256
LIONEL
ABEL
has not attributed a present delight at never having known a father
to
the boy who possibly had no such feeling.
What were these other "big" events of Sartre's childhood?
His
introduction to literature, first as produced by others, then as produced,
often fraudulently, by him; finally his initiation into his future career,
a career crowned already in possibility with glory. Now these events are
told by Sartre in terms of the meaning they have for him today rather
than in terms of the meanings they may well have had when he was
a
boy. But before taking up these "big" moments of his childhood, let
us see how Sartre reports one of his lesser experiences, his introduction
to the cinema. He was taken to the movies by his mother for the fint
time when, he remarks wittily, the cinema was not much older than he,
he being nine, the cinema twelve years old. What was his reaction
to
the first film he saw? Sartre writes: "The cinema was the suspect
a~
pearance that I loved perversely for what it still lacked. That streaming
was everything, it was nothing, it was everything reduced to nothing."
Could this possibly be what Sartre thought at the time? Writing
of
himself as he was then he says: "Though impervious to the sacred, I
loved magic." No doubt. This is probably true of most children, but
the
interesting thing one would like to know, and which Sartre does not
tell
us,
is
how the distinction between the sacred and the magical was made
in the mind of the boy, Sartre, when not yet aware of these terms as ideas.
The books he read had the effect they did, he claims, because
"imaginary child that I was, I defended myself with my imagination."
But did the young Sartre think of himself as an
imaginary
child? In
any
case here is the effect on him of the first books he read:
.
I became a hero. I cast off my charms. It was no longer a
matter of pleasing, but of impressing. I abandoned my family.
. . . Sated with gestures and attitudes, I performed real acts
in
my reveries. I invented a difficult and mortal Paul d'Ivoi.
Instead of work and need, about which I knew nothing, I intro–
duced danger. Never was I further from challenging the estab–
lished order. Assured of living in the best of worlds, I made it –
my business to purge it of its monsters. A cop and lyncher,
I sacrificed a gang of bandits every evening. I never engaged
in
a preventive war or carried out punitive measures. I killed
without pleasure or anger, in order to save young ladies from
death. These frail creatures were indispensable to me; they called
out for me. Obviously they could not have counted on my help
since they did not know me. But I thrust them into such perils
that nobody could have rescued them unless he were I. When the
janissaries brandished their curved scimitars, a moan went
