RONALD HAYMAN
459
yesterday's ideas, that was because they were the audience. He was
the champion.
But that's not all there is to it. Working and living are not sepa–
rate in this man whose main activity is writing. Long before he took
to using the ugly word "totalization" he was practicing an instinctive
dialectic in which each part of his life must relate to the whole and
the whole to each part, while the living subject makes his peace with
the image he tries to form of himself from outside. Sartre's passion
for biography starts out of an impulse, already strong in childhood,
to visualize his own experience from the viewpoint of posterity. He
tries to live biographically. He can never surrender himself to the ex–
perience of the moment without remembering it's already sliding
into the past. As he says in
Les Mots,
"Try as I might to throw myself
into whatever I took on, into work, anger, friendship, I'm always
about to deny the self in me that wants it. I'm betraying myself in the
middle of passion by the jubilant anticipation of my future treach–
ery." With one eye on the biography that remains obstinately in the
future, he can never enjoy the present. The book he's writing, the
woman he's kissing, the words he's saying can never engage his full
attention. The part belongs to the whole and the alternative futures
never stop trying to push each other out of the way. Like Roquentin
he comes closest to being himself at the moment of tergiversation.
The commitment to betrayal and self-betrayal leads to a certain pas–
sivity, but it is closely intertwined with activity in liberating himself
from attachments in day-to-day living. Nauseated or not, Roquen–
tin's self-critical consciousness is the part of him that functions best;
Sartre similarly observes himself observing, while the revulsion from
emotional commitment is encouraged by identification of the self
with consciousness as he portrays it - something which has no bal–
last and no substance. Nothing in his life must be allowed to obstruct
transparency. Austerely Puritanical and ruthlessly ambitious he
sacrifices himself, his projects, his lovers again and again while the
destruction fuels his self-aggrandizement. His political passions are
generous, and the generosity is genuine but compromised. He con–
demns givers of gifts as aggressors seeking power over those who ac–
cept, but he gives relentlessly while remaining endlessly on guard to
protect himself against the generosity of others. When given presents,
he gives them away; borrowing ideas he conceals his indebtedness,
even from himself, knowing .anyway that he will soon discard what
he has taken.
