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we know he had at least removed himself enough from the "complex"
to analyze it. But even at this relatively early stage of the Flaubert
biography we know that there is no hope for Gustave. He will die a
reactionary; he will never find the stance that would at least allow
him to see the pitfalls of his "complex," ifnot overcome them. He will
never be able to accede to authenticity by entering into an alliance
with the working class.
We are forced to return, nevertheless, to the suspicion men–
tioned earlier. This Flaubert biography is simply another version of
Sartre's autobiography. In each, the central problematic of bad
faith, play-acting, and writing is the same. Our suspicions increase
when we recognize that this "biography" is as much a product of Sar–
tre's imagination as it is of Flaubert's life: incidents about which
nothing is known are presented and speculated upon; a few refer–
ences in a letter justify an extended analysis of the hypocrisy and
guilt of a "little boy." Never are texts, the only things we really have
to go on, seriously read (Sartre planned a fourth volume, to be de–
voted to an analysis of
Madame Bovary,
but it was never written) .
This biography is a work of Sartre's imagination-or, put another
way, of his own life . Sartre is writing himself in this biography, but
himself as the "reactionary" Flaubert, without the optimistic (and no
doubt misleading) possibility of incessant dialectical renewal that
characterizes his own position in the closing pages of
The
WOrtll.
(In
that work, Sartre never posits the possibility of his own
difinitive
es–
cape from bad faith.) In any case, after death one can no longer con–
tinue to write his way out of bad faith: it has the last laugh. At the
end of his life, Sartre is writing the impossible autobiography; in this
work, the subject is already dead, beyond redemption, but in the
person of Sartre he is still writing. In his biography of the dead
Flaubert, the living Sartre has written the only
complete
autobiog–
raphy, because he has written it from beyond the grave . He thereby
escapes falling into a definitive bad faith . Loser wins: Sartre gains a
transcendent viewpoint after all, but one perhaps not unlike that
held by the young "Poulou," sitting in his grandfather's study and
contemplating his own posthumous literary glory.
ALLAN STOEKL
