Digital Theatermaker Profile #2- Jean Paul-Sartre
Jack Mathis
(Desan, 2018)
Biography
Jean-Paul Sartre was born June 21, 1905 in Paris, France where he grew up with his maternal grandfather after the early loss of his father (Desan, 2018). He grew up an awkward child who would wander the Luxembourg Gardens of Paris days on end. He went to the Lycée Henri IV in Paris after the remarriage of his mother to the lycée in La Rochelle, and then, he went on to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, from which he was graduated in 1929 (Desan, 2018). He formed a bond with Simone de Beauvoir while he was student and this bond lasted throughout his life. While at École Normale Supérieure, Sartre met others who were later to be famous writers such as Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Mounier, Jean Hippolyte, and Claude Lévi-Strauss (Desan, 2018).
Sartre went on to teach from 1931 to 1945 in the lycées of Le Havre, Laon, and finally Paris, where there were two breaks, one to study in Berlin, and the other when he was drafted in 1939 to fight in WWII (Desan, 2018). He was a prisoner of war in 1940 but was released a year later. While living in Le Havre, Sartre began to write and his writing here is what first brought him fame (Desan, 2018). After WWII and his teaching, he changed his writing to be focused on politics and social activism. He would often go participate in rioting, in the sale of left-wing literature, and in other activities that were to promote “the revolution” in his mind, that being toward his belief in socialism and Marxism (Desan, 2018). He was praised for his innovative ideas and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, but refused it claiming that “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution” (Brikett & Owens, 2016). He wrote in great amounts but his productivity decrease as he grew older. He became blind and his health deteriorated and in April 1980 he died of a lung tumor. He had a very impressive funeral of 25,00 people, those ordinary people who’s rights he protected throughout his life with his pen (Desan, 2018).
(Who, n.d.)
Theatermaker Attributes
From pictures like the one above, you can see that Sartre is was not large it stature. He was described as a scrawny young boy who was cross-eyed and has trouble making friends (Desan, 2018). In his autobiography, Les Mots (1963), he describes how he and his mother would bounce from group to group in hopes of being accepted, only to be turned away to retreat back to their sixth floor apartment. He says that “the words”, as in his writing, was his escape from the world that rejected him, a place where he could pour his dreams and thoughts into (Desan, 2018). This portion of his life, he speaks of in his autobiography once again, is what motivated him to want to use his writing to affect change and elucidate his own ideas of the what the world should be, with politics and society.
As Sartre matured into adulthood and his peak of writing, he became a formidable writer during France’s occupation in WWII and in the antebellum period to follow. Sartre’s ideas and politics explored the ideas of freedom and necessity along with the relationship between the individual and collective responsibility and action (Birkett & Owen, 2016). He continued to expound his ideas after liberation and became the writer of the people, as he explored social responsibility of each citizen, supporting the ideas of Marxism (Birkett & Owen, 2016). With his lasting relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, he supported the ideas of feminism and the ideas of nonconformity to the traditional ideas of the bourgeois upbringing of the time. He became a prominent figure in French philosophy in the 20th century and existentialism. He challenged traditional philosophies of life with existentialism, where he believed that the human experience focused specifically on the individual and their real physical experience, not just thinking and being (Brikett & Owens, 2016). His works with communism and ideas became known as “Sartrian Socialism” where he agreed with Marxism, but recognized that it was not livable in the Soviet model and that there must be more of a focus on the individual freedom of man (Desan, 2018). In the end, Sartre is remembered for the sheer amount of work he produced and the revolutionary style in which he wrote throughout his life.
(World War II, n.d.)
The Society of the Times
The main beginnings of when Sartre started to write was right around when the occupation of France and WWII were taking place. This became a platform for his writing since the society of the time was beginning to question the status quo and looking into the traditions of the time and the individual in society (Browns, 1948). There was a struggle between writers and intellectuals and the politics of the invading Germans, some even conforming to the anti-Semitism and damaging their reputations. It became almost impossible for writers to not be politically charged as there was the up and coming French Communist Party, fascism, and Marxism rising throughout the country and across Europe (Brikett & Owens, 2016). Writers became the main voice of revolution and uprising against the occupying Germans and is what later gave writers power to write in opposition to the traditions of society in France after the war.
There was a fight, however, in French society, no matter the political position, to regain French prestige and pride after their defeat and occupation by Germany, in which their society and culture was thrown aside and disrespect (Brikett & Owens, 2016). This is also why there was an opportunity for writers to try to create new ideas and philosophies, an example being existentialism with Sartre. With all of these new ideas, there was rioting for new ideas and a transformed country following the war, a want for a new society where there was more social equality (Desan, 2018). In the 1960’s, France faced a time of affluence and stability that it has not seen since before the war, somehow avoiding the entanglements of decolonization and the conditions radical sociocultural change. France seemed to keep a strong individual character even though there was critique that the war would change culture and morality forever (Brikett & Owens, 2016). France was in rebuilding mostly throughout Sartre life and this was what gave way to his ability to affect change with his writing.
(Theatre, 2014)
The Theatre of the Times
During the war, there was not much set French culture due to the rampage and destruction of the German with the occupation. Theater and the arts was not of prominence therefore, but this lapse in the theater is what gave way to the new theater of the absurd following the war in France (Zhu, 2013). The theater of the absurd is described as rejecting shared, common traditions and having no coherent subject, as in no singular philosophy or theme. This form of theater allowed Paris to reemerge as a center of the avant-garde and the theater in France and Europe as well (Zhu, 2013). France and Paris specifically had fallen at the wayside of culture due to the occupation, so this theater was a strong reconciling for the society and theater of France. This type of theater was performed mostly for the common folks and had the aim to have these people question the conventions of society and the established socioeconomic hierarchy of the time. This theater was performed throughout Paris as the new center of theater, but one main theater was the “Théâtre national populaire” or T.N.P. (Zhu, 2013).
The plays of the theatre of the absurd saw playwrights writing extremely grotesque plays both in form and content, which explored the conditions of human existence in modern society (Zhu, 2013). The theater of the time, also seen with the existentialism of Sartre, was focused on the exploring the human experience and having the audience question and think about their own lives. Sartre’s type of writing is described as “theatre engagée”, theatre engaged to social or political action, emphasizing conditions of humanity to prompt audiences to make critical choices that would allow them to attain purpose (Browns, 1948). He went along with the theater of the time in which his theater was a theater of situation that engaged the audience like the theater of the absurd as to call into question the norms of society. Existentialism focused around the individual experience, so the theater followed along with this philosophy of the time and can be seen directly in many of Sartre’s works where he looks into the rights of each person and ideas of death (Browns, 1948).
(No Exit, 2010)
His Work
Sartre was a profuse writer throughout his youth, again using it as an escape and a platform to illustrate his dreams. His first breakthrough piece, however, came while he was still teaching, and it was La Nausée (1938), which was thought of to be an individualistic and antisocial piece of writing (Desan, 2018). He took on the phenomenological method after this, in which uses careful, unprejudiced description rather than deduction, and used this in three successive publications L’Imagination (1936; Imagination: A Psychological Critique), Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions (1939; Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions), and L’Imaginaire: Psychologie phénoménologique de l’imagination (1940; The Psychology of Imagination) (Desan, 2018). He revealed his mastership though in L’Être et le néant (1943; Being and Nothingness) where he contrasts consciousness and unconsciousness, and makes a tragically beautiful point that the human endeavor is useless (Desan, 2018).
Following the war, he wrote in some other forms, such as the brochure L’Existentialisme est un humanisme (1946; Existentialism and Humanism) and the four volume book Les Chemins de la liberté in which he ended up only writing 3 volumes before deciding to go back to writing plays (Desan, 2018). He began to produce plays one after another after the war producing Les Mouches(produced 1943; The Flies), Huis-clos(produced 1944, published 1945; In Camera, or No Exit), Les Mains sales (1948; Crime passionel, 1949; U.S. title, Dirty Hands; acting version, Red Gloves), Le Diable et le bon dieu(1951; Lucifer and the Lord), Nekrassov (1955), and Les Séquestrés d’Altona (1959; Loser Wins, or The Condemned of Altona). Each of these plays focused on his philosophy of existentialism. The other part of his writing of course focused on the political side of things and this attitude is found in his critique, Critique de la raison dialectique (1960), of Soviet intervention and the French Community Party, despite believing in socialism. His final major work in his later years was Flaubert a four volume study of Gustave Flaubert and his use of the double tool of using Marx and Freud influences in his works (Desan, 2018). Sartre’s works focused on either the philosophical or political side of ideas, and most of the time the two would overlap with existentialism and socialism. Throughout all of his work, his plays were produced throughout France and Europe, but the main center of theater in his time was Paris and his works were produced in the city immensely.
References
Birkett, J., & Owen, D. (2016, July 21). French literature. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/art/French-literature/The-mid-20th-century
Brown, S. M., Jr. (1948). The Atheistic Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. The Philosophical Review,57(2), 158-166. doi:10.2307/2181764
Desan, W. (2018, April 08). Jean-Paul Sartre. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Paul-Sartre
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre. (2010, December 08). Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123933.No_Exit
(2014, December 07). Theatre of the Absurd. Retrieved from https://theoghamstoneul.com/2014/12/07/theatre-of-the-absurd/
Who is Jean-Paul Sartre? Everything You Need to Know. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/jean-paul-sartre-234.php
World War II: Axis Invasions and the Fall of France. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/07/world-war-ii-axis-invasions-and-the-fall-of-france/100098/
Zhu, J. (2013). Analysis on the artistic features and themes of the theater of the absurd.Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(8), 1462. doi:10.4304/tpls.3.87.1462-1466