SARTRE
VS.
PROUST
6043
Bovary, Anna Karenina, Molly Bloom) providing
he
is con–
scious of his margin of deficiency and is shrewd enough .to avoid
it. And by the same token, even more cleady, Proust can under–
stand the feelings of a man for the opposite sex, particularly if
his
man is a civilized, sensitive and cerebral one like Swann
01
MarceP Sartre, who was raised by his widowed mother, and in–
forms us most convincingly about the inner life of Daniel, his
pederast, ought to tread more lightly
in
these realms.
The invective implied in the word "bourgeois" hurled aJt
poor Proust similarly loses much of its power when we remember
that Sartre terms himself a bourgeois-as well as a "slimy rat"
(he seems to have gone to school to David Zaslavsky)-else–
where; the reputations of both men will probably survive despite
this
sad condition. Though no Proust, Sartre is obviously a
powerful somebody:'! Hence- and because he has hadm unfor–
tunate influence on artistic evaluations, and we can ill afford
such losses at a time when the sense of value is generally so
shaky-he is to be taken seriously, even when he is being as care–
less as he obviously is
in
the quoted passages.
We may thoroughly understand Sartre's response to the
needs of mid-twentieth-century France, which seem objectively
to call for a renewed emphasis on action, choice, will,
praxis,
I
commitment to urgent issues. We are also aware that French
literature does not stop with Proust, that much has been added,
even
in
the despaired-of genre of the novel, by
3i
dozen lively
figures and some fresh perspectives; conversely, that the cult of
masterpieces can be deadening, academic, or, as Sartre puts it,
2. Proust was not so successful in avoiding his margin of deficient in–
light or experience in the Albertine episodes mainly because he died b efore
he could revise them.
.
3. Occasionally he returns to more honest views· on art, even in regard
to Proust : "1 know ... in the greatest artists there is much beyond [mere
escapism] . .. in Proust one finds a human experience, a thousand paths"
Qu'est-ce que la litteratuTe,
p. 208. Elsewhere, however, he calls him a "fat
, lady stuffing herself with candy bars'; and in the midst
of
an article on
Husserl he exclaims : "At ·last we are rid of Proust!"
