Literature as philosophical choice Persp

Literature as philosophical choice
Perspectives on Sartre’s writings and readings
André Barata
University of Beira Interior, Portugal
In a discussion about The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, Jean-Paul
Sartre wrote: «the technique in a novel always takes us back to the metaphysics of the
novelist». And immediately he adds: «The task of the critic is to define the latter before
appreciating the first.»1 This view is formulated in universal and prescriptive terms; and
therefore, necessarily arguable.
Setting aside arguments about the question of what is literature, and even about
what is philosophy, and above all, discarding improbable generalizations, I will try to
defend that this metaphysical critique of the technique in novels is a philosophical choice
by Sartre – according to this point of view, it is thus as a metaphysical critic, that is, as a
philosopher, that Sartre discusses the metaphysics of time in The Sound and the Fury, or
the metaphysics of the absurd in Camus’ The Stranger.
But the choice is not arbitrary – in fact, following Sartre’s thought, it is not even
in the domain of Will–, for which reason it would be important to shed some light on the
manner in which Sartre works the relationship between literature and philosophy, even
between his own literature and philosophy. Can literature serve as an illustration for
philosophy? Could this mean that there could be appropriate and inappropriate
illustrations? And that there is a truth and a persuasive function to those illustrations? Or
is it, essentially, to ask more from literature: that it serve as evidence and that it be a
coactive force for philosophy? It seems that Nausea is already thinking of Being and
Nothingness, and that Proust and Faulkner, in the eyes of Sartre, the critic, fail their
metaphysics; in any case, we have literature providing reality for philosophy, even from
within philosophy, if we recall the literary descriptions of angst or bad faith in Being and
1
«Une technique romanesque renvoie toujours à la métaphysique du romancier. La tâche du critique est de
dégager celle-ci avant d’apprécier celle-lá. » Situations I, Gallimard, Paris, 1947, p.66
1
Nothingness, precisely as if it was fiction that was capable of giving realism to
philosophy, an other with whom it is confronted, as its own reality.
To face these questions, I propose a possible itinerary for discussion. Firstly, to
divorce this choice of literature as a philosophical choice - well present in Sartre’s work
before the after-the-war period - from the later positions held by Sartre in What is
Literature?(1951)
In fact, and independently of the relevance of this influential text, I hope to show
that Sartre did not start by reading and writing literature privileging commitment. More to
the point, I hope to show that some of the presuppositions on which Sartre bases the idea
of literary commitment, clearly diverge from the presuppositions that allow him to
philosophically choose literature. Having said this, I will make evident this philosophical
choice of literature in several examples of Sartre’s works: his critical reception of two
novels – The Sound and the Fury and The Stranger –, his own novel, Nausea; and finally,
in a brief reference, his descriptions of phenomena such as angst and bad-faith in Being
and Nothingness.
1. Literary word and reality value
If we wanted to summarize the central idea in Sartre´s philosophy in one sentence, we
could articulate it as: consciousness is always consciousness of something that not itself.
In this “not itself” we capture the origin of metaphysics in Being and Nothingness. In
fact, according to what was said, consciousness, in itself, is nothing; it only is for itself,
meaning, it only recognizes itself as consciousness, in it not being the “things” that it
goes on being consciousness of. Hence the reason Sartre distinguishes the pour-soi from
the en-soi, the first being that of consciousness and the latter of things. This is also the
reason for stating that consciousness arises supported by a being different from itself –
and, therefore, that it is permanently dependent. From this central idea, two consequences
follow, which I shall put forth rather schematically. Firstly, it follows that consciousness
has no content – since it is nothing, all content transcends it, even that of the I; hence the
idea of the transcendence of the Ego, that is, its transcendence in relation to
consciousness; and therefore, the rejection of a “digestive” philosophy which assimilated
2
the strangeness into self and sameness, and beyond this, since it is nothing, nothing can
determine it; this is why consciousness and freedom are, in Sartre´s Philosophy,
equivalent in worth, both ontological, but yet, both empty of any content. Secondly, it
holds that any identification processes, be it with one´s own past, or one´s own future, be
it with one´s own body or the body of an other, be it with the consciousness of another
putative “other” of oneself that would be the unconscious, are all only ways in which to
deceive the anguished consciousness of the being of consciousness itself. Generally
speaking, Sartre calls the structure of this illusion – unavoidably doomed to failure – badfaith.
As was said, the freedom of which Sartre speaks follows from his own
consciousness ontology. This is the reason we cannot, consciously, not be free. We are
not free not to choose – not choosing is already to choose. Therefore, freedom, more than
a prerogative is, for Sartre, a condemnation; a freedom that is less abstract, and more
keenly felt, sometimes resented; of which we become conscious not in happiness, nor in
the ability to guide ourselves towards it, but in angst.
Now, it´s based on these theses that Sartre commits, and summons to
responsibility, any agent who believes he is able to, consciously, abstain from taking a
stand. In the same way that a not choosing is still a choice, so a non-committed literature
is still the expression of a compromise. Thus, to assume the commitment that arises
spontaneously from the very existence of the writer in the world, this is what Sartre
demands. 2
The difficulty of this position in Sartre, as well as any others which subordinate
literature, or some of its forms, to a transparent extra-literary function, particularly a
transparent social function, lies in the understanding, highly debatable, of the literary
word as an instrument, a symbol or sign for something beyond itself, losing sight of what
we shall call here, its reality value. Naturally, militant literature or the social commitment
2
«On ne peint pas les significations, on ne les met pas en musique; qui oserait, dans cês conditions,
réclamer du peintre, ou du musicien qu´ils s´engagent ? L´écrivain, au contraire, c´est aux significations
qu´il a affaire. » (Sartre, J.-P., 1964. Qu´est-ce que la Littérature ? Paris : Gallimard, p.17). This,
obviously, if it is a literature that is capable of doing so. According to Sartre, it wouldn´t be the case in the
poetic attitude, which would <solidify> words, make them en soi, like things, and no longer signs for
something beyond them – « Le poète s´est retiré d´un seul coup du langage instrument ; il a choisi une fois
pour toutes l´attitude poétique qui considère les mots comme des choses et non comme des signes. » (Op.
cit., p.19)
3
in literature can be valued, but they will be valued not literarily, but socially. Even
conceived as a social institution, literature is not necessarily valued in terms of its
commitment.
What can we understand by reality value? A simple example, almost didactical,
may help to answer this question. The inherent difficulties of teaching values are wellknown. Let´s take ethical values. To know well one, two, or three ethical systems – for
example, Aristotles´, or Kant´s, or the one Sartre never finished – does not guarantee an
actual knowledge of ethics. A good ethics teacher, or a good ethics student, does not have
to be good people. More generally speaking, it’s common sense to recognize that
theoretical knowledge, that is, propositional knowledge, does not guarantee practical
wisdom, and that, while we may guess what is able to guarantee the first, it isn´t so clear
what may provide the latter. The means here involved indicate an undeniable opacity.
However, just as it is said that an image is worth more than a thousand words, we can
also state, precisely about our narrative prose, that a story can be worth more than a
thousand words. Just as with a child to whom one reads an exemplary story – the
improbable would be that there didn´t occur a transmission of values, it would be difficult
not to recognize an efficient literary commitment. Besides, exemplary literature, as
ancient as oral literature, is a clear sign of that efficiency. But if that can be noted, no
doubt that what is at stake in that efficiency is the fact that the stories are made with
words, but not with explicative words. Meanwhile, the point is made: literature, the
literary word, is not a mere symbol, an instrument of something that not itself. It is not, in
relation to reality, simply as a representative in the absence of a represented. Instead, it
substitutes reality in the quality of being itself a reality to be represented, opacity to be an
object of instrumental transparency of such thousand explicative words that may not be
worth as much as it. Well, it is in this sense that we say, here, that literature has reality
value.3
«In the words of Ingarden, “to ´represent` is, therefore, also to ´let something be known`, but it´s
radically different from ´presenting´ the object by means of its´ objective relations”; and immediately after:
“it is a “giving itself” somewhat different from the representative element, in which the representative
“imitates” what is represented, disguises itself as representative to simultaneously show itself as what
supposedly represented and thus bring forth, so to speak, from the distance the other which in fact it only
represents and to let it speak on its own. It´s an ‘apresentation’ where the presenter is inauthentically the
apresentee and at the same time, simulates being the ‘original’.» (Ingarden, R., 1973. A Obra de Arte
3
4
In this light, it would make as little sense to defend that literature has a transparent
social function as to defend that reality itself is transparent. Or yet still, that our
propositional knowledge about, for instance, Paris – that it is the capital of France, that it
is city in which Sartre lived, etc. – could count in any way as knowing Paris. In a similar
fashion, knowledge of literature, before all knowable propositions about it, is knowledge
by acquaintance, experiential knowledge, just as we know Paris or we know Sartre,
independently of what we might know about Paris or Sartre.
The problem with What is literature?, however, is not in the meaning Sartre gives
to commitment. About this, what the existentialist tells us is that «… a writer is
committed (…) when he passes to himself and for others the commitment from
immediate spontaneity into reflected.»4 This passage from spontaneous commitment to
reflection means no more than an effort to know, by the author, and also by his readers,
of their own situation, as someone who makes explicit what before remained implicit.
Naturally, from this, one can also obtain a commitment regarding the social situation,
political life, and the world around us, but not a transparent commitment, having a single
interpretation, nor a commitment that justifies, by itself, Literature. To specify the
commitment in such a way that Literature was, or should be, at the service of a cause, a
political militancy, or an ideology, results in its instrumentalisation. Well, it’s precisely
the contrary of this instrumental-literature – Literature as value and holding claim to
reality – that gains intervening force in the human world. Eduardo Prado Coelho makes
this point quite clearly in his Universos da Crítica, when he recognizes that the aesthetic
attitude tends to «approach the literary text as if it was a real object – and this is what
allows literature to have suggestive force and ability to intervene in the world. We
believe without believing; we consider that it is real, but we don’t take this real seriously;
we accept that it’s true, while recognizing that it’s a fantasy truth.»5
Where does literature get its reality value from? In the same way that in films,
where the movement isn’t less real – for example, the movement of a gesture or of a kiss
–, even in spite of having the images projected on a screen, in literature, a belief or a
Literária. Lisboa: F.C.G., p. 267 in Reis, C., 2001. O Conhecimento da Literatura. Coimbra: Almedina, p.
82)
4
“Je dirai qu’un écrivain est engagé (…) lorsqu’il fait passer pour lui et pour les autres l’engagement de le
apontanéité immédiate au réfléchi.” (Sartre, J.-P., 1947. Situations II. Paris :Gallimard, pp.123-4).
5
Prado Coelho, E., 1987. Os Universos da Crítica. Lisboa: Edições 70, p.399.
5
suspicion, an ambition or an anxiety, aroused in the narrative by the very narrative
process, are also not less real. What is important to have in mind here, while thinking of
literature as simulation, is that it is one thing to simulate a result, and another, quite
different, to simulate the process that culminates in that result. This second simulation,
happening in the narrative process, does not obtain only a simulation of a result, it may
obtain the result itself. Further ahead, we will see examples Sartre offers us of this
simulation of processes instead of results, making evident that more than what is said, it
matters how it is said, the “technique” of saying.
2. Sartre as a metaphysical critic
Sartre stated, about The Sound and the Fury – that was our starting point –, that
«the technique in a novel always takes us back to the metaphysics of the novelist. The
task of the critic is to define the latter before appreciating the first.» We are faced here
with a dissociation between the act of appreciation and that of understanding a novel’s
technique, the first being characterized in terms we presume to be aesthetic, and the
second in metaphysical terms, at least in the form Sartre explicitly assumes. There
doesn’t seem to be a necessary relation between these two acts, although the critic, in the
fulfilment of his craft, should not only appreciate but also understand the work at hand.
The claim about a priority of understanding isn’t difficult to explain: the critic shouldn’t
only appreciate the work and its’ technique, he should appreciate them based on a
previous understanding. Only then he is able to appreciate it in full. Naturally, an
understanding is something that arouses the critic’s judgement differently than an
appreciation: in the former, the question is whether the novelist’s metaphysics is true or,
at least, can be true, that it is plausible, reasonable; in the latter it is only a matter of an
aesthetic judgement: if it’s beautiful, if it is alluring, or not.
Having said this, a second point lies in noticing that what Sartre is proposing is
that one discover the metaphysics of the author – what there is, after all, to be understood
– through an analysis of his or her novel’s technique, and not through the content of any
given fictional work. And this is a rather important point if we bear in mind the study of
the relation between Literature and Philosophy in Sartre. If literature, or at least fictional
6
literature, implicates a philosophy, it isn’t only because the author disposes of an
experience of the world, a vision of the cosmos or a vision of the world that is expressed
in his or her work. Such an expression could be one of those necessities that go together
with artistic production without, however, fulfilling any distinctive constitutive function.
With much greater perceptiveness, Sartre claims that it is in the very core of fictional
literature, that is, in its’ novel’s techniques, that the metaphysics is revealed and such is
what is decisive in the justification of this or that novel’s technique.
Before advancing further, I believe this is enough to demarcate this sartrean view,
of an essential articulation between the novel and metaphysics, of what is more
commonly known as a philosophical novel or, in perhaps broader terms, as a thesis novel
(roman à these). This articulation remains independently of the fulfilment of the
requisites for recognizing a thesis novel.6 This is the case both in Faulkner’s The Sound
and the Fury and in Camus’ The Stranger – the two works for which Sartre wrote critical
reviews and which we’ll be looking at. In fact, relatively to the first, Sartre’s point is in
claiming that there is a metaphysics of time to be clarified, a clarification which is
necessary for a proper understanding of Faulkner’s novelist technique, independently of a
possible metaphysical thesis about time that Faulkner may have wanted to demonstrate in
literary form.
The same demarcation regarding the thesis novel is openly defended by Sartre in
relation to L’Étranger, in spite of all its theoretical implications as an “absurd novel” «Even if the only theme is the absurd of the human condition, it is not a thesis novel; it
does not rise forth from a “satisfied” thinking, interested in providing its justifying
documents; it is, on the contrary, a product of a “limited, mortal and rebellious” thought.
It proves, by itself, the uselessness of discursive reason.»7 And then, quoting the The
Myth of Sysiphus, wherein he claims to have found the “theory of the absurd novel”, he
puts Camus himself defending the idea that it is in the framework of a novel’s technique
that the metaphysics of the author plays out.
“According to the philosophical term, thesis, a thesis novel is one which proposes to demonstrate and
defend a core claim, in the context of a determined system of values, claim which may be eventually
contested.” (Reis, C., & Lopes, Ana C., 2002. Dicionário de Narratologia. Coimbra: Almedina, p.364).
7
Sartre, Situations I. Situações I, p.92.
6
7
But in fact, the preference they [big novelists] have shown for writing in images rather
than reasoned arguments, is revelatory of a certain thought which is common to them all,
convinced of the uselessness of any principle of explanation and sure of the educative
message of sensible appearance.8
It is worth noting that in the critical review Albert Camus, in turn, writes about
Sartre’s Nausea, the same idea is recovered – «A novel is nothing but a philosophy given
in images. »9
Next, we will see how Sartre proceeds in the analyses of the novel’s technique in
Faulkner and Camus. But before that, it doesn’t seem illicit, right now, to confront what
has just been said about what Sartre thinks the task of the critic to be – which clearly
holds for himself as a critic – with what I was earlier aiming for about a certain reality
value in Literature. Where did Literature get that value from? Not from a content
simulation, but from the processes which give origin to it. Now, in analogy, what Sartre,
“the critic” values as capable of being understood and susceptible of truth, in any manner,
of corresponding to reality, isn’t so much the view of the world that is expressed, but the
technique put to work in its expression, that is, the process that realizes it.
2.1 The analysis of The Sound and the Fury
More than in any other aspect of content related to the plot, it is in the manner
how the narrative is built that Sartre identifies what he takes to be a faulknerian
metaphysics of time in The Sound and the Fury. Synthetically, there are at least four
aspects in Faulkner’s novel technique that Sartre interprets metaphysically.
i) Firstly, there isn’t a linear time, upon which the narrative unfolds. Sartre says,
in that regard: «nothing happens, the story does not unfold.» What underlies this peculiar
novel technique in Faulkner, is his metaphysical conviction that temporality is not lived
chronologically, that it isn’t measured by clocks and pendulums, that these, in fact, do not
let time live. We can read in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury : «It is only when the
Camus, The Myth of Sysiphus (and other essays), trad. Justin O’Brien, (p. 65), 1955, quoted in Sartre, Op.
Cit., p.92.
9
«Un roman n’est jamais qu’une philosophie mise en images.» (Camus, Compte rendu dans Alger
Républicain in Contat, M., & Rybalka, M., 1991. Sartre – Oeuvres Romanesques, Paris: Gallimard/Plêiade,
p. 1709.)
8
8
pendulum stops that time begins to live again» -. The counterpart to the succession of
clock time, is an emotional interconnection of events which resound each other as if they
were, this is Sartre’s expression, “emotive constellations”. What links time is, thus,
emotion. And if emotion doesn’t respect chronological order, it is lived time itself that
doesn’t respect it.
ii) Secondly, Sartre observes: «The past is mentioned, told… We had noticed,
regarding Sartoris, that Faulkner always presented events after they had been realized. In
The Sound and the Fury everything happens backstage: nothing happens, everything
already happened.»10 This time, Sartre analyses Faulkner’s technique as having as a
psychological basis an obsession with the past.
iii) Thirdly, the counterpart to this past substituting the present - «I am not, I
was», declares one of the main characters – is an event without any mediation, an event
of a catastrophic nature. «The present does not exist, it is made; everything was.»11 We
can still read, about Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury, that «sometimes, one feels such
a strong obsession for the occultation of the present, that it walks in the shadow, like an
underground river, to reappear only when it has transformed into past.»12 It is the past,
subjectively lived, emotive and traumatic, that presents events without a chance of these
actually occurring.
iv) Lastly, hand in hand with the obsession with the past, and the occultation of
the present, Faulkner, according to Sartre’s reading, conducts a pure and simple
annihilation of the future. To annihilate the future is to annihilate the possibility of
possibility. Sartre writes, about Quentin Compson’s possible suicide – «The future
suicide, which throws its thick shadow over Quentin’s last day, isn’t a human possibility;
there isn’t a single moment where Quentin considers the possibility of not killing
himself.»13 However, it is from the perspective of a novel technique that Sartre is trying
to make his point. And, thusly, he tells us: «This isn’t an undertaking, it is a fatality; in
losing its character of being possible, it ceases to exist in the future: it is already present,
and all of Faulkner’s art hopes to suggest that Quentin’s monologues and his last walk are
10
Sartre, Situations I. Situações I, pp. 64-65.
Op.cit., p.65.
12
Op. cit., ibidem.
13
Op. cit., p.68.
11
9
already Quentin’s suicide. Thus is explained, I think, this curious paradox: Quentin thinks
his last day as something past, like someone who remembers.»14
But then comes the critic’s metaphysical judgement. Sartre begins by asking:
«Could human time exist without the future?» And replies no for manifestly
philosophical reasons – «the nature of consciousness implies (…) that it throws itself
ahead into the future; it can’t understand itself except in what it will be; it determines its
present being through its very possibilities: it is what Heidegger calls “the silent force of
the possible”»15. Sartre’s metaphysical critique doesn’t keep him from appreciating
Faulkner’s art, even without believing in his metaphysics – «I appreciate his art, but I
don’t believe in his metaphysics; a barred future is still a future»16. Less than the
metaphysical discussion, some problems follow from this, like, what would then be the
conditions for aesthetic appraisal? If they are not in the [dependence] of metaphysics
which would determine, according to Sartre, the novel’s technique, if understanding the
first, consequently, does not influence the aesthetic judgement, then what understanding
can one gain from such a judgement. And about this, Sartre says nothing.
2.2. The analysis of The Stranger
In Albert Camus’ novel, the aspect Sartre highlights the most is the use of a
certain parsimonious novel technique, borrowed from the American neo-realism authors,
namely Hemingway. It’s a technique, Sartre tells us, built on «short sentences». And he
adds right away: «each one refuses to take advantage of the impulse gained from the
preceding ones, each one is a starting over. Each one is a note of a gesture, of an object.
To each new gesture, to each new object, corresponds a new sentence.» 17 Further ahead,
he declares: «a sentence in The Stranger is an island»18. How does Sartre interpret this
14
Op. cit., p.69.
Op. cit., p.70.
16
Quoting Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, one recognizes, in this respect, almost a tone of censure directed
towards Faulkner’s metaphysical partiality – «even if human reality has nothing “ahead” of itself, even if it
has “liquidated its account”, its existence is still determined by that “anticipation of itself”. The total loss of
hope, for example, does not tear human reality from its possibilities; it is just “a manner of being in relation
to those possibilities”.» Sartre, op.cit., p.71.
17
Op.cit., p.99.
18
Op. cit., p. 103.
15
10
technique, this solitude of sentences, what metaphysical meaning does he extract from
this? Exactly a mimetic transposition to literary language of a dry and inert exteriority,
now no longer of sentences and their connection, but of the very facts of reality. Without
intimate relation, rather only exterior, just as the time of facts is transformed in a mere
«succession of present-times», so does narrative time become discontinued, a succession
of islands without bridges to connect them, simply accumulating by addition, stranger to
each other, island-sentences – «All the sentences in his book [Sartre insists] are
equivalent, just as all the experiences of the absurd man are equivalent; each one presents
itself by itself and leaves the others in nothingness»19. Who is this absurd man? Precisely
the one The Stranger does not say, but shows. And outside of the scope of demonstration.
Sartre writes: «The Stranger isn’t a book that explains: the absurd man does not explain,
he describes»20. Describing might not even be the most adequate activity to account for
what is here at stake; Sartre himself recognizes it when, further ahead, says that Camus,
«in The Stranger decided to shut up»21. The brevity, the muteness possible in a novel,
places the words themselves beyond meaning, in the court of the absurd. In one more
quotation from The Myth of Sysiphus, the book presumed to give the notion of the absurd
(as a complementation to the feeling of the absurd given in The Stranger), Sartre puts
Camus explaining himself – «A man is speaking on the telephone behind a glass
partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you
wonder why he is alive.»22 The absurd is thus linked to what is, despite the absence of a
justification to be; or still, in a word, to gratuity, the same with which the sentences
follow each other in The Stranger, without any rule of equivalence, and, precisely for that
reason, all equivalent. In short, Camus’ novel technique would be, in The Stranger, at the
service of an effort – to produce the feeling or consciousness of the absurd, through a
simulation of the process that determines it, a simulation undertaken in the narrative
process, through the choice of a certain novel technique.
19
Op. cit., p.105.
Op. cit., p.92.
21
Op. cit., p.98.
22
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sysiphus (and other essays) ,trad. Justin O´Brien (p. 11), quoted by Sartre,
Op. Cit., p.101.
20
11
3. Literature and Phenomenology
What in the critical work appears as maxims, even due to the shorter character of the
texts, is quite less evident when it is Sartre himself writing literary works and
philosophical essays. We will make two brief incursions: one about Sartre’s most famous
novel, Nausea, which we will consider here as a work of phenomenological literature;
and another over some not less famous phenomenological descriptions present in Being
and Nothingness, which we will treat as exercises in literary phenomenology. Perhaps
this distinction between phenomenological literature and literary phenomenology seems
artificial but, with it, our aim is really less to separate than to bring closer together, trying
to determine a field, let’s call it, of indistinction between Phenomenology and Literature.
This is, besides, a way to deny a somewhat dishonest but frequent double accusation
addressed to Sartre – that Nausea isn’t really literature, but philosophy, and that Being
and Nothingness isn’t really philosophy, but literature.
3.1. Nausea
We will begin by paying attention to Nausea from the perspective of the critical
reviews it received on the occasion of its publication in 1938. To switch, in this way,
Sartre’s position in the author/critic relationship is a way of putting him under the gaze
that he himself would expect from a metaphysical critic, that is, of someone that would
pay attention to his own novel technique. And the difficulties are, or were, enormous, to
the point of hesitating about what literary genre was most suited to describe Sartre’s
novel. In fact, reading the Dossier de Press, collected by Michel Contat and Michel
Rybalka for the Plêiade edition, we can see the hesitation going from a suggestion that
Nausea is more of a poem than a novel (André Perrin), or from the question if it isn’t
rather an essay or a philosophical reflection (Marcel Arland), to the idea that it is a
surroman, meaning, a novel carrying a meaning which transcends its novel’s origin
(Claude-Emmanuel Magny), or yet still, a simple and uncommitted, but extremely
symptomatic, classification of Nausea as a «document» (Emmanel Buenzod) – indeed, it
is a diary, fictional, but a diary… and diaries, before being literature or philosophy, are
12
precisely documents, with greater or less interest, and interests of diverse nature, such as
philosophical or literary. Edmond Jaloux risked a bit further: «It will be said, perhaps,
that it is not a novel; but what is a novel, if not, above all, a form of fiction holding a vast
experience?»23 Sartre thanks this review with a letter where he says Edmond Jaloux was
the only critic that presented Nausea as a phenomenological experience.24
Now, it’s precisely this statement that what is at stake in Nausea is a
phenomenological experience that leads us to ask what novel technique would be most
suited to its expression? We do no more, by posing this question, than to apply Sartre’s
precept of Sartre-the-critic to Sartre-the-novelist. Particularly, knowing that Nausea is a
diary, what could have determined the choice for this form?
To answer this question – and always under the sartrean assumption that a novel’s
technique must be not only appreciated, but also understood –, it is important to briefly
introduce phenomenology as Sartre knew it. Therefore, it must be noted, firstly, that
phenomenology isn’t, essentially, an argumentative discipline, but is, rather, descriptive.
And what it describes, in turn, isn’t objects (a paper-weight, for example), but
phenomena. Hence the name, “phenomenology”. But note, secondly, that we don’t mean
by “phenomenon” neither physical phenomena (like the rainfall this early morning, or the
condensation of water on the windowpanes), nor even psychological phenomena (like
forgetting the name of a person we would like to remember today). In phenomenology,
phenomenon means the same as intentional experience, that is, not physical or
psychological phenomena, but that way in which they are lived. The question isn’t, thus,
to describe the objects of an intentional consciousness, but the experiences that bear the
object intended or directed in this way. Note, thirdly, that describing intentional
experiences is to make them explicit, themes of attention for a consciousness, contrarily
to what happens in the natural attitude, in which they “go by” unnoticed. This is why a
phenomenological attitude is distinguished from a natural attitude. Finally, to go from
this to that attitude is the work of reflection – to reflect, in a phenomenological sense,
«On dirá, peut-être, ce n’est pás un roman; mais qu’est-ce qu’un roman, sinon, avant tout, une forme de
ficton contenant une vaste experience?» (Compte rendu d’Edmond Jaloux, paru dans Les Nouvelles
Littéraires in Contat, M., & Rybalka, M., 1991. Sartre – Oeuvres Romanesques, Paris: Gallimard/Plêiade,
pp. 1703-4).
24
Cf. Op. Cit., p.1704.
23
13
isn’t the same as introspection; rather, it consists in taking an act of consciousness, an
intentional act, as theme of another act of consciousness which, in this way, intends it.
With this, we now have clearly identified the object and the method of
phenomenology, as a discipline that started out having scientific aspirations – indeed,
even of an apodictic science. Its object is intentional experience, and its method is not
only descriptive, not only explicitative, but still reflexive.
In presenting these general notes about phenomenology, it is important to point
out the relevancy of the fact that reflection is directed at experiences already past, in
order to proceed towards an analysis of Sartre’s novel technique in Nausea, and to justify
the choice – in my opinion, philosophical – for the diary format. In fact, an instantaneous
reflection would imply that the same consciousness could be, at one time, act and theme
of itself. Such simultaneity is impossible, just as much as trying to capture one’s own
gaze. This is why Sartre distinguishes, still in Being and Nothingness, between a
reflection we may undertake but which remains always impure and an unfeasible pure
reflection. We realize the first, with greater or less purity, but pursuing the latter, and we
do it by shortening the temporal lapse between the current consciousness that reflects and
the past consciousness which is reflected upon, without ever achieving total coincidence.
Now, in light of this effort of a reflection as little impure as possible, the advantages
Sartre achieves in choosing, in Nausea, the diary format, become evident. With his fine
temporal precision, which goes to the point of determining the hour, Roquentin’s
intentional experiences are promptly subjected to being registered, in a good
approximation to the ideal of pure reflection. In other words, such explicitation and
description wouldn’t surely be as successful if the choice had been in favour of
biography, or even, autobiography. Although these genres of expression, just like the
diary, all participate – be they understood literarily, or not – in an intention to testify, they
fail the goal of a purer reflection. Of course, on the other hand, they could be preferable,
if the philosophical choice were different, if, for example, the choice favoured
introspection, or a neutral account, and not phenomenological reflection.
On the other hand, the methodological rigour demands that one doesn’t
overdetermine an acquired description with reflective explanations. These can follow
naturally – no phenomenology does completely without them, although they maintain an
14
occasional character – but in respect for the scope of each one. In this point in particular,
the register of six o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, reveals quite well that care in the
novel technique relatively to its metaphysical implications and, concretely, its
phenomenological implications. We’re talking about the famous passage where
Roquentin tells the experience of nausea suffered while looking at the root of a chestnut
tree. Here, the purely descriptive effort suddenly opens up a phenomenological fact
hidden until then, and which is, in this manner, made explicit.
The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just under
my bench. I couldn't remember it was a root any more. The words had vanished and with
them the significance of things (…)25
In three consecutive sentences, Sartre goes from the natural attitude to the
phenomenological, and then, from this to an explaining moment. In the first sentence, the
metaphorical sinking is still only a part of the natural attitude, suggesting movement and,
perhaps, permeation, perhaps even undefinition there where it sinks, between the root and
the earth. In the second sentence – built upon a contrary one – we are already faced with
rupture from the natural attitude. It is obvious that it isn’t a psychological forgetting that
is being noticed by Roquentin, but an absence of “being a root”, in fact, as much as of
“being anything”. And this is the phenomenological fact which, as much as possible,
Roquentin tries to make explicit and contain in a description. With the third sentence,
Roquentin suspends the phenomenological effort to try to give some account of it. Here,
the word no longer realizes, it begins to “talk”, so to speak, and becomes theoretical,
explaining, searching for transparency, that is, for making things as clear as possible.
The appeal to the “talking” word which, instead of showing, explains, is
something that becomes notorious in the use Sartre makes of words that will, perhaps,
hurt the more literarily sensitive ear, words like “category”, “abstract”, “filiation”, etc.
Another passage illustrates the juxtaposition, sometimes difficult to discern, between
explicitative moments and explicative moments – «Existence had suddenly showed itself.
«La racinne du marronnier s’enforçait dans l aterre, juste au-dessus de mon banc. Je ne me rappelais plus
que c’etait une Racine. Les mots s’etaient ávanouis et, avec eux, la signification des choses (…)» (Sartre, JP. 1991. Oeuveres Romanesques. Paris, Gallimard/Bibliothèque de la plêiade, p.150).
25
15
It had lost the harmless look of abstract category: it was the very paste of things».26 In
fact, here, the novelty that is made explicit lies in the revelation that the contrast between
existence and essence isn’t only epistemic, since it is also, in lack for better words,
affective: existence isn’t, in its rawness, harmless. Hence the nausea as a
phenomenological experience – a forced ingestion of what is already indigestible, that is,
an existing which overweighs upon meaning without giving it a chance to assimilate, and
in that way, dominate it. Hence also – in this double movement of nausea – the gratuity
of existence, unjustifiable, and the awareness of a “being in the way”, of “being too
much”, consciousness, alas, of the absurd.27
The description and explanation never dissolve into each other – they are like oil
and water – to not dissolve existence in an essence is really the indication that only a
“non-talking” word, indistinctly literary or phenomenological in its capability to realize,
can account for the existing. It is interesting to note, in this regard, that Roquentin can
only explain the impossibility of explaining existence by a return to explanation:
The world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not
absurd; it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its
extremities. But neither does a circle exist. That root, on the contrary, existed insofar I
could not explain it.28
The inexplicability is explained in theoretical words, but existence can’t be
explained by words; one can show it, and with words, but with words that tends to be
literary, phenomenological literature. To name existence and the absurd, precisely with
the words “existence” and “absurd”, doesn’t help. That’s not the path to make them
digestible. Roquentin says it clearly - «In vain to repeat: “This is a root” – it didn’t work
anymore.»29
«L’exstence s’était soudan dévoilée. Elle avait perdu son allure inoffensve de catégorie abstraite: c’était
la pâte meme des choses (…)» (Sartre, Op. cit., p.151)
27
«Nous étions un tas d’exstants genes, embarrasses de nous-mêmes, nous n’avions pas la moindre raison
d’être lá, ni les uns n les autres, chaque existant, confus, vaguement inquiet, se sentat de trop par rapport
aux autres. De trop: c´était le seul rapport que je pusse établir entre ces arbres, ces grilles, ces cailloux.»
(Sartre, Op.cit., p.152)
28
«Le monde des explications et des raisons n’est pas celui de l’existence. Une cercle n’est pas absurde, il
s’explique très bien par la rotation d’un segment de droite autour d’une de ses extrémités. Mais aussi un
cercle n’existe pas. Cette racine, au contraire, existait dans la mesure où je ne pouvais pas l’expliquer.»
(Sartre, Op.cit., p.153).
29
«J’avais beau me répéter: “C’est une racine – ça ne prenait plus.» (Sartre, Op.cit., p.153)
26
16
3.2. Being and Nothingness
This inability of language, of a certain kind of language, that aims to explain,
name, fixate, become transparent, justifies the return to those general considerations
about the relation between literature and phenomenology. Indeed, it isn’t only that
literature, when attempted phenomenologically, chooses certain novel technique of
giving testimony of recent intentional experiences. The question is, now, to draw
attention to this other fact – to treat phenomenology literarily is a feasible project if one
considers that phenomenology can only be successful with another kind of word that is
not explicative nor abstract and if, on top of that, one consider that this other type of word
is made available by literary word.
If we look at the purely phenomenological information in Being and Nothingness,
if we take note of the phenomenological descriptions within it which became famous, like
the ones about examples of angst or bad-faith, and comparing them with examples taken
from Nausea, it isn’t easy to declare that the writing is different, namely, that one is
philosophical and the other literary. Among them, it is more the kind of work in which
they are included that distinguishes them, than the kind of writing, phenomenological or
literary. We will take two examples from the Essay on phenomenological ontology to
illustrate this point.
But then suppose he takes her hand. This act of her companion risks changing the
situation by calling for an immediate decision. To leave the hand there is consent herself
in this flirt, to engage herself. To withdraw is to break with this troubled and unstable
harmony which gives the hour its charm. The aim is to postpone the moment of decision
as long as possible. We know what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there
but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice it because it happens by
chance that she is, at this moment, all intellect.30
Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too
precise, a little too rapid. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express
an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns,
trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while
carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually
unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light
movement of the arm and hand. All his behavior seems to us a game. He applies himself
30
Sartre, 1943/1993. O Ser e o Nada. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, p.81. [trad. 55-56]
17
to changing his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his
gestures and even his voice seems to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and
pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing?31
These two large quotations, which hope only to reinforce my point of view,
introduce us two characters – a woman and a café waiter – no less fictional than
Roquentin or the Self-taught man in Nausea. They also give us a narrative time and a
narrator, that is, they give us a narrative. And what´s more, there is a constant focusing by
initiative of the narrator in different aspects he wants to describe, as if it was a moving
painting, all in the name of making evident the structure of a single phenomenon, badfaith. The “materiality”, so to speak, of the real is given – it is fictional matter but, all the
same, recognizable in the everyday experience. Nonetheless, the reality of bad faith isn’t
immediately given within it. It must be made explicit with an effort to untangle the true
and the false, or the evident and the illusory.
Like these, many other examples of passages in Being and Nothingness, use
fiction, as a way to elucidate the structure of phenomena. Be it bad-faith or angst, be they
conducts of sadism or masochism, be they any other intentional experiences subject of
phenomenological work, Sartre always appeals to fiction, as if it were an experiential lab,
to conduct his crucial experiences. How can literature fulfil this role? Two ideas we have
been defending until now may answer this question: on the one hand, maybe there is a
truth in literature that could be in its phenomenology, perhaps this phenomenology is, in
substance, the reality value of literature; and, on the other hand, maybe fiction, namely of
the kind novels offer, is able to show, in a privileged manner, that is, in an exemplary
form and not merely exemplifying form, what phenomenology, theoretically thought,
can’t say. Under this exemplary condition, Sartre’s literature is not in a position of being
after the thought as if to illustrate it; well on the contrary, it is situated before it, as if
providing food for thought and, thus, inaugurating philosophy. The philosophical choice
for literature is, therefore, itself in Sartre a literary choice for philosophy.
31
Op.cit., p.84.
18