War
Diaries: Notebooks from a Phony War, 1939-40 by
Jean-Paul Sartre, Quintin Hoare (Translator)Excerpt:
As
I've said, surprising as it may seem, in my childhood I was
pretty. Pretty and pampered: in other words, lavish
with my promises. I had 'fiancées' in all the towns I
passed through, and their doting families would sponsor thee
betrothals (I was six or seven years old). I definitely
preferred the company of girls to that of boys. Besides, I
had neither father nor brother to teach me rough manners, and I
lorded it like a little king in a world of women...
For
the pampered child I was, love was dirt-cheap: it sprang up
beneath my feet...So I cam down with a bump when, at La Rochelle,
I found myself ugly and abandoned; when I realized that it was
difficult to win a woman's love, and that others managed it better
than me. I fell into a deep state of gloom, and experienced
the torments of unrequited love. Not for a girl, actually,
but for two of my comrades: Pelletier and Boutillier.
It wasn't a question at all of homosexual attraction, but of a
boundless admiration and affection, which was promptly turned to
their advantage by those two fine young fellows. They forced
me to dance to their tune; I made myself their lackey. I
stole from my mother for them; I fought for them, on countless
occasions; and they betrayed me shamefully...
But
what had changed profoundly since my arrival in Paris was the fact
that I'd found comrades and a friend. Friendship was the
main thing. It's something which appeared in my life with my
sixteenth year and Nizan, and which, in different guises, hasn't
left it since. I've had three 'bosom friends', each of whom
corresponded to a specific period in my life: Nizan --
Guille -- the Beaver [Simone de Beauvoir] (for the Beaver was also
my friend, and still is). What friendship brought me -- far
more than affection (whatever that may have been) -- was a
federative world, in which my friend and I would pool all our
values, all our thoughts and all our tastes. And this world
was renewed by ceaseless invention. At the same time, each
of us buttressed the other, and the result was a couple of
considerable strength...
Whenever Guille
showed a certain tenderness for me -- always very discreet and
charming -- I sued to be as embarrassed as if a homosexual had
propositioned me. As soon as relations with a man are no
longer just superficially cordial, it embarrasses me.... I had a
passion for Pelletier and Boutillier, to be sure -- and for Nizan.
But that was in the days when my sexuality wasn't yet very well
defined, and my feelings certainly contained an element of
platonic love. A man's moral or physical nakedness shocks me
to the highest degree. Guille could see no harm in appearing
naked before me; but for my part, I was shocked to the highest
degree and didn't know where to turn my eyes. I wrote in
these notebooks that this was perhaps repressed homosexuality; but
when the Beaver read that remark, she thought she'd die
laughing. And, indeed, I suppose it isn't that. But
what is it then? I don't know...
...I've
had friendships only with what I shall term women-men: an
extremely rare species, standing out from the rest thanks to their
physical charm or sometimes beauty, and to a host of inner riches
which the common run of men know nothing of...I'm a woman-man
myself, I think, for all my ugliness -- at least in my main
preoccupations...
Saint
Genet: Actor and Martyr by
Jean-Paul
Sartre
"An abandoned child
manifests evil instincts in his early childhood. He robs the poor
peasants who adopted him. Though reprimanded, he persists. He
escapes from the reformatory into which he had to be put, steals
and plunders more than ever and, in addition, prostitutes himself.
He lives in squalor, committing petty thefts and begging. He
sleeps with everybody and betrays everyone. Nothing can discourage
his zeal. This is the moment he chooses for devoting himself
deliberately to evil. He decides that he will do the worst in
every circumstance and, as he has come to realize that the
greatest crime was not the doing of evil but the manifesting of
evil, he writes, in prison, abominable books which stand up for
crime and which fall within the provisions of the law. Precisely
for that reason he will cease to be abject and squalid and will
get out of prison. His books are printed and read. A stage
director who has been decorated by the Legion of Honor mounts one
of his plays which incites to murder. The President of the
Republic nullifies the sentence he was supposed to serve for his
latest offenses, precisely because he boasted in his books of
having committed them. And when he is introduced to one of his
former victims, she says to him: 'Delighted to meet you, sir.
Please continue.'" -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint
Genet
