The Case for
Responsible Literature
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
A
LL WRITERS
of bourgeois origin have known the temptation of
irresponsibility: for a century this has been traditional in a literary
career. An author seldom establishes any connection between his
works and their cash returns. On the one hand, he writes, sings and
laments: on the other, he is given money. These are two apparently
unrelated facts; the best he can say for himself is that he is being given
a pension for lamenting. He feels himself to be in the position of a
student with a scholarship rather than in that of the worker who re–
ceives the price of his labour. The theorists of Art-for-Art and Realism .
have- helped to confirm him in this opinion. Has it been noticed that
they have the same object and the same origin? The principal aim of
the author who follows the precepts of the former is to produce works
which are of no use: they seem beautiful to him almost by virtue of
their complete gratuitousness and lack of foundation . Thus, he places
himself on the fringe of society, or, rather, consents to figure in it
exclusively as a consumer : exactly like the scholarship student. The
realist is also a willing consumer.
As
for production, that is a different
matter : he has been told that science is not concerned with utility,
and he aspires to the sterile impartiality of the scientist. We have been
told often enough that he 'leans over' the class of society which he
wishes to describe. He leans over? Where is he then? In mid-air? The
truth is that, uncertain of his 5ocial position, too timorous to revolt
against the bou_rgeoisie which pays him, too lucid to accept it unreser–
vedly, he chooses to pass judgement on his time, and so is persuaded
that he remains outside it, as an experimenter remains outside an ex–
perimental system. Thus the disinterestedness of science converges
with the wantonness of Art-for-Art.
It
is not by chance that Flaubert
is at the same time a pure stylist, a whole-hearted lover of form, and
the father of naturalism; it is not by chance that the Goncourts prided
themselves both on their powers of observation and on the artistry
of their writing.
This heritage of irresponsibility has sown confusion into the
