Customer Reviews

"What is Literature?" and Other Essays

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I rarely read Sartre because I have more interest in political theories than in philosophy, and Sartre has the kind of journal which takes sides on a different basis than merely accepting the current higher swindles. I quote:

Consequently, concerning the political
and social events to come, our journal
will take a position in each case.
It will not do so politically -
that is, in the service of a particular
party - but it will attempt to sort out
the conception of man that inspires
each one of the conflicting theses,
and will give its opinion in conformity
with the conception it maintains. (p. 255).

The style of philosophy is likely to condemn works of rock and roll as:

what Mallarmé called "bibelors
d'inanité sonore" (trinkets of
sonorous inanity), this in itself
is a sign - that there is a crisis
of Letters and, no doubt, of
Society, or even that the dominant
classes have channeled him without
his realizing it toward an activity
that seems pure luxury, for fear
that he might take off and swell
the ranks of the revolutionaries. (p. 251).

Spend about five minutes listening to the song What's Up by 4 Non Blondes and see if you hear someone in an institution praying for a revolution every single day. Mostly the song is feeling a little peculiar, and it is quite common in a society that depends on a higher swindle to keep getting by that philosophy is the extraliminated activity of only a very few people, none of whom will be important for the five-second attention span of people who are wrapped up in rock and roll.

Like most other people, I first read Sartre early in my time at college- Nausea, Being & Nothingness, Words. And I was, of course, smitten by this man who understood so well my experience of isolation, freedom and how irritating it is when tools don't work properly and when other young men and women looked at me. And then, like (I hope) most other people (including, it must be said, Sartre), I got over it, realized that the world existed neither to irritate me nor to coddle me, and that there were more important things than the state of my Existence.

So I didn't exactly have high expectations of this, and was very pleasantly surprised. Sartre's argument is based on a pretty dodgy philosophy, but quite valid feelings: anger at injustice, love of literature. Like most philosophies of literature, he makes absurd and stupid generalizations (the poet 'considers words as things, not signs' and so isn't like a 'writer'), but at least his largest generalization isn't an insult to human beings: the act of writing, he argues, is an act of freedom addressed to other free humans who happen at present to be in terrible situations of unfreedom. The relation between writer and reader can be an ideal image of a world in which people aren't forced to work in jobs they hate, or do anything else they hate for that matter. I'll take that over 'the act of writing is the putting into question of literature' any day. "The work of art, from whichever side you approach it, is an act of confidence in the freedom of men." And, I assume, women.

So Sartre argues that the writer is addressing both a real public - the people who do actually read her - and a virtual public, the people who could conceivably read her. In different historical periods these two audiences will more or less match up: when the society is one of minimal freedom for most people (Sartre's example is the 17th century), the virtual audience is more or less absent; when the society has the potential for greater freedom, the virtual audience expands (e.g., modernity.) But in any case, the writer must address her 'virtual' public through her real one. Abstract palaver has no place in Sartre's theory.

He follows this up with a great history of 20th century literature in France, which is basically a critique of surrealism and the communist party (it's important to note the latter, since everyone - including myself up till now - seems to think Sartre was a Stalinist), and the last chapter is a rousing call for writers to care about what they do.

I couldn't get over 20 pages of this essay without groaning from exasperation. The famous philosopher is presenting such a silly argument trying to distinguish prose from poetry equaling poetry to painting and music and for some reason leaving out prose as a special art which uses words to convey messages and opinions while poetry employs words to create an image not unlike the painting. For anyone more or less acquainted with the best works of literature, such separations would seem silly. Would we consider then Hemingway's short stories written with paratactic barren phrases prose or poetry? would would Sartre say about Nabokov's novels? the border between prose and poetry, literature and painting, literature and music is not that defined. different arts use different languages and codes ad are limited in their own way but it is impossible and ultimately unwise to try to create a theory separating poetry from prose on the basis of how the writers use language and what the ultimate goal of writing is. There are poetic novels that are written in such a way a mere glance at any paragraph would betray the hand of a writer, there are novels in verse like Eugene Onegin, there are finally poetry of thought dwelling on abstract ideas.