Sartre influenced a generation

Press, 17 April 1980, Page 9

Sartre influenced a generation

NZPA-Reuter Paris The French philospher, Jean-Paul Sartre, who died yesterday after a short illness, created from the despair . and humiliation. of France’s World War II collapse a way of thought and life that made him one of the most influential writerphilosophers of his country’s long history. In the years immediately after the war, when his name became synonymous with the philosophy of existentialism, he offered new hope, espcially to an emerging generation of students and intellectuals.

Through plays, novels, essays, and profound influence in the intellectual capitals of the West, he proclaimed his discovery; recognising the meaninglessness of tradition was in itself a step towards hope and a meaningful life. In a period when many young people felt trapped and bewildered, Sartre preached that no matter what circumstances a man found himself in, he was free to give his existence importance.

“Man . . . exists only to the extent that he fulfils himself, he is thus nothing other than the whole of his acts, nothing other than his life,” Sartre wrote in 1946.

For all his revolutionary commitment, he remained an individualist, insisting on the supremacy of his conscience and his own road to fulfilment.

Characteristically, at the height of his international popularity, he was attacked in 1947 by a Soviet critic for writing "professorial balderdash,” and the following year his' works were put on the Vatican’s index of banned books.

He consistently chose the Left, assailing the policies of Gaullist France and the United States. But after periods of alliance with the communists, he bitterly criticised them and the Soviet Union. He condemned the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 as “aggression, pure and simple.” Despite his chosen role as rebel and revolutionary, there were many who agreed with the Swedish Academy which offered him the Nobel Prize for literature, in 1964, saying “he carries on the great French historical tradition, that of the moralists who criticise society.”'’ Typically, he refused to accept the Nobel Prize saying he did not want . to be institutionalised. Sartre was born in Paris on June 21, 1905, into a

bourgeois family whose values he. later completely rejected. In a book of reminiscences, “Les ' Mots” (“Words”), he wrote with contempt of the middle-class conventions of his childhood.

Sartre graduated in philosophy from the Ecole Normale Superieure, training ground’for [many of France’s intellectual leaders.

He . became a philosophy teacher, while working through his personal agony toifind a meaning in his life. The process is reflected in his- first important novel, “La Nausee” (“Nausea”), published in 1938. In' it the narrator describes the shock of discovering. that existence is arbitrary and gratuitous. . . From this: position Sartre, an [ atheist, went on to build a philosophy of freedom. “Man -is condemned to be free,” He said. “Man is condemned because he did not choose . to exist, but once thrust into the world he is responsible , for air his acts.” -With the outbreak of war in 1939 Sartre entered military ‘ Service. He - was captured- by the • Germans in 1940 „ but was released the following year. ’He served in the Resistance during the rest of the war, while continuing to teach philosophy. At the

I same time he established a reputation as a playwright. His first - play, “Les Mouches,” ("The Flies”), produced in 1942 during the Nazi occupation, made him a hero to many French intellectuals. It was a reworking of the ancient Greek myth in which Orestes avenges the murder of his father by killing his mother and her lover. But in Sartre’s hands the grim tale became a parable of the value of stubborn resistance.

The Nazis apparently missed the implications which helped make the play a landmark for French audiences. •

His second play, “Huis Clos” (“No Exit”), produced in London as “Vicious Circle,” appeared in 1944. After • the liberation of Paris, he gave up teaching to-devote himself to writing. Through the years his close companion was Simone de Beauvoir, one of France’s most famous woman writers.

His plays continued to express his social commitment. “La Putain Respectueuse” (“The Respectful Prostitute”), set in the United States, involved a' black man unjustly pursued on rape charges. Sartre and de Beauvoir were passionate critics__of

France’s war in Algeria. In 1960 they demanded that the authorities charge them in connection with a manifesto supporting the right to refuse military, service. Other signers had been charged. The challenge went unanswered. A generally acbepted report in Paris said President Charles de Gaulle replied to suggestions that Sartre be arrested: "One does not put Voltaire on trial.”

During a wave of Rightwing terrorism in the early 1960 s powerful explosive charges twice went off in Sartre’s apartment building. He was a vehement critic of the United States role in Vietnam and headed the “war-crimes tribunal” backed by the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, which met in Stockholm in 1967 and condemned the United States for allegedly breaking international law. . In recent years, Sartre’s health deteriorated. He becamehalf blind and was unable to read or write. He became a recluse, rarely appearing in public. In 1979, he turned against the Vietnamese Communist movement he had long supported and made a rare appearance to ask Western countries to accept more ref* ugees from Vietnam.