called omnipotence or magnificence. This concept could be defined as a self-construction (but often imposed from the outside) within a narrative of heroism in relation to others and to oneself. There is a disproportionate investment in a singular aspect of the self. In Sartre the adult, it manifests itself by intellectual omnipotence; Johnson defines it as a sense of self that has intense feelings of power and personal effectiveness (1994: 297). ‘Grandiosity’ is often an

| attempt to counter great emptiness/loss of self, humiliation and shame

and feelings of worthlessness. |

Narcissism is considered a normal developmental stage at a very young age. However, it may present problems in self-representation and object-

relations when there are difficulties in the rapprochement sub-phase of separation-individuation with the mother (or mother-figure). In ‘normal’ contact, there are various stages for a sense of self to develop. According to Mahler et al., the overall developmental process of children includes differentiation, practising,’® rapprochement, and separation /individuation. Rapprochement is the third sub-phase of separation-individuation lasting from fifteen to twenty-four months where the mother is perceived more as

separate and outside. If this phase is well adjusted, the child has a growing realisation of separateness /individuation and with it of his/her own

vulnerability. It is at this point that the grandiosity or magnificence gets | integrated with vulnerability. I will argue in chapter one that Sartre experiences difficulties in these processes and that his grandiosity remained out of proportion since it was not integrated with vulnerability. The concept of self-object will also be used. It signifies ‘the experience of another person as part of the self in which that other person provides necessary functions for self-cohesion’ (Breshgold and Zahm 1992: 64). Aside from the canonical text by Pacaly, Sartre au miroir (1980), heavily indebted to Freud,’? Andrew Leak’s book on sexuality (1989),”° or individual studies of specific texts of Sartre as for example Bellemin-Noel on Erostrate (1988), very few books look at the psycho-social formation in Sartre. A

combination of masculinity studies and the psycho-social formation in Sartre has, to my knowledge, not been attempted before. Whilst aware of the uneasy relationship between psychoanalysis and the social sciences,” I am in agreement with Connell when he writes that ‘psychoanalysis offers to modern thought on masculinity a uniquely rich method of investigation, some illuminating general principles, and an immense variety of hypotheses and insights’ (1994: 33), arguing that the idea of multiple masculinities finds a precise meaning and its strongest evidence in psychoanalysis.

My first book on Sartre was published in 1992. It resulted from my interest in Sartre which began around 1980. When I left France to go and

8 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

live in England in January 1979, on the spur of the moment, I bought six of Sartre’s books from a newspaper kiosk at Gare du Nord. This turned out to be highly symbolic and prophetic: I was leaving France, the country where I was born and where I had been educated up until then, but I was taking Sartre with me, as my cultural baggage and intellectual exploration.

A few years later, I was to write my doctorate on him. I have always remained interested in Sartre, but journeyed with Hervé Guibert and other HIV writers. Along the way, I have discovered gender studies, and masculinity studies, as well as psychotherapy. I want to use my own psycho-

social development in order to read Sartre anew, learning about myself and my own masculinities along the way. Iam not claiming any monopoly

whatsoever on interpretations of Sartre’s life. I hope that others will be stimulated enough, including to take issue with me, so that the eventual

overall process will further the understanding we have of Jean-Paul Sartre’s life and work. Today, if I were standing in Gare du Nord again, knowing everything I know and feeling everything I feel, I would still choose to pick up Sartre’s books to take away with me.

Notes 1. For example Lilar, 1967 and recently Lacoste, 1999. 2. There is also the question of length since a detailed study from 1905 until 1980 would be more than double the length of the present volume. Indeed I could and may write a second volume spanning the period 1945-1980. 3. See for instance Birchall 2004 and also Drake 2002. I do not want to be part of revisionist tendencies (symbolised by Robert Faurisson), seeking to rewrite history in order to suit right-wing ideologies. Sartre was subjected to an attack about his role during the Occupation (Gilbert 1991). 4. See for instance Boschetti, 1985 or Galster, 2001. 5. ‘The politics of theory, personal politics and the politics of social change are inextricably entwined’ (Henriques et al. 1984: 118). 6. Whilst I needed to take into account key secondary texts, [have not wanted my own creativity to be stifled by interpretations peripheral to my approach. 7. Seidler (1989) generalises about men. He was later criticised, especially by Australian theorists, but in the late eighties it was probably necessary to generalise as a mobilisation strategy. It was certainly salubrious that Seidler used ‘we’ and did not hide behind academic ‘objectivity’.

8. This was Sartre’s nickname as a child. A nickname his mother will carry on using throughout his adult life. It is quite surprising that, as late as 1970, in a pact of reconciliation Sartre signs with Siegel, one of his lovers, he writes: ‘We, the undersigned, JeanPaul Sartre known as Poulou ...’ (Siegel 1988: 79)!

9. The regressive method looks at character structure and the progressive method at the particular family situation of individuals within their historical context, looking for their project (see Sartre 1960c: 119-230). On reading my manuscript, a friend and Sartrean scholar suggested that I had in fact gone some way towards producing an existential biography of Sartre since I do look at Sartre’s character structure and also at his

Introduction 9

family situation as well as his project. I do not think I explain why Sartre wrote the works he did but I would agree that I am trying to unearth and preserve the individual. 10. I will be using Cau quite extensively throughout. One may object that Cau is not very reliable with his move to the right but he produced a moving, sensitive portrait of Sartre where he did not try to settle scores. 11. Beauvoir notes that Sartre’s generosity impresses all his friends; he gives generously his time, his money, and himself (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 419). 12. See Connell 1995. 13. ‘Men’s gender identities and practices ... are likely to be internally complex and are often internally divided’ (Connell et al. 1998: 60). 14. Part of the French system of ‘Grandes Ecoles’, it is a very prestigious institution in Paris, entered by competition, preparing teachers for higher education. 15. The expression ‘doing’ masculinity is now commonly used as in Connell et al. 1998: 58. 16. Butler makes the point that homophobia often operates through abject gender, ‘calling gay men “feminine” or calling lesbians “masculine”’ (1993: 238). In an article inspired by Homi Bhabha, Krishnaswamy shows that effeminacy (or rather ‘femininity in masculinity’) is a production of hybridity, a form of resistance (2002: 295, 304, 306). For further reading on this issue, see The Masculinity Studies Reader where a whole section is devoted to ‘Borders’, demarcating ‘the insecure divisions between male and female, femininity and masculinity, heterosexual and homosexual. In each case, the category of masculinity, which aspires to permanence and universality, is destabilized by attention to its fraying borders’ (Adams and Savran 2002: 337). In affirming a homosexual identity, many gay liberationists embraced the label of effeminacy (Carrigan, Connell and Lee 2002: 109). Another border zone in particular is female masculinity. Judith Halberstam wonders whether masculinity belongs first and foremost to men and coins the phrase ‘female masculinity’ (2002: 355). She usefully points to masculinity dividing its power into complicated differentials of class, race, sexuality, and gender (356) and concludes that masculinity should not remain the property of male bodies. 17. Primary narcissism, secondary narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. 18. Practising is the second sub-phase of separation-individuation, lasting from about nine to fourteen months; the infant is able to move away from his mother and return to her (Johnson 1994: 300).

19. The text concentrates on Sartre’s biographies, referring throughout to Sartre’s anal fixation and to his castration complex. 20. This text does discuss masculinity and femininity in chapter one and is closest to some of the preoccupations of my own essay. Leak is presently writing a book on ‘Sartre and Authenticity’. 21. See Connell 2000, especially chapter one: ‘Debates about men, new research on masculinities’, 3-14.

Chapter 1

THE INFANT PRODIGY (1905-1917)

Jean-Baptiste Sartre is away at sea when the young Sartre is born on 21 June 1905. When he is over four months old, his father comes back home and metaphorically dislodges him. Jean-Baptiste then falls seriously ill, and they uproot from Paris to go and live in the Dordogne, on the family farm. Jean-Baptiste’s health takes a turn for the worse, and it is decided that he and his wife will live in La Brégére, in a cottage away from the main town of Thiviers. The young Poulou who is only eleven months old is left behind in Thiviers and cared for by his grandparents. He is actually physically separated from his mother. Pacaly writes that since a child can recognise his mother from as young as eight months old, this event could have had severe consequences for the young Sartre (1980: 67 n. 8). Not surprisingly, Poulou’s health starts to deteriorate significantly; he suffers from enteritis ‘and perhaps from resentment’ as the interpretative framework of his autobiography suggests (1964a: 16). His health will only improve again when his mother comes back to live with him. I referred in the introduction to the fact that there are various stages for a sense of self to develop. According to Mahler et al., the overall developmental process of children includes differentiation, practising, rapproche-

ment, and separation-individuation. Between nine to thirteen months, there is a stage where the sense of self goes from ‘we’ to ‘you’. At this time, there is propensity for borderline personality; no sense of self / who is feeling what?! During separation-individuation, the child gains an identity of

his or her own and can differentiate between self and object representations. It is precisely during that stage that Sartre’s father falls ill; his mother goes to live in a cottage to nurse her husband and Sartre lives a few miles away with his grandparents. A wet nurse is brought in for him. In Les Mots, the narrator states that at the time mothers breast-fed their own children for a long while; he benefited from the situation of not being Notes for this chapter begin on page 31.

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 11

exposed to the difficulties of a late weaning: ‘I was prevented by fever and exhaustion from feeling the last snip of the scissors which severs the bond between mother and children’ (1964a: W, 13). Should we believe Sartre? This quotation serves as a useful reminder that Sartre constructs — even fictionalises — his autobiography; it is his crafted version of his childhood.” Using this quotation, Pacaly argues that it betrays Sartre’s anguish by the very fact that he is in denial (1980: 67 n. 8). It may be important for Sartre as an adult to reconstruct this particular episode as one where his rational

self takes over and where he is in control, but it seems that the bond between himself and his mother was not severed and that he did not benefit from the situation at all. Sartre’s health deteriorated; he himself mentions the word ‘resentment’, which indicates that he believes his ill health could have been psychosomatic. He will only get better when his mother comes back to live with him. In terms of self-representation and object-relations, narcissistic pathology is said to arise precisely ‘out of difficulties in the rapprochement sub-phase of

separation-individuation’ (Johnson 1994: 157), and matches the young Sartre’s experience. The rapprochement is the third sub-phase of separation-individuation lasting from fifteen to twenty-four months where the mother is perceived more as separate and outside. Children’s belief in omnipotence can become severely shaken and ‘the environment is coerced as he tries to restore both the union with his mother and his prior feeling of omnipotence’ (Johnson 1994: 298). If this phase is well adjusted, the child has a growing realisation of separateness /individuation and with it of his own vulnerability. It is at this point that grandiosity or magnificence gets integrated with vulnerability, but it will not be the case for Sartre.

Jean-Baptiste Sartre dies on 11 September 1906, Poulou is fifteen months old, and the narrator of Les Mots comments: ‘Jean-Baptiste’s death was the great event of my life: it ... gave me my freedom’ (1964a: W, 14).* This sets up a totally negative view of a father/son relationship that I intend to explore further. Chodorow stresses that paternal absence from early childcare means that masculinity is defined as that which is not feminine (Segal 1990: 79). Poulou and his mother move back in with her parents and they will live together for the next eleven years; she is aged only twenty-four. He presents his relationship with his mother as symbiotic. Sartre describes his early childhood as paradise (1964a: W,

24): ‘I was treated like a young prince that the Schweitzer family had

begotten, a treasure that had not yet been clearly defined but that exceeded all its outward manifestations’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 349). We read in Les Mots: ‘I had been told over and over again that I was a gift from Heaven, much longed for, indispensable to my grandfather and to my mother’ (1964a: W, 104-105). But this does not cancel out what happened to him during the first fifteen months of his life. Sartre cannot dif-

ferentiate himself from significant others. He often writes that his mother and himself are one. Pacaly stresses that, unlike in the most

12 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

common scenarios, the mother is not the object of desire; the young Sartre identifies with her (1980: 430).

What happened when the young Sartre and his mother went to live with his grandparents? Sartre’s grandfather provided a model of hegemonic masculinity (intellectual and patriarchal). He is described in Les Mots as ‘the patriarch: he looked so much like God the Father that he was often taken for him’ (1964a: W, 15). Sartre will grow up with the value of hegemonic masculinity that is centrally connected with the subordination of women and the institutionalisation of men’s dominance over women, readily conceding this to Beauvoir during their 1974 conversations. Sartre’s grandfather does not want his grandson to be a wimp |poule mouillée], whilst the narrator of Les Mots is convinced that his mother wanted to give birth to a daughter: ‘Anne-Marie ... would have liked me to be a real girl’ (1964a: W, 65-66). In the end, she had to make do with Poulou and made the best of it by giving him ‘the sex of angels, indeterminate but feminine round the edges’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 65). Elsewhere the narrator of Les Mots writes that he was ‘feminised through his mother’s tenderness’ (1964a: W, 71). Combined with his loneliness, it made him stay away from rough games (and therefore from interaction with young boys who remained an alien species for him). He was busy reflecting himself in his mother’s eyes. He used to have ‘fiancées’ when he was six and seven and he describes himself as “pretty and pampered’ (1995: WD, 263). Sartre projects that his mother elevated him to the status of her husband /lover. In his war diaries, he states that he had no father or brother to teach him rough manners (what he means by that is a male role model), and that he ‘lorded it like a little king in a world of women’, describing himself as a real play-actor (1995: WD, 263). But was he a king or a princess? Describ-

ing one of his neighbours, Lucette Moreau, the narrator of Les Mots describes her as having his blond curls and his youthful femininity (1964a: W, 39); this is as near as we get to a self-portrait.® In Les Mots, Poulou describes how when his grandfather’s voice became dry and hard [asséchée, durcie], he mistook it for the voice of his own father which he calls the absentee (1964a: W, 100). It hardly needs pointing out that these adjectives are the opposite of soft, and flowing, often represented as ‘feminine’ attributes. And for someone who is supposed to have almost forgotten that he ever had a father, Sartre in fact readily identifies his voice as dry and hard. Secondly, in his autobiography, Sartre constructs his fatherless state as a real opportunity in life when, in fact, he neglects the whole dimension of a positive father-son relationship: ‘The rule is that there are no good fathers; it is not men who are at fault but the paternal bond which is rotten ... If he had lived, my father would have lain down on me. Fortunately, he died young ...’ (1964a: W, 15). Yet again, Sartre is caught up in fixed subjectivities and gender polarities; patriarchy is synonymous with oppression. Sartre’s own narratives seem to be contradictory.’ On the one hand, he claims not to have suffered from an Oedipus complex since he did not have

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 13

to share his mother with anyone. On the other hand, he feels that he does not belong (‘We were never at home: either rue Le Goff or later on when my mother remarried’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 56)).° In a passage where he analyses

the fact that he is fatherless, the narrator writes: ‘A father would have weighed me down with a few lasting prejudices ... he would have dwelt in me [habité |; this respectable tenant would have given me self-respect’ (1964a: W,

56; my emphasis). The implication from this extract is that the young Sartre had no self-respect: there is some self-knowledge here on Sartre’s part. But

he constructs his story by stating that not having a father liberated him from oppression; he wanted to be free from patriarchal authority’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 14). This is not helped by his grandiosity: ‘I could not find within myself the imperative mandate which would have justified my presence in this world nor recognise the right of anyone else to deliver it to me’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 83-84). Harvey sees a concealed regret or nostalgia for the father in Les Mots (1991a: 36). Quoting the passage from the text where the narrator talks about an imagined paternity of his own father, he claims that this signifies ‘regret at missing a father’ (1991a: 36).'° And Buisine argues that the identification between Sartre and his father is through death (1986b: 33).

Seidler points out that because men suppress their emotions, it is hard for them to acknowledge their feelings of love and need for their fathers since they have more time with their mothers and no competition: ‘Supposedly, men are not supposed to feel anger and resentment at the absence of their fathers’ (1991: 99). This is certainly how Sartre presents his life in Les Mots: he had his mother all to himself and there were no family quarrels (but that is probably because his grandfather ruled and no one dared to disobey his wishes, least of all his daughter). One of the advantages of a positive father /son relationship would have been to put in perspective his own relationship to his grandfather and to his mother. From the age of five, Sartre was asked to be the mirror image of his grandfather who was seventy, and of his mother who was still in her twenties. According to Cohen-Solal’s analysis, Poulou is in fact the product of two wounded adults (1985: 67) — this is his narcissistic wound — and in turn he mirrors this narcissism in his grandiosity. The attitude of Sartre’s grandfather reflects a particular moment of patriarchal culture of the early part of the twentieth century; the mother’s attitude also reflects the place of women in cultural history at that moment. Especially as a widow, Anne-Marie owns nothing in life: she has no money, no house, no husband, no social status, and no career. It is very tempting for her to make Poulou into her object in which she can mirror her younger self, and give him the sort of life she has never had. Her son becomes an object that is ‘cathected narcissistically ... the target of one’s investment or attachment but not viewed as having its own life center or activity’ Johnson 1994:

159). At this stage, Sartre’s multiple selves are narrowed down to being what his mother wants him to be; he maintains contact with her through dependency and at the expense of his own autonomy.

14 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

If the young Sartre was idealised by his mother, then it is more than likely that he would have been unable to provide the gratification, excitement or meaning that she expected. He would have projected that his mother was disappointed in him, and that he was not coming up to her expectations. And in return, he would have been disappointed at the failure of his mother as an idealised other. Cau, Sartre’s secretary, reports Sartre’s mother talking about him as a young boy, saying that he was a nice

little boy, gentle and easy going. He was devilish but would soon repent telling his mother: ‘When I grow up, my little mummy, I will be what you want me to be ... what would you like me to be?’ And she used to reply to him: ‘I only want you to be my little boy’ (1985: 254). As a double blow, Sartre would also have understood that he was too ‘feminine’ to come up to his grandfather’s expectations and this would have created an internal conflict between different selves: ‘I was pure object, doomed, above all, to masochism’ (1964a: W, 71; my emphasis).

One of my main contentions is that Poulou was caught between two mutually exclusive models; that of his grandfather and that of his mother.

From the former he understood that he could not express his feminine side, from the latter that he could not express his masculine side. He does not have access to a reintegrating discourse where there would be a place for his masculine in relation to his feminine.“ At the point of self-formation, ‘the narcissist is led to reject some part of himself’ — hence the manifestation of what I called in the introduction his ‘compromised sense of self’ — and this is done through the exertion of considerable will johnson 1994: 169-70). Sartre learned very early to forge his will, which gave him power over significant others. The manifestation of Sartre’s compromised sense of self, linked to his grandiosity, can be traced back throughout his childhood. In a particularly insightful passage, the narrator of Les Mots explains that as young Poulou sat alone reading, he could imagine the gaze of the adults and therefore that even alone he was performing: ‘Seen, I saw myself’ (1964a: W, 46) which also implies that, not seen, he was invisible to himself. And what is seen is his grandiose self: the infant prodigy who pretends he can read a book when he does not know the alphabet. The narrator of Les Mots writes about his life from six to nine: ‘Everything took place in my head; an imaginary child I protected myself through the imagination’ (1964a: W, 71; my emphasis). This is Sartre’s way of describing his compromised sense of self, away from embodiment. Elsewhere, he talks about leading two exis-

tences, both of them lies. In public he was an impostor; alone, ‘I was absorbed by an imaginary fit of sulks. I corrected my false glory by a false incognito’ (1964a: W, 84; my emphasis). He talks about being threatened in as much as his self was in danger of remaining those alternative lies of his to the very end. The narrator then talks about another sense of self that he equates to the reality of the children playing in the municipal gardens and ignoring him: ‘I lost my prodigious intelligence, my universal knowledge,

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 15

my athletic frame, and my ruffianly poise’ (1964a: W, 84). The children were actually deflating his grandiose self; this could have triggered off a painful but healthy process allowing Sartre to shed some of his magnificence and to include a wider range of selves rather than to expel them. This appears to be reflected in the theme of mourning in Les Mots. Hollier reads in it the motif of the dead child, as a narcissistic tendency in which the author laments over his own absence, going as far as calling Les Mots a suicide since the imaginary child was dead from the beginning (1986: 198). And Buisine explains that whereas normally a subject comes to

terms with the death of his primary narcissism symbolised by the child that he was, Sartre identifies with the dead child: ‘He keeps becoming the one he must still and again put to death’ (1986b: 32). My interpretation of Sartre’s psycho-social formation seems a useful tool for the following quotation, which I have pondered over many times: I have looked for my sense of self [mon moi]: I have seen it manifest itself in my relationship to my friends, to nature, to the women I have loved. I have found in myself a collective soul, a group soul, a soul of the earth, a soul of books. But my sense of self, as such, outside of human beings and of things, my real self [mon vrai moi], unconditioned, I have not found it. (1990: 471-72)!

This was written in 1924 when Sartre was nineteen. Read today this statement could be attributed to someone influenced by post-modernism. In the 1920s, it was widely believed that people had a ‘real self’, and what Sartre is trying to express is that he is not aware of his ‘real self’. In order to have a relationship with himself, he has to go through the Other. This seems to tally with the hypothesis about Sartre as a toddler blocked from becoming more independent, with his subsequent identity found exclusively in the relationship with the other. Johnson writes about the narcissist that the self is defined almost entirely by the other or by the other’s response to him (1994: 168); the underlying emotional reality includes ‘the sense of void in the experience of any real self’ (1994: 172-73). This theory also fits in with a masculinity reading. Seidler argues that,

although men often have a strong sense of identity within the public realm, this is often at the cost of a more personal sense of self: ‘Because there is a strong connection between learning our masculinity and learning to be impersonal, rational and objective, we are often left with a weakened sense of individual identity’ (1989: 107). According to him, this produces a false sense of objectivity with men so identified with their goals and ends that they are often unaware of their own emotional needs. He concludes that whereas women are often said to be invisible in the public realm, men are often invisible to themselves (1989: 108). And because men

strive for independence, male identity is often identified with separateness: ‘This means that as men we can have a strong sense of ourselves as separate and independent human beings while at another level have a very weak sense of personal self’ (1989: 149; my emphasis).

16 ~— Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

It could be argued that Sartre’s experience of his self influenced his first philosophical essay La Transcendance de l’Ego, published in 1936. Sartre feels

a void inside himself linked to his externally validated compromised sense of self. According to Sartre, the Ego is made up of the concept of ‘T’ (an active agent) and of the ‘self’ (the concrete totality of a person both psychologically and physically), as explained by Sylvie Le Bon (Sartre 1936a: 19 n. 12). Sartre describes the Ego as not being inside consciousness either formally or materially. It is outside, in the world. It is a being in the world, like the Ego of other people (1936a: 13). Consciousness makes possible the unity

and the personality of my ‘I’ (1936a: 23); through ‘intentionality’, it transcends itself (1936a: 21). For him, the ‘T’ has no place in the non-reflexive consciousness (1936a: 24). Feelings such as love or hatred are transcendental objects (1936a: 76). I have stated that Sartre feels he exists only in his interaction with significant others (‘But my sense of self, as such, outside of human beings and of things, my real self, unconditioned, I have not found it’ (1990: 471-—72)). His view of the self is consistent with my interpretation of his character having similarities with that of a narcissist. Presenting La Transcendance de l’Ego in La Force de l’aige, one senses that

Beauvoir does not agree with Sartre’s theory. She refers to Sartre’s notion

that the unreflexive consciousness is autonomous as one of his most

ancient and stubborn beliefs (1960: 189-90). And Le Bon makes the point in

her preface to the 1965 edition that Sartre would not renege on La Transcendance de l’Ego but that he would want to qualify his remarks on psychoanalysis, having totally revised his belief (1936a: 8). However, in an interview that took place in 1975, despite the questioning of Pucciani, Sartre still argues that the ego is outside consciousness (Sartre 1982a: 76). The connections I am making are not a way to try and belittle Sartre’s philosophy. I am simply tracing how his psychic state finds its way into his phenomenological psychology. What is happening to Sartre as he is growing up into a little boy? Charles

Schweitzer was irritated by Poulou’s long curly hair, telling his daughter that he was a boy and that she was making him into a girl. When Poulou is aged seven, his grandfather takes him to the barber, telling the young Poulou that they are going to prepare a surprise for his mother. He gets his

long curly hair cut off; his mother and grandmother are stunned. His mother reportedly locks herself in her bedroom and cries, the narrator of Les Mots interpreting: ‘her little girl had been changed into a little boy’ (1964a: W, 66). With this incident Sartre says that he discovered his ugliness. In a letter to Simone Jollivet written in 1926, Sartre tells her that until then

he was a gorgeous baby. After that, his ephemeral splendour disappeared along with his shorn locks: ‘I turned ugly as a frog, much uglier than now’ (1983b: WL, 12). Sartre’s body also becomes his narcissistic wound. Sartre’s ugliness is something that will deeply influence his relationship to others; especially women, and it will be synonymous for him with his vulnerability, which he will try to hide. In terms of embodiment, his ugliness

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 17

is psycho-socially produced. He is measured and measures himself up against an ideal of beauty that he cannot attain, and his inadequacy is defined against a ‘norm’.'° Lévy makes the point that the origin of Sartre’s phrase ‘One is not born a Jew, one becomes it’ which stresses the freedom of the individual could lie in ‘One is not born ugly, one becomes it’ (2000: 346).

| In Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions published in 1939, Sartre argues that an emotion is a way of changing the world by a magical attitude; it is a flight of consciousness faced with a world that invades it violently and that consciousness wants to destroy. When we cannot see a way out, we

try and change ourselves rather than the world. He contends that with emotions, it is the body which, directed by consciousness, changes its relationship to the world so that the world changes its properties (1939a: 44). One wonders how much Sartre is influenced in his phenomenological psychology by his childhood experiences. Why is the episode of the haircut so important? Symbolically, the young

Sartre lost his androgynous self (his mother and grandmother loved to brush his soft locks) in order to be firmly positioned within masculinity discourses as dictated by his grandfather. The latter cuts a formidable figure and is described as a nineteenth-century man (he was once compared to Victor Hugo). Years later in 1979 Sartre was still ready to reclaim his androgynous self when he declared in an interview on Gustave Flaubert: ‘As for me, Iam certainly androgynous’ (1979a: 37). And he also told Beauvoir in 1975 that there was a sort of woman inside him (Sartre 1976a: 116).

It is perhaps at the age of seven with the symbolic haircut that Sartre encounters his first ‘masculinity challenge’. James W. Messerschmidt defines this notion as follows: ‘Masculinity challenges arise from interactional threats and insults from peers, teachers, parents, and from situationally defined masculine expectations that are not achievable’ (2000: 13). In this case, Sartre is asked to choose ‘manhood’ by his grandfather and to (literally) shed his feminine side. As stated in the introduction: ‘Masculinity has to be constantly reasserted in the continuous denial of “femininity”

or “feminine qualities”’ (Seidler 1991: 98-99). And this creates a gender melancholy, as expressed by Butler: ‘What ensues is a culture of gender melancholy in which masculinity and femininity emerge as the traces of an ungrieved and ungrievable love, indeed, where masculinity and femininity within the heterosexual matrix are strengthened through the repudiation they perform’ (1995: 28). Sartre complies with his grandfather’s wishes, but all he achieves is to

make his mother cry. In turn he feels that he is ugly (the photographs of Sartre with his hair cut short does show his wall-eyed and quite a brutal

face in contrast to his soft appeal when he had long hair). Sartre will become trapped between a set of fixed subjectivities and gender polarities, and effectively will find it too threatening and destabilising to integrate his feminine side in his masculinity. He will mirror his environment, rejecting in himself what was rejected by others, and trying to hide that which has

18 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

been rejected, trying to compensate for it. Sartre’s relationship to his body,

which was already puny will never be the same again as his physique becomes part of his narcissistic wound. Ultimately, he will feel shame every time he feels tender, soft, or vulnerable, especially as these traits are associated with his mother.

It is easy to spot how this can be translated into Sartre’s philosophy. Harvey makes the following point, referring to Nausea: ‘Existence, which is at the root of Roquentin’s nausea, is represented as a fluid, rotting,

murky, feminine medium threatening to engulf the subject (male by Sartre’s reckoning)’ (1991a: 57 n. 12); he also argues that transcendence is blatantly phallic. Hughes notices how the imagery in Les Mots points to the fact that Poulou’s anguish is partly sexual, that female sexuality ‘constitutes its bedrock’ (1999: 31) and that ‘non-pleasure is the proper of women’ whilst linguistic violence is that of males (1999: 27). Johnson argues that the narcissistic child who has forged his will and rejected a part of himself tends to also cut himself off from real sensory

experiences of the self (1994: 169-70); this would indicate that Sartre becomes disembodied. If I can anticipate Sartre’s relationship to his body as a young adult, Beauvoir famously relates that with his body taken over by renal colic, Sartre maintained that he felt fine, wanting to carry on with his daily routine (1981: A, 320). Elsewhere she claims that when Sartre’s body manifests itself through tiredness or illness, he refuses to admit that

he and his body have anything in common. When he is ill, he hides or denies his symptoms hence doctors have a terrible time reaching a diagnosis (1946: 113)! In his war diaries, Sartre argues that fainting, seasickness,

and nervous breakdowns are a matter of will power and he plans to classify people according to the nature of their self-consent (1995: 500). In L’Etre et le néant, he writes that one’s illness remains out of reach, but others can detect it hence its profound nature is to be a being-for-others (1943:

424). Seidler sums up: “It is as if we were continually trying to free ourselves from the demands of the body, which would inherently undermine our freedom and autonomy’ (1989: 103, 129-30). Within Sartre’s splitting of masculine / feminine, a possibility of reintegration appears. He will invest in the illusion of a fixed self, that of a reading and then a writing self, to the exclusion of other subjectivities; this will feed his grandiose self.'* Pacaly writes that Sartre almost claims not to be

born from a man and a woman but from writing, a feat he also projects onto Genet and Gorz (1980: 298)!*° She also sees writing as revenge for the fear of castration (359); the way I would put this is that Sartre’s writing self is a way of escaping his fantasised fear of emasculation.’® Buisine writes that for Sartre the funerary and the literary are interlinked (1986b: 18). Les Mots is separated into two parts: first ‘Reading’, then ‘Writing’. The

transition between the two parts comes as follows: whilst he is battling with his feelings of rejection by his peer-group as they do not let him join in with their games, the narrator talks about being saved by his grandfa-

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 19

ther who flung him into writing (1964a: W, 85); Sartre is eight years old. I do not believe in such a neat two-phase progression;’’” Sartre was prepar-

ing for writing from the moment he was reading, and investing his grandiose self (his compromised sense of self) and his masculine subjectivity in the reading, which in turn will feed into his early writing.’® In the conversations with Beauvoir in 1974, Sartre mentions how when his ‘girlfriend’ of the time who had tuberculosis died, he wrote her poems; he was aged six (1981: 370). The narrator of Les Mots calls writing ‘a fresh imposture’ (1964a: W, 85). It shows that, at the time of writing his autobiography at least, he does not appear to be fooled by his investment in writing. I do not want to denigrate in any way Sartre’s investment in writing nor under-

estimate the fact that it allowed him to survive psychically, as I will now explain. It is in fact a testimony to the resources of the young Sartre. And although Sartre discovered his ugliness aged seven, it was then sublimated and Sartre argued that it was not a problem during the following years.” In a passage from his autobiography, Sartre articulates that his sense of self became exclusively identified with his writing self: ‘By writing, I existed ... but I existed only to write and if I said: me — that meant the me who wrote’ (1964a: W, 97). Leak writes: ‘Writing was, if not a substitute for

living, then at least co-substantial, indeed co-terminous, with it’ (1998: 975). Sartre has the illusion of a fixed self rather than a fluid self at the expense of other excluded selves. Sartre talks in an interview about the role of

a critic. According to him, a critic should try and find his original choice, which is the most difficult (1982a: 80). My contention is that this is Sartre’s original choice, and that it will drive him until 1973 when he has a stroke and loses his remaining eyesight, and tragically becomes unable to write. But at the time of his original choice, the writing self provides him with a

rational, unified, powerful and coherent self that protects him against the sensual, embodied self, which carries his void (what Sartre will call his emptiness); it is in fact part of his compromised sense of self, there to hide other feelings like his ugliness. Panic, emptiness and void are often associated with feeling that there is no substance to the self. The writing self

will provide a powerful self that will defend him from vulnerability threats, as an embodied omnipotence (the act of writing). Commenting on Sartre’s reflection (as an adult): ‘I have no Superego’ (1964a: W, 15), Idt makes the point that, on the contrary, Poulou’s superego was rather tyrannical, censoring all impulses but that of writing (2001: 29). His writing self will be produced through rational control and will also become his way of rising to the challenge of hegemonic masculinities. In 1979, Sartre is asked about sexuality and writing. He also talks more generally about the printed word: ‘It is the transformation of what is still soft, belonging too much to oneself, like a sexual organ that does not erect,

into something which, on the contrary, through the intervention of the printed letter, takes on a quality of hardness, of thickness which still remains oneself, whilst also being already something hard ready to pene-

20 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

trate into the World’ (Sartre 1979b: 11; my emphasis).”° One could almost write ‘For a long while I treated my pen as a phallus’; the act of writing is embodied.’ The quotation echoes Dolorés Vanetti’s description of Sartre

with whom she shared a passionate affair after the Second World War: ‘What was extraordinary, when he was in love and when he wanted to seduce you, is that he talked without limits, is that he asked you questions and entered into you, like a tank, a real tank’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 357; my emphasis). And a priest living with Sartre in the prisoner of war camp will describe him as a steamroller (Perrin 1980: 144). Sartre appears to embody masculinities.

The young Sartre discovered the world through books to the extent that he felt nature to be more ‘real’ in his books than in the public park: ‘I found ideas more real than things’ (1964a: W, 34). He invented himself as a writer

as one of the ways of producing his masculine subjectivities. Seidler underlines that within a rationalist culture, men use language to assert themselves individually, hiding their vulnerability as it is read as a sign of weakness (1989: 141). At first, Sartre believed that one wrote for God with a view to saving one’s neighbours (1964a: W, 13); grandiosity seems to be underlying his project. In a telling episode when Sartre is taken to the Luxembourg park by his mother, he relates how his clothes are going round the park, but his ‘glorious body’ remains on the sixth floor of their apartment in Rue Le Goff, presumably reading or writing (1964a: W, 97). Sartre could be saying that he has no sense of his physical body. In 1974, Sartre is asked how he feels inside his body — he is by then an ageing man. His reply is highly revealing: ‘It’s not very disagreeable; but it’s not agreeable. I don’t feel well in myself’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 312). Sartre is against ‘letting go’ [abandon] of the body. For him, the body is a centre of action, thrust away outside of his consciousness. What matters for him are

the actions performed by his body: ‘I think that when I was a child I very early conceived of my body as a center of action, neglecting the aspects of sensation and passivity’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 312). He then explains that it

was always when his body was in activity (his hand for example) thathe was aware of it. The following is a clear statement of disembodiment: ‘I found it hard to have a body’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 117). Most of the time, Poulou will rejoice in his imaginary body, that of his comic book hero, Pardaillan, the paradigmatic hero from Michel Zevaco’s

serial adventure series. Sartre traces the origins of this body at the time when he could not yet read but when he used to listen to his mother playing the piano, stating that he always had an adult imaginary body, as far back as he can remember (Beauvoir 1981: A, 321). He will get used to being alienated from his actual physical body, which has narcissistically injured

him, living exclusively in his head through his imagination and through his pen. In the conversations with Beauvoir in 1974, Sartre expands on his imaginary body claiming that it enveloped his actual physical body in his perception: ‘Since it was a matter of killing columns of enemies ... I felt like

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 21

a powerful warrior. And that’s a feeling I have always retained; it was a kind of compensation for my shortness’ (1981: A, 313). Sartre became his heroes Michel Strogoff or Pardaillan, in his imagina-

tion, but this also spilled into reality: ‘If I pushed against a stone, my act was more violent and the stone heavier in the imaginary world than it was in reality’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 313). Sartre will construct his own masculine _ body by becoming his comic book hero, with a steel body, and — using fairy

tales as a starting point — constructing himself as a knight in shining armour rescuing damsels (Sartre 1964a: W, 72). His hero, a cloak-and-dag-

ger hero, was a man stronger than the rest, taller, so to some extent the opposite of what he was (Beauvoir 1981: 167).

What can be said specifically about Sartre’s relationship with girls? Writing opens up the world of seduction. Sartre relates an episode when he was nine. He used to invent puppet shows and perform them in the Luxembourg Gardens. These attracted young girls; Nicole became his ‘girlfriend’. He remembers being particularly proud because he knew that | he had obtained her affection thanks to his imagination: From this time onwards — and this was perhaps the deepest motive in my wish for writing — | associated art and love so much so that it seemed to me impossible to gain the affection of these little girls by means other than my talent for comedy and story-telling ... | would have hated to be loved for my face or my phys-

ical charm, I had to seduce through the charm of my inventions, comedy, speeches, poems ... (1995: 263-64; my emphasis)

The art Sartre is referring to in this instance is oral performance but he will often be using the written word. Sartre confided to Beauvoir in 1974 that he had relations with girls in which he acted the part of the great talker, the seducer (Beauvoir 1981: A, 290-91; 371). Aged ten he dreamt of being a

scholarly Don Juan, ‘slaying women through the power of his golden tongue’ (1995: WD, 266). This is an important discovery for Sartre since clearly one of the masculinity challenges he will be set in the heterosexist

world is that of his interaction with girls.” Sartre’s response will be to seduce through writing and being a writer; the pattern will be set for life: ‘To write was to grasp the meaning of things, and to render it as well as possible. And to captivate [women] was the same thing, quite plainly’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 269).

Poulou will imagine that he has a steel body capable of responding to any masculinity challenge thrown at him. His ugliness is thus sublimated into his writing self and probably forgotten by Sartre, at least that is what he leads us to believe. Peter Middleton, studying the action-comic image

of the male body, makes the point that all disputes seem settled by the matching of physical force, analysing that ‘the real motive for the violence is ... the release of anger, because the fighting is apparently such a satisfactory means of emotional catharsis’ (1992: 33). In this scenario, Sartre

would be releasing some of his pent-up anger through his fantasies. It

22 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

would be difficult to state where this anger comes from, but some of it could be linked to his frustration at not measuring up to inflated ideals of masculinity or to having had to give up his femininity (‘The flight from femininity is angry and frightened ...’ (Kimmel 1994a: 127)). Sartre’s anger could also be linked to his growing sense, as expressed in his autobiography, that his life at home is inspired by what he will call ‘the family comedy’ (‘I was called a gift from heaven’, 1964a: W, 70). He recalls that as a child he was not really proud but that he was acting out the part of pride to himself (1995: 506). It appears that the adults around him do not relate to the young Sartre as a contradictory being. In 1974, when Beauvoir presses Sartre on the question of his complete refusal of bodily passivity as an adult, she asks him if he was too coddled by his mother and grandfa-

ther and if he reacted against it. Sartre’s reply is illuminating. He refers Beauvoir back to his autobiography and then explains that he felt he was something other than a pretty little petted boy (this would indicate Sartre aware of his compromised sense of self, at least at the time of writing his autobiography): ‘So there was a very ugly man who was me and then an adorable little boy who was also me, but a me of whom I was less proud, with whom I was less pleased’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 327).

Throughout all this time, Sartre’s relationship with his mother carries on being presented as symbiotic. A passage in Les Mots describes a man looking at Sartre’s mother with a mad look (probably desiring her), and is worth quoting in full: ‘... Anne-Marie and I quickly became a single terrified young girl who sprang backwards ... I sensed his desire through AnneMarie: through her, I learned to scent the male, to fear and loathe him. This

incident bound us more closely together: I used to trot along looking tough, my hand in my mother’s, confident that I could protect her’ (1964a: W, 137, my emphasis).*° The first movement in the scene is one of identification with his mother; they become a single terrified young girl, almost fusing together. But the incident makes them closer and he has the fantasy that he is a knight protecting his mother, even though revealingly it is his hand that is in his mother’s. A psychoanalytical reading might reveal that there is an unconscious desire on the part of Poulou to possess his mother and simultaneously a fear of being engulfed and overwhelmed by her, for as Connell writes: ‘There are many ways in which a boy may find part of

himself to be feminine. There is often a continuing identification with mother ...’ (1983: 20). It is also a way for the young Sartre to own up by proxy and temporarily to his feminine side that he has had to reject and bury. This is a pattern that will be repeated in his relationship to women, as analysed in chapter eight. It is again another episode that bears for the young boy a negative connotation with embodied men, where he learns to ‘scent the male, to fear and loathe him’ and which will have unfortunate consequences for all his life.”4

We learn from the manuscript of Les Mots that the young Poulou aged eight invested everything in writing in order to compensate for a malaise,

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 23

comparing his investment to entering into a religion (Cohen-Solal 1985: 456). My analysis has shown that this was a wish to present a unified self. I want to reiterate at this stage that I am not judging Sartre. This aspiring,

alternative self may be a basis for many good things and it might bea fairly good adaptation to the difficulties Sartre encountered. Buisine remarks that Sartre’s biographies of Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert all start melodramatically; a situation of failure triggers off the choice of writing (1986a: 42). In his preface to Gorz’s book Le Traitre, Sartre appears to be talking about himself when he makes the point that every classic author (Pascal, Racine, Saint-Simon) is ‘a deceased child who prefers himself to everything else’ (1964b: 40). The word ‘malaise’ is a slight understatement

for what must have been at best existential angst: ‘I was the undefined made flesh and blood ... Iloved nothing and no one’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 27); ‘I was nothing: an indelible transparency’ (1964a: W, 58). Sartre is also telling us about his pain.

Being nothing alerts us to speculate that Sartre did not have a strong sense of self, or self-esteem. One also gets from these statements a strong presence of the concept of contingency that Sartre will develop in his early philosophy. I talked above of disembodiment; it is revealing that with the young Poulou so often ill, he conflated his body and his illnesses: ‘I confused my body and its malaise: I no longer knew which of the two was undesirable’ (Sartre 1964a: 78).*? Let us remember that Sartre has two bodies: the one he calls a puny physical body (he is smaller than most boys of

his age), and the imaginary body of Pardaillan who is launched into incredible adventures every night.*° On a fantasy level, cutting himself off from his body is a way of not feeling his malaise. In Sartre par lui-méme, his

autobiographical film, Sartre recognises that his ‘escapism’ into comic strips worked as an antidote, against a kind of emptiness: ‘I felt, a kind of boredom, which represented what I later called existence’ (1976b: SBH, 6);

this concurs with what I analysed earlier regarding the origin of some of these philosophical concepts. The emptiness, the malaise, point to a void. How do these psycho-social processes relate to my masculinity reading? It is my contention that the telescoping between Sartre’s masculinity challenge and a certain lack (in the psychoanalytic sense of the term) could contribute to producing the void Sartre is referring to. It is worth pausing here to look at this lack, which is a threat of masculine inadequacies since it is an important element in the construction of Sartre’s masculine subjectivities.

The perceived threat of masculine inadequacies which most men encounter is often linked to a sense of Joss. The threat of masculine inade-

quacies for Sartre appears twofold: first, a feeling of purposelessness, somehow linked to the absence of a father and to the fact that Poulou does not appear to have any sense of self separate from his mother’s projections — he feels that he is a void without her. Secondly, a sense of masculine self that makes him feel inadequate since he cannot integrate his femininity.

From the incident of the haircut, compounded later on by life in La

24 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Rochelle (as we will see in chapter two), the loss will be about the brutal exclusion of ‘softer’ masculinities, the loss of the mother-object and the repudiation of the ‘feminine’. According to Butler, ‘the lost object continues to haunt and inhabit the ego as one of its constitutive identifications’ (1995: 23). Like a lot of men, Sartre will engage in compensatory, masculinity-accomplishing behaviours, buying into or colluding with a seductive discourse of heroic heterosexual masculinities (like stealing, getting involved in fights, trying to seduce young women). In terms of masculinities, void and emptiness, part of Sartre’s own vulnerabilities, count as nothing(ness), and since Sartre embodies these feelings, he tends to split from his body as a defence against his vulnerability, something which will be the direct cause of his body’s premature ageing.”’ If he could integrate his void, it would become part of a more inclusive sense of self. Embodied lack or the ‘threat of lack’*® is psycho-socially con-

structed in a lot of men through implicit contrasts between the cultural ideals of toughness, muscularity and strength — unattainable ideals — (which Sartre derived from Pardaillan and acted out in his fantasy writings) and many men’s threatened sense of imaginary inferiority to this idealised norm (Sartre describes himself as a ‘puny boy who interested no one’ 1964a: 115).”

Sartre’s own sense of self is built around his heroic project of reading / writing (‘For a long while I treated my pen as a sword’, 1964a: W, 157). He developed a sense of grandiose masculine identity: ‘I am not at ease except in freedom, escaping objects, escaping myself; I am not at ease except in Nothingness — I’m a true nothingness ... I am a lack and I precisely lack the world ... So it’s the world that I want to possess’ (1995: WD, 251; my emphasis). Escaping from himself may mean escaping from his ugliness, which trans-

lates as his vulnerability, dependency and embodied state. It also means escaping from the void, and therefore the loss and the pain. Magnificence often compensates vulnerability, which would explain the statement that Sartre wants to possess the world: ‘My ambition is myself alone to know the world ... as a totality ... to know is to appropriate’ (1995: WD, 251). Sartre as the heroic philosopher king, narcissistically omnipotent.”

Sartre’s self-agegrandising subjectivity is pursued through rationality. Sartre will derive social (and sexual) power from writing for the rest of his life. And, paradoxically, it is the politics of masculinity that will allow him to have such energy, especially after the war, to commit himself to political action, and to start so many different projects: to be a novelist, a playwright, an essayist, a political commentator, a philosopher, a committed writer and thinker. Where does the wish to write come from? Apart from Sartre himself, it also appears to come from the adults surrounding him. From a very young age Sartre associated reading with a privileged time with his mother: “We were alone and private, far from man, gods and priests, two does in the wood, with those other does, the Fairies’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 31);! their iden-

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 25

tification is very powerful, away from men and masculinity since they are associated with fairies — asexual beings. Sartre’s grandiosity manifests itself in reading; he pretended he knew how to read without having been taught formally. He narrates that having struggled through Hector Malot’s Sans Famille, when the last page was turned he knew how to read (1964a: W, 32).°* During his childhood, his mother copies his writing into notebooks, nurturing his aspirations; she is implicitly endorsing his masculin-

ity path. Poulou also claims that between the ages of eight and ten, he internalised his grandfather’s voice and the latter’s “so called imperative mandate’ that he should write (1964a: W, 104). Using the expression ‘internalising his grandfather’s voice’ is revealing: if the ten year old is carrying

Charles Schweitzer inside his head, it must be because he holds him as a type of father figure. Likewise, ‘mandate’ betrays a voice of mastery and authority. Poulou is a child prodigy whom everyone admires, family and family friends alike. This fits in with the narcissistic theory; there is an ‘ideal breeding ground for a highly narcissistic adaptation ... particularly if there is then parental idealization’ Johnson 1994: 156). It seems impossible to judge the influence his grandfather and mother exercised on his project of being a writer by relying mostly on Sartre’s own account in Les Mots. However, Cohen-Solal argues that Sartre may have

been economical with the truth in interpreting his grandfather’s role. According to her analysis, this is the one place in his autobiography where his account leaves a lot to be desired. She cites as evidence the letters writ-

ten by Charles Schweitzer, which show measure and restraint, and she qualifies his attitude towards the young Sartre’s early attempts at novels as the most sensible in the family. She would rather blame Sartre’s mother

Anne-Marie but speculates that Sartre may have been so much in the throes of an Oedipal complex at the time that he wanted to protect his mother whom he idealised (Cohen-Solal 1985: 60).

But a well-known anecdote could be used to argue the opposite case. Aged six and a half, Sartre sends a letter to a writer called Courteline and signs ‘Your future friend’. The letter starts with a reference to Sartre’s grandfather; he had told him that Courteline was being honoured. The purpose of the letter is to congratulate him. In the Album Jean-Paul Sartre, the envelope is printed. It is addressed to the writer c/o his publisher Flammarion (1991a: 27). Would Anne-Marie have known how to contact a writer? Or is that not the work of his grandfather, himself a man of letters and author of a pedagogical book for teaching German? My purpose is not to blame either Anne-Marie or Charles Schweitzer. What is important is the fact that Sartre developed his writing self at the expense of other selves.

There is a significant person in Sartre’s recalling of his childhood, his grandmother. She is portrayed as either dominated by her husband or confluent with her daughter. In a telling passage she is mentioned in the context of Poulou’s life being described as paradise, but she spoils the party by

not admiring him enough, the narrator commenting: ‘In fact, Louise had

26 ~— Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

seen through me’ (1964a: W, 24).°° By this I understand that she may have seen through his grandiose self. Significantly, as a young adult, Sartre will fee] quite close to her and he will often go and see her in Paris. Perhaps he realised when he became older that she loved him for who he was rather than who he pretended to be. This is clearly articulated in Les Mots: ‘I was a buffoon, a clown, a sham, and she ordered me to stop my monkey-tricks’ (1964a: W, 24).

Sartre’s grandiosity does create chaos. In his autobiography he recalls how ona rainy day, ten children acted in a patriotic play (Sartre was nine). At rehearsals he is told that he is perfectly sweet, which does not surprise him. During the actual play, the narrator reports that all children were enjoying themselves except for him: ‘Convinced that the fate of the play

lay in my hand, I did all I could to please’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 67). He believed that all eyes were fixed on him and went too far. As a result, Bernard who was less mannered than Poulou received the votes. Poulou then tugged Bernard’s beard thinking it would be seen as a joke: it came away in his hand. His mother told him that everyone was surprised at his

gesture and she reprimanded him. And his grandmother reported that -Bernard’s mother talked about Poulou being jealous of her son’s success. Jean-Paul is told: ‘You see what happens when you show off!’ He ran off and spent a long time making faces in front of a mirror.** This episode could illustrate the following theory taken from Johnson:

‘When well-defended, the narcissistic person aggrandizes and adorns himself, plays to the audience for superlative approval, manipulates, objectifies, and devalues others in service of his grandiose ... self, and seems to believe in his own grandiosity’ (1994: 42). In terms of masculinities, Bernard is seen as a rival who displaces Sartre from his pedestal and Sartre has to topple him over. His gesture is highly symbolic; by tugging at his beard, he reminds everyone that Bernard is a child who had taken on the masculine display of his grandfather (the beard). The whole audience

becomes manipulated for the desired effect but Johnson argues that the inevitable frustrations of life will elicit the opposite pole of worthlessness and self-depreciation (1994: 42). It does not appear as if Sartre feels shame, since in shame one averts one’s eyes. His response is to make faces at himself in front of a mirror.

A similar episode is narrated, again in Les Mots. The young Sartre is with Mme Picard, a family friend. She asked him to fill in a questionnaire and Poulou saw it as an opportunity to be wonderful, or in masculinity terms omnipotent. He tried to write answers above his age. Handing his answers back to Mme Picard and his mother, he noticed the latter turning pink once they had read them. Mme Picard told him that the questionnaire was only interesting if one was sincere. The narrator comments: ‘My mistake was patent: they wanted the infant prodigy, and I had given them the child sublime’ (1964a: W, 68-69). Again, Sartre disappeared and went to make faces in front of a mirror. This time, the narrator stands back from the

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 27

actual event and tells us how he interprets the making of faces. They are a

form of self-protection (‘I was guarding myself against the lightning flashes of shame by a barrier of muscle’ (1964a: W, 68-69)).°° There is some

self-awareness here. The narrator expands further that by turning himself into a monster and getting rid of his means of pleasing, his remorse would turn to pity; in other words, he ‘plunged into humility to evade humiliation’ (1964a: W, 68-69). Pacaly argues that such an attitude can be a sign of reversed omnipotence; to plunge towards humiliation is a way of avoiding the risk of being subjected to it in a passive way (1980: 246, n. 280). Sartre explains: ‘By screwing and wrinkling it up, I was altering my face; | was throwing acid at myself to efface my old smiles’ (1964a: W, 69). In other words, he wants to actually destroy the child sublime. But if this sense of self is destroyed, one faces the void. If lam not my accomplishment of the grandiose symbols, then who am I? This is precisely what Sartre is express-

ing in the following paragraphs. | He writes that he had tried to take refuge from glory and dishonour ‘in

the loneliness of his true self (my emphasis); result: ‘I had no true self (my emphasis). Precisely: what Sartre means is that he is nothing outside of the projections of the adults around him; if he is not his compromised sense of self then he is nothing(-ness): ‘Idolised by all, but rejected individually, I was an item that had been returned, and, at the age of seven, I could fall back only on myself; who did not yet exist. I was an empty palace of mirrors ...”, (Sartre 1964a: W, 69; my emphasis).*° This last image is particularly striking as it matches the definition of a narcissist. This is what Sartre calls ‘the family comedy’ where he plays the infant prodigy (1964a: W, 71). Ina

passage, the narrator explains that in order to fill the void, he set up the pretension of being indispensable to the Universe (1964a: W, 70). One can

see the grandiosity in the compensatory sense of self and the masculine omnipotence (‘Someone’s lacking here: it’s Sartre’ (1964a: W, 72)). A connection can also easily be made with Sartre’s philosophical notions of contingency and necessity. The young Sartre is encouraged to pursue his heroic project, although as narrator of Les Mots, writing decades after the actual event, he claims that he was not completely duped, referring to the project as the ‘family comedy’.*’” He was only taken in by the ‘family comedy’ on the surface: ‘deep

down, I remained cold, unjustified ... I prepared for myself the middleclass solitude for which there is no cure: that of the creator’ (1964a: W, 71). ‘Unjustified’ is the key word here: writing does not shore up his sense of self but simply inflates his narcissism. Once he realised that it was a fantasy, he could have abandoned such a project. The fact is that he did not, a fact he puts down to his pride and friendlessness, and to the fact that he wanted to be either dead or sought after by the whole world (Sartre 1964a: W, 105). Poulou has learnt to inflate those parts of him that were highly valued.

By seeking such polarities, Sartre is in perpetual flight from himself, never attaining his goals, never satisfied with himself, never self-accepting.

28 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

This illustrates how the grandiosity lingers on in Sartre’s project, and will be reflected in some of his fictional characters and also in some of the mammoth writing tasks he will undertake but not be able to complete. No wonder also that the concept of the ‘fundamental project’ / original choice will hold such prominence in Sartre’s philosophy. Sartre writes that eventually he had to choose between Pardaillan and Corneille, between being an athlete or a writer, opting for the latter (1964a: W, 102). These are two different

forms of masculinity: muscular or intellectual. One is pushing people around physically and the other is pushing people around intellectually. _ In his autobiography, Sartre relates that he used to avenge rejection by his peer-group with... words, ‘with half a dozen precocious remarks and the slaughter of one hundred mercenaries’, concluding: ‘It was no good, something was wrong with me’ (1964a: W, 104). I do believe that something was ‘wrong’ with the young Sartre in the sense that he was in danger of tipping

over into the world of the imaginary, as a flight against the world. Aged | nine, this is what he relates in Les Mots: ‘It began with an anonymous flow of chatter in my head ... I thought I had two voices; one — which hardly belonged to me and was not dependent on my will — was dictating to the other what to say. I decided that I was dual ... “There is talking in my head.” I told my mother who, luckily, was not worried’ (1964a: W, 136; my empha-

sis). The adult Sartre writing this realises that had his mother taken his voices seriously he could have been pathologised! This incident is related with irony, the predominant tone in the autobiography, but if one stands back from the laughter, the young Sartre was actually in pain. Judging by the tone, the adult Sartre does not appear to allow himself to feel any empathy for Poulou, as if the pain would come flooding back.

Walkerdine states that looking for a source of power such as social power (in Sartre’s case, a command of communication) is in fact a way of counteracting a perceived weakness and that it is also a bid for narcissistic omnipotence: ‘Power in its manifest content covers over a terror of powerlessness, an anxiety beneath the pleasure’ (Walkerdine 1990: 188).°° Sartre writes in Les Mots: ‘the urge to write contained a refusal to live’ (1964a: W, 117). The refusal to live is a desperate, defensive movement to avoid facing the emptiness. It is very difficult from the tone of Les Mots to gain much empathy for the young Sartre when the narrator is so full of irony. But what is at stake is actual psychic survival; writing becomes the reason, and the only reason for living. In an interview with Chapsal in 1960, Sartre explains that he chose to be a writer against the fear of death and that he put into his desire to write his desire to survive — that is to survive as a writer for posterity (1972b: 32). According to Leak, ‘writing was the expedient by which Sartre magically deferred the moment of death’ (1998: 975). Sartre will invest in writing throughout his entire life, but what we can now appreciate is that writing represented for him much more than writing. In a chapter dealing with Sartre’s childhood, why have I not mentioned Poulou’s friends and peer-group? There is a simple answer to this ques-

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 29

tion; he was socially isolated from them. Piaget has shown that the social context is crucial in the role of children’s cognitive development; development overcomes egocentricity and can only be achieved through coopera-

tion with others (1928: 204). During his early childhood, Sartre spent hardly any time at school and was tutored by his grandfather and then by various tutors.*? His grandfather did take him to school when he was around six, convincing the headmaster to put him in an advanced class. When the headmaster told Charles Schweitzer that in view of Sartre’s appalling spelling, he needed to be in the lowest possible year, his grandfather took exception and took him out of school (this would be an illustration of Sartre’s grandiosity fed by his grandfather). The narrator of Les Mots analyses: ‘I had lost ... the chance of becoming real’ (1964a: W, 50). Poulou may have been a child prodigy at home in the world of adults but he needed to derive his self-esteem and sense of self-worth from acceptance by his peer-group, through social recognition. His inflated view of himself, which his grandfather so obviously feeds in the above example, would have healthily been cut down to size. When Poulou was aged eight, his grandfather made a second attempt by taking him to the Lycée Montaigne in Paris but withdrew him soon after and tutored him at home. In 1914, Sartre and his family spent a few months in Arcachon and Sartre attended the local school, and then went back to Paris where he attended a private institute (Poupon). Again he was withdrawn to be tutored privately. At nine, he records that as an only child with no friends, he felt that his isolation would never end (1964a: W, 114) and talks about reading almost all day long between the ages of nine and eleven’ (1995: WD, 81). Earlier on, I evoked Poulou’s ‘seducing’ of young girls. However, he claims that from about eight onwards and for a few years after, he no longer had any relationships with little girls (1981: A, 291). In 1915, Sartre entered the Lycée Henry IV, so it was only aged ten that he went to school regularly, making the transition from individual to collective. Poulou had been kept in social isolation from his peer-group until then, living amongst an old man and two women. Before that time, he was a young child in a world of adults, playing at pleasing them, ‘aping man’ as he writes (1964a: W, 138) — another description for his compromised sense

of self. But the young Sartre now has glimpses of a different, if painful, sense of self: ‘I had been the foremost, the nonpareil of my ethereal isle; I fell to the lowest rank when I was subjected to common laws’ (1964a: W, 49).

The narrator in Les Mots describes very movingly the simple physical

embodied pleasure Poulou derived from running down Place du Panthéon with his new-found mates, shouting at the top of his voice and playing ball — he appeared to be liberated: ‘I washed my hands of the family comedy ... [had but one passion: to identify myself with them ... I felt like steel, freed at last from the sin of existing ... I was indispensable’ (1964a: W, 139).*° What he is feeling could be linked to what I have argued in this chapter: having learned to exercise their will, narcissistic children are

30 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

usually cut off from real sensory experiences of the self Johnson 1994: 170). And the running is described as a real sensory experience; Poulou learns to be spontaneous. Whereas before, the key word was ‘unjustified’, Sartre now feels ‘like steel, freed at last from the sin of existing’. No matter how much recognition Sartre got from adults, he needed — as any other child — to be accepted by his peers; he was searching for an ‘identity’. The young Poulou felt loved by his mother but he repeats that he had no selfesteem. Even as an adult, Sartre writes: ‘Not liking myself enough, I ran away forwards; result: I like myself still less’ (1964a: W, 148). From some of

the pronouncements he made, the young Sartre could be seen as immensely arrogant. However, I have argued that grandiosity is constructed out of overcompensation for feelings of worthlessness. I think there is enough evidence to speculate that Poulou felt a lack of self-worth and self-esteem. Historically, my story has reached the stage of the First World War. How is Sartre affected by it? ‘The war years were the happiest of my childhood. My mother and I were the same age and we never left each other’s side. She used to call me her attendant knight and her little man; I told her everything’ (1964a: W, 135-36; my emphasis). Through these roles — and the possessive pronoun here has its importance — his mother invites Poulou to claim his masculine status. And in turn Sartre makes himself dependent on his mother to recognise his masculinity. By giving his power away in this manner, he could possibly become resentful. Elsewhere, the narrator of Les Mots will talk about their ‘union’ (1964a: 183), which in French can mean ‘marriage’. Les Mots describes the many happy cinema outings he under-

took with his mother, despite his grandfather’s disapproval. All these episodes may serve the purpose of Sartre owning, albeit by proxy, some of his feminine side. Harvey writes: ‘Whether reflecting critically on film or describing his experience as spectator, Sartre is far more ambivalent about his patriarchally defined maleness than he is in any other of his discourses’ (1991b: 45). Indeed, Beauvoir relates how Sartre once allowed himself to cry when he went to the cinema (1960: 59).

Describing his life between 1905 and 1914, the narrator of Les Mots describes it as paradise. But it has a more sombre undertone. At times, the

narrator analyses that he was undefined, before wondering if he was a narcissist. This is what he answers: ‘Not even that: too anxious to win others, I forgot myself’ (1964a: W, 27), explaining that for anything to have any value a grown-up had to rhapsodise over his work and that he was a

cultural possession. In refuting the label of a narcissist, Sartre must be using the concept in its general sense, equating it with self-love. Sartre was convinced as a child that everything was decreed in advance or had already happened, and that this spared him the temptations of self-love: ‘I, the dead man, did not like myself’ (1964a: W, 124). But according to the definition I am using, Sartre has buried his self-expression in response to

early injuries (hence the idea of death) and replaced it with a compen-

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 31

satory self that results in a compromise. This could be why Sartre writes that he forgot himself, he literally buried a more inclusive sense of self by expelling various subjectivities. The compromised sense of self is totally given to other people’s expectations; Sartre uses the following image to demonstrate that he was a cultural possession: ‘I was impregnated with

culture and I returned it to the family like a radiance, as pools in the evening give back the heat of the day’ (1964a: W, 27-28). He also talks

about his hollowness inside. es

We have seen that from 1915, Sartre relished going to school in Paris and interacting with his peer-group. But his world was about to be shattered and with it the image of the infant prodigy. And the events to cause such chaos were not triggered off by historical events but by personal cir-

Notes |

cumstances.*!

1. This theory is drawn from Breshgold and Zahm, 1992. 2. Most of the critical literature on Sartre’s autobiography, Les Mots, falls into three categories. Psychoanalytical readings such as Pacaly, 1980; readings that explain Les Mots by means of Sartre’s philosophy and of his Marxism, such as Idt, 2001; and finally readings that show the difference in narrative voices between Sartre as a philosopher and Sartre as an autobiographical subject as in Lejeune, 1975; or Doubrovsky, 1986. 3. Beauvoir points to Sartre’s experience of weaning when discussing with him his sexual practices in 1974 and to the fact that he did not really enjoy penetrative sex, nor the moment of climax. She talks about a refusal of all bodily passivity, of all delight in his

own body, going as far as rejecting sexual pleasure. Sartre replies that it is not necessar- : ily a refusal but concedes that he does not know what is at the root of his sexual practices. Beauvoir, keen to look at the origins of what she sees as a peculiarity of Sartre, _evokes his infancy and more specifically weaning; Sartre agrees that it is possible (Beauvoir 1981: 401).

4. The family is also a socio-economic unit. Sartre makes the point — in L’Enfance d’un chef , and elsewhere — that the bourgeois makes his child — especially his son — in order to inherit. But this is not the case with Sartre since, though the family is, in a sense, bourgeois, there is no property in the form of a family business to inherit. For other reconstructions of childhood by Sartre, see L’Enfance d’un chef and also his books on Baudelaire, Flaubert and Genet (Thanks to Ian Birchall for making these two points to me). L’Enfance d'un chef will be mentioned in chapter two and dealt with in chapter four at the time of its writing; the other books fall outside of the period under study. 5. According to Johnson, idealised dreams include symbiosis and grandiosity; reality includes separateness and limitation (1994: 157). 6. It was not unusual for mothers at the turn of the century to dress their infant sons in _ frocks (Segal 1990: 113).

7. Leak argues that parental figures in Les Mots all have a double articulation (1998: 93). 8. The first version of his autobiography was called ‘John has no land’ [Jean sans terre]. When Beauvoir asked him what it meant, Sartre replied that it meant who he was: without any heritage, nor possessions (Beauvoir 1981: 275). Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, a psychoanalyst, claims he has always heard ‘Jean sans terre’ as ‘Jean sans pére’ [Fatherless

32 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

John] (Cohen-Solal 1985: 566-67). In Act I of Les Mouches, Orestes claims not to belong anywhere (see O’Donohoe 1999: 72). In an interview dated March 1978, Sartre reveals that when he was writing about the Jew in Réflexions sur la question juive, he was in fact writing about himself aged twelve: someone without any land, depending on the good will of his stepfather (Ben-Gal 1992: 316-17); see Sartre, 1946: 101 ff.

9. I donot actually subscribe to the traditional heterosexual model; same-sex parents are interchangeable in my formulation as long as they fulfil the role of caregiver. 10. Harvey (1991a: 120) will make the case that, in L’Age de raison, Sartre divulges ‘a deepseated conviction that paternity is paramount to the human’s project of seeking plenitude of being’, with Bariona achieving the critical conversion to an acceptance of paternity (134). See also Lévy (2000: 395) who is dubious about Sartre’s claim of being fatherless which he interprets as a disavowal. 11. We know from Sartre’s manuscript of Les Mots that the first part was to be called ‘Abel’, which refers to a person not determined, before the difference between masculine and feminine. Teroni argues that in Les Mots, Abel is replaced by the figure of the angel (1996: 339).

12. [have translated moi as ‘sense of self’ rather than ‘Ego’ as in Freud because Sartre wrote the ‘Carnet Midy’ in the 1920s and the above extract in 1924, before he knew the work of Freud. 13. As will be seen in chapter eight, many women who went out with Sartre never saw him as ugly. He had a fascinating face, very interesting to look at; hence when I talk about Sartre’s ugliness throughout this essay one should read Sartre’s perceived ugliness. 14. Leak also analyses Sartre’s writing self but within Lacanian psychoanalysis and argues that the invention of writing by Poulou could be seen as a late self-inscription into the Symbolic Order ‘where the dyad becomes a triad through the mediation of the name-ofthe-father — that is to say, “language” (1989: 97), expanding later on that the discovery of writing is tantamount, in the case of Poulou, to the reinvention of the missing father (1989: 100). Though the analysis based on the Symbolic Order is convincing, it does not tease out the masculinity angle nor does it show the compromised sense of self excluding the expression of other selves. 15. See Chiantaretto (1995: 221-22). 16. See Leak (1989: 93). 17. See also Chiantaretto (1995: 193).

18. Some books were for him hermaphroditic objects with feminine attributes; in fact Hughes distinguishes between high reading / culture, books associated with the grandfather, and low reading/culture, books associated with his mother and grandmother, (1999: 29).

19. There may be some confusion in Sartre about dates since in the film Sartre par lui-méme (1976b: 12), from conversations held in 1972, he maintains that he discovered his ugliness aged eleven when his hair was cut short. Significantly, eleven is when his mother remarried. 20. See also Leak (1995). 21. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin argues that masculinity often displays metaphoric connections in part with ‘aggressive, violent, penetrating, goal-directed, linear’ (1994: 239).

22. Connell argues that masculinisation extends into perception and sexual arousal and therefore takes place at the level of bodily experience; he calls this pattern ‘heterosexual sensibility’ (1995: 123) and shows that this is a collective practice usually undertaken in peer-groups. 23. Aversion of this episode will find its way in Le Sursis with Pablo and Sarah (1981: 939).

24. See chapter eight. 25. Philosophical readings do not see the masculinities angle in Sartre and his bodies. Hence Idt links it to the philosophical idea of the contingency of the body, which brings on nausea (2001: 34).

26. See Middleton 1992: esp. 14-42.

The Infant Prodigy (1905-1917) 33

27. See the Postscript. 28. See Segal (1990). 29. For the whole section on ‘Lack’, I am indebted to David Jackson’s ‘Processes of gender identification in boys and men’, Unpublished paper, 30 June 2000. 30. Sartre reportedly told Lagache in his twenties: ‘I want to be the man who knows most things’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 108).

31. See Louette (1996) for a detailed analysis of this scene. 32. This is highly symbolic since Sans Famille is the story of being orphaned. 33. As Idt points out, she has the last word at the end of Les Mots, which has the effect of ruling out other parental figures (1996: 167). 34. Kaufman argues that power associated with dominant masculinities can be a source of enormous pain since it is fuelled by childhood pictures of omnipotence that are impossible to obtain (1994: 148).

35. In Nausea, having observed his face in front of the mirror to the point of not recognising himself, Roquentin decides to pull a face to himself in order to keep himself in check but it does not stop his visual delirium (1938: 35).

36. Commentators have noted how Sartre can narrate episodes in various books with a totally different emphasis. Wickers cites the above examples of the play and of the questionnaire to Mme Picard and shows how in his war diaries, there is no interpretation of the stories (2000: 126). Lejeune points out that some episodes such as the Picard questionnaire are written as successes in Sartre’s war diaries and as humiliations in Les Mots (1996: 76-78). Indeed, and this could be because when Sartre writes in his war diaries in the late thirties, he is not yet fully aware of his grandiose self whilst his autobiography is preceded by ten years of self-reflection and Sartre is more aware of the family comedy and of entering the writing profession like one enters religion.

37. As mentioned in the previous note and in the introduction, there is an obvious gap between Poulou living his childhood and the adult Sartre narrating his autobiography. Les Mots has its own game of mirrors. 38. See also Hollway (1984). 39. At the beginning of the twentieth century, this was still common amongst the middle classes who could afford private tutors. 40. This is one of the rare instances of empathy from the narrator, as if the adult is identifying with his younger self and allowing himself to feel that joy. 41. Iwill therefore concentrate more on personal circumstances than on the historical / class dimension of the period 1917-20 in the next chapter.

Chapter 2

VIOLENCE AND COUNTER- VIOLENCE

(1917-1920)

When he was about to turn twelve, in April 1917, Sartre’s mother remarried

to Joseph Mancy. Sartre stayed with his grandparents whilst the newly married couple moved into a separate apartment (Jeanson 1974: 290 n. 1).

. Was Sartre reminded of the time when his mother moved to a cottage in La Brégére to care for her husband, and the young Poulou who was only eleven months stayed in the main town of Thiviers with his grandparents? They uprooted to La Rochelle in November of that year where Mancy took up the post of managing director of a shipyard; yet again the young Sartre saw a man he describes as an intruder ‘stealing his mother from him’. For the young Sartre there is no question of which side his mother is on; she slaps him because he is insolent with his father-in-law during an algebra lesson and he claims that she represented his stepfather in the household Jeanson 1974: 290). In Sartre par lui-méme, Sartre explains that when his mother remarried, he made an emotional break from her; beforehand she

was his ally and he saw her as an older sister rather than as a mother: ‘I think that one of the important aspects for me about this marriage ... was that it forced me mentally to break with my mother. It was, if you will, as though I didn’t want to be hurt, and therefore, to avoid it, I had decided it would be better to make this break’ (1976b: SBH, 7; see also 8~9).! Was Sartre angry and if so how did it manifest itself? The answer lies in one of his philosophical works. In Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions, Sartre

writes that anger is neither an instinct, nor a habit, nor a reasoned calculation; it is the abrupt resolution of a conflict, a way of severing the Gordian knot (1939a: 30). Lejeune argues that the break was a way of not breaking with his mother; Sartre internalised the violence he felt: if he cannot speak about the break, it is because Sartre did not verbalise it, and seemingly car-

Notes for this chapter begin on page 45.

Violence and Counter- Violence (1917-1920) 35

ried on as if everything was the same (1978: 284). This episode in his life must be so painful that Les Mots only narrates the first ten years of Sartre’s life (Lejeune 1978) and Lejeune comments that Sartre’s teenage years are open to interpretation since Sartre never wrote about that period of his life (1980: 167). I would contend that these years are the inspiration for some of Sartre’s Ecrits de jeunesse, which will prove a useful source in order to explore Sartre’s teenage years later on in this chapter. Sartre writes in his ‘Carnet Midy’ (an alphabetical notebook he found in the 1920s where he consigned his thoughts) that he can only write about something if he no longer feels the pain, unlike Goethe who simply had to write a novel about one of his passions in order to be free from it (1990: 452). In an interview with Jeanson in 1959, he uses the vivid image that he has buried his teenage years under ashes (1974: 289).? The ashes were once red-hot cinders. In Les Mots, he talks about how acids ate into the distorting transparencies that wrapped him round (1964a: W, 156). As a young child, Sartre had felt he was ‘loved by his mother, lived in a household without family conflicts, and felt free because he had created a certain world in which he became indispensable’ (1976b: SBH, 20). All this came crashing down when he moved to La Rochelle. Sartre the adult com-

ments that this is how he first apprehended the notion of contingency, understating: ‘It’s quite possible that that left its mark’ (1976b: SBH, 20). The young Sartre — who had been led to believe by his mother that he was her knight — felt that he failed as a boy in his masculinity challenges as soon as he was confronted with another kind of peer-group when the family moved to La Rochelle; he was twelve. Some aspects of his grandiose self were going to be torn apart. This is doubly important because Sartre is about to enter his teenage years. The peer-group was made up of mostly fatherless children, most fathers being at war by then and these children had themselves internalised the violence that was all around them. The specific historical conditions that produced this brand of violence are important to remember: “The consequence of bodily practice is historicity: the creation and transformation of situations. Bodies are drawn

into history and history is constituted through bodies’ (Messerschmidt 2000: 93). In an interview given to Chapsal in 1960, Sartre explains that children of his generation met two violent events between being a child and becoming a teenager: the First World War in 1914 and the Russian revolution in 1917. He says that they were imbued with their father’s violence (1972b: 28). Whereas all Sartre knew about violence was a punch on the

nose, when he arrived in La Rochelle, he claims that the other boys took the war seriously; the opponent was always a German (Beauvoir 1981: 191). In La Rochelle, children ruled. There is a social class issue here since Sartre must have gone to a state school whereas in Paris he had gone to more elitist schools. He relates an anecdote about one of his friends running after his mother, a knife in his hands because she had served him potatoes for lunch and he did not like them (1972b: 28)! In terms of mas-

36 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

culinities, with fathers away at war, these young boys probably felt that they had to take up the mantle of masculine hegemony and to grow up very quickly. So this was the setting for Sartre’s ‘gender regime’.° Not that the war situation preoccupied him very much. The way he put it in his war diary, he was more preoccupied by his awakening sexuality than by the armistice. On 11 November, Pelletier initiated him on the city walls to games that had nothing innocent about them. Sartre concludes that he was more preoccupied by guilt than by peace in 1919 (1995: 82). Almost overnight, Sartre was no longer the little wonder of his mother and the mate of his Parisian friends but an ugly unpopular boy. He came from Paris, talking in an almost precious way at times like his grandfather, and generally was different from the young teenagers of La Rochelle. ‘In La Rochelle, I discovered something which was going to affect me for the rest of my life: the deep relationships between men are based on violence’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 75; my emphasis). This will have an incidence on Sartre’s relationships all his life, on his political philosophy — Sartre writes in L’Etre et le néant that conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others (1943: 413)* — and even on his style of writing. In the intellectual boxing

ring, Sartre could not abide anyone else; he mastered all discourses and styles, philosophical, familiar, polemical and used all his arms at different times (Cau 1985: 240); Harvey writes: ‘Sartre ... cultivated the tough, defensive macho style of writing commonplace in Western fiction of the 1930s and 1940s’ (1991a: 44).°

Sartre believed that tender relationships between men were not possible. Kimmel argues that men are often afraid of other men (1994a: 131).° Sartre will start to experience subordinated masculinities. When Beauvoir asked him during their 1974 conversations if he was really affected by the violence, Sartre replied that he felt there was some sort of bad luck at work: he was very unhappy, very often the object of jokes and blows; he ended up feeling inferior (1981: A, 148). It is in coming to terms with hegemonic, heterosexual masculinities that young men can experience consid-

erable vulnerability (Holland et al. 1988: 160). The latter see three main ways in which young men can be vulnerable, and the first two appear to apply to Sartre. The first one is failing to measure up to the requirements of hegemonic masculinities, which brings out fear and uncertainties. The second one is engaging with emotions when they try and negotiate sexual encounters; this can ‘connect them to their need for affection, and render their dependence on women visible’ (1988: 160), especially as hegemonic masculinity curtails nurturing or effeminacy. This would be particularly dangerous for Sartre’s narcissistic characteristics because it could reunite him with his earlier injury and archaic demands of rapprochement, and rock the foundations of his compromised sense of self. In his autobiographical film, Sartre relates how he tried to pretend he had a girlfriend in Paris in order to get some kudos from his male friends.’ Sartre gets his maid to write a note pretending to be his girlfriend, but his

Violence and Counter-Violence (1917-1920) 37

lie is discovered. From this point on, he is looked upon as a true Parisian, ‘the guy who lies, and who not only has an odd way of talking but also has ridiculous feelings’ (1976b: SBH, 10), concluding that at that time in his life

he became a loner. The others rejected what he had to offer by rejecting | anything he felt or proposed (Jeanson 1974: 291) and he fell into a deep state of gloom (1995: WD, 269). This is a crucial stage in Sartre’s develop-

ment of masculinities, with the onset of puberty, when he is about to become a teenager. He represses his infantile dependency upon his mother in order to develop masculine subjectivities,? and simultaneously enters into conflict both with his grandfather and his stepfather. In the process he will commit violence against himself. Sartre was bullied for two years. He was a punchbag, regularly beaten

up (1995: 178).'° Other boys made alliances in order to persecute him (Beauvoir 1981: 443). Sartre was not a violent person (Jeanson 1974: 295).

His inability to fight back allowed the bullying to continue;" survival in schools depends on the capacity for embodied power. There is a culture of

cruelty where boys have to learn to handle themselves (Kindlon and Thompson 1999: 79). The most popular boys are often the tallest and strongest and the fears of being seen as a sissy dominate the cultural definitions of manhood (Kimmel 1994a: 131). According to his own description, Sartre was ‘puny’ and he started with a massive disadvantage of not measuring up to the school view of the ideal masculine body. Boys who cannot compete in physical terms often ‘leave themselves out by a deliberate process of detachment, separation, and dissociation ... they keep control by living in sealed off compartments of self’ (Salisbury and Jackson 1996: 193). Looking back at his teenage years, Sartre analyses that he

finally decided to become violent himself as the only response to the violence that was inflicted on him and that if enough boys had supported him or if he had been stronger physically, the situation would have been different. When he was twelve and thirteen, he was constantly getting into fights with some boys who were not the most popular (Jeanson 1974: 291, 295). Sartre’s second attempt at obtaining some kudos from his friends by seducing a girl proved equally disastrous. Aged twelve, he tells Lisette Joirisse that he is interested in her. The young woman turns round, and tells him that he is an ‘old fart [sot], with his glasses and his huge hat’ (CohenSolal 1985: 83). His mates tell him that the way she reacted is understandable because he is so ugly. Sartre’s perceived ugliness came to the surface when he was seven. He then did his best to sublimate it. And the evidence indicates that he did (‘But I insist on the fact that I wasn’t yet ugly. I had fine, fair hair and plump cheeks; my squint wasn’t yet very visible’ (1995: WD, 265)). His imaginary body was no doubt very handsome; the ideal, masculine body. At possibly the maximum state of vulnerability for him, his ugliness comes back to haunt him, and is very much in the way of him seducing young women and therefore of proving his masculinity to his peer-group; in a way it is like a second bodily narcissistic injury.

38 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Sartre confirms retrospectively: ‘I was not really aware of my ugliness until I was twelve, at the time of the episode with the girl’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 327). Because of the masculinity challenges involved, the main threat to young men’s standing as men ‘does not come from a “female-in-the-head” but from the surveillance power of the “male-in-the-head”’ (Holland et al. 1988: 168). This ‘male-in-the-head’ will stay with Sartre for a long time. Not only does he not measure up to the school view of the ideal masculine body, he does not measure up either to the view of a handsome, attractive face. So it is a double rejection of his physical body and a showing-up of his inadequate sexual skills and therefore his ultimate failure at shaping himself as masculine.

Sartre fell into a state of deep gloom and became more and more imbued with the feeling of his ugliness (1995: WD, 268). He was a whipping boy in life, so he did what he was used to doing at times of emotional

turmoil: he retreated into his imagination and invented a select society where he would be king: ‘I ruled by my strength of mind and my charm’ (1995: WD, 268), commenting lucidly that this fiction was invented by himself out of revenge. The power of the imagination is a way out of his gloom

and a resource for feeling powerful and omnipotent; it also feeds his dented grandiose self. What Sartre could not really understand was why love was dirt-cheap during his earlier years and now he could not get anyone to love him; he was especially desperate to be loved. Can Sartre’s Ecrits de Jeunesse throw some light on his teenage years? The aforementioned anecdote is narrated in a fragment originally destined

to be either a novel or a short story called Saturnin Picquot in Ecrits de Jeunesse, and probably written around 1922-1923. Sartre has related the anecdote in four different but similar versions (Sartre 1990: 349). According to Contat and Rybalka, writing Saturnin Picquot is a way for Sartre to get rid of his humiliation; by exaggerating the character of Saturnin, Sartre laughs at himself. He describes himself as more ugly, ruder, shyer, more

prudish than he was (in the text, Saturnin is described as wall-eyed, his face is covered with spots and he has a tooth missing (1990: 353)). This allows Sartre to detach from Saturnin and to be able to say that he is not Saturnin (though interestingly Saturnin’s world is that of books), but the writer who describes him. He may be ugly, but he knows it and from that self-knowledge stems his talent and his intelligence. Saturnin, who is about to approach a young lady, reflects that, although he is conscious of his ugliness, he is equally conscious of his dazzling mind and one compensates for the other (1990: 355). This is a course that Sartre will chart. Contat and Rybalka conclude: ’... because I am lucid, you can recognise me even if you don’t love me. What is behind these contortions is still and always an immense need for tenderness’ (1990: 351). I could not agree more. Sartre’s writing is autobiographical and he is using it as some

form of therapy, writing his pain into the narrative but with enough distance, by means of a fictional artifice, for it to be bearable. Fictional options

Violence and Counter-Violence (1917-1920) 39

are opening up for him as a way to counteract his daily dread. In terms of psycho-social processes, he could be tentatively exploring his own feelings of humiliation and shame by projecting them out onto a character with many autobiographical traits but with the safe distance of fiction. To return to Sartre’s biography, this episode must have precipitated a crisis. Sartre understood that he could not seduce the young woman he fancied because of his ugliness (what he will call in philosophical terms his facticity). He will toughen himself up in order to survive psychically.’* An ex-school pupil saw him at the time as aggressive, bad tempered, quarrelsome, and belligerent with others (Cohen-Solal 1985: 80): ‘Masculinity as fighting is a defence, a defence against powerlessness, a defence against femininity’ (Walkerdine 1990: 188).

In the autobiographical film, Sartre analyses that period of his life. He states that he learned the meaning of solitude and violence (being beaten up and beating up other children in turn), but also that he internalised that violence: ‘And I took that violence ... and made it part of myself, that is, I tried to feel violent myself’ (1976b: SBH, 10). Violence is not only physical but also emotional, psychological and verbal (Jackson 1990: 191).’8 Sartre is taking up the masculinity challenges by fighting back as a way of correcting the subordinating social situation, and to ‘implement a physically confrontational masculinity’ (Messerschmidt 2000: 101). He physically stands up to threats and exercises power over other bodies.

Sartre started to steal money from his mother in order to buy pastries for his male friends and to give them money (Jeanson 1974: 292); his mother eventually found out that he had stolen the money from her purse.

This is the classic behaviour of somebody who is being bullied. Sartre explains that his action was a way for him to be accepted by Pelletier and Bouthiliers. He was trying to ingratiate himself with them. According to Sartre, they were quite handsome (Beauvoir 1981: 374). He became their lackey and fought for them on countless occasions. In the ‘Carnet Midy’, reproduced in Ecrits de jeunesse, Sartre mentions a short story, which would be a follow-up to the novel Jésus la Chouette called ‘Le Sac’ (1990: 470). In it, the first person narrator describes stealing money from his mother on three occasions for his two friends, having a fight with

somebody called Cardinau, and finally his mother discovering the whole thing. He also writes about Pelletier and Bouthiliers in the following terms: ‘my friendship-passion for them’. This is the first time Sartre uses the word passion to describe a friendship; he will use it again to describe his friendship with Nizan. We have to take seriously what Sartre writes about his two friends. They dominated him and in all probability did bully him, but Sartre’s initial feelings for them are to feel a passionate friendship. It is almost as if he has transferred these feelings from his mother to these two boys. In his war diaries, he talks about ‘unrequited love’ and immediately defends himself by saying that it was not a question of homosexual attraction but of boundless admiration and affection (1995: WD, 268). Further on

40 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

— when admitting that he had a passion for them — he adds that it was in the days when his sexuality was not very well defined, before conceding that his feelings ‘certainly contained an element of platonic love’ (1995: WD, 275). Perhaps he has recognised them as dominant members of the

group and through them he envies their status. He desperately needs to identify himself with these two strong boys. Love, or more precisely, to be loved, which was a common currency in his childhood had become rare and precious (1995: WD, 268).

Sartre is no longer looking for kudos by inventing himself a girlfriend, but trying to buy Pelletier and Bouthiliers’s friendship by buying them cakes from stolen money. This could be seen as a form of bullying on the part of the other children accepting and perhaps demanding the cakes, free cinema tickets etc. When the young Sartre is eventually found out as a thief, his grandfather refuses to let him pick up his loose change that has

dropped on the floor, intimating that he has no right to touch money. Sartre comments: ‘And that was the point at which I broke off relations with my grandfather, the second major break in my young life’ (1976b: SBH, 10-11). Sartre does not expand on this but there is little doubt that the break was painful for him, especially after the break with his mother, and also because his grandfather must have acted as a father figure. We saw in chapter one that when Sartre responded to Mme Picard’s questionnaire, he tried to play the child sublime and was reproached for not being sincere. Sartre came across this with his peer-group and his different response is symptomatic of his changed attitude. This time he no longer wants to ‘avenge the dead’. In order to be well in with his peergroup, he adopts their cynicism in his replies as much as he has adopted the high aspirations of his family (1995: 82). The key expression used is ‘to

fit in with them’. Sartre becomes an emotional chameleon in order to be accepted. In the process, he has no sense of his separate self but becomes what others want him to be, perpetuating his narcissistic attitude as a child with his family. By analysing Jésus la Chouette, written around 1922, we may gain a better understanding of Sartre’s time in La Rochelle. Most readings have identified Sartre with the narrator of this novel, ‘Paul’, although he is aged fifteen in the novel when Sartre wrote it two years after that. There are autobiographical elements in the narrator, Paul, who describes himself as shy, puny (1990: 108), reminding us of a similar description in Les Mots (‘puny boy who interested no one’ (1964a: 115)). Interestingly, Sartre has not given Pardaillan’s body to his narrator. Paul is historically situated at a time of multiple masculinity challenges (being aged fifteen): he indulges in violence, whether verbal or physical, as when he beats up Jésus la Chouette’s son, Adolphe. He lusts after women, stating that since the onset of

puberty, women are his only desire (1990: 72). Sartre said that in La Rochelle the only preoccupation of his peer-group and therefore of himself was to find a ‘bird’. Whilst Belot and Adolphe are chasing girls, the

Violence and Counter-Violence (1917-1920) 41

narrator comments that he is a novice. They end up following three girls,

not for the pleasure of the flesh (according to the narrator they are not interested in that) but because they want to be seen by their friends with a ‘bird’ (2000: 101).”°

‘There are a few provincial old towns ... which from their past keep ... a ferocious hatred of all individuals not born within their walls’ (2000: 74); this

is a description of La Rochelle in 1916 where the action is set. November 1917 is when Sartre was uprooted to La Rochelle. The narrator has no success with women. Marguerite Laubré, whom he fancies, thinks he is an insignificant little boy, echoing Sartre’s earlier experiences with women in La Rochelle. He himself deplores that his logorrhoea changes into muteness as soon as he speaks to a woman (2000: 101). He seems to live in a realm of fantasies. The four or five town prostitutes metamorphose for him into Russian princesses seduced by his beauty, or young French women attracted by his intelligence. These are the two polarities of seduction: body or mind. The narrator attributes both to himself. It is significant that in his fantasies, they fall for his beauty; this shows indirectly how much his perceived ugliness bothered him. Once they are seduced, he goes for long walks with them (this will announce Sartre’s long walks with Olga Kosakiewicz when he tries to recover from his ‘madness’ — see chapter three).

The narrator’s other fantasy is with the daughter of Jésus la Chouette who is much older than him (reminiscent of the young Sartre’s feelings for | some of the family friends). He imagines her with a bob [cheveux a la Jeanne d’ Arc] (2000: 62).'” In fact, she is quite androgynous. Could this be a reflec-

tion of the young Poulou before he had to choose his masculine side over his feminine side? Incidentally, before Adolphe introduces Paul to Suzy, the latter imagines her as tall, with dark hair and again her hair cut in a

bob, explaining that this description is that of his ideal woman (2000: 101-102). Seducing Marguerite entails talking to her by moonlight. Sartre’s , seducing techniques are through words whether written or spoken (‘I drew that idea of the seductive power of words’ (1995: WD, 266)). As in the

other fantasy, the love being depicted is courtly love, which Sartre had read about in books (‘Love appeared to me like a courtly adventure —- a game with its own rules — basically very like those played in mediaeval love-courts’ (1995: WD, 267)). When analysing his relationship to women, Sartre maintains that he could not imagine any pleasures of the flesh. He did not think for a long time that women had bodies, and was interested only in courtly love until much later than his friends (1995: WD, 266-67).

Paul cannot imagine Suzy’s body even though Adolphe has told him about her nice breasts; he states: ‘For a long time, I despised women’s bodies’ (2000: 102). Paul explains that what he wanted to do with women, he could have done without a lot of fuss with a sister: to care for each other, to be attentive, to kiss, to put arms around each other and walk by moonlight. My contention is that in all his amorous adventures up to the age of seventeen at least, Sartre was trying to recapture some of the intimacy he

42 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

had with his mother/sister and lost when she remarried (Before, I was a prince in relation to my mother; now I was only a prince of the second rank’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 350)).'® This is why he cannot imagine bodily pleasures nor wants to do anything other than talk by moonlight.

Sartre may be engaging in a salvage operation by writing into his grandiose self. In terms of his relationship with young women, the narra-

tor lives in a realm of fantasies whilst Sartre cannot seduce the young women he fancies. In Jésus la Chouette, he surrounds himself with Russian princesses seduced by his beauty, or young French women attracted by his intelligence. He longs for a symbiotic relationship with a young woman.

Just as Sartre suffered a double narcissistic wound in terms of his perceived ugliness with the Lisette Joirisse episode after the earlier one of the

haircut, he appears to have suffered a double wound in terms of feeling abandoned by his mother a second time when she remarried. ‘And this great need for communicating feelings took over me and made me melancholic when I was a teenager, after a happy childhood and before a joyful youth’ (2000: 102). These are words pronounced by Paul the narrator but nobody would be surprised if Jean-Paul Sartre pronounced them in an interview. Jésus la Chouette could serve as a mourning ritual for the loss of Sartre’s special relationship with his mother. Contat and Rybalka make the following comment about the narrator:

‘It is very striking that Sartre portrays himself as a boy who is really quite unfriendly and curiously absent to himself’ (Sartre 2000: 57) before

concluding that Sartre is setting the trend for his future works by writing against himself. ‘Absent to himself’ is a good description of the young Sartre; with not much self-worth, feeling starved of love and probably cutting off from his pain. Sartre explores in the relative safety of fiction the boy that he felt he was earlier in life (I was nothing: an

indelible transparency’ 1964a: W, 58). I would qualify Contat and Rybalka’s comments by saying that Sartre is writing not against but with his younger self.

In the same vein, one cannot help thinking that the character of Adolphe could be a way for Sartre to explore his own story of being bullied in La Rochelle, but in a more detached way as the narrator is identifying with the bullies rather than the person being bullied. In a way, he is rewriting hi(s)story, and this time he is both a friend of the bullied boy but also one of the perpetrators who is integrated in the gang. This writing process is more than a fantasy; it could be part of a healing process by showing Sartre that there are options other than being the punchbag of the class. It could be a way for him to regain some of his own power and selfworth. On another level, through writing and becoming an intellectual, Sartre is feeling omnipotent again, which feeds his grandiose self. Paul and Adolphe fight twice, and during the second fight, the whole gang of boys is there. Adolphe ends up with a bloody nose and with his trousers down; the gang beats him up.” At the end of the fight, the narra-

Violence and Counter-Violence (1917-1920) 43

tor describes the aggressive boys brushing each other’s clothes with a ‘touching fraternity’, speaking to each other with a discreet and unusual tenderness, in order to try and prove to each other that, after such a repugnant execution, they are not bullies (2000: 125). The emotions are described

in staggering detail. Could Sartre the writer have really imagined totally such intricate emotional ramifications? Or was a real incident used as the basis for the writing? It must not be coincidental that the same incident will be used again in L’Enfance d’un chef. After beating up an old communist, Lucien and his peers are unusually kind to each other, having temporarily abandoned their modest roughness, which they used to shield their feelings, and Lucien comments that for the first time ever they were behaving as they probably behaved within their own families (Sartre 1939b: 239). To go back to the first incident, it is significant that once one’s masculinity is constructed and reaffirmed in such a violent way, one can relax and afford to let in ‘femininity’ by means of ‘caring’ physical contact between boys that brings on tenderness. Especially in that age group, through rela-

tions of power, boundaries between homo/heterosexuality are being actively constructed and shored up. Masculinity is a structure of social relations.”° In the last chapter, the narrator meets up with Adolphe five years later. The latter is a commercial rep. After describing his physical appearance,”' the narrator ends up questioning the morality of his sexual orientation. The ending almost implies that Adolphe was bullied because the gang of boys could sense that he was gay. In terms of sexualities, the episode may

serve to police Sartre’s own heterosexual boundaries.” |

Jésus la Chouette could be Sartre’s way of rewriting his own history, but as a healing process. The narrator depicts himself being packed from the family home and sent to La Rochelle to live as a lodger with a family of

strangers. Having lived with his grandparents and mother for the previous eleven years, it replicates the situation of the young Sartre who must have felt powerless, going to live with his stepfather who was a stranger to him. He takes textual revenge on the situation by depicting a family where the head of the household is a complete emasculated failure, in contrast with his stepfather. Before actually meeting them, he fantasises about being in love with the daughter of the family who is much older than him: this is reminiscent of incest thoughts; Sartre often depicted his mother as a kind of older sister in his grandparents’ household and he narrates how he used to catch glimpses of her having a strip wash at night (they used to sleep in the same bedroom where they had twin beds). On one occasion, whilst he is referring to her as Anne-Marie rather than as his mother, one reads: ‘the young girl of my mornings’ (1964a: W, 31). Jésus la Chouette is

totally dominated by his wife and especially his daughter who are both cruel to him: this could be the fourteen-year-old Sartre’s wish that his mother (symbolically the daughter) did dominate his stepfather.** In a memorable dressing-down, his wife reproaches him for not having been posted to Paris (where Sartre wanted to return to and felt he had been

44 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities , wrenched from). In this novel, the most powerful character is the narrator, in control of the situation, and able to make Jésus la Chouette die, unlike his stepfather. Finally, it is worth exploring the combination of the two characters of Paul and Adolphe since they both represent some episodes of Sartre’s life in La Rochelle in a kind of dual role. It is important for the narrator to portray himself as a perpetrator of violence rather than a victim. This is the time in Sartre’s biography when he transforms himself from being bullied into being a bully. Adolphe serves as a reminder for Sartre that, unless he gains the upper hand, he could be treated like him again. _ Sartre’s Ecrits de Jeunesse were all written in the 1920s. Did Sartre carry on writing when he was in La Rochelle? At first, he did; he talks about writing when he was fourteen (Beauvoir 1981: 520). Later on, he explains

that he was absolutely not encouraged to write at home (this being the only mention of his mother’s change of attitude). His only readers were his schoolmates and they were totally unimpressed and potentially hostile.**

Sartre wrote much less and ‘perhaps not at all’ when he was fifteen and sixteen (Beauvoir 1981: 542). For him the writer was an unhappy creature, ‘a poor devil, unfortunate and damned’ that would only become famous

after his death. Sartre’s main prop, which also served as his way of responding to masculinity challenges, suddenly does not produce the desired effect, and his mother no longer encourages him to write. At the same time his school friends hack down his grandiose self. One can only imagine how wretched Sartre must have felt (or refused to feel) inside. After the two years of being bullied in La Rochelle, there was a slow transformation and, by the time he returned to Paris in 1920, Sartre’s personality seems to have changed. He is a lot more introverted, but also determined that he will never again put himself in a position where he becomes the scapegoat of his school year. One of the main tenets of Sartre’s

gendered and sexual construction of masculinities is the fact that he expelled a threatening ‘femininity’ from his dominant version of himself because he experienced it as ‘letting him down’ in his quest for masculine

hegemony or acceptance by others. This reinforces a similar message picked up as a young child when he was torn between his grandfather and his mother. Within this ‘femininity’, he also expelled his vulnerability and supposed weakness. Sartre writes movingly: ‘It’s a reaction of pride and defence of a child,

at one time hounded and beaten up, who reacts by toughening up, and who will keep all his life this kind of aggressive and defiant toughness towards men and a will power not to be pushed around’ (1995: 178). Sadly

the damage is done. Sartre confided to Beauvoir that in between being beaten up and the relationship with his stepfather, he spent the unhappiest years of his life in La Rochelle (1981: 193). Sartre will distrust men for

most of his life. As a defensive attack, he will become macho in his demeanour, embodying masculinity, so that men immediately get a signal

Violence and Counter-Violence (1917-1920) 45

that they cannot mess with him: ‘I’ve never forgotten the violence that I learnt there. It’s in that light that I’ve seen people’s relations with one another. I’ve never had tender relations with my friends since then. There was always ideas of violence between them ... violence was imperative in the relations between men’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 148). Sartre will try and analyse this period of his life during the Phoney War, concluding that, as reluctant as he is to look for psychological causes, he

probably suffered at the time from an inferiority complex, his psychic defences were put up and he engaged in compensatory behaviour, before adding: ‘naturally, one could go a lot further’ (1995: 178). I have tried to take up Sartre’s invitation. The inferiority complex he mentions can be understood in two ways. His grandiose self collapses, and his writing self does not pay dividends. The compensatory behaviour corresponds to the violence transformed into counter-violence. Sartre, as narrator of Les Mots,

deserves the last word on the subject, famously coining the phrase: ‘I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it’ (1964a: W, 104).

Notes 1. This episode is remarkably analysed by Lejeune (1978). It forms part of the plot of Les Mouches where Orestes comes to avenge his father who has been killed by his mother’s lover. This has been read as an Oedipal story but my contention would be that Sartre’s mother is more likely to be represented by Electra, Orestes’s sister, than by Clytemnestra, his mother. See also Grell-Feldbriigge (2001b) who establishes an interesting parallel with Mathieu, Odette and Jacques in Les Chemins de la liberté.

2. Although Sartre himself uses adolescence, Birchall points out that the concept of ‘teenager’ is in some sense an anachronism with teenagers being invented by capitalism in the 1950s as anew market. Beforehand, there was a much more direct transition from child to adult. Whilst this is accurate economically, I will use the term ‘teenager’ to refer to a psychological state characterised by its transitional aspect between the subjectivity of a child and that of an adult. It has been amply established that it is a period of fragile mental stability. 3. Connell coined the expression (1987). 4. See for instance McBride (1991: 19). 5. See also Louette (1990). 6. He is talking about American men but it can be equally applied to European men.

7. ‘The peer-group makes demands and exerts pressure on young men to take part in sharing stories of sexual prowess and performance in a context characterised by competition and the risk of ridicule ...’ (Holland et al 1988: 161). 8. As explained in chapter one, Johnson argues that for the narcissistic character, when his compensatory false self breaks down, the individual shows great vulnerability to shame or humiliation, feelings of worthlessness, and this low self-esteem dominated depression may be accompanied by hypochondriacal preoccupations, psychosomatic illness, anxiety, and loneliness (1994: 45). 9. See Segal (1990). 10. ‘Power impacts on bodies most directly in the form of violence’ (Connell 2000: 62). 11. See Messerschmidt (2000: 93).

46 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

12. Using ‘toughen up’ is part of my own internalised masculine oppression: | actually mean that Sartre will brutalise himself and ban from his subjectivity his softness and his sensitivity.

13. See especially chapter nine, ‘Everyday violence and life in an all-boys’ secondary school’, 188-206. 14. This episode is fictionally recreated in L’Age de raison with Boris and his father and it is a spoon that is dropped on the floor.

15. Idt believes that Sartre’s grandfather acted as a father figure (2001: 29), and Leak argues that Sartre’s grandfather is described as the archetypal swine [salaud] in Les Mots (1989: 41)

16. Connell writes: ‘the construction of heterosexuality [is] a collective practice usually undertaken in peer groups’ (1995: 123).

17. This is a far cry from his stereotypical image of a blond that he will talk to Beauvoir about in their conversations in 1974 (1981: 378-79). 18. ‘The [narcissist] individual is still looking for the symbiosis that was either insufficient or prematurely lost’ (Johnson 1994: 169). 19. Any sign of powerlessness or a refusal to compete among men is automatically equated with the imagery of homosexuality (Carrigan, Connell and Lee 2002: 109-10). 20. Carrigan, Connell and Lee remind us that the evolving social structure that is masculinity is a social struggle ‘in which there is a continuing process of mobilisation, marginalisation, contestation, resistance, and subordination. It forces us to recognize the importance of violence, not as an expression of subjective values or of a type of masculinity, but as a constitutive practice that helps to make all kinds of masculinity’ (2002: 110-11). 21. He has a sharp voice, his facial hair is almost waxed, he walks bending his knees and has his hands covered with rings, he wears a tight jacket, and he has curly hair which is too long (reminiscent of the young Poulou). 22. La Semence et le Scaphandre features a gang of young men who witness a fight between Ranconné and the Count of Chadernac. Chandernac is beaten up because he is a paedophile (1990: 182), and he ends up retreating bleeding from his nose. 23. Though the inspiration for the character is said to be one of Sartre’s teachers called M. Loosdreck (Sartre 1981: xxxix). 24. Again there is the issue of social class whereas in Paris Sartre was with other young men like Nizan who shared his aspirations as a writer.

Chapter 3

INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL MASTERY

(1920-1929)

In 1920, aged fifteen, Sartre moves from La Rochelle to Paris. This happens for two reasons: first of all his grandfather knows various teachers in Paris and is confident that he can get the young Sartre into a prestigious school. Secondly, his parents think that he needs to be taken away from the ‘bad’

influence of La Rochelle, that is, the working-class boys Sartre has been mixing with. This enables him to escape the family atmosphere but also the oppression of La Rochelle. Sartre starts attending the Lycée Henri IV, a

prestigious, privileged and sought after school, where he will stay until 1922. He becomes a boarder and spends Thursdays and Saturdays with his grandparents. This is the first time that he is living without his mother, and this must have had a liberating effect in terms of allowing him to explore his sense of self away from her. He will be reunited with Paul Nizan whom he had met in 1915 at the Lycée Henri IV. Being a boarder was difficult for Sartre because, as he explains in his own words, the dormitory is a ‘whole world’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 137); it is

| a site for both making and breaking masculinities (Jackson 1990: 176-79). Sartre does not express himself very well during that conversation with Beauvoir and consequently she does not grasp fully what he is trying to communicate. It seems that he experienced the binary active / passive (‘But there are some who undergo and some who are active’, 1981: A, 137). Later on, he states that he became aware of a vague homosexual inclination. He

ventured to take boys’ trousers off in the dormitory. Beauvoir plays it down by saying that it was only a slight inclination and Sartre replies: ‘But it was there’ (1981: A, 293) before they move on from the subject. Around 1920-1921, Sartre flirted with poetry very fleetingly, liking especially Jules Laforgue, but with Nizan they opted instead for the cult of

Notes for this chapter begin on page 62.

48 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

the body (Sartre 1995: WD, 155-56). The choice of Laforgue is significant as

he writes about ‘having a thousand palaces in his heart, which the foolishness of women prevented them from visiting’ (1995: WD, 270). By that time Sartre claims to have definitely discovered his ugliness and to suffer from it (1995: WD, 265). In his war diaries, he is less dismissive about his

love of poetry, explaining that he used to weep over Laforgue’s verses (1995: WD, 270).

The cult of the body is a significant choice to make in terms of embodied masculinities. The texts of that period in Ecrits de Jeunesse celebrate this

cult (1990: 358). At the Ecole Normale, Sartre, Nizan, Maheu and Guille

had invented their own language, the Eugénes. Even though Sartre appears to be getting on with men, he is in fact on the defensive, and yet with a real hunger for a friendship with a man as his relationship with Nizan will prove. What is Sartre’s psychic state and has the experience of La Rochelle scarred him? He tells Jollivet that in order to master his character, he forced himself to conceal it: ‘Previously I’d been very talkative, but the life given to me at La Rochelle ... and my desire to change ... made me withdraw’ (1983b*: WML, 7). A huge shift takes place; Sartre decides he needs to take

the upper hand in his relationship to his peers. The pecking order has changed; he will become chief satirist at his secondary school and derive power from being the clown of the class (Sartre 1990: 524). Sartre analyses his transformation as the result of freedom whereby one discovers oneself: ‘To a certain degree it was I who decided that my companions should no longer persecute me ... [had changed myself’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 355). From 1922 until 1924, Sartre and Nizan will transfer to Lycée Louis-le-

Grand to prepare for the entrance examination for the Ecole Normale. Sartre lives with his parents again since they have moved back to Paris. This is a time of incredible intellectual growth, spurred on by Nizan who makes Sartre discover most contemporary writers (Sartre 1990: 54). Sartre claims retrospectively he lived in the nineteenth century and Nizan lived in the twentieth century (Beauvoir 1981: 174). Schoolmates who aspire to be writers surround him once more and he starts writing again and show-

ing his writings to them; in the process he is claiming a renewed masculinity. Sartre transforms himself from being bullied to being a bully: ‘They didn’t [persecute] me because I was no longer someone who could be persecuted’, (Beauvoir 1981: A, 355). Sartre fell in love with the caretaker’s daughter when he was sixteen, but only had intercourse when he was eighteen with young women he used to meet at the Luxembourg Gardens (1977b: 65). Sartre and his schoolmates did not respect the young girls who would sleep with them. They also knew bourgeois daughters

who were virgins and who would only allow them to kiss on the lips (Beauvoir 1981: A, 295). Once again, the class division is apparent. Are there portraits of Sartre of the time? Canguilhem, a contemporary, recalls that the latter used to get noticed, not only for his ability to work and

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 49

his brilliance, but also for his enthusiasm and happy disposition; his friends were attracted by his humour and he loved to be a prankster as well as occasionally playing up with the teachers (Sartre 1981: xlii). This sounds like a

healthy, well-adjusted young man. Sartre recounts that the years 1920 to 1924 were very pleasant; he felt completely accepted (Beauvoir 1981: A, 355).

Sartre’s preface to Nizan’s book Aden Arabie is a moving tribute to his late friend. He recalls how when he was sixteen Nizan suggested that they should both be seen as superhuman and Sartre accepted; they were called R’ha and Bor’hou (1964b: 143). They shared the desire to write and Sartre notes that he mistakenly believed they were united by the desire to write (1964b: 164). This indicates that Sartre may have projected his grandiose self onto Nizan and that he was looking for some kind of merger. Writing in 1960, Sartre can start to appreciate the differences between them: he felt

he was a chosen one whilst Nizan believed he was damned. Nizan was suffering and Sartre reproached him for it; they were going to write beautiful books, which would justify their existence. Nizan was frightened of dying whilst Sartre thought he was immortal (1964b: 156, 147, 145). In 1924, Sartre enters the Ecole Normale where he is to stay until 1928. Being a boarder, Sartre no longer lives with his parents, but with a group of young men, including Nizan. From day one, being at the Ecole Normale

means the beginning of independence (1964b: 149). He is again a free human being, or at least on the way to freeing himself (Jeanson 1974: 289).

The biggest change since arriving in Paris is that he has found acquaintances and a friend (1995: WD, 270). Though he is still a boarder, he is no

longer sleeping in a large dormitory but in small rooms of three or four beds, subsequently he will only share with Nizan and when the latter leaves for Aden he will be on his own.

Was Sartre a violent person? On being asked this question, Sartre replied that he was; he used to hit people (Jeanson 1974: 295). With Nizan,

they sided with Alain’s students who had a reputation for violence and brutality and imposed a reign of terror on the other students (Beauvoir 1981: 314). Sartre was involved in shoring up hierarchic masculinities, reminiscent of gang rivalries. He used to despise students of the Sorbonne because they ‘were not quite men’: ‘some of them might perhaps become men, but the majority never would’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 245). Sartre discovered camaraderie, being one of a set, with a sense of solidarity and ‘felt simultaneity’ from which he derived a feeling of necessity — the opposite of the contingency he had felt earlier in his life (1995: WD,

279). He also wanted to be a leader in order to get his revenge on La Rochelle and admits to being feared and sometimes admired (1995: WD, 279). He was the king of pranksters and entertained others by doing takeoffs and singing ditties. But the others, through what Sartre calls a kind of Republican mistrust, never elected Sartre officially as a leader, for in social groupings, his ‘buffoonery w[on] the upper hand’ (1995: WD, 279) and

they were always on their guard. He then explains that he no longer

50 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

wanted to be a leader as such, more of a spiritual authority that people consult.’ On a continuum, there is still a wish to be a ruler but it is evolving into some kind of moral / intellectual imperialism.

In this respect, it may be helpful to look at masculinities, as Sartre’s intellectual imperialism will become so important. Redman and Mac an Ghaill retrace the making of the former as an academic. Not very successful at other forms of masculinities available to him whilst at sixth form col-

lege, Redman discovered that an alternative form of masculinity was available in the form of a discourse: ‘muscular intellectualness ... it added muscle to what was otherwise “other’”’ (1997: 169). The importance of muscular intellectualness is that it ‘promised to give him [access] to the entitlements of conventional masculinity’ (1997: 171). Sartre failed pitifully at La Rochelle when he tried to get some kudos from his peer-group by trying to seduce young women; he then experienced violence. Muscular intellectualness is allowing him to experience power. Sartre was rather macho in his dealings with his peers. He was really aggressive mentally and physically and through rigorous training, he had become a good boxer and an agile athlete (Aron 1983: 35). He liked boxing because he was ‘engaged in total activity’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 316). Boxing started to become popular again at the turn of the twentieth century, as a counter to the ‘mere womanishness’ of modern, overcivilised society, celebrating ‘toughness, prowess, ferocity’; it was a ‘manly art’ that ‘instilled and expressed violent masculine power’ (Kimmel 1994b: 34-35). Beauvoir questions Sartre about his imaginary body, that of Pardaillan, and asks if much of it remained in adulthood. Sartre replies that it is linked to boxing.

He explains that by boxing he thought he would recover an imaginary strength. Being an amateur boxer would be a return into his ‘true’ body, which was the imaginary one: ‘when I was training with a jump rope, and

afterwards, when Bonnafé talked to me about our style of fighting, I became the imaginary character once again’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 322). One of his contemporaries, Armand Bérard, remembers his exceptional

muscular body; he could do a wheel on the horizontal bar (Cohen-Solal 1985: 100). Cohen-Solal wonders why he chose boxing and wrestling, aggressive sports with brute strength when his friends preferred either team sports like rugby or skilled ones like tennis. Again one can explain this in terms of social class. Sartre was influenced by the working-class

boys of La Rochelle rather than by Parisian bourgeois pursuits. As analysed in chapter one, by becoming Pardaillan, Sartre felt like a powerful warrior and it is a feeling he claims to have always retained; it was a kind of compensation for his shortness. As he is forging his will, he is forging his body. Bérard explains that Sartre manufactured himself entirely: he made himself physically strong, and he made himself a writer, through his will power (Cohen-Solal 1985: 106-107). In his war diaries, Sartre describes himself as a man in control of himself, with no aberrations, ‘who can endure hard blows’ (1995: WD, 175; my emphasis).

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 51

Who were Sartre’s friends at the time? Nizan, Guille, Maheu and Beauvoir. Nizan, Guille and Beauvoir were ‘bosom friends’, each corresponding to a specific period of his life. He wanted a federative world where together with his friend, they would pool their values, their thoughts and their tastes — each buttressing the other, as a ‘couple of considerable strength’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 270). What was important was the togetherness (Beauvoir 1981: A,

255-56). The wish for merger is apparent. Sartre claimed to be happy without reservations at the Ecole Normale (1976b: 21). So is it inconsistent to read in a letter to Jollivet that Canguilhem tells Sartre he likes him because he is basically very sad and it is only to break out of it that he tells jokes and beats up Larroutis? Sartre comments: ‘I don’t know why that flattered me. Yet you know how [hate this melancholy’ (1983b*: WML, 6). Perhaps Sartre was flattered because Canguilhem saw beyond his mask. It appears that a layer of sadness still inhabits Sartre, and I would argue that it is his inside

void, plus the fact that he is scarred by the experience of La Rochelle. Another witness, Fabre, describes Sartre at twenty by saying that he was a most generous person and companion who presented himself as scornful and full of self-disgust (Sartre 1981: xliii). Whereas most boys are either swots (academic hopefuls) or ‘the bloods’ (hearty, sporting) (Connell 2000: 137), Sartre claims a stake in both. It is as

if he wants to rule so much (to get away from his experience in La Rochelle) that he is making sure of being hegemonic in both areas. He learned to be competitive rather than cooperative. Aron recalls that amongst their group of friends, Sartre never shared his thoughts on their presentations, ideas etc. One had to ask a third party what he thought, and this became a kind of unwritten rule (Cohen-Solal 1985: 105). He claims

that Sartre could never bear a face-to-face discussion in the twenties (Cohen-Solal 1985: 575). However, Sartre liked to argue philosophy with Aron and they talked every week, something confirmed by Sartre in his film (Cohen-Solal 1985: 93).

The philosopher Merleau-Ponty narrates the circumstances of his meeting with Sartre at the Ecole Normale. During a party where the students

were drinking punch, Merleau-Ponty objected to some of the obscene songs, and a fight ensued. ‘A small, powerful, active boy’ (1980: 3) separated the fighting factions; his name was Sartre. Sartre measured 1 metre and 60 cm (five foot two inches). As well as Sartre’s courage in ending the fight, his masculine embodiment stands out. Sartre’s gaiety was striking, he was always singing, in contrast to the melancholic temperament displayed by the author of La Nausée: ‘[Sartre was] extraordinary lively, active and happy’ (1980: 3). How does Sartre analyse this period of his life? ... at the Ecole normale we had become those who practised violence. What's more, it continued, and I suspect that for anyone who wants to understand me, you'd have to study and ponder that line of violence, which still exists today [in

52 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

the 1970s] ... the just use of violence became a notion that impressed itself on me because there had been an interiorisation of a violence to which I had been subjected and which, later, I had in turn used on others. (1976b: SBH, 21)

Sartre recalls that when he entered the prestigious school, no one would have argued that violence should be rejected (1972b: 28). He remembers

that with Guille and Maheu, two of his best friends, he felt a kind of distance and the possibility of violence between them (Beauvoir 1981: A, 148). As well as being psychological, the differentiation of masculinities is in an equally important sense institutional, ‘an aspect of collective

practice’ (Carrigan, Connell and Lee 2002: 112). The latter see social definitions of masculinity embedded in the dynamics of institutions as much as in the personality of individuals. The Ecole Normale would have been a hotbed of France’s future educational elite, and as such the gender regime prevalent would have reflected the gender order of French society at the time. The state itself institutionalises and promotes particular masculinities and regulates relations between masculinities. Those destined to be the future educational elite of France, entrusted

to teach the next generation, needed to be positioned within ruling masculinities.* What of Sartre’s relationship to women? At twenty-one he met and fell

in love with Simone Jollivet. She will be his first love (but not the first woman he slept with) and they will be together for two years. He first slept with a woman at eighteen; she was thirty, came from Thiviers and was a doctor’s wife. They had a one-off encounter (Beauvoir 1981: A, 294).

, He then remembers sleeping once with a young woman who was also eighteen and lived in the Sorbonne area. In 1928, he became engaged to a

young lady called G. Marron who was the cousin of his friend Alfred Péron. When he failed the state examination of the agrégation® in the sum-

mer of 1928, her parents refused to give the hand of their daughter to

someone who had failed his final examination. What mattered most for Sartre at the time: his friendships — and with whom -— or his relationship with Jollivet? ‘I had a passion ... for Nizan’

(1995: WD, 275), he tells us. According to Sartre, all friendship, even between two red-blooded /healthy men [hommes sains], has its moments of love (1983b*: WML, 15). Sartre did not stay away from men all his life as he readily claims in various places. Contat and Rybalka talk about the depth, the strength and the ambivalent passion of their relationship claiming that until he met Beauvoir, it is the most significant relationship Sartre experienced with anyone (Sartre 1990: 138). But an argument produced a rift.* In ‘Paul Nizan’, the homage Sartre wrote in 1960 after Nizan’s death, he confesses that he suffered during their rift (1964b: 145). It is all the more surprising to witness Sartre writing about Nizan in Lettres au Castor or in his war diaries in a detached manner. These two contrasting attitudes point to the fact that Sartre seems to have made an emotional break from him too.

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 53

On the surface, political divergences started to open up: though sympathetic to the left, Sartre was not committed before the Second World War whilst Nizan became a communist (Scriven 1996). In ‘Paul Nizan’, Sartre sees the differences between them more clearly and this may show us the submerged part of their relationship. He admits that he felt hurt by Nizan just taking off to Aden; he had to come to terms with the fact that he did not really matter. This was reinforced by his jealousy once they went their separate ways after 1929; Sartre claims that he refused to accept feelings manifested by Nizan, which he, Sartre, could not feel (1964b: 148, 146). This latter statement would be music to the ear of a psychotherapist: it shows

that Sartre wanted a symbiotic relationship with Nizan. After Nizan’s death, Sartre based the characters of Brunet and Schneider / Vicarios in Les Chemins de la liberté on him. For Contat, this is more than a symbolic gesture; Sartre has embodied Nizan to make him survive through him: ‘Dréle d’amitié where Sartre shows his affection under cover of irony is an elegy for a dead friend, a discrete but passionate and tragic elegy’ (Sartre 1981: 2107).

Sartre’s Ecrits de Jeunesse have proved a useful source so far. Can they also teach us anything new about his relationship with Nizan? In a letter to Jollivet, Sartre tells her that, soon, he will describe in Une Défaite one of their outings at the Ecole Normale when they believed that the world was theirs (1983b*: WML, 14). This description is in Une Défaite

(1990: 207 ff). Frédéric, the narrator, states that, amongst their group, whilst they claimed equality, there was a tacit agreement that a hierarchy existed, and that he was at the top of the pecking order. Elsewhere, Sartre comments: ‘Right now I live a bit too much on the admiration of others’ (1983b*: WML, 7).

He mentions four friends going out together,’ drinking, talking and ending up befriending prostitutes. The landlady of the café gives out her favours in turn when her husband is not looking.® The narrator admits relying on his friends admiring him. This makes up for his lack of success in society, but he is weary of becoming dependent on it. When they show any weaknesses, he protests. In his correspondence, Sartre describes his friends at the Ecole Normale: they are always eager to confide in someone, which for Sartre is a sign of confusion. They would like to talk about their personality but his presence alone keeps them from doing so, for he hates weakness and confidences told half-heartedly, concluding that behind his back they must be ‘babbling on like old women’ (1983b*: WML, 6). Frédéric talks about feeling lonely, even with his position in the epicen-

tre of the group of four he has formed.’ The passage also contains a long

description of pranks. Sartre was said to be one of the most ferocious pranksters at the Ecole Normale (Sartre 1990: 524). The narrator volunteers to play a prank on Hennebicque, a soft metaphysician with a stammer; the others agree because Frédéric is known to be hard. He describes feeling like a king, and goes into the psychology of the prankster: it is a lot more than the triumph of the strong over the meek. The prankster must get rid of any

54 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

sentimentality, and strain to be ruthless and loveless. Any prankster feels some compassion at one point for his ‘victim’; the first victory is to ignore this feeling. One becomes aware that, as the description progresses with its level of intricate details, Sartre appears to be drawing on his experience at the Ecole Normale. There is a fine line between a prankster and a bully, and many pranks are forms of bullying. All the time, Sartre is trying to achieve a certain status among his peer-group, to be the ‘dominant male’. A short novel entitled La Semence et le Scaphandre is the story of a rift in a friendship (Sartre and Nizan; the narrator and the character of Lucelles) as well as that of the beginning of a literary career. Sartre started writing it in 1924 and abandoned it later, presumably because the quarrel had ended. The novel starts with the first person narrator telling us that his friendship with Lucelles was more stormy than a passion (Sartre 1990: 140), describing himself thus: ‘I was hard, jealous, without attention or gentleness, like a manic lover.’ He wanted to show Lucelles the tenderness he felt for him, a feeling he could not understand himself. Because of the aforementioned traits of character, all he showed Lucelles when the later came to see him was the aggressive behaviour of a warrior. This implies that the narrator

feels gentle, full of attention and tenderness towards Lucelles. But he wanted to appear tough and masculine. Is he frightened by his own feelings, wondering where his tenderness comes from? Relating with some nostalgia his past relationship with Lucelles, the narrator reminisces that whilst their personalities were opposite, they admitted being like each other on all fronts. If one discovered a quality, he would attribute it to the other; they used to speak about each other individually using ‘we’. This spilled into Sartre and Nizan’s actual life since they were often mistaken for one another. Famously, when they went together to the publisher Gallimard, Brunschvicg congratulated Sartre for a book Nizan had written. From 1920 to 1930, they were indistinguishable (Sartre 1964b: 141-142). They wrote one poem together which they signed ‘Sartre Nizan’ (Sartre 1990: 338). At the Ecole Normale, they used to be inseparable and they were nicknamed ‘Nitre and Sarzan’ (Sartre 1990: 523). In terms of embodiment, here is Sartre describing Nizan: of average height, dark hair, and with a squint; but whereas Sartre’s divergent squint transformed his face into a wasteland, Nizan’s convergent one rendered him maliciously absent (1964b: 142). Buisine calls Nizan Sartre’s alter ego (1986a: 112).

What was so special about Nizan for Sartre? There seems to be a wish for a kind of fusion, for a connection between two human beings where the boundaries between one and the other are blurred. It is too early to detect a pattern in Sartre but this hypothesis needs to be followed up, especially in his relationship to women. It would correspond to a wish for symbiosis, a desire to find someone else who harbours dreams of grandiosity, a kind of soul mate — to replace the defective mother, someone to mirror him.

Sartre explained he wrote the novel in order to put some distance between himself and his feelings (1990: 137); writing as therapy. Contat

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 55

and Rybalka have this nice formula to describe what they see as an autobiographical piece of writing: ‘emotional self-defence’ (Sartre 1990: 138). They notice a trend set by this novel which will also apply to La Nausée and to L’Age de raison: a personal crisis needs to be worked out in and through writing in a story where the main character is one’s alter ego, judged without indulgence. Nizan also appears in Une Défaite but he is now ‘the Former Friend’ (1990: 208) — though the narrator uses ‘we’ to talk about the Former Friend

and himself (1990: 231). Despite referring to him as his companion for every hour, the narrator also confesses that he judges him now in order to hurt him, like a son judges his parents. They still share a feeling that they will be powerful in the future but Frédéric regretfully realises that love and the fact that they are both starting to get recognition is driving them apart. He recognises that the Former Friend is the dandy that he is not, but — and here the judgement hurts — people like the Former Friend from the outside; from the inside they see him as selfish and superficial. The implication is that if one scratches the surface, one is disappointed. A page has definitely been turned in the passionate friendship between Nizan and Sartre. Can we learn more about Sartre and about his relationships? Sartre is said to have written the novel Une Défaite for Jollivet;? writing as seduction. She largely inspired the main female character, Cosima Wagner. It is the story of Nietzsche and Wagner with a first person narrator resembling Sartre in the role of F. Nietzsche (Beauvoir 1981: 173). In an interview, Sartre concedes that he identified himself with Frédéric (Sartre 1982a: 74).

He wanted to write a realist novel combined with a love story. Frédéric lives at what resembles the Ecole Normale and he is looking for private pupils to supplement his income.’ This is how he will come across Wagner’s family and fall in love with Cosima.

Cosima enters the room where the narrator is tutoring her two young daughters and he describes her as a third little girl (Sartre 1990: 234); inevitably one thinks of Sartre’s own mother, who is described as more of a sister than a mother to him. The seduction game between them will be polarised by the joint narrating of a fairy tale.'° This is reminiscent of Poulou recounting as privileged moments the times when his mother used to tell him bedtime stories. Thinking back about his novel, Sartre believes he saw for the first time how to express both his sensitivity and his conception of the world (Beauvoir 1981: 197). This will guide me in my reading of Une Défaite.

There are many descriptions of physical appearances. Frédéric knows that fashionable clothes do not fit him well." He describes himself; he is not eloquent either in body (robust but graceless) or spirit. He despises the elegance of other men, which he lacks (1990: 218). His idealised image of success is a young man in white flannels talking with a group of young women by the sea. He has banned this image for another image that could be summarised by the word ‘force’. He is all muscles and his thoughts are

56 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

vigorous (1990: 208).'* Masculinity is not only played out in the body, it is also transferred onto the mind. It appears that Frédéric has made himself

an iron body, a sort of armour against the world, and by implication against his sensitivity. Dyer argues: ‘... a hard, contoured body does not look like it runs the risk of being merged into other bodies. Only a hard, visible bounded body can resist being submerged into the horror of femininity and non-whiteness’ (2002: 265).!° Frédéric admires Organte’s tall, athletic body and shivers, ecstatic when he imagines wrestling with him (1990: 254). It is as if since he has a hard contoured body, he can afford to let his homoerotic imagination run. At one point we read that the narrator feels powerful and broad, allowing himself to be tender. Being tender is not the exclusive domain of homoeroticism, but the narrator implies this. Schehr argues persuasively that in Sartre’s early writings, the opposition between heterosexuality and homosexuality is not polarised, as it was to

become later, especially in a chapter entitled ‘Les Lévres d’Organte’ (Schehr 1995: 93-94). As elsewhere in Sartre’s writings, a character other than the first person narrator, Crossier — introduced as one of the four male friends — shares some characteristics with Sartre (1990: 208). He is small and frail, with one eye blinking and the other half shut because he put it out (1990: 218). As in

Saturnin Picquot, exaggerating Sartre’s physique allows him to project some of his own pain into the narrative. Though he does not say much, his

peers think he is intelligent. He spends quite a lot of time as a teenager standing in front of mirrors, knowing in advance that the mirror will be frank and brutal, saying to himself: ‘I am not as ugly as all that’ (1990: 219) or not realising if he is handsome or ugly. In a revealing passage, Frédéric’s character is fleshed out. It is claimed that he judges people according to himself (1990: 231). Each human being corresponds to one of his feelings, carefully analysed, labelled and classi-

fied; this smacks of rationalism. He goes deep down within himself but does not reach out to others; this foregrounds some of Sartre’s future analyses of relations to the Other in L’Etre et le néant and seems to betray some sort of fear of the Other as if one’s sense of self is really precarious and threatened by the Other. Elsewhere we learn that Frédéric does not look after himself when he is ill, he puts up with illnesses without complaining, not taking medication; this resembles Jean-Paul Sartre in life (1990: 269).

Frédéric talks about his attitude when he is with women (1990: 235); it is instructive enough about the history of Sartre and women to be analysed in detail. He describes feeling disgusted by his own behaviour. He feels that he has to adapt to their level and that, in order to do so, he needs to break his own mind by softening himself up, becoming smooth, talking

about a thousand subjects and handling them delicately, like a flower, whilst smiling. In the meantime, he longs to get out. Clearly what is projected here is some sort of superficiality of women, as well as fragility and

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 57

softness. The narrator contrasts this to his own way of talking about subjects: charging towards them and scattering them in pieces. This is a very masculine way of talking about topics, one that has been used to describe Sartre’s way of thinking in the previous chapter. The description carries on using the same gender polarities. The narrator talks about faking tenderness whilst suppressing his primitive rutting instinct; for him intimacy means sex. He confesses that when he gets overtired he can sense his body | flooded by real tenderness and that this brings on shame; he feels at the pit of infamy but he is still trying, with bad grace, to use the language of love and thinks there is something wrong with him [I] se jugeait malade] (1990: 235). Frédéric sees tenderness as the key to a woman’s heart. But he has to fake this tenderness except when he is very tired. In that case his whole body fills up with it. In a letter to Jollivet written in 1926, Sartre asks whether her love for him encompasses tenderness. He explains that it is her tenderness he is particularly fond of, especially as he is swamped by the trappings of intelligence and weary of intellectual love affairs, stating unequivocally: ‘What I need is warm and foolish tenderness, the kind I feel for you right now. I only want to kiss you and tell you sentimental nonsense’ (1983b*: WML, 7). Where does this tenderness come from? Is it not already there in Sartre,

suppressed in his body? And does he not project his own tenderness onto women rather than owning it? Tenderness is synonymous with being feminised;* because of his socialisation, it brings shame. Which internalised force, brings on his shame? Could it not be the peer-group in his head and also his grandfather? It could be traced back to his gender polarisation between masculinity and femininity. Tenderness is also the feeling that the narrator describes towards Lucelle (based on Nizan) in La Semence et le Scaphandre. He writes that he cannot understand why he should feel that

way. Mixed with all this is a fear of being overwhelmed. The narrator makes the point that if a woman loves him and says that it is forever, he does not want to get involved.’® Frédéric is aware of not physically desiring Madame Organte, feeling a

sort of repulsion for her body, remarking that it is unusual for him (this echoes the narrator Paul in Jésus la Chouette who does not imagine doing anything other with the prostitutes he seduces than to go for long walks

with them). What he wants is to immortalise her smile but her fragile beauty escapes him. The key word here is ‘beauty’. There is a wish to feed off the woman’s beauty. Is it in order to forget about his ugliness? Or even to appropriate her beauty? A pattern seems to be emerging that will guide Jean-Paul Sartre in many

of his relationships with women. ‘Appropriating women’ represents a magical means of forgetting about his own perceived ugliness and recapturing feelings he has long suppressed like tenderness. Sartre’s femininity is projected onto women, but he has a desire to recapture it as long as he does not start feeling it in his body because then he feels shame.

58 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Another pattern seems to become apparent regarding Sartre’s friendships. This will allow me to draw a few principles, using psychoanalytic theory.’” One could talk about a narcissistic transference between Sartre and Nizan, also called self-object function. It indicates ‘the experience of another person as part of the self in which that other person provides necessary functions for self-cohesion’ (Breshgold and Zahm 1992: 64). I concluded from the quotation in the Carnet Midy* that Sartre seemed unable to find his sense of self outside of his interaction with others, and that this appeared to be due to his narcissistic tendencies. In his relationship at the Ecole Normale with Nizan, Guille, and Maheu, Sartre was possibly looking for the same thing. At the height of his relationship with Nizan, Sartre talks about having the same taste, being mistaken for one another, being

called Nitre and Sarzan, and together with Maheu and Guille having invented their own language. It is as if Sartre is hankering after a ‘we’. Sartre claimed to be happy without reservations,’? and this was probably because he felt met or reflected by these friends. Another person provided Sartre with the necessary functions for self-cohesion. Narcissistic transferences involve idealising, mirroring, merger, and crucially twinship transferences acknowledged.” This would explain the full significance of Sartre claiming that he refused to accept feelings manifested by Nizan, which he, Sartre, could not feel (1964b: 146). Sartre admits that his friends did not necessarily share his wish for con-

fluence. He notes that they always kept something back, even the Beaver (this was Beauvoir’s nickname [le castor]*!). On the occasions when Beauvoir went along with Sartre’s desire for transparency, he describes it as ‘an overwhelming happiness similar to summer’ (1995: WD, 273). But confluence may also be called dysfunctional closeness. Whereas Sartre’s wish for confluence had a survival function when he was very young, it now stops any intimacy within his self. As Clarkson says: ‘a permanent merging or enmeshment with “the other”, whether person or situation, leads to loss of self’ (1989: 55-56). He adds that the person who seeks dysfunctional closeness or merging is kept cut off from his own resources. Sartre seems dissatisfied with himself. While engaged in these relationships, he is dreaming of another self: “This man would be handsome, hesitant, obscure, slow and upright in his thoughts ... How I should have liked to feel uncertain ideas slowly, patiently forming within me! How I should have liked to boil with great, obscure rages; faint from great outpourings of tenderness!’ (1995: WD, 273-74). Sartre describes here somebody fully alive, with a more inclusive sense of self. In evoking Guille, Sartre writes that he was unusually communicatively warm, with an almost feminine tenderness, a jealous exclusivity, whilst he was very far from possessing these qualities (1995: WD, 274). These attributes sound like a description of the young Poulou and form part of the character traits he has expelled in his masculinity quest. It is no

coincidence that Sartre is attracted to Guille’s personality since it forms

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 59

part of his own lack. Thus, being friends with Guille is a way of reclaiming warmth, feminine tenderness, and jealous exclusivity. In describing Sartre at twenty, Jean Fabre writes: ‘His secret was probably that of a great tenderness that he could neither accept nor deny’ (Sartre 1981: xliii). So people who knew Sartre were not necessarily always duped. When Guille shows Sartre tenderness (always very discreet and charming, Sartre assures us!), this is how the latter reacts: ‘I used to be embarrassed as if a homosexual had propositioned me’ (1995: WD, 275). When relationships with men are no longer superficially cordial, he gets embar-

rassed; he hates either himself or men confiding in him. Sartre uses a revealing metaphor: ‘What I call confidence is defined more by its form than by its content: by a certain carelessness; a certain moist abandon ... If a man confides in me, I become icy’ (1995: WD, 275; my emphasis). So when Sartre is on the receiving end of human warmth, it becomes too much like something he would categorise as female (passivity, moist), and it has the opposite effect on him: he hardens up. He is afraid of intimacy, of aman’s moral and physical nakedness and he sees tenderness as sexual: ‘Tcan’t conceive of being tender with a man without at once feeling something like a brief surge of sexuality, which finds no outlet and at once repels and embarrasses me’ (1995: WD, 276). Sartre sees sex and intimacy as synonymous. Guille used to treat him quite badly and apparently, not respect him. How did Sartre —- the young man who at the time ruled through violence at the Ecole Normale — react? He claims that he never got

angry which would indicate that part of him was emotionally dead and that he was feeling powerless again like Poulou. In order to draw this chapter to a close, it seems pertinent to evoke one of Sartre’s dreams and some letters to Jollivet, relating to events when he

was twenty, because they capture his psychic state. Questioned on his ‘stereotype’ of women, Sartre describes a blond (Beauvoir 1981: 378-79),

but explains that this stereotype did not apply when he had serious liaisons. He then recalls a dream. He describes a pretty little blonde girl. He was also in the dream, slightly older; the two children are busy playing hula-hoops. Beauvoir suggests that the dream is about childhood love.

Sartre protests that it represented love when he was twenty (which is when he had the dream) but that he was in short trousers and that the girl

had on her little girl suit. He then interprets his own dream as sexual because of the symbolism of the hula-hoops and the stick before insisting that in his dream there was no priority, the man was not superior to the woman, there was no macho attitude on his part. My contention is that both characters in his dream symbolise his split self. The little blond girl symbolically represents Sartre himself before his curls were cut off, or before he felt obliged to cut himself off from his feminine side. The little boy is also Sartre at the point in time when he decided to become a writer; hence he is slightly older than the girl since he has had to leave her

behind. Sartre sees equality between his feminine and his masculine side.

60 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

And since Sartre had that dream aged twenty, it would indicate that he was still in mourning about his split self, albeit at the level of the subconscious.” In a letter to Jollivet, Sartre writes: ‘Until last year I was very melancholfic] in my temperament because I was ugly and that made me suffer. I have absolutely rid myself of that, because it is a weakness’ (1983b*: WML, 21; my

emphasis). Sartre’s perceived ugliness was almost forgotten, but this shows that it never went away. He feels he cannot afford to integrate his vulnera-

bility, symbolised by his perceived ugliness. One can feel all the selfimposed violence derived from this statement. So Sartre learned very early

on to forge his will and this is something he will do throughout his life. Forging his will is at the expense of his emotions; it narrows his sense of self. It also means that Sartre will drive himself throughout his life, not listening to his body. In this sense, it has to be seen as fairly destructive. In letters from 1926, Sartre is trying to seduce Jollivet and he produces a self-portrait. He is tempted by glory because he wants to be far above ordinary people, whom he scorns (1983b*: WML, 3); his primary tendency is ambition. One can see Sartre’s grandiosity at work. He would like to be well above others, whom he despises (1983b*: 9). There is no discrimination here; Sartre feels superior to men and women.” In an astonishing passage one reads: Deep down I have the personality of a little spinster. As you may not have guessed, I was born with a personality to match my face: foolishly, stupidly emotional, cowardly, self-indulgent. I’ve cried like a baby at plays and movies, over novels. I’ve had unjustified, implausible attacks of pity and cowardice and weakness of character, that have relegated me to the nadir of failure in the eyes of my friends and relatives. (1983b*: WML, 4)

Sartre is equating his personality and his physique as both letting him down and, crucially, as not coming up to other people’s expectations (both friends and relatives). How can he have much self-esteem? Being emotional, looking after oneself, being sensitive, not being ‘brave’ are qualities to be cherished. But his grandfather probably did not care for them. And they did not

help him to survive when his mother remarried and when he went to live in the violent atmosphere of La Rochelle. He sees himself as a failure. What appears to be part of a more inclusive sense of self is loathed. Sartre then explains how he has changed his personality by working on two things: to give himself will power and to suppress his sentimentality, which shamed him deeply. He writes that when he has decided to do something, nothing can make him change his mind (1983b*: WML, 14). In order to strengthen his will, he used to accomplish gratuitous actions. Aged fourteen he gives the example of tossing beneath the wheels of a tram a hat he had been coveting for two weeks and which his mother had just bought him (1983b*: 10). Sartre confides he is telling Jollivet about all these things candidly. Not since he was fourteen has he gone into such details, and this is because he

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 61

is sure of himself now. Sartre is trying to seduce a woman by telling her confidences and he appears to be quite successful. He then explains that he has not really stifled what he calls ‘these grotesque tendencies’ in himself: they still exist and are constantly trying to reappear. In trying to repress these ‘grotesque’ tendencies, Sartre assumes an artificial attitude Jollivet reproaches him for: ‘I am never really real since I’m always searching for ways to modify, to recreate: I will never feel the happiness (?) of being able to act spontaneously’ (1983b*: 10-11). By using the question mark, Sartre indicates that he is not even sure that being spontaneous brings on happi-

ness. What does Sartre mean by being ‘real’? He will link this to being authentic when he embarks on a thorough self-examination during the Phoney War. According to my interpretation, it would mean reintegrating a more inclusive sense of self. What Jollivet calls Sartre’s ‘artificial attitude’ could be what I call his compromised sense of self, which at times seems to weigh heavily on Sartre too — judging by the last quotation. Sartre appears to be severely restricted in his self expression because he has forged his will. When he feels a sincere emotion, he cannot express it:

‘Either I babble or say just the opposite of what I wanted to say — or I

express the equivalent of that feeling through refined, meaningless phrases — or else, as happens more often, I express nothing, fleeing all expression: the wisest course’ (1983b*: WML, 5). Sartre explains that he is

emotionally illiterate; his self-knowledge and his level of self-reflection are quite remarkable. Nevertheless he believes that emotional purging is healthy. He holds a certain ideal of character to attain, which he calls moral health, a perfect balance. This is the road to freedom: ‘If, concurrently, you develop within yourself the force and the violence of the passions, stifling all scruples, all pity, you will then be absolutely free’ (1983b*: WML, 21). But

this is not to say that Sartre reneges on emotional joys. For him, to be morally healthy is not to be cold. One must be sentimental but in respect to oneself, not others. Above all one must always keep hold of the reins (1983b*: WML, 21-22); one must always be in control, at the expense of emotions and feelings. The following example illustrates what Sartre thinks when someone is not in control. Jollivet tells Sartre she is sad; he castigates her, calling sadness ‘this interesting pause you decided to adopt’ and also ‘playacting’. Within a rationalist tradition, emotions and desires are constructed as threatening. As Seidler argues: ‘We [men] inherit a false sense of control over our emotional

lives, thinking that we can always make things better through acts of will’ (1989: 118). Sartre says he used to be the same as Jollivet: Nowadays I hate and scorn those who, like you, indulge their brief hours of sadness. What disgusts me about it is the shameful little comedy rooted in a physical state of torpor that we play out for ourselves ... What delightful corrupt pleasure there is in imagining a dreary life, when we actually feel assured

of the contrary. We are full of self-pity. (1983b*: WML, 16) ,

62 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Where does all this violence come from? An element of response lies in the fact that narcissists often berate other people who display tendencies that they feel they have had to suppress in themselves. Sartre is inviting Jollivet

to adopt his compromised sense of self. Yet again, shame is brought into the picture. He is also projecting his own narrative in the interpretation of sadness; it is not everyone who can be assured that his or her life will be a success (but the young Sartre was). Sartre points out that sadness is the one thing in the world on which the will can do the most, advising Jollivet

to transform her sadness by turning it into an emotion in her writing (1983b*: WML, 17). Sartre may be using some of his repressed emotions in Ecrits de Jeunesse, notably the sadness of some of the main characters. And in Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions, he argues that an emotion is a way of changing the world by a magical attitude, as well as an escape from it. His time at the Ecole Normale has come to an end and he has passed his

state examination [agrégation] the second time round. He is about to embark on ‘adult life’, at the age of twenty-four. Politically, he is not com-

mitted. He used to have a theory about man alone [l’homme seul] who opposes himself to society by the independence of his thought but who owes nothing to society; in return society does not have a hold on him because he is free (1976a: 176). Sartre did not vote in elections and saw writing as his mission, but not yet as socially relevant (1976a: 177). In his war diaries, Sartre analyses the period 1921 to 1929 as one of optimism, calling himself ‘a thousand Socrates’ (1995: WD, 73). He constructed his metaphysical morality on the work of art, deciding to devote his life to writing, and thinking that his own life would mirror that of great writers he had read about. He was extremely conscious of being the young Sartre as people spoke of the young Berlioz or of the young Goethe; he was in the

throes of his grandiose self. Having achieved emotional mastery, Sartre was ready for intellectual dominance.

Notes 1. This is reflected in the relationship between Boris and Mathieu in L’Age de raison. 2. In 2003, the French government decided that the ENA (Ecole Nationale d’ Administration) should be relocated to Strasbourg rather than Paris to inject a more egalitarian spirit into

the powerful old boys’ network. It grooms 120 future civil servants, politicians and business leaders every year. The top twenty graduates have a guaranteed position at the top of the civil service. ENA has educated two of France’s last three presidents and six of its last eight prime ministers (The Guardian, 23 October 2003). 3. This qualification is awarded by competitive examination with one classification for the whole of France — the written examination often lasting eight hours, followed by an oral examination for the students who come in the top twenty. It entitles the holder to teach at the highest level. The number of candidates always vastly exceeds the number of places.

Intellectual and Emotional Mastery (1920-1929) 63

4. The reason for the argument is still a confused matter. Contat and Rybalka tried to find out exactly what happened, and drew a blank. All they were able to establish is that the rift lasted from March to October 1923. Sartre apparently could not remember what the argument was about other than that it was linked to the setting-up of the journal La Revue sans titre. In his war diaries, Sartre talks about a ‘fit of childish pride’ (1995: WD, 175) and Elkaim-Sartre further elucidates in a footnote, though in a very tentative manner, that they fell out perhaps because of a friendship betrayal or because Nizan had made some derogatory remarks about the quality of one of Sartre’s texts for La Revue sans titre. She then reports Sartre telling her that Nizan had talked to a third party about him, referring to him as a ‘temporary friend’. 5. Sartre often went out with Nizan, Maheu, and Guille. 6. This announces Roquentin with the landlady in La Nausée. Other ideas will find their way into La Nausée, such as a phenomenological description of the existence of things (1990: 220). During his first encounter with Organte, Frédéric tells him that he is after a philosophy that would be expressed in one idea (1990: 226). Contat and Rybalka argue that this is a resume, albeit rather gauche, of Sartre’s project as a writer (Sartre 1990: 527). Later on, the narrator describes what he wants to write and the description fits what will also eventually be La Nausée —- a novel which would be as hard as a philosophy book, dealing with

intellectual life as much as emotional life, showing man at work and thinking. It resembles the first version of La Nausée and above all, La Légende de la vérité (Sartre 1990: 527).

and/or lonely.

7. This could echo the fact that, despite his claim of happiness, deep down Sartre is still sad

8. It was written around 1927 but Contat and Rybalka could not establish its exact date because of conflicting evidence (Sartre 1990: 189). _ 9. Sartre did take on private pupils [tapirs] whilst at the Ecole Normale, and that is how he met someone who was to become a good friend, Mme Morel. In view of the content of Une Défaite one could speculate that Sartre was secretly in love with Mme Morel, and that she was somehow another source of inspiration for Cosima Wagner. This is a fact that Mme Morel herself may have discovered after reading Sartre’s novel. Contat and Rybalka report that Sartre may have lusted after Mme Morel — although Beauvoir denies

| it vigorously in her Memoirs — more than he could let on. In fact, Mme Morel was not duped; having read his novel she started to call Sartre occasionally ‘pitiful Frédéric’ (Sartre 1990: 197).

10. ‘He had the impression whilst relating the fairy tale of shaping a woman’s body like that of Cosima; each phrase was a mysterious fondling’ (1990: 239). 11. Contat and Rybalka point to the preface to Aden Arabie where Sartre talks about Nizan’s sartorial elegance before writing that he tried to imitate his style but that nice clothes worn by him looked like rags (Sartre 1990: 523). 12. This matches Aron’s description of Sartre as seen earlier. 13. See also Theweleit (1987). 14. See the whole chapter entitled ‘Sartre as Midwife’ for an illuminating discussion on Sartre’s homosexualities (68-112). And also the last chapter ‘The Perverted Consciousness’, in Leak (1989: 103-128).

15. Sartre felt feminised through his mother’s tenderness (1964a: W, 71). 16. This is a precursor of his crisis in the late twenties when he will feel ‘trapped’ in his relationship to Beauvoir, as I will analyse in chapter four. 17. Itis at about that time that Sartre met Beauvoir but their relationship is so important that it deserves a chapter of its own. 18. Cited in chapter one. 19. The underlying sadness reminds us that this seeking of happiness with friends is a compensatory activity. 20. Idealisation is “where the other enhances self-cohesion and esteem by being perfect in one or more respects and serving as a source of emulation’; idealisation may also serve to create the illusion of the perfect merger, twinship, or mirroring object. Mirroring is

64 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

‘where the individual relates to the other solely as one who enhances self-esteem by serving as a prizing, understanding, acknowledging “part-object’”’. Merger is ‘where the individual achieves a sense of security and worth through fusion’; here the individual will freely use the other without recognising the actual self-other boundary. Twinship transference is where ‘the individual achieves a sense of enhanced identity and self worth by assuming exaggerated similarity between the self and others’ Johnson 1994: 46). 21. The nickname was invented by Maheu who had written in an exercise book BEAUVOIR=BEAVER, telling her that she was a beaver since ‘Beavers like company and they have a constructive bent’ (Beauvoir 1990a*: LTS, X).

22. Making appointments he did not honour and turning up sometimes two or three hours late. 23. See Butler (1995).

24. According to Seidler, men tend to equate reason with masculine identity; emotions and feelings are denied and ‘associated predominantly with weakness and femininity’ (1991: 95).

25. Inan interview, Sartre admits to feeling superior to a lot of men too (Beauvoir 1976a: 119).

Chapter 4

MELANCHOLIA: MASCULINITY CHALLENGES (1929-1939)

As was compulsory for all young French men, Sartre went to do his military service in November 1929 until January 1931. He served in the meteorological corps and was in a barracks near Tours. With hindsight, Sartre believes that he took a negative attitude right from the outset and that it was the saddest time of his life (1995: 85). He talks about bad will and aggressive despair (1983b*: 283). Aron, a friend of Sartre at the Ecole Normale and one of Sartre’s main intellectual interlocutors, turned out to be one of his instructors, having opted to become an officer. Sartre was also with his friend Guille. Aron notes that for some reason his relationship with Sartre deteriorated during that period (Sartre 1995: 85 n. 1). Sartre did not aspire in this case to traditional hegemonic masculinities and he was anti-hierarchical by refusing to become an officer, having already written anti-militarist songs whilst at the Ecole Normale. He was also refusing to

follow in his father’s, and in his stepfather’s footsteps; this also meant abdicating a class privilege. His decision would have far reaching conse-

' quences because when the war broke out, instead of being confined to officers’ headquarters, he mixed with private soldiers. In a letter written in 1930,1 Sartre explains that the details of his life are regulated, minute by minute: ’... [know that the same thoughts will recur, the same hope and despair and all the schizophrenic fabrications which I notice I’m trusting more and more. Thus I sink into the condition of all who are sequestered’ (1983b*: WML, 33). He does not feel great inside. He

describes his state as a ‘middle state between power and impotence’ (1983b*: WML, 34), which indicates that it is powerlessness that brings on

his sinking condition as he talks of being sequestrated. His first reflex action is to write poetry (is that not a way of expressing his sensitivity?) Notes for this chapter begin on page 87.

66 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

but then he gets frustrated because he judges the poetry he has engendered to be terrible. In his war diaries, we read: ‘It makes me furious not to be a poet ... there’s something throttled in me — a secret shame, a cynicism too long learnt — and also a certain misfortune: my feelings haven't found their language. I feel them, I stretch out a shy finger and, as soon as I touch them, I change them into prose’ (1995: WD, 314). He warns Beauvoir that every time he will feel like this, his letters will be in arid, obscure prose (1983b*: WML, 34); presumably poetry should be ‘clear’ and ‘flowing’. Harvey remarks that Qu’est-ce que la littérature? makes the forceful point that prose is the most masculine form of writing (1991a: 57 n. 35). We saw in chapter three that around 1920-1921, Sartre says that he flirted with poetry very fleetingly, liking especially Jules Laforgue, but that Nizan and himself opted instead for the cult of the body (1995: WD, 371-72). There is a marked contrast between his time at the Ecole Normale where he reports being unreservedly happy and the time during the military service, which he qualifies as the saddest time in his life (up to 1939). Sartre left

the cocooned atmosphere of the Ecole Normale where he had a certain intellectual status, and where he was feared if not respected. He had to leave the ‘amorphous, violent world of camaraderie to live alone’ (1995: WD, 75). He felt disoriented and gloomy when he left that group life: “No friendship or love could at first replace that distinctive, easy-going density of life’ (1995: WD, 280). His relationship with the other conscripts does not

seem to have gone very well. He interacted with two men: a man from Toulouse and a seminarian. He did not like the former because he saw him as a grafter and a thief, and he kept arguing with the latter about religion (Beauvoir 1981: A, 257). In his war diaries he talks about conducting himself as a fierce and lonely critic in a male community (1995: WD, 280). Sartre joined the meteorological corps when he was twenty-four, and

left when he was twenty-five. Perhaps he felt cheated of those fifteen months. When he talks about it, he points to his own will power being the cause of his unhappiness, mentioning a negative attitude and aggressive despair. ‘Aggressive despair’ is a key expression. Perhaps this situation replayed for Sartre the analogical situation of being sent to La Rochelle, and he mentally switched to the same emotions. As a teenager, he moved from Paris and the comfort of his life with his grandparents where he was

a child prodigy to the harsh realities of the violent peer-group at La Rochelle, waiting to bully him. Once again men surround him, and there may be again, as in La Rochelle, an issue about social class. Sartre had to become modest: “This modesty finally cleansed all the last dross of superhumanity I still retained’ (1995: WD, 75). Whereas he was still harbouring grandiosity, fuelled by his status at the Ecole Normale, he must have come down to earth being one conscript amongst others, and receiving orders from Aron to whom Sartre felt intellectually superior. But there is no doubt, as we will see with the war, that had he put his mind to it, Sartre could have established his intellectual hegemony and dominated

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 67

his fellow conscripts and officers. So why did he not do that? Perhaps there was a deeper crisis brewing under the surface. His grandiose self is showing signs of cracks, he is not the writing self he is trying to produce; the others do not see him as ‘superhuman’, and his world is crumbling apart. Beauvoir and his friends are his emotional props and when they are not around, Sartre is in danger of collapsing. Sartre’s unhappiness may also be linked with his image as a seducer. In 1929 Beauvoir accepted Sartre’s gift of his freedom and kept it. He fell into a certain melancholy (1995: WD, 75). Writing about the 1920s, Sartre makes

plain in ‘Paul Nizan’ that he never understood why Nizan got married; he had made a point of remaining single and turned it into a moral principle (1964b: 148). He further elucidates in his war diaries that the great man that he thought he was destined to become should keep himself free for his destiny (1995: WD, 75). Analysing this period of his life during the Phoney War, Sartre says that he was foolish enough to be upset by Beauvoir’s attitude; instead of seeing it as an opportunity, he became melancholic (1995: WD, 272). Seidler reminds us that ‘men experience any compromise of their independence, defined as self-sufficiency, as a threat to their very sense of male identity’ (1991: 97). Sartre’s crisis appears to be partly a crisis of masculinity as well as disillusionment over his grandiosity: ‘T felt I was deeply committed to a path which was growing narrower and narrower; I felt that at every step I was losing one of my possibilities, as a person loses his hair. Incidentally, I did begin to lose my hair’ (1995: WD, 272). It is almost as if Sartre did not feel the ageing process before, and was perhaps living the myth of eternal youth, when suddenly reality hit him. This is precisely what Sartre articulates when he writes that he did not feel he was ageing before 1929 (1995: WD, 76). After his military service is over, Sartre takes up his first post teaching philosophy in Le Havre in October 1931, where he will stay for two years. The ‘malaise’ is not yet over; according to Sartre, becoming a teacher was a hard blow. If Sartre was a ‘thousand Socrates’ from 1921 until 1929, he now felt that he was ‘only one Socrates’ (1995: WD, 76). It was a hard blow because he was suddenly entering a professional career, and resembling the people whose ‘spirit of seriousness’ he would denounce in his writings. He did not mind teaching and the contact he had with young men — indeed he used to box with them outside of the classroom (Sartre 1982a: 81) and is reported to have visited a brothel with them after a night out (Sartre 1981: 2132) — but he despised the bureaucracy and all the official duties he was expected to attend, seldom turning up for the latter. Sartre seems to enjoy relationships where he has power and where he is seen as a sort of father figure or older brother (although he was not much older than his students). What did his students think of him? Jacques-Laurent Bost remembers that Sartre used to have fits of anger. Once he reportedly stared at his class and roared: ‘All those faces and not one single glimmer of intelligence!’ (Beauvoir 1960: PL, 246). He also spent time with them in cafés where he

68 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

used to talk about the latest film or the latest novels. Apart from the students, he had few friends. Amongst the teaching staff, he only liked Bonnafé

and the English teacher (though Bonnafé and himself thought the English teacher was a buffoon) and he tells Beauvoir that he was friends with Bonnafé because he was good looking and a boxer (1981: A, 257). Sartre also says that he liked Zuorro because he was good looking (Beauvoir 1981: A, 259). Sartre surrounds himself with attractive people because he feels ugly.°

Usually, Sartre was more interested in muscular competition with men,* except perhaps with Guille. He used to see a sports teacher because “he was a big fellow, quite good looking and powerfully built, and he told stories’: ‘What I liked were stories about men’s lives with sex and fighting in them’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 260). Sartre’s own belligerent temperament is not

dampened. He recounts a fight he was involved in during the year 1937-1938 with another teacher in the staff room (Beauvoir 1981: A, 323), and also in a bar in Rouen. During the academic year 1933-1934, Sartre went to Berlin at the French institute in order to study the relationship between the psyche and physiology. There are not many accounts of Sartre’s life for this period but he mentions some male friends (Brunschvick, Klee, Copeau) (1983b™*: 53), including a disciple, and also how he would quickly gain the upper hand on the other males he was in contact with. He specifically remembers violent quarrels during the evening meal with a teacher he did not like (Beau-

voir 1981: A, 261). Sartre is displaying a muscular intellectualness developed at the Ecole Normale. He started having an affair with a married woman nicknamed la femme lunaire.° In order to seduce he counted on

his power of speech alone. He had set off determined to sleep with German women but realised that his German was not good enough to converse: ‘Stripped thus of my weapon, I ... fell back on a French woman’ (1995: WD, 284; my emphasis). Set against his melancholy at feeling that his freedom had been taken by Beauvoir in 1929, this must have been a liberating experience for him, one where he was able to assert his masculin-

ity through seduction and intellectual fighting. He discovers Husserl and phenomenology; this would have a lasting influence on the development of his philosophy; it is a time of incredible intellectual growth. Sartre refers to this period as a year’s holiday where he rediscovered the ‘irresponsibility of youth’. On his return, he was ‘recaptured’ by Le Havre and his life as a teacher for a further two years (1934-1936), ‘perhaps even more bitterly’ (1995: WD, 273). By November, Beauvoir and himself were bemoaning the fact that they felt nothing new could happen to them. But Olga Kosakiewicz was about to enter into Sartre’s life and blow all his emotional cobwebs away. In the equation of Sartre’s malaise, there is definitely an element about youth/ ageing, freedom/enslavement (it is no coincidence that he uses ‘recaptured’). Having tasted his youth and freedom again in Berlin, it is all the more difficult to “settle down’ in Le Havre. And it is perhaps because of the ‘irresponsibility of youth’ that Sartre actu-

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 69

ally spends one year in Berlin without worrying overtly about the rise of Nazism, unlike Aron and Gandillac (Sirinelli 1990: 1046 ff.).

In February 1935, his friend Dr Lagache injected Sartre for an experiment with mescaline. The latter was interested in anomalies of perception, which he was studying for his work on the imaginary.° Sartre started to have hallucinations that lasted for months. In a letter dated 25 March 1935, Beauvoir tells Jollivet that Sartre has been worryingly mad but that heis __ no longer mad now (1990a*: 21). But in La Force de l’age she writes that Sartre’s crisis dragged on, with various ups and downs until the summer holidays. With hindsight, Sartre explained to Beauvoir that he had been in a state of deep depression for several days after the injection. His visual faculties became distorted. Beauvoir writes that, for a few months, Sartre thought he was mad, telling her he was on the edge of a chronic hallucinatory psychosis! Reading carefully Beauvoir’s account in La Force de l’age,

it seems that Sartre was actually disengaging from the world, switching off, as if the world was too painful a place, which is symptomatic of a form of depression. A few days after his injection, whilst walking with Colette

Audry’ and Beauvoir on the beach, Beauvoir writes that he appeared absent; going to a paintings exhibition of his friend Fernando Gerassi, he sat in a corner saying nothing. This is repeated in cafés or during walks. A key phrase from Beauvoir reads: ‘Whereas a short time ago he missed nothing, now he simply did not bother to look.’ There seems to be a refusal to look at the world, and to be engaged in it. At the time, Sartre was writing L’Imagination and L’Imaginaire and it did

not help him because he was forever rummaging about in his own consciousness (1976b: SBH, 38). In L’Imaginaire, he talks about two sorts of feel-

ings: real ones and imaginary ones. Imaginary feelings are not unreal but they vanish the moment the real is in front of them (1940: 281). He then pro-

poses that individuals can be classified into two categories according to whether they prefer to lead an imaginary life or a real life (1940: 283). This is

interesting when one thinks back about Sartre’s childhood and Pardaillan and the fact that he took refuge in the imaginary, with an imaginary body. He explains that people who live an imaginary life want to escape the real (1940: 283)° and also makes use of his own personal experience (1940: 303 ff.). In Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions, published in 1939, Sartre talks at

length about a certain form of sadness he calls ‘passive sadness’. It almost resonates with Beauvoir’s description of Sartre: ‘one turns towards a corner and stays sitting down, motionless’ (1939a: 46). Feeling incapable of performing actions, we somehow manage for the world not to ask anything of us. In order to achieve this, since we can only influence ourselves, Sartre uses the expression se mettre en veilleuse, which is not easily ren-

dered in English but would mean, we function below par, and do not expend a lot of energy; the world then becomes gloomy (1939a: 46-47). This description seems to match what happened to Sartre. In Sartre’s case, depression would be a defensive manoeuvre against the pain. Looking

70 ~— Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

back in his war diaries at what he calls the gloomy years, Sartre claims that he learnt that it was not good for man to know himself or to be over-concerned with himself; one should just write and create (1995: WD, 87). Significantly, Beauvoir remarks that Sartre’s fears did not seem to linger

so much when he was with other people. Sartre starts going for walks with two former pupils, two young men: Albert Paille and Bost, and Olga Kosakiewicz enters the picture too. Sartre tells her endless stories, going with her for endless walks. At some stage, he must have entered into a seduction game with her. Sartre needs companionship; isolated, he cannot face his demons. It is as if solitude and isolation take him back to a time in

his life when he felt totally isolated during his early childhood (‘I was nothing: an indelible transparency’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 58)), and of course during his time at La Rochelle. Sartre slowly became obsessed with Olga Kosakiewicz. She was eigh-

teen when she met Sartre and he was thirty. Sartre analyses in his war diaries that he was at the nadir of his madness and passion for Olga for two years: from March 1935 to March 1937. Beauvoir and himself were after a life of ‘imperious casualness’ (1995: WD, 77), feeling rather stuck in their rut when Olga walked into their life and offered precisely everything they desired. Olga had been a student of Beauvoir in Rouen and at first she

became friends with her. She was blond with her hair covering her face.’ Beauvoir describes her as possessing one virtue, genuineness: ‘She was liable to fits of rage’ (1960: PL, 231); there was a ‘fresh, childlike quality about her enthusiasm ... she only valued emotions; cerebral concerns left her cold’ (1960: PL, 238); ‘Olga was quite something, very intelligent, very

proud, and very elegant with refined manners. She had an inner strength ... she used to dance in the middle of the street, she was naturally authentic and conqueringly spontaneous’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 156).

‘Iam not so sure I didn’t seek out women’s company, at one time, in order to get rid of the burden of my ugliness’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 282). Sartre

was attracted by Olga’s physical appearance: ‘I should have liked to eat beauty and to incorporate it’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 282). Sartre was smitten. He lost weight and grew as thin as a rake (Sartre 1995: WD, 278) — confessing that when he met Olga he dreaded the idea of becoming a ‘bald little fatty’ (1995: WD, 123)'° —- this shows how he felt at the time that a major symbol

of his masculinity was threatened. Sartre would stay up for up to forty hours at a time (1995: WD, 122). During a ‘privileged’ time together, they

stayed up all night wandering around the streets of Rouen (1995: WD, 332-35). According to Beauvoir, Sartre used to go on and on about Olga’s extraordinary behaviour, trying to decipher each of her gestures to gauge if he was in or out of favour; she was a magnificent obsession and Beauvoir (understandably) found it a little tedious. Thad always assumed that Beauvoir, Olga and Sartre started a ménage a trois as suggested in L’Invitée (Beauvoir 1943) and that, in any case, Sartre had had a sexual relationship with Olga. Cohen-Solal notes the discrepancy

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 71

between Beauvoir’s account of the ‘trio’ and Sartre’s account. He never mentions a trio, just an unhappy passion." In fact, it appears that Sartre and Olga never slept together during the two years that Sartre courted her. A seduction game was going on, and Olga seemed to hold the power. One day she would be flirtatious with him, but the next day distant. Sometimes she responded to him as he hoped, ‘behaving in a more feminine, coquettish, and artificial way than she did with [Beauvoir]’ (Beauvoir 1960: PL,

255) and at other times she did not. Olga did not give in to Sartre’s advances — nor did she reject them — which was agony for Sartre; he had to exist in an indecisive time capsule (Cohen-Solal 1985: 157). In 1974, Sartre admits that his relationship with Olga was neither possessive nor sexual; he claims he wanted pride of place in her heart (Beauvoir 1981: 388).

Beauvoir believes that Sartre wanted to monopolise her, but in a purely

sentimental fashion. Sartre became jealous of Olga’s friendship with Zuorro, one of their friends (sometimes presented as a gay man, other times as bisexual). He told Olga and they quarrelled (Beauvoir 1960: PL, 239). Beauvoir explicitly states that Sartre did not want sex with her but her attention. Sartre insisted on exclusive rights and he wanted no one to mean as much to Olga as he did (Beauvoir 1960: PL, 240). He forced her to neglect Zuorro but it was not enough: ‘the friendship he wanted of Olga was something as absolute and exclusive as love, and he felt the need for her to confirm it by some open sign — a word, a glance, a symbolic gesture’ (Beauvoir 1960: PL, 240). Sartre was tyrannically jealous and could not cope with Olga’s capricious tantrums. Beauvoir must have found it difficult to accept Sartre’s obsessive interest in Olga, feeling rejected by the intensity of their relationship. She had the idea of a trio as a way of being more integrated (Cohen-Solal 1985: 157).

She stresses how much time Sartre gives to Olga when we know that his time was normally rigidly compartmentalised so that the main part of every day was devoted to writing. She writes that Sartre pursued Olga with sheer stubbornness. Influenced by Olga, ‘Sartre let himself go, to the great detriment of his emotional stability, and experienced feelings of alarm, frenzy, and ecstasy such as he had never known with me’ (Beauvoir 1960: PL, 261). One can feel Beauvoir’s pain and respect her emotional honesty. Her fictional revenge will be to kill off the character of Xaviére, loosely based on Olga, in L’Invitée.

What was being played out for Sartre underneath the surface? According to Beauvoir, they both pursued the cult of youth in Olga: ‘She became

Rimbaud, Antigone, every enfant terrible that ever lived, a dark angel judging us from her diamond-bright heaven’ (1960: PL, 242). With hind-

sight, Beauvoir’s judgement is that they behaved as though they were twenty again (Cohen-Solal 1985: 243). And although she enjoyed listening to Olga and liked both her way of thinking and her sensitivity, as far as she was concerned, she was still a child (1960: PL, 166) whereas she exercised a magic attraction for Sartre. Sartre described his jealousy, saying that he

72 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

even broke a window in a jealous fit. For him, she was synonymous with ‘authenticity and spontaneity’ (1995: WD, 156). Sartre also talked about her in the character of Ivich in Les Chemins de la liberté; she is portrayed as dominating, exotic, depressive, with ups and downs (Cohen-Solal 1985: 159). Ivich appears essentially in L’Age de raison’? and Mathieu, the main character who is passionate about her, finds his feelings not reciprocated. From all the information above, it seems that Sartre wanted uncondi-

tional love from Olga. And there may have been some kind of sibling rivalry between him and Zuorro. But there is something else taking place. As well as some kind of regression, Sartre is also letting his emotions speak (and it is so unusual for him that Beauvoir describes him as ‘emotionally unstable’) and he is not obsessed about preserving his writing time. If one lists Olga’s qualities, these are all qualities that are buried deep in Sartre but that he is not in touch with anymore. She is the antithesis of the person he has become: spontaneous, in touch with her body, and above all only valuing emotions. Sartre had become a rational man who had forged his will; he had stopped feeling. By contrast, ‘her moments of despair were even more intense than her cheerful moods’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 244). Beauvoir also talks about the childlike quality of her enthusiasm. Olga registered record highs and lows on the Richter scale of emotions whilst Sartre was a constant horizontal line somewhere below the average. But thanks to Olga, Sartre ‘experienced feelings of alarm, frenzy, and ecstasy such as he had never known with [Beauvoir]’.’’ Sartre recovered in Olga his own uninhibited child; she enabled him to reach out and reconnect with a more inclusive sense of self. In his war diaries, Sartre describes another self he would like to be: ‘This man would be handsome, hesitant, obscure, slow and upright in his thoughts ["] ... How I should have liked to feel uncertain ideas slowly, patiently forming within me! How I should have liked to boil with great, obscure rages; faint from great outpourings of tenderness!’ (1995: WD, 273-74). And Olga is giving him permission to be this other self. Beauvoir saw Sartre’s attention towards Olga as compulsive. And Sartre who had boasted of forging his will was this time not in control of his passion; his passion controlled him. This would explain why Sartre did not necessarily want to sleep with Olga (though the jury is still out on this one) since what he wanted to possess deep down was her mind, or rather her personality. This can be illustrated by Sartre’s fiction. Mathieu writes about Ivich: ‘Being for one instant this bewildered consciousness and filled with her own smell ... Being Ivich without stopping being myself’ (Sartre 1945b: 74). Mathieu wants to recover some of the

qualities he has denied in himself and projected onto women, without reneging on being himself. He wants to reintegrate his feminine side without losing his masculine subjectivity. This is what Sartre expresses in his war diaries in relation to tenderness. He claims to have the impression of

being tender with the help of the other’s body, mirroring his gestures; Sartre would describe tenderness as a situation for two. Except that in the

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 73

case of a man, the coarseness of his physique is an insuperable obstacle to tenderness. He argues that in a relationship, the man is an acquired taste and the woman ‘is the absolute object of desire’ (1995: WD, 276); for the man to be desirable in turn, a ‘transfer’ must take place. Sartre does not see

smelling of tobacco’. |

himself as an object of desire but imagines his lips as ‘all rough and Sartre describes his feelings for Olga as follows: ‘Each day I used to wait for the moment of seeing her again — and beyond that moment for some kind of impossible reconciliation. The future of all these moments ... was this impossible love’ (1995: WD, 4). The key word here is reconciliation. To

reconcile is to reconnect and it leads to impossible love since what is at stake here seems to be Sartre reintegrating what he considers to be his feminine side. This is confirmed by the aforementioned account from Beauvoir who describes Olga behaving at times in front of Sartre in a more feminine, coquettish, and artificial way than she did with her. This would be in order to come up to his expectations, and her description corresponds to Sartre’s

ideal of a blond woman. ‘Authenticity and spontaneity’ is what characterises Olga, and this is to be contrasted to the rationalist man who has omnipotent fantasies. Beauvoir describes one of their idyllic moments together: ‘Looking at the world in unison and sharing its enchantment’ (1960: PL, 259). One can sense a wish for fusion or merger here, reminiscent

of the young Poulou and his mother as one. There is also an element of ‘courtly love in Sartre going for endless walks with Olga, acting out his own teenage fantasies, reflecting the plot of some of his Ecrits de jeunesse; seduc-

ing for him meant talking, walking together and holding hands. And there was never a consideration that the relationship would develop into a sexual one (‘what most delighted me was the seductive enterprise. Once the woman had been captivated, I used to abandon her to her fate’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 266)). Sartre claims that when he was twenty-five he still felt that physical turmoil was a preposterous scandal (1995: WD, 266). Cohen-Solal believes that on another level Sartre was desperately trying

to seduce Olga by using his humour, his intelligence, his generosity, his imagination and his singing voice — going through his entire repertoire of songs. He made her read his manuscript of La Nausée, his first short story (he will dedicate to her the collection Le Mur); he seeks her approval (Cohen-Solal 1985: 157). An illustration of the powerful combination for Sartre of writing and seduction is when in 1937 he has sex with a common friend of Beauvoir and himself called Gégé. When she tells him that she almost had an orgasm, he thanks her by giving her a copy of his short story Erostrate (Sartre 1983b*: WML, 111). It shows the correlation between

writing and seduction’? and how much Sartre invested in his phallic objects, his books, as a masculine endorsement. In this instance, his masculine status is confirmed more by his book (whose content is highly sexualised) than by his prowess as a lover. Offering the book makes up for the lack of orgasm: ‘I may not be the best lover in the world but I write books

74 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

about sex.’ Sartre’s writing is a more precious gift than his body.’° Sartre also uses writing to gain the respect of his disciples. He makes Bost read a few pages of his manuscript La Nausée and comments that it filled him with stupefied admiration (1983b*: WML, 83). How does Sartre’s ‘madness’ relate to his relationship with Olga? Beauvoir claims that, in front of Olga, Sartre was transformed for a few hours from a pitiable neurotic (which was how he saw himself) into a brilliant buffoon (Cohen-Solal 1985: 239). Sartre’s crisis of masculinity must have been precipitated by the fact that he could not possess her; she was always enacting freedom, displaying an independent desire. The relationship is described by Sartre as ‘passion and madness’ (1995: WD, 157; my emphasis).

Sartre introduces the concept of madness with regard to his relationship with Olga. And in a circular move, the passion leads him back to madness. The end of the school year saw a series of arguments between Sartre and Olga. Olga went back to Rouen for the summer and Sartre found it easier since she was living away. Olga became closer to Beauvoir as her relationship with Sartre deteriorated. In September, she was back in Paris. Sartre started to go for walks again with Olga but they quarrelled a lot. Beauvoir reckons that Olga was sulky and that Sartre had fits of impa-

tience. Elkaim-Sartre relates the ending of Sartre’s passion for Olga. According to her account, Olga secretly preferred Bost, a young man who had been one of Sartre’s students, but she never told Sartre directly; he slowly discovered it (Sartre 1995: 71 n. 1). Beauvoir confirms this version when she explains that Olga and Bost were seen kissing by Zuorro (1960: PL, 284). Sartre put on a brave face. Olga tried to carry on seeing Sartre and he made great efforts to keep their relationship amicable but his heart was not really in it any more. Six years later Olga married Bost, and remained friends with Sartre and Beauvoir. They were often financially dependent on Sartre and Olga became an actress in Sartre’s first play, with the lead

female role. The following year, Sartre became interested in Olga’s younger sister Wanda.

Sartre will start a sexual relationship with Wanda at the end of July 1939, after a year of courting her, subsequently sleeping with her twice a day during their time together over that summer. Elkaim-Sartre reports Sartre claiming that he had a relationship with Wanda because she resembled her sister Olga (Sartre 1995: 455, n. 1). This may or may not be right, but what transpires from Sartre’s correspondence is how much he liked Wanda whom he refers to as his personal obstinacy, before adding that it is insipid (1983b*: WML, 197). From this, it seems that the main ingredient, which was there with Olga, is missing. ] mentioned above a ménage @ trois. Sartre will meet Bianca Bienenfeld when she is seventeen and he is thirty-four. Bianca will become involved

in a sexual relationship with Beauvoir who had been her philosophy teacher before embarking on one with Sartre; they will form a trio. In her book, she relates how after a few weeks of going out together Sartre asked

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 75

if they were going to have sex (she was a virgin). They set up a date at his hotel and as they were walking towards the hotel, Sartre told her that the maid would be surprised because the day before he had already taken the virginity of a young girl (1993: 54-55). In February 1940, Sartre will break up with Bianca. What happened to Sartre’s masculine subjectivities during this period? By 1937, Bost, a young man in his early twenties and Sartre’s ex-student, had ‘taken’ Olga from him since the latter preferred him. We now know that Bost also started a sexual liaison with Beauvoir that Sartre was aware of. This must have had an effect on Sartre. All the more because he was not sure that Gallimard would take ‘Melancholia’, the manuscript that became

La Nausée. So Sartre appears to fail at this moment in time in what he regarded as his two major ways of achieving masculinity: writing and seduction. I would contend that this is the underlying cause of his depression, what is referred to in his biographies as ‘madness’. He claims that he felt so miserable that on several occasions he contemplated death with indifference; ‘feeling old, fallen, finished’ (1995: WD, 78). When it was all over, Sartre wrote to Beauvoir about Olga: ‘I put her on such a pedestal then that, for the first time in my life, I felt humbled and disarmed before someone’ (1983b*: WML, 376).

Sartre did not come out unscathed from his passion for Olga. In 1938, he

writes that ever since the Olga affair he immediately ‘blots out anything with the slightest resemblance to passion ... in a sort of abiding fear. It’s not just with Olga but with the whole world that I have “counter-crystallised”’ (1983b*: WML, 148). In the short term Sartre shut down emo-

tionally and protected himself from such turmoil by shoring up his compromised sense of self. But this also means that he buried again the chance of experiencing a more inclusive sense of self. We talked earlier of Sartre being only tangentially aware of the rise of Nazi Germany whilst he lived in Berlin. As the Spanish civil war breaks out, Sartre and Beauvoir explore Italy throughout the entire summer of 1936 (Beauvoir 1960: 274). Sartre will write a short story Dépaysement based on their travels but the Spanish Civil War will not be mentioned (1981: 1537-57).

Can we derive some information from Sartre’s writing at the time? The theme of madness (schizophrenia) will be explored in a short story called ‘La Chambre’ written in 1937 and published in 1938; one could argue that ‘Erostrate’ written in 1936 also touches upon it. However in the latter, Paul Hilbert, a social recluse, writes how he is plotting to meddle in a crowd of

people and shoot at random. Hilbert does not like men, or only from above, but in a crowd, one cannot avoid physical contact with men (Sartre has had the experience of military service and within three years he will be

living exclusively with men in barracks). Doubrovsky remarks that he does not like women either and that they have to be looked at from afar; he sees this as a leitmotiv in the other short stories of Le Mur and coins the expression ‘skin solipsism’ [solipsisme épidermique] (1986: 121-22). Hilbert

76 ‘Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

wants to accomplish a grandiose gesture; he has a reoccurring dream of being an anarchist about to become a suicide bomber in order to kill the Tsar. He composes a letter to a writer who is famous and sells books because he likes men, explaining that he cannot like men because they dis-

gust him; they have highjacked the meaning of life and are humanists. One can sense in Hilbert a desperate wish to be recognised as a writer. Sartre, like in his Ecrits de Jeunesse, could be exploring what happens to men who fail to make it as writers, and hence who fail in their masculine subjectivities.!” Written in 1937, ‘Intimité’ is the story of Lulu, agonising as to whether

she will leave her impotent husband for her lover, Pierre, but also toying with the idea of living with her friend Rirette who has also been her lover. She finally leaves Pierre after he hits her younger brother. Her relationship to the latter is very tender and he loves nothing better than to watch her getting dressed. This is reminiscent of the narrator of Les Mots revealing that his mother was more like an older sister and that he used to watch her get undressed at night. When Sartre’s mother remarried, she is the one who hit Sartre because he had been insolent to his stepfather, whom she never left. Sartre could be taking textual revenge on his situation as a teenager. ‘Le Mur’ is written at the beginning of 1937. It is set in Spain during the Civil War. Bost, one of Sartre’s students in Le Havre, went to see Sartre to ask him if he could get him smuggled into Spain, as he wanted to fight in the Civil War. Sartre claims that the idea for the short story was born from this dilemma (1981: 1829). The short story follows three main characters the night before they are due to be executed. There is no question of Sartre glamourising the war or fuelling heroism. He describes the panic setting in as one of the men urinates in his pants. Through a twist of fate, Pablo is the only one not to be executed. Sartre’s apparent detachment from politics will be transformed after March 1941 into a lifelong commitment to politics. In 1938, Sartre will shake off his individualist pacifism to become anti-Nazi (1976a: 178). I may have overstated Sartre’s apoliticism before 1939. Beauvoir records many

political discussions and notes in her memoirs that Sartre was vaguely tempted to join the French Communist Party before 1939. And Sartre declared that Le Mur was written out of hatred for fascism; the main character Pablo being an anarchist. Nevertheless, assessing that period of his life in the 1970s with Gerassi, Sartre states that his political consciousness

of the time was to be ‘petit bourgeois, individualistic and democratic’ (Gerassi 1989: 120).

What has happened to Sartre’s madness? Biographers generally state that this ‘madness’ lasted for up to two years. But Sartre is still experiencing problems in August 1939, some four and a half years after the event, according to a letter to ‘Louise Védrine’ (1983b*: 257-58). He mentions that

whilst swimming in the sea, he suddenly got frightened of the Beast who lives under water. In the next sentence, he asks Louise not to worry, that it

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 77

is an obsession, only half-serious, but it comes upon him, especially when he is swimming alone in the sea. One could speculate that the imagery about the Beast in the sea here narrated, and stagnant water (all these will find their way into La Nausée) symbolise Sartre’s pain and grief, which is ‘leaking out’. When she thought the crisis was over, Beauvoir enquired with doctors

who told her that mescaline could not have provoked Sartre’s attacks, merely providing him with certain hallucinatory patterns. She concludes that Sartre was overworked because of his philosophical work and that this brought his fears to the surface again: ‘We [presumably Sartre and Beauvoir] afterwards concluded that they were the physical symptoms of a deep emotional malaise; Sartre could not resign himself to going on to “the age of reason”, to full manhood [4 l’a@ge d’homme]’ (1960: PL, 211). Whatever Beauvoir means by ‘lage d’homme’, 1am not sure but I could not agree more

that ‘a deep emotional malaise’ was at the root of Sartre’s madness. And I would argue that the malaise should be traced back to 1929 when Sartre went to do his military service. Sartre was isolated from his peers and, with no one to bolster his grandiose self, cracks started to appear.

Sartre went back over this episode on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. He describes a sort of depression that lasted for months and interprets it as an identity crisis linked to a passage to adult life (1976a: 177). Sartre was in his thirties. This is the acme of masculinity, and Sartre was frightened of not measuring up because he had given himself the goal of being a writer, and he was not yet a recognised writer.® Cohen-Solal relates Sartre’s psychological crisis when he was in his early thirties. It is claimed that the actual trigger for the crisis was the realisation that he was losing his hair (1985: 153):!? ‘It was a symbolic disaster for me. I still remained more or less indifferent to the idea of death. On the other hand, I got a taste at that time ... of growing old. And for ages I used to massage my head in front of mirrors: balding became the tangible sign for me of growing old’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 76). Sartre introduces the idea of death to then provide an example of denegation. His crisis seems to come partly from a threat to his masculine subjectivity. Sartre only really became famous aged thirty-three. For Sartre, the transition to manhood went badly and at thirty-two he felt old as the hills (1995: WD, 76).”? He had always modelled his lifeon __ that of illustrious writers such as Stendhal and was measuring how his life was different from other great men’s lives. Sartre reads Shelley’s biogra-

phy, and comments: ‘I’m hardly interested anymore in anything but accounts of great men’s lives; I want to search them for some prophecy of my own life’ (1983b*: 14). He remembers copying in his diary a dictum from Tépffer that at twenty-two, whoever is not famous must renounce glory forever. And, by the time he was twenty-eight, Sartre claims he knew he had written nothing good. Because Sartre has invested so much in writing, it is not simply being published which is at stake, but also his whole

78 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

masculine subjectivity. In his war diaries, he writes that at the time he felt that man was an absurd creature, lacking any raison d’étre, and the big question was that of his justification. He himself felt utterly dreary and unjustified: ‘Only the work of art could give man that justification ... man is worth nothing’ (1995: WD, 87); deep down he could not console himself for the fact that he had lost his great man’s life. Since fame did not call for all these years, the lack of success threatened Sartre’s grandiose self, which called for defensive manoeuvres, including depression or inertia (which corresponds better to the description of Sartre by Beauvoir). Cohen-Solal talks of a narcissistic wound (1985: 162). I now propose to explore some other Ecrits de jeunesse to see if we can gain a deeper understanding of his situation at the time. L’Ange du morbide, written when Sartre was seventeen, has a male character that fails to measure up to masculinity. He teaches but has no control over his students at school, he is a writer — significantly a poet — but not a

successful one. He only feels powerful in his relationship with a weak woman who has tuberculosis,*! when ‘he exulted above all by feeling healthy and male’ (1990: 47). Could this represent one of Sartre’s worst fears: being a failed writer; being a failed teacher whose classes are anarchy; and being a failed seducer who can only feel powerful next to a dying woman? Sartre conceded that, without knowing it, he put something of

himself in the male character (Beauvoir 1981: 172). This leitmotiv is encountered in Jésus la Chouette, probably written at the same time in 1922 (Sartre 1990: 51). Most readings have identified Sartre with the narrator of

this novel, ‘Paul’, although he is aged fifteen in the novel when Sartre wrote it two years after that. Beauvoir asked Sartre if he was compelled to

write the story anticipating with this teacher his own future but Sartre totally sidesteps the question (1981: 170-71). Jésus la Chouette is going bald and has a slight limp; his legs are thin and wiry (this reminds one of the exaggerated physical afflictions of Saturnin Picquot), he has not fulfilled his ambitions as a writer. Contat and Rybalka describe him as ‘emasculated’ [dévirilisé] (Sartre 1990: 57). He

lacks any authority over anybody whether at school or at home and is a very passive character, known occasionally to cry. He is a complete failure,

and everyone else in his life dominates him. This is what happens when someone does not fulfil his ambition as a writer. Sartre did become a successful and famous writer. So how did he deal with the crisis? Forced to concede that his own life did not resemble — so far — that of other illustrious writers, he decided that this mattered no longer and started to think that a writer was judged on his works, and that his life could be humdrum (Sartre 1995: WD, 77). Writing occupied him: ‘After this, I devoted myself to writing with a kind of fury. The sole purpose of an absurd existence was indefinitely to produce works of art which at once escaped it’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 78). It is almost as if Sartre commits himself a second time after his childhood in doing masculinity through

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 79

writing. As he explained in 1975, having discovered the contingency of the

world, he became the man who wrote about contingency and in the process he became necessary and escaped the very contingency he was denouncing (1976a: 199). We saw in chapter one how the narrator of Les Mots explains that, in order to fill the void, he set up the pretension of being indispensable to the Universe (1964a: W, 70). We are in 1935; Sartre believes in salvation through Art, but it will be short lived. The ending of La Nausée is ambiguous because Sartre is on record as saying that when he _ started writing it he believed in salvation through art, and by the time he finished it, he had changed his mind. His experience with Olga should not be underestimated either. In Sartre’s own words, she broke the magic spell

of writing: ‘Art seemed pretty pointless faced with that cruel, violent, naked purity’ (Sartre 1995: 78). Sartre becomes so much his writing that when Gallimard rejected Melancholia, he expresses: ‘... 1 had put all of myself in this book ... in refusing it, it is myself that was rejected, my experience that was excluded’ (Beauvoir

1981: 160). It is also Sartre’s writing self that is not validated. Beauvoir recalls that Sartre actually shed a tear or two, which was a rare occurrence, because it had been such a shock (1981: 208). La Nausée was only accepted in May 1937, Sartre was about to turn thirty-two. Sartre describes his reac-

tion at his manuscript being accepted. He feels very at ease inside, poetic and soft (attributes which Sartre associates with femininity) before con-| fessing: ‘I have a strong suspicion that this uneasiness I’ve been feeling these past days — which I was attributing to subtle causes — was quite simply because Melancholia hadn’t yet been conclusively accepted. But today, I walk the streets like an author’ (1983b*: 119; my emphasis). This statement

from Sartre shows clearly that he wants to identify as an author; it also links to masculinity* and to narcissism.*? Having felt old, fallen and finished, Sartre describes feeling ‘full of a tremendous, intense youthfulness’ (1995: WD, 78).

Sartre describes himself as being at ease inside, poetic and soft. Elsewhere, he will often describe himself as hard and dry. In his mind, the former evokes feminine qualities, the latter masculine ones. It is almost as if when Sartre lacks in self-esteem and feels empty, he has to produce himself as masculine because his sense of self seems to be precarious; when his subjectivity is associated with his writing self, which is one of his ways of shaping his masculine subjectivities, then he can be more fluid and let in some of his femininity. Sartre started to work on La Nausée in 1931 and the third and final ver-

sion was written in 1936. He thought of the title Melancholia when he worked on the book in the few months after his deep depression in February 1935 (Teroni 1986: 39). His experiences with mescaline can be traced in some passages in La Nausée with the monster under the water (1938: 117), the sea full of animals (1938: 177) or when objects metamorphose into living things (1938: 224-25). But Contat and Rybalka point out that it is very

80 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

difficult to work out exactly what was written before and after the crisis (Sartre 1981: 1667).

The main character leads a very solitary life, and though he does interact with people, he has no real contact with them. The only person he is interested in is Rollebon, the eighteenth-century man. Half way through La Nausée, he decides that it is the book he is attached to rather than the man; he needs to write it (1938: 29-30). Sartre told Beauvoir in 1974 that La Nausée

represented the theory of man alone and that he could not get out of it. Roquentin has a strong body and red hair, and he can occasionally turn on the violence as when he grabs the little Corsican, the librarian (1938: 236). He looks at his face in the mirror, and cannot decide if it is ugly or beautiful, but thinks it is ugly because he has been told so (1938: 34). There follows a description of his face where he sees a ‘vegetable world’ with his eyes coming off the worst; they look like fish scales (1938: 34) — Sartre will describe his face in similar terms in his conversations with Beauvoir (Beauvoir 1981: 394). There are traces of Pardaillan in the main character — he has travelled widely and known many adventures** — and even more so in M. de Rollebon who took an active part in the assassination of the Pope, was a

double agent in the Orient for the Tsar but in fact reporting back to Napoleon. He is described as very ugly but successful with women: they are said to fall passionately for him. Roquentin has a shared past with Anny, his ex girlfriend. At one point, he thinks he could perhaps rekindle their relationship but ultimately, it does not work. Anny has been obsessed with ‘perfect moments’ and her character is said to be based partly on Jollivet. But there are also echoes of Sartre in his relationship with Olga. Sartre talks about his privileged times with Olga, and also about impossible love. Again, Sartre could have been writing into his pain by using the character of Anny, creating a safe distance but also coming to terms with the fact that what he wanted from Olga was perhaps unobtainable. Roquentin writes a biography.” But it is an historical thesis on a histor-

ical character living in the eighteenth century. Whilst seeing similarities between Sartre and Roquentin, Contat and Rybalka point out that the latter is not a writer in Sartre’s definition of the word at the time: someone whose entire life is dictated by the choice of writing, who is devoted to

writing by an irresistible mandate. Quoting the beginning of Sartre’s famous sentence in Les Mots, ‘I was Roquentin; in him I exposed, without self-satisfaction, the web of my life’, they stress the end of that sentence ‘at the same time I was myself, the elect, the chronicler of hells ...’ to underline

the main difference between them. Sartre writes La Nausée and derives some happiness from the act of writing itself and from the fact that he is fulfilling his mandate (Sartre 1981: 1663). In his autobiography, Sartre interprets his earlier life as being in the throes of a writing neurosis, which

he unmasks in Les Mots. Contat and Rybalka point out that his writing neurosis protected him. Though he had periods when he was down in the thirties, all witnessing accounts speak of a vitality in Sartre, a level-head-

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 81

edness, a level of productivity and a happy predisposition, which Roquentin lacks. Sartre expresses the same view when he writes, referring to articles on La Nausée and Le Mur, that he has had enough of being seen as decadent and morbid when he is quite the opposite (Sartre 1983b*: 219). La Nausée is at times interpreted as delivering the message of art for art’s

sake. I would argue, with many others, that the ending of La Nausée is much more ambiguous.”° Roquentin talks about the writer and the performer of the song Some of these days as having cleansed themselves from the sin of existing (1938: 249). Roquentin envies people, as well as works of

art whose property is to be necessary rather than contingent. ‘Some of these days you’re gonna miss me honey’; if this song stops Roquentin’s nausea in its tracks, it could be because it counteracts contingency; someone is needed. What Roquentin wants is to be missed, to be necessary to someone and for a while he felt that Rollebon justified his existence. This should amount to more than the patronne of the café telling him that she will miss him when he leaves Bouville, alluding to their sexual encounters (she was used to him). Anny, his past partner, has made it clear when he met up with her again that she does not need him, that she will not need him in the future and this precipitates his decision to stop writing his historical thesis. At one stage, Roquentin confides in his diary that M. de Rollebon represents the only justification for his existence. Near the end of the book, he decides to abandon his book since he realises that an existent can never justify the existence of another existent and that the past does not exist. He

then glimpses a possible book he could write which would make people ashamed of their existence, clearly some kind of philosophical book and

therefore, as some have argued, a book such as La Nausée. The book Roquentin would write would have life as its subject. As analysed in Ecrits de Jeunesse, Sartre explores what happens when

someone does not fulfil his ambition as a writer. And this could be

repeated in La Nausée. Having abandoned his writing project, Roquentin writes that he needed Rollebon in order not to feel his being. He was his raison d’étre; now he has freed him from himself (1938: 143). Sartre told Beauvoir that both Mathieu in Les Chemins de la liberté and Roquentin had lives different from his but very similar, expressing what he looked upon as the deepest in his own life (1981: 537). In his war diaries, he reflects on the

fact that Roquentin and Mathieu are so gloomy and writes that it is because they are homunculi. The dictionary definition of an homunculus is that of a small man, a weakling. In Sartre’s vocabulary, they are not ‘real men’. And they are not real men because they fail in their masculinity challenge and this is so because, as Sartre analyses, ‘they are me, stripped of

the living principle. The essential difference between Antoine Roquentin and me is that, for my part, I write the story of Antoine Roquentin’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 338). They are not writers.”” Sartre gave Mathieu, the main character of L’Age de raison, everything that he has in him — not in terms of what

82 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

happened in his life but his personality — except for the main thing, being a writer, and argues that this tips the novel into falsehood (1981: 1880).

Why would Sartre want to portray characters with lives different but similar to his, and expressing what he looked upon as the deepest in his own life? An element of an answer would be that La Nausée is also a foray, albeit unconsciously, into what it would be like for Sartre to give up on his writing self. And what would be left would be gloom, or rather sadness. In a particularly revealing passage from his war diaries, he explains candidly — using Mourgue - that in all our thoughts and feelings there is an element

of terrible sadness. Most of the time, this sadness is inoffensive. But at times, structures such as sadness, which are usually subordinated, begin to take on a life of their own (Sartre 1995: WD, 339). One could see a parallel process in Sartre’s fiction: ‘That’s what I did: I stripped my characters of

my obsessive passion for writing, my pride, my faith in my destiny, my metaphysical optimism — and thereby provoked in them a gloomy pullulation. They are myself beheaded’ (1995: WD, 339). Wickers writes that, through these fictional accounts, Sartre played at frightening himself in imagining the unimaginable: a life where he would not have written (2000: 67). But to go back to Sartre’s biography, he has now arrived. La Nausée is

a success, the reviews are good and he is a confirmed author ... a little later than he had anticipated. I have neglected so far to talk about Sartre’s relationship with his mother and stepfather now that he is an adult. What has happened to it? One could imagine that as soon as he is financially independent, he would want to live a separate life and to have little contact in view of his teenage years, unless he has worked through what happened. In fact, during the academic year, he regularly has Sunday lunch with them, especially when he is posted in Paris. Sartre is in his thirties, and he still goes on holidays

with them, often for a fortnight. This annual holiday ritual takes place right up to the summer of 1939 included, and only stops because of the war. Being away from Beauvoir, he usually writes to her, and to other female friends, and this provides a source of information. In 1935, he goes with his parents on a cruise to Norway. He cannot stand his stepfather whom he finds unbearable (1983b*: WML, 49). Did matters

come to a head between the thirty year old adult, already established socially and a promising author, and the stepfather he has always seen as a usurper? Sartre talks about wanting to toss him overboard but being sweetness incarnate before adding: ‘Parents are like a knife in the skulls of children, whose thoughts they cut in two’ (1983b*: WML, 50). First of all, Sartre is thirty at the time, so when he talks about children, he has to be talking about his younger self. Secondly, there is such violence in this sentence, evoking as it does a fear of castration, it shows the depth of Sartre’s feelings

for what he feels was done to him. It also echoes Sartre’s teenage years when he mentions displaying a strange behaviour towards Mancy: he felt hostile towards him but did not express hostility Jeanson 1974: 290).

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 83

One of the most traumatic events of Sartre’s life has to be the haircut (another form of castration) by his plotting grandfather when he was seven. Sartre getting his hair cut is now a theatre of war between him and his parents. He lets his hair grow too long for their liking, and his mother asks him

to go to the barber, often giving him the money. Being given money is pretty usual: in 1937, during his holiday, his mother gives Sartre ten francs a day. This sounds like pocket money given to a child! Sartre earns a good

salary. Sartre tells Beauvoir in a letter, he is by then thirty-two, that he will | not have time to get his hair cut because he is writing to her. The way he describes the anticipated reaction of his parents is revealing: ‘My family is about to pull my ears’ [va me décoller les oreilles] (1983b*: 139). A few months

later it is the same story, with the same interesting choice of vocabulary: _ ‘Already I’m going to be bawled out [me faire engueuler|’ (1983b*: WML, 128). This carries on right up to 1939: ‘And then my stepfather, who is in a crushing mood bawls me out continually’ (1983b*: WML, 142). One cannot imagine either Sartre’s mother or stepfather pulling his ears or bawling out

at him. These are things that are done to young children.

Sartre may be regressing when he goes to stay with his parents. So instead of telling his stepfather that he irritates him, he is sweetness incarnate. In another letter, he relates how his stepfather tells long stories, and he nods acquiescing. He feels a smile of respectful attention on his lips and longs to get out. Again, there is a mismatch between how he feels inside and how he behaves on the outside. When he stays with them, he has an asthma attack during the night — this will occur more than once right up to 1939 (1983b*: WML, 54). Is this not partly psychosomatic? Sartre is cer-

tainly treated like a child; when he goes to bed late they wake him up early the next day. Why would Sartre regress? It appears that he is attempting to fulfil his frozen needs (needs which are frozen in time because they were never fulfilled). He may be trying — albeit subconsciously — to regain the special place he felt he had in his mother’s eyes, and to recapture the love that he

felt then. He is also playing the role that he thinks she wants him to play. | In this context, some unwelcome feelings are also coming up to the surface. Sartre tells Beauvoir that his parents want him to have lunch with them every day when he starts teaching in Paris in the autumn. He will avoid it at all costs because he has discovered that they sadden him: ‘Whenever I am with them for more than two hours at a time, I become irritated with myself, I’m conscious of my every gesture, which profoundly disgusts me’ (1983b*: WML, 129). The comedy of the adult Sartre brings on self-disgust; he appears to be detached.”

Sartre thinks his parents do not show any pleasure in seeing him: his stepfather is surly and his mother is enslaved to someone surly. But he will

not have a wrong word said about his mother. She is a poor victim who had no choice but to marry Mancy in order to be financially independent from her parents and to live in her own house. How does Sartre react to his

84 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

own projection that his parents do not seem pleased to see him? He observes that he goes from being gloomy to being nice and that his mood swings do not surprise them: ’... my stepfather doesn’t give a damn about what goes on in my head ... As for my mother, she derives no pleasure from seeing me with my stepfather’ (1983b*: WML, 194; my emphasis). For the

first time ever, instead of claiming that he does not like his stepfather, Sartre says that his stepfather does not care about him. Sartre’s legendary dislike of his stepfather could be a defensive counter-strike. He may feel that his stepfather does not like him, with perhaps a longing to be liked by him, for him to ‘give a damn about what goes on in Sartre’s head’. Sartre has another grievance against his parents. They surround him

with their image of him, ‘and I of course must play that image, bend it somewhat, under threats of conflict’ (1983b*: WML, 129). Sartre does not have to play to that image! Perhaps the fact that he is not functioning as an adult makes him lose his assurance and his power of reasoning. The other aspect that seems to frighten him is conflict, which he avoids. He prefers to be confluent with the image that his parents have of him.

There follows a parody where Sartre speaks about the image he thinks his parents have of him. He is a decent lad, a little crazy, who adores his mother. They see him as an honest lad ‘who messes around with ideas ...

a nice little anarchist surrounded by his books, basically very seriousminded, a young teacher of merit. Someone who still has a lot to learn from life but is starting out well. And he writes, in his free time ... a nice amateur talent’ (1983b*: WML, 129). It would be very difficult not to feel patronised by this description. Again, Sartre is called a ‘lad’ rather than a

man. Another interesting aspect of this ‘portrait’ is that it is Sartre who puts these words into his parents’ mouth. He feels belittled; he is not taken seriously nor given respect. This does not bode well for his self-esteem.

The aforementioned atmosphere affects Sartre so much that it takes away his desire to write: ‘Twelve hours a day of submitting politely to their image of me: it’s enough to do a person in’ (1983b*: WML, 129). Some-

thing must break inside, as this is a rare occurrence. Since he has been identifying himself as a writer, it is his sense of self as a writer that is shat-

tered by the family atmosphere. One can only start to imagine the place that Beauvoir held in Sartre’s mind when we read: ‘... I know that seeing you I'll come back to myself somewhat’ (1983b*: WML, 129). Sartre has lost his (writing) self. One’s relationship to one’s parents is often full of contradictions, and as

outsiders we are only ever onlookers. Hence I would like to end this specific exploration with this image of Sartre picking foxgloves for his mother but writing he is counting the days until his departure (1983b*: WML, 193).

In 1939, Sartre published another short story ‘L’Enfance d’un chef’ which traces the childhood of Lucien Fleurier until the age of reason. This short story picks up a lot of the themes evoked in this and earlier chapters and may be a good way to conclude the present investigation. It is a text

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 85

more politically explicit than the other short stories (Sartre 1981: 1805). Fleurier becomes a right-wing anti-Semite. It all starts with an ‘idyllic’ childhood. Lucien looks like an angel with his soft blond curls and feels inside that he is a little girl. Pacaly analyses Lucien as narcissistic (1980: 121). His father owns a factory and Lucien is destined to inherit it and to become the boss; his masculinity path is carved up for him. Sleeping in the same bedroom as his parents as a rare treat, he wakes up in the morning feeling that things have changed forever, that he has witnessed an incident, to do with a tunnel and something moving in it. This incident is not extrapolated, but Lucien appears to make a break from his parents, deciding that he will never sleep again in their bedroom. He still spends his days with his mother and talks to her as a little man. He harbours dreams of grandiosity. When the admiring adults ask what he wants to be when he grows up, he has two replies. Either ‘a great general like Joan of Arc’ who will recapture Alsace-Lorraine from the Germans,”? or a missionary” (Sartre 1939b: 160). At other times, a priest asks him if he prefers his mother or God, and Lucien cannot guess what the ‘right’ answer is; he lashes out in frustration. After the summer, war breaks out and his father goes to fight, leaving the young Lucien with his mother ~as we learn later on that the Armistice is signed, it appears that the action takes place during the First World War. He starts fussing over his mother, determined to look after her now that he is the only ‘man’ in the household. But he is not as popular as he was: since his curls have been sheared off,

the adults make less fuss of him. His father, back from the war, is busy teaching him how to be a leader by using a commanding tone of voice, and telling him that he must learn to be both feared and loved by his employ-

ees.! Lucien is due to inherit the factory; he had been made for that. Unlike Sartre who was a puny little boy, Lucien is a beanpole but in ~ either case, the peer-group despises those who differ from the ‘norm’. Fleurier reaches some kind of crisis after his mother reports that one of his friends thinks he has an inflated opinion of himself (as a good narcissist) and he ends up believing that he does not exist. He thinks the only way to persuade people that they do not exist is to commit an irreparable act, to

show the nothingness of the world. These thoughts occur to him as he handles his mother’s gun (this has echoes of ‘Erostrate’ ). A new student, Berliac, arrives at school and provides a breath of fresh air. He wears fashionable clothes, and Lucien is attracted to him.* Berliac does not care about his appalling results in maths because he is a literary type. There follows a parody of psychoanalysis and of a certain form of surrealism. Berliac tells Lucien that he sexually fancied his mother until he was fifteen and he makes Lucien acquiesce that it was the same for him.** Lucien is then introduced to a surrealist called Achille Bergére who fascinates him. He talks to Lucien about Rimbaud, the senses, and eventually sleeps with him. Lucien stands in front of a mirror and repeats to himself: ‘Lama pederast’ (Sartre 1939b: 209).°° There follows another existential cri-

86 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

sis and Lucien feels that he is nothing but fog. He is wondering why he exists. He then seduces Berthe, flattered that she has become his thing, but since she is the family’s servant, he thinks he should not sleep with her as

it might jeopardise his future authority if ever it became known - social class is still at work. He then starts to meet up with right-wingers. Bergére has disappeared from the scene, but Lucien is really angry with Berliac. He reproaches him for having introduced him to Bergére. When he finds out that he is Jewish,

it starts to fuel his hatred. He derives his hegemonic status amongst his peers by being an expert on ‘sniffing out’ Jews, telling anti-Jewish jokes and also occasionally beating up Jews or communists. The character of Lucien is by now totally unsympathetic. He sleeps with Maud, a young bourgeois girl, and is very disappointed by the result. Whilst what he desired was her personality, he ended up possessing a large flower of wet flesh: ‘He saw again the blind beast palpitating in the sheets, lapping, with

hairy yawns and he thought: that was us two’, pondering that they had become one whilst he had a disgusting impression of intimacy (Sartre 1938: 243).°° The short story ends with Lucien deciding that he will stop looking inside for himself, since he is to be found outside. But the outside is

not all that promising. When he looks in the mirror, he does not find the inscrutable look he is after, so he decides to grow a moustache, as a masculine visual aid.°’ ‘L’Enfance d’un chef’ has many autobiographical traits.°° And yet Lucien is very different from Sartre. As Doubrovsky argues about Paul Hilbert in ‘Erostrate’, but the argument could be applied to most of the main characters in the short stories, the latter is not a double of Sartre but he is a caricatured version of him, a nightmarish deformation, in which certain traits are still readable (1986: 122). The most important difference is

that Lucien is not a writer, not even a failed writer like some of the characters in Ecrits de Jeunesse, or an aborted writer like Hilbert. As a young child Lucien is not sure of his own gender identity. His family and family friends have encouraged him to think that he is special. And yet, when he looks inside for himself, he cannot find anything since he is to be found outside (his grandiose self). Sartre’s blurb for Le Mur may encapsulate more than the short stories: ‘Nobody wants to look Existence in the face ... running away from Existence is another way to exist. Existence is a plenitude that man cannot escape’ (1981: 1807). In the decade just expired, Sartre has gone through an emotional roller coaster. From his melancholia, where he went through a depressive state linked to a crisis of masculinity where his compromised sense of self was destabilised, to the publication of La Nausée which confirmed him as a writer — not forgetting the experience of Olga where he both had glimpses of a more inclusive sense of self and where his seducing techniques failed him. He has now decided that he would not necessarily have the life of illustrious writers. He believes that a writer is judged on his works, and

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 87

accepts that his life could be humdrum (1995: WD, 77): ‘The sole purpose of an absurd existence was indefinitely to produce works of art which at

once escaped it’ (1995: WD, 78). :

What is Sartre doing during the historically charged summer of 1939? He is on holidays, almost obsessively keeping fit. He does not believe that war will break out. He swims in the sea one kilometre a day and exercises, boasting that his body is starting to show muscle definition (1983b*: 264). Either physically or mentally, nothing could have prepared him for the events about to unfold in front of his very eyes.

Notes 1. Apart from a few letters, the other letters he must have written during that time have

not been published and Sartre never talked at length about this period of his life. , 2. His real name was Marc Zuore — see Grell-Feldbriigge (2001a). 3. In L’Age de raison, Mathieu who considers himself to be ugly takes Ivich to see an art exhibition; seeing beautiful objects is a way for him to excuse his ugliness in her eyes. 4. In 1937, Sartre gives De Roulet a long lecture on the relativism of values, concluding: ‘I left him with his back to the wall [sur le carreau] but satisfied’ (1983b*: WML, 90-91). 5. She is also called Marie Girard but her real name was Marie Ville. 6. See Beauvoir (1960: PL, 208 ff.). 7. Audry wasa very influential figure for both Sartre and Beauvoir at the time, being a pioneer feminist. She was also very close to Sartre. 8. This would tally with my interpretation of Sartre’s childhood. 9. This is the exact description of Ivich in L’Age de raison. 10. In L’Age de raison, it is Boris who is preoccupied with ageing, going bald and putting on a belly. Mathieu also feels old and fears going bald. 11. The trio will be in 1939 between Sartre / Beauvoir and Louise Védrine whose name was Bianca Bienenfeld and whose married name is Bianca Lamblin. This came to the public’s attention when she published her memoirs (Lamblin 1993). Her book received mixed reviews because it was seen as bitter. There is certainly a lot of anger emanating from Lamblin’s account, directed more against Beauvoir than Sartre (she felt betrayed by the former whom she trusted whilst she had no illusions about the latter). One could argue that her account is not reliable. With this proviso, I shall nevertheless use it as there are very few accounts of Sartre’s relationships at the time outside of the ‘official’ portrait brushed by Beauvoir in her memoirs, which has been shown to be somewhat biased. 12. Elkaim-Sartre states that Ivich is based on Wanda as well as on her sister Olga (Sartre 1995: 111).

13. This is reminiscent of the narrator in Les Mots describing very movingly the simple physical embodied pleasure Poulou derived from running down Place du Panthéon with his new-found mates, shouting at the top of his voice and playing ball — he appeared to be liberated: ‘T felt like steel, freed at last from the sin of existing ... I was indispensable’ (1964a: W, 139).

14. This corresponds to the first description of Brunet in L’Age de raison. Mathieu has an inferiority complex towards Brunet in the first volume of the trilogy, saying that the latter is a man, and that all that he touches seems real (1945b: 150); this is reminiscent of the relationship between Hugo and Hoederer in Les Mains sales (1948a). Sartre will also narrate through Brunet’s character his own capture during the war in La Mort dans l’ame.

88 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

15. See Leak (1995 and 1996). 16. One only has to look at the number of lovers to whom Sartre has dedicated his books ... and this could just be the visible part of the iceberg. Cohen-Solal relates for instance how Sartre asked his publisher for two copies of Critique de la raison dialectique dedicated to the ‘name of a woman’ when the book was dedicated to Beauvoir ‘Au Castor’ (1985: 491). 17. ‘Erostrate’ also contains some interesting insights about sexuality that will be explored further in chapter eight; suffice it to say that again Hilbert comes up short in terms of performing heterosexuality. Idt makes the judicious point that in Le Mur Sartre contests the hierarchy of the sexes and questions the distinction between masculine and feminine (1972: 45).

18. One of his first texts, ‘La Légende de la vérité’, had a fragment published in a review called Bifur in 1931. According to Contat and Rybalka, it shows what Sartre calls his neurosis: the fact of being chosen and of saving the world through writing (1970: 53). For the published fragment, see 531-45. In his introductory text on L’Age de raison, Contat too makes the point that Sartre’s crisis was also due to the fact that his ‘writing-being’ had not yet been recognised (Sartre 1981: 1887). 19. In L’Age de raison, Boris’s hair is falling out and he is worried about being bald. 20. In L’Age de raison, Mathieu who is thirty-four says that he feels old (1981: 395).

21. Sartre’s ‘girlfriend’ when he was six had tuberculosis and died. 22. ‘For men, identity often involves an externalised relation to self, in which men learn to measure themselves against individual success and achievement’ (Seidler 1989: 143). 23. Characteristics of the narcissist include ‘great reliance on achievement to sustain a fragile self-esteem’ Johnson 1994: 164). 24. Sartre confirms that Pardaillan passed into his writing through Roquentin (Beauvoir 1981: A, 323). And Cohen-Solal found biographical elements belonging to Jean-Baptiste Sartre (Sartre’s father) in Roquentin (Cohen-Solal 1985: 138). Orestes in Les Mouches also has echoes of Pardaillan once he decides to avenge his father. 25. This could announce Sartre progressively abandoning other forms of literature in favour of existential biographies (Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert). 26. See Keefe (1976). 27. Ihave already mentioned the fact that Roquentin is not a writer in the sense that Sartre gave at the time to the word. Ivich refers to Mathieu as a ‘Sunday writer’ whom the narrator then defines as a petty bourgeois who writes a short story per year or five or six poems (Sartre 1945b: 98). Later on, Mathieu refers to himself as a Sunday writer who will write a short story every two years, as he has done in the past (1945b: 120). 28. Seidler points out that when men are estranged from their bodies, ‘this can place men outside and beyond their own lived experience, as if destined to observe their lives from outside’ (1991: 96). 29. In Les Mots the young Sartre is given the role of a young Alsatian in a play and utters the line: ‘Good bye, good bye, our dear Alsace’ (1964a: 67). 30. Like Sartre’s great uncle Albert Schweitzer. 31. Sartre’s stepfather was of course the managing director of a shipyard, but he was still an employee. Sartre explains that his first impression of workers was influenced by Mancy; he treated them like children (Beauvoir 1981: A, 379). 32. This reinforces Sartre’s account of the family as a socio-economic unit. 33. This echoes Sartre’s encounter with Nizan. 34. In the conversations with Beauvoir, Sartre agrees that when he was thirteen or fourteen he had sexual feelings for his mother (1981: A, 292). In L’Age de raison, Daniel suggests to Philippe who hates his stepfather and talks about having the Oedipus complex that he is perhaps in fact in love with his stepfather rather than with his mother (Daniel tells Philippe: ‘He possesses you. You walk on all fours, the general mounts you’ (Sartre 1981: 1272)). In the relationship as it is described between Philippe and his stepfather, Philippe shows a lot of frustration, feeling squashed by his stepfather but still hankering for a close relationship with his mother.

Melancholia: Masculinity Challenges (1929-1939) 89

35. The character of Daniel in Les Chemins de la liberté will repeat this sentence. In fact much

of the plot is used again in the story between the characters of Daniel and Philippe. Daniel tells Philippe about Rimbaud and the senses too (Sartre 1981: 1273) and they have a sexual relationship. 36. See Leak for an analysis of failure of Sartrean desire (1989: 80-81). 37. See for example Johnson, (1981). Burnier argues that if Sartre achieved nothing else, he deterred a certain number of young men from growing moustaches (1966). 38. See Lecarme (1996).

Chapter 5

THE PHONEY WAR (SEPTEMBER 1939—May 1940): STOICISM/AUTHENTICITY

German forces attacked Poland on 1 September 1939, marking the beginning of the war. France and Britain mobilised their soldiers on the very same day. For the next eight months, each army placed its soldiers along

their respective borders. Very little happened and the period became known as the Phoney War. Sartre was mobilised on 2 September 1939 and

assigned to an Artillery HQ just behind the front in Alsace. War was declared on 3 September at 5 p.M. He would remain in the army until March 1941, and be away for a total of sixteen months with two periods of leave.

On the day of mobilisation, Sartre is biting his nails (Beauvoir 1990b: 15). Despite his bodily tension, there is something determined about him. Afraid of arriving late at his rallying centre, he goes there on 1 September 1939. The place is deserted except for a few gendarmes. Sartre shows them his papers and says that he has to report to Nancy. They tell him to come back at midnight if he wants, but that they cannot charter a train just for him and suggest that he comes back at 5 A.M. Sartre boards a train bound for Nancy later that morning. From there he will eventually travel to his position near the front. In 1974, Sartre argued that when he was first called up, he could have decided to be a pacifist like Alain (Beauvoir 1981: A, 357). Being a collaborationist, pro-Nazi was never a choice because he was against the Nazis. But his attitude clearly shows a determination to answer the call for mobilisation. What is his psychological state, leaving everything he loves and cares about behind him and marching towards war, and possibly death? As he is travelling to the front, he uses an expression he and Beauvoir will use very often during the war: “Je suis barré’. This has been translated as ‘I am stymied’; ‘I am blocked’ and ‘I am cut off’. Sartre cuts himself off from his

Notes for this chapter begin on page 112.

The Phoney War (September 1939-May 1940) 91

emotions and blocks any feelings he may have. This can be positive as survivors of various traumas, including war, manage to pull through by having been able to dissociate during the traumatic events. He writes: ‘From time to time some small memory surfaces ... but then I burst it’ (1983b*:

WML, 196). This also applies to sexual feelings; he records one erotic dream in three months, at the end of November 1939 (1983b*: 435). Discussing with Beauvoir the frigidity she is speaking about, Sartre shares it: ‘Still, I think as you do that it is a way of closing things off [de se barrer]. But

, right now, for me, it’s no longer a question of barriers: the state of war is natural to me’ (1983b*: WML, 268).

The Phoney War will last eight months. Sartre will stay in the Alsace area of France — ironically where his grandparents originated from and where he spent some holidays as a child — being moved four times during

that period. Captured by German troops on his birthday on 21 June 1940, , he will eventually be sent to a prison camp inside Germany. Sartre had spent the previous years surrounded by women, now he was forced to share intimacy with men he had never met before. The separation between men and women imposed by the military experience reaches deep into a man’s sense of identity and self (Morgan 1994: 166).

When the war broke out, notwithstanding Beauvoir, Sartre was involved with Olga’s sister Wanda (called Tania in the correspondence), with Martine Bourdin (whose real name was Colette Gibert), and with Louise Védrine (whose real name was Bianca Bienenfeld) — the latter was also involved with Beauvoir. Sartre had lived in community with men at the Ecole Normale, describing it as the happiest years of his life, but he

hated his time during his military service, plunging into aggressive despair. How was he going to fare during the Phoney War? One has to distinguish his time as an army soldier during the Phoney War, and his time as a prisoner of war, which is why these are studied in two separate chapters. But beforehand, let us look at his writing output for the whole period until his return to Paris in 1941. What happens to Sartre’s writing self, so important for his subjectivity? Even if he is ‘barré’, he can still write. Perhaps Sartre needs to write other-

wise he would fragment. He reports having to force himself during the first few days of the Phoney War when uncertainties about his future must have been at their highest point, but after that ‘it’s smooth sailing’ (1983b”*: WML, 235). He sees opportunities opening up for his trilogy: ‘I think I'll have a lot of time to work and, even if the war is short, to finish volume one during the war. If it goes on for long, I’ll begin the second volume. That way, I could actually gain time on civilian life’ (1983b*: WML, 236; my empha-

sis). The war presents Sartre with an opportunity to advance his writing project(s). He has more time than in civilian life, especially during the eight months of the Phoney War (September 1939—April 1940). He also starts a process of self-reflection, looking at himself, his relationship with others and at his life, as well as studying philosophy. Hoare estimates that

92 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Sartre wrote perhaps a million words in the period until his capture in June 1940 (Sartre 1995: WD, ix), equalling the bonanza year of 1958.' Johnson comments that the narcissistic character often has a good deal of creative energy in times of emotional crisis (1994: 176). Sartre writes daily letters to Beauvoir (of which the 550 printed pages published in 1983 represent only a small part), Wanda and his mother as

well as corresponding with various other friends. He writes his diary in fourteen notebooks (of which the 653 printed pages published in 1995 represent just over one third). He finishes his novel, L’Age de raison. He writes his first play, Bariona, which will be performed at Christmas 1940 in the

camp. He reads avidly Heidegger and many of the ideas of L’Etre et le néant will be burgeoning in the notebooks. On 20 September 1939 he has written three letters in one day, five pages of his novel (L’Age de raison), four pages of notebook, commenting that in his whole life he has never written so much (1983b*: 307). All these varied writings are a rich source of information, which I will now explore. With hindsight, the war made him discover the social but at the time he

felt he was a victim of society which had put him somewhere he did not want to be and made him follow rules he did not want to follow (1982a: 76). The war was one of the turning points in his life because it was no longer a teacher’s life that he led, interspersed with a few trips abroad; he was plunged into a vast social situation (Beauvoir 1981: A, 356). At the beginning, Sartre finds it quite difficult to relate to other soldiers: ‘It is truly “solitude in common” ... big guys who shit, wash themselves, snore, and smell of man. And yet a person is alone, unable to do a thing with his solitude’ (1983b*: WML, 230). This sounds as if he is feeling lonely in the crowd of men, and yet noting the bold intimacy that is thrust upon them. One gets a feeling of visceral recoiling. His diaries will become “a little fragment of his solitude’ (1983b*, WML, 404). He tells Beauvoir: ‘how odd it is to live with men. How dense man is! [Ce que c’est épais, un homme!] It’s incredible’ (1983b*, WML, 267). At first, one gets the impression that Sartre is standing outside of the crowd of men, being neither integrated with the

soldiers nor the officers and observing them all. He is aware of class differences when he detects the officer’s condescension in his body language whilst he talks to his men (1995: 48-49) or between Paul, Keller and Pieter.”

From time to time, Sartre spends some time with the men, but on his own terms: ‘Someone brings in a litre of white wine, they settle in, I give a long lecture, they listen’ (1983b**: 52) — the French word is ‘pérorer’ which demonstrates a certain level of self-parody on Sartre’s part. He carried on an hour’s conversation with the acolytes who were surprised and flattered (Sartre 1983b**: 261), the latter reaction being a projection. He is known to get up quickly in the morning in the hope that he can have breakfast on his own. At night, Sartre prefers to live off bread and chocolate and to stay in the office rather than to have a meal at the restaurant because those are the best hours for him to write uninterrupted (1983b**: 32).

, The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940) 93

He notes in his war diaries that he lacks any individual humanism, explaining that he is touched by crowds but not by individuals: ‘My first movement, on the contrary, is one of mistrust and suspicion’ (1995: WD, 278). He gives the example of the room he is in where there are a hundred fellows. Taken en masse they move him, one by one he has no time for them: ‘There’s not a single one of them whose acquaintance I should like to make. I don’t like men — I mean the males of the species’ (1995: WD, 279). At other times he does his mea culpa, confessing that he is unbearable with the acolytes because he cannot respect them. He despises them and calls himself a moral pedant, saying that deep down he reproaches them for being bourgeois like him whereas with workers he would have melted with humility (1995: CDG, 112); this shows Sartre’s own class guilt. In March 1940, he writes that he seeks Grener’s esteem despite the fact that he ‘belches, farts, spits in constant floods’ because the latter is a worker (1983b**: QMW, 119). After more soul searching, Sartre engages with what he calls ‘an explanation of the psychoanalytical type’.

He has been too harsh with the other men. He often tells them to mind their own business as his standard reply. When he knew he was going to be living as a man amongst men, he felt he had to be hard, to be a toughie, without specifically thinking about it, reflecting ‘it was in me like that, latent’ (1995: 177). By being a toughie he means: not complaining, not avoiding setbacks but also making himself be respected. All this manifests itself by a certain harshness. His tender side, which he displays with his female friends, is well and truly buried. But by adopting such an attitude, Sartre is gaining some ascendancy over his colleagues.

| His reflection was prompted by an argument with a soldier called Naudin. He now concludes that he did not bear a grudge against Naudin as such but against men in general, pointing out that he was already hard in his relationship with men at the Ecole Normale. This he traces back to the contrast between a childhood surrounded by women until he was thir-

teen and then being bullied and beaten up by hard teenagers in La Rochelle, for two years. When he went to Paris at seventeen, he decided that he would never be bullied again and he toughened up: ‘It would be a defence mechanism and a reaction of pride from a child hounded and beaten up who reacts by becoming hard and who keeps all his life this kind of aggressive and defiant harshness towards men and a will not to be pushed around’ (1995: 178). At times, Sartre cannot avoid the others, as during a medical examina-

tion. All the men are naked, urinating in beer steins. The acolytes do not seem any more naked than usual: ‘It’s as though I have always been seeing them nude. I think that despite the jackets and the heavy blue pants, we live in a state of total nudity’ (1983b*: WML, 350-51). ‘Wrinkled, jaded,

ashamed, they vainly tried to hide below their little tufts of hair’; the penises on display bring melancholy to the proceedings. Reflecting on the day, he is left with a vague disgust, having seen so many penises. Won-

94 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

dering what was disgusting about them, he concludes: ‘It was sexual, I suppose. A way of proving to oneself that one doesn’t have “those tastes”. But perhaps I calumniate [mentir] myself’ (1983b*: WML, 350-51). Sartre’s

heterosexual boundaries may be shaken by the nude display. He denies that he has ‘those tastes’ before inferring some self-doubt. Somehow, a strange solidarity is developing among them, due neither to esteem nor to sympathy, but rather to their identical situations (1983b*: WML, 233). This is in contradiction to La Rochelle where he had learned

that the deep relationships between men are based on violence (CohenSolal 1985: 75).° This experience is crucial and will be crucial for Sartre’s development, both in terms of his situation, but also for his future political philosophy, notably in Critique de la raison dialectique, with the notion of being-in-fusion. An anecdote shows the pleasure Sartre can derive from being in a group of men, it is the story of the cows. They escape from their enclosure in the middle of the night, and Sartre and his acolytes are called

upon to round them up. Sartre is running after them in his pyjamas, and describes being in a frenzy of emulation, writing the next day: ‘But last night I experienced a moment of strong, pure joy, chasing after them’ (1983b*: WML, 260). This experience is reminiscent of the narrator in Les Mots describing very movingly the simple pleasure Poulou derived from running down Place du Panthéon with his new-found mates, shouting at the top of his voice (1964A: W, 139). At that moment Sartre may have felt that his identity was bound up with the group and he became indispensable. It also sounds as if the thirty-four year old man contacted his free spirit which one associates with being a carefree child. Up until this point in time, Sartre had surrounded himself with women. I have argued that he projected his ‘feminine qualities’ onto women. What happens now? I’ve become hardened too, my love, very much, and all the more so in that since I’m living with men, I don’t even have to pretend to be tender ... I feel no regard or friendship for my acolytes: I simply put up with them. They complain I am

always criticising, and it’s true, but I don’t want to attain a state of good will towards them that would amount to simple resignation. ... lam curt and probably even pretty disagreeable. (1983b*: WML, 270-71)

Living exclusively with men* has hardened Sartre. He does not want to befriend anyone. He gains some ascendancy over them by criticising and being sharp; they end up on their guard when he is around. An incident with Pieter is symptomatic. Pieter spills some wine on Sartre’s letter to Beauvoir and stands sheepishly. Sartre explains that they are all scared of him and Pieter is quick to point out that he is hard on all of them (1983b**: 35). Sartre does not relate the incident with any remorse whatsoever. Why should he? He holds the men exactly where he wants to hold them. By May 1940, he has become a fierce wrangler; the other soldiers are scared of him and he plays it up as much as possible (1983b™*:

The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940) 95

QMW, 165). He proudly relates to Beauvoir on 15 January 1940 that the previous night the soldiers were worrying about German—Dutch tensions but that, by contrast, he managed to control himself and digested the blow in a way that honoured him (1983b**: QMW, 30). So he is giving the exam-

ple of the man in control, not showing any emotions. Indeed, he talks about being hardened and keeping a stiff upper lip in front of disappointments such as his leave being suspended (1983b**: QMW, 31).

In 1974, as they are exploring his relationship with men, Sartre tells Beauvoir that a lot of men have confided in him. He specifically cites Hantziger during the war. He asked advice about which woman he should

choose (Sartre 1995: WD, 238). Sartre did not like it but put up with it because he then had an influence on these men (1981: A, 281-82). What he

found unbearable was the emotional bond created by the confidences; once someone relies on you in such a manner, there is no longer equality in the relationship but Sartre is regarded as some kind of spiritual director. But this is exactly the kind of ascendancy that Sartre developed over men at the Ecole Normale. Beauvoir asks him if he has minded women confiding in him throughout his life, and Sartre replies that, on the contrary, he invited it. She then asks him if it is not machismo but my contention is that it is linked to emotional intimacy. Sartre split men and women and his attitude reflects his earlier split. Being emotionally intimate with a man is frightening; being emotionally intimate with a woman reunites him with the feminine side he has expelled. Seidler writes that male gender identity is threatened by intimacy (1991: 98). Having just learned that his father is dying, the first sergeant is sobbing.

Sartre is careful not to look up otherwise he would have to say a few words of consolation (1983b*: WML, 305—306).° Since Sartre has cut himself

off through an act of will, the first sergeant may be awakening anger | within him: ‘It can make it difficult for men to support others, since they readily assume they should be able to pull themselves together as an act of will’ (Seidler 1991: 98).

How does Sartre carry on dealing with the situation? Over the next few months, he will seriously neglect his personal hygiene, and grow a beard a la Stendhal (to coin his own expression) that will give him a ‘hard and sceptical look’ (1983b*: WML, 266). I guess this is the intention; he is telling everyone to stay away from him. This is a remnant from Sartre’s school days, when he learned to perpetuate violence. It is a form of male power over other men, a power that implies a threat of violence (Canaan 1998: 179). His overall appearance will bring him the reputation of a ‘tramp’. Waitresses will laugh at him when he walks into cafés, but Sartre claims he does not care. Other males poke fun at him for his beard and his grubby appearance, but it does not put him off his stride: ’... Isat down again and we exchanged digs of all sorts, and once more I adopted that odd tone and

role I assume among groups of men: a pathetic sort of guy, ugly, filthy, dressed somewhat repellently, his ideas somewhat revolting, but making

96 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

people laugh anyway, stirring them up a bit [et qui chatouille un peu]’ (1983b*: WML, 399). Sartre carves himself a place in the group of men as a jester, as he was already at the Henry IV Lycée in 1920, later turning it into

an art at the Ecole Normale. But elsewhere he refers to himself as some ‘wretched joker playing his role’, (1983b*: WML, 381-82).

He becomes extremely competitive. He plays chess and when he is beaten by two of his acolytes, including Pieter who is a beginner, he persists until he wins (1983b**: QMW, 125); he is capable of playing seven games in one afternoon. Sartre also sets up competitions with himself; he becomes obsessive about his typing speed and sets up tests for himself,

| reminding Beauvoir that he used to have a similar obsession with the yoyo. He uses his reason and intelligence to gain an intellectual ascendancy over his peers. Relating a discussion on the concept of promises with Paul and Pieter, he tells Beauvoir he pulverised them (1983b*: WML, 402). To complete the description of Sartre’s physical appearance, he will let his hair grow as much as army regulations permit. He is also doing some serious drinking and it cheers him up (1983b*: 366). There was a trade-off for Sartre between his own perceived ugliness and women’s beauty. Because in the camp he is cut off from women, he may feel that he does not have any possibilities to try and excuse or sublimate his ugliness. In addition, he may feel that the company of men gives him permission to neglect himself. So he may as well neglect himself, until he is called a tramp. And, paradoxically, this could make his ugliness more bearable: it can pass as an incognito. But there is also a more mundane explanation. Sartre will tell Beauvoir when he is moved to the prisoner of war camp that seeing a man from the Flore (a café Sartre used to frequent in Paris), he decided to wash and shave the moment he recognised him, and that he now washes every day, because he could not bear being seen repulsively dirty by someone from the Flore (1983b™*: 292). The first edition of Sartre’s war diaries starts with a quotation from Romains writing about the trenches during the First World War (a book Sartre was reading at the time), which could have been used as an epigraph to this chapter: ’... as though he had been completely transported from one state of being to another. All his senses were equally affected, eyes, lungs, mind, and limbs. Nothing, within him or without, but was different from what it had been a moment before’ (1995: WD, 3). Sartre comments that Romains has understood where fright comes from: it comes from the body. Sartre may be letting himself go physically, but he is disciplining his body, which he calls ‘docile, uncomplaining’ (1983b*: WML, 347). In the depths of winter, he goes out first thing in the morning to do his meteorological reading in a temperature of twenty-three degrees below zero without his overcoat! For him real cold is both terrible and voluptuous which is why he does not put his overcoat on, ‘to enjoy those treacherous baths’ (1983b**: QMW, 35). According to Morgan, one way to understand military life and its relationship with gender is in terms of the construction of

The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940) 97

the masculine body (1994: 167). And Kimmel comments on the increasing importance of the body, of physicality from the beginning of the century, so that the body no longer contains the man, it is the man (1994b: 26). We left Sartre in the summer of 1939 swimming one kilometre a day in the sea. He can no longer exercise in this way, so by December 1939, having found that he has a belly, he decides to go on a rigid diet: only one meal a day with no bread or alcohol (1983b*: WML, 413). He is disciplining his body at a time of maximum anxiety. Sartre explains that most of his life he tried to

lose weight in order to give the impression that he was a thin little man instead of a fat little man; he saw being fat as letting go and contingency (Beauvoir 1981: A, 316). In order to preserve one’s equanimity, it is quite something to have a docile body that keeps quiet (1995: WD, 16). Unlike him, Paul is not in charge of his body, his body is in charge of him and plays tricks on him, which Sartre reads as a sign of weakness. Sartre looks at his

stomach in a mirror and becomes unhappy. He then decides to follow a rigid diet, barely endurable. This is repeated every four or five months. Sartre interprets it as follows: ‘... if I crack down on myself a bit roughly I have the impression of being my own master, hence free’ (1995: WD, 123). Sartre is mobilised, and he exercises his freedom by a draconian diet.

What is going on for Sartre underneath the surface? He claims not to feel metaphysical anguish because he exercises his will power and this leaves no room for weariness nor for distractions, let alone for letting himself go. This has the added advantage that he does not really feel the war (1995: 55). If he stops believing in a lightning war and France’s final victory, everything crumbles, a dark void opens in front of him but as a trade-

off he realises the war more fully (1995: 67). An emotional dilemma is opening-up for Sartre: either he is cut off and does not feel his situation, or he feels, faces the void but then he becomes present in his situation. In the latter scenario, writing would have to stop and he would become a ‘naked consciousness looking at the diverse interrupted lives of his self’. He will keep coming back to this dichotomy. Whilst examining his moral sense, he reflects that his writing absorbs the best of his energy and that he is passive towards war. Behind these

labels, stoicism or authenticity are battling out in a bid for supremacy. Sartre starts wondering if they are compatible and if stoicism is not simply a refusal to feel anguish whilst authenticity would be moaning (1995: 69).

This shows how much Sartre moves on in his war diaries. At the beginning, he was lamenting that Paul, unlike him, considers authenticity to be moaning and tears (1995: 21). By October 1939, he no longer feels that war is an illness one has to put up with but writes: ‘War is me’ (1995: 101); war is his being-in-the-world. Sartre only ever refers to the men he shares his life with, even those he

| works with and shares a bedroom with, as his acolytes.° ‘We have seen with Seidler that conventional male gender identity is threatened by intimacy but also by dependency; Sartre will go out of his way to show that he

98 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

is not dependent on anyone: he has not made any friends — they are merely acolytes. When he discusses with Mistler and they share the same political views, as soon as he commits himself and exposes himself in the conversation, Sartre feels a sweet disgust reminiscent of every time he shares intimacy with another man, concluding: ‘I only like superficial relationships’ (1995: 119). He prefers physical intimacy (nudity, farting and defecating

next to each other) rather than intellectual and moral intimacy. Why should Sartre be afraid of this type of intimacy with men? Sartre himself ventures an explanation. Reflecting on the fact that he has always been attracted by handsome men in order to take them out, he then wonders if this nauseous fright of friendship is not in fact a latent and suppressed homosexuality (1995: 119-20). Mistler who is thirty-seven is turning into a disciple, even though Sartre has never had such an old one (1983b*: WML, 334). Sartre terrorises and bru-

talises Mistler a little (the direct translation of the French is ‘rapes’) by describing to him his conception of the dictatorship of freedom (1983b™: QMW, 9). He is so mean to Mistler that the latter brings presents whenever he comes to see him; one day it is chocolate and cognac (1983b**: QMW, 49). Sartre relates this without a shadow of guilt. This is reminiscent of the situation in La Rochelle when Sartre was in awe of his two school friends, Pelletier and Bouthiliers. Only he was the one buying them presents, having fights for them, and stealing from his mother for them. Sartre explains that he lets men

come to him and that he never takes the first step because he wants to be solicited. When he displayed the same attitude in La Rochelle, others did not come to him (1995: WD, 573-74). It is almost as if he is writing the opposite scenario to the one in La Rochelle in his relationship to men. Sartre’s influence over Mistler is so great that the latter dares not urinate

in the chamber pot at night because Sartre has told him that it is disgust-

ing. He does it out of the window. But Sartre comments that because Mistler is so docile, he does not like him anymore (1983b**: QMW, 50). Because Mistler is showing no resistance, Sartre no longer gets any pleasure from dominating him. On another occasion, he puts up a poster Pieter

has made for him: ‘Please do not piss me off and leave me alone’ and remarks that he terrorises the men mercilessly, the way he used to terrorise people in Berlin, comparing Mistler to Brunschvicg and Paul to Klee and adding that he has achieved the kind of domination he wished for, so that consequently he is left in peace. The end result? ‘I am absolutely my own master, just as in civilian life’ (1983b**: QMW, 40-41; my emphasis). Mistler tells Sartre that since he knows him, he has changed his view

about being mobilised and he now accepts his war. Sartre’s reaction is noteworthy. He tells Beauvoir that he blushed and, although he was flattered, he had an odd and familiar feeling ‘that those thanks were not addressed to me, but to some character I was pretending to be, that I was some wretched joker playing his role’ (1983b*: WML, 381-82). Sartre can-

not take compliments; it is as if one is pouring oil over fire. It does not

The Phoney War (September 1939-May 1940) 99

appear that his self-esteem can be contacted, and the distancing strategies used by Sartre give him some breathing space. He does not have to contact the pain that is waiting to be reunited with him if he lets in to his heart the fact that another man respects, appreciates and admires him. When someone praises him, he always thinks either that someone else is being praised because he cannot relate what they are saying to the experience of his self, or he thinks that he was being inauthentic and that the person liked the character that he was pretending to be; in either case he should not let in the compliment. Sartre offers an explanation for this character trait. His starting point is that he does not experience humility and yet he has no problem owning up to his faults. His self of yesterday is no longer his present self; he experiences no solidarity with himself whatsoever: ‘Each moment of my life detaches itself from me like a dead leaf’ (1995: 126; my emphasis). Since he always projects himself into the future, any mistake he has made does not

matter. He talks about his past self without any sympathy and, in the process, strips the man in him in order to become an impartial spectator. He becomes a consciousness looking at ‘his’ man and he judges himself with the severity used to judge others. He never feels remorse because he lets go of himself and looks at himself with a cold disdain — in the past — without feeling that his present self is involved in the matter. This also applies to when he is flattered; he downplays it. And he does so because he always feels that he will do better next time, concluding: ‘Everything detaches itself from me ... I bet that all sorts of emotions are not accessible to me as a result of this’ (1995: 127).

Sartre calls the past the ‘poor, disdained, despised, denied past’’” and has no solidarity with his self: ‘For this reason I’ve always readily admitted misdeeds or mistakes, since they were committed by someone else’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 415). In Beauvoir’s portrait of Sartre for Harper’s Bazaar

in 1946, she confirms: ‘Sartre refuses to admit that he shares an identity with his past. He rarely reminisces about his souvenirs ... he has ceased recognising himself in the Sartre he is talking about. What he really is lies in the future, so he never boasts about anything he has done in the past’ (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 419).

We read in March 1940: ‘I feel no solidarity with anything, not even with myself: I don’t need anybody or anything’ (1995: WD, 293). Sartre does not like his character and wants to change. Character traits presented in a positive light have now led to a crisis of confidence. Sartre’s crisis has been precipitated by emotional turbulence over Wanda. He writes that he first sensed authenticity when he was writing during the very last days in Brumath at the Taverne du Lion d’Or where he sloughed off his old skin (1995: WD, 328). What he has understood is that authenticity means plunging into life and becoming an integral part of it, being rooted: ‘the personality must have a content. It must be made of clay, and I’m made of wind’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 294).8

100 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Sartre displays neither empathy nor solidarity with his self. If I return to

the example of Mistler flattering him, Sartre is unable to take a compliment. He does not seem to feel a centre, a ‘core’ self. He talks about dead leaves falling from him but it is him who is detached and, as he points out, all sorts of emotions are simply not accessible to him. Sartre’s compromised self, which is out there in the world, is his primary sense of reality. And he is cut off from a more inclusive sense of self, which includes his painful

emotional reality. Dwelling on his pride, Sartre ascertains that he is not humble, and never despairs because he is not proud of his self but proud of his consciousness ‘exactly at the level of the Cartesian cogito’ (1995: 129). Sartre demonstrates that he is not in touch with an inner life or self. In February 1940, Sartre analyses his relationships with friends of both sexes. Since he was seventeen he has always lived as part of a couple. This

has meant he has had no inner life, no secrets: ‘I had the impression, at every instant, that my friends were reading my innermost self; that they

could see my thoughts forming ... I could feel their gaze to my very entrails’ (1995: WD, 271), claiming that as soon as a thought belonged to him, it belonged to them. One can see here a wish for merger, ‘where the individual achieves a sense of security and worth through fusion’, (Johnson 1994: 46). Sartre is not preserving any intimacy /boundary of his inner self. On the contrary, he claims he does not have an inner self. At the same time, he claims that intimacy never lets itself be expelled entirely, and that he held the firm consciousness of always being beyond what he was, when

he allowed himself for years to yield himself up unveiled and in total nakedness to his friends (1995: WD, 272).

Talking about the admission of his faults in front of friends, Sartre explains: There was nevertheless — beyond that sincerity of public confession, or rather before reaching it — a kind of bad faith which was really mine, which was me: not so much in the fact of keeping back secrets as, rather, in a certain way of escaping that very sincerity and not giving myself up to it. In one sense, if you like, I was completely up to my neck in it; in another sense, I escaped it by seeing myself up to my neck in it — and by desolidarising myself from that public part of myself, by the very fact of viewing it. (1995: WD, 271)

Since Sartre calls it ‘that public part of myself’, it cannot be his intimacy. He claims that the essential form of his pride consists in having no solidarity with himself. But is this a desirable state to be in? Further on, he admits that when he used to speak about himself he was detached and it became the common property of him and his friend at the time; ‘it was us much more than myself’ (1995: WD, 272). His behaviour is something his friends must have noticed too. Jollivet denounced his artificial attitude. Guille used to reproach him for playing the part of perfection when he visited Mme Morel. Sartre asks himself who he was, and replies: ‘A mere look — neither sad nor gay; contemplative and

The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940) 101

reserved — at what I was saying ... I was living dissociated from myself (my

emphasis), explaining that he did not have a warm, intimate relationship with himself and that all that he felt, he would at once grasp gingerly and express in words. “The truth is, I treat my feelings as ideas’ (1995: WD, 272). ‘Hence he cut off from his emotional life in order to be rational. He concludes: ‘As a result of this, there was something missing in me. What was missing was inexpressible, so much so that I lived for long without realising it’.

Elkaim-Sartre informs us that the above quotation contains one of the rare sentences crossed out in Sartre’s manuscript. Originally, Sartre had written: ‘As a result of this, there was something dead in me. What was dead was inexpressible, so much so that I lived for long without realising it’. What is dead is a more inclusive self, expressed by Sartre as follows: ‘It was nothing at all, except a certain way of dwelling in oneself: of being an integral part of oneself’. According to Beauvoir, Sartre is not psychological. His psychological reactions ‘at once appear like dried plants in a herbarium’ (1995: WD, 272). There is a part of Sartre that is dead (hence his analogy about dead leaves

falling from him). Even if he writes that friendship has always been a milieu, a world and a source of strength for him, he also argues that he is not cut out for friendship, having disappointed all his friends by ‘a profound lack of warmth’. He has no problem giving them consideration, like

being on time. I would argue that his profound lack of warmth comes from the part of his self he has had to expel; hence he cannot give what he is not accessing himself. For him, friendship has something austere about it, which bores and oppresses him: ‘precisely because I don’t feel anything very much in myself’ (1995: WD, 278). This does not mean that Sartre is cut off from change, as his relationship

with Pieter illustrates. Pieter’s real name was Piederkovsky and he had Jewish origins. Despite Pieter being referred to as a capitalist, a gossip, a swine, as typifying the inauthentic being of Heidegger, as the angel of inauthenticity, Sartre and him almost act like a ‘couple’ who keep arguing but who nevertheless stay together. Referring to an argument between them, Sartre notes that they said some irrevocable things that can only be uttered ‘within the bosom of a family’ (1983b**: QMW, 43). Sartre was clearly fascinated by him; both the correspondence and the war diaries are full of minute observations of Pieter. There are innumerable accounts of arguments between them. Their interaction is full of passion, a word Sartre

used to describe his relationship with Nizan. Sartre was unable to enter into conflict with his parents; he certainly makes up for it with Pieter. He has learned all the tools of the trade of hegemonic masculinity and knows when to use them. He replies to the latter: ‘Shut up you are reasoning like a woman, you are an ass [un con]’ (1983b*: WML, 358). And on another occasion: ‘The basic thing about your character is that you’re a huge shit fly, buzzing and clumsy’ to which Pieter retorts: “You’re hard on others, Sartre, very hard, but very indulgent towards yourself’ (1983b**: QMW,

102 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

191). Another time, Pieter tells him: ‘You observe others but you don’t know yourself, you’re pretentious.” And Sartre reacts: “You are an old woman and a weakling [tu es une bonne femme et une chiffe] (1983b*: WML,

428). Sartre talks to Beauvoir about exchanging words that hurt between them. Segal analyses that, in the army, the opposition between male and female is intensified, with ‘women’ used as a term of abuse (1990: 18).? During another argument, Sartre accuses Pieter of being a ‘lazy bastard’ and Paul comes to the rescue of Pieter; they accuse Sartre of being hardnosed and pretentious and he reproaches them for being weak and stupid (1983b**: OMW, 43).

What is fascinating is the aftermath of these various exchanges. The next minute, they manage to move on and to get on with their meteorological duties. As Sartre puts it: ‘But between the two of us it never goes very far’ (1983b*: WML, 428). It does, and it does not. There is something in Pieter that hooks Sartre emotionally (perhaps he recognises himself in

Pieter). Why would he spend such an incommensurate amount of time and energy on Pieter, observing him and then writing? He gives a memorable description of his lips ‘obscene and slack ... enormous and female’ (1995: WD, 118; my emphasis) and reports Pieter being cross because he is explaining to him that he has a feminine temperament (1995: WD, 153). Sartre is certainly not regressed with Pieter; he is in charge of his full intelligence but also of his range of emotions. Sartre could be both valuing but also punishing in Pieter the ‘feminine qualities’ that are also in him but that he has repressed. This hypothesis fits in with the theory that narcissists, having learned to hide that which has been rejected, will ‘very likely

shun or be angered by those who display what [they] have rejected in [themselves]’ Johnson 1994: 158).

Their heated arguments did not dent the underlying affection that they must have felt for each other since they were reconciled so readily. And it must have been salubrious for Sartre to act in as foul a way as he could with Pieter and yet not be rejected. Pieter did burst his grandiosity bubble a few times by some of his remarks. Perhaps it showed Sartre he could

contact a more inclusive sense of self. Sartre will choose to see

Piederkovsky for a number of years after the war, which goes to show that the relationship was not imposed on him. And in 1974, all he will remember is how he got along well with Pieter (Beauvoir 1981: 336). Despite the relationship with Pieter, interacting with his peers was not

Sartre’s favourite activity: ‘As long as I can write, I am peaceful and happy,’ insinuating that once he has been left to write, he can spend three

hours with fools (1995: 26). What were the effects of Sartre’s writing bulimia? Because he spends practically every minute of the day reading and writing, he is not actually mentally present in his situation, with all the anguish it carries. When he works up to thirteen hours a day (including ten to eleven hours of reading and writing), he has no time to think about Ger-

man attacks or about the people he has left behind in Paris. One could

The Phoney War (September 1939-May 1940) 103

equally contend that because many of the characters in his novel are based on his close friends and the main character Mathieu on aspects of himself, he is still controlling the situation by writing fiction.’° Sartre get tired from so much writing and reading every day and he concludes that eye troubles _

are harder to bear than war problems (1983b*: WML, 352). | If writing were taken away from Sartre, because he has invested so much of his subjectivity and masculinity, he may well fragment and have to reconstruct himself painfully. Sartre is aware of this on some level. He tells Beauvoir in January 1940 that philosophy has the role of protecting him against the melancholy, gloom, and sadness of the war, remarking that philosophy and life have become one (1983b**: QMW, 29). But slowly and inexorably, even his writing self starts being shaken. Having talked previously about being dry, Sartre comments that this applies not only to facing things, people and landscapes, but also to his writing: ‘There used to be a sort of emotion that somehow flowed along with the ink in my pen ... it gave me sympathy for my characters. Instead, now it’s more conceptual’ (1983b**: QMW, 31-32). Is Sartre also blocking emotions within his writing? In 1939, he comments that in relation to Gau-

guin, Van Gogh and Rimbaud, he has a distinct inferiority complex because they managed to destroy themselves, adding: ’... Rimbaud most of all, because he managed to give up even writing. 1am more and more con-

vinced that, in order to achieve authenticity, something has to snap ... But I have protected myself against snapping. I have bound myself hand and foot to my desire to write’ (1995: WD, 39; my emphasis). Authenticity can be achieved if the present sense of self is questioned (Sartre’s compromised sense of self), but Sartre readily admits that he is dependent on his desire to write. Leak coins the following expression: ‘I write therefore I am’, calling it the Sartrean cogito (1991: 51)." Sartre analyses further: ‘I only dream of questioning my desire to write, because if I really tried even for an hour to hold it in abeyance, place it in parenthesis, all reason for questioning anything whatsoever would collapse ...’ (1995: WD, 39-40).

Sartre goes on to say that he is ‘bastard enough’ to leave something of himself intact. These are harsh words; in fact, Sartre may simply not be able to remove his safety net. He is a soldier at war, isolated and away from all the people he loves. He is not sure he will see them again. How could he undertake a journey on his own that would mean tabula rasa? Especially as he is going through turbulent times... Sartre has had a crisis of confidence in February 1940 triggered off by the

problems with Wanda. He has not felt so bad about himself since he was mad (1983b**: 108-109). One of Beauvoir’s letters upset him. She claimed he felt superior to other people and that what is lying for him is actually a good enough truth for them (1983b*™*: 110). How will Sartre ride the storm? By ‘doing what has to be done’ without thinking about himself at all (1983b™: QMW, 20). This will stop him from writing self-deprecating letters to Beauvoir and also from feeling, which brings on a crisis of self-confidence.

104 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

But something is not quite right. The writing machine has partly broken down. He finished L’Age de raison, and said to himself: ‘That is all there is.’ Having reread his five notebooks, they did not make a good impression on

him; he found them superficial and vague and with the clearest ideas being rehashes of Heidegger (1983b**: QMW, 19). Sartre feels all his courage and willingness to explore the experience of war comes from his certainty that he is understood and supported by the Beaver. If this support was withdrawn, everything would go to pieces and he would simply drift away (Sartre 1995: 121). Sartre had told Jollivet that he was forging his will, that he did not like his fellow students at the Ecole Normale dwelling on their emotions and that he had banned feelings like sadness. He explained to Beauvoir that he wanted to be cut off from his feelings as soon as the war started. Paradoxically, the diary that he is keeping is a highly self-reflexive exercise, in contradiction with all the above resolutions, and connects him to his feelings. He notes that he is learning to think more spontaneously (1995: 167).

Describing that he feels on the way to discovering himself in January 1940, Sartre gives a lot of credit to the notebook form: ‘this free and fragmented form isn’t subject to prior ideas, you write each thing according to the moment and only take stock when you want to’ (1983b**: QMW, 14). It has taken the new disciplines of phenomenology, sociology and psy-

choanalysis for him to decide to draw a full-length portrait of himself (1995: WD, 138). However, he also sees a downside in such introspection:

‘’'m growing disgusted with myself from all this writing about me’ (1983b*: WML, 328) and claims to have lived the previous fifteen years without looking at himself since he does not interest himself at all (1995: WD, 138). In notebook fourteen, he will wonder if his notes do not corre-

spond to moments of low tension, pointing out that it is the defect of diaries in general (1995: WD, 344). This is a phoney period in Sartre’s life in more than one sense. Sartre is suspended, almost bracketed, by being mobilised; his daily routine and his

milieu have changed; even history seems to have stopped during this Phoney War where nothing happens; Sartre appears to have neither a future nor a project — and, in return, this makes everything textually possible (Buisine 1990: 691). Despite being disgusted with all the writing about himself, his actual changing is parasitic on it; the personal is political. Sartre

will only be able to change politically because this movement is underpinned by changes in his psyche. On 28 September 1939, barely a month after being mobilised, Sartre tells Beauvoir: ‘I am no longer the same: my personality hasn’t changed, but certainly my being-in-the-world has. It is a being-for-the-war’ (1983*: WML, 267). Elsewhere he will talk about the state of war being natural to him (1983*: WML, 268). By mid-December, he is no longer sure about where exactly the changes lie: ‘Am I simply taking stock of myself, or is it that I hope to slough off that hardened, slightly deadened personality along with the peace?’ (1983*: WML, 487; my emphasis).

The Phoney War (September 1939-May 1940) 105

One has the image of an old shell, a crust, which Sartre is peeling off. He

talks about changing his life like a snake sloughing its skin (1995: WD, 139). It is a way of announcing a new sense of self, and Sartre’s war diaries are a perpetual work of mourning of the self in order to facilitate the emergence of a new self (Buisine 1990: 701). But what is this new sense of self? Sartre is trying to change his being-in-the-world and this is most in evidence in his own examination of his relationship with women who started the whole process since Sartre claims that the crisis leading to his search for authenticity was triggered off by his predicament with Wanda. Sartre maintains three relationships by means of letters: with Martine Bourdin / Colette Gibert (for a while), Wanda and Beauvoir. He names the three women he is going out with and writing his novel as his reference points (1995: 37). Writing and seduction. One could argue that Sartre’s war takes place in Paris, where the movements of the Kosakiewicz sisters and of the other women threaten his own position (Wickers 2000: 53). In September 1939, Sartre thinks that if the war lasts three years, Wanda will not wait for him. What does he do? ‘So, for my own peace of mind, I consummated an interior provisional break-up with her’ (1983b*: WML, 247). By the time October comes, still convinced of the same idea, he prefers to

cut himself off, commenting that it is something he always finds easy (1983b*: WML, 299). But if Sartre feels he needs to cut himself off, it is because he is not cut off, despite his own will power. By November, Sartre is getting very upset because Blin, another actor, is lusting after Wanda: ‘I have to say I find it very disagreeable. But what can I do? You can’t fight

at a distance’ before watering down what is happening (this could be because he is writing to Beauvoir): ‘it’s an oddly hollow passion ... it’s a

small nightmare of the passions, and I’ve woken up. Now it’s over’ (1983b*: WML, 363). Sartre probably did not cut himself off from Wanda in October either as he had written he would do. He reads the situation as a straight fight for Wanda between Blin and himself and feels powerless because he is far away. We are led to believe, or rather Beauvoir is, that by the twenty-third of November the crisis is over; indeed Sartre tells Beau-

voir that it lasted one or two hours... But, on the twenty-eighth of November, Sartre states that he is still irritated by the Blin story before telling Beauvoir that he has just consummated the umpteenth break-up in his mind (1983b*: WML, 370). According to Sartre, such passionate crises signal a lack of balance: ‘I am

hard and irresponsive ... with no liking for myself, no passion, no interest in the war’ (1995: WD, 47-48), accompanied by violent mood swings of poetic sentimentality. Sartre seems to describe someone who is dead inside were it not for poetic sentimentality, which he cannot control. Already during military conscription when he was particularly down, he felt poetic. He is veering between not feeling at all and feeling overwhelmed by his own sentimentality. What is he like with the other soldiers in this time of crisis? They describe him as being at his most aggressive (Sartre 1995: WD, 63).

106 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Sartre will eventually rationalise the Blin affair by telling himself that it was only one thing in her life: ’... her life is me — less perhaps through the ten-

derness I inspire in her than through the intellectual and material need she has for me’ (1983b*: WML, 377). Sartre states clearly how he has ‘secured’ Wanda.” It is the case that Wanda, like her sister Olga, is only living in Paris (in the same hotel as Beauvoir) because Sartre is paying her a monthly allowance. Otherwise she would be back in the family home in Rouen. Sartre insists that Beauvoir should let her know that it is thanks to his money (his royalties from Le Mur in fact, hence his writing) that Beauvoir can bring her to live in Paris. In December 1939, he reports receiving no letter from Wanda and feeling indifferent; he is surprised by his new attitude when compared to his love crisis (1983b*: WML, 488). A few days later, still no letter from Wanda, Sartre says it is really as if she did not exist (1983b*: WML, 496).

No sooner has Sartre recovered than another crisis blows up regarding Martine Bourdin. She has shown some of Sartre’s letters to a common friend (Mouloudji) who has repeated some of their content to Wanda. Sartre is accused of acting like a ‘billy goat’ sexually [bouc obscéne| and he

is upset by the accusation, which he denies. Bourdin has talked about Sartre’s sexual behaviour, characterising it as obscene and sadistic. Wanda has heard about it. Although this happened prior to Sartre’s involvement with her, Sartre believes that he is in danger of losing her. He reflects that she is very precious to him and that he wants to change (1995: WD, 242). But if the accusation is false, why feel bad; if he is not guilty, why does he want to change? (Doubrovsky 1986: 105).

Une Défaite, written around 1927, starts thus: ‘Frédéric had left Geneviéve with a calculated brutality. He had sent her a rude letter via a friend where he confessed to never having loved her’ (1990: 204). This is exactly the way that Sartre will break up with Bourdin. He informs her that the fact that she was common stimulated his sadism and that he only ever wanted a fling with her. He was sick of her conversations, especially when she tried to talk about the theatre. In a letter to Beauvoir, Sartre concludes that he is becoming hard with people but that he has no regrets. He is sick of false situations and wants to be left in peace, since for too long he has been constrained and restricted by a false sensitivity (1983b™: QMW, 89-90). In February 1940, he writes that he wants to change, claiming that

he has never known how to lead either his sexual or his emotional life properly, and that he feels like a bastard but that it has not stopped him from writing (1983b*™": QMW, 75).

Sartre appears to want to change some of his conquering attitude towards women. But a few days later, he tells Beauvoir that he is no longer sad: ‘the present — with the foyer, the taste of my pipe, the reading, etc. — has built up a thick crust around me again. I wrote in my diary that I was tasting the “gloomy sweetness of living”’ (1983b*: WML, 102). The thick crust stops him from feeling and from growing a new skin (a more inclusive sense of self). When he does not feel, everything is gloomy rather than

The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940) 107

pulsating and alive. When he does feel, he feels let down by himself. He heard a record, tears came to his eyes but he fought them back, pretending to be cleaning his glasses. He calls his emotion ‘an abject gushing over myself’ (1995: WD, 194). He does not seem to have much compassion for his sorrow. The image of gushing also betrays someone who is not in control of the emotional flow that is best dried up. Sartre had been feeling ‘violently angry’ after the Bourdin affair. Then he starts to feel profoundly disgusted with himself, commenting to Beauvoir: ‘You know that happens to me rather rarely, and even then, there’s my tendency to lack solidarity with myself, which makes things still bearable’ (1983b**: QMW, 89). He explains that his lack of solidarity with himself allows him to judge his dead past insolently from the vantage point of his present (1995: WD, 209). Sartre’s defence mechanisms to stop him from feeling are highly sophisticated!

In the appendices to her edition of Sartre’s war diaries, Elkaim-Sartre gives relevant extracts from Sartre’s correspondence, some of which were censored by Beauvoir in Lettres au Castor et 4 quelques autres. In January 1940, Sartre is disheartened both about Wanda’s and Bianca’s feelings for him. Elkaim-Sartre writes in a note that this is revealing of Sartre’s own self-doubts. The question is: how much love and desire does Sartre feel he deserves? According to Elkaim-Sartre, this would explain his sentimental inconsistencies (1995: 634 n. 1). Sartre’s lack of self-worth could be interfering with his seducing powers and hence with his masculine subjectivity. Sartre calls these moments ‘a violent frenzy of gloom’ or ‘a black fit’ and claims that they recur often enough in him to constitute a character trait (1995: WD, 208). By the end of February 1940, Sartre writes to Beauvoir that his feelings for Wanda do exist and that there is no point denying them (1983b**: QMW, 84).

One must always bear in mind that Sartre is writing to Simone de Beauvoir, and that he tends to play down to her his feelings for other women.

Restrictions also apply to his war diaries, which she (and others) read. Hence Sartre tells Beauvoir he has written about his love crisis but he has had to disguise his diary somewhat because so many people will read it: ‘Conclusion: I waver, I’ve told nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth’ (1983b*: WML, 444).

To return to the emotional breaks Sartre talks about, they are reminiscent of the break-up of his relationship with his mother when she remarried. Sartre was already planning to finish with Wanda back in September when nothing had happened. It is as if every time Sartre gets an inkling that he may get hurt by a woman, he cuts off from them because he does not want to repeat the pain of the break-up with his own mother; it is an act of self-protection. It may be opportune at this stage to look at what is happening to Sartre’s relationship with his parents during the war. Throughout his time away, Sartre will attempt to write a daily letter to his mother. On the two occasions when he will be on leave, he will try and

108 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

juggle seeing her despite some pressure from Beauvoir that he should not tell his parents about his leave. When Beauvoir asks him why he has told his parents that he is coming on leave, he replies that it is because his mother is

touching and feels really deprived by his absence (1983b**: QMW, 116). Beauvoir has to inform his mother that he will stay in town to sleep (so that her hopes of him sleeping at their house are not raised) and go to them for lunch. In compensation he will take her out for a day. He feels much the same as before about his stepfather. He is disgusted with him because “he doesn’t know how to behave, to the point of making scenes with my mother these days, whereas the poor woman — mistakenly of course — is worrying about me. I'd like to haul off and smack him one [C’est a lui foutre des gifles]. It’s made me sad’ (1983b*: WML, 380-81). It is not clear how Sartre got the

information that his stepfather makes scenes with his mother. Sartre exteriorises the violence he feels towards Mancy but he actually feels powerless because if he ‘bawls him out’ then his mother will pay. Sartre describes a triangle. Feeling powerless is probably the feeling he had when she remarried, and he cannot move away from that feeling. Sartre concludes that he will carry on being ‘nice’ to his stepfather because he thinks that is what his mother wants. This perpetuates the behaviour isolated in chapter three. If Sartre regresses, it is because being around his mother puts him in touch with his neediness. He certainly seems to enjoy his mother caring for him. His version of events is that her marriage is a mistake, she deserves better than her present life and he ends up pitying her.

Sartre can have insights about what is going on. Paul is one of the acolytes. Sartre often writes about Paul’s body letting him down, which he reads as a sign of weakness. Paul resembles his stepfather, which makes

him reflect: ‘And I think I make him pay a bit, for my stifled bitterness [rancunes rentrées| against my stepfather ...’ (1983b*: WML, 380-81).

Has his mother’s attitude evolved towards him? As Sartre is going to wart, she is reported as saying: ‘It’l] do him good, it'll teach him about life’ (1983b*: WML, 42).!* Sartre is furious at his mother’s ridiculous phrase, commenting: ‘I wouldn’t have thought her so stupid’ (1983b*: WML, 241). The source of this information is Beauvoir who chooses to repeat to Sartre those hurtful words. She may have wanted Sartre to knock his mother off

her pedestal. One may wish to teach a teenager or a young adult in his twenties a lesson about life, but these comments are addressed to a thirty-

four year old. Mme Mancy is treating her son as a boy.'° Perhaps she believes that he has never grown up and that he behaves like a spoilt child. But this is an isolated incident in the idealised version we are offered of

Sartre’s relationship to his mother. It is more usual for instance to have Sartre’s mother writing to him: ‘It gives me great joy to see the Beaver again, and to talk with her in all confidence about my dear little child - my only worldly goods’ (1983b*: WML, 357); Sartre registers feeling moved.

What transformations have taken place in Sartre during the Phoney War? My investigation will be centred on the concept of authenticity and

The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940) 109

its flip side, inauthenticity, together with the concept of stoicism. When Sartre forges his will, he teaches himself at the same time to suppress his emotions, and this brings on inauthenticity. He chooses reason over emotion. He is inauthentic because he is not giving a voice to his feelings but suppressing them; this corresponds to his compromised sense of self. His writing self keeps his anguish at bay, but eventually cracks will start to appear. In his own words, he finds himself dead inside, or a void; and his friends reproach him for his artificial attitude. Being authentic is realising fully one’s being-in-situation, whatever this situation may happen to be and by being cut off, Sartre is also cut off from his situation. Sartre describes being a stoic right up to the war. He was not politically engaged (even though he knew where his political sympathies were). He was detached.’ His relationship with Olga may have been a contributing factor. In 1938, Sartre writes that ever since the Olga affair he immediately ‘blots out anything with the slightest resemblance to passion ... in a sort of abiding fear. It’s not just with Olga but with the whole world that I have “counter-crystallised”’ (1983b*: WML, 148). He also refers to himself as a stoic during the beginning of the Phoney War as a way of not feeling the loss of the life he has left behind. He calls it a psychic defence, but a con-

scious one, where he cuts himself off, concluding that he is a lot less unhappy than if he accepted suffering (1995: 21). One has to admire Sartre’s resourcefulness for getting by during such traumatic times. But he becomes

dissatisfied with his attitude, admitting that stoicism is a complacent morality (1983b*: 458). Stoicism alternates with feelings. Hence on 17 September 1939, he declares the day a ‘feeling day’ after six days of stoicism. Sartre believes that one either is or is not authentic, though authenticity has to be invented for each situation (1995: WD, 219). He claims to have

been authentic during the Phoney War before his leave, when he was on his own, but that he was not authentic in Paris and fears that if the war does not last too long, he is afraid of finding himself as he was the previous year when he had expected to be different after the war. Elkaim-Sartre discreetly points out (1995: 450 n.1) that Sartre uses the anonymous example of someone who has been called up to make his point that ‘a being who expects the inauthentic of us will freeze us to the marrow with inauthenticity, by reviving our old love’ (1995: WD, 221) and that this could be a camouflaged confession, which Sartre will use in Les Chemins de la liberté with Mathieu telling Marcelle that he no longer loves her. Sartre’s war diaries break out at this point into a long explanation of what it is to love and be loved. Sartre talks about inauthenticity amongst people who get involved in being loved without loving, confessing immediately afterwards that he has very often been of their number (1995: WD, 261). If we now put together his earlier remark that he was not authentic in Paris, it is fairly obvious that he is involved with someone who loves him and he does not love that person. During his leave in Paris, he did not see Bianca who never knew he was on leave (in fact Beauvoir and he dis-

110 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

cussed whether he was going to break up his relationship with her or not); he only met Beauvoir and Wanda. Having seen Wanda, Sartre was morally uneasy with her because she was so kind to him, and he wondered if one should not be faithful all his life to one person (Beauvoir 1990b: 279-80). It must be his behaviour towards Wanda that he sees as inauthentic. Once he

is back in the barracks, regaining his authenticity means feeling alone, beyond all those people he cares for and who care for him (Sartre 1995: WD, 262). In other words, it is finding himself alone with his sense of self. When Sartre reflects on the feelings of other writers, he admits to having these feelings in him but to suffocating them. It seems as if feeling for him means not being free (‘it is another psychology that interests me, that of freedom’ (1995: 44)).'® At other times, self-doubt creeps in as he wonders if denying these feelings really suppresses them. On balance, he thinks his

worries are not justified. And he puts these suppressed feelings in the characters of his novels.’? Somehow, Sartre is safer exploring his feelings or

at least projecting them out onto his fiction ... or in his notebooks as he remarks that he does not consider his feelings to be intimate since everything that happens to him, everything that he thinks, he thinks instantly of sharing it with the Beaver.”° Sartre does not appear to have any intimacy with himself.

He thinks about the whole question at length in his war diaries. Prompted by a letter from Wanda who tells him that he is not authentic, he writes: ‘It’s true, I’m not authentic. With everything that I feel, before actually feeling it I know that I’m feeling it. And then, bound up as I am with defining and thinking it, Ino longer more than half-feel it’ (1995: WD, 61). His greatest passions are mere nervous impulses. He manufactures exemplary feelings but does not feel them: ‘I fool people: I look like a sensitive person but I’m barren ... I haven’t felt Nausea, I’m not authentic’ (1995:

WD, 62). He then describes himself seeing himself feel as when one is detached, and concludes that he is only pride and lucidity. Because men identify with reason, Seidler claims that they are trapped as observers, not only of the natural and social worlds, but also of themselves. They are left as observers, rather than as participants, in their own lives (1989: 130-33). Sartre notes that there is a lack of moderation in him: he is either indifferent or obsessively enthusiastic. It can only be one or the other for him (1995: WD, 139); he cannot exist in the space in between. He tells Beauvoir

he only seems to care for Wanda when he is going through passionate episodes (1983b**: QMW, 446).*! Hence passion seems to melt the barren defences he has put up and to allow him to feel inside. When he is not passionate, he is hard and irresponsive. He does not like himself, does not feel passion and has no interest in the war (1995: WD, 47-48). He is ‘hardened, slightly deadened’ (1983b*: WML, 487), and needs the ‘violence of arguments’ or the ‘pathetic of making up’ in order to feel alive. Beauvoir must have talked about Sartre being cut off from her as well” since in a letter dated 20 December 1939, Sartre denies it (1983b*: 497). In

The Phoney War (September 1939—May 1940) 111

February 1940, Beauvoir reproaches Sartre for being unfeeling. Though we do not have her original letter, Sartre writes back saying that if only she knew how much he has loved her over the last two days, she would no longer ask what is a feeling for him in his head, and she would nevermore call him a whited sepulchre (1983b**: QMW, 57). By the end of the month, Sartre explicitly concedes the comparison with the sepulchre and also calls himself a cold fish, saying that he wants to change by caring about things (1983b**: 105).

I want to return to the chasing of the cows at night. Sartre experienced a moment of strong, pure joy (1983b*: WML, 260). It takes the surge of passion for him to break through the ice cover, and then he starts to feel. When Sartre allows himself to feel, tenderness or passion, he is becoming authentic by getting in touch with a more inclusive sense of self.

In the introduction, I quoted Sartre saying that someone’s life forms a whole that cannot be divided up; the inner and the outer, the subjective and the objective, the personal and the political all influence each other since they belong to the same totality and one can only understand a person by treating them as a social being (1976a: 176). Sartre’s transformation is a complex interaction between his writing self, his relationship to men and women, the war situation and above all the genre of the war diary, which brings on self-reflection and makes all these changes possible. Sartre’s transformation is also reflected in his philosophy. Looking back at La Transcendance de l’ego published in 1937, Sartre writes that his point of

view has changed a lot since then (1983b*: 444). He reflects that he ‘quite simply ejected the Self from consciousness, like some nosey visitor’ (1995: WD, 324), explaining that he did not have the tender intimacy that causes _ adhesions between the Self and consciousness; the self was objectified. Whilst he was a stoic in the late 1930s, he now considers stoicism to be a ‘morality of complaisance’, commenting to Beauvoir: ‘We have come a long way, my dear little one, since the time when we were rationalists, Cartesian and anti-existential’ (1983b*: WML, 385). Before the war, Sartre and Beauvoir were seemingly politically detached.” In her memoirs, Beauvoir describes a demonstration in 1936 for the popular front, which Sartre

and herself watched from their balcony and applauded. As Beauvoir analyses, they would never have thought of actually joining it. Sartre’s reading is also changing him. In December 1939, having read the Rauschning, he notes that the book has inspired some sound reflections on violence as a means to promote morality, and he has concluded that violence must be used and is necessary (1983b*: WML, 431). This is something that will prove crucial; it will shape some of Sartre’s political philosophy. Sartre also points to his reading of Heidegger as an influence for his change of attitude. He now understands the importance of one’s project for human reality to realise itself. He then asks the question: is he going to allow the self back in [to consciousness]? The answer is negative but he now concedes that the totality of the for-itself (consciousness) is the person

112 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities |

and concludes: ‘I’m in the course of learning, basically, to be a person’ (1995: WD, 324-25).

In the midst of these transformations, what has happened to Sartre’s investment in writing? On 27 March 1940, he writes that he is finishing off

his novel and has had no taste for writing in the notebook. He does not think much of his novel — it strikes him as the work of a debutant. He is used to his life and does not even notice it. He does not feel the tension of the previous months and it has been a long time since he has worried about authenticity or nothingness (1995: WD, 354). By May 1940, he is not writing much as he has a sense of arrested momentum (1983b**: OQMW, 201). Men are dying like flies in the North and the whole destiny of Europe is at stake. Sartre’s search for authenticity has brought with it deep anxiety, which he finds difficult to contain. His war situation is becoming more and more

‘real’ to him and halting the writing process. Leak argues that Sartre’s transformation into authenticity is ‘intellectual’ rather than ‘real’, that is, existential (2001: 55). For him, writing in the war diaries is a ‘flight forward’ with a gap between the ‘I’ being enunciated and the ‘l’ of the enunciation (2001: 56). But the anxiety that Sartre is feeling proves that his transformation into authenticity is not simply intellectual but a lived experience; it stops his writing self.

Eventually, Sartre will decide that writing is his individual destiny (1983b**: QMW, 203): ‘it’s against the failure of democracy and liberty, against the Allies’ defeat — symbolically — that I’m doing the act of writing.

Acting to the very end “as if” everything were to be again as it once was’ (1983b**: QMW, 204). So Sartre transforms the act of writing into symbolic

resistance. Instead of writing in order to keep himself from feeling, he is now fully aware of the war situation and he writes as a mode of resistance. This is an idea he will develop in a moving text first published in 1944, ‘La République du silence’: ‘each of our gestures had the weight of a commitment’ (1949: 11). Sartre’s change is symbolised by this sentence written on 22 December 1939: ’ ... [I] wrote that phrase I’ve been saying to myself from time to time for a whole year now: “I have attained the age of reason” (1983b*: WML, 422).** Sartre is thirty-four.

Notes 1. That year, Sartre was desperately trying to finish Critique de la raison dialectique whilst on amphetamines, nearly killing himself in the process (see the Postscript). 2. The character of Charlot Wroclaw in La Mort dans l’dme is said to be based on Pieter and that of Pierné is based on Paul (Sartre 1995: 597 n. 3). 3. Morgan remarks that military experience binds men together (1994: 166). 4. Though admittedly there were some women around the barracks.

5. In Le Mur, Pablo senses that fright has taken Juan over completely. He writes that he really should offer him some pity but that pity disgusts him, and that he loathes Juan (Sartre 1939b: 16).

The Phoney War (September 1939-—May 1940) 113

6. In L’Age de raison, Mathieu, the main character, has trouble fitting in with the other soldiers. There is a striking scene where all the soldiers are getting drunk and one of them remarks to Mathieu that even in getting drunk he is different from them. 7. As Seidler writes: ‘As men we learn to look to the future and identify with the projects we set ourselves, so that in some important sense we come to live in the future ... at some level we never really learn to take personal experience seriously’ (1989: 119). 8. This is more or less Mathieu’s trajectory in Les Chemins de la liberté who is free for nothing in the first volume, frantically spending his time asserting his freedom against what he sees as constraints and refusing to marry Marcelle. His character will evolve at the end of the first part of the third volume and in the planned fourth volume. In philosophical terms, he will evolve from ontological freedom to freedom-in-situation. Sartre explains that he wants to show authenticity rather than freedom, which is why he is toying with the title ‘Greatness’, referring to the character of Mathieu (1983b**: 196). 9. In Les Mouches, Electra tells Orestes (but she has not yet recognised him) that if the later came back to the city and did not want to avenge the death of his father, she would spit in his face and tell him to go away amongst women for he is no more than a woman (1945a: 170); Jupiter tells him that he believes he is going to kill his mother and stepfather but who would have believed it the previous day when he had the face of a girl (1945a: 237). 10. For example, Olga started going out with Bost. In L’Age de raison, the two characters based on them are Ivich and Boris, but they are brother and sister; though they appear close in the novel, there is no sexual relationship between them. 11. See also Leak (1998: 976 ff.). 12. Leak calls Sartre’s attitude ‘narcissistic imperialism’ (1998: 980). 13. To put this in perspective, Sartre writes in a letter dated August 1939 that he loves her passionately (1983b*: WML, 260). 14. In Beauvoir’s Journal de guerre, there is a slightly different version of the same event: ‘It will do him good, show him that you can’t live life as you want’ (1990b: 22). 15. Sartre will use this in L’Age de raison. Jacques, Mathieu’s brother, tells his wife Odette (who is in love with Mathieu) that being a prisoner will knock some sense into Mathieu and that he will come back a different man (1981: 1305).

16. Ina way mothers and parents generally do, but there are also more adult-adult relationships! 17. See Leak (1998). 18. Sartre explains that he wants the character of Mathieu in L’Age de raison to have the freedom to be and not to act (1995: 69). 19. There are indeed remarkable insights into many characters in Les Chemins de la liberté, both male and female. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the narrative choice is to offer different chapters from the point of view of different characters. For example, in the case of Odette but also Lola, one gets the impression of being inside their mind. If Sartre does not display many emotions in life, he certainly puts them in his fiction. And he also follows Beauvoir’s advice; see chapter seven. Interestingly, Sartre submitted himself to the Rorschach test in 1960. Denise Pouillon who made him take the test states that it revealed a creativity springing from affects and emotions rather than logic or exclusively reflexion. She talks about a flow of emotions, almost uncontrollable and wonders how Sartre could control these in life: ‘it was obvious that for Sartre emotions were not a temporary state but the very fabric of his life’ (Contat 1996: 472). 20. ‘Everything that I feel, I analyse it for the other the very instant I feel it’, Sartre (1995: 74).

21. This could also apply to his relationship with Pieter. 22. Some of Beauvoir’s letters to Sartre were lost. 23. Although I qualified my own comments in the last chapter, arguing that things were not as clear-cut and that Sartre was not totally apolitical before 1939. 24. He is talking about his novel, L’Age de raison. In an earlier exchange with his brother Jacques who tells Mathieu that he has attained the age of reason, Mathieu replies that it is the age of resignation and that he does not want it (Sartre: 1945: 137)

Chapter 6

SARTRE’S WAR (JUNE 1940-1945): THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE

The Phoney War ended with the German invasion of Belgium, then of Northern France in May/June 1940. During that time, Nizan was killed at the front on 23 May 1940. Sartre was made prisoner during the French army’s retreat in Padoux near Epinal on 21 June 1940, on the occasion of his thirty-fifth birthday. He was sent to Baccarat until mid-August before ending up in Tréves, Stalag XII D. The only witness accounts remaining are extracts from Sartre written in diary form from 10 June to 20 August 1940 (the entries for 10 and 11 June being the only publication of Sartre per se in

1942). They do not form part of his war diaries and were published in Oeuvres Romanesques (1981: 1559-84) under the title ‘La Mort dans l’4me’;!

they were actually written in 1941 when Sartre came back to Paris (Sartre 1981: 2133). There are also fictional accounts from Les Chemins de la liberté,

which I will make use of, as well as Sartre’s conversations with Beauvoir in 1974 (1981: A, 388).

The diary extracts have a peculiar status as they are supposed to be diary entries but are reminiscent of La Mort dans l’ame. Sartre will say that he reread these diary extracts before writing La Mort dans l’aime.* They start

with a first person narrator (whom one identifies as Sartre) describing a sun made for glory and for death; he notices the silence of the day, punc-

tuated by five air raids. Sartre no longer refers to his companions as ‘acolytes’ and he uses ‘we’ when he speaks (‘We remain quiet with an aching heart’). He keeps having flashbacks about Paris but all his souvenirs have been killed, they smell of death, just as the soldiers stifled their own heart the previous winter for fear of suffering. Walking in the streets of the abandoned town of Haguenau, they find a café but Sartre thinks the owner does not like French people so when Pierné wants to Notes for this chapter begin on page 126.

Sartre’s War (June 1940-1945) 115

enquire about the latest news, Sartre tells him to shut up, reflecting that if he asks a question, he will slap him in the face (1981: 1568). Although Sartre shows some solidarity with the other soldiers, he portrays himself as dominant, ready to use violence to shut Pierné up and very much wanting to rule the group. This echoes his behaviour amongst men as described during the Phoney War. In the entry for 12 June 1940, Sartre speaks of his fright amidst the silence of the abandoned village, complete with bodily sensations (a shiver going down his spine) and envisages being killed with the other soldiers by the Germans, visualising their four dead bodies. In the conversations with Beauvoir, Sartre dwells longer on the actual capture. He mentions staying in an abandoned town for three or four days, and then hearing gunfire in a village about ten kilometres away, knowing that the Germans would arrive the next day. The officers had abandoned the soldiers, walking in a forest with a white flag. The next morning Sartre was awoken by

shouts, voices and cries and he knew that the German had arrived. He describes the actual event, showing clearly that — understandably in such extreme circumstances — he was detached from himself: ‘I went out and | remember the strange feeling that I was acting in a scene in a film and that it was not true’ (1981: A, 388), remembering a gun firing at the church where some French soldiers were holding out. Sartre then crossed the square under German rifles hurrying him along and he joined an immense troop of young men who were moving off towards Germany, explaining that he gave an account of this in La Mort dans l’ame, but attributed it to the character of Brunet. As he verbalises, they had no idea where they were going or what the Germans were going to do to them. Sartre states that he learned about historical truth and solidarity: “There was a kind of unity among the men who were there — an idea of defeat, an idea of being a prisoner, which seemed at that time much more important than anything else’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 389). They were in Baccarat, on the floor of a barracks, without any food for two or three days, and then they were transferred to Germany by train, and ended up in a prison camp above Tréves (1981: A, 390).

It is interesting to reread La Mort dans l’ame (the published version was finished in 1948) in the light of Sartre’s autobiographical account. First of all, the end of Part One of the novel sees Mathieu involved in a stand-off with the Germans from a church tower with other soldiers fighting from the town hall (in Sartre’s account to Beauvoir, there was gunfire against the church). Mathieu kills some Germans in his ‘heroic’ attempt to last fifteen minutes, ending up in a sort of trance. This episode serves the overall pur-

pose of Les Chemins de la liberté and also expresses a certain form of Hegelian freedom (‘Freedom is Terror’), which Sartre will call in subsequent interviews ‘terrorist freedom’. Sartre chose to narrate his capture by the Germans through the character of Brunet rather than Mathieu. The second part of La Mort dans l’ame

starts with a hamlet burning in the distance (Sartre told Beauvoir about hearing gunfire in a village about ten kilometres away, knowing that the

116 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Germans would arrive the next day). Brunet is aware that the Germans will arrive the next day. He sleeps in a cellar where a man and his wife and child are taking refuge. He has been fighting the Germans for the last eight

days with almost no sleep or food, nearly getting killed on many occasions; he has stared death in the face. When the man wakes him up to tell him to get out because the Germans are here, he insists on shaving first. The man wants him to hurry up and get out so that he and his family will not get caught as well and, as he comes towards Brunet, the latter pushes him against the wall and tells him to shut up otherwise he will hit him.’ Here again the Germans are shooting towards the church. Sartre described to Beauvoir how he went out and felt that he was acting in an unreal film scene; Brunet describes the soldiers already held prisoner outside as ballerinas, doing points, with small hurried steps, as if they were parading for a beauty contest: ‘He joins the French and dances with them, it’s like cinema, nothing seems true’ (Sartre 1981: 1348).° There follows the long march towards the unknown. Brunet’s athletic body towers over everyone else’s. They are not given any food for a total of six days and the mood swerves from optimism about going home to pessimism. Brunet is portrayed as an extremely hard man who only sees men as material for joining the communist ranks. Like Mathieu, Brunet has fought the Germans. This episode is written after the war. Whilst he felt powerless the day he

was captured by the Germans, Sartre perhaps needs to write a fictional account of the event where he feels powerful, as Mathieu seems to be, making a last heroic — pointless but symbolic — stand. Hence this episode could be a way for Sartre to cope with his trauma and to move on from the war.® Writing as therapy. But equally, it could be a way to feed his grandiose self:

Pardaillan does not capitulate easily but fights a heroic death! Sartre appears to keep Pardaillan alive through the character of Brunet and, to a lesser extent and only during his last stand, Mathieu. In the diary extract dated 18 August 1940, Sartre reports a conversation

that turns into an argument where the prisoners ask themselves if they were ready to die when they met the Germans and if the French people will call them cowards. At first Sartre records being hesitant about what he thinks and then writes that they could hardly have been expected to jump feet first towards death (which is what Mathieu does). His generation was used to being in close contact with death, living with the First World War and then the Spanish Civil War before Munich. Once again Sartre uses we: ‘Indeed we didn’t advance towards death without feeling ambivalent and bitter — but can that be held against us?’ (1981: 1578). Other entries also talk

about death, including deaths in the prisoner of war camp, and Sartre writes that since they were due to meet death in mid-June and that the encounter did not take place, they feel beyond death now. For instance, they carry on sleeping whilst an air raid takes place. In La Mort dans l’ame, the soldiers end up in Baccarat. Brunet spends his time not giving in to his body by ignoring his hunger and exercising obses-

Sartre’s War (June 1940-1945) 117

sively; his motto being ‘a body is made to obey’ (Sartre 1981: 1382). The — book ends with the soldiers arriving in Tréves. Dréle d’amitié and La Derniére chance are extracts from Sartre’s planned fourth and possibly fifth volume and the action takes place in the prisoner camp. Mathieu organises escapes from the camp and Brunet is trying to escape. Beauvoir presents the planned ending of Les Chemins de la liberté in La Force des choses (1963, I: 212-14).

I have argued the need to distinguish between Sartre’s time during the Phoney War and as a prisoner of war. The change in Sartre can be pinpointed by a witnessing account from the national archives (‘Prisoners’

camps’) unearthed by Cohen-Solal. A sergeant writes that when they learned that they were surrounded, Sartre who had been aggressive towards many soldiers appeared to have a real instinct of solidarity with the others (Cohen-Solal 1985: 209). In his new authentic self, he may be feeling a sense of historicity underpinned by his reading of Heidegger. Whilst I noted that

Sartre’s first impressions of communal life during the Phoney War were rather lukewarm, here is what he remembers of his time in the camp: I found at the Stalag a form of collective life that I hadn’t known since the Ecole

Normale and I can say that overall I was happy ... What I loved in the camp was being part of a mass. There was a communication without any gaps, night and day, where people talked to each other directly as equals. I learnt a lot. (1981: lvi)

Arguably, the collective life was already present during the Phoney War. Could it be that Sartre’s state of mind at the beginning was more akin to his attitude when he went to do his military service, feeling that he was being organised and controlled, whilst here he has changed? During the Phoney War, Sartre cut himself off from his surroundings as he was writing for up to twelve hours a day. Having previously mentioned his almost visceral recoiling at men, Sartre will change. They will be sleep-

ing forty to a room! In the Stalag, he is exposed to crowds: ‘I adored crowds; I have seen all kinds, but I never recovered that naked awareness

without recoil of each individual towards all the others, that waking dream, that obscure awareness of the danger of being a man until 1940, in Stalag XII D’ (Sartre 1964a: W, 76-77).’ Sartre’s transformation is not as clear-cut. During the Phoney War, there

were already signs of solidarity. He mentioned being touched by crowds but not by individuals. In April 1940, he analyses an evening at the Army Theatre and claims that for the first time he felt fraternity. Whilst Sartre understands it as the classless concept the bourgeois experienced during the First World War and still talk about, he puts it down to wearing the same clothes as everyone else. This brings on an immediate feeling of sympathy for the person next to you, added to the fact that others do not think anything about you so that you can relax: “You don’t worry about defending your physical individuality’ (1983b**: QMW, 143-44). Sartre seems to

be claiming that the usual bodily competition between men no longer

118 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

exists: “We have only inner individuality ... one is simply unencumbered with one’s body’ (1983b**: QMW, 143-44). Sartre is progressively becoming more at ease with men. Fraternity gets rid of the necessity for compe-

tition and violence. This is not an isolated incident. In May 1940, Sartre suggests to Beauvoir that she would be moved to see small groups of soldiers chatting, sitting on doorsteps, with meditative patience: ‘It touches and delights me, and I am happy’ (1983b**: QMW, 168).

Bernard-Henry Lévy stresses Sartre’s transformation, and he pinpoints it to the seven months spent in Tréves (2000: 504). For Beauvoir, Sartre’s evolution, although started before the war, increased rapidly when he was in the German camp (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 419). In 1974, Sartre insists that the war opened his eyes, and especially when he was a prisoner of

, war rather than during the Phoney War; it was a time when he was immersed in a crowd (1974: 24). But already on 28 September 1939, Sartre

had written that his being-in-the-world had changed to a being-for-thewart (1983b*: WML, 267).°

Sartre could be romanticising this period of his life when he claims that he was happy at the Stalag since the interview took place in the seventies, but there are unmistakable signs that this was not the case. He compares it to his time at the Ecole Normale where he was happy. Key words from the quota-

tion cited above are ‘collective, being part of a mass, communication and equality’. Sartre will build his political philosophy on these concepts. He will argue that during the war, he learned to go from the individual to the collective, and to be part of a mass. None of them had agreed to be made prisoners, and they were all united by a common fate Sartre will call the situation.’ Equality is a big issue. Sartre is experiencing the fact that all men are prisoners of the Germans and, although some officers and artists (including Sartre) have some privileges, they are all living the same situation under similar circumstances. They all have to attend to their bodily functions in common. If we recall Sartre’s social isolation as a child and as a teenager, the sit-

uation of communication twenty-four hours a day must have been a real challenge. Sartre shares with Beauvoir that he has lost his inner grace because of the Frenchmen he is with, describing them thus: “‘beastliness, baseness, jealousy, stupid pranks, coprophilia’ (1983b**: QMW, 235), before adding that he has assumed some authority over those around him. No matter what you do in the camp, you do it among men by the thousand: ‘You cannot imagine a more closely packed, more charged social atmosphere’ (1983b**: QMW, 235-36). Elsewhere he describes fifteen of them sleeping on one floor and practically living lying down (1983b™*: QMW, 242). In 1974, he reiterates that they used to live in a crowd, constantly touching each other.’? When he was liberated, he remembers writing that to see people sitting so far apart in a café seemed to him wasted space (Beauvoir 1981: A, 390)!

In 1980, Perrin — a priest who was in the same camp as Sartre — published an account of Sartre’s time in the Stalag. Having remarked on his

Sartre’s War (June 1940-1945) 119

rapid footstep, his first impression at the end of June 1940 reads as follows: ‘He looks like a shepherd, stocky, short, badly dressed, with long hair. You can’t see if he is looking at you because he is wall-eyed’ (1980: 16). He also mentions Sartre’s voice, which mixes bitterness and warmth (1980: 143). These two adjectives seem to epitomise Sartre. He is a steamroller and he also has ‘the milk of human kindness’ (1980: 144). Sartre’s physical appearance does not seem to have changed since the Phoney War: he looks like a

tramp. Once they have both been released, Perrin will notice how nice Sartre looks, freshly shaved and immaculately dressed, when they meet again in Paris (1980: 164). At first, Sartre manages to stay in the sick bay because he wants to avoid

manual labour. He then joins a barracks lodging all the artists in the camp since the prisoners are grouped by profession; Sartre is classified with the liberal arts. The artists are supposed to set up some entertainment. Perrin observes that Sartre does not laugh very often and that he prefers to be around boxers and wrestlers rather than artists. Sartre meets a man who often goes to the café Le Flore, regretting: ‘I’d become accustomed to the earthy faces of the farmers with their long wailing farts, I got along well with them’ (1983b**: QMW, 238). Sartre keeps fit with the boxers and

wrestlers and talks about working out for forty-five minutes a day (1983b**: 300). He even has fights, recalling losing a match against a young printer (Beauvoir 1981: A, 323): ‘War and the military represent one of the major sites where direct links between hegemonic masculinities and men’s bodies are forged’ (Morgan 1994: 168), with the disciplining and control of the body. With the artists, Sartre feels there is an ‘atmosphere of homosex-

uality’. Of all the experiences of being in the world, he reveals to Perrin that he has never felt drawn to homosexuality: ‘I have experimented quite a lot. I could not manage to explore it [homosexuality]’ (1980: 38). Sartre seems most at ease with people who celebrate the cult of the body” and uncomfortable around an atmosphere of homosexuality. In an article published in August 1945 entitled ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un collaborateur?’, Sartre sets up a binary between feminised / collaborator /homo-

sexual against masculinised /resistant /heterosexual. He explains that articles from collaborators such as Brasillach use curious metaphors where the relationship between France and Germany is described in sexual terms

with France playing the role of the woman. As far as one can enter the mind of a collaborator, one guesses a climate of femininity. Sartre then argues that through enticing Germans with French culture, collaborators create a climate of masochism and homosexuality; later he will talk about slaves of Hitler. This passivity is to be contrasted to the resistance movement, which — even if it appears that it had to submit - managed to say ‘No’ (Sartre 1949, 58-59, 61). In his war diaries, he sets up a binary between

the officers, the feminine element in the army who commandeer the women’s lavatories and the squaddies, to whom he belongs, with their big boots and dumb expressions who are the males (1995: WD, 96). And there

120 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

is also the character of Daniel in Les Chemins de la liberté who is a closet gay

until he comes out to Mathieu. He then decides to marry Marcelle, pregnant with Mathieu’s child, in order to torture himself. During the Occupation, Daniel, the homosexual, will flirt with collaboration.” How does Sartre interact with other men? He can still be quite harsh. A surrealist gives a lecture. Sartre complains he has not even touched upon his subject matter. Perrin comments that Sartre is hard with people he does not like. This is another example of muscular intellectualness. As well as bodybuilding, Sartre can have the upper hand by mindbuilding combined with a certain aloofness. However, Sartre has changed since the Phoney War, and he seems a lot more at ease in the prisoner of war camp. It is as if he is accepting his historical situation. He did write another notebook recording his experience after the debacle when he was in a prison camp | inside Germany (winter 1940), but this did not survive. Notebook XV was the last war diary that Sartre wrote. Letters between Beauvoir and himself became very sparse. When the Germans allowed the prisoners to write, at first it was only postcards. There is not the wealth of written evidence of the last chapter. But a long letter written by Sartre on 23 July 1940 informs us of his state of mind. Sartre is absolutely not miserable. And what is he doing? Writing... He is working on L’Etre et le néant — his philosophical treatise — and finishing

his novel. Though he feels ‘tender moments to the brink of tears’ deep inside, none of this even rises to the surface and Sartre concludes: ‘I’m nei-

ther stoical nor authentic but under lock and key like one of Freud’s patients’ (1983b**: QMW, 235).

A witnessing account was published in September 1982 when a text by Sartre entitled ‘Journal de Mathieu’ reemerged (Sartre 1982b). In the presentation, the Temps Modernes team stresses that Sartre writes about his own experience in Stalag XII D under the name of Mathieu. The dates covered in this notebook are from 15 September 1940 until 25 November 1940. The narrator makes the point that he is writing the diary with the support

of his comrades (no longer called acolytes as during the Phoney War) because they are afraid of remembering events worse or better than they

actually were. There appears to be a lot of solidarity between the men, and Mathieu is right in the middle of the group rather than standing aloof. He narrates how the Germans hit them, especially as they are not disciplined in going

to their barracks at night when the curfew is declared. He describes in detail the ‘kick up the arse’ he received one day. He explains how they are engaged in one-upmanship in explaining to the others how they are hit and that it takes them back to the school playground boasts. At the moment of being slapped, they often detach from themselves in order to cut off from what is being done to them. According to Mathieu, the only disadvantage

of these corporal punishments is that the men become infantilised as it reminds them of when they used to get slapped on the face or beaten up as

Sartre’s War (June 1940-1945) 121

children, and by the same token the authorities become identified with the law of the father. Good and Evil are drawn up by the Germans and deviated into what is allowed and what is forbidden in terms of the camp rules. In the entry for 16 September 1940, the narrator starts questioning his — role as a witness of others and of himself. He then analyses his life before the war and since then, concluding: ‘T reread these pages with a smile: still lucidity. Supreme cowardice of lucidity: it’s an alibi, understanding everything in order to do nothing; to analyse oneself in order to be two people. Mathieu’s diary or the prosecution of lucidity by itself. It is a vicious circle, Iam going to bed’ (1982b: 464).'* The writing act is questioned, as a smoke screen for inaction. There are no more entries for a whole month and the next one reads: ‘One should be passionate,’ which the narrator questions

the very next day by wondering with what he could be passionate, concluding that it is the secret dream of lucidity: finding good reasons to be blind. He then debates moral questions before concluding that he should be modest. He is a prisoner, there is nothing to do except endure his condition without cowardice or bad faith and by enlightening others — if possible. And then he decides that this is what he has always done; that it is an easy task for him: ‘There is a leap to make. Not belonging to me any longer, being no longer predictable, not recognising myself any longer’ (1982b: 466). Though bearing in mind that this is a fictional account, there is also some self-reflection in Mathieu's diary as if the past status quo is no longer acceptable. Some of the questioning echoes the search for authenticity at the end of the Phoney War period. There is also a valuable account of life in the camp captured in the following sentence: ‘The paradox of our condition is that it is both unliveable and easy to live’ (1982b: 469). In parallel, there is a significant shift in terms of Sartre’s interaction with other men. But is this shift for the better? During the Phoney War,

Pieter was constantly putting Sartre in his place and puncturing his grandiose sense of self. Here things are different. Whom is Sartre friendly with? Aside from Perrin, Sartre’s best friends at the camp are Marc Bénard (a journalist and painter), Paul Feller (a Jesuit priest), father Henry Leroy, and two more priests: Etchegoyen and Boisselot. Beauvoir asked Sartre why he had befriended so many priests, and he replied it was because they were intellectuals (1981: A, 263). He felt more able to talk to them than to the farmers since they thought about the same things as he did (1981: A, 437). But he confided to Pouillon during his autobiographical film that it was a remnant of elitism (1976b: 49). Sartre starts to give them some lectures and is rewarded by ‘gourmet’ meals (1983b**: QMW, 243). He is almost holding court. According to Perrin, the first time his barracks invites him for a meal, there follows a long monologue of Sartre throughout the meal. Sartre derives a special status, and therefore power, as an intellectual but also in terms of personal interaction; because he can be rude as well as generous, other men are wary of

him and therefore keep a certain distance. By November 1940, Sartre is

122 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

asked to organise a sort of people’s university; the project interests him (1983b**: QMW, 245). His life carries on along the same line; he is still giv-

ing philosophy lectures to his priests (a three hours daily lecture) and has become a sort of spiritual director for many, something he sees as a necessity (1983b™*: QMW, 246).

In 1974, Beauvoir wonders how Sartre could live exclusively with men and yet not feel contempt, disgust, solitude or withdrawal. Sartre explains that he perhaps withdrew in as much as he thought of things they did not

think about and he did not share it with them, but he insists that in the evening for example he was entirely with them: ‘I'd tell stories, I’d sit at a table in the middle of the hut and talk and they were very much amused. I told them any old crap, playing the fool’ (1981: A, 264). There is something slightly condescending in Sartre’s tone. One can denote the pattern set in his late teens of obtaining his masculine status by being the court jester. It is also reminiscent of Le Havre when he used to spend time with his students in a

café, talking to them about the latest film or the latest novels. Sartre now looks back at his experience with some cynicism. He was pleased with him-

self when he used to tell stories in the barracks or play the funny man at night after the lights were switched off, whilst the others were all lying down: ‘I had taken on a kind of personal importance. I was the fellow who amused them, who interested them’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 354). This experience

brings a real contradiction to Sartre’s experience at La Rochelle: the deep relationships between men are not necessarily based on violence. I would not necessarily agree with Hollier who pinpoints the Liberation as a time when Sartre experienced for the first time the group-in-fusion: ‘the irruption in a public space of a collective self-consciousness or even ... the collectivisation of self-consciousness’ (1986: 30). I would contend that Sartre experiences it in the prisoner of war camp. As he analyses the situation of telling stories to the other prisoners at night, Sartre tells Beauvoir

that it is linked to freedom. She does not grasp immediately the link between the two, so Sartre explains: ‘It was I who united the men who listened, who were interested, who laughed. It was a synthetic unit, and in this unit I committed my freedom’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 354). Later on, when

she does not understand how the situation in the prisoner of war camp made Sartre discover class war, he explains that a whole society was operating, a society with classes and series (1981: A, 390). For the first time perhaps, Sartre can glimpse how he could combine his personal philosophy and politics. This will culminate with the decision to write a play, Bariona, in which he will also play the role of one of the Three Wise Men, King Balthazar, when it is performed at Christmas 1940 in front

of his fellow prisoners. Beauvoir records that the warmth of friendship untied the knots of Sartre’s anti-humanism (1963, I: 17). Sartre believes he has talent as a playwright and that when the war is over he will write plays (1983b**: QMW, 245). What did Bariona mean to him? In a lecture given in 1946 in the United States, he talks about addressing his friends, talking to

Sartre’s War (June 1940-1945) 123

them about their situation as prisoners. He refers to them as ‘comrades’. Seeing them so attentive and silent, he understood what theatre should be: a great religious and collective phenomenon (1973: 62). Sartre is still using his subjectivity as a writer, but he is combining it in order to become politically committed and this will prove very effective. Such a combination | will make Sartre a formidable force in the decades to come. Bariona announces some of Sartre’s philosophical ideas subsequently developed with the character of Orestes in Les Mouches. Bariona points out

that he is a free man and that God has no power over him; he states that man’s dignity is in his despair (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 603). In 1968, Sartre pointed out that he gave Bariona existentialist credentials by refusing to have him commit suicide and by making him fight (1973: 221). He also states that the play was not very good because it was full of mini-lec-

tures. At times the language is pretty obscure and one wonders what some of the prisoners would have made of it. Sartre’s early experiences of the theatre could be influenced by his grandiose sense of self and by his

comic book hero Pardaillan. An heroic warrior stands alone against all odds, is persuaded that he is right, and takes on everyone around him. Beauvoir also makes a connection with Sartre’s childhood and Pardaillan. She believes that Sartre liked to have a hero in a lot of his plays, a man that accomplishes extraordinary actions (Sartre 1979c: 327). As ensconced as he was in his role, Sartre did not spend the rest of the war as a prisoner. He left the camp in March 1941. Perrin wrote a false cer-

tificate about his wall-eyed condition on some official headed paper he had managed to steal. It stated that a commission of doctors had found him ‘unfit’ (Perrin 1980: 74). Sartre was taken to Drancy by train and put into a barracks; he was set free two weeks later. Sartre explained to Gerassi in 1973 that he did not particularly want to escape but he told himself: ‘It is necessary to be in on it’ [Il le faut, pour étre dans le coup] (1981: lvi). Elkaim-Sartre notes that, because of his eye, Sartre was in fact unfit for military service, let alone to go to war; some people with similar conditions were declared unfit. But she remarks how hurt he was by this disability and that he chose to ignore it (1995: 149, n. 1). Had he chosen to put forward his medical condition, he would never have been mobilised when war broke out. It seems appropriate at this juncture to try and synthesise Sartre’s war experience. And what comes to mind is a statement Sartre made on the occasion of his seventieth birthday: I was quite comfortably ensconced in my situation as an individualist, anti-bourgeois writer. What exploded all that was the fact that one fine day in September

1939 I received a call-up paper, and was obliged to go off to the barracks at Nancy to meet fellows I didn’t know who’d been called up like me. That’s what introduced the social into my life ... Up till then I believed myself sovereign; I had to encounter the negation of my own freedom - through being mobilised —

124 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

in order to become aware of the weight of the world and my links with all those other fellows and their links with me. The war really divided my life in two. It began when I was thirty-four and ended when I was forty and that really was the passage from youth to maturity. At the same time, the war revealed to me certain aspects of myself and the world ... You might say that in it I passed from the individualism, the pure individual, of before the war to the social and to socialism. That was the real turning point of my life. (1976a: SIS, 80-81)

This echoes the phrase: “I have attained the age of reason” (Sartre 1983b*: WML, 422) cited at the end of the last chapter. Sartre was thirty-four when the war broke out and forty when it ended. How did these changes manifest themselves? Already, Sartre had come back on leave and famously told Beauvoir that from now on he would be engaged in politics (Beauvoir 1960: 492). When Sartre was still in Drancy waiting to be set free, he said that he was going to take up politics (Beauvoir 1981: A, 390). He has discovered a social world, and he now accepts that he is shaped by society. He wants to create a resistance group to try to win over the majority to resistance and to overthrow the Germans.’© He writes: ‘As for politics, don’t worry, I will go alone in this fight, I shan’t follow anybody, and those who want to follow me will follow me’ (Beauvoir 1960: 493).”” By the time he gets back to Paris, Sartre is ready to conquer the

world of letters, and of politics, determined to lead from the front. His grandiose self is used in a positive light towards this goal. It takes a lot of courage (and some madness) for a wall-eyed philosopher to decide that the mighty German war machine might be defeated and that politically the French Resistance would be significant. Militarily, the combined efforts

of the Russians, United States and Britain were to defeat the Germans rather than the Resistance.

With the help of others, Sartre founded a political movement called ‘Socialism and Freedom’ in March 1941. He even wrote a draft constitution where Jewish people would have specific rights. At the time, Sartre could not have joined the French Communist Party because they were not in the Resistance — the Hitler-Stalin Pact was still in force and the French Communist Party, though illegal, did not oppose the French Vichy government.

Later, when they entered the Resistance and Sartre contacted them through some common friends, the reply came back that Sartre was not to be trusted. They believed he ‘had been sent back by the Germans to carry out Nazi propaganda among the French under the pretence of resistance’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 391) and would not work with him under any circumstances. ‘Socialism and Freedom’ collapsed in the autumn of 1941 when Sartre went back to teach philosophy in Paris at the Lycée Condorcet. He also concentrated on writing Les Mouches; Beauvoir notes in her memoirs that it represented the only form of resistance available to Sartre. Les Mouches was published in April 1943. Sartre exposes — amongst other things — what he understood by authenticity through the character of

Sartre’s War (June 1940-1945) 125

Orestes but I will concentrate on the ending of the play. In Bariona, the ‘hero’ refuses to be a leader because his people have doubted him. Eventually, they come back to him and he will accept leading them once again into a final flurry. Whilst relating his unhappy childhood in La Rochelle in his war diaries, Sartre confides that the hero of his dreams leaves, not in order to flee men definitely, but with the certitude that men will one day go down on their knees to him (1995: WD, 322). Sartre could be taking textual revenge with Bariona. In Les Mouches, Orestes refuses the throne that Jupiter wants to give him because he would be taking on their guilt too. And he also leaves his people. Some secondary literature has concentrated on the fact that Sartre is still exposing the theory of man alone, as in La Nausée. There is little doubt that the people of Argos will give in to guilt, influenced by Jupiter and Electra, and that Orestes needs to stay in order to help his people achieve their freedom. But Sartre is also not succumbing to the temptations of grandiosity. As he concludes, each man must find his own path. It appears that, at least in the play, the question of the individ-

ual and the collective is still finely balanced. :

In 1943, through a communist Sartre had met in Tréves named Billet, the Communist Party approached Sartre and asked him to be part of a group.

He became a member of the C.N.E. ‘National Committee of Writers’

[Comité national des écrivains]. He wrote articles for a clandestine publication, and notably an article against a collaborator, Drieu la Rochelle (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 650-52). During the Liberation, the C.N.E. was asked

together with some actors to defend the Comédie-Frangaise, the French

National Theatre, with one gun to share between all of them. Camus reports Sartre falling asleep in one of the armchairs whilst he was supposed to be on watch... Up to 1945, in three years, Sartre wrote two plays, a lengthy philosophical treatise, four articles (on Camus, Blanchot, Bataille and Brice Parain), two film scripts as well as teaching full-time (1981: 1868). During the Phoney War, Sartre was able to look at his life and to start reflecting by means of his writing, mainly his war diaries. The resulting self-analysis allowed him to get in touch with a more inclusive sense of self (hence his search for authenticity) and to condemn some of his own behaviour and his past stoic stance. After being made a prisoner of war, he writes in July 1940: ‘I’m neither stoical nor authentic but under lock and key ...’ (1983b**: QMW, 235).

For Hoare, the fact that nine of Sartre’s fourteen completed war diaries were lost is ‘surely one of the great intellectual losses of the kind in our century’ (1995: WD, XV). One anticipates in the surviving war diaries: L’Etre et le néant; Sartre as a playwright; Sartre as the engaged or committed social thinker (Cf Les Temps Modernes); as a biographer (L’Idiot de la Famille); as an autobiographer (Les Mots), and — I would add — as a moral thinker (Cahiers pour une morale). As the translator of Sartre’s diaries into English, Hoare is in

the unique position of having acquainted himself intimately with these writ-

126 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

ings, commenting: ‘multi-faceted and diverse as they are, they are unmistakably unified by a profound sense of a total human project in process of formation’ (1995: WD, x-xi). The impact of the Second World War is captured by Qu’est-ce que la littérature?: ‘Brutally reintegrated in history, we were cornered to produce a literature based on historicity’ (1948c: 260).

Once the war is over, Sartre will become intellectually hegemonic in the

late forties in France, and throughout much of the fifties, founding Les Temps Modernes in October 1945. This intellectual domination has been well documented.'® What has not been written about is the fact that, if on the surface Sartre goes from individualism to the collective and to committed literature, this is underpinned by profound emotional turbulences whose keys lie in his childhood and which can be witnessed in the writ-

ings he produced at the time. Sartre stated that authenticity could be achieved if the present sense of self is questioned, but he admitted readily that he was dependent on his desire to write. Hence ultimately, this project

is not pursued to its conclusion. And Pacaly makes the point that, although Sartre analyses the war as a cutting point in his life where he questions his representation of a writer, his conscious transformation does not necessarily mean that his deep psychic structure is also changed. Quoting his autobiographical writings, she demonstrates that behind Sartre’s wish to be a writer is a narcissistic desire for omnipotence. The person who can now aspire to admiration is a historical hero — Mathieu in the planned ending of Les Chemins de la liberté (Pacaly 1980: 197).

Sartre wishes to become politically hegemonic by combining his personal philosophy and politics. He will become a political Pardaillan, fusing his grandiose self, his masculinities and politics (this will be examined in the last two chapters). In the committed manifesto published in 1948, Qu’est-ce que la littérature, Sartre — quoting Parain — talks about words as

loaded guns; to speak is to shoot (1948c: 31). Sartre has made a political shift, but the shift is not complete, as yet. Meanwhile, in order to gain a better understanding of Sartre’s character traits, [need to stay with the period presently under study and to explore more fully within this time span the one relationship that has been paramount to Sartre during all these years, so paramount that it deserves a separate study, that between himself and Beauvoir.

Notes 1. The title is the same as that used for the third volume of Les Chemins de Ia liberteé. 2. Sartre confided to Contat in 1972 that whilst he wrote the diary without any intention to use fiction, he may well have invented some of the characters: ‘When a novelist writes in order to describe personal reminiscences, he also imagines them since he always more or less imagines the real’, (1981: 2133).

Sartre’s War (June 1940-1945) 127

3. ‘Heroic’ is indeed ironic as Mathieu is actually in bad faith, compensating for his own failures and earlier lack of commitment. 4. Inthe ‘Journal de Mathieu’, the main narrator kicks Bunoust under the table in order to avoid a two-hour-long argument about politics (Sartre 1982b: 473). 5. Sartre will narrate his capture again in L’Idiot de la famille, I, (1971: 666) stating that he flipped in the world of the imaginary because he could not respond adequately to the situation; hence his environment became unreal too. 6. Inasimilar vein, on learning that he is mobilised, Mathieu, in Le Sursis, decides that he will delay by twenty-four hours rallying Nancy so that he can see Gomez in Marseille — in stark contrast to Sartre’s almost over-keenness to go to the train station as discussed at the beginning of the last chapter. 7. Inan article published in Lettres francaises in 1944 and reprinted in Les Temps Modernes in 2000, Sartre argues that only cinema can show the masses (2000: 2). Sartre wrote a film script during the winter 1943-1944 called ‘Résistance’, also printed in the same issue. 8. This is inspired by Heidegger’s notion of a being-for-death. 9. Sartre will develop the concept of the serialised masses in Critique de la raison dialectique (1960a).

10. The Self-Taught man in La Nausée relates his experience of the First World War as a pris-

oner and tells Roquentin that when it rained, they made them enter a huge wooden hangar, where about two hundred of them pressed against each other in almost total darkness: ‘At that moment I felt I loved those men like brothers, I would have liked to kiss them all’ (1938: 165). As Hollier puts it, ‘the novel precedes the real that it was intent

on following, and the real is, as a result, no longer anything but the copy of the novel with which it wanted to break’ (1986: 174-75). 11. This is the very orientation he took with Nizan at the Ecole Normale, which is reflected in some of the characters of the Ecrits de jeunesse. 12. For the planned fourth volume, he was supposed to take a hand grenade and blow himself up at a meeting with important German dignitaries once the Germans had killed his lover Philippe. 13. Although this is still a fictional account rather than Sartre writing in his war diaries. 14. Idt points out that lucidity is a theme in Gide (1979: 89). 15. Iam aware that Bariona had to be obscure in terms of its interpretation in order to hide its political message from the camp authorities. Nevertheless, Sartre’s language is couched in mystical terms. This is something Sartre readily admitted with hindsight and one of the main reasons why he did not subsequently publish the play (1973: 221). By contrast, the style in La Mort dans l‘ame will be very realist and popular. 16. Reflecting on this in Sartre par lui-méme, he calls it rather naive (1976b: SBH, 50). 17. This is indeed the stance that Sartre will take as can be seen from Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (1948c: 318-19).

18. See for example Boschetti (1985), and recently Galster (2001).

Chapter 7

SARTRE AND BEAUVOIR

Asked how different Sartre was from the others when she met him, Beauvoir replies: ‘I think that he was the dirtiest, the most poorly dressed, and I also think the ugliest’ (1976b: SBH, 22). The bond between Sartre and Beauvoir lasted from the moment they met in July 1929 until Sartre’s death in April 1980. Much has been written about their intellectual dialogue, their existentialist views and their political commitment. They were innovatory in trying to invent a new version of being a couple, away from traditional bourgeois society. They did not get married, never lived in the same house, and were not monogamous. Beauvoir did not have children, and they were financially independent of each other — though they helped each other at different times. What happened during the war? Sartre and Beauvoir will be separated from 2 September 1939 until the end of March 1941 except for two periods of leave for Sartre and two occasions when Beauvoir will go and visit him in Alsace. Beauvoir remarks in her war diaries that without the war she would never really have known Sartre’s love for her, which he expresses in the daily letters he writes to her, nor would she have given herself to her love for him with such sweetness for, looking back, she feels that she was hardening (1990b: 203). One of the most important aspects of their relationship is the fact that they were intellectual equals and that their own mutual intellectual excitement and stimulation lasted all their life. They read each other’s work as first drafts and took account of each other’s criticisms. This is supported

by evidence from their letters and war diaries. Beauvoir is the first to encourage Sartre as she reads in his war diaries in embryo state some philosophical ideas eventually published in L’Etre et le néant; at the time, he was writing fiction (1990a*: LTS, 122). She writes in her war journal

because Sartre said he found it interesting when he read what she had Notes for this chapter begin on page 141.

Sartre and Beauvoir 129

written (1990a*: LTS, 169). As she is drafting what will become her novel, L’Invitée, Beauvoir makes clear that, although she has reworked it a lot and

she thinks it is good, she is waiting to know what Sartre makes of it (1990a*: LTS, 233). Finally, as soon as Sartre shares with Beauvoir during

his leave that he will be actively involved in politics after the war, she

replies that she will be too (Beauvoir 1960: 492). |

Sartre is keen to know what Beauvoir thinks about his war diaries

(1983b*: WML, 398). He also listens to her advice about his novel, even encouraging her to be severe with him (1983b™*: 124). For instance she tells

him that the character of Marcelle does not work and needs fleshing out, something he applies himself to. After writing the first version of his play La Putain respectueuse, Beauvoir told him that he should start again, which he did (Sartre 1979c: 325). In an interview, Sartre’s specific debt in relation

to La Nausée is acknowledged; Sartre’s first draft was a very dry philosophical meditation and Beauvoir suggested he transform it into a novel. She in turn talks about Sartre’s encouragement for Le deuxiéme sexe and for La Vieillesse, I and If. The ultimate statement has to be when Sartre tells

Beauvoir that she has carte blanche to cross out, erase, or strike anything she likes over the manuscript of L’Age de raison (1983b**: QMW, 165). All the above constitutes evidence from Sartre and Beauvoir’s own writings of

their intellectual exchange and respect for each other. Looking back on this aspect of their relationship during their conversations in 1974, Sartre recognises that Beauvoir did him a great favour by giving him confidence in himself that he would not have had otherwise; once she said that something was good, Sartre did not care what critics thought of it (1981: 218). And in the film Sartre par lui-méme, they make plain that this interaction lasted all their life (1976b: SBH, 90).

By demonstrating the intellectual dimension of Sartre and Beauvoir’s relationship, I do not want to undermine the passion between them. Sartre tells Beauvoir: ‘I love you, my love, my little dearest, I love you passionately’ (1983b*: WML, 366). And Beauvoir says that Sartre’s letters are so tender she feels overwhelmed with passion for him (1990a*: LTS, 81).

Although their own sexual relationship fizzled out, it clearly was an important element at the beginning of their relationship. Lamblin reports that when she met Beauvoir in 1938, her sexual relationship with Sartre had more or less stopped; the reason given is that Sartre preferred sexual relationships with new women or with young girls (1993: 40). The famous pact elaborated by Sartre was that their love was necessary, but they could also have contingent relationships with others (a philosophical sleight of hand!). With the publication of Beauvoir’s posthumously published writings, we now know that she was bisexual and that she had lovers — whilst during their life together, it was mostly Sartre’s flings with women which were common knowledge.' At the time of mobilisation, Beauvoir sleeps with one female (Védrine whose name was Bianca Bienen-

feld and whose married name subsequently became Lamblin) and two

130 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

males (Sartre and Bost — she started sleeping with the latter on 24 July 1938);

Sorokine is soon to be added to the list. Sartre sleeps with four females (Beauvoir, Bourdin, Védrine, Wanda). The debate still rages as to whether they achieved a new form of living as a partnership or perpetuated bourgeois patriarchy (Le Doeuff 1989) but I am not interested in joining in this debate.” I will also leave philosophical considerations until the next chapter after stating Sartre’s basic premise. Sartre argues in L’Eire et le néant about the impossibility of love; fundamental relations with others at a sexual level are either sadistic or masochistic, or based on hatred. Iam interested in the submerged part of the iceberg constituted by their attraction to and faith in each other. If we put aside all the public debates surrounding their relationship, there was a deep, perhaps unconscious

bond between them that kept them together, a bond that I propose to explore. Because this book concentrates on Sartre, I will not be exploring the relationship from Beauvoir’s point of view. However, I was surprised to find that the framework I uncovered for Sartre seems to work equally for Beauvoir. I will therefore provide quotations from Beauvoir’s own cor-

respondence and war diaries to show that there is a parallel process at work.’ This could be one of the reasons why the relationship lasted throughout their life; they gave reciprocally to each other.

In his relationships at the Ecole Normale with Nizan, Guille, and Maheu, Sartre was possibly looking for the same thing. I argued in relation to Nizan that one could talk about a narcissistic transference, also called self-object function. It indicates ‘the experience of another person as part of the self in which that other person provides necessary functions for self-

cohesion’ (Breshgold and Zahm 1992: 64). Narcissistic transferences involve idealising, mirroring, merger, and twinship transference. Examples of these can be found in Sartre and Beauvoir’s correspondence, mostly written during the war but also in the thirties and late forties, but to a lesser extent for twinship transference.* I shall be quoting in direct style more frequently than in the rest of the book in order to try and recreate a form of dialogue between them that reflects their correspondence. Merger is ‘where the individual achieves a sense of security and worth through fusion’ (Johnson 1994: 46); here the individual will freely use the

other without recognising the actual self-other boundary. Beauvoir declares: ‘You’re my life, my happiness and my self. You are everything for me’ (1990a*: LTS, 83; my emphasis), culminating with ‘It’s myself I will be rediscovering when I rediscover you’ (1990a™*: LTS, 334). Sartre writes:

‘My love, we are simply one, despite the distance, and that gives me a , great deal of strength ... I know that I’m attached to you with all my soul’ (1983b*: WML, 232-33), and after his leave during the war, he is keen to establish that they were as one (1983b*: WML, 327). He also talks about fusion: “... it seemed as though as I was telling you my every thought, or

rather that you were thinking it along with me ... I was imagining two consciousnesses melted into one ...’ (1983b*: WML, 122), as does Beauvoir

Sartre and Beauvoir 131

in her war diaries where she says she is afraid of no other relationship of Sartre’s: ‘I am again merged with him, on my own with him’ (1990b: 203). If in 1937, Sartre writes to Beauvoir that he loves her dearly but as a person who is not him (1983b*: WML, 122), by 1939, she has become ‘my dear little you who are me’ (1983b*: 501). Crucially, she also has the capacity to

make Sartre recover his sense of self: ‘... I know that seeing you I’ll come back to myself somewhat’ (1983b*: WML, 129).

Beauvoir has written to Sartre to tell him she would not survive him if he died. This is his reply: ‘It would be the ultimate cleansing, as though the two ends of the severed worm were annihilated ... The fact is, in any case, I’ve never felt so intently that you are me’ (1983b*: WML, 241-42). And the

message is repeated again and again: ‘I love you, you who are me [vous autre moi], most passionately’ (1983b*: WML, 252); ‘I love you with all my might, my little heart, you are me, you are my life’ (1983b*: WML, 369). Mirroring is ‘where the individual relates to the other solely as one who enhances self-esteem’ Johnson 1994: 46). Sartre: In your last letter, you explain how much I am within you. But you are within me too. Or rather, you are on the horizon of my every thought. Everything I think or feel or write is for you. Even my novel and my journal, which other people will eventually see, are first for you, and only through you for others. You are like the objectivity of this world that surrounds me, and that otherwise would be only mine but is instead ours. You are there all the time. (1983b*: WML, 318)

This is a classic illustration of the self-object function. Idealisation is ‘where the other enhances self-cohesion and esteem by being perfect in one or more respects and serving as a source of emulation’ Johnson 1994: 46); idealisation may also serve to create the illusion of the perfect merger, twinship, or mirroring object. In 1947, Beauvoir is in New York. She confides in Sartre: ‘You see, more than the Liberation, more than my journey to New York, it’s you every time who are the most astonishing experience in my life, and the strongest and the deepest and the truest. My

love, Iam so happy to feel you close at hand that it radiates across New York’ (1990a**: LTS, 452). Writing in July 1938 whilst Sartre is holidaying with one of his lovers, he tells Beauvoir: ‘I’d like to be with you, my love,

only you can give me the impression of living in a new present, O charm of my heart and my eyes, mainstay of my life, my consciousness and my reason. I love you most passionately, and I need you’ (1983b*: WML, 170). Sartre expresses similar feelings during the war: ‘My love, you are always my conscience, my witness ... I cannot be separated from you, because you are the very consistency [Ja consistance] of my being’ (1983b*: WML, 256); and in 1940: ‘I won't tell you that you are perfect because that irritates you ... but you are what I know best in every way, all that I love you have and you have it best’ (1983b**: QMW, 55).

It may be interpreted as paradoxical that, within such intimacy, Sartre and Beauvoir used the formal form of address ‘vous’ with each other all

132 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

their life rather than the more familiar ‘tu’. This form of address is essentially a class phenomenon. And yet it also shows that they were able to be

intimate with each other using formal language. Beauvoir was called Beaver [Le Castor] by Sartre, a nickname first coined by René Maheu; beavers are supposed to be resilient and hard working. Sartre used it all his life. Le Castor is also a woman declined with a masculine gender. In his study of their correspondence, Buisine found only one example of ‘castor’ declined in the feminine (1984: 195). We now need to stand back from such a firework display of love. Kohut

argues that twinship transference is somewhat ‘more evolved developmentally than the merger transference’ Johnson 1994: 167) since the sepa-

rateness from another human being is actually acknowledged. And it is revealing that there are more instances of merger transference. Beauvoir remarks that had the war not happened, she would have never known the depth of Sartre’s love for her nor hers for him.° Could there be some idealisation because they are apart? In L’Imaginaire, Sartre explains how when

you love someone, something of that person escapes you. But if you are apart, whilst your love is diminished, it also becomes a lot easier since we mould the unreal object of love according to our desires much more than when we interact face to face (1940: 280). Sartre talks about the importance of receiving letters from the loved one, not so much for the news they con-

tain, but because they are a concrete sign of the other’s presence through the paper, their handwriting, their smell (1940: 279-80). Sartre’s life is somehow full and fulfilled by Beauvoir, and empty without: ‘Oh, my love, how I love you, how I need you’ (1983b*: WML, 229). Sartre is going against the grain by owning up to his neediness and to the tenderness that

he had suppressed earlier in his life. With hindsight, Beauvoir seems aware of Sartre’s needs when she explains in a letter to Algren, one of her lovers, that she cannot leave Sartre because he needs her: ‘In fact he is very lonely, very tormented inside himself, very restless’ (Fallaize 1999: 61).° Before getting too carried away by romance, one must not forget that

Sartre — who started the war with four female lovers — still has two.

Although he solemnly declares to Beauvoir in 1939: ‘This war has bromised [bromuré] my infamous desire for flirtations that you used to see. As I say, there is no one but you, and I contemplate nothing but that when I think of peace’ (1983b*: WML, 419), he admits that to be truthful, when Wanda (called “T.’ in the letters) is very nice to him, he can feel tenderly towards her. Sartre pushes emotional honesty to the limits when he shares with Beauvoir: ‘I tell you that this war makes a person more harshly and

clearly aware of hierarchies. There is no one but you, my dear little one (right now I’m going to write to T. that I love her passionately, which sickens me somewhat)’ (1983b*: WML, 432).

When Sartre comes on leave, there is a subtle juggling act; he wants to spend secret time with Beauvoir that Wanda does not know about. This

will involve them moving to a hotel in a different area of Paris. If they

Sartre and Beauvoir 133

want to do their favourite walk, they will need to get up at the crack of dawn so that they cannot be seen. Beauvoir will lie to the women in her life

by telling them she is going away for a few days to visit her sister and Sartre is not telling his parents either. As seen in chapter four, Sartre’s crisis appears to have started when he was doing his military service and he touched on some despair. It seems as if every time Sartre is ‘isolated’ from his milieu where he must have his ‘emotional props’, and where he is recognised, some kind of crisis occurs — he is prone to losing his sense of self. This is most in evidence during the war: ‘But the fact is that since I left, I’m cut off [je suis barré] from everything that made up my former life — alas, even writing - except for you [Beauvoir]’ (Sartre 1983b*: WML, 232-33). His grandiose self cannot be

sustained as efficiently as before, especially when writing stops. War brings external chaos and it seems as if Sartre needs the solidity of Beauvoir more than ever. One could almost talk of a symbiotic relationship: ‘Where merger idealization exists there are always etiological difficulties with the nurturing-holding functions of the original caregivers. The individual is still looking for the symbiosis that was either insufficient or prematurely lost’ johnson 1994: 169).

Sartre writes in his war diaries that since he was seventeen, he has always lived as part of a couple ‘without any inner life and without any secrets’. This has made him hard and transparent: ‘I had the impression, at

every instant, that my friends were reading my innermost self; that they could see my thoughts forming, even when they were still only bubbles in the dough; and that what was becoming clear to me was already clear to them’ (1995: WD, 271). Sartre tells Beauvoir in 1937: ‘I am all moist with

tenderness for you ... I never ceased feeling one with you deep inside’ (1983b*: WML, 122). This quotation describes the dissolving of boundaries between Sartre and Beauvoir, and Sartre’s softness (apart from the obvious sexual imagery). Sartre’s world with Beauvoir becomes a ‘we’; this echoes

his earlier relationship to Nizan, and before that his relationship to his mother before she remarried. There is a wish for fusion with another human being. By October 1939, Sartre and Beauvoir have been together for ten years. They call their relationship a morganatic marriage [mariage morganatique]

and Beauvoir is not averse to calling Sartre ‘my sweet little husband’ (1990a*: 22); he occasionally signs his letters ‘Your little husband’ (1983b*: WML, 418). Fallaize concludes that Sartre and Beauvoir address each other

in terms of a fantasised conjugality (1999: 56). Sartre is happy to renew their lease for another ten years: ‘My dearest, you’re the most perfect, the most intelligent, the best, the most passionate ... I feel altogether humble before your little self. I love you with all my heart, and you have never gone from all my thoughts’ (1983b*: WML, 280). He will also pay tribute to

Beauvoir’s role in helping him cope with the war: ‘Without you, my courage collapses. It’s because of you-there that I can go on. I really feel

134 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

that, without you, I wouldn’t have even the energy to write, everything would go to hell’ (1983b*: WML, 286). Sartre has two props, writing and Beauvoir. Since writing is linked to his subjectivity and therefore to his sense of self, then in some ways, so is Beauvoir. Is Sartre’s interaction with Beauvoir supporting the changes witnessed

in the previous two chapters or, on the contrary, is it hindering those changes? Does Beauvoir help Sartre discover a more inclusive sense of self, does she simply aggrandise his compromised sense of self, or a mixture of both? Johnson argues that the narcissist’s healing comes when he turns to use others once again for the purpose of discovering and strengthening his self (1994: 162), observing that initially this creates a more dependent position. This could be what is happening with Beauvoitr. When Beauvoir first offered her love to Sartre in 1929, he went into a crisis, feeling unable to commit himself. I can now revisit his response and argue that he probably reacted the way he did because Beauvoir’s commitment frightened him; he most likely felt that he would be engulfed. Sartre was not prepared for this deep emotional turmoil. In terms of mas-

culinity, male gender identity can often be threatened by intimacy and dependency (Seidler 1991: 98). But Sartre has evolved considerably on this issue aS We Saw above.

‘Everything I live through is lived through in order to tell you about it’ (Beauvoir 1990a*: LTS, 71); never were words spoken with more veracity. Sartre and Beauvoir appear to share everything about their sex life and to believe in transparency. When Beauvoir is in bed with Védrine, Sartre gets the following description in a missive: ‘We went up to my room and petted one another a bit — as much as possible, actually — but I was cold as a log’ (1990a*: LTS, 77). At times she compares herself to Sartre and even embodies him: ‘We woke up at about 8.30, and like a satisfied man I discreetly avoided her caresses. I wanted to have breakfast and work (I feel I can get right into

your skin at such moments) [il me semble entrer dans votre peau dans ces moments-la] (1990a*: LTS, 218). Beauvoir calls Sartre’s letters her daily bread and Fallaize points to the religious overtone used by Beauvoir (1999: 57).

Sartre does not exactly hold back either on the subject of his conquests.

His progress in his relationship with Bourdin is reported to Beauvoir (1983b: WML, 151).” Later he writes to her that he told Bourdin he was in love with her but that there was no place for her in his life, having briefed her about both Beauvoir but also about ‘Tania’ (Wanda) (1983b: WML, 153-54). Beauvoir is given intricate details about their petting: “Yesterday I kissed that fiery girl, who pumped my tongue with the force of a vacuum cleaner (it still hurts)’ (1983b: WML, 151). A few pages later, he describes when they are in bed together (‘At first her slightly violent sensuality and her legs that prickle like a man’s badly shaved chin surprised me a bit, and half disgusted me. But once you get used to it, it’s rather powerful’ (1983b: WML, 155)). He describes how he refused to have sexual intercourse with Bourdin,® and then how he did: ‘She wanted to give me her virginity. I’m

Sartre and Beauvoir 135

not quite sure whether I took it or not ... in any case it seemed like a profoundly difficult and disagreeable task’ (1983b: WML, 156).

Doubrovsky notes that Sartre reserves his passion and sexuality for other women, whilst there is only one indifferent allusion to a sexual relationship between himself and Beauvoir. Doubrovsky’s contention is that he keeps Beauvoir at a distance, which allows him not to feel threatened by engulfment: ‘She is the non-viscous woman. In a radical sharing, he devotes to other women the “passionate” and the “marvellous” ... sexual-

ity’ (Doubrovsky 1986: 129). In return, he shares with her all his erotic | adventures but beyond the normal code of confidentiality, which results in Beauvoir enjoying the female bodies that Sartre describes to her, by proxy.’ Buisine demonstrates how Sartre’s jouissance is only ever fulfilled when he narrates it to Beauvoir: ‘One only goes to bed to then be able to put oneself down in a letter’ (Doubrovsky 1986: 131). Beauvoir’s mirroring of Sartre also feeds his grandiosity, and therefore his compromised sense of self. Sartre is made to feel not just special but unique:

‘Iam happy whenever I go and see someone new -— but at once disappointed, since the pleasure I’m hoping for from them is that which you alone

can give me. I’m mutilated without you, my love ... In the whole world, there’s only you who counts for me’ (1990a*: LTS, 81). Such statements must

have counteracted Sartre’s feeling of contingency whilst feeding his grandiosity. Elsewhere, she will refer to Sartre as the essential, undefined condition of her own life (1990a**: LTS, 315). Above all, Sartre is made to feel

special in love. Beauvoir tells him unequivocally about her pecking order; she cannot harbour tender feelings for Bost since her love for Sartre has ‘laid everything waste — a real tornado’, Sartre being the only person she feels passion for (1990a*: LTS, 95). Whilst talking about her relationship with Védrine, she claims to be growing hard [séche], and that only Sartre could make her melt (1990a*: LTS, 80). She tells him that his letters overwhelm her with passion. For him, she would be prepared to give up everything: My love, what you say about how, together, we could be anywhere at all — that’s so true for me! Anywhere at all —there’s only you in the whole world who counts

for me. This has to be taken in the fullest sense: neither people, nor places — nothing matters in the least to me. I'd restart a life with you by making a clean sweep of everything — Paris, money, everything — with joy. (1990a*: LTS, 156)

Sartre writes less categorically in May 1940 that if he contemplates a life where he would no longer be able to write, with material privations, but was with Beauvoir then he could still find happiness in it (1983b*™*: QMW, 237). For Beauvoir, this extends to her own life. She writes on 19 November 1940, that if she knew she would never see Sartre again, she would kill herself (1990b: 360). Which Sartre does Beauvoir love? Is it the version of Sartre with a more

inclusive sense of self or his compromised sense of self — including his grandiosity — or a combination of both? The only partial answer to this

136 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

question is to point to the fact Beauvoir thinks she has access to a version

of Sartre that is unique. She claims not to feel threatened by Wanda because ‘in her little consciousness, you [Sartre] are such an odd being, so different from the one I love’ (1990a*: LTS, 142-43). Beauvoir is really important for Sartre’s well being. He calls her: ‘my little self’ [mon petit moiméme]| (1983b*: 369). Sartre claims that in November 1939, Beauvoir had figured out he was depressed [déjeté] long before he did, concluding: ‘You seem to have a surer sense of me than I do’ (1983b*: WML, 417); this is precisely the point. When Beauvoir recognises him, Sartre feels that he can hold on to his sense of self. I noted in chapter four that after he had spent some time on holidays with his parents, he felt he had lost his self, writing to Beauvoir that it is when he sees her that he will come back to himself (1983b*: WML, 129). The latter holds the key to Sartre’s sense of self. Beauvoir is like a permanent witness. In Sartre’s Ecrits de Jeunesse, there is

a section called ‘L’Appel au maitre’ (1990: 232-33) belonging to the novel Une Défaite. It was written when Sartre was in his early twenties. The first person narrator, Frédéric, talks about needing a master. Because of his weakness, he feels he needs to escape from uncertainty. He imagines a spirit that

would know the truth of things, a sharp but indulgent spirit that would guide him gently but firmly. He recognises that he would rebel at the idea of being a disciple and suddenly understands that this call for a master is a call for a God. Digging deep within himself, he writes that no one can bear to feel for more than one instant that he is alone and inscrutable by others. He does not care about others being impenetrable but he wants to be scrutinised because all men need a witness. Some people invent a consciousness, others cannot think without saying what they think and try to be transparent to the

world. In all this, he sees God amongst men. There is an uncanny resem-

blance here with what Beauvoir will come to represent for Sartre, as expressed in their war correspondence. It is almost as if this idea of a permanent witness is a role that Beauvoir fulfilled for Sartre all her life. In the 1974 conversations, Sartre comes back to this idea of a God. He claims to live

beneath the consciousness of the other who watches him and that consciousness could be God or his friend Bost. It is a being that sees him, a being that is a benevolent judge (Beauvoir 1981: A, 283).

At times, Beauvoir appears to be some kind of cognitive moral barometer. In the correspondence, Sartre frequently refers to her as his little judge (1983b**: QMW, 87). Buisine talks about the ‘castorisation’ of Sartre by Beauvoir. What he means by the latter, apart from the obvious association with castration, is the fact that Sartre uses Beauvoir regularly as a judge in his correspondence (1984: 198). Very often, Sartre is only interested in what she thinks of his actions and whether she approves of them or not. He does not necessarily want her to agree with him: ‘Give me a good tongue-lashing if I deserve it, please’ (1983b**: QMW, 87), and specifies at the time of the Bourdin affair that he is not looking for absolution (1983b**: QMW, 74) but that from now on, he wants nothing but the pure (1983b**: QMW, 84).

Sartre and Beauvoir 137

When in November 1939 Sartre is upset because Blin is trying to seduce Wanda, he blames his crisis on the fact that he did not receive a letter from Beauvoir that day, arguing that had there been a letter from Beauvoir, he would not have given it a second thought, concluding: ‘But it was almost as though you had left me alone facing T.’ [Wanda] (1983b*: WML, 363).

Here Beauvoir seems to be carried in Sartre’s psyche and to give him strength by means of her daily letters — as a good object-relation. Alone, he cannot face the world, explaining: ‘A day without a letter from you creates a real little void; the day lacks your sanction’ (1983b*: WML, 433). And in

April 1940, he will tell Beauvoir that when he works on his novel, she is present like a strict little censor (1983b**: 162).1°

With the Bourdin affair in February 1940, Sartre is only interested in Beauvoir’s ‘judgement’. Martine Bourdin has talked about Sartre’s way of behaving in their sexual relationship, characterising him as obscene and sadistic. Wanda had heard about it and Sartre believes he is in danger of losing her. He writes to Beauvoir admitting his faults but what is paramount for him is to know what his little judge thinks (1983b**: QMW, 74). At times, he has to substitute himself for Beauvoir. When she is not around with him, he has to judge himself: ‘For who would judge me if not myself, when my little moral consciousness is not here?’ (1983b**: 180).” At one point, after a succession of effusive letters, Sartre is moved: ... all those individuals think of me. It brought a lump to my throat. And I found myself in a strange taste, moved, reproaching myself for being moved, not knowing what to do with that tender feeling and strongly suspecting it of being inauthentic and yet altogether delighted ... I write you in order to give you that little emotion, and in fact the only use of it I could see as authentic is to put it into a little burst of love for you. (1983b*: WML, 357)

This is a rather complicated thought process. Sartre is obviously moved and he defends himself against his vulnerability. This brings on a feeling of

tenderness he has long suppressed. He does not trust this feeling and accuses himself of being inauthentic. What appears to be happening is that he feels his emotion, and then questions it until he stops feeling it. This is a defence mechanism: he deflates his emotion by rationalising it. Perhaps

feeling cared for is likely to open up his narcissistic wound to the point where he would reconnect with some of his pain: here are people who think of him and care about him; he is loved. What is particularly interesting is that he feels like a bad object and needs to transfer his tender feeling onto Beauvoir whom he perceives as the good object; she somehow alone ‘deserves the emotion’. But this is not finished! Sartre is an expert at emotional recycling. He says he then took that emotion and put it in a letter to Wanda, ‘I reworked and literaried the fleeting emotion ... I pretended that it was of her that I was jealous, which holds up. It strikes me as a pitiful little sacrilege, and I relieve myself of it in confessing it to you’ (1983b: WML, 358; my emphasis). In a foot-

138 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

note he calls his gesture morally crass and yet he confesses it to Beauvoir (ear-

lier he had used the term absolution). It is almost as if he does not want to take responsibility for his action, and Beauvoir is left with the moral judgement. Sartre acts as if emotions are precious commodities that can be traded; in terms of masculinities Seidler notes: ‘It is as if our emotional exchanges have been transformed into exchanges between goods’ (1989: 149). Sartre explains: ‘I treat my feelings as ideas’ (1995: WD, 273). He tells Beauvoir he still cannot describe what a feeling is in his head (1983b™: 69). In an interview, Sartre expands on this saying that he does not communicate emotionally. He

communicates with people who think, who reflect, whilst Beauvoir communicates emotionally at once (Julienne-Caffié 1966: 39).

Sartre’s road towards authenticity is tortuous, especially on the subject

of women. When Wanda becomes furious because Bourdin has talked about Sartre’s mysticism for Beauvoir, he replies to her: “You well know that I’d walk all over everyone (even the Beaver) despite my “mysticism” to have a good relationship with you’ (1983b**: QMW, 75). ‘The end justi-

fies the means’ is Sartre’s subsequent explanation to Beauvoir. He is going to change and to stop having what he calls ‘vulgar little affairs’ and ‘big affairs undertaken lightly’ (1983b**: QMW, 76) — the implication being

that big affairs not undertaken lightly are acceptable. And he will keep Wanda because ... he is fond of her. A few pages later, Sartre concedes that,

although from now on he wants to be pure, it is regrettable that he needs to declare to Wanda that he loves her passionately and to lie to her about Beauvoir (1983b**: QMW, 84); he is going to stop his life of conquests! In May 1940, Sartre writes to Beauvoir. He prefaces that what he has done will not be very nice for Beauvoir (the art of understatement), though it is only a symbolic gesture. He has offered to marry Wanda since she is ill and

he is worried about her. Marriage should give him three days leave from the front (1983b**: QMW, 180). Beauvoir’s reply is one of the many controversial letters we do not have.’ What is remarkably candid about Sartre is the way he shows Beauvoir his contradictoriness. The next day he signs off his letter assuring Beauvoir that he loves her passionately, ‘always in the full sense of the term’ (1983b**: QMW, 185). Six days later, the marriage

is off; Wanda is not as sick as Sartre believed. Sartre tells Beauvoir in the last sentence of his letter that the two of them (Sartre and Beauvoir) are inseparable (1983b**: QMW, 193). And after all he has proclaimed about his seduction game being over, he mentions in passing a little springtime flirtation with Charlotte, the restaurant’s waitress, justifying himself thus in brackets: ‘(in war it’s permitted)’ (1983b™*: QMW, 213).

‘Iam only above board [propre] with you, and that doesn’t come from me, that comes from you, little paragon’ (1983b™*: 95). A paragon is a role

model. Sartre feels soiled in all his other relationships with women. Sartre’s choice of words ‘above board’ as in ‘clean’ brings up the image of

someone potty trained! In March 1940, Sartre tells Beauvoir that she should rub his nose into what he has done; otherwise she is no longer his

Sartre and Beauvoir 139

‘moral consciousness’ (1983b**: QMW, 89). It is as if Sartre feels like a naughty little boy, enjoys it, and expects Beauvoir to punish him. Beauvoir is being compared to a judge: ‘It’s as though you have a little seal and have to stamp everything I see’ (1983b**: QMW, 89). He then explains that this does not apply metaphysically because he does metaphysics by himself ‘like a grown-up’ but morally. In the next paragraph Sartre confides that he has started a process of self-reflection about his relationship to other people, but there again he is going to have to lie because Wanda will be reading his diaries... Sartre is undoubtedly infantilised by Beauvoir on certain occasions. By the same token, she casts herself as a maternal figure.’* There are many examples of Beauvoir calling Sartre ‘little’, even ‘little man’. The following is quite typical: ‘O littlest of all charms, little all-charm, little charm-all’ (1990a: LTS, 156). And at times, Sartre imagines Beauvoir calling him ‘little man’ with affection (1983b: WML, 201). Why does Beauvoir use such diminutive adjectives to refer to Sartre’ and Sartre occasionally to refer to Beauvoir (1983b*: WML, 283)? Does she need to infantilise him, or does she

think that he needs to feel infantilised by her? The way they handle conflict is also very revealing. In one of the letters, Beauvoir appears to be angry because Sartre has apparently not sent on books to Bost who is asking for them. Here is how she brings up the issue: ‘It’s naughty [vilain] ... send them quickly you little naughty, little selfish, little bad’ (1990b*™*: 28)! Sartre is definitely treated as a little boy and, on those occasions, Beauvoir does not express her anger cleanly but it is perhaps because she knows how she must address Sartre not to offend him...

At other times, as when Beauvoir reprimands Sartre for his letter to Védrine, there is much more of an adult tone: ‘And honestly, I don’t know

what got into your head. That letter, with its moral exhortations and protestations of esteem, was quite unacceptable’ (1990a™*: LTS, 279). It is as

if Beauvoir is protecting Sartre in the former example by asking him ‘nicely’ to send the books (or at least in a way that Sartre will accept) but anger gets the better of her in the second example. In a letter written in February 1940, Sartre tells Beauvoir that he fears his true image and what he is with Beauvoir is being soiled by all his shenanigans. But he reassures her. He does not lie to her, nor does he tell her halftruths: ‘My little one, my darling Beaver, I swear to you that with you I’m totally pure. If I were not, there would be nothing in the world before which I would not be a liar, I would lose my very self. My love, you are not only my life but also the only honesty of my life’ (1983b**: QMW, 88-89; my emphasis).

Beauvoir acts as the last bastion of Sartre’s integrity. It is not unlike the paradox of the liar; she allows Sartre to take his marks, and perhaps to feel better about himself for as long as he does not lie to her, he feels he can lie to everyone else. I am reminded of Sartre reportedly replying to Olivier Todd when asked how he managed with all the women around him that he lied to them all. Todd then asked if he lied even to Beauvoir and Sartre

140 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

replied that he lied especially to Beauvoir (Todd 1981: 117). On the other hand, during the interview with Catherine Chaine, when asked if he had ever not told Beauvoir the truth, Sartre replied by the negative (1977b: 83)! The fact that Sartre gave a contradictory reply to Todd and Chaine may well have to do with their gender. In 1937, Sartre reported to Beauvoir that he enjoys talking about her to young Bost, pretending that she terrorises him and that she is a woman of steel (1983b*: WML, 105). I did make the

point in the introduction that there were different ‘versions’ of Sartre according to the people he met. I believe that Sartre tended not to lie to | Beauvoir as a rule for the reasons highlighted above by Sartre himself, less by integrity than to secure his own sense of self.

Applying a Freudian framework, Doubrovsky argues that Beauvoir does not so much represent the mother figure as the Phallic mother, very close to a pre-oedipal Superego. Incorporating the father’s phallus, Beauvoir is more Sartre’s ego than himself since she is his Superego, she administers the Law; she is the supreme judge (1986: 130). This tallies with what I have argued above regarding the call for a master that is a call for a God in Sartre’s ‘L’Appel au maitre’, a role Beauvoir seems to fulfil, but also with all the instances I have highlighted when Sartre sets her up as a judge of his life. However, the most interesting aspect of Doubrovsky’s article is

the next stage of his argument. Sartre delegates to Beauvoir his moral authority with delight, because he lures her into sexual pleasure [jouissance]. In other words, ‘thanks to his writing strategy, the Ego slowly trans-

forms the Superego as a double, a voyeuristic alter ego, thanks to the fascinating excess of exhibitionism’ (1986: 132). Hence Beauvoir becomes at once Sartre’s judge but also his accomplice in jouissance. Doubrovsky

talks about an erotic harmony between them where Beauvoir is not an object but the other subject of his desire. This interpretation is very seductive but it does not appear to account for the whole dimension of the relationship as uncovered in this chapter. My contention is that Sartre could be trying to be authentic by sharing with Beauvoir any crass gestures he is capable of making, in order to see if when Beauvoir knows what he is ‘really’ like, she will still love him. This could explain why he tells Beauvoir that this is something totally new for him. Unlike in the past when he did crass things superficially, he now feels inside them (1983b**: QMW, 85); in other words he assumes responsibility for them. He wants these things and the end justifies the means. It is as if he starts a process of reintegration by owning these acts as being part of him. More and more of these ‘confessions’ from Sartre appear in 1939, and then in 1940. Sartre argues in his war diaries that to make oneself loved by someone is not to try and give them a flattering image of oneself: it is to ‘exist in safety in the midst of his freedom’ (1995: 259).

Sartre may be starting to feel the unreality and poverty of his present contact with others. Seidler points out that this cannot be changed simply by an act of will: ‘The first step could be to admit to ourselves and then to

Sartre and Beauvoir 141

others if we remain unmoved and untouched by others and feel that something is dead inside us’ (1989: 155; my emphasis). In chapter five, I noted Sartre saying: ‘Am I simply taking stock of myself, or is it that I hope to

slough off that hardened, slightly deadened personality along with the peace?’ (1983b*: WML, 487; my emphasis) and likened this interrogation to

a wish to shedding his compromised sense of self. The acceptance of a more inclusive sense of self cannot be done single-handed but with the support of a social context and with the input of others, hence the importance of Beauvoir for Sartre at that precise time. This is played out in Le Sursis between Daniel and Mathieu.'® Sartre learned that he could start to show a more inclusive sense of self without playing a role, and not be rejected.’” He is able to share some of his

vulnerabilities (his neediness), tenderness and shame. Behind the search for authenticity is a wish to stop playing the family comedy, to stop trying to give a flattering image of oneself and to be accepted for what one is. But things are not as clear-cut as I have just made out. As analysed above, Sartre writes candidly to Beauvoir that with her he is totally pure and that it allows him to lie to the whole world. It is now time to widen this study to Sartre’s relationship to men and. women, concentrating mainly but not exclusively on the period after the war since the earlier period has already been covered, in order to find out what existing principles can be elaborated upon or new ones discovered.

Notes 1. Sartre does not appear to have had sexual jealousy or possessiveness. Whilst Beauvoir is wondering if she can accommodate Sorokine in her life and feels that she is perhaps too passionate, Sartre encourages her to love Sorokine (1983b*: 503). 2. See Lecarme-Tabone (2002) for an excellent overall view. 3. Moi has shown that Beauvoir’s acceptance of Sartre’s pact (necessary and contingent love) was a wish for fusion (1995: 352). See also Rétif (1998). 4. Twinship transference is where ‘the individual achieves a sense of enhanced identity and self worth by assuming exaggerated similarity between the self and others’ Johnson 1994: 46). 5. Beauvoir confides in her war diary that apart from Bost and Sartre (her two lovers) she only has a true and intimate relationship with Mme Morel, an older woman who is a common friend (1990b: 65). 6. Apart from the war situation, perhaps Beauvoir needs to tune in to Sartre’s own emotional level. Fallaize makes the judicious point that in the letters to Algren, Beauvoir displays a much greater emotional range (1999: 60). Lamblin also notes that it is Algren who revealed passion to Beauvoir and that it created a contrast with her intellectual relationship with Sartre (1993: 40). Algren was an American writer whom Beauvoir met in 1947 when she went on a lecture tour to the United States. She began a relationship with him that was to last until October 1951. 7. “No oath has been exchanged, rest assured’. Sartre uses ‘rest assured’, as if Beauvoir is worried about Sartre’s relationship with Bourdin. And yet no corresponding letter from Beauvoir exists which refers to this episode. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir admits that Beauvoir edited profusely her letters to Sartre (Beauvoir 1990b: 301 n. 1).

142 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

8. This turns out to be on the advice of Beauvoir who ‘forbade it’, telling him he was going to put himself in a bad situation (1983b: WML, 158). 9. This is also the argument of Bianca Lamblin in her book. 10. See Buisine (1984). 11. Leak (1998: 984) sees a division of labour for Sartre between Wanda (for the aesthetic) and Beauvoir (for the ethical). 12. A motto which will be at the centre of his play Les Mains sales, though politically Sartre will not always accept this argument; see Birchall (2004). 13. Beauvoir’s letters are missing from 24 March 1940 until 11 July 1940 (see Fallaize 1999). 14. See Moi (1997: 122). 15. Beauvoir calls Bost ‘little Bost’, or ‘the little subject’. 16. In Le Sursis Daniel writes in a letter to Mathieu: ‘I understood that one could only reach oneself [s’atteindre] through another’s judgement ... through another’s love too’ (Sartre 1945c: 396).

17. Sartre could also be starting this process with Pieter.

Chapter 8

SARTRE’S RELATIONSHIPS:

To BE oR Not To BE INTIMATE

What is an intimate relationship with someone? A succinct definition would be that it is a mutual recognition and sharing of strengths, passions, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and anxieties. Montaigne’s definition of his friendship with La Boétie is encapsulated in the phrase: ‘Because it was him, because it was me’ [Parce que c’était lui, parce que c’était moi]; this defi-

nition recognises the other’s individuality and each person keeps their own boundaries. There is no question of mirroring, merger or fusion. We have established so far that Sartre does not seem to have much intimacy with himself, and that he finds intimacy with others difficult, apart from a

few privileged relationships, notably with Beauvoir. Although I will analyse Sartre’s relationship with men and women separately, these relationships only make sense in dialogue with each other. In order to understand Sartre’s relationship with men, one has to see Sartre interact with women and vice-versa. Sartre split men and women from a very young age; consequently, his relationships with men have been mostly problematic: ‘I can’t imagine tenderness in my relationship with men. So I have had friendships only with what I shall term hommes-femmes’ (Sartre 1995: WD, 277). Sartre explains

that these are rare, standing out from the rest thanks to their physical charm | or beauty, and ‘to a host of inner riches which the common run of men know nothing of’. And he declares that he himself — for all his ugliness — is an homme-femme.' Handsome men have always attracted Sartre. He likes to take them out: Guille, Maheu, Nizan, Zuorro, Bonnafé and Bost. Describing

Guille, Sartre writes that he is unusually communicatively warm, with an almost feminine tenderness, a jealous exclusivity, adding that he was very far from possessing these qualities (1995: WD, 274).

Notes for this chapter begin on page 173.

144 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

In men’s friendship, Sartre is looking for qualities he perceives as lacking in himself. But even with them intimacy seems bland. Sartre wonders if this nauseous fright of friendship is not in fact a latent and suppressed homosexuality (1949: 119-20). We saw in chapter five that, with Mistler, as soon as Sartre commits himself and exposes himself in the conversation, he feels a sweet disgust reminiscent of every time he enters the intimacy of another man, concluding that he only likes superficial relationships with them. Kimmel writes that ‘the fear of being seen as a sissy dominates the cultural definitions of manhood’ (1994a: 131). Beauvoir asks Sartre if the adult male is his “bad smell’,? and he replies that he finds the adult male disgusting. He elucidates: ‘What I really like

is a young man, insofar as a young man is not entirely different from a young woman’ (1981: A, 285). Sartre seems attracted by androgyny in men,

or rather by individuals who have not split their ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ side? — unlike him — and he defines himself in opposition to the adult

male saying that he is what he does not want to be. Reflecting on male friendships in his mid thirties, Sartre reveals that he finds them unbearable. He generally does not ask to meet any man and only puts up with those who seek him out. He seems to recoil at reciproc-

ity: ‘what sickens me in advance is any idea of the relationship being mutual — of being seen by them whilst I see them: the idea that there could

be any affective connection between us, be it merely one of cordiality or even politeness’ (1995: WD, 280). Thus he writes that there is one half of humanity that hardly exists for him. Asked by Contat in 1975 to reflect on his male friends, Sartre chose to talk about Albert Camus (another handsome friend). He met him in 1943. He was attracted by the fact that Camus was funny, used a lot of slang and told dirty jokes which Sartre joined in with (1976a: 196). They were also both womanisers.* Sartre used to like drinking with Camus. He really appreciated a side of Camus’ personality, reminiscent of an Algiers lout [voyou], very much a crook, adding: ‘It is probably the last one to have been a good friend’ (1976a: 196). One expected to be hearing about great intellectual affinity between the two whereas the portrait Sartre sketches of Camus is that of one of the rough teenagers in La Rochelle. Camus could be fulfilling some unmet needs. Sartre would have craved a friendship of the sort when he was in La Rochelle. Was there ever any intimacy between them? Or simply an implicit sexual and intellectual rivalry? Sartre cer-

tainly spoke about how handsome Camus was and how women were attracted to him. He also claimed he could not take things too far intellec-

tually because Camus would get scared. Given that Sartre admitted to having had less than a handful of friends, it is important to spend some time studying this relationship. In the conversations with Beauvoir that must have taken place less than a year before Sartre’s interview with Contat, there is a marked difference in tone when Sartre evokes Camus. He is very negative, stating that there was

Sartre’s Relationships 145

no intimacy to their friendship, no depth to it. Beauvoir reminds him that

they used to see him a lot, and that they had their best time socialising together (1981: A, 266). She also maintains that there was some intimacy between him and Sartre about personal matters; Sartre acquiesces, having stated previously that there was no intimacy in their friendship (1981: A, 268). He stresses their political differences before the Jeanson affair as when Camus and Merleau-Ponty had political disagreements (1981: A, 267). It is interesting to compare the different perspectives of the two interviews, especially because they took place so near to each other. Whilst they are consonant in explaining the political differences between them that eventually led to the demise of the relationship, they are dissonant in how far Sartre is prepared to acknowledge that Camus was a good personal friend in the conversations with Beauvoir. It could be that once Beau-

voir had reminded Sartre what a good friend Camus had been to him, Sartre took on board Beauvoir’s comments and this became his starting point in his interview with Contat. In the latter interview, he stated that Camus was the last good friend he ever had. One can still wonder why Sartre was so reluctant to admit that Camus had been a close friend when he spoke to Beauvoir. Following Jeanson’s review of Camus’ L’Homme révolté and Camus’ and

Sartre’s subsequent replies, they fell out politically and never spoke to each other again until Camus’s death.° But even during that time, Sartre’s friendship is in evidence. Recollecting the events that led to Jeanson’s review, Sartre remembers that when the book first came out, Jeanson was

on holidays and he looked for someone from the editorial team who would write a review. No one volunteered. And no one volunteered because Sartre made clear to his collaborators that he wanted a review that did not attack Camus too much: ‘I wanted there to be moderation and everybody loathed the book’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 268). Why Sartre did not

write the review is another question that will remain unanswered. | Sartre invokes an underhand story. Apparently, Jeanson asked Camus to join him in founding a rival journal to Les Temps Modernes, which would be more revolutionary. And because Camus refused, he took revenge in his review (1981: A, 269). Sartre is arguing that the content of Jeanson’s article

was not guided by political reasons based on sound principles but on personal vendetta (there could be a parallel process at work here since it is in fact Sartre who let the personal influence the political in dictating that the review should not be unkind to Camus). Result: ‘He wrote the article in the

way I had not wanted, that is to say, it was violent and slashing, and it pointed out the book’s faults’ (1981: A, 269). Sartre was in fact demanding that Camus should be protected. This gesture shows the depth of his feelings and is reminiscent of the time at the Ecole Normale when the bullies

were about to beat up Merleau-Ponty and Sartre intervened and averted the fight. Here Sartre was trying to protect Camus’s sensitivity and pride, and perhaps a friendship that he valued.®

146 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

This will not stop Sartre from being ferocious once they have fallen out. There is a marked contrast between Sartre’s review of Camus’ L’Etranger, which is respectful — though Sartre does make the point that Camus shows off by quoting Jaspers, Kierkegaard and Heidegger without really understanding them (1947: 94) — and his ‘Reply to Albert Camus’, which is an attack, or more accurately a demolition job (1964b: 90-129). We talked in chapter four about Sartre having developed a muscular intellectualness at the Ecole Normale. This is much in evidence in his pugilistic style. Whilst talking about determinism, Sartre writes that he does not dare ask Camus to read L’Etre et le néant for he would find it too difficult (1964b: 108). As

with Aron, he ends his piece by telling Camus that he does not want to fight him (when he has just produced a knockout!). Whatever Camus writes, he will remain silent; this is rather disdainful. Sartre also attacks Camus from a position of hegemonic heterosexual masculinity, reminiscent of his insults towards Pieter during the Phoney War. Sartre tells him that a mixture of sombre self-importance and vulnerability has stopped Sartre telling him the truth in the past (1964b: 91); vul-

nerability is used as a weakness. Later on, Sartre compares Camus not wanting to be involved in History to a little girl poking her toe in the water and asking if it is warm (1964b: 123).

And there is also another marked contrast between ‘Reply to Albert Camus’ and Camus’s obituary (1964b: 126-29), whose style is sober and poignant. Their dispute was in fact another form of relationship, of living together (1964b: 126). There is a pattern in Sartre’s obituaries of Camus,

Nizan, Merleau-Ponty where he buries the hatchet and talks movingly about his ex-friends. It is as if he is allowing himself his own vulnerability in order to write obituaries,’ when his friends no longer pose a competitive

threat, or cannot get him for it, unlike the boys in La Rochelle. As for Sartre’s friends, one gets a much better treatment dead than alive! What is also sad is that Sartre calls Camus his last good male friend, which means that Sartre had no good male friend from the mid-forties until the midseventies, in other words for most of his adult life. Sartre evokes other male friends but they are more ‘ex-disciples’ or past students like Bost and Pontalis. Sartre talks about friends he met before the war like Dullin, during the war like Leiris and his wife, Koestler and his wife Annette, Queneau and Genet; and after the war Giacometti. Sartre remembers eating out with Giacometti and his wife once a week together with Beauvoir, and enjoying the fact that they could talk about everything. For all the aforementioned couples, Beauvoir remarks that they almost exclusively saw these people in couples; consequently Sartre shared all these male friendships with her. Sartre never met Giacometti alone (Beauvoir 1981: A, 271)! Is Sartre avoiding intimacy? Beauvoir asked him: ‘You didn’t particularly want to have a one-to-one friendship of the kind you had with Nizan or Guille?’, and Sartre replied that it was out of the question (1981: A, 271). Sartre can only think of meeting Camus on his own

Sartre’s Relationships 147

quite a few times. As for his relationship with Genet, when they met Genet

was very much a young novice compared to Sartre’s formidable status. , Sartre describes Genet turning up in the café Le Flore where he was with Beauvoir looking like a boxer, a lightweight or even a featherweight (1981: A, 272). Sartre also evokes his relationship to older men (Paulhan, Gide, Jouhandeau) and claims that he did not particularly enjoy meeting them (1981: A, 284). There were also relationships with political collaborators like Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lanzmann. Sartre has an unusual record of falling out with his male friends. To

name but a few: Guille, Zuorro, Maheu, Cocteau, Queneau and Giacometti — Aron also enters into this category. He admits that in all cases he

took the decision to break up (Beauvoir 1981: A, 277). Sartre went to a party after the hundredth performance of Morts sans sépulture and was bored senseless. To wind up he dragged Astruc through the mud (out of sheer drunkenness and perversity) and the latter had a nervous fit. When Beauvoir quizzes Sartre about falling out with his male friends, he replies that it did not affect him: ‘T think I did not feel a deep friendship for some of the men who were among the closest of my friends’ (1981: A, 275).’ He has never relied on others and would have hated it (Sartre 1995: 24).

He claims to have had deep friendships with some women and with Nizan but argues that, generally speaking, there were no deep sensitive elements between him and other men (Beauvoir 1981: A, 276). Beauvoir translates this by saying that Sartre only had an intellectual rapport with these male friends. When this led to political or other disagreements, he fell out with them because there was no emotional bond; Sartre emphatically agrees. However, there was an emotional, even a passionate, element to Sartre’s relationship with Nizan; he was looking for some sort of writer ego. Guille ought to be added to this list too and possibly Camus." It appears from the

obituaries of both Nizan and Camus that Sartre never did break up emotionally with them despite their differences. This could be because he felt able to exist within a more inclusive sense of self in their presence, as in his relationship with Olga, by being in touch with some of his passion. Breaking up completely with them would have meant killing off parts of his self. Before looking at Sartre’s muscular intellectualness with political opponents, I need to state that I have no intention of playing down his political commitment; I am commenting on the tools he utilises to make his points.

The quotations from Sartre will be out of context and arbitrary, allowing no autonomy to the political issues themselves. It does take two to fight, and I am only relating Sartre’s verbal attacks, which shows a distorted view of the overall picture." Sartre has a plethora of political friends and even personal friends who became political foes, such as Aron, or at least they begged to differ.’ One could argue that Sartre never let personal relationships with men compromise his political judgement. Sartre’s attitude towards Aron who had been a good friend at the Ecole Normale was to ignore him intellectually, as

148 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

with Merleau-Ponty, Lévy-Strauss and also Camus after their dispute. For Sartre, Aron’s supposed superiority runs on empty and on people Aron considers to be cretins (Cau 1985: 240)! Sartre dispatches Mauriac in a famous review ‘Mr Francois Mauriac and freedom’ (1947: 33-52) with the coup de grace at the end of the article: ‘God is no artist; neither is M. Mauriac.’ Years later, Mauriac admitted that because of Sartre’s attack he was inhibited for a long time from writing another novel. Sartre’s most direct hits are reserved for political opponents. De Gaulle of course; Sartre claims that he hated him and he compares him to King Charles XI." In the seventies, Sartre goes back over the fifties and justifies having attacked De Gaulle violently (1976b: SBH, 84-85). Aron came under fire following May 68 (1972c: 175-92). Sartre declared that Aron was not worthy of being a professor (1972c: 188) and that he should strip and be seen naked; only if he decides to question himself [de se contester] will he get his clothes back (1972c: 192). Sartre reckons that questioning is the only way to learn but also to be a man (1972c: 187). It seems childish to use this

kind of threat on Aron, and is reminiscent of playground humiliation. Sartre is setting standards for being a man: to question. ‘To question is not to

protest but it is ambiguous enough to encompass questioning oneself and others. Sartre is sixty-three by then. For him, a man of forty-five should

know that within five years he will be questioned and told that things have moved on. When one hears that, it is the first sign of old age and Sartre believes that this happens between the ages of thirty-five and fortyfive: ‘But if, after having said what we have to say we learn to question ourselves with others, then we can prolong one’s maturity, one’s useful life’ (1972c: 188). At this stage in his life, being a man for Sartre means being active and taking part in political life. When in 1975 Contat gently challenges him about the sort of things he said about Aron, Sartre stands by them (Sartre 1976a: 189). The piéce de résistance has to be Sartre’s declaration about Franco in 1975. This is followed closely by ‘An anti-Communist is a dog. I couldn’t see any way out of that one and I never will’ (1964b: 248-49). Publishing Franco’s portrait would be the best way to get French people wanting him dead: ‘His mug calls for being stabbed or guillotined ... this abominable mug of a Latin bastard, with bags under his eyes and his bad, nasty wrinkles’ (cited in Boulé 1992: 183). There were a lot of complaints after this interview. Apparently, following his faux pas — the faux pas being the implication that Franco’s face had something in common with that of other Latin/ Mediterranean people — Sartre told Beauvoir that all he managed now in the political arena was to be an extra (Boulé 1992: 183). Sartre now feels like an old man (with some justification since he is seventy by then). Sartre was himself the target of many attacks, from Russians calling

him a hyena with a pen (Fadeiev) to pro-French Algeria war veterans shouting ‘Shoot down Sartre!’ during a demonstration. A homemade bomb was detonated by the OAS [Secret Army Organisation — Organisation

Sartre's Relationships 149

de l’Armée Secréte, a pro-French Algeria organisation] in his apartment in 1962, Rue Bonaparte, at the height of the Algerian conflict. As for his statement about an anti-communist being a dog, one must not forget that it was in the context of McCarthyism, and of the Rosenberg executions. Overall this proves what Sartre had already written in Les Mains sales (1948a), one

cannot engage in politics without dirtying one’s hands.

Cau writes that every discussion and dialogue for him was a [boxing] match. He waited for the arguments and the justifications of the other like a boxer weighs up his adversary. He would let the other expose his ideas,

study his guard and then suddenly strike, with both hands in a series, exactly like in a boxing ring, with all his lightening intelligence (1985: 230).

Cau gives a list of people, male and female, that Sartre dominated, concluding that he feared no one verbally or on the terrain of eloquence (1985: 231); he also talks about the coarseness of his language (1985: 236). According to Sartre, intellectual debates are pointless, and Beauvoir is the only true interlocutor he has ever had (1976a: 190). By 1975, he often

sees the women who are close to him. He meets three or four men regularly once a fortnight on the occasion of the Temps Modernes editorial meeting (1976a: 166) and they represent his best friends: Bost, Lanzmann, Gorz and Pouillon (Beauvoir 1981: A, 277).'* Beauvoir points out to Sartre that they are all at least ten years younger than him and, whilst it does not mat-

ter so much now, when they met some of them were ex-students like Bost or disciples like Gorz. She then prompts Sartre to make a comment about these relationships. One expects Sartre to address the power imbalance but he replies that politics played a part (1981: A, 279). There is a genuine friendship between them, which does not take the form of violent emotion, but they can rely on each other. It is clear that it is politics that allies them together but also that passion is missing. These friendships are not on a par with those of Nizan, Guille and Camus. Generally speaking, Sartre claims not to be curious about men (1976b: 163) (this did not stop men like Fanon being curious about Sartre). Sartre can meet men as long as they are actively engaged in politics, and that is all. Giving the example of his meeting with Lukacs, Sartre explains that two philosophers trying to have a discussion are at their worst (1976b: SBH, 92). His most extended conversations with a man go back to Aron when he was twenty-five, and yet he holds the view those arguments did

not give him anything! Discussions do not represent real relationships between men: ‘Real relationships are when you act in concert, when you decide to do something together — it may be an intellectual act’ (1976b: SBH, 93). This is a masculine statement whereby some men have to be doing something together in order to justify their being together, preferably to do with politics, sport or drinking.

Sartre’s relationship to men was warped by his experience in La Rochelle, and also by Joseph Mancy. He approached the Phoney War by trying to remain hegemonic in his relationships as well as distant. After he

150 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

was captured, there was a marked change in his attitude and he discovered solidarity. But this was short lived and Sartre will have very few relationships during the rest of his life. Why did Sartre not capitalise on the newly found solidarity in the prisoner of war camp? He did by translating it into political commitment but it seems as if, as soon as he came back to

Paris, he went back to pursuing women. During the Phoney War he reflects how, having been on leave in Paris, he ceased being authentic and finds it much easier in the barracks. Sartre takes pleasure only in the company of women: ‘I feel respect, tenderness and friendship only for women’ (1995: WD, 281). He prefers to talk to a woman about the tiniest things than about philosophy to Aron. ‘I enjoy being with a woman because I’m bored out of my mind when I have to converse in the realm of ideas’ (1976b: SBH, 92). Is Sartre being patronising? Else-

where he explains: ‘It’s because those are the tiny things which exist for me; and any woman, even the stupidest, talks about them as I like to talk about them myself; I get on with women’ (1995: WD, 281). Sartre goes back to the subject in 1974. When Beauvoir asks him what attracted him in women, he replies: ‘Anything at all!’; Beauvoir gets upset. Since Beauvoir had all the other qualities he could ever find in a woman, the others just had to be pretty. Beauvoir suggests he did not have a sexual liaison just because a woman threw herself at him, to which he replies ‘Well... [mon Dieu...]’ as if to say: ‘I can’t argue with that!’; Beauvoir carries on his sentence for him and tells him that it is not true (1981: A, 296-97). Before talking in more details about the women in Sartre’s life after the war, we need to ask ourselves what seduction and love meant for Sartre by using his various writings. This will also lead to an examination of Sartre’s bodies and of his sexual practices. For Sartre, every desire is a desire to appropriate (1995: WD, 260). What do we want to appropriate? ‘I am only a desire for beauty, and outside of that: void, nothing. By beauty ... [I mean] unity and necessity over time’ (1995: WD, 282). Sartre believes that beauty or ‘unity and necessity over time’ will counteract his sense of contingency, fulfilling the function of the work of art as in La Nausée. He used to think that what he calls ‘the loving event’ was that necessary and beautiful event he was looking for (1995: WD, 284).” Seduction was a matter of capturing the world in words for his companion and his aim was ‘to merge indissolubly with the world’s beauty’ (1995: WD, 285). One realises how much Sartre’s perceived ugliness bothered him and how he was desperately trying to compensate for it with beauty (“My own manner of being my dead eye is certainly my way of wanting to be loved through intellectual seduction’, 1995: WD, 306). Neither Siegel nor Lamblin, two of his female lovers, thought he was ugly. The former was too preoccupied with listening to him rather than looking at him; the latter was too flattered to be wanted by such a famous man (Lamblin 1993: 50). Sartre talks about presenting the world to a woman, dissecting the most

veiled meanings of landscapes, and even substituting himself for her thought and her perception, achieving harmony between art and love

Sartre's Relationships 151

(1995: WD, 268-69). ). In L’Age de raison, Mathieu takes Ivich to art exhibitions, explaining the paintings (1945b: 101). According to Cau, Sartre’s only

seduction technique was his presence. He did not believe in curves, or detours, but advanced in a straight line. He used to strike those closest to him with violent humour, holding back just enough not to knock them out (1990: 1134). Sartre suggests to Jollivet that she read the philosopher Alain but only after he will have talked to her about him (1983b*: 13). Later on, he falls out with her and loses his temper. He asks her who has made her into what she is, that he is trying to prevent her from turning into a bourgeoise,

a prostitute, an aesthete, and asks her who looks after her intelligence (1983b*: 15)! As regards Wanda, Sartre informs Beauvoir he has decided that she will do theatre work rather than painting (1983b**: QMW, 251). In

retrospect, he agrees that he liked to mould women, to help them to develop (1981: A, 301-302). At times he infantilised them too; in 1926 Sartre

often addresses Jollivet who is older than him as ‘My dear little girl’. Beauvoir relates that, whilst Sartre is happy to help people if they come to him with various requests, he hates asking his way if he is lost, borrowing money or asking for a favour in general (1981: A, 288). Sartre explains tentatively that there is a feeling in him that he annoys the person he asks,

stating that he used to think people were hostile to him. Beauvoir asks why specifically to him: ‘Because it’s linked to an idea of myself [représentation de moi-méme]; I thought people did not find me physically agreeable ... if you are ugly, then asking the way to the Rue de Rome means inflicting a disagreeable presence on the person you ask’ (1981: A, 288). Sartre’s

attitude is linked to his own perceived ugliness. The significant absents from this dialogue are his protected vulnerability and anxieties, which motivate a great deal of his defensive behaviour. Sartre’s theory of love is highly intricate. The overarching statement in L’Etre et le néant, which will be dealt with later, is that love is impossible. Fundamental relations with others at a sexual level are either sadistic or masochistic, or based on hatred. The whole question hinges on the dyads freedom /enslavement, subject / object. The main problem is that a total enslavement of the loved one kills love in the person who loves (1995: WD, 256); this defeats the object. The freedom of those I love is dear to me but I do not respect it at all since the desire to be loved means ‘to hit at the

Other in the Other’s absolute freedom’. Sartre calls this love that craves slave-freedom inauthentic, explaining that the desire to be loved seems to him to have the aim of positing the Other as the foundation of our own existence (1995: WD, 258); this is the essence of narcissism. What does being loved means for Sartre? Wanting to be loved by the Other is wanting to ‘recuperate’ one’s being-for-the-

Other by acting in such a way that the Other’s freedom subjugates itself before the defenceless nakedness which we are for it ... we expect the Other to bewitch himself in his own freedom; to set his freedom to denying his freedom

152 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

in face of us ... Thus, to make oneself loved by someone is not to try and give him a flattering image of oneself: it’s to exist in safety in the midst of his freedom. (1995: WD, 259)

Sartre then ‘translates’ in simple language by writing that the lover wants to be everything in the world for the loved one (1995: WD, 261). This illustrates a need for symbiosis as seen in the relationship between Sartre and Beauvoir. In a candid passage, Sartre explains his modus operandi. He used to run after women, tell them they should not infringe on his freedom and then make a gift of his freedom saying that it was the finest present he could give them (1995: WD, 75). Another tactic is demonstrated when he tells Jollivet that he has decided to trust her; as a validation of his trust, he requests that she should love only him (1983b*: WML, 10). Sartre is a little more direct with Wanda; he tells her their relationship is over unless she falls in love with him (1983b*: WML, 172).

In his courtly love pursuits, Sartre likes to make slow progress. In 1938, he talks about kissing Wanda for three hours: ‘To tell the truth, I gain territory each time’ (1983b*: WML, 166). This sounds like a general analysing a battle, with the Promised Land being Wanda’s hymen since she was a

virgin. And when she loses her virginity to him during the summer of 1939, he writes to Beauvoir that he was clever enough to indicate that he was offended by the ridiculous situation that falls to a guy in a deflowering, adding ‘and from time to time I find myself about to say, with feeling, that I must love her as I do, having lent myself to the sordid task’ (1983b*: WML, 199).

In his quest for authenticity during the war, Sartre claims to have changed and to no longer want to seduce: Everything was always a story of seduction, I see it clearly now as I write about it and, once the woman was seduced, I was flabbergasted to have her on my hands. I hadn’t anticipated that. Now it’s all over because I like to have full relationships |des rapports pleins] and they, on the other hand, can only begin once the ceremonies of seduction have been completed. (1983b**: QMW, 90)

But of course he will keep Wanda because of his feelings.

Reflecting on his attitude towards women in his war diaries, Sartre is amazed to see the degree of imperialism involved (1995: WD, 269). He concedes that he has a desire to possess people but sees this as some kind of inauthenticity, defined as follows: ‘Seeking out a foundation in order to “lift” the absurd irrationality of facticity’ (1995: WD, 258). It is an attempt

to escape from solitude: ‘I’m struck this morning by that universal demand: “wanting to be loved”’(1995: WD, 254). For the basis of love’s joy is feeling oneself justified for existing. And paradoxically, we are not in the least justified; we have merely lost our solitude. Sartre is adamant that no love can validate our existence. And then in the middle of this philosoph-

Sartre’s Relationships 153

ical rumination, he explains: ‘To be honest, the people I have mainly to reproach for such inauthenticity are those who get involved in being loved

without loving. But, precisely, I have very often been of their number.’ Sartre reveals he was drawn into an affair because he wanted to appear as necessary, like a work of art, ‘but, I must say, as soon as you love in your turn — and whatever love the loved one may feel for you — you emerge into

solitude’. One loves to escape from solitude and at the end, one emerges back into solitude. QED. Sartre famously wrote that man is a useless passion (1943: 678).'© Leak argues that Sartre’s theory of love and seduction in

L’Etre et le néant is essentially narcissistic (1996: 59) since it amounts to | being loved. Secondary narcissism in psychoanalytical theory directs the libido away from objects onto the subject’s own ego and, for Sartre, ‘the lover’s ideal is a perpetual mirror-play’ (Leak 1996: 60). Why did Sartre launch into such a demonstration? He claims he wanted to get to the heart of that strange inauthenticity which makes us depend ona person, precisely because we are everything for her/him before adding: ‘It may not seem that way, but I have portrayed myself life-size in that metaphysical description’ (1995: WD, 254). I analysed in chapter five that Sartre was talking about his attitude towards Wanda when he penned these passages in his war diaries. When he writes about things too close for comfort, he needs to stand back and use an impersonal philosophical language.

Why did Sartre want to be loved so much, as opposed to loving? To answer that question, we need to go back to his childhood and listen to Sartre’s own analysis. In La Rochelle, what Sartre could not really understand was why love was dirt-cheap during his earlier years and there he could not get anyone to love him; he was especially desperate to be loved (1995: WD, 268).

We have talked about loving and being loved, what about self-love? Sartre wonders in Les Mots if he was a narcissist: ‘Not even that: too anxious to win others, I forgot myself’ (1964a: W, 27), explaining that for anything

to have any value a grown-up had to rhapsodise over his work and that he was a cultural possession.’” The definition of a narcissist is someone who has buried his self-expression in response to early injuries and replaced it with a highly developed, compensatory sense of self in response to his/her environment needing the individual to be something substantially different from what he or she is. This is why Sartre writes that he forgot himself; he

literally buried the possibility of a more inclusive sense of self. Pacaly analyses Sartre’s argument in Les Mots and argues that Sartre is a prisoner of an idealised image of himself for others, having to be the wonder child

of his family: ‘Whilst refusing the term [narcissist], he describes it constantly throughout his autobiography’ (1980: 310). She also contends that by loathing his childhood he could be expressing a morbid form of narcissism whereby he cannot accept himself because he has not come to terms with the death of the wonder child. What Pacaly calls the wonder child, I call the grandiose self, which is part of Sartre’s compromised sense of self.

154 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Contat tells Sartre that one of his qualities is that he is not narcissistic; by

that he means ‘self-obsessed’. Sartre only half agrees with him, arguing that he can be narcissistic at times (1976a: 198). When Contat ventures that

in fact in order to be happy one has to love oneself, Sartre questions whether such a feeling can actually exist. His reasoning is that you can love someone because you are not with them all the time; for him love exists only in one’s relationship with others (1976a: 198). Why can’t love exist without a relationship with others? Johnson argues that for the narcissistic person, the underlying emotional reality is a sense of void in the experience of his self (1994: 172-73). How can one love a void? What kind of love has Sartre in mind? He believes that love by its very nature is sexual. He did not particularly enjoy sexual intercourse. Sexual relations with women were called for as something he had to do at one

point but he did not attach a great deal of importance to them. He preferred caressing: ‘I was more a masturbator of women than a copulator’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 302'*). For him the essential was: embracing, caressing,

and kissing a body all over. Sartre is already setting up the masculine binary active / passive; indeed Schehr (1995) demonstrates that Sartre sees

being active as being heterosexual and being passive as being female /homosexual.’? Sartre claims that he performed the sexual act, often, but with indifference. According to Kimmel, ‘sex evokes ... feelings of vulnerability in sexual surrender to another and the power and control that often accompanies another’s pleasure. The moments of most intense

intimacy and connection are also moments of loss and abandonment’ (1990: 3). Beauvoir goes as far as to talk about a sexual coldness in Sartre,

explaining that it was never just crude desire that motivated him. Interestingly she further expands that this sexual indifference reflects Sartre’s relationship to his own body. Sartre writes about the female sex organs in L’Etre et le néant: The obscenity of the feminine sex is that of everything which ‘gapes open’. It is an appeal to being as all holes are. In herself, woman appeals to a strange flesh which is to transform her into a fullness of being by penetration and dissolution ... Beyond any doubt her sex is a mouth and a voracious mouth which devours the penis. (1943: BN, 782)

In reading such passages, feminist critiques have pointed to sexism in Sartre.2? What must not be overlooked is the masculine subjectivity of the narrator who fears being dissolved into nothingness (another form of void).”! Sartre claims that one can infer a lot about his sexuality from his novels but also from his philosophical writings (1976a: 146-47). And if he has not

told the truth about his sexual relationships, it is quite simply because society is not ready for it, and other people have not done so themselves. So far, I have approached Sartre’s relationship with people by looking at his reflexive writings, including his philosophical writings. By looking now at his fiction, I may be able to net some new elements. I have chosen

Sartre’s Relationships 155

an extract from L’Age de raison where Boris and Lola are making love and wish to proceed by analysing Boris’s attitude during this scene. Why use one of Sartre’s fictional characters in order to look at Sartre himself? Sartre writes in Les Mots: ‘I was Roquentin; in him I exposed, without self-satisfaction, the web of my life’ (1964a: W, 156). Often, subconscious processes are involved in writing fiction where internal censorship is not as prevalent as in biographical writings, and there are enough parallels between this fictional episode and Sartre’s own life to make it rele-

vant.” In the extract I have chosen, elements of Sartre’s biography lie within. In the preliminary scene before lovemaking, Boris goes to the bathroom — knowing that making love is imminent — in order to put on his pyjamas (most people would take them off at this stage but Boris will try to keep them on throughout lovemaking). He is preoccupied with brushing his hair in order to see if it is falling out. As we saw in chapter four, during Sartre’s psychological crisis when he was in his early thirties, it is claimed that part of the actual trigger for the crisis was Sartre realising that he was losing his hair (Cohen-Solal 1985: 153). This very specific autobiographical detail is repeated in the character of Boris. Hair falling out can be interpreted as a sign of declining virility: Sartre / Boris is worried about his waning virility and about ageing. Short of transcribing the extract from L’Age de raison (1945b: 46-49; AR, 37-40), I will try and sum it up, quoting in direct style the most significant moments. Lola and Boris are in bed together. Lola is older than Boris and he cannot help but think of her death whilst holding her ageing body, fantasising about strangling her. In the bathroom, he states: ‘A naked body,

full of naked odours, something overwhelming ... He was about to let himself flow into an enveloping and strong-savoured sensuality ...’. Feeling nervous, he promises to himself: ‘I don’t intend to faint like I did the other time.’ The image of ‘letting himself flow’ is contrary to someone being in control. It evokes abandonment to fluidity by forfeiting a state of solidity. This is both desired (as it brings with it a ‘strong-savoured sensuality’) and feared (as it becomes ‘enveloping’ ); the fear seems stronger than

the desire. Boris appears to have a fragile sense of masculine self. He apprehends being dissolved, overwhelmed and possibly engulfed by female sexuality as if he has no self boundaries. The above quotation evokes images of gaping holes going back to Sartre’s childhood, linked to a fear of death, echoed by the narrator of Les Mots: ‘Dark mouths might open anywhere, in broad daylight or in the brightest sunshine, and snap me up ... I lived in terror — it was a genuine neurosis’ (1964a: W, 61). Sartre

is associating holes with death, and also gendering death as female. This could point to a lack of differentiation between his sense of self and that of his mother, or to the void within himself. Using Chodorow, Seidler states: ‘It becomes harder for men to give themselves up to a sexuality which involves blending and melting into the rhythms of sexual contact. Men can easily feel threatened by any experience which threatens their differentia-

156 = Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

tion, such as sexual contact which often involves a regression to pre-Oedipal relational modes’ (1991: 98). In his war diaries, Sartre analyses the hole. Since it must be forced in

order to pass through, it is already feminine: ‘In a sense, all holes plead obscurely to be filled, they are appeals: to fill = triumph of the full over the empty, of existence over Nothingness’ (1995: WD, 151). He states: ‘the hole — nocturnal female organ of Nature, skylight to Nothingness’ (1995: WD, 152). To go back to Boris, describing the point of climax as ‘not wanting to faint’ is an expression of detachment from one’s emotions and also from one’s physical self; a desire to remain in control. Bersani writes: ‘It is pos-

sible to think of the sexual as, precisely, moving between a hyperbolic _ sense of self and a loss of all consciousness of self’ (1988: 218). For Sartre, man is a being who flees from himself into the future. Throughout all his undertakings, including during lovemaking, he seeks to found himself. At

the end of each undertaking, he discovers himself anew just as he was ‘gratuitous to the marrow. Whence those notorious disappointments after effort, after triumph, after love ... love is the effort of human reality to be a foundation of itself in the Other’ (1995: WD, 110-11). Lola’s body is objectified, compared to a fish’s belly, with ‘on it a triangular tuft of reddish hair’. Boris is described as eyeing her ‘with a mixture of arousal and disgust’. Leak describes the whole scene as rightly unerotic with sexual desire ‘passing through all its stages, like so many stages on the via dolorosa’ (1989: 82). Despite switching the light off in order not to see her

body, the glare from the electric wall sign outside shows him a glimpse of Lola’s face. Boris imagines that she appears to be in pain and that her eyes are hard. From Boris’ point of view, the pain is associated with her ageing, which in fact is revealing of Boris’s own fear of ageing. Boris likens the anticipated climax to a tragedy (hence etymologically supposed to evoke pity or terror — and it does sound like terror in his case) and he uses the

image of a bullfight: ‘Something was going to happen, something inevitable, terrible and tedious, like the bull’s ensanguined death.’ Presumably, Boris — thinking of his own orgasm — identifies with the bull being

put to death rather than with the matador; he is no heroic gladiator figure. But this is no poetic way of describing ‘la petite mort’, rather a bloody murder, and the fear of annihilation of the self. Boris’s masculinity appears to be threatened by the act of penetrative sex, one notable manifestation being fear of engulfment. His sense of self is so precarious that physical contact with a female being would send him into nothingness. According to Segal: ‘For many men, it is precisely through sex that they experience their greatest uncertainties, dependence and deference in relation to women’ (1990: 212). The feeling of terror reminds one of a young child. Boris appears to want to remain in control and to fear dependency and intimacy. This is achieved by strategies of detachment like keeping his pyjamas on, making love in the dark, comparing Lola’s body to a fish’s belly (objectifying her) and likening the climax to the slaughtering of a

Sartre’s Relationships 157

bull. To counteract his fears, he constructs his self as rational, using the phenomenon of distancing. According to Kimmel, masculinity is often

demonstrated by the separation of emotion and reason, in emotional detachment. When Lola starts moaning, he tells himself: ‘That’s it, I am going to faint!’ There is a bid to be differentiated from what he sees as the ‘feminine’ side of his subjectivity, his sensuality, which he projects onto the feminine Other, and also from his vulnerability. This reflects Sartre’s biography. For Pacaly, since Sartre does not seem to be able to ally sensuality and tenderness, this is a sign of his Oedipus attachment (1980: 120). Perhaps predictably, despite all the ‘precautions’ he has taken, Boris is overtaken by physical sensations. Despite clenching his teeth and saying ‘I

don’t want to’, when he feels ‘a clammy thrill’ running up his body, we read: ‘But then he had a sudden sense of being picked up by the neck, like a rabbit, and he let himself go in Lola’s body, reduced to a red, voluptuous

dazzlement.’ The bull has become a rabbit, and the blood is now a red voluptuous dazzlement. However, the analogy of being out of control is still very present with the image of a rabbit taken by the scruff of the neck, helpless and powerless. Boris feels that making love renders him helpless and

out of control. He cannot conceive of reciprocity between two human beings, but fears the annihilation of the self. One could be reading a description of the sexual act as described by Augustine (‘the whole body is shaken by terrible jerks, and one loses control of oneself’ (Seidler 1991: 89)). Quoting Foucault and Sennett, Seidler explains that a rationalist dream of paradise is ‘self-control carried into the realm of sexual relations’ (1991: 90). The post-coital scene sees Boris prostrate (as after a shock), swearing to himself: ‘I loathe making love ... I loathe fainting. You no longer know what you are doing, you feel dominated; and besides, what's the point of choosing a girlfriend, it would be just the same with anyone, it’s physiological.’ Domination (being passive) is used as opposed to reciprocity, though I guess he is talking about being ruled by one’s bodily sensations and about the fear

of losing rational control. There is no intimacy with his sexual partner because he prevents it. ‘It would be just the same with anyone’ shows that there are no feelings involved on his part, or that he is cut off from them. ‘It’s physiological’ repeated with disgust — disgust a feeling already invoked when he was watching Lola’s naked body before making love — puts him on a par with animals (hence the bull and rabbit comparisons).

In L’Etre et le néant, sexual desire is presented as compromising me

because it makes me an accomplice of my body, my consciousness becomes furred up [empatée]. 1 seem to be invaded by facticity, and I slide towards a passive consent to desire (1943: 438). In L’Imaginaire, Sartre writes

that if a woman is very beautiful, we cannot place ourselves at the same

time on an aesthetic level and want to physically possess her since to desire her we will have to forget that she is beautiful: ‘desiring is plunging at the heart of existence in what is its most contingent and absurd’ (1940: 373). Leak argues that Sartre reproduces the duality of the sacred and the

158 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

profane love objects (1989: 33). Human consciousness is nowhere to be seen: Boris appears to lose his sense of self. Indeed fainting is losing one’s consciousness.”

Remarkably, and this shows that what is at stake above all here is Boris’s masculinity, the piece ends with Boris daydreaming. He thinks that this whole episode may have been a hallucination, a concept explored at length in L’Imaginaire. When the hallucination is over (in fact he is actually hallucinating there and then), he wakes up in a desert with a cork helmet over his eyes, the colonial warrior protection. Mathieu suddenly appears; Mathieu is his teacher, his mentor. ‘“It’s funny”, he thought: “T like men better than women.” When I am with a girl I am not half as happy as with aman. And yet, I wouldn’t dream of going to bed with a man.” He cheered

himself with the thought: “A monk, that’s what I’ll be when I have left Lola.” He felt arid and pure.’ In order to recover his masculine self, Boris needs to see himself as a soldier, a warrior, in the desert with his male friend Mathieu, and presumably with no women for miles around. His happiness is linked to being with men, though he confuses sex and intimacy by stating that he would not dream of going to bed with a man. The alternative is becoming a monk, isolated from mankind and remaining chaste. His body now feels arid and pure, having last been compared to a rabbit’s. Pure is an interesting word to use, as if cleansed from the sin of the flesh. In Les Mots, Poulou describes how when his grandfather’s voice became dry and hard [asséchée, durcie], he mistook it for the voice of his own father (1964a: W, 100). These adjectives are the opposite of soft and flowing, often represented as ‘female’ attributes, Boris describing the point of ejaculation as letting himself flow. The feminine threatens the masculine, the latter defining itself in opposition to ‘feminine qualities’, which reinforces the binary. Order is restored when Boris finds himself with Mathieu in the desert.

Wiegman argues that male bonding narratives serve the purpose of reasserting homosociality: ‘we can read ... male bonding narratives as equally powerful and often overlapping instances of the remasculinization process ... where the ideological investments of regenerating the masculine are done to rearticulate dominant relations not just between men and women, but, significantly, among men themselves’ (2002: 208). One could talk of ahomosocial desire*® to designate desire between men that is channelled through women, who are used as exchange objects in transactions that primarily promote the interests of male rivalry and/or male solidarity.” Because homosocial desire operates through enforced heterosexuality, itis generally (though not always) homophobically proscribed. Hence Boris reassures himself, sensing that he may have gone too far in exposing his feelings for Mathieu, by stating that he would not dream of going to bed with a man. The analysis of this scene leads us back to the body again. The body is to be feared because ‘it threatens to disturb and upset the kind of control

Sartre’s Relationships 159

so closely identified with masculinity’ (Seidler 1991: 91). Sartre and his body. Sartre was small, stocky, with a large chest and a strong complexion. Abel recalls that he had an ‘obvious virility that emanated from his way of

speaking, his physical strength, and his attitude towards pain’ (CohenSolal 1985: 362). Cau reminisces that he had the strength of an ox. He did not walk but tore along; if one looked at his facial features, they were more a devouring type than a sensual type, with his big nose (1985: 229). Pontalis describes meeting Sartre in 1941 when the latter became his new phi-

losophy teacher. His overall recollection is that Sartre stood out but he does not know if it is because of his voice, which was sharp,”8 of his speech, which was cutting, or the fact that rumour had it he did not wear a tie (1990: 1266). Pontalis intuited that Sartre did not like feelings (1990: 1268). Cau recalls that with men close to him, Sartre, by his tone, his sub-

ject-matter, his demeanour, and his natural ‘presence’, was completely macho: ‘his presence, that he would soften in front of women, was uniquely virile’ (1990: 4). He sees Sartre ready to laugh with others at some anec-

dotes from his life, but equally ready to reject anyone who criticises his works; Sartre was the only one who could criticise his own work. John Huston met Sartre in 1959 when they worked on the Freud film scenario. He gives the following description of Sartre: ‘He was small, stocky and as ugly as a human being can be. His face was lined and swollen, his teeth yellow, and to top it all up he squinted’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 499).”? Cau describes Sartre at work: ‘He used to sit down, rub his nose, rotate his shoulder and his boxing arm, pull down all the levers and the machine started up again. When he wrote he held his pen between his index finger

and his thumb’ (1985: 235). Cau explains that Sartre used kilos of lined paper pads. He seldom used to cross things out, preferring to start again on a blank page in order to have a new impulse on a virgin territory: ‘An intact

virgin to rape whilst rushing headlong’. Whilst this metaphor may be revealing about Cau, it is nevertheless inspired by Sartre’s writing habits. Sartre claims that in the main he has not got along well with his body during his life. He has never known the joy of feeling physically well in his body. He liked swimming but still did not have an agreeable body feeling. When he walked, all he felt was tiredness; he did not welcome it and perceived it as an unpleasant feeling (Beauvoir 1981: A, 311). He believed that

one could almost suppress pain by assimilating it to one’s subjectivity. Beauvoir concludes that Sartre cannot have enjoyed his own physical presence if he identified it with pain (1981: A, 320). This description of Sartre and his body fits in with some narcissist characteristics: having learned to exercise their will, narcissistic children are usually cut off from real sensory experiences of the self Johnson 1994: 170). One could conclude that Sartre did not really have any intimacy with his own body. How does Sartre feel inside his body? ‘It’s not very disagreeable; but it’s not agreeable. I don’t feel well in myself’ (1981: A, 312). Sartre explains that he felt active in his body, and that activity led to sexual intercourse. ‘But

160 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

the physical position of lovemaking and the activity that I exerted in it ... was the male activity’ (1981: A, 326; my emphasis).*? Beauvoir asks if that is why he has always been uncomfortable in his body but he replies that it

is more complicated than that and that it would lead to Pardaillan, that is to his imaginary body (which is linked in turn to his grandiose self). One of Sartre’s principles is that he is against ‘letting go’ [abandon] of the body. Allers argues that this was a deep neurosis (1961: 117). For Sartre, the

body is a centre of action, thrust away outside of his consciousness. What matters are acts performed by his body: ‘I think that when I was a child I

very early conceived of my body as a centre of action, neglecting the aspects of sensation and passivity’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 312). When his body

was performing an activity (his hand for example), he was aware of it.* This applies to Sartre’s theory about time. Man is active sexually, hence he always goes towards the future; the letting go is with the present or tends towards the past (Beauvoir 1981: A, 316). Sartre also relates this principle to sex itself. For him, what mattered in sex was always the active side ‘but reciprocity was the thing I felt least — the fact that the other person might also have pleasure in feeling my body’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 314). An orgasm during penetrative sex brings up the issue of a lack of control, of a loss of self. Sartre was aware of seizing the other’s flesh but not of the other seizing his body. Beauvoir sums up that he was never conscious of himself as a passive object and Sartre acquiesces; there was never full reciprocity with the other but always a gap in what they could give to him. Discussing his sexual practices, Beauvoir evokes his infancy and more specifically weaning (1981: A, 315). Commenting in Les Mots on the fact that

he was only ever an object for his family, the narrator writes that he started

to loathe his over-fondled, over-tended body (1964a: 71). Hence being touched is equivalent for Sartre to being an object and to feeling again deep down ‘cold, unjustified’. Sartre also associates being passive with being a homosexual.” Is he not using his own experience when he writes apropos Flaubert: ‘Gustave does not accept himself as homosexual, rightly so, since his passivity demands to be reconstituted by the hugs of a goddess-mother

...” (Schehr 1995: 103)? In order to feel that he is a subject, he has to be active. Sartre did not like ‘letting go’ right from childhood. Letting go has been given by androcentrism pejorative connotations: it is associated with being out of control and is not compatible with rationality. Because men learn to identify self-control with self-sufficiency, they assume they have to be constantly active in their sexual encounters and can feel fear if women take a more active role in sexual relations (Seidler 1989: 163); ‘the language of male sexuality that we have inherited is a language of will, performance and conquest’ (1989: 22). Quoting André Breton, Sartre reveals: ‘I’d be ashamed to appear naked before a woman unless I had an erection,’ commenting that it may not be much prettier erect but at least it is justifying its existence (983b*: WML, 350-51); the penis cannot afford to be seen as a flaccid passive object; it has to be pulsating and throbbing.°?

Sartre’s Relationships 161

Sartre’s lack of interest in sexual intercourse did not have physiological roots. He claims that he was well equipped, his erections were quick and easy but penetrative sex was for him without very great pleasure: ‘Just a little pleasure at the end but pretty feeble’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 314); it was not his personal desire to end sex with penetration.** He wrote in L’Etre et le néant: ‘Penetration of the female by the male ... remains a totally contingent mode of our sexual life’ (1943: 447). Beauvoir calls it ‘a kind of frigidity’, talking about a refusal of all bodily passivity, of all delight in Sartre’s body, going as far as rejecting sexual pleasure (1981: A, 315). Elsewhere she will

confess that he was no great shakes as a lover (1997). Beauvoir is also reported to have said the same thing to Lamblin (1993: 40), and the latter claims too that Sartre was a mediocre lover. During the Phoney War, Sartre

writes that he shares the frigidity Beauvoir is speaking off, commenting: ‘You'll tell me that it doesn’t change me’ but subsequently he further elucidates that it is a way of being cut off emotionally (1983b*: WML, 268).

Generally speaking, men’s sexuality has become tied at a deep level into a need to control both other people and particular facets of men. Men’s sense of their lives can be so fragmented that sexual feelings can easily be identified as a ‘weakness’, as giving in to temptation, which has the effect of more or less suppressing sexuality (Seidler 1989: 43, 47). An orgasm for men is often synonymous with a temporary loss of control: ‘Feeling out of control, for whatever reason, terrifies men as it erodes their very sense of self and threatens to undermine the basis of their power’ (Edley and Wetherell 1995: 161). This could be one of the reasons for Sartre’s lack of interest in sexual intercourse. Sartre explains that he should be passive being caressed and active caressing (Beauvoir 1981: 415). Beauvoir elucidates that, in his case, it was only the active side that was developed, which led him to self-control, but at the same time to coldness.

Sartre writes in L’Etre et le néant that to give is to enslave. By giving women pleasure whilst refusing to be given pleasure, Sartre could be capturing women’s freedom whilst remaining free. He likens his attitude to a touch of sadism; in the end the other person was yielded up [donnée] and he was not (or rather he was, but what was yielded was nothing to him,

since at that very moment he was the active principle). Activity, as opposed to passivity, represents sadism.*° Beauvoir elucidates that sadism exists because the other is reduced to the state of an object, whereas the

normal relation would be a true reciprocity. Using L’Etre et le néant, Doubrovsky demonstrates that sadism leads to the obscene (1986). How do these translate into Sartre’s sexual practices? When Sartre is doing his mea culpa with Beauvoir regarding Bourdin, after an initial phase of denial (no, he was not a billy goat [bouc obscéne}!), he explains that, with Bourdin, both his behaviour and his sexual relationship were disgraceful; he wonders why he had to play the neighbourhood Don Juan. He cannot be excused for being driven by sensuality because he is devoid of it. What Sartre means by bouc obscéne is not clear but it has

162 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

something to do with sadism since in L’Etre et le néant, he explains that the

obscene is a characteristic of the sadist who does not desire the other’s flesh but wants to see the inertia of their flesh (1943: 452). His whole sexual persona, not just with Bourdin, stinks; he has behaved like a spoiled

brat in his physical relationship with women, and there are very few women he has not upset, including Beauvoir. The only exception he names

is Wanda (and this is due to Wanda’s sexual preferences rather than to Sartre behaving differently with her). In his correspondence, Sartre talks about spanking Wanda in 1938, describing it as ‘a playful tap on the behind’. He adds that she sobbed and that he was wretched: ‘It is understood that Iam a master manipulator, there’s even talk of blows and kisses mixed.’ But Sartre also claims that Wanda does not hide the great pleasure she takes in it (1983b*: WML, 167). One night, Sartre brushed Jollivet’s body with his fingers, saying that it was one hundred times gentler than his more violent impulses (1983b*: WML, 24). Sartre writes that he has embarrassed Beauvoir who found him obscene

on occasion. There is something rotten in him though he has started to change as Beauvoir could see in their physical relationship during his recent leave (but he mentions that in the process it lost some of its intensity)

whereas with Bourdin, there was an atmosphere of sadistic dirty-dealing (1983b*™*: QMW, 74-75). The key expression here is ‘in the process it lost some of its intensity’. It would appear that in the throes of his compromised sense of self, Sartre is dead inside and that he does not feel. Only when he goes to extremes of behaviour does he feel anything inside his body.

Sartre does not come out of Lamblin’s account of the day he took her virginity very well. Apart from telling her that he deflowered another young girl the day before as they are walking to his hotel, he mocks her because she has kept a necklace on after getting undressed. His romantic gesture consists in stripping off to his underpants and washing his feet in the sink in full view of her. He also refuses point blank her request to draw the curtains by telling her that what they need to do has to be done in full light, and she wonders why he has switched from being kind to being quite brutal (Lamblin 1993: 55). She senses immediately that he is incapable of letting himself go sensually. She gets too tensed up and nothing

happens. Sartre then feels the need to give her a lecture on physical anatomy, ‘as a Science teacher’. Over the next few days, he will manage to have intercourse with her. Reflecting on this episode (and Iam aware that there is a lot of anger in Lamblin’s book against Sartre and Beauvoir), she

concludes: ‘the mixture of brutality, loutishness, physical coldness, pedantry and priggishness coming from Sartre hindered for a very long time any possibility of sexual fulfilment for myself’ (1993: 58). By brutalising the female Other, Sartre is also doing violence to himself. He is killing off his softness and gentleness. In Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions, he

writes that anger could be interpreted by psychoanalysts as a way of symbolically satisfying sexual tendencies before adding: ‘there is no doubt

Sartre’s Relationships 163

that anger could signify sadism’ (1939a: 34). What is meant by sadism and the obscene? Doubrovsky gives the most detailed account of Sartre’s sexual behaviour. He argues that it is to be found in L’Etre et le néant. The sadist wants

the Obscene; it occurs when the body takes postures that strip it of its actions and show the inertia of its flesh: ‘the sadist manipulates the Other’s

body, weighs on his/her shoulders to bend him/her towards the ground ... when the thighs for example are already open to an obscene and radi-

ant passivity and are still instruments to be manipulated, spread open,

bent over in order to show off the buttocks and to incarnate them in turn’

(1943: 473). Pacaly, using L’Enfance d’un chef, demonstrates how sensuality

distorts the whole person, leaving partial objects, unrecognisable, on which a regressive, manic activity takes place (1980: 121).

Sartre explains in his war diaries that the ideal of sadism is to extract groans. The sadist pushes torture to the point where the victim cannot refrain from asking for mercy. The victim still has freedom since the tortured one could have not cried (1995: WD, 256). For Sartre the victim has a choice; to suffer or to surrender willingly to a practice that repels him/her: ‘The instant of orgasm for the sadist is precisely that ambiguous instant in which constraint unleashes freedom ... the victim will nevertheless remain free at the very moment of yielding’ (1995: WD, 25). Thus freedom is not

exactly destroyed and Sartre argues that it is this contradiction which excites the sadist: ‘a slaved freedom — that’s what attracts him’ concluding that there is always an essential void at the heart of the vice, and the vicelover’s pleasure is bitter, further elucidating: ‘And I don’t say that love is

sadism; but sadism takes its origin from love.’ Sartre talks about a brand new freedom: to will its captivity. I talked above about anger in relation to Sartre and Lamblin. The type of anger Sartre could be feeling may come from his childhood. It could be linked to Sartre’s comment in Les Mots that he was only ever an object for his family; he talks about parts of the body as ‘instruments to be manipulated’. It could be some form of fantasised revenge. Sartre could be actually

spanking or dehumanising his own over-fondled body by projecting it | onto the female other. He could be angry both with the adults that made an object of him and he could also be pummelling his own neediness, which made him complicit in what he calls the family comedy. In either case, as Lamblin analysed, he is brutalising himself. In L’Etre et le néant, Sartre explains that in sadism, the other’s body, disfigured and panting, represents crushed and enslaved freedom (1943: 454). This is what happened to Sartre when he gave up some versions of his self in order to be what his family wanted him to be.°° One could conclude from all the above

that there is not much chance of intimacy in Sartre’s sexual relationships. | In order to trace sadism, one could also point to Sartre’s fiction. In La Nausée, Roquentin dreams of spanking Barrés until he bleeds (1964a: W, 89). Hilbert, the main character in Erostrate, makes the female prostitute

164 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

parade naked in front of him; she feels humiliated (1939b: 86-87). He makes her sit on the bed and asks her to spread her legs wide open. He looks between her legs, sniffs, and then laughs uncontrollably. When the main character describes sexual intercourse with women, he writes: ‘They

devour your lower abdomen with their hairy mouths and from what I have heard it is them — by far —- who gain at this exchange’ (1939b: 83). A

leitmotiv in Sartre’s work is the use of a cane/walking stick. In Dépaysement, Audry narrates his night at the brothel.°” The older of the two prostitutes holds a white stick, similar to a candle, symbolising the phallus. She places it between her legs, performing various pauses (1981: 1553-54). This short story is described by Rybalka as a scene 4 la Fellini where the narrator is passively voyeuristic and the sexual relationship is non reciprocal (a sine qua non condition of sadism as we analysed above but also of lack of intimacy) (1981: 2125). Pacaly stresses the fact that the two prostitutes are used for a phallic cult and that femininity is negated (1980: 298), commenting more generally on the importance of the phallic mother in Sartre’s writings. In Erostrate, Hilbert gives the prostitute his walking stick and makes her do the exercise (the fact that it is referred to as the exercise means that it is usually the same one that he asks prostitutes to repeat); he then ejaculates in his pants. In L’Enfance d’un chef, Lucien Fleurier uses his stick

to get his frustration out and to behead plants and flowers in the garden (1939b: 164). As he grows in confidence and is becoming a leader, he decides to buy a stick made from rush, in order to beat up the Jews he encounters (1939b: 240).°® Throughout all these instances, it is a phallic symbol. Having established Sartre’s theories of love, seduction and sex, what kind of relationships did he have with women after the war? It would be impossible to analyse Sartre’s relationships with all his con-

quests but a few principles can be drawn out, bearing in mind his rela-

tionship with Olga. Women gave Sartre different things. In his correspondence, Sartre talks about a bar, the College Inn, and explains that he had sentimental little rendezvous with Beauvoir, evenings of passion with Olga and of attentive intrigue with Tania — not to mention Bourdin —

and charming, friendly evenings with the Lady [Mme Morel] whom he names elsewhere as his only true female friend (1983b**: QMW, 7). One can already see in this one sentence the range of emotions that women brought to Sartre. With the Bourdin affair, Sartre heaps blame on himself and concedes to

Beauvoir that he was wrong in sending her the letter. He is not going to have affairs long after the end of the war because he is really disgusted but also because it would take up too much of his time (presumably it would

interfere with his writing). Throughout his war diaries and some of his correspondence, Sartre analyses at length his relationship to women and keeps repeating that these times are over, referring to them as a bygone era. And yet he will go back to them straight after the war. For instance in 1947, he has three relationships: Wanda, Castor and Dolorés Vanetti. The

Sartre’s Relationships 165

following year, he adds a young American journalist he calls ‘the little one’, Mary Burnet, and in between Colette Audry. Almost each country

Sartre and Beauvoir visited was synonymous with a woman for him; , Marie Girard in Berlin, Dolorés in the United States; Christina in Brazil; Lena Zonina in Russia® etc. With the fifties and sixties, more names will be added to the list: Michelle Vian,“” Evelyne Rey,*! Arlette Elkaim,* Liliane

Siegel.* In January 1965, Sartre decided to adopt Arlette who became | Arlette Elkaim-Sartre.“* And again in the seventies: Mélina (Siegel 1988: 110-111) /Héléne Lassithiotakis — dedicating On a raison de se révolter to her. Ben-Gal explains that they used to name Sartre’s various women by referring to their place of origin. Hence as well as the ‘Greek friend’, there was the ‘Italian friend’ etc. (1992: 125). In La Cérémonie des adieux, Beauvoir

alludes to more young women for Sartre for that period, even right up to 1979 when she mentions a young American woman who lived in Rome (1981: 147). This long list - no doubt far from exhaustive (at one point around 1977 Sartre is reported to have told Siegel that, not counting Beau| voir, he had nine women in his life! (Siegel 1988: 166)) — is very impressive,

but let us not forget that Sartre actually never lived with a woman throughout his entire life... apart from his mother. As soon as his stepfather dies on 15 January 1945, Sartre, aged forty, will

move back in to live with his mother. They will live together until 1962 when their apartment is bombed (by that time he will be fifty-seven years old!). They play the piano every morning.* Mme Mancy hires a maid to do his laundry. A clean pressed white shirt awaits him every day. Sartre was brought breakfast in bed by his mother every day (Siegel 1988: 36).*° Though Mme Mancy has found her Poulou again,” and he the rightful place near his mother from which he had been usurped twice, once by Jean-Baptiste Sartre, and once by Joseph Mancy, symbolically she also acts as his wife. Mme Mancy used to refer to the situation as her third marriage (Beauvoir 1972: 105)! Ruling class family is organised around the professional career of the husband: “The well-groomed wife is subordinated ... by her task of making sure his home life runs on wheels to support his selfconfidence, his career advancement, and their collective income’ (Carri-

gan, Connell and Lee 2002: 113). In 1962, Sartre will rent a different apartment. His mother will live in a hotel room round the corner until her death on 30 January 1969. In evoking the women Sartre had sexual liaisons with, Beauvoir says that they were mostly intelligent women. Sartre believes that within their sensitivity, intelligence was shining through and that he could talk to them for hours. By contrast, once he had talked to a man about politics for two hours, he did not need to speak to him again for the rest of the day and not see him the next day either (Beauvoir 1981: A, 306). Sartre learned to compartmentalise and divide his time up and also to lie to some of his female friends about the existence of some of the others (and enjoy lying by all

166 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

accounts!) — hence Siegel was only officially introduced after Sartre had had a liaison with her for ten years!

There was a day for each of his lovers or past lovers, lunchtime or evening. For instance Siegel was given Tuesdays from 4 P.M. until 8 P.M. and,

after Mme Mancy’s death, Thursdays 9.30 A.M. until 11 4.M.; in the late 1960s, Arlette had Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday lunchtime and Monday, Thursday and Friday evening (Ben-Gal 1992: 106). What transpires from this schedule is how much Sartre liked to be in control of these relationships, deciding on their terms and frequency. Most of his days were timetabled, leaving little space for spontaneity with everything revolving around his writing time. And if Siegel is representative, Sartre enjoyed vulnerable, lonely women, slightly lost, that he could transform; they became a project. In Siegel’s book, Sartre is an amateur psychologist wanting to gain some kind of ascendancy over her mind; at times, Beauvoir even gives him advice on Siegel’s psyche. Sartre concentrates almost exclusively on her relationship to her mother and father; it is significant that someone who had decried Freudian analysis for so long actually dabbles in it. Sartre could be exploring his own situation by proxy; through Siegel, he is realising how important his own parental background was to his personality.* Eight years into their relationship, he tells Siegel that she needs to have an analyst to finish the work he has started. He warns her that if she stops her psychotherapy without talking to him first he will end their relationship (Siegel 1988: 92). Sartre is not afraid to say that he is a fatherly or even a motherly figure to Siegel, and of course he will adopt Elkaim. In terms of sexual politics, it appears that most of these women sacrificed part of their lives for Sartre, waiting for the time Sartre would spend with them inevitably hindered their forming other relationships. When Beauvoir and Sartre invite Lena Zonina to Paris for three weeks, Sartre cancels his appointments with the other five women. Sartre tells Siegel she should get on with Arlette. Since they live near each other, they should go out to the cinema together, adding ‘on some things you are the same. After all, it is I who made you both!’ (Siegel 1988: 141). Why does Sartre need to surround himself with so many women, all financially dependent on him? One could speculate that, symbolically, he is taking his revenge on his mother for ‘abandoning him’. He could also be overcompensating for earlier ‘scarcity’ as in La Rochelle, to borrow language from Critique de la raison dialectique. In all cases, he is now the one regulating the relationships and controlling terms and conditions. This can be taken to extremes. After a rift with Siegel due to Sartre adopting Arlette, he will write down a pact of reconciliation that they both have to sign, valid for seventeen months and to be renewed in December 1971. During the war, Wanda and Olga are financially dependent on Sartre and Beauvoir; they give them a monthly allowance of 2,000 French Francs (Sartre 1983b*: 318). Sartre insisted on Wanda being told by Beauvoir that she lives in Paris only because of the money Sartre has earned with the

Sartre’s Relationships 167

NRE (Nouvelle Revue Francaise) for his short stories; another version of writ-

ing as seduction. After the war, Sartre has a circuit he does with each new

lover: Rome, Capri, Venice; for instance he was in Capri with Arlette Elkaim in 1959. After he finishes with women, Sartre likes to give them a monthly allowance, and to set them up in an apartment near his so that he can schedule regular meetings. Commenting on this practice, Cohen-Solal rightly points out that it was a way for Sartre to propose that the relationship did not end. She calls it ‘a contract of friendship for life’ (1985: 422). I argued above that Sartre never broke up emotionally from Guille, Nizan or Camus, in spite of his declarations. Sartre could also be defending himself

against his own perceived maternal abandonment, or rather because he knows what pain he went through, he does not want to make anyone go through the same pain. To illustrate Sartre’s material support, in 1974 he talks about financially supporting six or seven people (Beauvoir 1981: A, 342). In L’Etre et le néant,

Sartre writes that to give is to enslave. Coria reminds us of the sexualised nature of money and its association with manhood and virility (1986: 23); as we saw in chapter five, Sartre reasons with himself that Wanda will

stay with him rather than Blin because she is financially dependent on him. Sartre does not support exclusively women. Robert Misrahi explains how Sartre financed him whilst he was studying for his doctorate” and Sartre also supported his former student Jean Kanapa whist he was in a sanatorium. When asked by Beauvoir if giving money for life did not warp his relations to people, Sartre replied that it did not (1981: A, 345). But in 1977, Sartre admitted to Catherine Chaine that at the beginning of their relationship, he likes all women to be totally dependent on him, including financially, adding that he should not be like this, and that it is macho of him (1977b: 82).

Why did Sartre not change his ways after he returned from the prisoner of war camp? Perhaps he had invested too much in being a seducer. After all, Sartre tells Beauvoir that, as a writer, he was to have amorous relations with scores of women, together with passions, etc. because he had learned that from books devoted to great writers (Beauvoir 1981: A, 294). Hence it is linked to his grandiose self. Sartre’s notoriety and his reputation also attracted women like a magnet. Male charisma comes from the appeal of power and the seduction that having power generates (Bourdieu 1998: 87).

We saw in chapter four the importance of books as seduction with the copy of Erostrate that Sartre gave to Gégé after sexual intercourse. As he had given Olga pages of the manuscript of La Nausée to read, when he first meets Bianca Bienenfeld in 1939, Sartre makes her read pages of the novel that will become L’Age de raison. It seems to be one of his courting rituals: he makes a gift of his embodied phallic self.

In order to grasp more fully some of the complexities of Sartre’s involvement with women, we need to examine his relationship with Dolorés Vanetti, especially as it started just after the war when Sartre had

168 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

declared that affairs were over. Sartre met her when he went to America in 1945 to write a series of articles for Camus’ newspaper Combat. She was an actress who had lived in Paris in the thirties but she had never encountered Sartre before. She was entrusted with preparing his obituary. She spoke fluent French, which facilitated communication. Six months after meeting her, Sartre was dedicating to her his seminal text presenting Les Temps Modernes. Sartre went back to the United States in 1946, arranging a conference tour but the real reason was to be with Dolorés.°° They spent two and a half months together after he delayed his return to France. Cohen-Solal points out that whilst Sartre writes to Beauvoir that he aches to get back to France, he is telling Dolorés as he is leaving that she should come to France with him and that he would marry her. He was keen to accept one of her friends’ proposals that he should teach for two years at Columbia University, allowing him to live with her (Cohen-Solal 1985: 365). When Sartre eventually returned to Paris, he kept talking to Beauvoir about Dolorés. Olga Kosakiewicz was synonymous for Sartre with ‘authenticity and

spontaneity’, in contrast with the rationalist man. Dolorés resembled Olga’s personality more than Wanda did. Cohen-Solal interviewed Dolorés for her biography of Sartre. She describes her as spontaneous as well as genuine, direct, and extrovert (1985: 313). In 1938, Sartre had written that ever since the Olga affair he immediately ‘blots out anything with the slightest resemblance to passion ... in a sort of abiding fear. It’s not just with Olga but with the whole world that I have “counter-crystallised”’ (1983b*: WML, 148). This will be reinforced during the war when he will talk about cutting himself off, as will Beauvoir. So in the short term Sartre shut down emotionally, which had the effect of shoring up his compensatory sense of self and of burying the possibility of a more inclusive sense of self. Dolorés allows him to feel again a full range of emotions (after all she was an actress), and therefore to feel fully alive. For Sartre the rational man who had forged his will, Dolorés is a breath of fresh air: ‘Sexuality ...

demands the very surrender and spontaneity which men have grown up to be suspicious of’ (Seidler 1991: 96; my emphasis). Sartre had set down in his war diaries that he would not like a woman who was too sensuous ... famous last words. He writes about Vanetti (but to Beauvoir!): ‘Dolorés’s love for me scares me’ (1983b**: OMW, 274). What

frightens Sartre, but I would argue also attracts him, is her passion: ‘Her passion literally scares me, particularly since that’s not my strong suit, and she uses it solely to her disadvantage, but she can display the candour and innocence of a child when she is happy’ (1983b**: QMW, 275). By going up

and down on the Richter scale of emotions, like Olga before her, she is allowing Sartre to get in touch with parts of himself that he had buried. What he seems to appreciate most is her childlike qualities; it puts Sartre in touch with his own suppressed child. Sartre used to tell Beauvoir that he shared with Vanetti the same reactions, the same emotions, the same impatience and the same desires (Beau-

Sartre’s Relationships 169

voir 1963, I: 101). This echoes Sartre wanting with Olga an ‘impossible connection’. Sartre wished for a sort of symbiosis reminiscent of his early childhood with his mother but with the difference that Vanetti is presented as a kind of alter ego. It is also reminiscent of Sartre’s wish for merger in his relationship with Beauvoir except that the latter is seen at times as a sort of judge, almost a Superego. If I could venture into Freudian territory, I would say that Olga represented for Sartre the Id, Dolorés an Alter Ego (something Sartre had looked for in his relationship with Nizan), and Beauvoir the Superego. At one stage, Sartre and Dolorés wanted to spend four or five months of each year together. Beauvoir felt she had to ask the question: ‘Her or me?’ -‘T care about her a lot, but I am with you, am I not? [Elle compte beaucoup mais je suis avec vous ou non?]’ (Sartre 1977b: 65) is the best Sartre managed. In 1949, Sartre and Dolorés go on a long trip to Central America. Since she lives in New York, they meet up intermittently. Sartre will break up their

relationship in June 1950 and propose his contract of friendship for life, complete with an allowance and an apartment, but she will refuse it. Retrospectively, Beauvoir does not have many positive things to say about Dolorés. She stresses that she wanted to come and live in Paris, becoming too demanding before concluding: ‘There is the infernal nuisance of women who ask more than one can give’ (1981: A, 390).>! But Sartre is not happy with such an assessment and he stresses that she gave him America: she gave him a lot. In terms of his compromised sense of self, Dolorés, like Olga before her, opens up for Sartre the possibility of a more

inclusive sense of self. In terms of masculinity, she allows him to reintegrate some of the emotional life he is cut off from and which he has projected out onto women. This may be an important reason why Sartre did not change his ways after he returned from the prisoner of war camp; he needed women in order to be himself. Looking back at his relationship with women, Sartre agrees that he has been very protective and therefore imperialist. He was looking for an atmosphere of sentimentality in women. Not sexuality as such, but ‘feelings with a sexual background’. He must have been macho because he was brought up in a family of machos; his grandfather was macho. But in his personal relationships, he was not really macho. His part was the more active and reasonable; the woman’s role was the role of emotions. Masculinities ‘are constructed as relations of power around opposing discourses which deploy the rhetorics of ... reason in various ways, and also on how femininity is constructed as other’ (Frosh, Phoenix and Pattman 2002: 62). But Sartre maintains that he did not devalue the emotional role. In women, sensitivity is not often transformed into reason; only when they are engineers, study for doctorates etc. (Beauvoir 1981: A, 299).°? But most of the time women had emotional and sometimes sexual values and he drew that aggregate towards himself because he felt that having a connection with a woman like that was to some extent taking possession of her

170 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

affectivity: “Trying to make her feel it for me, feel it deeply, meant possessing that affectivity — it was a quality that I was giving myself’ (Beauvoir

1981: A, 298-99; my emphasis). Since Sartre has expelled his own emotions, he looks for women to feel his own affectivity. Beauvoir asks if in fact

he wanted women to love him and Sartre replies that she is right. If women loved him, then sensitivity would become something that belonged to him. In a way, women gave him permission to legitimise his own sensitivity. Cau confirms: He has no ‘sensitivity’ whatsoever. Not a trace, not an ounce. He is, through a sort of intellectual hypertrophy or who knows what, absolutely rid of it. This man who may appear so affable, so easy to get on with, so generous with his ideas when one manages to approach him, has banished from his life any trace of sensitivity or visible sentimentality, any abandon to feelings. All his generosity is in his head, answering to moral codes, elaborated mentally. (1985: 252)

Sartre only ever went out with attractive women (and attractive men). Being with pretty women developed his sensitivity (Beauvoir 1981: A, 300-301). What did Sartre get from women’s sensitivity? An ‘emotional interpretation of what I was saying on an intellectual plane’. He dominated women, saying that he grew up with that structure. He was also more intelligent than them (1981: A, 300); he believed too that he was more intelligent than most men (Sartre 1976a: 119). But Cau argues that Sartre was neither proud nor vain; he was simply assured of his intellectual supe-

riority and of his cultural imperialism in the fifties (1985: 239). Sartre explains that he tried to set up his domination as a social symbol even if, for him, it was unjustified. And in practice, he was the dominant partner — though he did not think that because he was more intelligent he ought to

prevail: ‘Basically what interested me was to dip my intelligence in another’s sensitivity,’ to which Beauvoir concludes: ‘you took over women’s characteristics,’ and Sartre acquiesces.°° The real idiocy — demonstratively committed by Auguste Comte — was

generously to allot women sensitivity as their lot as if there could be a human faculty called sensitivity, with which certain representatives of the species were more handsomely endowed than the rest. Sartre believes that each human reality exists in totality in each of its undertakings. What he came to think, aged thirty-five to forty, was that intelligence and affectivity represent a stage in the individual’s development. One is not intelligent and sensitive aged six: one is emotionally sensitive and intellectually sensitive. Slowly sensitivity can remain strong, or intelligence can develop; there are various combinations. In 1967, Sartre will state: ‘But when the day comes, of course, the special qualities of [sensitivity] for which I pre-

fer the company of women will be due purely to chance; sometimes a woman will have them, sometimes a man. They’Il cease being a feminine prerogative’ (Gobeil 1967: 178). In a 1975 interview, he declared having

Sartre’s Relationships 171

always believed that there was some sort of woman inside him (1976a: 93).

Both sexes are born with both attributes but in men sensitivity is slowly transformed into reason. They need women’s sensitivity so that their sensitivity can become a woman’s sensitivity. Beauvoir elaborates that, in other words, Sartre feels incompleteness in himself and he agrees (1981: 385-86). This could be one of the main reasons for Sartre’s relationships with women; he believed that a normal life implied a continual relation with women. This allowed him a more complete version of himself. If we now revisit what Sartre says about men, he seemed to recoil at reciprocity: ‘What sickens me in advance is any idea of the relationship being mutual — of being seen by them whilst I see them: the idea that there could be any affective connection between us, be it merely one of cordiality or even politeness’ (1995: WD, 280; my emphasis). Because of his compartmentalisation, Sartre cannot stand an affective connection with a man, and he feels

almost physically repelled by it. This shows how this feeling is deeply embodied in him, and also how his boundaries are set in concrete. Anything that threatens these boundaries is rejected as threatening his masculine sense of self. Beauvoir denounces his macho attitude when he declares that he always hates men confiding in him whilst he loves it if women do it (Beauvoir 1981: A, 282-83). But if we recall a quotation cited in chapter _ three: ‘What I call confidence is defined more by its form than by its content: by a certain carelessness; a certain moist abandon ... If a man confides in me, I become icy’ (1995: WD, 275; my emphasis), it becomes obvious that this is more to do with Sartre’s own gender boundaries. Sartre wrote that there is one half of humanity that hardly exists for him. However, he did have contact with men like Guille, Nizan, Camus and perhaps a few others. Clatterbaugh makes the point that men dependent on women emotionally become isolated from other men since ‘the reliance on women as emotional caretakers makes men afraid of other men’ (1997: 65). Being Sartre’s secretary for eleven years, Cau spent many hours with him every day, witnessing his daily routine — including his behaviour with his mother — and he was subjected to his different moods. For him, there were two Sartres. One that did not take himself seriously, that did not care

about his appearance; and another that incarcerated himself within the confines of his ideas and that did not tolerate criticism. On the one hand someone gentle, simple and straight; on the other, someone who did not suffer any rival in the intellectual boxing ring but only sparring-partners who boxed like him within his rules. When these decided to up the tempo, Sartre would invariably quash them (1985: 239-40). It is Sartre’s grandiose self that does not tolerate any intellectual opponents, that thinks he cannot learn anything from his peers and that does not tolerate intellectual dissidence. And this is linked to Sartre displaying a certain brand of hegemonic masculinity by being ruthless. Sartre tries to recover his own feminine side with women. He chases, not after women, but after a more inclusive sense of self.°* Can we learn

172 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

anything more about Sartre’s relationship with Beauvoir in the light of the. present chapter? In an interview, Sartre is asked what he thinks of Beau-

voir as a woman. He replies that what first struck him was her beauty before adding: ‘... she has a man’s intelligence — you can see from the way I am talking that I’m still a bit feudal - and a woman’s sensitivity. That is, I’ve found in her everything I could possibly want’ (Sartre 1965: 72). Ulti-

mately, Sartre could be unconsciously attracted to Beauvoir because she symbolised for him a ‘complete’ human being, someone who has integrated their masculine and their feminine side — what Sartre was perhaps unconsciously hankering after. To use the term coined by Halberstam, Beauvoir displays ‘female masculinity’ (2002: 355).°° During the sixties and seventies, prompted by Beauvoir, Sartre started

to deconstruct machismo and to look at his own education. In 1974, he claimed that most men he knew were macho: ‘They may say macho things without realising it, and their egalitarian definition of the relation between the sexes doesn’t amount to much in practice’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 297). According to Beauvoir, in 1973, Sartre fronted a campaign for women’s equality in Libération (the French daily newspaper) and he started fighting against the macho attitude of the far-left men working for the newspaper (Schwarzer 1984: 70). He was associated with Beauvoir all his life and he was open and encouraging towards her feminism. He supported her writing Le deuxiéme sexe in the late forties when most men of his generation would not have done so. He was committed to freedom for all individuals. And in that supportive role, he was making a political gesture: ‘Profemi-

nism for men is one of the major forms of resistance to dominant masculinity’ (Pease 2000: 38). During the spring of 1948, Sartre — who is in Paris — writes to Beauvoir.

He gives her his news in order of importance. First comes work; by then Sartre is quite famous and he has to juggle meeting people, working on Les Temps Modernes, receiving journalists etc. but he still manages to work from 9 A.M. until 12 PM. and from 3 P.M. until 7 P.M., a seven-hour day! Then comes his love life. He talks to Beauvoir about Dolorés and then about the one he calls the little one, Mary Burnet; he sleeps with her every night. It is

| related to Beauvoir as follows: ‘I go up and I do it.’ After that, he evokes his play Les Mains sales, being played at a Paris theatre. Finally, he has a one liner about friends: ‘Bost, Olga, etc. I seldom see them but they seem kind’ before finishing on Merleau-Ponty (1983b**: 340-41). This example illustrates Sartre’s pecking order. What matters most is his work, his writing, followed by his love life. Everything else is relegated to the periphery and he is rather dismissive of his friends, especially male friends. What stands out in the present chapter is Sartre’s avoidance of intimacy with himself, his body, men and most women, even in sexual relationships.

Sartre’s Relationships 173

Notes 1. See Bauer (1997: 133 ff.). 2. See Bauer (1997). 3. This could be one of the reasons for Sartre’s attraction to Venice: ‘In Venice I choose, I go from the feminine to the masculine, from the soul to the spirit; one only has to change slightly the direction of one’s look’ (1991b: 111). Buisine writes judiciously that in his correspondence Sartre allows his feminine side, arguing that femininity is the key to the | Sartrean imaginary (1984: 193 and n. 15). For him Sartre can be present to himself when he accepts his ‘bisexuality’ (1984: 202).

4. At one stage, Camus was chasing Wanda and Sartre mentions another woman they both had a fling with (Beauvoir 1981: 343). 5. See Aronson (2003). ° 6. For Jeanson’s side of the story, see Aronson and Jeanson (2002). The interview also contains interesting insights about Sartre on friendship with men and women concurrent with my own argument. 7. Apropos Merleau-Ponty he will write that their long friendship stays in him like a permanently sore wound (1964b: 286), and Elkaim-Sartre confides that Sartre had great difficulties writing the obituary (Cohen-Solal 1985: 560-61). For once Sartre is owning up to his bad faith in 1942, to lagging far behind Merleau-Ponty in terms of understanding History, and to being dogmatic. 8. Sartre appreciated his sensitivity (Sartre 1976a: 173). 9. Cau offers a different perspective on this. He talks about Sartre being the star with constellations circling around him (his admirers and close collaborators). As soon as someone steps out of line, or stops being in harmony, they are excluded by Sartre. Cau argues that Sartre does not get angry, he simply excludes people: ‘There is no other choice: either being a satellite of Sartre rendered into a Sartrean [qui sartrise] or, sooner or later, exclusion. There is no compromise and when the Other distances himself, it can only be because of a break. There is no stretching in the Sartrean universe, only breaks’ (1985:

, 242). Such an interpretation would concur with Sartre’s grandiosity. 10. Gerassi makes the point that Sartre liked his own spontaneity in politics (1989: 5). 11. Aron had attacked Sartre for many years in his books, and de Gaulle was not himself adverse to violence when it came to ruling France, not to mention Franco’s bloody dictatorship in Spain. I am also not speaking about people, men and women, who saw Sartre as a good friend. For example, Fanon once said that he would pay a lot of money to talk politics with Sartre. 12. Pingaud and Pontalis resigned from Les Temps Modernes because of a difference perspective on psychoanalysis. 13. See the three texts and the interviews (1964c: 89-159), especially ‘The frogs asking for a King’.

14. Cau recalls these meetings in the fifties with Sartre as the brilliant professor who dazzled his audience and was funny (1990: 1135). 15. This reinforces my argument that he put something of himself in Anny in La Nausée with

her perfect moments. ,

16. See Lilar (1967) for a critique of Sartre’s theory, especially chapter three: 105-69. 17. Using Sartre’s earlier manuscripts for Les Mots, Pacaly demonstrates the crucial place of narcissism, which was later censored by Sartre’s rewriting (1996). 18. See Doubrovsky (1986). 19. See also Leak (1989), especially chapter one ‘Theorising the Difference’, 1-22. 20. See Collins and Pierce, 1973-74; Moi, 1986, and more recently Ghamari-Tabrizi (2001). 21. Leak analyses the ‘viscous’ in L’Etre et le néant as a choice for Sartre, not between the masculine and the feminine, but ‘between the masculine and emasculation, for the feminine is given as an emasculated maleness’ (1989: 19).

174 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

22. One could object that I am using Boris in order to talk about Sartre when convention has it that Sartre is more based on the character of Mathieu, and Boris himself is based on ‘le petit Bost’ as Beauvoir calls him in her memoirs. It makes no more sense to say that Sartre is embodied in Mathieu than in Boris. Rather, there are aspects of Sartre used in the fictional characters of all his novels and plays, including at times female characters, and also in his philosophy, and they build up an image of multiple and at times competing Sartrean subjectivities. 23. In Le Sursis, Iréne reflects: “We are animals; we put words on an instinct’ (1945c: 346). 24. Sartre has interesting things to say about fainting in Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions. If we apply his theory, Boris would use fainting as a magical behaviour in order to escape from a situation he cannot withstand anymore, and it would be seen as an act of freedom. 25. Bonne femme is used in French and in that context it carries with it a pejorative tone. 26. I take the term homosocial from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Krishnaswamy (2002: 314 n. 7). 27. It would be interesting to study Sartre’s male characters in his plays and fiction where the female characters are caught in this homosocial crossfire, and especially in Les Chemins de la liberté the relationship between Mathieu, Brunet and Daniel. In his study, Harvey analyses the character of Mathieu in L’Age de raison as perceiving his own unified self as a lack, and as fearing the feminine. By opposition, Marcelle is a hybrid being, characterised by sexual ambivalence. Marcelle has masculine traits and Mathieu is ‘the embodiment of manhood turned feminine’, though Harvey argues against a simple reversal of gender polarisation. He also makes the case that the narrative voice between Sartre and Mathieu is ambivalent (1991a: 98, 109-110). For Harvey ‘Mathieu's being is located ... between the masculine and the feminine,’ and he sees in Les Chemins de la liberté Sartre’s ‘own curiosity and even aspirations for ontological androgyny or, perhaps, even sexual “betweenness”” (1991a: 110, 112). 28. This cutting voice will be given to Mathieu in L’Age de raison. 29. Such an unkind portrait may have something to do with the fact that Sartre and Huston fell out over the film adaptation of Sartre’s Freud scenario (Sartre 1984). 30. Sartre talks in the singular about the position of lovemaking; one can assume that he is referring to the missionary position. 31. In La Nausée and parts of Les Chemins de la liberté, bodies tend to be limited to hands. 32. See Schehr (1995). 33. In L’Age de raison, having just been told by Marcelle that she is pregnant, we read: ‘she was looking at Mathieu’s belly and the guilty flower that rested so cosily on his thighs with an air of impertinent innocence’ (1945b: 22). 34. Sartre is turning away from traditional heterosexual masculinities by not fixating on penetrative sex and also by acknowledging an independent female sexuality. For as stated in Wimp or Gladiator, masculinity is often defined in terms of young men’s thrusting sexuality rather than by acknowledging and engaging with female sexuality (Holland, Ramazanoglu and Sharpe 1988: 32; see also Frosh, Phoenix and Pattman 2002). Sartre refuses to see himself as a gladiator. 35. See Sartre (1943: 449 ff.). 36. Sartre’s philosophical ‘being-for-other’ would be worth comparing to the role he was led to play by his family. What Sartre calls the masochistic attitude (1943: 427 ff.) sounds like what I have described as his compromised sense of self; being absorbed by the other and lost in his/her subjectivity in order to get rid of one’s own. By denying my own freedom, I commit myself to my being-as-object, and I apprehend my being-asobject in shame (see Johnson 1994). For Sartre, I become an object, that is an in-itself [ensoi]. It would be worth comparing Sartre’s notion of the in-itself with the notion of the compromised sense of self. Elsewhere he explains that once one’s being-for-others has been alienated, what has been alienated can never be recovered (1943: 463). 37. Beauvoir narrates this episode in her memoirs since it happened to Sartre in Naples in 1936 (1960: 280).

38. The stick could be inspired by Nizan who took to carrying one when he was seventeen, as a fashion statement (1964b: 142).

Sartre's Relationships 175

39. Sartre will be particularly fond of her and their relationship will last until 1976, see Contat (1996: 31-32 n. 3).

40. Sartre and Michelle Vian started having a relationship as soon as Sartre had finished with Dolorés, which will carry on throughout Sartre’s life. 41. Claude Lanzmann’s sister; he himself had a long relationship with Beauvoir. 42. She contacted Sartre before becoming a student whilst she was still at boarding school. 43. She calls herself the fifth woman in Sartre’s life when she enters it in 1961 — excluding Beauvoir — after the three aforementioned names plus Wanda who is still around; see Siegel (1988).

44. In an interview with both Sartre and Beauvoir, Schwarzer brings up the delicate question of Sartre having adopted Arlette Elkaim despite their earlier response in the interview that they never wanted to have any children. Beauvoir is at pains to demonstrate that Sartre adopted her for practical reasons, in order to protect his royalties from going to his family, but one senses between the lines a greater emotional involvement on Sartre’s part (1984: 55). It certainly upset Siegel as explained in her book; Sartre had apparently promised her he would not adopt Elkaim without her consent, which she did not want to give and she found out about it in a newspaper. Sartre reckoned he precipitated things partly because Elkaim was very upset after Lena’s three-week stay in Paris. According to Siegel’s account, Beauvoir warned him that it would upset both Siegel and Rey (1988: 77).

45. Sartre will also play music with Elkaim-Sartre and Siegel. 46. This is recalled differently in Cau; a reminder that one has to be careful about sources of information. 47. Inoted in chapter one Sartre as a young boy telling his mother that when he grew up he would be what she wanted him to be (she stated that she only wanted him to be her little boy). Sartre could be fulfilling Poulou’s promise. 48. Likewise Sartre’s existential biographies of Baudelaire, Genet and Flaubert also serve as explorations of his own psycho-social processes, notably in Baudelaire since he also had an early symbiotic relationship to his mother. Buisine talks about Sartre’s projections in his biographies (1986a: 42, n. 4). It would be worth exploring Sartre’s psycho-social processes in his biographies, as Pacaly partly does. Howells analyses how, in Flaubert, Sartre sees his Ego as his blind spot, ‘he experiences it as coming to him only from others ... his self is introduced into his subjectivity, as it were, from the outside. In Sartre’s terms it is allogéne, it is generated by the other, not the self’ (1997: 31). This is remarkably close to what I am arguing about Sartre in terms of his compromised sense of self and of his void. A follow-up volume to the present one would look specifically at Sartre’s construction of other childhoods based on his own projections and revealing a lot about himself in the process. 49. Talk at the Sartre Studies Group, Paris, June 2001. 50. This will also happen with Sartre’s frequent ‘official’ visits to the USSR where he will meet up with Lena Zonina. 51. Jeanson reports Beauvoir crying about Dolorés because she felt she had failed and that Sartre’s affair with her was serious (Aronson and Jeanson 2002: 52).

52. I would argue that one could still find sensitive women engineers and doctors of philosophy and vice-versa. 53. In La Force de l’€ge, Beauvoir narrates how Sartre had dressed up as a woman: ‘Oddly enough, drag suited him. During his Norwegian cruise he had gone to a fancy-dress ball in a black velvet dress of his mother’s, and a blond wig with long pigtails: an American lesbian had pursued him all night’ (1960: PL, 247). 54. Fora feminist point of view on this debate whose main argument is that Sartre — in line with other philosophers since Plato - appropriates a feminine imaginary rather than real women, see Collin (1993) and Léon (2001). 55. See Boulé (2003). 56. See Rétif (1998) for an analysis of androgyny regarding Beauvoir.

POSTSCRIPT

What has happened to Sartre since 1945? This will be answered in two parts, in a cursory and selective glance. First of all, from 1945 until 1972, and then from 1973 (when Sartre becomes almost blind) until 1980. For Sartre, someone’s life forms a whole that cannot be divided up; the inner and the outer, the subjective and the objective, the personal and the pollitical all influence each other since they belong to the same totality and one can only understand a person by treating them as a social being (1976a: 176). This last chapter will look at Sartre’s work, his inner life, his biography, his political persona and his body; these themes all being linked.

Sartre had started a process of self-reflection in his war diaries that stopped abruptly in 1940. In 1953, he started to work on his autobiography and wrote the bulk of it. The writing process will go on intermittently for

the next ten years.’ Contat argues that Sartre had already engaged with questioning writing, or more precisely his status as a writer, in 1949-50 (Sartre 1981: 1876). In 1960, whilst talking about committed literature, Sartre thinks that if literature is not everything, it is not worth an hour’s labour (1972b: 15). He holds the belief that writing is a necessity for everyone, that it is the highest form of communication (1972b: 38). Whilst he was writing on ethics, he realised that he was only addressing other writers when he was pretending to speak to non-writers. This prompted him to look back to his childhood for his investment in writing (1972b: 33). In his autobiographical film, he expands further: My neurosis ... was basically that I firmly believed that nothing was more beautiful than writing, nothing greater, that to write was to create lasting works, and

that the writer’s life ought to be understood through his work. And then, in 1953, I came to the realisation that that was a completely bourgeois viewpoint, that there was a great deal more to life than writing ... I was, somewhere around 1953-54, cured almost immediately of my neurosis. (1976b: SBH, 88)

The self-reflection that became Les Mots comes into the equation: ‘And at

that point I felt a strong urge to understand that neurosis to try and find out what could have made a nine-year-old boy slip into that “neurosis of Notes for this chapter begin on page 199.

Postscript 177

literature”, whereas other boys my age were normal’ (1976b: SBH, 88).* Sartre ceased believing in his neurosis of salvation through writing (itself

a by-product of religion); communism taught him that writing was an activity amongst many (1974: 41). And this brings change: ‘ I have been a man who is waking up, cured of a long, bitter-sweet madness’ (1964a: W, 157). Sartre had wanted to achieve his salvation but now he knows that literature does not save: ‘I have changed; I have served a slow apprentice-

ship to the real. I have seen children starving to death. In the face of a dying child, Nausea does not stand the comparison’ (Sartre 1964e: 13). By then, Sartre is influenced by Marxist ideology. What has happened to Sartre politically? In 1952, the midst of the Cold War, he becomes a fellow traveller of the Communist Party, writing “Les

Communistes et la paix’.* Sartre severed his links with the Communist Party after the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956. He cannot be accused of following trends. When most intellectuals in 1945 commit themselves either to communism or to Marxism, Sartre does not. When most people

quit and start to break up with the Communist Party in 1951-52, Sartre becomes a fellow traveller. He then enters into conflict with the other intellectuals. According to Cohen-Solal, Sartre seems to be enjoying falling out with most of his past political allies in his general attitude of praising and supporting the USSR (1985: 456).* Sartre as heroic warrior is still acting out Pardaillan, although — as mentioned in the previous chapter — he never lets

personal relationships compromise his political judgement. Camus had been brutally dispatched two years previously. Sartre breaks up with his old allies from the R.D.R., from Les Temps Modernes, Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lefort, his political neighbours like Gilles Martinet and the entire team from France-Observateur, like Roger Stéphane, and Etiemble.° Sartre wanted his autobiography to be a farewell to literature. We have seen previously that when Sartre was on his quest to authenticity during the war, he stated that he should give up writing but that he had bound himself to his desire to write (1995: WD, 39). And he knew why he could not stop writing: everything would collapse (1995: WD, 39-40). With Bariona, and then Les Mouches, he decided that he would write and that his writing would be a political gesture, foregrounding his conception of committed literature after the war, as explicated in Qu’est-ce que la littérature? Given this context, one could legitimately wonder if the present farewell to literature is also a farewell to Sartre’s grandiose self. 1 am not arguing that all literary activity is grandiose but, in Sartre’s case, it is linked to ‘salvation’. In order to answer this question, I need to talk about Sartre’s sense of self in his autobiography. Sartre appears to be less detached. As Elkaim-Sartre points out, some passages written in his war diaries from an adult viewpoint are also written in Les Mots but with the shame of a child, as in the questionnaire by Mme Picard (1995: 79 n. 2). This would indicate that Sartre is more able to

accept the young Poulou and to empathise with him, and therefore to

178 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

embrace his pain. At the end of Les Mots, Sartre revisits the analogy of the stowaway traveller. In the first version, confronted by the ticket inspector, the narrator, aged seven, explains that a secret mission concerning France

and possibly humanity is taking him to Dijon. If he has to interrupt his journey, the entire race could turn to chaos. They remain face to face with the inspector saying nothing and the narrator talking indefatigably (1964a:

W, 70). The first person narrator appears to be in the throes of his grandiose self. At the end of the autobiography, the narrator explains that he has changed. He has become once more the traveller without ticket. The inspector enters his compartment and wants a valid excuse. But this time, the narrator cannot find one and does not even want to look for one. In Dijon, he knows that no one is waiting for him (1964a: W, 157). In this second version, he is more likely to stay with his pain and therefore a more inclusive sense of self, rather than to invent a secret mission.® However, in the very next paragraph, he confides that, whilst he has renounced his vocation, he has not ‘unfrocked’ and still writes, every day: ‘Nulla dies sine linea’. According to Contat and Rybalka, the end of Les Mots

is as ambiguous as the ending of La Nausée and therefore Sartre may not have altered his views as much as he claims: ‘In Les Mots, he claims to no longer believe in it [literature], but cannot help still believing in it’ (Sartre 1981: 1673). In the ending of Les Mots, Sartre looks for what is left if he puts away Salvation (through literature) — that is part of his grandiose self: ‘A

whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him’. Pacaly makes the point that, although Sartre claims to have changed from ‘like nobody else’ to ‘like everyone else’, he still wants in both cases to be a unique anybody (Sartre 1980a: 299).’ Did Sartre’s reflexive work change his relationship to his mother, which would have an impact on his grandiosity? Mme Mancy is reported to have

exclaimed after reading Les Mots that Poulou had understood nothing of his childhood! Sartre appeared to remain close to her until her death, on 30

January 1969, except that in an unpublished interview by Gerassi, he evoked his mother’s death in the following terms: ‘In a way, I had ceased to love her the way I loved her when I was little’ (Grell-Feldbriigge 2001a: 64). In order to elucidate further the question of Sartre’s grandiose self, I need to look at his political persona. Commenting on Sartre in 1956, Cohen-Solal argues that ‘the writer dies in favour of the intellectual at the service of the oppressed of the earth’ (1985: 467). Earlier she had quoted from his Cahiers pour une Morale: ‘I see oppressed people (colonised, proletarians, Jews). I want to free them from oppression. It is those oppressed groups who touch me and I feel complicit with their oppression; it is their freedom which will recognise my own’ (1985: 377). This was written in 1947 and 1948, though only published in 1983, after Sartre’s death. On one level, this quotation is very poignant; Sartre is making a serious point about the oppression of the colonised, proletarians and Jews. On another level, it appears that Sartre is still displaying

Postscript 179

his grandiose self. His former grandiose project is replaced by another grandiose project; the creation of the intellectual who replaces the writer.® Sartre defines the intellectual as a technician of practical knowledge: ‘The intellectual ... can only be free if others are also free’ (1972c: 412). Sartre is still haunted by posterity, at least in his subconscious... In 1960, Elkaim-Sartre jotted down his dreams. Their main focuses are the themes of immortality, non-completion and being recognised. Pontalis, an analyst, comments that they are ‘dreams from above’ and Cohen-Solal concludes that it is rather strange if one thinks that Sartre did not care about his notoriety, his audience or posterity (1985: 566). But it is not strange if one thinks about Sartre’s grandiose self, which he is still measuring himself against.’ My analysis is not intent on delegitimising Sartre’s political itinerary, or his writings. On the contrary, his grandiose self serves him well to tackle the various gigantic tasks he sets himself (in effect he constructs his selves through these tasks) and his achievements would have been less spectacular had he been deflated in some way. In her portrait of Sartre in 1965, Beauvoir reveals that Sartre can recognise his faults with a disarming candour; he can describe and criticise himself with a strict impartiality. But he

has an immense pride about what he is going to do. Sometimes, it has helped him to achieve the almost impossible and failures do not bother him or knock him off his stride (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 419). And Sartre

will need plenty of determination to go through the 1960s... | During that period, Sartre’s influence starts to wane. In 1964, there is a public debate in Paris on ‘What is the role of literature?’ According to Cohen-Solal, it symbolises the fact that Sartre’s influence is at its lowest. Some people start perceiving him as someone over the hill (1985: 574). Revealingly, from 1965 until 1970, Sartre will be attracted by young people. May 68 will catch Sartre by surprise, even though he will be solicited (for instance he interviewed Cohn-Bendit for a newspaper). Asked to join in a debate at the occupied Sorbonne, he finds a note on his desk written by one student asking him to be succinct (Sartre 1974: 66)."° Is Sartre still the Pardaillan of politics? In a lot of his writings about colonialism and May 68, he will use violent language. In a radio interview about May 68, he declared that the only relationship students could have with universities was to destroy them and, in order to do so, they needed to take to the streets (Boulé 1992: 91). He exhorted violence in his preface to Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre (1964c, 167—93)." Sartre wrote a first draft and then systematically revised it to make it more violent.”* Lévy suggests:

‘You went back to Poulou playing war games, sword in hand ... the new Pardaillan writing the preface to Les Damnés de la terre’ and Sartre acquiesces (Sartre 1980a: HN, 94). Sartre’s masculine way of engaging in politics is linked to his grandiose self.

Sartre’s ‘revival’ will come in the early seventies when he becomes involved with Maoists groups.’ Going back over the incident in May 68 when Sartre was asked to be brief at the occupied Sorbonne, he comments

180 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

in 1972 that he was still a classical intellectual at the time and that he needed to question his status. He had no place amongst the students of the occupied Sorbonne. Sartre defines a classical intellectual as someone who realises that there is a contradiction between universal knowledge and its practical use, i.e. when the bourgeois use a specific policy /concept that gives them an advantage in the name of the universal (1976b: SBH, 100). Sartre calls for the creation of the ‘new’ intellectual, who helps the masses to think and facilitates their liberation from oppression. He accepts questioning himself so that philosophers will still be relevant in a new society (1974: 103). Sartre now criticises his earlier position in the mid to late 1960s; the intellectual should stop talking about the relationship universal-specific and fuse with the people, ready to participate in political actions (1974: 66). Is a ‘new’ version of Sartre being born? Throughout this time, Sartre is working on his Flaubert. He first moots the idea in 1943. In 1954 he decides he will do it; in 1956 he starts a first draft. From 1960 until 1970, he writes it, with four or five different versions of the entire manuscript, reworked every time. The first two volumes will finally be published in 1971 and the third one in 1972.* Pacaly argues that the length of the Flaubert suggests

that self-analysis in Sartre was powerless to change his neurosis as a writer, to change — as he had hoped -— his relationship to writing (1980a: 14). With the concept of the new intellectual, is Sartre still displaying his grandiose self and his Pardaillan style of politics? One would be forgiven for answering affirmatively looking at a picture of Sartre perched on a barrel in 1970, haranguing the workers in the Paris suburb of Billancourt, despite the pathos that is generated by the photograph. But let us listen to Sartre’s actual message. He wants to reunite people and intellectuals. The difference with his previous attitude is clear: ‘But it is no longer for the intellectual to give advice to the people but to help the masses take on a new shape’ (1976b: SBH, 104). The intellectual would become a sort of critical catalyst. We may uncover yet another layer of meaning by examining Sartre’s relationship with his body. Sartre wrote ‘Les Communistes et la paix’ in a

hurry, having to write or to suffocate; he wrote the first part, day and night. ‘What is the point of good health? I prefer to have written Critique de la raison dialectique —1 say it without pride — it is better to write a long thing,

dense, which we see as important than to be in good health.’ Such is Sartre’s reply to Contat suggesting he ruined his health by writing the 755page volume, published in 1960 (Sartre 1976a: 153); volume two stands at

456 pages and was published posthumously. This sums up Sartre’s attitude towards his body and his health from 1945 until 1973. The tone had been set in the thirties when he had accepted being injected with mescaline because he was researching hallucinations for L’Imaginaire. During those twenty-eight years, he will relentlessly work, write, womanise and play hard (smoking and drinking), as if he was still a young man.

He will have some health warnings but will choose to ignore them. He

| Postscript 181 started to take sleeping pills at the end of the war and carried on taking them every night. Already in January 1950, Sartre is working fifteen hours a day on his book on Genet: ‘He gets under my skin and gives me hallucinations. He wakes me up in the middle of the night. But it’s fascinating’ (1983b**: 349). Sartre has had high blood pressure since 1953 through overwork (Beauvoir 1990**, 416). The first alarm call came when he was fortynine. He was visiting the USSR and obligingly getting into macho drinking competitions of vodka. He was hospitalised for ten days after becoming slightly incoherent and diagnosed with hypertension. Looking back at this incident, Sartre interpreted it as a temporary inconvenience (1976a: 150). He took no notice of medical advice and, back in Paris, during a rehearsal at the theatre for one of his plays, he started to become incoherent. In 1958, Sartre aged fifty-three is working on Critique de la raison dialectique. He has a serious health warning; his blood pressure is so high that he is on the verge of a stroke. Beauvoir records that it was a really difficult year: his mind started to wander off, his writing became illegible; he had

constant ringing in his ears, and high blood pressure. Discussing this warning with Contat, Sartre confided he felt things had evolved; he knew his body was worn but he refutes Contat’s question that he was frightened, stating that he was never frightened (1976a: 150). Sartre took a break

for two months and then started working again, but he stresses that it delayed the publication of his play Les Séquestrés d’Altona by a year! In October 1959, whilst he is away with John Huston working on the Freud scenario, he promises to Beauvoir that he does not drink ‘except one little dry martini, sometimes two. No Scotch. Except for the first two nights’

(1983b**: 358). Beauvoir observes that when the doctor ordered less tobacco and alcohol, less drugs, he half followed it, felt better and then believed he could abuse his body again, even more.

Sartre used to take massive doses of sleeping pills, and ‘corydrane’ (aspirin and amphetamines) as soon as he woke up. All day along he would

fuel his body with cups of coffee, and at night whisky. ‘Corydrane’ was banned as a toxic product in 1971. On the box, it states: ‘Do not exceed the stated dose; one or two pills in the morning or for lunch.’ Most days Sartre would take a tube (twenty tablets), some days more (Cohen-Solal 1985: 485)! He used to swallow not one tablet of ‘corydrane’ but ten each time (Beauvoir 1981: A, 319). Consequently, at night, he would need, not one, but three or

four sleeping tablets, washing them down with whisky. Beauvoir recalls that, at one stage, because of the side effects, Sartre’s tongue was peeled and he was partially deaf. Every day, he would have two packs of twenty ciga-

rettes, numerous pipes, more than one litre of alcohol: wine, beer, spirit, whisky, 200 mg of amphetamines, 15 mg of aspirin, barbiturics, sleeping pills, teas and coffees, and a fat saturated diet (a typical lunch would have processed meat, rich sauces and a dessert, accompanied by a bottle of wine). Throughout all these decades, his daily timetable seldom altered. Sartre gets up around 8.30 A.M.; at 9.30 A.M. he is at work until 1.30 PM. He then

182 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

goes for lunch, usually with one of his girlfriends — he meets different women on different days of the week — until 3 P.M. From 3 P.M. until 5 P.M.,

he sees friends (it is also a slot for going to bed with women), and from 5 P.M. until 9 p.M., he works at home. Then he goes out to eat, accompanied, and retires in his bedroom at midnight (Beauvoir 1981: A, 408-409). This

represents an eight-hour working day. This timetable is strictly regimented, with little room for variations; Sartre could not bear anyone not being punctual (Beauvoir 1981: A, 484). His rhythm is calculated on the academic year hence he takes teachers’ holidays. Sartre seems cut off from his body, which acts as a performing tool. Even in the throes of nephritis, he ignores it by philosophising and rationalising. Beauvoir records: ‘You had the idea that suffering was always an absence of suffering, that there was always a kind of void and that it never could be fully realised’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 320). Sartre was a stoic. Suffering from a terrific toothache, he believed he could isolate it with yoga: ‘It is only pain and it does not spread through the rest of your body.’ He had the idea you could suppress pain by making it subjective (Beauvoir 1981:

A, 317). Contat and Rybalka think that Beauvoir sees Sartre’s stoicism towards illness as a form of sadism inflicted on his body, which becomes masochism (1970: 535). Reflecting on Sartre in the fifties, Cohen-Solal evokes his prolonged mental absences and asks the question: ‘Did he realise that his frantic way of living was a way of committing suicide?’ (1985: 486). Answering this question links back to masculinities; Seidler points out that most men have learnt to be estranged from their bodies, to regard them as having no part in their identities or experience (1991: 96).

Beauvoir: “There was one idea you had, and that was the idea of full

employment, that every minute had to be useful and that your body should go to the limit of its strength, including that part of the body which is the brain’.

Sartre: ‘I thought that in my head ... I possessed all the ideas I was to put down on paper’ so a tube of ‘corydrane’ meant ‘these ideas will be analysed in the next two days’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 319). Stimulants are fuel for the body, which is a writing machine. However, Sartre draws the line somewhere. He never used stimulants for writing lit-

erature, only for philosophy, though he claims elsewhere to have written the Flaubert with ‘corydrane’ too (1976a: 150).

Pouillon narrates how Sartre agreed to give a lecture at the Collége de Philosophie in 1960 on dialectics and on his ongoing research. He was going to talk about what he was doing; he took his notes and read them. He spoke for one hour and three quarters without any interruptions and without looking at his audience. Sartre seemed to have forgotten about time. When the person acting as chair made a sign to him, he stopped

abruptly, packed up and went back to his office (Cohen-Solal 1985: 502-503) — presumably to carry on writing where he had interrupted himself two hours previously.

Postscript 183

As a child, Sartre claimed that, in order to escape his puny body, he invented an imaginary body, that of his hero Pardaillan. This heroic figure is in evidence in some of his fictional characters, in physical activities such as boxing, in his way of engaging in politics and also in some relationships, with slashing comments on people. Sartre makes explicit that taking ‘corydrane’ was in pursuit of his imaginary body and that his state was one of

complete bodily surrender. He perceived himself through the motion of his , pen: ‘I was the same active being as Pardaillan’ (Beauvoir 1981: A, 328), coenaesthesia almost vanishing (1981: A, 329). Sartre the physical being is becoming his writing, a sort of writing hero with boundless energy. Sartre’s writing self is becoming his only self. And this is his undoing. As CohenSolal observes, since Sartre gave such an image of indefatigable energy, no one amongst his close circle raised the alarm (1985: 483). In 1964, Beauvoir explains that Sartre has to be active all the time; he is

unable to rest and cannot stop and take life as it comes (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 419). In 1974, she reiterates that Sartre’s adult body always looks active; when he was around fifty or fifty-five, it became a nervous tic. Sartre agrees to having been highly strung, and explains it by an excess of ‘corydrane’ (1981: A, 328). Doctors started to give him drugs and sedatives

in order to lower his blood pressure; he has a much calmer body now (1981: A, 329). By 1970, Beauvoir records that Sartre drinks too much; he is uncoordinated (1981: 20). In June 1971, many people notice that he seems detached, indifferent to many things — including his future. The inevitable happens on 15 July when he has a relapse whilst holidaying in Switzerland

with Elkaim; hypertension is to blame again. The portrait being painted is a gloomy one. However, there is some selfawareness, both in terms of Sartre’s grandiosity and in relation to his ageing body, which can be traced back to the early 1970s. In On a raison de se révolter,

Sartre is criticised for not abandoning the fourth volume on Flaubert in order to write a popular novel. He defends himself vigorously. He claims that, once the revolution is over, a book such as his study of Flaubert may be useful. More realistically, he claims the subjectivity of being both a classical intellectual and a new intellectual and concedes that, by writing his Flaubert, he is still a classical intellectual who is ‘breaking bones in [his] head’ [casser des os dans ma téte| in order to follow his left-wing friends (1974: 104-105). He

needs to write his Flaubert as an anchor point in his life in order to then follow the Maoists in their direct political action. This feels realistic; Sartre is no

longer trapped in an either/or discourse but he exists in the space in between. The Communist Party made him get rid of his neurosis of being a writer, and the Maoists of being an intellectual (1974: 96). For Sartre, the new intellectual is someone who is with the masses, but who can be called upon to offer a tendency towards universality because of his studies (1974: 102). This is where Sartre is so remarkable. Whereas he could simply have rested on his laurels and his notoriety, he still accepts being challenged past his retirement age; he questions himself and is prepared to change.

184 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

A shift also takes place in relation to Sartre’s body, despite appearances. As he is getting older and getting serious heath warnings, Sartre is working with the Maoist movement in France. In On a raison de se révolter, he

claims in December 1972 that he feels younger since he works with the Maoists. They originally approached him in order to use his name for their newspaper La Cause du peuple, because of state repression. They were hon-

est about their motive. Sartre talks about friendship amongst them, and even reciprocity (Beauvoir 1981: 77). This is something he never had with the communists and that is enough reward for working with them (Sartre 1974: 185-86). But in December 1972, he also tells his interlocutors that he has physical limitations and that when he is seventy, he will no longer be able to do protests, demonstrations etc. (1974: 74-75). Whilst talking about retired workers, he explains that men are treated by society according to their work capacity and nothing else; when they stop producing, they are not worth anything (1974: 128). This is a veiled way for Sartre to explain to the two young men in front of him, Gavi and Lévy, both in their twenties, that this is also what awaits him. Cohen-Solal is also aware of this shift; whilst normally Sartre appears oblivious to his physical limits, here he is candidly honest about them (1985: 609). This is the first time that Sartre is accepting physical limitations and coming to terms with the fact that he is no longer in his thirties. And by voicing his concerns, he is also puncturing the image of Pardaillan, for presumably Pardaillan never ages or dies.

But there is a word that Sartre never pronounces and that is retirement. Whether this was prescient or not, in 1973, Sartre’s health was to take a turn for the very worst. ‘In fact, towards the end of my life, blinder even than Beethoven was deaf, I would put my final work together gropingly’ (1964a: W, 129). In March 1973, following a stroke, Sartre seems bereft of his eyesight. Doctors tell him to stop smoking and to drink very little but he takes no notice and

remains quite confused until May when his near blindness is confirmed (Siegel 1988: 133-34). Sartre becomes incoherent again in August. After a series of ocular haemorrhages, his eyesight worsens in late August and he definitely cannot either read or write. In October, he discusses his near blindness with Beauvoir, confiding that he does not suffer that much. He seems sincere to her but she adds as a word of caution that all his life he has denied pain. For Beauvoir, his dozing off during the day is not due to physiological reasons but to psychological ones; it is a defence against the anxiety provoked by his eyes (1981: 80). By early December, Sartre is still slow and he sleeps a lot throughout the day. Beauvoir now argues that his attitude amounted to a refusal: he could not accept his near blindness (1981: 85). This is reminiscent of Sartre’s period of ‘madness’ when he

refused to look at the world. | Sartre is no longer writing by default rather than through a conscious

choice. This means that his writing self is no longer being produced. Reality must have been so painful that he could not face it. For Beauvoir, Sartre is in

Postscript 185

denial; he refuses to face the fact that he is almost blind. When she informs him he is unlikely to recover his sight, his reaction is that he does not want to envisage that situation; he can see better now. He tells Contat over lunch that he can only bear the situation by thinking it temporary (Beauvoir 1981: 87). But later on, Sartre exclaims that he is a living corpse (1981: 92). In September 1973, Benny Lévy — alias Pierre Victor — a Maoist leader of

the Proletarian left [Gauche prolétarienne| that he was about to dissolve, becomes Sartre’s secretary. He was originally employed for Sartre to carry

on working on the fourth volume of the Flaubert, where he wanted to analyse Madame Bovary. The year 1974 sees signs of a slow recovery of

Sartre’s morale. In October, he feels better and attends again editorial meetings of the Temps Modernes. He tries to stick to the aforementioned daily routine but now he is often sat at his desk for hours, occasionally jotting down notes he cannot reread but mostly staring into space. During the summer, Sartre asserts that he feels like a young man; he still sees himself as though he was thirty-five (Beauvoir 1981: A, 281). He hates to think that he is ageing, that he is no longer what he was when he was thirty and that he cannot read or write anymore, but also feels he is young in his head. He only lives in the present (Beauvoir 1981: A, 418). Sartre finds it hard to walk and to see but says he has adapted and is pleased when people tell him that he looks young (he likes the fact that his hair is not white). By 1975, Beauvoir talks about a new vitality in Sartre (1981: 109). He is working on the interview with Contat that will become ‘Autoportrait 4 soix-

ante-dix ans’ where he will speak honestly, courageously and openly about his physical health. He can no longer be a writer and his professional occupation is completely destroyed (1976a: 134). Sartre’s newly found optimism is linked to his project of television programmes about the seventy-five years of the century.’ Together with the interviews with Gavi and Victor, an interview with Jeanson (1974), the conversations with Beauvoir, the self-portrait with Contat and other projects to come, Sartre is embarking in a cycle Lejeune will call ‘spoken autobiography’ (1980). In October, whilst he is working hard over the television programmes he is planning with his large team (some meetings lasting four to five hours), he gets overtired. He starts losing his balance again and is hospitalised once more (Beauvoir 1981: 116). His arteries are clogged up and he is advised to stop smoking. He cuts down to four cigarettes a day. When he

comes out of hospital, he becomes more dependent again. The various women in his life bring him his lunch (Beauvoir 1981: 117). Beauvoir or Elkaim-Sartre sleeps in his apartment; he cannot be left alone in case some-

thing happens overnight. People read to him, mainly Beauvoir and also Lévy. Sartre has had to abandon his volume on Flaubert. He decides to work together with Lévy. They start formulating a project, Pouvoir et liberté, which aims to develop a new ethical basis for the left. They will work col-

laboratively over the following years through a reading programme and discussions. Beauvoir notes that Sartre is happy living again.

186 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

According to Beauvoir, by 1976, although Sartre could listen and discuss, he could no longer innovate. Eating and drinking were important for him,”° and he did not like people contradicting him (1981: 120). By March,

Sartre tells Beauvoir that he has no health problems to speak of, and she comments that he is much better adapted to his situation than the previous year (Beauvoir 1981: 121). In 1977, she records that he is well, with no more health warnings, whilst recognising that he still has problems walking and

smokes too much; he tells her: ‘I am very happy’ (1981: 126). But Sartre

complains to Lévy that today people talk about him like a living-dead (Cohen-Solal 1985: 628). In March 1978, he is hospitalised again and told to

stop smoking or risk amputation. His response is that he does not care about his legs as long as he keeps his brain (Siegel 1988: 148). But after twenty-four hours of reflection, he finally announces he will stop smoking. Sartre is still disciplining his body, as he has always done. After putting on six kilos over the summer, he decides that he will have one meal a day, which will be steak with peppercorns [au poivre| and green beans. He sticks to it and loses the six kilos in five weeks (Siegel 1988: 147). In 1979, Beauvoir records that Sartre asks to drink more and more, and gets angry (1981: 133).

Over the summer Goldmann, one of their collaborators at the Temps Modernes, is shot dead. Although Sartre is affected, Beauvoir comments that these days he is detached from events (1981: 147). In 1980, she claims that he is obsessed with drinking. Already during the Phoney War, Sartre was doing some serious drinking in order to be cheered up (1983b*: 366); it is a way of drowning the pain. For Beauvoir, the drama of the last few years of Sartre’s physical decline was the consequence of his whole life in terms of denying that he had a body and pushing himself like a machine (1981: 133). In March, Sartre and Lévy publish ‘L’espoir, maintenant’ in Le Nouvel Observateur, a series of discussions that were to announce the larger project of Pouvoir et liberté.'’ Even before their publication, these interviews are the subject of intense controversy. Beauvoir and other people from the Temps

Modernes team are concerned both by the content and the tone; Sartre appears to be negating some of his work. Beauvoir accuses Lévy of making him renege on himself. They try to have the publication halted’ but Sartre is more eager than ever to have it published. He puts pressure on Jean Daniel, the editor of Le Nouvel Observateur. He tells him that the itin-

erary of his thought eludes Beauvoir and other people from the Temps Modernes but he is confident they will be convinced once the book is pub-

lished (Sartre had told Gallimard he would bring him the manuscript in September 1980). For the first time in their half-century association, a rift is created between Sartre and Beauvoir. In April, Sartre’s health takes a turn for the worse. He is taken to hospital and dies on 15 April 1980 at 9 pM. Elkaim-Sartre, his adopted daughter, is at his bedside.

Three interlinked themes come out of this potted history of the last seven years of Sartre’s life. Masculinity, dependency and the dichotomy between a compromised sense of self and a more inclusive sense of self.

Postscript 187

Throughout this entire period, Sartre still produces himself as a seducer. At one point around 1977, Sartre told Siegel that, not counting Beauvoir, he had nine women in his life (1988: 166). In the autumn of that year, he sees a lot of Mélina, feeling again like a thirty-five year old (Beauvoir 1981: 132). Sartre is investing in the myth of the seducer. And the women around him approve of this and even facilitate it; Siegel introduces him to women (1988: 165-66). In 1978, more women appear and Sartre tells Beauvoir: ‘Women have never liked me as much as now’ (1981: 138); the latter’s attitude is that as long as it keeps him happy she does not mind (Bair 1990: 675, n. 12). We have travelled a long way from Sartre declaring in his war diaries in 1939 that his days of liaisons were over. In November / December 1979, Siegel initiates contact with a new woman, rather pushy. Beauvoir

also mentions a young American who lived in Rome that Sartre met in 1979 (1981: 147). Sartre is still actively constructing himself as masculine

four months before his death. He no longer has access to writing but he still has access to seduction. As seen throughout this essay, Sartre prided himself on needing no one and wore this as a masculine badge of honour. It is a way of negating one’s needs and of refusing to be nourished / dependent on the other. In her portrait of Sartre in 1965, Beauvoir states clearly: ‘He needs no one’ (Contat and Rybalka 1970: 419). So what happens when Sartre becomes nearly blind?

Contat asks Sartre if it is not difficult to have become dependent on people. | Sartre replies that it is a little unpleasant because he was used to writing and reading on his own and that real intellectual work demands solitude, point-

ing out that he has written all his works on his own (1976a: 14). Sartre’s dependency will help him to get in touch with a more inclusive sense of self: ‘Yet, to be human is to be in some ways vulnerable, limited, needy, dependent, weak ...” Johnson 1994: 47). Clearly, Sartre will not accept dependency overnight as he will not accept his physical condition overnight.

Benny Lévy describes the beginning of their new relationship: ‘Sartre had to face a long labour to accept his body, a real apprenticeship of his dependency towards other people’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 632). Lévy talks about almost giving up at first because he despaired. He describes the daily struggle as a fight against death. He would arrive in the morning and find Sartre asleep in his chair, not even hearing the doorbell. He uses the analogy of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He carried on because he was convinced that it was Sartre’s only way to show that he was alive. Siegel relates angrily how when she asked Lévy to become Sartre’s secretary, he hesitated, saying that he felt trapped and that he had things to do (1988: 136). He may well have been feeling Sartre’s emotions for him; if anyone was trapped, it was Sartre himself. Lévy’s initial hesitations on taking on the job of Sartre’s secretary seem to be for the aforementioned reasons, through delicacy and sensitivity, knowing what it implied for Sartre. He may also have realised the shift in the balance of power and wondered how Sartre would adapt to it. The process itself is interesting. Sartre asks

188 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

Siegel to enquire with Lévy if he will act as his secretary (1988: 135). Why

did Sartre not ask Lévy himself? Perhaps he was not ready to show his dependency and feared rejection. When Siegel relates to Sartre Lévy’s initial reaction, he replies that he knew Lévy would be reluctant but tells her that he would slowly enjoy it, which is exactly what happened (1988: 137). Gradually, Sartre accepts his new condition. Siegel sets down that once

Sartre had admitted and accepted the fact that he was almost blind, he opted for life and became joyful again. Does he mind too much depending on people? No, he does not; it even has a pleasant side (1988: 164). Sartre has accepted with simplicity losing his autonomy, his absolute control of decision-making (Cohen-Solal 1985: 624). He is forced to accept his body and its limitations, to look in now that he can no longer look out. Discussing the narcissist’s characteristics, Johnson argues: ‘Cure is a rapprochement and acceptance of one’s abilities, achievements, and ambitions with one’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses’ (1994: 187). Sartre’s body is forcing him to take notice of it. In the conversations with Beauvoir, he

agrees that up to this point in time his imaginary body has turned his interest away from his ‘real’ body (Beauvoir 1981: A, 324). Now he has to reintegrate his body, which means his vulnerability, in order to reintegrate a part of his subjectivity he has expelled; in the process he has to dilute his own over-controlling rational self. I evoked earlier a period of depression. According to Johnson, the narcissistic character may go through a depressive state when ‘a crisis — a healing crisis’ is on the horizon (1994: 176). This

crisis may be either resisted or worked through, and from the evidence available it seems that Sartre eventually embraced it. It cannot have been easy to change the habits of a lifetime. This transformation is underpinned by his political evolution, from a classical intellectual to striving to become a new intellectual. During the Phoney War, Sartre was searching for the road to authenticity: In relation to Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rimbaud, I have a distinct inferiority complex because they managed to destroy themselves ... Rimbaud most of all, because he managed to give up even writing. I am more and more convinced that, in order to achieve authenticity, something has to snap ... But I have protected myself against snapping. I have bound myself hand and foot to my desire to write. (1995: WD, 39)

He elucidates that he only dreams of questioning his desire to write, because if he really tried even for an hour to hold it in abeyance, place it in

parenthesis, all reason for questioning anything whatsoever would collapse (1995: WD, 39-40).

In order to rebuild a new sense of self, one has to fragment. Sartre is forced to face this situation with his near blindness because it signifies the end of writing. In ‘Autoportrait 4 soixante-dix ans’, Contat remarks that no longer being able to write is a terrible blow that he seems to be taking with serenity. Sartre suddenly stops keeping up appearances; in a way, it takes

Postscript 189

away all reason for being, he was and he is no longer. We read in Les Mots: ‘By writing, I existed ... but I existed only to write and if I said: me — that meant the me who wrote’ (1964a: W, 97). Sartre’s subjectivity — but also his masculinity — is linked to his writing self. The same line of reasoning is used in 1975: ‘I am no longer.’ Sartre pronounces these words with serenity. He explains that all he can do is to get used to what he is now and to

utilise his capacities as best as he can, though losing his eyesight is the worst thing, especially as he has things he wants to write about. But he has decided that he has said everything that he has to say. He then retracts by confessing that what he has just stated is not true; if he had years in front

of him and was in good health, he would claim that he has not written everything. In view of his circumstances, he does not want to admit this to himself (1976a: 151-152). Contat asks him if he feels lost and once again he is able to expand on his feelings, stating that he is because the only goal in his life was writing. He argues that he used to think creatively whilst writ-

ing. In a way, he cannot think either and cannot use style in his writing (1976a: 135). Already in his war diaries, when his eyes were hurting, he had written that he had not realised so fully that he thinks with his eyes. One can now fully appreciate why Sartre goes through a period of dozing off during the day from 1973 until 1975, which I have compared to his

period of ‘madness’ in 1935-37 when he believed he was failing as a seducer (with Olga) and as a writer; now he can no longer write. This could explain why he so frantically wants to seduce young women.” Where does Sartre’s relationship with Lévy fit in within my interpretative framework? Their relationship started in 1970 when Sartre collabo-

rated with the Maoists. Lévy was one individual amongst a group of people. Subsequently, they worked together on the project of On a raison de se révolter with Gavi. In a December 1972 interview Sartre claims that he feels younger since he is working with the Maoists, talking about friendship amongst them, and even reciprocity (Beauvoir 1981: 77). He is always

discussing philosophy with Lévy. Apart from his friendliness with Maoists, Sartre evokes a warm conviviality as well as political action, ‘a real human intercourse.’ This is new for Sartre in the context of his relationship with men. Although they often limited themselves to political actions, Sartre claims that they could have shared other things like going and seeing a movie together. Often in the evenings, Sartre is invited to eat at Lévy’s house where he meets young people. According to Cohen-Solal, Sartre liked to play the anonymous intrusive presence in these groups of friends, liked to feel integrated during these time of complicity and jokes, as if these mischievous escapades made him feel younger (1985: 617).”° In 1972-73, Sartre sees Lévy once or twice a week. They discuss politics and make decisions about political actions (Beauvoir 1981: 357). He feels a real friendship for Lévy, who is very intelligent. This sounds like a more traditional form of male friendship, based on rationality and political action. But Sartre also mentions a cultural relationship. In the past, Sartre has only

190 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

ever engaged in politics with men, the emphasis being on doing. Conviviality and a cultural relationship have never been on the agenda. It appears that Sartre is slowly breaking away from his self-imposed rigid boundaries. Kaufman argues: ‘Struggling for personal change can be done only if we are able to break our isolation from other men’ (1994: 158). When Lévy became Sartre’s secretary in the autumn of 1973, the latter became dependent on him. Whilst employed as Sartre’s secretary, Lévy also attended to his intellectual life. Sartre started to need but also willingly decided to trust a man, perhaps for the first time in his life. It is Sartre who asked Siegel to enquire if Lévy would accept being his secretary. He had

enough competent women around him who would have jumped at the chance if he had wanted to be dependent on a woman. This is one of Sartre’s first published statements about Lévy: ‘Just imagine: now that I know you, I feel better in myself’ (1974: 172). When I asked Lévy what he thought Sartre meant by this, he gave me a political explanation that made a lot of sense. Sartre was carrying on writing his book on Flaubert whilst being indispensable to the most active extreme-left group in France (Boulé

1992: 206). If I now revisit this quotation in terms of psycho-social processes, it demands a different explanation, an explanation that probably remained at a subconscious level, both in Sartre and Lévy. In 1977, after they had started working together, they published an interview. Sartre reveals that what attracted him to Lévy is the fact that the Jatter was interested in talking about things other than politics, stating: ‘In fact you were able to have the sort of conversations away from the main-

stream topic which I like to have with women, something very rare between men’ (Sartre 1977a: 10). Lévy replies: ‘You didn’t quite take me for a leader nor quite for a man,’ and Sartre revealingly retorts: ‘You were still

aman, but a man with feminine qualities. This didn’t draw me into your arms: I am not a homosexual. No, but I liked that side of you’ (my emphasis). As soon as he has talked about his attraction to the feminine side of Lévy, Sartre feels the need to add that this does not draw him into his arms because he is not a homosexual. Their relationship could illustrate the following from La Reine Albemarle ou le dernier touriste: ‘What I regret is

friendship, but it is a certain Italian friendship, that I have observed a hundred times, that tenderness of a man for a man that is almost sensual and

so little pederastic’ (1991b: 151). Sartre has always been attracted by hommes-femmes. ‘A man with feminine qualities’; Sartre finds in Lévy or

rather projects onto Lévy the fact that he appears to have integrated his feminine and masculine side.”' This is precisely the subject-position Sartre felt he split from as a young child. One of the main contentions of this essay has been that Sartre wanted to appropriate women in order to reintegrate his feminine side. In Olga and Dolorés, Sartre found two human beings who were spontaneous and passionate and this put Sartre in touch with a more inclusive sense of self. Lévy is very much in the same mould as Olga and Dolorés. Cohen-Solal under-

Postscript 191 -

lines that he wanted everything (1985: 629). Ben-Gal describes him as having a passionate character, vibrant with sensitivity. He was constantly exultant and would often stand up animatedly in the middle of a conversation because he was getting carried away by his emotions; a volcano constantly erupting (1992: 212). Contat discusses Lévy with Sartre and claims that — like Giacometti, another friend — Lévy was radical in his ambitions, wanting everything. Sartre acquiesces, adding that he also wanted everything at one stage in his life (Sartre 1976a: 194). Through Lévy, Sartre may allow himself to feel more extreme emotions he usually keeps under lock and key. As with Pieter during the Phoney War, Sartre and Lévy used to argue a lot — but this time about politics - sometime violently. Sartre reportedly told Robert Gallimard, his publisher: ‘I really like working with him. He entertains me, we really argue’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 632). This would indi-

cate that Sartre is showing a more inclusive sense of self with Lévy.” Elkaim-Sartre also reports ‘short flashes of anger’ between them (CohenSolal 1985: 638) and Lévy told me when I interviewed him that the clash of ideas at first was very important. This is a far cry from Sartre claiming that he never gets angry, especially when friends like Guille treat him badly. ‘Now that I know you, I feel better in myself.’

Sartre feels more complete as a human being around Lévy. He allows himself to reintegrate his feminine side. Sartre is feeling safe and trusting. In the last chapter, I ventured that perhaps the unconscious pull for Sartre was

that Beauvoir represented someone who had integrated masculine and feminine qualities, something Sartre unconsciously craved for. I would con-

tend that Lévy was for Sartre the male equivalent of Beauvoir, someone who, according to Sartre’s projections, had integrated his feminine side into

his masculinity. This could partly explain the rift between Beauvoir and | Lévy; paradoxically they were too similar. When so many commentators have denounced Lévy for using Sartre, and analysed Sartre as some kind of father figure / intellectual mentor, in the scenario I have just described it is in fact Lévy who acts as an emotional role model for Sartre!

Can this interpretation be extended to Sartre’s relationship to other women linked to some ‘minority’ groups? Out of the women close to Sartre at the end of his life, three were Jewish: Wanda, Liliane, Arlette. There were also past flames like Bianca, Olga, and Evelyne Rey.** When Siegel asked Sartre why this was the case, he replied: ‘Jewish women have eyes I particularly like. You can read all their history in their eyes’ (1988:

52). This sounds very romantic and mystical, but there may be another explanation for Sartre’s attraction to Jewish women. This needs to be extended to men too since Lévy is also Jewish and Sartre has a long-standing friendship with Lanzmann (Pieter had Jewish origins too). Sartre has long been preoccupied by the Jewish question, publishing in 1946 Réflexions sur la question juive. In the sixties, he had advocated violence

192 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

for colonised people and also during May 68. He stated in the 1970s that the self-defence counter-violence of the have-nots is emotional, whilst the violence of the haves is justified with reason (Gerassi 1989: 6). As well as a

politically motivated analysis, this points to an emotional affinity. ‘T see oppressed people (colonised, proletarians, Jews). I want to free them from oppression. It is those oppressed groups who touch me ...’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 377). This comes from a notebook destined to become Sartre’s ethics. Traditionally, masculinity is built upon the systematic denial of ‘feminine’ qualities. This leaves men in a continuous and endless struggle with themselves, in constant anxiety and fear of the revelations of their natures: ‘They think they can control these fears within themselves, but they do so by projecting them ... on to women, homosexuals, Jews, and blacks’ (Seidler 1991: 99). The main difference with the behaviour described by Seidler is that Sartre wants to reintegrate all these ‘feminine’ qualities. This could partly explain why he befriends women, he writes about Jews, black writers such as Fanon, homosexuals like Genet etc. Cau explains that for Sartre

‘no woman was stupid since she was ... a woman. Therefore alienated, therefore worthy of his interest in her ... He felt the same about the homosexual (Genet, for example, very funny in civil life), the Black, the Jew, the Worker’ (1990: 1133; my emphasis). Harvey extends this to class struggle

when he argues that Sartre sees the proletarian losing his procreative forces under prolonged exposure to capitalism (1991a: 158). He depicts the proletariat as being jellylike [prolétariat-tremblotin], acknowledging a soft quality in it and therefore recognising a feminine aspect of the masculine subject (1991a: 155).

Sartre’s interest may appear rather patronising. If he wants to recover ‘feminine’ qualities from individuals in these groups, it is because he projects these onto them (and this may have racist, heterosexist and sexist over-

tones). Equally, it may reflect his grandiose self. Here is Pardaillan liberating all these oppressed groups. Pacaly makes this very point. She talks about the narcissistic origin of Sartre’s fight against oppression when Sartre explains that he joined forces with the left because as a writer he wanted to expand his public as much as he could, that is ‘write for everyone’ (1980a: 451-52). But Cau adds a new dimension to the debate when he uses the concept of ‘alienation’. Sartre is alienated from his body, and his

vulnerability. He is alienated from a more inclusive sense of self. If he is attracted to these groups, it could be because he has a special sensitive

antenna; he tunes in to their emotional state, which mirrors their own alienation. Or rather, as Sartre himself expresses, they touch him. They have a shared history of alienation and this unconscious attraction may be part of Sartre’s affinity with these groups. If Sartre mentions that he likes to read

their history in the eyes of Jewish women, it could be because he senses some connection with hi(s)/story. Pacaly spots this pattern in La Nausée with Roquentin identifying himself with the Jewish man, the black woman, the old madman, Lucie the maid, the Autodidact when he has been hit, the

Postscript 193

little Lucienne raped; she refers to Roquentin’s identification with people who are humiliated (1980: 434). Let us remember that grandiosity is always an attempt to counter great emptiness /loss of self, humiliation and shame. When he was writing about the Jew in Réflexions sur la question juive, Sartre reveals he was in fact writing about himself aged twelve. Someone

without any land, depending on the good will of his stepfather (Ben-Gal 1992: 316-17). He therefore identified with the Jew (Sartre 1946: 101 ff.). For

him, the Jew has a raw sensitivity. There is a sense of sincerity, youth and warmth in friendship from a Jew that is rare in Christians (1946: 160-61). Does Sartre’s relationship with Lévy fit in to this pattern, and how? Let us look firstly at the question of equality. In the aforementioned interview between them which took place in 1977, Sartre lucidly highlights the issue:

‘People may think I am an old fool that you manipulate or a great man who gives you ideas ... the right answer is that we are equals’ (CohenSolal 1985: 634). In front of Beauvoir, he insists on equality (Beauvoir 1981:

529). For Gallimard, Lévy seemed to admire Sartre and the latter was happy (Cohen-Solal 1985: 635). Ben-Gal speaks of Lévy’s boundless love for Sartre (1992: 213), and Beauvoir recognises that Lévy had a lot of affection for Sartre and Sartre for him (Cohen-Solal 1985: 630). When it is suggested to Sartre that Lévy is a disciple, he denies it vigorously (1976a: 210).

It is then put to him that they may have a father-son relationship and Sartre gets irritated, retorting that he had never wanted a son and that they were equals (1976a: 212). Some facts are inescapable: there was a power unbalance between them and Sartre was on the decline, physically and mentally. For Elkaim-Sartre, the clash of ideas did not take place (Cohen-Solal 1985: 638). But Cau points _ out that whilst Sartre had refused to look at any of his philosophical ideas, writing, and political positions in order to engage in self-criticism, he was able to do so with Lévy. He especially scrutinised the time when he was a fellow traveller of the Communist Party (1990: 1134). And Aronson reminds us that Sartre had broken with Aron, Merleau-Ponty and Camus when their

paths separated for political reasons and yet remained close to a young man ‘whose itinerary was so clearly diverging from his own’ (1996: 37). Why would Sartre do that? When I returned to this question in 1998, I went back to my interview with Lévy. For him, the difference was that ‘it was a war of love that [they] were fighting’ (the expression is from the Talmud) (Boulé 1998: 58). They were committed to working together on Pouvoir et

liberté. I now believe that it is equally linked to Sartre’s psycho-social processes and to the development of a more inclusive sense of self. In the past, Sartre would have defended his grandiose selves ferociously (for example his political persona), to the point of excommunicating dissidents. Now, Sartre is able to accept more readily his abilities, achievements, and ambitions together with his vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

, Thus the transformation that Sartre was seeking during the Phoney War took place; having changed physically, he changed mentally. What is lev-

194 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

elled against Sartre in ‘L’espoir, maintenant’ is that his pugnacious style is no longer there (Cohen-Solal 1985: 656). This was one of Sartre’s ways of

actively constructing his masculinities. He has realised that he does not have to carry on boxing; he can retire from the ring. No wonder that Aron, who has known Sartre all his life, tells Lévy in a television debate shortly after Sartre’s death that he cannot recognise the Sartre of ‘L’espoir, maintenant’ because he finds Sartre reasonable. He agrees with what he is saying when all his life he has profoundly disagreed with him and found him unreasonable (1980: 49)! Whilst this argument has been used to prove that

Lévy had manipulated Sartre, I would cite it as evidence to underline Sartre’s own transformation, so effective that Aron does not recognise him. What has happened to Sartre’s grandiose self? Already in 1970, Sartre had said about the Maoists that he was not a star for them, that they called him ‘tu’ (using the informal form of address).*4 Gavi, Victor and Sartre use tu in On a raison de se révolter, and Sartre and Lévy in their 1977 interview.

This is one of the things that will shock certain people about ‘L’espoir, maintenant’, notably Gallimard (Cohen-Solal 1985: 635). As a point of com-

parison, Beauvoir and Sartre used ‘vous’ (the formal form of address) all their life. May 68 had questioned such traditional linguistic conventions as forms of power relations — also linked to class distinctions. Cohen-Solal considers another aspect. Sartre did not appear any longer to be Sartre to his close friends but Lévy had not known him like that, he had always known him with some health problems; for him Sartre was still Sartre (1985: 637). Ben-Gal explains that for Lévy, Sartre’s illness and old age did not mean anything, what mattered was his work and he used to forget at times that Sartre was embodied — until Elkaim-Sartre would point out that Sartre was getting tired (1992: 213). In a way, Lévy and his

Maoists friends were colluding with Sartre around the myth of eternal youth; paradoxically, this was the only way Sartre came out of his torpor every morning. Siegel is astonished that Lévy dared to confront Sartre, stubbornly; she was flabbergasted as she had dreamed about doing it so often but never dared (1988: 122). My contention is that Lévy does not speak to Sartre’s grandiose sense of self but relates to him as a contradictory human being, which in turn helps Sartre in coming off his grandiose self. Ben-Gal confirms that Lévy confronted Sartre violently about what he had just said, or written, summoning him to explain an apparent contradiction. He comments that Sartre enjoyed Lévy’s company, appreciated his work being discussed and confronting himself with such a sharp intelligence (1992: 212). By contrast, as Pouillon himself analyses, the Temps Modernes team who had protested so much at the publication of ‘L’espoir, maintenant’ had perhaps become the old guard by then (Cohen-Solal 1985: 636). They had fixed Sartre’s mean‘ing once and for all. Sartre had told Daniel that the itinerary of his thought eluded Beauvoir and other people from the Temps Modernes. It could be more of a case of his psycho-social evolution eluding them. Perhaps in

Postscript 195

1980, Sartre actually believes that he is ‘A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him’, but without wanting to be unique anymore. During that period, Sartre had been struggling between being a classical intellectual and trying to become a new intellectual. He explains to Lévy that, in 1975, he was still someone who had been shaken by May 68 but who was trying to combine his ideas with those of May 68 without too many contradictions (Sartre 1980a: HN, 109). I would agree with Beauvoir when she explains that Sartre counted on Lévy to become the new intellectual that he was struggling to be, as a leap of faith into the future, and when the end of his own life was imminent. Sartre claims that Lévy gives him entire satisfaction both as a militant and as an intellectual (1981: 211). But Lévy is also changing a lot. He was a very authoritarian leader of the Gauche Prolétarienne, some would call him a bully, and Sartre claims he helped him to realise that his authority was harmful (Beauvoir 1981: 211). Lévy is self-critical about his past political ideas. He exposes the thought that, in wanting the revolution, the means justifying the end was a mistake (Sartre 1980a: HN, 81). He also states unequivocally (and this comes from the ex-leader of the Gauche Prolétarienne) that if the idea of revolution becomes identified with terrorism, it has no chance of succeeding (Sartre 1980a: HN, 96). One could say that Sartre is helping Lévy too to shed some of his own grandiose self; they mutually support each other. Pouvoir et liberté is the book that Sartre and Lévy were working on by means of what they call ‘plural thought’ [la pensée plurielle|. Sartre soon realised Lévy could not be a secretary and that he needed to include him in his reflection. It completely modified his mode of inquiry, no longer working alone but working out ideas together. Sartre defines their work as ‘plural thought’; they are two men jointly working on ethics. Because of

Sartre’s history of merger and confluence in his closest relationships -— including with Beauvoir and Nizan with the latter speaking about each of them individually using ‘we’ [nous] — one could be forgiven for thinking that Sartre is looking for confluence. This would be doing Sartre an injustice. Sartre has changed.*° He has a more solid and inclusive sense of self and he is now more ready to meet the other, with his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. He no longer needs to be seen to be visible. He is no longer frightened of being dissolved in an intimate relationship, which is why he can entertain the idea of plural thought. Gerassi confirms this transformation. Throughout their interviews in the seventies, he discovered a vul-

nerable Sartre — a Sartre not shown and not showing himself in other interviews — worried about posterity, questioning his judgement, his actions and his relationships. He hints that Sartre probably did experience guilt, envy and jealousy (after the age of twenty) despite what he had often claimed previously (1989: 21). In view of the political situation, Sartre and Lévy decided to extract ‘L‘espoir, maintenant’ from their work in progress and present it to the

196 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

public. In Critique de la raison dialectique, published in 1960, Sartre introduces the concept of ‘fraternity-terror’ (1960a: 527 ff.) defined as a ‘statutory relation between the members of a pledged group inasmuch as their new birth as common individuals gives each the right of violence over the freedom of all the others against the dissolution of the group’ (1960a: CDR, 457). The end of keeping the group intact justifies violence (the means). This is also the message of Les Mains sales.*° Following his experience in La

Rochelle, Sartre believed that ‘the deep relationships between men are based on violence’ (Cohen-Solal 1985: 75). He wrote in L’Etre et le néant that conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others (1943: 413). In terms of relations with others, Sartre argued that fundamental relations with others at a sexual level are either sadistic or masochistic, or based on hatred. He also explained that there were concrete relations such as collaboration, struggle,

rivalry etc. that he could not describe in his philosophical treatise and, significantly, he relegated to a footnote ‘maternal love, pity, kindness’ (1943: 457). But thanks to his lived experience with the Maoists in the first place and then with Lévy, Sartre now considers that he can trust a man by exposing his vulnerabilities and weaknesses and not be destroyed. So it seems to follow logically that in ‘L’espoir, maintenant’ the concept of fraternity is discussed, but minus terror. The personal experience becomes political. In Cahiers pour une morale, Sartre had already expressed the hope of a society where conflict would no longer form the basis of human relations. In ‘L’espoir, maintenant’, he concedes that fraternity has little place in Critique de la raison dialectique. He now believes that society is formed by a

bond among people that is more fundamental than politics and he can envisage that people ‘should, can, or do entertain a certain primary relationship, which is that of fraternity’ (1980a: HN, 86). Fraternity is not equality; it is a ‘relationship where the motivations for an act come from the affective realm’ (1980a: HN, 89). Lévy presses Sartre to elucidate where it comes from and Sartre explains that we have in common a family; everyone is born from a mother (Sartre explains that it is the ‘same mother’ as a generic term) and shares the same end. Fraternity is ‘the relationship members of the species have with one another’ (1980a: HN, 88). Lévy allows us

to measure Sartre’s shift when he reminds him that in his preface to Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre, he wrote that the colonised man was the son of violence and not the son of the mother (1980a: HN, 91).

Sartre is also preoccupied with defining what he refers to as ‘man’, politically (1980a: HN, 67 ff.). He wishes the end of exploitation for man.”’ Man should no longer be used as a means to an end, as in Marxism - this is Sartre’s ethical quest. For an ethics to work, one needs to extend the idea of fraternity ‘until it becomes the manifest, unique relationship among all human beings’ (Sartre 1980a: HN, 93). Having exalted it in the past, Sartre now situates violence as the very opposite of fraternity. The interaction between the personal and the political is also evident in the next line of enquiry. Sartre has accepted dependency after a lifetime of

Postscript 197

stubborn autonomy, especially with men. In ‘L’espoir, maintenant’, he is revising with Lévy one of his most fundamental philosophical concepts, that of being-for-others [étre-pour-autrui]. Sartre recognises that in his past philosophy he was looking for ethics in a consciousness that had no reciprocity, no Other. He has revised his position and now thinks that every-

thing taking place in a consciousness is linked to, and even often engendered by, the presence of another: ‘In Being and Nothingness my theory of others left the individual too independent’ (1980a: HN, 71). He adds: ‘I hadn’t determined what I am trying to determine today: the dependence of each individual on all other individuals’ (my emphasis). His past theory

was characterised by the objectifying look and by the fact that love often led to masochism or to sadism. Prompted by Lévy, Sartre explains that dependency is not akin to slavery; one chooses it freely.”® Lévy objects that

Sartre’s whole theory on fraternity belongs to the mythical realm and Sartre replies that the relationship between the two of them is not mythical but real (1980a: HN, 90). This shows how Sartre derives his principles from his lived experience.”’

Elucidating fraternity further, Sartre states that the ‘relationship between a man and his neighbor in a society in which they are brothers is primarily affective and practical’ (1980a: HN, 89). He claims that the gift [le don] has to be rediscovered ‘because originally sensitivity is almost communal’ (1980a: 60). Sartre suppressed his sensitivity as a child when faced with masculinity challenges, projected it on to women (and a handful of men), and then tried to reappropriate it for himself via his relationship to women. He told Beauvoir that if women loved him, then sensitivity would become something that belonged to him; women gave him permission to legitimise his own sensitivity. Sartre’s present discovery, aided by his lived experience with Lévy whom Sartre considers to have feminine qualities, is that relationships between men are no longer based on violence but on affection. And this is because they almost all share when they are born the quality of sensitivity that Sartre equates with emotion. In the future, men will be ‘connected through emotions and actions’ (Sartre 1980a: 61). This is very different from Sartre’s previous relationships with men. The doing is still here but there is also an emotional connection. This reinforces Sartre’s reintegration of his masculine and feminine side. In a prescient statement, Sartre had declared in 1975 that men would only be in harmony once society changes in terms of economic, cultural and emotional relationships among men (1976a: 144). In a stimulating article, Guillermine de Lacoste argues that Sartre is articulating what Cixous calls ‘a feminine economy of reciprocal abandon in personal and eventually social relationships’ (1999: 272), according to which there exists the possibility of self-giving in love. A feminine economy is defined against a masculine economy. The lived-

body is gender free (being both active and passive, and masculine and feminine); and abandon is not a negative notion but more akin to Cixous’ notion of ‘de-selfing’ or ‘de-egoisation’ (1999: 292).

198 Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

‘L’espoir, maintenant’ ends on a discussion of the Jew. The Jewish experience is evoked in terms of revolutionary movements and an ethical end (1980a: HN, 99-110). Sartre now accepts that there is an inner reality of the Jew. In the past, he stripped consciousness of the self of all individual char-

acteristics that might have come from within and then made them be rediscovered from the outside (1980a: HN, 102), as analysed in chapter one regarding La Transcendance de l’Ego. Hence in Réflexions sur la question juive,

he believed that the Jew was a construction of the anti-Semite. In chapter one, I argued that Sartre’s experience of his compromised sense of self (the fact that he feels a void inside himself linked to his externally validated sense of self) could be found to have influenced his first philosophical essay. The remarks on the inner reality of the Jew reflect the fact that Sartre is in touch with a more inclusive sense of self. The last words of the interview contain a message of hope; despite the despair engendered by the world today, Sartre wants to and will die in hope, his conception of the future (1980a: HN, 110).°°

Part of the controversy surrounding “L’espoir, maintenant’ focused on Sartre’s declaration that his books are a failure in as much as he has not

said all he wanted to say. At times this has caused him distress and at other times he has not recognised his mistakes. I have argued that Sartre being prepared to be self-critical is part of the shedding of some of his grandiose self.*' Now, he has a more balanced position: ‘But at the moment, I think neither the one nor the other anymore. I think I have done just about what I was capable of doing, and it’s worth whatever it’s worth’ (1980a: HN, 61). When Lévy asks him a propos his decision to write as a young boy as a way of ensuring immortality if it has been a failure (1980a: _ HN, 57), Sartre gives a measured response. He is neither Shakespeare nor Hegel, but he has written polished works; some have been failures, others less so, while others have been successes, before adding ‘and that’s good enough’ (1980a: 26). People like Aron and some of the Temps Modernes team — including Beauvoir — did not recognise Sartre in these interviews.” What they did not recognise was Sartre’s grandiose self.

‘What counts in a vase is the void inside’ wrote Sartre on the band

around L’Etre et le néant. This void symbolically represents Sartre’s psychic state as a child and as he grew up. What he learned is that the void inside

needs to be filled. Near the end of his life it appears that, due to the contingent factor of his near blindness and to the fact that writing stopped, Sartre was able to start a process of psychic and social reintegration of his self, replacing the divided and split selves he had inhabited with a more inclusive sense of self, and embracing his body.*® Sartre declared about his work with Lévy: ‘But there is no doubt that I could only have considered this exchange in my old age’ (1980a: HN, 73). Precisely: it is only after writ-

ing had stopped that Sartre was able to access a more inclusive sense of self, and to engage in plural thought, changing in the process his lifelong mistrust of men.** This did not happen overnight. The spadework was

Postscript 199

done during the Phoney War. Lacoste argues that Sartre’s shift can also be traced to Cahiers pour une morale (1990: 283 ff.); and the work was consolidated during the decade of self-reflection that led to Les Mots. In all this, the paradox is that his compromised sense of self, including his grandiose

self — whilst imprisoning him — allowed him to achieve an incredible

amount both as a writer and as a political figure. | Denis de Rougemont” wrote: ‘He who touches an object without pro-

foundly marking it with his imprint and making it his own can never touch the property of others. What he has taken can never belong to him: it is not in his power to appropriate it. The scholar and the person inclined to quotation profit from greatness that they are unable to mark’ (Hollier 1986: 122). In this book, I have touched Sartre (and Sartre has touched me); I have also objectified him. But what I have taken does not belong to me and Sartre should have the last word... in French. The quotation I have chosen reflects his evolving definition of freedom, a concept fundamental to his entire oeuvre, which could also be applied to his psycho-social evo-

lution. ‘Je crois qu’un homme peut toujours faire quelque chose de ce qu’on a fait de lui. C’est la définition que je donnerais aujourd’hui de la liberté’ (1972b: 101).°° I hope my readers can make something with (and of) what I have made of Sartre...

Notes 1. See Contat (1996: 25; 32-33); also Chiantaretto (1995: 183-236).

2. Interestingly, Sartre was never psychoanalysed. He suggested it to his friend Pontalis around 1963, more from intellectual curiosity than for the psychoanalytical method itself but the latter refused (Sartre 1976a: 146). Sartre is on record as saying that in order to know who he really is, what he is and what he is worth, it would be necessary to have a perfect psychiatrist who does not exist (1976a: 160); clearly Sartre’s narcissism is still in evidence.

3. See Sartre (1964d: 80-84). ‘When I returned to Paris, in a hurry, I had to write or to suffocate. I wrote, day and night’ (1964b: 249). 4. The full record of Sartre on the USSR for the period 1952-56 is more complex than Cohen-Solal’s analysis suggests (see Birchall 2004).

5. Iam only presenting one side of these feuds: Merleau-Ponty supported the United States in Korea, Stéphane became a Gaullist whilst Lefort’s polemics against Sartre (and those of Castoriadis) were ferocious. It takes two to make a quarrel and the blame cannot be laid solely with Sartre. 6. See Lejeune (1996) for a detailed analysis of this episode. 7. Sartre writes in his preface to Gorz’s Le Traitre: ‘For we are like him in that each of us, like him, is a unique anybody’ (1964b: 78-79). Already in his preface to Les Mouches, Sartre had written that Orestes at the end of the play carries on on his way like a hero, like anybody (1973: 223). Sartre developed the notion of the ‘singular universal’, see Louette (1996). 8. See Sartre (1972c: 375-476). 9. Three more dreams are cited in Contat (1996: 466), which Elkaim-Sartre passed on to Lejeune, and the first two certainly evoke notoriety and posterity.

200. Sartre, Self-Formation and Masculinities

10. This should not detract from the significance of the fact that he was invited rather than the French intellectuals who appeared to be dislodging him from the limelight in the 1960s. 11. Politically, this is the serious question of the fighting back of colonial populations who have been the victims of violence over generations, and it is not my intention to trivialise Sartre’s argument about violence by underlining its masculinity angle. 12. See Drake (2002: 124). 13. This is all very sketchy, as mentioned in the opening paragraph of this chapter. See for instance Drake (2002). For an excellent study of Sartre on violence, see Santoni (2003). 14. A mere total of 2,136 pages in the ‘Tel’ series for Gallimard — the equivalent of a paperback edition — and over 3,000 pages in the hardback edition! 15. These will never see the light of day, Sartre and his team being the victims of state censorship. 16. In an interview, when asked what is the most important thing in his life today, Sartre replies: ‘I don’t know. To live. To smoke’ (cited in Boulé 1992: 182). 17. Sartre also published an interview for Gai Pied where he argues about the continuity of his thought, as well as discussing sexuality (1980b). 18. They were more successful in 1978 when they stopped the publication of an interview that Sartre and Lévy were trying to publish in Le Nouvel Observateur after they had visited Jerusalem. This created a rift between Lévy and Beauvoir and the Temps modernes team. The interview is published in Ben-Gal (1992: 315-21). 19. One needs to bear in mind that, in view of his physical state, it is probably the young women who seduced Sartre but he would want to produce himself as the active agent. See the thought-provoking article by Moi (1997). 20. Whether Sartre was anonymous is another matter. 21. Not everyone liked Lévy; he was perceived by some as a bully and a manipulator (see Aronson 1996: 15).

22. Gerassi also talks about Sartre getting really angry with him during their interviews, making the point that it is part of the mythological Sartre to say that he never got angry (1989: 20); this shows that Sartre was also engaged with Gerassi. 23. Claude Lanzmann’s sister (Rey was more than likely her pseudonym as an actress). 24. Cited in Boulé (1992: 208). 25. Gerassi reports a conversation in the 1970s between Sartre and two of his female students where Sartre argues that it is people in power who advocate rationality and who argue that being emotional is being weak; these are male (1989: 6). 26. As canbe seen from Cahiers pour une morale, Sartre did not always accept this argument as when he discusses Trotsky’s Their Morals and Ours (see Birchall, 2004).

27. The whole discussion on fraternity and man is highly gendered. See for instance McBride (1997: 333) and also Kuykendall (1997: 293).

28. This seems to indicate that previously Sartre believed that showing dependency would be equivalent to forfeiting his freedom — hence his reluctance to accept Beauvoir’s gift of her freedom in the late 1930s. 29. Other people working with Sartre at the time confirm this. According to Colombel, ‘He was looking for, in the midst of otherness, a link to the other that would form islets of fraternity. In order to stop seeing only rivalry from one individual to another but reciprocity’ (1990: 1139); Sartre had also been discussing the matriciel (the mother as ‘matrix’ ) with Colombel for three years (Colombel, 1981). Sartre told Sicard that he was writing a work that was to transform completely what he had thought in philosophy, explaining that, ontologically, consciousnesses are not isolated and that it changes everything (Sartre 1979b: 15). 30. The ending is remarkably consonant with the ending of Sartre’s self-portrait at seventy, five years earlier (1976a: 216 ff.).

31. Already in his interview with Lévy dated 1978, he ends the interview as follows: ‘At the time of Réflexions, I did not know about Jewishness. Today, I still don’t know about it, but I know that I don’t know’ (Ben-Gal 1992: 321).

Postscript 201

32. There were also some voices that actually liked the interviews. Jeanson shows how the Sartre of the Lévy interviews is confluent with the Sartre of the 1960s who already argued that history and ethics were alike [se confondent] (1990: 891). 33. Whilst I am arguing in terms of wholeness, or putting together the different fragments, I do not wish to give the impression of a kind of utopianism, nor minimise the tragedy of the end of life and the suffering of dying. 34. I would differ from Lacoste’s interpretation that sees Sartre’s transformation only in terms of him coming to terms with his fear of abandonment and his fear of the body, especially the female body, thus coming to terms with his neurosis (1999: 295). Though Iam in agreement with her argument (but I use different terms when I state that Sartre is being more inclusive of his ‘feminine’ side for example), it neglects the other factors I have highlighted. 35. Sartre wrote one of his first articles on him in 1939 (1947: 57-64). 36. ‘I think that man can always make something with what has been made of him. That is the definition I would give today of freedom.’

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sartre, J.-P. 1936a. La Transcendance de l’Ego (In Recherches Philosophiques). (ed. used: Paris:

J. Vrin, with Introduction, Notes and Appendices by Sylvie Le Bon, 1965). 1936b. L’Imagination. Paris: P.U.F. (reprint 1981).

1938. La Nausée. Paris: Gallimard, Folio edition (reprint 2002). The Diary of Antoine Roquentin (1949), London: Lehmann Ltd. Nausea (ed. used: London: Penguin, trans. Robert Baldick, 1965,

reprint 1975). :

1939a. Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions. Paris: Hermann (ed. used 1965). 1939b. Le Mur. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1978). 1940. L’Imaginaire. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1982). 1943. __L’Etre et le néant. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1970). Being and Nothingness (1956). New York: Methuen, (trans. Hazel Barnes). 1945a. Huis clos. Followed by Les Mouches. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1977). 1945b. L’Age de raison. Paris: Gallimard, Folio edition. The Age of Reason (1947). London: Hamish Hamilton (ed. used Heron books, trans. Eric Sutton). 1945c. Le Sursis. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1977). 1946. _Réflexions sur la question juive. Paris: Morihien (ed. used Idées / Gallimard 1954, reprint 1982).

1947. Situations, I. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1978). 1948a. Les Mains sales. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1978). 1948b. La Mort dans l’ame. Paris: Gallimard (ed. used Livre de poche, 1963). 1948c. Qu’est-ce que la littérature? Paris: Gallimard (ed. used Folio, reprint 1985). 1949. Situations, III. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1976). 1960a. Critique de la raison dialectique. Paris: Gallimard. Critique of Dialectical Reason (1976). London: Humanities Press, (trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith). 1960b. Les Séquestrés d’Altona. Paris: Gallimard. 1960c. Questions de Méthode. Paris: Gallimard. 1964a. Les Mots. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1974). Words (1964). London: Hamish Hamilton (ed. used: Penguin Classics, trans. Irene Clephane, 2000).

, Bibliography 203 1964b. Situations, IV. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1980). 1964c. Situations, V. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1978). 1964d. Situations, VI. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1975). 1964e. (Interview by Piatier, J.) ‘Jean-Paul Sartre s’explique sur Les Mots’. Le Monde, 18 April: 13.

1965. (Interview by Gobeil, M.) ‘Sartre talks of Beauvoir’. Vogue, No. 146, July: 72-73. See also under Julienne-Caffié. 1971. —L'Idiot de la famille, I, II. Paris: Gallimard. 1972a. L’Idiot de la famille, III. Paris: Gallimard.

1972b. Situations, IX. Paris: Gallimard. 1972c. Situations, VIII. Paris: Gallimard (reprint 1980). 1973. Un Théétre de situations. Paris: Gallimard.

1974. With Philippe Gavi and Pierre Victor. On a raison de se révolter. Paris: Gallimard. 1976a. Situations, X: Politique et Autobiographie. Paris: Gallimard. Sartre in the Seventies (1978). London: André Deutsch, (trans. by Paul Auster and Lydia Davis). 1976b. (Film, by Alexandre Astruc and Michel Contat.) Sartre par lui-méme. Paris: Gallimard. Sartre by Himself (1978). New York: Urizen Books, (trans. by Richard Seaver).

1977a. (Interview by Victor, alias Benny Lévy) ‘Pouvoir et liberté: actualité de Sartre’, dialogue avec Pierre Victor. Libération, 6 January: 10-11. 1977b. (Interview by Chaine) ‘Sartre et les femmes’, un entretien avec Catherine Chaine. Le Nouvel Observateur, 31 January: 74-76, 79, 81-83 and 7 February: 64-66, 68, 73-75, 81-82. 1979a. (Interview by Catherine Clément and Bernard Pingaud) ‘Entretien avec Jean-Paul Sartre’. L’Arc, November: 33-37. 1979b. (Interview with Michel Sicard) ‘L’écriture et la publication’. Obliques, No.18-19, Spécial Sartre: 9-29. 1979c. (Interview with Beauvoir by Sicard) ‘Michel Sicard: Entretien avec Simone de Beauvoir et Jean-Paul Sartre’. Obliques, No. 18-19, No. Spécial: 325-29. 1980a. (Interviews with Benny Lévy). ‘L’espoir, maintenant’. Le Nouvel Observateur, Nos 800-802, March. (ed. used: L’espoir, maintenant [1991], Paris: Verdier). Hope Now, The 1980 Interviews (1996). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, (intro. by Ronald Aronson, trans. by Adrian Van Den Hoven). 1980b. (Interviews with Le Bitoux and Barbedette). ‘Sartre et les homosexuels’. Le Gai Pied, No. 13(April 1980): 1; 11-14. 1981. O0cuvres Romanesques. Paris: Gallimard, La Pléiade (includes La Nausée (1938), Le Mur (1939), Les Chemins de la liberté: L’Age de raison (1945), Le Sursis (1945), La Mort dans l’@me (1949)). Eds. Contat, M. and M. Rybalka

with G. Idt and G. H. Bauer.

1982a. (Interview with Pucciani, Rybalka and Gruenheck) ‘Une vie pour la philosophie: Entretien inédit avec Jean-Paul Sartre’. Le Magazine littéraire, No. 182: 75-76. 1982b. ‘Journal de Mathieu’. Les Temps Modernes, September: 449-75.

204 Bibliography

1983a. Cahiers pour une morale. Paris: Gallimard. — 1983b*. Lettres au Castor et a quelques autres, 1926-1939. Paris: Gallimard. Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir.

London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd (1992), (trans. Lee Fahnestock and Norman Macafee). 1983b*". Lettres au Castor et a quelques autres, 1940-1963. Paris: Gallimard. Quiet Moments in a War: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd (1993), (trans. Lee Fahnestock

and Norman Macafee). 1984. Le Scénario Freud. Paris: Gallimard. 1990. _Ecrits de jeunesse. Contat, M. and M. Rybalka (eds.). Paris: Gallimard. 1991a. Album Jean-Paul Sartre. Paris: Gallimard. 1991b. La Reine Albemarle ou le dernier touriste. Paris: Gallimard. 1995. Carnets de la dréle de guerre: Septembre 1939—mars 1940. New edition (with Notebook 1). Paris: Gallimard, (first edition is dated 1983). War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War, November 1939-—March 1940.

London: Verso (1999), trans. Quintin Hoare (trans. of first edition i.e. without Notebook 1). 2000. ‘Résistance’. Les Temps Modernes, No. 609 June, July and August): 3-22.

Beauvoir, S. de 1943. _L’Invitée. Paris: Gallimard. 1946. (Interview) ‘Jean-Paul Sartre: Strictly Personal’. Harpers Bazaar, January: 113, 148, 160.

1949. Le deuxiéme sexe. Paris: Gallimard. 1958. Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée. Paris: Gallimard. 1960. La Force de l’ége, I, II. Paris: Gallimard (continuous pages). The Prime of Life (1962). London: André Deutsch and Weidenfeld and Nicolson, (ed. used: Penguin [reprint 1977], trans. by Peter Green). 1963. La Force des choses, I, II. Paris: Gallimard. 1970. La Vieillesse, I, I. Paris: Gallimard. 1972. Tout compte fait. Paris: Gallimard. 1981. La Cérémonie des adieux suivi de ‘Entretiens avec Jean-Paul Sartre’. Paris: Gallimard. Adieux. A Farewell to Sartre (followed by ‘Conversations with Jean-Paul Sartre’) (1984). London: André Deutsch and Weidenfeld and Nicolson (trans. Patrick O’Brian). 1990a. Lettres a Sartre *, 1930-1939. Paris: Gallimard. Lettres a Sartre **, 1940-1963. Paris: Gallimard. Letters to Sartre, 1930-1963 (1991). London: Random House, (trans. and

ed. Quintin Hoare). 1990b. Journal de guerre, Septembre 1939-Janvier 1941. Paris: Gallimard. 1997. Lettres a Nelson Algren: Un Amour Transatlantique. Paris: Gallimard, (trans. and ed. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir).

Bibliography 205

Works in English Abelove, H., M. Aina Barale and D. M. Halperin (eds.). 1993. The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. London: Routledge. Adams R. and D. Savran (eds.). 2002. The Masculinity Studies Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Allers, R. 1961. Existentialism and Psychiatry. Springfield: Charles Thomas. Arkin, W. and L. R. Dobrofsky. 1978. ‘Military Socialization and Masculinity’. Journal of Social Issues, 34, No. 1: 151-68. Aronson, R. 1980. Jean-Paul Sartre — Philosophy in the World. London: Verso. Aronson, R. 1996. ‘Sartre’s Last Words’, Introduction to Hope Now, The 1980 Interviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 3-40. Aronson, R. 2003. Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended it. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aronson, R. and F. Jeanson. 2002. ‘The Third Man in the Story’. Sartre Studies International, 8, 2: 20-67. Bair, D. 1990. Simone de Beauvoir. London: Jonathan Cape. Barnes, P. (ed.). 1995. Personal, Social and Emotional Development of Children. Oxford: Blackwell. Bauer, G. H. 1997. ‘Snails and Oysters: Sartre and His Homosexualities’. In Fourny, J.-F. and C. D. Minahen (eds.). Situating Sartre in Twentieth Century Thought and Culture. New York: St Martin’s Press, 129-49. Benjamin, J. 1990. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of

Domination. London: Virago. Benjamin, J. 1998. Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Berger, M., B. Wallis and S. Watson (eds.). 1995. Constructing Masculinity. London:

Routledge. Bersani, L. 1988. ‘Is the Rectum a Grave?’. In Crimp, D. (ed.). AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. London: MIT Press, 197-222. Birchall, I. 2004. Sartre against Stalinism. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Bloom, H. (ed.). 2001. Jean-Paul Sartre: Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia:

Chelsea House Publishers. Boulé, J.-P. 1998. ‘Revisiting the Sartre /Lévy Relationship’. Sartre Studies International, Vol. 4, No. 2, ‘Hope Now: A Symposium’: 54-60. Boulé, J.-P. 2003. ‘Sartre Interviewed by Women on the Subject of Women: the Good Faith of Bad Faith’. Nottingham French Studies, Vol. 42, No.1 (Spring): 5-20. Breshgold, E. and S. Zahm. 1992. ‘A Case for the Integration of Self Psychology Developmental Theory into the Practice of Gestalt Therapy’. The Gestalt Journal, Vol. xv, No. 1: 61-93. Brod, H. 1987. The Making of Masculinities: The New Men’s Studies. London: Allen

and Unwin. Brod, H. and M. Kaufman (eds.). 1994. Theorizing Masculinities. London: Sage. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter. London: Routledge.

206 Bibliography

Butler, J. 1995. “Melancholy Gender / Refused Identification’. In Berger, M., B. Wallis and S. Watson (eds.). Constructing Masculinity. London: Routledge, 21-36. Canaan, J. 1998. ‘Is “Doing Nothing” Just Boys’ Play? Integrating Feminist and Cultural Studies Perspectives on Working-Class Young Men’s Masculinity’. In Daly, K. and L. Maher (eds.). Criminology at the Crossroads: Feminist Readings in Crime and Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 38-57. Caplan, P. (ed.). 1991 (original edition 1987). The Cultural Construction of Sexuality. London: Routledge. Carrigan, T., B. Connell and J. Lee. 2002. ‘Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity’. In Adams, R. and D. Savran (eds.). The Masculinity Studies Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 99-118. Chodorow, N. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clarkson, P. 1989. Gestalt Counselling in Action. London: Sage. Clatterbaugh, K. 1990. Men, Women, and Politics in Modern Society. Boulder: Westview Press. Clatterbaugh, K. 1997. Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity. Boulder: Westview Press. Cockburn, C. 1988. ‘Masculinity, the Left and Feminism’. In Chapman, R. and J. Rutherford (eds.). Male Order, Unwrapping Masculinity. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 303-29. Collins, M. L. and C. Pierce. 1973-74. ‘Holes and Slime: Sexism in Sartre’s Psychoanalysis’. The Philosophical Forum, 5, No.1-2: 112-27. Connell, R. W. 1983. Which Way Is Up? Essays on Sex, Class and Culture. London: George Allen and Unwin. Connell, R. W. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Connell, R. W. 1994. ‘Psychoanalysis on Masculinity’. In Brod, H. and M. Kaufman (eds.). Theorizing Masculinities. London: Sage, 11-38. Connell, R. W. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press. Connell, R. W. 2000. The Men and the Boys. Berkeley: University of California Press. Connell, R. W. et al. 1998. Men’s Health: A Research Agenda and Background Report. Canberra: Commonwealth Dept of Health and Age Care. Craib, I. 1987. ‘Masculinity and Male Dominance’. Sociological Review, Vol. 34, No. 4: 721-43. Crimp, D. (ed.). 1988. AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. London: MIT Press. Drake, D. 2002. Intellectuals and Politics in Post-War France. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Duncan, N. 1999. Sexual Bullying, Gender Conflict and Pupil Culture in Secondary Schools. London: Routledge. Dyer, R. 2002. ‘The White Man’s Muscles’. In Adams, R. and D. Savran (eds.). The Masculinity Studies Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 262-73. Edley, N. and M. Wetherell. 1995. Men in Perspective: Practice, Power and Identity. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Fallaize, E. 1999. ‘Love from Simone: Epistolary and the Love Letter’. Sartre Studies International, Vol. 5, No.1: 49-63.

Bibliography 207

Fausto-Sterling, A. 1992 (Second edition). Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men. New York: Basic Books. Fausto-Sterling, A. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.

Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, A. 1994. “The Male Body and Literary Metaphors for Masculinity’. In Brod, H. and M. Kaufman (eds.). Theorizing Masculinities. London: Sage, 239-58. Foucault, M. 1967. Madness and Civilization. London: Tavistock, (trans. R. Howard). Foucault, M. 1981. The History of Sexuality, The Will to Knowledge, Vol. I: An

Introduction. Harmondsworth: Penguin (trans. R. Hurley). Foucault, M. and R. Sennett. 1981. ‘Sexuality and Solitude’. In Anthology, 1. London: Junction Books. Fourny, J.-F. and C. D. Minahen (eds.). 1997. Situating Sartre in Twentieth Century , Thought and Culture. New York: St Martin’s Press. Freeman, M. 1993. Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, Narrative. London:

Routledge. Freud, S. 2002. ‘The Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes’. In Adams, R. and D. Savran (eds.). The Masculinity Studies Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 14-20. Frosh, S., A. Phoenix and R. Pattman (eds.). 2002. Young Masculinities. London: Palgrave.

University of Chicago Press.

Gerassi, J. 1989. Jean-Paul Sartre. Hated Conscience of His Century, Vol. 1. Chicago:

Ghamari-Tabrizi, S. 2001. ‘Feminine Substance in Being and Nothingness’. In Bloom, H. (ed.). Jean-Paul Sartre: Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 189-98. Gobeil, M. 1967. Playboy Interviews. Chicago: Playboy Press, incl. ‘Playboy Interviews: Jean-Paul Sartre’, 162-79. Goldstein, L. (ed.). 1994. The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Grell-Feldbriigge, I. 2001a. ‘Jean-Paul Sartre and Daniel Séreno’. Sartre Studies International, Vol. 7, No. 2: 58-75. Guntrip, H. 1977. Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy and the Self. London: Hogarth Press. Halberstam, J. 2002. “An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity without Men’. In Adams, R. and D. Savran (eds.). The Masculinity Studies Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 355-74. Hancock, P. et al. 2000. The Body, Culture and Society. Buckingham: Open University Press. Harvey, R. 1991a. Search for a Father: Sartre, Paternity and the Question of Ethics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Harvey, R. 1991b. ‘Sartre / Cinema: Spectator / Art that Is Not One’. Cinema Journal, 30, No. 3 (Spring): 43-59. Haug, F. (ed.). 1987. Female Sexualisation: A Collective Work of Memory. London: Verso. Henriques, J., W. Hollway, C. Urwin, C. Venn and V. Walkerdine. 1984. Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity. London: Methuen. Holland, J., C. Ramazanoglu, S. Sharpe and R. Thomson. 1988. The Male In the Head: Young People, Heterosexuality and Power. London: Tufnell Press.

208 Bibliography

Holland, J., C. Ramazanoglu and S. Sharpe. 1993. Wimp or Gladiator: Contradictions In Acquiring Masculine Sexuality. London: Tufnell Press. Hollier, D. 1986. The Politics of Prose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (trans. J. Mehlman). Hollway, W. 1984. ‘Gender Difference and the Production of Subjectivity’. In Henriques, J. et al. Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity. London: Methuen, 227-63 (especially the sub-section entitled

, ‘What Does a Man Want?’, 244-46). Howells, C. 1997. ‘Gustave in Sartre’s L’Idiot de la famille’. In Fourny, J.-F. and C. D. Minahen (eds.). Situating Sartre in Twentieth Century Thought and Culture. New York: St Martin’s Press, 29-38. Hughes, A. 1999. Heterographies: Sexual Difference in French Autobiography. Oxford: Berg. Jackson, D. 1990. Unmasking Masculinity: A Critical Autobiography. London: Unwin

Hyman. Johnson, P. J. 1981. ‘Of Mauvaise foi and Mustaches: Facial Hair as Sign in Sartre’s Fiction’. Research Studies, 49, No.3 (September): 154-61. Johnson, S. M. 1994. Character Styles. New York: W. W. Norton. Jung, C. 1962. Memories, Dreams and Reflections. London: Fontana. Kaufman, M. 1994. ‘Men, Feminism, and Men’s Contradictory Experience of Power’. In Brod, H. and M. Kaufman (eds.). Theorizing Masculinities. London: sage, 142-63. Keefe, T. 1976. ‘The Ending of Sartre’s La Nausée’. Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. xii, No. 3 July): 217-35. Kimmel, M. S. (ed.). 1990. Men Confront Pornography. London: Meridian. Kimmel, M. S. 1994a. ‘Masculinity as Homophobia’. In Brod, H. and M. Kaufman (eds.). Theorizing Masculinities. London: Sage, 119-41. Kimmel, M. S. 1994b. ‘Consuming Manhood: The Feminization of American Culture and the Recreation of the Male Body, 1832-1920’. In Goldstein, L. (ed.). The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 12-41. Kindlon, D. and M. Thompson. 1999. Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional life of

Boys. New York: Ballantine. :

Kosofsky Sedgwick, E. 1993. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial

Desire. New York: Colombia University Press. Krishnaswamy, R. 2002. ‘The Economy of Colonial Desire’. In Adams, R. and D. Savran (eds.). The Masculinity Studies Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 292-317. Kuykendall, E. 1997. ‘Sartre on Violence and Fraternity’. In McBride, W., Sartre’s Life, Times, and Visions du Monde. New York: Garland, 288-312. Lacoste, G. de. 1999. ‘The Beauvoir and Lévy Interviews: Towards a Feminine Economy’. In Murphy, J. S. (ed.). Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 272-98. Leak, A. 1989. The Perverted Consciousness: Sexuality and Sartre. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Leak, A. 1995. ‘Writing and Seduction I. Actaeon’. Sartre Studies International, Vol. 1, Nos 1-2: 57-75. Leak, A. 1996. ‘Writing and Seduction: Sartre’s L’Etre et le néant Il. Narcissus’. Sartre Studies International, Vol. 2, No. 1: 57—75.

Bibliography 209

Leak, A. 1998. ‘On Writing, Reflection, and Authenticity in Sartre’s Carnets de la dréle de guerre’. Modern Language Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (October): 972-84. McBride, W. 1991. Sartre’s Political Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McBride, W. 1997. Sartre’s Life, Times, and Visions du Monde. New York: Garland. Messerschmidt, J. W. 2000. Nine Lives: Adolescent Masculinities, the Body, and Violence. Boulder: Westview Press. Middleton, P. 1992. The Inward Gaze: Masculinity and Subjectivity in Modern Culture. London: Routledge. Miell, D. 1995. ‘Developing a Sense of Self’. In Barnes, P. (ed.). Personal, Social and Emotional Development of Children. Oxford: Blackwell, 187-227. Moi, T. 1986. ‘Existentialism and Feminism’. Oxford Literary Review, 8 (1-2): 88-95. Moi, T. 1997. ‘Freedom and Flirtation: Bad Faith in Sartre and Beauvoir’. In: Fourny, J.-F. and C. D. Minahen (eds.). Situating Sartre in Twentieth Century Thought and Culture. New York: St Martin’s Press, 111-28. Morgan, D. H. J. 1994. ‘Theater of War, Combat, the Military, and Masculinities’. In Brod, H. and M. Kaufman (eds.). Theorizing Masculinities. London: Sage,

165-82. |

Murphy, J. S. (ed.). 1999. Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre. University

Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. | O’Donohoe, B. 1999. ‘Sartre’s Melodrama: Les Mouches, or the Stepson’s Revenge’. French Studies Bulletin, Autumn: 6-9. Pease, B. 2000. Recreating Men: Postmodern Masculinity Politics. London: Sage. Piaget, J. 1928. Judgement and Reasoning in the Child. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Redman, P. and M. Mac an Ghaill. 1997. ‘Educating Peter: The Making of a History Man’. In Steinberg, D. L., D. Epstein, and R. Johnson (eds.). Border Patrols. London: Cassell, 162-82. Salisbury, J. and D. Jackson. 1996. Challenging Macho Values. London: Falmer Press. Santoni, R. E. 2003. Sartre on Violence: Curiously Ambivalent. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schehr, L. R. 1995. Alcibiades at the Door: Gay Discourses in French Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

| Scriven, M. 1996. ‘Sartre and the Nizan Affair’. Sartre Studies International, Vol. 2, No. 1: 19-39. Segal, L. 1990. Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men. London: Virago. Seidler, V. J. 1989. Rediscovering Masculinity: Reason, Language and Sexuality. London: Routledge. Seidler, V. J. 1991. ‘Reason, Desire, and Male Sexuality’. In Caplan, P. (ed.). The Cultural Construction of Sexuality. London: Routledge, 82-112. Silverman, H. J. and F. A. Elliston. 1980. Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Steinberg, D. L., D. Epstein and R. Johnson (eds.). 1997. Border Patrols. London: Cassell.

Theweleit, K. 1987. Male Fantasies. Cambridge: Polity Press. | Walkerdine, V. 1990. Schoolgirl Fictions. London: Verso. Watson, J. 2000. Male Bodies: Health, Culture and Identity. Buckingham: Open

University Press.

210 Bibliography

Weedon, C. 1987. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Wiegman, R. 2002. ‘Bonds of (In) Difference’. In Adams, R. and D. Savran (eds.). The Masculinity Studies Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 201-25.

Works in French Aron, R. 1980. ‘Sartre a “Apostrophes”’. Libération. Special issue ‘Sartre’, May: 48-49. Aron, R. 1983. Mémoires. Paris: Julliard. Badinter, E. 1994. XY: De l’Identité masculine. Paris: Odile Jacob. Barthes, R. 1980. La Chambre Claire. Paris: Seuil. Bellemin-Noel, J. 1988. Interlignes. Lille: Editions du Septentrion. Ben-Gal, E. 1992. Mardi, Chez Sartre: Un Hébreu a Paris (1967-1980). Paris: Flammarion. Boschetti, A.-M. 1985. Sartre et ‘les Temps Modernes’: Une entreprise intellectuelle. Paris: Minuit. Boulé, J.-P. 1992. Sartre médiatique: La Place de l’interview dans son CEuvre. Paris: Minard. Bourdieu, P. 1998. La Domination masculine. Paris: Seuil. Buisine, A. 1984. ‘Ici Sartre’. Revue des sciences humaines, |xvi, No. 195 (July-September): 183-203. Buisine, A. 1986a. Laideurs de Sartre. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille. Buisine, A. 1986b. ‘Les Mots et les morts’. In Burgelin, C. (ed.). Lectures de Sartre. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 17-38. Buisine, A. 1990. ‘Une étrange machine textuelle’. Les Temps Modernes, 48@me année, Nos 531 to 533, October to December: 686-702. Burgelin, C. (ed.). 1986. Lectures de Sartre. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Burnier, M-A. 1966. Les Existentialistes et la politique. Paris: Gallimard. Cau, J. 1985. Croquis de mémoire. Paris: Julliard. Cau, J. 1990. ‘Post-scriptum “Rien et tout”’. Les Temps Modernes, 48eme année, Nos 531 to 533, October to December: 1132-36. Chiantaretto, J.-F. 1995. De l’acte autobiographique. Seyssel: Champ Vallon. Cohen-Solal, A. 1985. Sartre 1905-1980. Paris: Gallimard. Collin, F. 1993. Futur antérieur: Féminismes au présent. Paris: L’'Harmattan. Colombel, J. 1981. Sartre ou le parti de vivre. Paris: Grasset. Colombel, J. 1990. “Brumes de Mémoire’. Les Temps Modernes, 48eme année, Nos 531 to 533, October to December, 1137-58. Contat, M. (ed.). 1996. Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (ed. used, reprint 1997). Incl. ‘Introduction: Une autobiographie politique?’, 1-41. Contat, M. and M. Rybalka (eds.). 1970. Les Ecrits de Sartre: Chronologie, Bibliographie commentée. Paris: Gallimard. Doubrovsky, 5S. 1986. ‘Sartre: Retouches 4 un autoportrait (une autobiographie visqueuse)’. In Burgelin, C. (ed.). Lectures de Sartre. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 99-134. Doubrovsky, 5. 1988. Autobiographiques, de Corneille a Sartre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, ‘Perspectives critiques’.

Bibliography 211

Galster, I. 2001. La Naissance du ‘Phénoméne Sartre’: Ratsons d’un Succés 1938-1945. Paris: Seuil. Gilbert, J. 1991. Une si douce Occupation. Paris: Albin Michel. Grell-Feldbriigge, I. 2001b. ‘Odette — Jacques — Mathieu: une triste histoire d’amour’. Etudes sartriennes, vui, No. 24, RITM, Université Paris X, 63-78. Hollier, D. 1982. Politique de la prose: Jean-Paul Sartre et l’an quarante. Paris:

Gallimard. Idt, G. 1972. “Le Mur’ de Jean-Paul Sartre: Techniques et contexte d’une provocation.

Paris: Larousse. Idt, G. 1979. ‘Les Chemins de la liberté, les toboggans du romanesque’. Obliques, Michel Sicard (ed.), Special Issue ‘Sartre’, No. 18-19: 75-94. Idt, G. 1983-1984. ‘La Cérémonie des adieux de Simone de Beauvoir: rite funéraire ou défi littéraire?’. Revue des sciences humaines, \xiii, No.192: 15-33. Idt, G. 1996. “Travail de style dans les avant-textes des Mots’. In Contat, M. (ed.). Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 121-81. Idt, G. 2001. ‘Les Mots’: Une Autocritique ‘en bel écrit’. Paris: Belin, Lettres Sup. Jeanson, F. 1974. Sartre dans sa vie. Paris: Seuil (Includes an interview with Sartre dated 17 June 1973, 289-99). Jeanson, F. 1990. ‘De I’Aliénation morale a l’exigence éthique’. Les Temps Modernes, 48me année, Nos 531 to 533, October to December: 890-905. Julienne-Caffié, S. 1966. Simone de Beauvoir. Paris: Gallimard, (incl. ‘Entretien avec Jean-Paul Sartre’, par Madeleine Gobeil, 38-43). Lamblin, B. 1993. Mémoires d’une jeune fille dérangée. Paris: Balland. Leak, A. 2001. ‘Les enjeux de |’écriture dans Les Carnets de la dréle de guerre: prolégoménes a une théorie de l’engagement’. Etudes sartriennes VIII, No. 24, RITM, Université Paris X: 49-62. Lecarme, J. 1996. ‘Sartre palimpseste’. In Contat, M. (ed.). Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 183-248.

Lecarme-Tabone. 2002. ‘Le couple Beauvoir-Sartre face a la critique féministe’. Les , Temps Modernes, No. 619 June-July): 19-42. Le Doeuff, M. 1989. L’Etude et le rouet. Paris: Seuil. Lejeune, P. 1975. Le Pacte autobiographique. Paris: Seuil. Lejeune, P. 1978. ‘Ca s’est fait comme ¢a’. Poétique, ix, No. 35 (September): 269-304. Lejeune, P. 1980. Je est un autre: L’Autobiographie de la littérature aux Médias. Paris:

Seuil. ,

Lejeune, P. 1996. ‘L’Ordre d’une vie’. In Contat, M. (ed.). Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 49-119. Léon, C. T. 2001. “L’Existentialisme est-il un féminisme?’. In Galster, I. La Naissance du ‘Phénomeéne Sartre’: Raisons d’un Succes. Paris: Seuil, 305-32. Lévy, B.-H. 2000. Le Siécle de Sartre. Paris: Grasset. Lilar, S. 1967. A propos de Sartre et de l’amour. Paris: Grasset. Louette, J.-F. 1990. ‘La Boxe du style’. Le Magazine littéraire, No. 282 (November): 45-48. Louette, J.-F. 1996. ‘Ecrire l’universel singulier’. In Contat, M. (ed.). Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 373-416. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1980. Esprit, No. 43-44 July-August): 3-5.

212 Bibliography

Moi, T. 1995. Simone de Beauvoir: Conflits d’une intellectuelle. Paris: Diderot Editeur (original ed. in English, 1994). Pacaly, J. 1980. Sartre au miroir. Une lecture psychanalytique de ses écrits biographiques. Paris: Klincksieck. Pacaly, J. 1996. ‘Travail de la censure de “Jean sans terre” aux Mots’. In Contat, M. (ed.). Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 359-72. Perrin, M. 1980. Avec Sartre au Stalag 12. Paris: Opéra Mundi. Pontalis, J.-B. 1990. ‘Un boy de Sartre’. Les Temps Modernes, 48eme année, Nos 531 to 533, October to December: 1266-76. Rétif, F. 1998. Simone de Beauvoir: L’Autre au miroir. Paris: L Harmattan. Schwarzer, A. 1984. Simone de Beauvoir aujourd’hui. Paris: Mercure de France. Siegel, L. 1988. La Clandestine. Paris: Editions Maren Sell. sirinelli, J.-F. 1988. Génération intellectuelle: Khagneux et normaliens dans l’entredeux-guerres. Paris: Fayard. Sirinelli, J.-F. 1990. ‘Le jeune Sartre ou la non-tentation de l'histoire’. Les Temps Modernes, 48eme année, Nos 531 to 533, October to December: 1039-1055, (especially 1046 ff.). Teroni, S. 1986. ‘Sartre et les séductions de la “Mélancolie”’. In Burgelin, C. (ed.). Lectures de Sartre. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 39-48. Teroni, 5. 1996. ‘Construction d’une image de soi a travers biffures et corrections’. In Contat, M. (ed.). Pourquoi et comment Sartre a écrit ‘Les Mots’. Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 321-57. Todd, O. 1981. Un Fils rebelle. Paris: Grasset. Wickers, O. 2000. Trois aventures extraordinaires de Jean-Paul Sartre. Paris:

Gallimard.

Work in Spanish Coria, C. 1986. El Sexo Oculto del Dinero. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, Colleccion Controversia.

INDEX

A authorial personality, 3

Abel, Lionel, 159 ‘Autoportrait a soixante-dix ans’ activity / passivity dyad, 154, 159-60, 161 (Sartre interview), 185, 188-9 Adams, Rachel, 9n. 16

Aden Arabie (Nizan), 63n. 11 B

agrégation (state examinations), 52, 62, Baccarat, 114, 115 Alain, 151 Bariona (Sartre), 32n. 10, 92, 122—3, 125,

62n. 3 Bair, Deirdre, 187 ,

Album Jean-Paul Sartre (Sartre), 25 127n. 15, 177

Algeria, 148-9 Bataille, Georges, 125

Algren, Nelson, 132, 141n. 6 Baudelaire, Charles, 3, 23, 31n. 4, 88n.

alienation, 192, 193 25, 175n. 48

Allers, R., 160 Bauer, G. H., 173n.n. 1, 2

Alsace, France, 90, 91, 128 beauty, 57, 150, 170, 172 alter ego, 54, 55, 169 Beauvoir, Simone de, 1, 2, 9n. 11, 11, 12,

androgyny, 144 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31n. 3,

anger, 21-2, 34, 67, 162-3, 191, 200n. 22 3in. 8, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 44, 45,

anti-Communism, 148, 149 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 58, 59,

anti-femininity, 5 63n.n.n. 9, 16, 17, 64n.n, 21, 25, anti-Nazism, 90 66, 67, 68, 69, 70-1, 72, 73, 74, 75, anti-Semitism, 85, 86, 198 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87n.n.

Arcachon, 29 6, 11, 88n.n.n. 16, 31, 34, 90, 91,

Army Theatre, 117 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 103, Aron, Raymond, 50, 51, 63n. 12, 65, 66, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110-11, 69, 146, 147-8, 149, 150, 173n. 11, 113n.n.n. 14, 19, 22, 114, 115-16,

193, 194, 198 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 124, 126,

Aronson, Ronald, 173n.n. 5, 6, 175n. 51, 128-41, 141n.n.n.n.n. 1, 3, 5, 6, 7,

193, 200n. 21 142n.n.n.n. 8, 11, 13, 15, 143,

art: for art’s sake, 81; spell of, 78-9, 87 144—5, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151,

Astruc, Alexandre, 147 152, 154, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164,

Audry, Colette, 69, 87n. 7, 165 165, 166-7, 168-9, 170, 171, 172,

Augustine, (Saint), 157 174n.n. 22, 37, 175n.n.n.n.n. 41, authenticity, 1, 70, 72, 73, 97, 99, 103, 43, 44, 51, 53, 179, 181, 182, 183, 105, 108-9, 110, 111-12, 113n. 8, 184-5, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 117, 121, 124-5, 126, 138, 140-1, 194, 195, 197, 200n.n, 18, 28 150, 152, 168, 177, 188. See also Beaver (Beauvoir’s nickname), 58, 64n.

inauthenticity 21, 104, 108, 110, 132, 138, 139

214 Index

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 184 Bovarty, Charles, 3 Being and Nothingness (Sartre), 154,197 Bovary, Madame, 2-3

being-for-others, 174n. 36, 196, 197 Brasillach, Robert, 119

being-for-the-war, 97, 104, 118 Breshgold, E., 7, 31n. 1, 58, 130

119 Britain, 90, 124

being-in-the-world, 104, 105, 109, 118, Breton, André, 160

Belgium, 114 Brumath, 99

Bellemin-Noel, Jean, 7 Brunschvicg, Léon, 54, 68, 98

Ben-Gal, Ely, 32n. 8, 165, 166, 191, 193, Buisine, Alain, 13, 15, 18, 23, 54, 104,

194, 200n. 18, 200n. 31 105, 135, 136, 142n. 10, 173n. 3,

Bénard, Marc, 121 175n. 48

Bérard, Armand, 50 Burnet, Mary, 165, 172

Berlin, 68, 69, 75, 98 Burnier, Michel-Antoine, 89n. 37

Berlioz, Louis-Hector, 62 Butler, Judith, 9n. 16, 17, 24, 64n. 23 Bernard (Sartre’s childhood friend), 26

Bersani, Leo, 156 Cc

Bhabha, Homi, 9n. 16 Cahiers pour une morale (Sartre), 125, Bienenfeld, Bianca (Louise Védrine) 178, 196, 199, 200n. 26

(later Lamblin), 74-5, 76-7, 87n. Camus, Albert, 125, 144-7, 148, 149, 11, 91, 107, 109-10, 129, 130, 134, 167, 168, 171, 173n. 4, 177, 193

135, 164, 167, 191. See also Canaan, J., 95

Lamblin, Bianca Canguilhem, Georges, 48-9, 51

Billet, 125 Capri, 167 Birchall, Ian, 8n. 3, 31n. 4, 45n. 2, 142n. Carnet Midy (Sartre’s notebook), 35, 39, 12, 199n. 4, 200n. 26 58

bisexuality, 129-30 Carrigan, Tim, 4, 5, 9n. 16, 46n.n. 19,

Blanchot, Maurice, 125 20, 52, 165

Blin, Georges, 105, 106, 137, 167 Castor (Beauvoir’s nickname), 58, 88n.

body, 3, 6, 159-60 16, 132, 136, 165

competition regarding, 117-18 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 199n. 5

cult of the, 47-8, 66, 119 castration anxiety, 18

fear of, 158-9 Cau, Jean, 3, 9n. 10, 14, 36, 148, 149,

female, 41 151, 159, 170, 171, 173n. 9, 173n. masculine, 21, 97, 119, 159-60 14, 175n. 46, 192, 193 See also disembodiment; Chaine, Catherine, 140, 167 embodiment; Sartre, Jean-Paul, Chapsal, Madeleine, 28, 35

body; ugliness Charles XI, King of France, 148 Boisselot, Father, 121 Charlotte (waitress), 138 Bonnafé, Alphonse, 50, 68, 143 chastity, 158 Boschetti, Anna, 8n. 4, 127n. 18 Chiantaretto, Jean-Francois, 32n.n, 15, Bost, Jacques-Laurent, 67, 70, 74, 75, 76, 17, 199n. 1 113n. 10, 130, 135, 136, 139, 140, child development, 7, 10, 29 141n. 5, 142n. 15, 143, 146, 149,172 Chodorow, Nancy, 11, 155 Boulé, Jean-Pierre, 148, 175n. 55, 179, Christina (Sartre’s girlfriend), 165

190, 193, 200n.n. 16, 24 Cixous, Héléne, 197

Bourdieu, Pierre, 167 Clarkson, P., 58

Bourdin, Martine (Colette Gilbert), 130, | Clatterbaugh, Kenneth, 171 134-5, 137, 138, 141n. 7, 161-2, C.N.E. (National Committee of

164. See also Gilbert, Colette Writers’), 125

Bouthiliers, 39-40, 98 Cocteau, Jean, 147

Index 215

Cohen-Solal, Annie, 13, 20, 23, 25, 32n. De Roulet, Lionel, 87n. 4 8, 33n. 30, 36, 37, 39, 50, 51, 70-1, Dépaysement (Sartre), 75, 164 72,73, 74, 77, 88n. 16, 88n. 24,94, dependency, 97-8, 134, 166-7, 186, 187,

117, 155, 159, 167, 168, 177, 178, 188, 190, 196—7 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188, detachment, 3 189, 190-1, 192, 193, 194, 196, disembodiment, 18, 20, 23, 24

199n. 4 Dordogne, 10 Cold War, 177 Doubrovsky, Serge, 31n. 2, 75, 86, 106, collaboration, 119-20 135, 140, 161, 163, 173n. 18

Collége de Philosophie, 182 Drake, David, 8n. 3, 200n.n. 12, 13

College Inn, 164 Drancy, 123, 124

Collin, F., 175n. 54 dreams, 59-60, 179

Collins, M. L., 173n. 20 Dullin, Charles, 146 Colombel, Jeannette, 200n. 29 Dyer, Richard, 56

Columbia University, 168 dysfunctional closeness, 58 Combat (newspaper), 168

Comédie-Frangaise, 125 , E Communism, 177. See also anti- Ecole Normale, 48, 49, 51-2, 53, 54, 55, Communism 58, 59, 62, 65, 66, 68, 91, 93, 95, Communist Party, 125, 177, 183, 193. 104, 117, 118, 127n. 11, 130, 145,

See also French Communist Party 146, 147

competition, 117-18 Ecrits de Jeunesse (Sartre), 2, 25, 38, 39,

Comte, Auguste, 170 44,48, 53, 62, 73, 76, 78, 81, 86, concrete relations, 196 127n. 11, 136: ‘L’Appel au

conflict, 196 maitre’, 136, 140

Connell, R. W., 4, 5, 6, 7, 9n.n.n.n.n. 12, Edley, Nigel, 161 13, 15, 16, 21, 22, 32n. 22,45n.n.3, Ego, 16, 140: writer, 147. See also alter

10, 46n.n.n. 16, 19, 20, 51, 52, 165 ego; Superego Contat, Michel, 6, 9n. 11, 38, 42, 52, 53, elites, 5, 52 54—5, 63n.n.n.n.n. 4, 6, 8,9, 11, 78, — elitism, 121

79-80, 88n. 18, 99, 118, 123,126n. Elkaim-Sartre, Arlette, 63n. 4, 74, 87n.

2, 144, 145, 148, 154, 175n. 39, 12, 101, 107, 109, 123, 165, 166, 176, 178, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 167, 173n. 7, 175n.n. 44, 45, 177, 188, 189, 191, 199n. 1, 199n. 9 179, 183, 185, 186, 191, 193, 194,

contingency, 79, 81, 97 199n. 9

control, fear of losing, 156-7, 161 emasculation, 78

Copeau, Pascal, 68 embodiment, 22. See also Courteline, Georges, 25 emotion, 2, 191

Corneille, Pierre, 28 disembodiment

Critique de la raison dialectique (Sartre), role of women, 169-71 94, 112n. 1, 127n. 9, 166, 180, 181, and sexuality, 36

196 as threat to masculine identity, 5

Critique of Dialectical Reason (Sartre), See also Sartre, Jean-Paul, emotion

196 ENA (Ecole Nationale

cult of the body, 47-8, 66, 119 d’ Administration), 62n. 2

cult of youth, 71 engulfment, 134, 135, 154, 155-6

D equality, 118, 193

enslavement, 151-2, 161, 163, 167

Daniel, Jean, 186, 194 Erostrate (Sartre), 73, 75—6, 85, 86, 88n. De Gaulle, Charles, 148, 173n. 11 17, 164, 167

216 Index

escapism, 169 fraternity-terror, 196

Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions freedom, 3, 110, 122, 123-4; (Sartre), 17, 34, 69, 162-3, 174n. 24 enslavement dyad, 151-2, 161,

Etchegoyen, Father, 121 163, 167; terrorist, 115

ethics, 192, 195, 196, 197 French army, 114 , Etiemble, 177 French Communist Party, 76, 124 ‘Eugenes’, 48 French Institute, 68 existential crises, 85-6 French resistance, 124

existential psychoanalysis, 3 Freud, Sigmund, 7, 32n. 12, 120, 159,

F Freudian theory, 166 181

Fabre, Jean, 51, 59 frigidity, 161

Fadeiev, Alexandre, 148 Frosh, Stephen, 169, 174n. 34

Fallaize, Elizabeth, 132, 133, 134, 141n. fundamental project, 28

6 fundamental relations, 196 family comedy, 6-7, 22, 27 fusion, 53, 54—5, 130-1, 132, 133, 143 Fanon, Frantz, 192: Les Damneés de la terre, 179, 196 G father, absent, 11, 12-13, 35, 36 Gai Pied, 200n. 17 Faurisson, Robert, 8n. 3 Gallimard, 54, 75, 79, 200n. 14

Feller, Paul, 121 Gallimard, Robert, 186, 191, 193 Fellini, Federico, 164 Galster, Ingrid, 8n. 4, 127n. 18 fellow travellers, 177, 193 Gandillac, Maurice de, 69 female masculinity, 9n. 16 Gauche Prolétarienne, 185, 195

feminine economy, 197 Gauguin, Paul, 103, 188

femininity, 5-6, 17 Gavi, Philippe, 184, 185, 189 of collaborators, 119-20 Gégé (Sartre’s lover), 167

constructed nature, 5 | gender melancholy, 17

fluid nature, 5 gender regime, 36, 52

integration with masculinity, 190-1, Genet, Jean, 3, 18, 23, 31n. 4, 88n. 25,

192, 197 146, 147, 175n. 48, 181, 192

of men (psychic), 22, 23, 24, 43, 44, genuineness, 70 57, 72-3, 79, 102, 171, 173n. 3, Gerassi, Fernando, 69, 76

190-1, 197 Gerassi, John, 123, 173n. 10, 178, 192,

as passivity, 154 195, 200n. 22

repudiation of, 24 German forces, 90, 91, 114, 115, 116,

as threat to masculinity, 158 120-1, 124 See also anti-femininity Germany, 91, 119

feminism, 172 Giacometti, Alberto, 146, 147, 191 First World War, 30, 35-6, 96, 116, 117 Gide, André, 127n. 14, 147 Flammarion, 25 Gilbert, Colette (Martine Bourdin), 91, Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, A., 6, 32n. 21 104, 106, 107. See also Bourdin,

Flaubert, Gustave, 3, 6, 17, 23, 31n. 4, Martine

88n. 25, 160, 175n. 48 Gilbert, Joseph, 8n. 3 Flaubert (Sartre), 180, 182, 183, 185,190 Girard, Mary, 165

Foucault, Michel, 157 Gobeil, Madeleine, 5, 170 France, 90, 114, 119, 126 God, 136 France-Observateur, 177 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 35, 62

Franco, Francisco, 148 Goldmann, Pierre, 186

fraternity, 196, 197, 200n.n. 27, 29 Gorz, André, 18, 23, 149, 199n. 7

Index 217

Grandes Ecoles, 5, 9n. 14 Hughes, Alex, 18, 32n. 18 grandiosity, 7, 13, 14-15, 20, 24, 25-6, humiliation, 45n. 8 27, 28, 29, 35, 38, 42, 44, 45, 49, Hungary, 177 60, 62, 66-7, 78, 85, 102, 116, 123, Husserl, Edmund, 68 126, 133, 135, 153, 167, 171, 173n. Huston, John, 159, 174n. 29, 181 9, 177, 178-9, 180, 183, 192, 193,

194, 195, 198, 199 I

Grell-Feldbriigge, Isabelle, 45n. 1, 87n. ‘TY, 16

2, 178 idealisation, 58, 63n. 20, 130, 131, 132, Grener, 93 133 group-in-fusion, 122 identity Guardian, The (newspaper), 62n. 2 homosexual, 9n. 16

Guibert, Hervé, 8 weak sense of, 15

Guille, Pierre, 48, 51, 52, 58-9, 63n. 5, See also masculine identity 65, 68, 100, 130, 143, 146, 147, Idt, Geneviéve, 19, 31n. 2, 32n. 25, 33n.

149, 167, 171, 191 33, 46n. 15, 88n. 17, 127n. 14

H imagination, 38 Haguenau, 114-15 inauthenticity, 101, 109-11, 151, 153 imaginary life, 69

Halberstam, Judith, 9n. 16, 172 incest, 43. See also Oedipal complex

Hantziger, 95 individualism: and the collective, 125;

Harper's Bazaar (magazine), 99 Sartre’s move to socialism from, Harvey, Robert, 13, 18, 30, 32n. 10, 36, 118, 124, 126

66, 174n. 27 institutional masculinities, 52

Heidegger, Martin, 92, 101, 104, 111, intellectualness, muscular, 50, 68, 120,

117, 127n. 8, 146 146, 147, 149

helplessness, 157 intellectuals, 179; classical, 180, 183,

Henriques, Julian, 6, 8n. 5 188, 195; new, 180, 183, 188, 195 Henry IV Lycée, 96 intimacy, 100, 110, 131-2, 134, 143-7

heroes /heroism, 7, 20, 21, 24, 27, 115, avoidance / fear of, 59, 146-7, 171,

116, 123, 125, 126, 177, 183. See 172 also Pardaillan (comic book hero) bodily, 159, 182

heterosexuality, 56, 154 defining, 143

Hitler, Adolf, 119 male-female, 95

Hitler-Stalin Pact, 124 male-male, 95, 98, 171 Hoare, Quintin, 91—2, 125-6 and sex as synonymous, 59 Holland, J., 36, 38, 45n. 7, 174n. 34 sexual, 154, 156-7, 163 Hollier, Denis, 15, 122, 127n. 10, 198 Intimité (Sartre), 76

Hollway, Wendy, 33n. 38 irony, 3 hommes-femmes, 143, 190 Italy, 75 homoeroticism, 56

homophobia, 158 J

homosexual identity, 9n. 16 Jackson, David, 33n. 29, 37, 39, 47 homosexuality, 39, 59, 94, 119-20 Jaspers, Karl, 146 inclinations towards, 47, 63n. 14 Jeanson, Francis, 34, 35, 37, 39, 49, 82,

latent, 98, 144 145, 173n. 5, 175n. 51, 185, 201n.

as passivity, 154, 160 32

homosociality, 158, 174n.n. 26, 27 Jésus la Chouette (Sartre), 39, 40-4, 57, 78

homunculi, 81 Jewishness, 191-3, 198, 200n. 31. See Howells, Christina, 175n. 48 also anti-Semitism

218 Index

Johnson, P. J., 89n. 37 86, 125, 127n. 10, 129, 150, 163-4, Johnson, S. M., 7, 9n. 18, 11, 13, 14, 15, 167, 173n. 15, 174n. 31, 178, 192-3 18, 25, 26, 30, 31n. 5, 45n. 8, 64n. La Putain respectueuse (Sartre), 129 20, 92, 100, 102, 130, 131, 132, La Reine Albemarle ou le dernier touriste

133, 134, 141n. 4, 154, 159, 174n. (Sartre), 190

36, 187, 188 ‘La République du silence’ (Sartre), 112

Joirisse, Lisette, 37, 42 La Revue sans titre (Sartre), 63n. 4

Jollivet, Simone, 16, 48, 51, 52, 53,55,57, La Rochelle, 23-4, 34, 35-6, 40, 41, 42, 59, 60-2, 69, 100, 104, 151, 152, 162 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 60, 66,

Jouhandeau, Marcel, 147 70, 93, 94, 98, 122, 125, 144, 146, ‘Journal de Mathieu’ (Sartre), 120-1, 149, 153, 166, 196

127n. 4 La Rochelle, Drieu, 125

Julienne-Caffié, Serge, 138 La Semence et le Scaphandre (Sartre), 46n. 22, 54, 57

K La Transcendance de I’Ego (Sartre), 16,

Kanapa, Jean, 167 111, 198 Kaufman, Michael, 33n. 34, 190 lack, 24, 33n. 29, 59. See also loss

Keefe, Terry, 88n. 26 Lacoste, Guillermine de, 8n. 1, 197, Keller, 92 199, 201n. 34 Kierkegaard, Soren, 146 Laforgue, Jules, 47-8, 66 Kimmel, M. S., 5, 22, 36, 37, 50, 97,144, | Lagache, Dr., 33n. 30, 69

154, 157 L’Age de raison (Sartre), 46n. 14, 54, 62n. Kindlon, Daniel J., 37 1, 72, 81-2, 87n.n.n.n. 3, 9, 10, 14,

Klee, Paul, 68, 98 88n.n.n.n. 18, 19, 20, 34, 92, 104, Koestler, Annette, 146 113n. 10, 113n.n.n.n. 6, 15, 18, 24, Kohut, Heinz, 132 129, 151, 155-7, 158, 167, 174n. Kosakiewicz, Olga, 41, 68, 70, 70-3, 72, 27, 174n.n. 28, 33 73, 74, 75, 79, 80, 86, 87n. 12, 91, Lamblin, Bianca (née Bienenfeld)

105, 106, 109, 113n. 10, 147, 164, (Louise Védrine), 87n. 11, 129, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 189, 190, 141n. 6, 142n. 9, 150, 161, 162,

191 163. See also Bienenfeld, Bianca Kosakiewicz, Wanda, 74, 91, 92, 99, L’Ange du morbide (Sartre), 78 103, 105, 106, 107, 110, 130, Lanzmann, Claude, 147, 149, 175n. 41,

132-3, 134, 136, 137, 138, 142n. 191, 200n. 23 11, 151, 152, 153, 162, 165, 166-7, Larroutis, Maurice, 51

168, 173n. 4, 175n. 43, 191 Lassithiotakis, Mélina/Héléne, 165, 187 Krishnaswamy, Revathi, 9n. 16, 174n. Le Bon de Beauvoir, Sylvie, 16, 141n. 7

26 Le Doeuff, Michéle, 130 Kuykendall, E., 200n. 27 Le Flore café, Paris, 96, 119, 147 , Le Havre, 67, 68, 76, 122

L Le Mur (Sartre), 73, 75-6, 81, 86, 88n. La Boétie, Etienne de, 143 17, 106, 112n. 5

La Brégeére, 10, 34 Le Nouvel Observateur, 186, 200n. 18 La Cause du peuple (Newspaper), 184 ‘Le Sac’ (Sartre), 39

‘La Chambre’ (Sartre), 75 Le Sursis (Sartre), 141, 142n. 16, 174n. 23 La Légende de la vérité (Sartre), 63n. 6 Leak, Andrew, 7, 9n. 20, 19, 28, 31n. 7,

La Mort dans l’ame (Sartre), 87n. 14, 32n.n.n. 14, 16, 20, 46n. 15, 63n. 112n. 2, 114, 115-17, 127n. 15 14, 88n. 15, 89n. 36, 103, 112, La Nausée (Sartre), 2, 18, 33n. 35, 51, 54, 113n.n.n. 11, 12, 17, 142n. 11, 153,

63n. 6, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79-81, 82, 156, 157-8, 173n.n. 19, 21

, Index 219 Lecarme, Jacques, 89n. 38 L’Imaginaire (Sartre), 69, 132, 157, 180 Lecarme-Tabone, Eliane, 141n. 2 L’Imagination (Sartre), 69 Lee, John, 4, 5, 9n. 16, 46n.n. 19, 20, 52, Loosdreck, 46n. 23

165 - Joss, 23-4. See also lack

Lefort, Claude, 177, 199n. 5 Louette, Jean-Francois, 33n. 31, 45n. 5, ‘Légende de la vérité’ (Sartre), 88n. 18 199n. 7

Leiris, Michel, 146 love, 109-10, 130, 140, 151-3, 154, 163, Lejeune, Philippe, 31n. 2, 33n. 36, 34, 172, 196, 197 35, 45n. 1, 185, 199n.n. 6, 9 courtly love, 41-2, 73, 152 L’Enfance d’un chef (Sartre), 31n. 4, 43, as dirt-cheap, 38, 153

84-6, 163, 164 impossible, 80, 130, 151-2 Léon, C. T., 175n. 54 inauthentic, 151, 153

Leroy, Henry, 121 love objects, 158

Les Chemins de la liberté (Sartre), 2, 53, lovemaking, 154—64, 174n. 30 72, 81, 89n. 35, 109, 113n.n. 8, 19, Lukacs, Georg, 149

114, 115, 117, 120, 126, 126n. 1, Luxembourg Gardens, 21, 48

174n.n. 27, 31 Lycée Condorcet, Paris, 124 ‘Les Communistes et la paix’ (Sartre), Lycée Henri IV, Paris, 29, 47

177, 180 Lycée Louis-le-Grand, 48

Les Mains sales (Sartre), 87n. 14, 142n. Lycée Montaigne, Paris, 29 12, 149, 172, 196

Les Mots (Sartre), 1, 2, 3, 10-11, 12, 13, M 14, 15, 16, 18-19, 22-3, 25, 26-7, Mac an Ghaill, Mairtin, 50 28, 29, 30, 31n.n. 2, 7, 32n. 11, macho qualities, 36, 50, 169, 171, 172 33n.n.n. 33, 36, 37, 40, 45, 46n.15, madness, 75, 76-7, 189 76, 79, 80, 87n. 13, 88n. 29, 94, Maheu, René, 48, 51, 52, 58, 63n. 5, 64n. 125, 153, 155, 158, 160, 163, 173n. 21, 130, 132, 143, 147

17, 177, 178, 189, 199 Mahler, Margaret, 7, 10 Les Mouches (Sartre), 88n. 24, 113n. 9, Malot, Hector, 25

123, 124—5, 177, 199n. 7 Mancy, Anne-Marie (Sartre’s mother), Les Séquestrés d’ Altona (Sartre), 181 10-14, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24-5, Les Temps Modernes (journal), 120, 125, 28, 30, 34—5, 42, 43, 44, 76, 82-4,

126, 127n. 7, 145, 149, 168, 172, 88n. 34, 107-8, 165, 175n. 47,

173n. 12, 177, 185, 186, 194, 198 178 ‘L’espoir, maintenant’ (Sartre), 186; Mancy, Joseph (Sartre’s step-father),

194, 196, 197, 198 34, 37, 43-4, 76, 82-4, 88n. 31,

L’Etre et le néant (Sartre), 2, 18, 36, 56, 108, 149, 165 92, 120, 125, 130, 141, 146, 151, Maoists, 179, 183, 184, 185, 189, 194,

153, 154, 157, 161, 162, 163, 167, 196

173n. 21, 196, 198 Marron, G., 52 Lettres francaises (Sartre), 127n. 7 Martinet, Gilles, 177 Lévy, Benny, 17, 32n. 10, 118, 179, 184, Marxism, 3, 176—7, 196 185, 186, 187-8, 189-91, 193, 194, masculine body, 21, 97, 119, 159-60

195, 196, 197, 198, 200n.n.n. 18, masculine economy, 197

21, 31, 201n. 32 masculine ideal, 37, 38

Lévy-Strauss, Claude, 148 masculine identity, 24, 88n. 22, 91 Libération (French newspaper), 172 dependency as threat to, 97-8 L’Idiot de la famille (Sartre), 2-3, 125, emotion as threat to, 5

127n. 5 intimacy as threat to, 95, 134

Lilar, Suzanne, 8n. 1, 173n. 16 as separateness, 15

220 Index

masculine self: fear of annihilation, Mistler (soldier), 98, 100, 144 155-7, 158, 160; male intimacy as Moi, Toril, 141n. 3, 142n. 14, 200n. 19

threat to, 171 Montaigne, Michel de, 143

masculine subjectivities, 4, 5, 23, 37, Moreau, Lucette, 12 75-6, 77, 78, 91, 107, 154 Morel, Mme, 63n. 9, 100, 141n. 5, 164 masculinity, 1, 4-6, 23-4, 38, 126, 186, Morgan, D. H. J., 91, 96, 112n. 3, 119

187, 189, 192 Mother: Phallic, 139, 140, 164;

as activity, 154 separation-individuation, 7 aggressive, 39, 43, 44-5 mother-object, 24 constructed nature, 4-5, 169, 194 Mouloudji, 106

‘doing’, 5, 9n. 15 muscular intellectualness, 50, 68, 120,

dominant, 54 146, 147, 149

embodied, 20, 48, 51, 55-6

female (psychic), 9n. 16, 172 N femininity as threat to, 158 Nancy, France, 90, 123 fraying borders, 9n. 16 narcissism, 6—7, 9n. 17, 13, 14, 15, 16, hegemonic, 4, 12, 35-6, 44, 66, 101, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29-30, 36, 40, 45n.

119, 146, 149, 171, 172 8, 46n. 18, 58, 62, 79, 85, 88n. 23, heroic heterosexual, 24 92, 126, 151, 153-4, 159, 173n. 17, heterogeneous nature of, 4, 5, 7 188, 192, 199n. 2

hierarchic, 49 definition, 153 institutional, 52 healing, 134

intellectual, 28, 50 and a lack of a sense of self, 15 and the mind, 56 repressed characteristics of, 102 muscular, 28 narcissistic transference, 58, 130-1, 132 reintegrated, 169 narcissistic wounds, 13, 16, 18, 20, 36,

soft, 24 37, 42, 78, 137 subordinated, 4, 36 Naudin (soldier), 93

as that which is not feminine, 11 Nazism, 69, 75, 90, 124

and violence, 5 Nicole (child girlfriend of Sartre), 21 and writing, 73, 78-9 Nizan, Paul, 39, 46n. 24, 47-8, 49, 51,

masculinity challenges, 17, 23, 38, 39, 52-3, 54, 55, 57, 58, 63n.n.n. 4, 5,

40, 44, 65-87 11, 66, 67, 88n. 33, 101, 114, 127n.

masochism, 196, 197 11, 130, 133, 143, 146, 147, 149, Mauriac, Francois, 148 167, 169, 171, 175n. 38, 195 McBride, William, 45n. 4, 200n. 27 Norway, 82

75,79 O

McCarthyism, 149 NRF (Nouvelle Revue Francaise), 166—7 ‘Melancholia’ (later La Nausée) (Sartre),

merger, 49, 51, 54, 58, 64n. 20, 73, 100, OAS (Secret Army Organisation),

130-1, 132, 133, 143, 150, 169, 195 148-9 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 51, 145, 146, object, 151-2, 160, 161 147, 148, 172, 173n. 7, 177, 193, O’Donohoe, Benedict, 32n. 8

199n. 5 Oedipal complex, 12-13, 25, 88n. 34, 45n. 11 Oeuvres Romanesques (Sartre), 114 _

Messerschmidt, James W., 17, 35, 39, 157

Middleton, Peter, 21, 32n. 26 omnipotence, 28, 42, 126: childhood, mirroring, 58, 63—4n. 20, 130, 131, 135, 11, 26; reversed, 27

143 On a raison de se révolter (Sartre), 165, Misrahi, Robert, 167 183, 184, 189

Index 221

oppression, 178-9, 192 146, 149, 161, 186, 188, 191, 193, Orestes, 32n. 8 199 orgasm, 73-4, 156, 160, 161, 163 Piaget, Jean, 29

original choice, 28 Picard, Mme, 26, 33n. 36, 40, 177

Other, 56, 151-2, 156, 163 Pierce, C., 173n. 20 enmeshment with and loss of self,58 Pierné, 114-15

fear of, 56 Piederkovsky (Pieter) (soldier), 92, 94, female, 162, 163 96, 101-2, 112n. 2, 113n. 21, 121,

as object, 161 142n. 17, 146, 191

_ personal existence as residing in Pingaud, Bernard, 173n. 12 interactions with, 15, 16, 197 Place du Panthéon, 29

P Poland, 90

plural thought, 195, 198

Pacaly, Josette, 7, 10, 11-12, 18, 27,31n. _ political issues see Sartre, Jean-Paul,

2, 85, 126, 153, 157, 163, 164, politics 173n. 17, 175n. 48, 178, 180, 192 Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand, 31—2n. 8, 146,

Paille, Albert, 70 159, 173n. 12, 179, 199n. 2 Parain, Brice, 126 post-modernism, 15

Pardaillan (comic book hero), 20, 21, Pouillon, Denise, 113n. 19, 121, 149,

23, 24, 28, 40, 50, 69, 80, 88n. 24, 182, 194 116, 123, 126, 160, 177, 179, 180, Poulou (the young Sartre), 3, 8n. 8,

183, 184, 192 10-14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22-3, Paris, 10, 26, 35, 36, 44, 47, 48, 66, 74, 25-6, 28, 29, 30, 34, 41, 55, 58, 59, 91, 93-4, 105, 106, 109, 114, 119, 73, 87n. 13, 94, 165, 175n. 47,

124, 132-3, 166-7, 180, 181 177-8, 179

Pascal, Blaise, 23 Poupon, 29

passion, 110, 111, 129, 135, 168; in male — Pouvoir et liberté (Sartre), 185, 186, 193,

friendships, 39-40, 52-3, 55, 59, 195

101, 147 power, 4, 24, 28, 30, 50, 60, 67 passivity, 154, 160, 161 prisoners of war, 91, 96, 114—26, 150 past, 99, 107 progressive-regressive method, 3, Pattman, Robert, 169, 174n. 34 8—9n. 9

Paul (soldier), 92, 96, 97, 98, 102, 108, proletariat, 185, 192, 195

112n. 2 psycho-social processes, 1, 6, 7, 15, 17,

Paulhan, Jean, 147 23, 24, 39, 175n. 48, 190, 193, 194,

Pease, B., 4, 172 199

peer-groups, 35-7, 39-40, 45n. 7, 47-53, | psychoanalysis, 3, 6, 7, 16, 199n. 2

54,55, 58-9, 91, 92-6, 97-8, psychosomatic illness, 11, 45n. 8, 83

101-2, 105 Pucciani, Oreste F., 16 penis, 93-4, 154, 160-1 QO Pelletier, 36, 39-40, 98

Péron, Alfred, 52 Queneau, Raymond, 146, 147

123 127n. 17, 177

Perrin, Marius, 3, 20, 118-19, 120, 121, Qu’est-ce que la littérature (Sartre), 126,

Phallic mother, 139, 140, 164 ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un collaborateur?’ phenomenological psychology, 16, 17 (Sartre), 119, 126

phenomenology, 68 questioning oneself, 148

Phoenix, A., 169, 174n. 34 Quiet Moments In A War (QMW) Phoney War, 45, 61, 67, 90-112, 114, (Sartre), 93, 95, 96, 98, 101-2, 103, 115, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123-4, 125, 104, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112,

222 Index

117-18, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, anti-Nazism, 76 129, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, apartment bombed, 149, 165

151, 152, 162, 164, 168 appearance

R childhood, 16, 17, 22 Racine, Jean, 23 as prisoner of war, 96, 119 in the army, 95-6

Ramazanoglu, Caroline, 174n. 34 See also Sartre, Jean-Paul,

rapprochement, 7, 36 ugliness

rationalism, 56, 61, 101, 157, 168 authenticity, 61, 97, 99, 103, 105,

R.D.R., 177 108-9, 110, 111-12, 117, 121, reading, 25 124—5, 126, 138, 140-1, 150, 152, ‘real life’, 69 168, 177, 188 Redman, Peter, 50 and beauty, 150 Réflexions sur la question juive (Sartre), and Beauvoir, 128-41, 172

191, 193, 198, 200n. 31 Beauvoir as good object, 137 resistance movements, 119, 124 Beauvoir as his prop, 133-4

Rétif, Francoise, 141n. 3, 175n. 56 Beauvoir as motherRey, Evelyne, 165, 175n. 44, 191 figure /Phallic mother, 139, 140

Rimbaud, Arthur, 103, 188 Beauvoir as Sartre’s witness,

Romains, Jules, 96 136-7, 138-9, 140

Roquentin, Antoine, 18, 33n. 35 intellectual equals, 128-9

Rosenberg executions, 149 morganatic marriage, 133 Rouen, 68, 70, 74, 106 narcissistic transference, 130-1,

Rougemont, Denis de, 199 132

Russia, 124, 177. See also USSR passion, 129

Russian revolution (1917), 35 reciprocity, 130 Rybalka, Michel, 6, 9n. 11, 38, 42, 52, sexual relationship, 129, 134-5 54—5, 63n.n.n.n.n. 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 78, unusual nature of their 79-80, 88n. 18, 99, 118, 123, 164, relationship, 128

178, 179, 183, 187 on being real, 61

on being-for-others, 174n. 36

S on being-for-the-war, 97, 104, 118

sadism, 161—4, 196, 197 on being-in-fusion, 94

sadness, 51, 69 on being-in-the-world, 104, 105, 118, Saint-Simon, 23 119 Salisbury, Jonathan, 37 blindness, 1, 176, 184—5, 187, 188,

Santoni, R. E., 200n. 13 189, 198

Sartre by Himself (SBH) (Sartre), 23, 34, body, 159-60, 180-3, 184-6, 189, 192,

35, 37, 39, 40, 52, 69, 128, 148, 201n. 34

149, 150, 176-7, 180 accepting the limitations of, 184,

Sartre, Jean-Baptiste (Sartre’s father), 188 10, 11, 12-13, 65, 88n. 24, 165 disciplines during military

Sartre, Jean-Paul service, 96-7, 119

ageing, 24, 67, 77, 155, 183, 184-6 imaginary, 20-1, 23, 24, 37, 50,

ageressive despair, 66 69, 160, 183, 188 ageressiveness, 105 lack of interest in the pleasures alter ego, 54, 169 of, 41-2 and androgyny, 17 lack of intimacy with, 159, 182 anger, 21-2, 34, 67, 162-3, 191, 200n. as living dead, 186

22 puny, 23, 24, 37, 38, 60, 183

Index 223

ruins health through role of women, 169-71 writing / fast living, 180-3, 184-6 enemies, 148-9

boxing, 50, 67, 119 fear of engulfment, 134, 135, 154,

brothels, 67 155-6 brutal side, 162, 163 enslavement, 68 bullied as child, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 93 and equality, 193

as bully, 48, 49, 50 ethics, 192, 195, 196, 197 |

chameleon-like personality, 3 family comedy of, 22, 27

change / transformation (personal), father, 10, 11, 12-13, 65, 88n. 24, 165 104-5, 106, 111-12, 117, 118, 120, as fellow traveller, 177, 193 121, 123-4, 126, 152, 190, 193-4, on the female sex organs, 154

195, 201n. 34 feminine side, 12, 14, 44, 57, 72-3, , childhood, 10-31 79, 102, 171, 173n. 3 appearance, 22 reintegration, 190-1, 192, 197 bullying, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 93 freedom, 61, 68, 110, 122, 123-4

face-making, 26-7 and Freudian theory, 166

haircut incident, 16, 17, 83 frigidity, 161

illnesses, 10, 11 grandfather, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18-19, resentment, 10, 11 22, 25, 29, 36, 37, 40, 46n. 15, 47,

self, 177-8 60, 65, 83, 169

on collectivity, 118 grandiosity, 13, 14-15, 20, 24, 25-6, and the Communist Party, 125 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 38, 42, 44, 45,

competitive nature, 51, 96 49, 60, 62, 66-7, 78, 102, 116, 123, and compliments, 98-9, 100 126, 133, 135, 153, 167, 171, 173n. corydrane abuse, 181, 182, 183 9,177, 178-9, 180, 183, 192, 193,

daily timetable, 181-2 194, 195, 198, 199

dead inside, 101, 105, 106, 109, 110, grandmother, 25-6, 34

141, 162 on group-in-fusion, 122 death, 186 hears voices, 28

dependency, 97-8, 166-7, 186, 187, height, 51

188, 190, 196-7 as heroic philosopher king, 24 difficulties of study, 2 heterosexual boundaries disembodiment, 18, 20, 23, 24 threatened, 94 dominating nature, 49-50, 51, 94-5, on holes, 156

98, 115, 126, 170 as homme-femme, 143

dreams, 59-60, 179 and homosexuality, 47, 63n. 14, 98,

drinking, 180, 181 119, 144

drugs, 69, 77, 79, 180, 181, 182, 183 hypertension, 181, 183

education, 29, 31, 47-52 Id, 169 fails final exams, 52 imagination, 38

passes final exams, 62 inauthenticity, 101, 109-11, 151, 153

elitism, 121 from individualism to socialism, emotions 118, 124, 126 blocks, 90-1, 101, 104, 106—7, 109, inferiority complex, 36, 45 110, 161, 168 influence starts to wane, 179

connections, 191 intellectual hegemony, 126 control issues, 61—2 intellectual imperialism, 50, 171 exchanges, 137-8 inter-disciplinary nature, 2 illiteracy, 61 and intimacy, 100, 131-2, 134, 143-7,

projected into writing, 38-9, 110 171, 172

224 Index avoidance/ fear of, 59, 146-7, mother’s remarriage, 34-5, 42,

171, 172 44,76, 107 lack of within himself, 110, 143 the objectified child, 13, 14

with men, 95, 98, 171 as young adult, 82-4

sexual, 154, 156-7, 163 muscular intellectualness, 68, 120,

with women, 95 146, 147, 149

irresponsibility of youth, 68-9 narcissism, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29-30, 36,

jealous nature, 71-2 40, 58, 62, 79, 92, 102, 126, 134, as jester, 63, 96, 122 151, 153-4, 159, 173n. 17, 188,

lacks moderation, 110 192, 199n. 2 loneliness / isolation, 92, 118 narcissistic transference, 130-1 loss, 23-4 narcissistic wounds, 13, 16, 18, 20, love, 109-10, 130, 140, 151-3, 154, 36, 37, 42, 78, 137

163, 172, 196, 197 neurosis of writing, 80, 88n. 18,

courtly, 41-2, 73, 152 176-7, 183

desperation for, 38, 40 nickname see Poulou as dirt-cheap, 38, 153 as object, 13, 14, 160, 163 impossibility of, 80, 130, 151-2 Oedipal complex, 12-13, 25, 88n. 34

love of childlike qualities, 168 omnipotence, 42, 126 macho qualities, 36, 50, 169, 171, parents’ image of, 84

172 passion, 110, 111, 168 madness, 75, 76-7, 189 peer-group

as male-in-the-head, 38 in the army, 91, 92-6, 97-8,

masculine subjectivities, 23, 91, 107, 101-2, 105

154 childhood, 28-30, 31, 35-7,

masculinity, 23-4, 38, 186, 187, 189, 39-40, 47-53, 54, 55, 58-9

194 on penises /erections, 93-4, 160-1

hegemonic, 171 personality, 3, 60

reintegrated, 169 Phoney War, 45, 90-112, 115, 117,

and writing, 73, 78-9 118, 119, 121, 123-4, 125, 146, 149, masculinity challenges, 17, 23, 38, 161, 186, 188, 191, 193, 199

39, 44, 65-87 plural thought, 195, 198

masochism, 182 poetry, 54, 65-6

melancholia, 65-7, 68, 69-70, 75, politics, 1, 2, 36, 76, 111, 126, 177,

76-7, 78, 86 178-80, 196-7

wish for merger / fusion, 49, 51, 54, associates / friends, 147-50 58, 73, 100, 130-1, 132, 133, 150, decision to engage in, 124

169, 195 desire for hegemony, 126

79, 180 124

experiences with mescaline, 69, 77, founds ‘Socialism and Freedom’,

military service, 65-67, 90-112 and his prisoner of war

on mobilisation, 123—4 experience, 118

modesty, 66 lack of interest, 62

mother-son relationship, 10-14, 16, Pardaillan, 179, 180 17, 18, 22, 23, 24—5, 28, 30, 43, and the personal, 196-7

88n. 34 and solidarity, 94 during the Phoney war, 107-8 power, 50, 60, 67

identification issues, 12, 22 powerlessness, 108, 116 in later life, 165, 175n. 47 prisoner of war, 91, 96, 114-26, 150

mother’s death, 178 capture by German soldiers, 115

Index 225

contemplates death, 116 Bianca Bienenfeld, 74-5, 91, 107,

keeps fit, 119 109-10, 130, 162, 163, 164, 167, leaves prison camp, 123 19] status, 121-2 Dolorés Vanetti, 165, 167-9, 172, psychic crises, 103, 105, 106-7, 133, 175n.n. 40, 51, 190

134, 137, 155 early rejections, 37-8, 39

psychic pain, 23, 28, 35, 38-9, 69-70, first love (Simone Jollivet), 52

77,99 girlfriends’ financial on questioning oneself, 148 in love with school caretaker’s reading, 25 daughter, 48 and reciprocity, 160 Martine Bourdin (Colette

psychosomatic illness, 11, 45n. 8, 83 dependence, 166-7

regression, 83, 108 Gilbert), 91, 104, 106, 107, 130, relationships with men, 143-50, 165, 134-5, 137, 138, 161-2, 164

171, 189-90, 197 in old age, 187, 191

in the army, 91, 92-6, 97-8, Olga Kosakiewicz, 70-3, 74, 75,

101-2, 105, 115 79, 80, 86, 109, 147, 164, 167, 168,

attraction to handsome males, 169, 172, 189, 190, 191

143-4, 190 re-examination, 105 198 Wanda Kosakiewicz, 74, 91, 92,

as based on affection, 122, 197, search for sensitivity, 169-71

as based on violence, 196, 197 99, 103, 105, 106, 107, 110, 130,

distrust, 44, 93 132-3, 134, 136, 137, 138, 142n. dominance, 94-5, 98, 115 11, 151, 152, 153, 162, 165, 166-7, fraternity-terror, 196 168, 175n. 43, 191

hunger for, 48 revival, 179-80

impossibility of tenderness, 36 sadism, 161-4, 182

intimacy, 95, 98, 171 sadness of, 51

lacks male role model, 12 Second World War, 92, 128, 131,

longs for symbiotic 132-4, 138

147 of war

relationship / fusion, 53, 54-5, 58 See also Sartre, Jean-Paul, Phoney passion, 39-40, 52-3, 55, 59, 101, War; Sartre, Jean-Paul, prisoner

solidarity, 94, 115, 116, 117, seduction, 37-8, 39, 61, 67, 68, 70, 117-18, 118, 120, 122-3, 124, 150 71, 73—4, 107, 150, 151, 153, 167,

in terms of action, 149 187, 189

relationships with political self

associates / friends, 147—50 absent, 42

154-64 177-8

relationships of a sexual nature, acceptance of childhood self, mediocre lover, 73-4, 161 compromised sense of, 14—16, 18, ménage a trois, 70-1, 74-5 19, 27, 30-1, 36, 61, 62, 86, 100-1, relationships with women, 21, 29, 109, 134, 135-6, 141, 153, 154, 52, 54, 55, 56-7, 59, 60-2, 70-5, 162, 168, 169, 171, 174n. 36, 186,

79, 80, 86, 128-41, 143, 150-3, 198, 199

164-72 illusion of fixed, 18, 19

affair with married woman (la inclusive sense of, 101, 111, 125,

femme lunaire), 68 134, 135-6, 141, 153, 168, 169, as attempt to reintegrate his 171-2, 177-8, 186, 187, 188-9,

feminine side, 197 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 198

226 Index

lack of a sense of, 79, 100 toughness, 39, 46n. 12, 93, 94-5, 96, lack of solidarity with, 99-101, 106-7, 120

107 ugliness, 16-18, 19, 21, 22, 32n.n. 13,

new, 105 19, 37-8, 39, 42, 48, 57, 60, 68, 70, past, 99, 107 95-6, 128, 150, 151, 159 perpetual flight from, 27 desire for uniqueness, 178 | reintegration, 61 violence, 49, 51—2, 60, 62, 111, 179, split, 59-60, 95, 144, 190 191-2, 196, 197, 200n. 13

unified, 23 to himself, 37, 39, 162, 163 weak sense of, 23, 27 virginity, 52 See also Sartre, Jean-Paul, writing virility, 159

self void/emptiness, 19, 23, 24, 27, 28,

self-dissatisfaction, 58 154, 198

self-doubt, 107, 110 vulnerability, 16, 24, 36, 37, 44, 60, self-esteem, 60, 79, 84, 99, 107 146, 151, 188, 193, 195, 196

self-loathing, 60-1 walking stick/cane leitmotiv, 164,

self-love, 153-4 174n. 38

self-manufactured nature, 50 wall-eyed, 17, 119, 123, 124

self-portraits, 60, 104, 125 weaning, 11, 3in. 3, 160

sensitivity, 169-71, 197 writer ego, 147

separation-individuation, 10-11 writing, 18-20, 24-5, 28

sexism, 154 achieves success / fame, 77, 79, 82

sexuality, 31n. 3, 59, 73-4, 154-8, control of reality through, 103 159-64, 167, 168, 196, 200n. 17 early lack of success, 60, 77-8, 79, awakening, 36-8, 39, 40, 41-2, 43, 81

47, 48, 52 as healing process, 42, 43-4 coldness, 154, 161, 162 inability to give up, 188

sadistic, 106 macho, 36

shut-down, 91 and masculinity, 73, 78-9

shame, 38-9, 57, 62 as necessity, 176—7 sleeping pills abuse, 181 neurosis of, 80, 88n. 18, 176-7, 183 and the social, 92 origins of his wish to write, 24-5 and solitude, 70 projects feelings into writing, as spiritual director, 95, 122 38-9, 110

spoken autobiography, 185 as refusal to live, 28

spontaneity, 104 as salvation, 176-7, 178, 189

step-father, 34, 37, 43-4, 76, 82-4, as seduction, 21, 55, 73-4, 105, 167

88n. 31, 108, 149, 165 as symbolic resistance, 112

stimulant use, 181, 182, 183 as therapy, 54—5

stoicism, 97, 109, 111, 125, 182 to cope with prisoner of war

strives to become a person, 111-12 status, 116 ! stroke, 19, 184 wish to identify as an author, 79,

as subject, 160 84.

subverted sensitivity, 197 unable to write in old age, 184

Superego, 169 writing self, 25, 32n. 14, 79

wish for symbiotic relationships, 53, during the Phoney War, 91-2,

54-5, 152, 169 102—4, 109, 112

teaches at Le Havre, 67-8 end of, 184, 185, 188, 189 tenderness, 36, 57, 58, 59, 72-3, 93, giving up, 82

133, 137, 150 as only self, 183

Index 227

shattered by family, 84 loss of through enmeshment, 58

Sartre par lui-méme (Sartre’s masculine, 155-7, 158, 160, 171 autobiographical film), 2, 23, multiple notions of, 6 32n. 19, 34, 36-7, 39, 51, 121, split, 59-60

127n. 16, 129, 176 weak sense of, 23, 27, 56

Sartre in the Seventies (SIS) (Sartre), 124 self-esteem, 60, 79, 84, 88n. 23, 99, 107 !

Sartre Studies Group, 175n. 49 self-formation, 4, 6—7, 10, 14

sartrean cogito, 103 self-object function, 7, 58, 130-1, 132 Saturnin Picquot (Sartre), 38 Sennett, 157 Savran, David, 9n. 16 separation-individuation, 7, 9n. 18, Schehr, L. R., 5, 56, 154, 160, 174n. 32 10-11

schizophrenia, 75 sexual desire, 157

Schwarzer, Alice, 175n. 44 sexual intercourse, 154—64, 174n. 30 Schweitzer, Albert, 88n. 30 sexuality, 31n. 3, 36-8, 39, 40-2, 43, 47,

Schweitzer, Charles (Sartre’s 48,52, 59, 73-4, 88n. 17, 154-8, grandfather), 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 159-64, 167, 168, 196, 200n. 17 18-19, 22, 25, 29, 36, 37, 40, 46n. and emotion, 36

15, 47, 60, 65, 83, 169 sadistic, 106 |

Schweitzer family, 11 and writing, 19-20 Scriven, Michael, 53 Sharpe, S., 174n. 34

‘se mettre en veilleuse’, 69 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 77 Second World War, 1-2, 90-112, 114-26, Sicard, Michel, 200n. 29 128-9, 131, 132—4, 138, 150 . Siegel, Liliane, 150, 165, 166, 175n. 42,

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 174n. 26 175n.n. 44, 45, 184, 186, 187, 188, seduction, 61, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73-4, 86, 190, 191, 194 105, 107, 140, 150, 151, 153, 167, Sirinelli, Jean-Francois, 69 187, 189; body-mind polarity, 41; — social class, 35, 46n. 24, 47, 48, 50, 65,

writing as, 21, 55, 73-4, 105, 167 66, 86, 93, 122 Segal, Lynne, 11, 31n. 6, 33n. 28, 45n.9, — socialism, 118, 124, 126

102, 156 ‘Socialism and Freedom’ (political

Seidler, V. J., 3, 5, 8n. 7, 13, 15, 17, 18, movement), 124

20, 61, 64n. 24, 67, 88n. 22, 88n. socio-economic factors, 31n. 4, 88n. 32,

28, 95, 97, 110, 113n. 7, 138, 140-1, 197 155-6, 157, 159, 160, 161, 168, Sorbonne, 49, 179-80

182, 192 Sorokine, Nathalie, 130, 141n. 1

self, 4,91 Spanish Civil War, 75, 76, 116 compensatory, 45n. 8 splitting, 59-60, 95, 144, 190

compromised sense of, 6, 7, 14-16, spontaneity, 104, 168, 190 , 18, 19, 27, 30-1, 36, 61, 62, 86, Stendhal, 77, 95 100-1, 109, 134, 135-6, 141, 153, Stéphane, Roger, 177, 199n. 5 154, 162, 168, 169, 171, 174n. 36, stoicism, 1-2, 97, 109, 111, 125

186, 198, 199 Strogoff, Michel, 21

fragile sense of, 155 subject, 3, 151-2, 160, 161 inclusive sense of, 6, 7, 23,101,125, — subjectivities, masculine, 4, 5, 23, 37,

134, 135-6, 141, 153, 168, 169, 75-6, 77, 78, 91, 107, 154 171-2, 177-8, 186, 187, 188-9, superego, 19, 140, 169 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 198 symbiotic relationships, 53, 54-5, 133,

intimacy within, 58 152, 169

lack of a sense of, 15-16, 19, 23, 27, symbolic Order, 32n. 14

79, 100-1 symbolism, phallic, 164

228 Index

T War Diaries (WD) (Sartre), 1, 3, 12, 21, Taverne du Lion d’Or, Brumath, 99 24, 29, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 48, 49, tenderness, 36, 57, 58, 59, 72-3, 93, 133, 50, 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 63n. 4, 66,

137, 150 67, 68, 70, 72-3, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79,

Teroni, Sandra, 79 81, 82, 87, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98,

terrorist freedom, 115 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105,

theatre, 122-3 106, 107, 109, 110, 112, 119, 120,

Theweleit, Klaus, 63n. 13 125-6, 128, 129, 133, 138, 140,

Thiviers, 10, 34, 52 143, 144, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156, Thompson, M., 37 163, 164, 168, 171, 176, 177, 187, Todd, Olivier, 139—40 188, 189 Tépffer, Rodolphe, 77 Wetherell, Margaret, 161 Tréves, Stalag XII D, 114, 115, 117, Wickers, Olivier, 33n. 36, 82, 105 118-19, 120, 125 Wiegman, Robyn, 158

Trotsky, Leon, 200n. 26 Witness to My Life (WML) (Sartre), 48, twinship transference, 58, 64n. 20, 130, 51, 52, 53, 57, 60, 61, 62, 65, 74,

132, 141n. 4 75, 82, 83, 84, 87n. 4, 91, 92, 93-4, 95, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104,

U 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113n. ugliness, 16-18, 19, 21, 22, 32n.n. 13, 19, 12, 118, 124, 129, 130-1, 132, 133,

37-8, 39, 42, 48, 57, 60, 68, 70, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141,

95-6, 128, 150, 151, 159 152, 160, 162, 168 Une Défaite (Sartre), 53-4, 55-7, 63n. 9, women

106, 136 beauty, 57

United States, 124 bodies, 41

USSR, 177, 181, 199n. 4. See also Russia and emotions, 169-71 male dependence on, 36

V as superficial / fragile, 56-7 Van Gogh, Vincent, 103, 188 See also Sartre, Jean-Paul, Vanetti, Dolorés, 20, 165, 167-9, 172, relationships with women

175n.n. 40, 51, 190 Words (W) (Sartre), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19,

Védrine, Louise see Bienenfeld, Bianca; 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 43, 79,

Lamblin, Bianca 94,117, 153, 155, 158, 177, 178, Vian, Michelle, 165, 175n. 40 184 Vichy government, 124 writing, 5, 18-25. See also Sartre, JeanVille, Marie, 87n. 5 Paul, writing; Sartre, Jean-Paul, violence, 5, 34-6, 37, 39, 42-3, 44—5, 49, writing self

self, 37, 39 Y

51-2, 62, 200n. 13; towards the

void/emptiness, 19, 23, 24, 27, 28, 154, youth, cult of, 71 198

vulnerability, 7, 16, 24, 36, 37, 44, 60, Z 146, 151, 188, 193, 195, 196 Zahm, S., 7, 31n. 1, 58, 130 Zevaco, Michel, 20

174n. 38 ,

WwW Zonina, Lena, 165, 166, 175n.n. 44, 50 Walkerdine, Valerie, 28, 39 Z.uorro, Marc, 68, 71, 72, 74, 143, 147 walking stick/cane leitmotiv, 164, wall-eye, 17, 38, 119, 123, 124