“Happy” Birthday, Jean-Paul Sartre
Posted by Richard S. on June 20, 2007
Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the greatest commie curmudgeons of all time. And he was born 102 years ago, on June 21, 1905.
Of course, it is still June 20 as I write this, at least for me, but it is June 21 in France. Though what difference does it make? A birthday really has no inherent meaning…
But it does provide me with a good excuse to post some of my favorite quotes from Nausea:
I live alone, entirely alone. I never speak to anyone, never; I receive nothing, I give nothing… When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell something: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow past; suddenly you see people pop up who speak and who go away, you plunge into stories without beginning or end: you make a terrible witness. But in compensation, one misses nothing, no improbability or, story too tall to be believed in cafes…
People who live in society have learned to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is naked? You might say - yes you might say, nature without humanity…
The misanthrope is a man: therefore the humanist must be misanthropic to a certain extent. But he must be a scientist as well to have learned how to water down his hatred, and hate men only to love them better afterwards…
The past is a landlord’s luxury. Where shall I keep mine? You don’t put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I should not complain: all I wanted was to be free.
(All quotes copied easily from the wonderful site, Sartre Online.)
June 21, 2007 at 2:31 am
I would like to nominate Theodor Adorno as runner up to Sartre in the all time commie curmudgeon championship. His birthday is 11 September, doubtless he would have relished the irony if he had lived to see his birthday in 2001. I remember reading in a biog that in his later years, after various Maoist and Stalinist attachments, Sartre began checking out left communism. Do you know anything about that?
June 21, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Hell is other people… That’s why we blog.
June 21, 2007 at 4:58 pm
NO EXIT! NO EXIST!?!
Okay, sorry. I couldn’t help myself.
Congratulations, Jean-Paul. The very fact we’re still talking about you now proves you’ve managed to erase a little of your existence, and gain a little bit of being—-just what you wanted.
June 21, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Hi, Transpontine. Re. Sartre’s politics… They seem to have been kind of complex (but what else would you expect)? I think he started criticizing Stalinism and the Soviet Union pretty strongly after the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution. I’ve read a little of his political writing from the late 50s into the 60s (though I haven’t managed to get very far into the Critique of Dialectical Reason yet)…and, from what I can tell, he supported many of the aspirations of left communism and the ideas behind workers’ councils but with some reservations and many comments about the complexity of the challenge of putting those ideas into action in the present day (of the ’60s, that is) - or, for that matter, at any time. (Also always acutely aware of historical conditions, circumstances…
I know Sartre was also one of a relatively small crowd back in the late ’50s and early ’60s to emphasize Marx’s earlier writings, and became known as one of the greater proponents of Marxist Humanism. So, I think he was somewhat in the crowd that included Socialism or Barbarism, Facing Reality, etc. (which would make sense considering his significance in the May ‘68 uprising) - though, again, with maybe not quite as much enthusiasm about the revival of workers’ councils, without considering qualifying circumstances and opposing views (always interested in the interaction between opposite tendencies - big on dialectics, you know.
)
To anyone… I’d welcome any further comments/illuminations regarding this very interesting phase of Sartre’s political life…
I also read that he disavowed Marxism completely in the last couple of years of his life, in the mid ’70s. And became less adamantly anti-religious… He became more interested in Judaism and, I read somewhere, a sort of “mysticism,” though he was very fuzzy about that, and nobody can say that he actually started to believe in such things, as opposed to being just interested in them intellectually, culturally, etc.
But when I think of Sartre as the Great Commie Curmudgeon, I think most of all of that ’50s-’60s period. (Though he did exhibit brilliant curmudgeonliness in his earlier writings - Nausea being one example…
Adorno… I have to read more of him. Been meaning to for sometime…
June 21, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Gavin: Oh, yes, and I have blogged about that quote before!
Imugi: Interesting. Thanks for adding that.