Sartre's second century

182 Chapter Twelve
This topos of the father / son relationship is central in Sartre's work and
life, and it is naturally a rich vein of psychological investigation. Consider
not only Les Mots, of course, but think also of Hugo's obsession with, and
continuous revolt against, his father in Les Mains sales; or Bariona's
protest against paternity (in Bariona, 1940), or Mathieu's phobia of fatherhood
in L'Age de raison {The Age of Reason, 1945); or, again, Oreste's
determination to avenge his father by assassinating his stepfather in Les
Mouches (The Flies, 1943). Above all, compare the pivotal part played by
the father / son dynamics in Les Sequestres d'Altona, where it is gradually
revealed to be not only the motor of Frantz's psychosis, but also the
motivation of old von Gerlach's manipulation of the family towards a
situation in which, eventually, he will both be reunited with his favourite
son and preserve the macabre status quo beyond his own death. Clearly,
these extant fragments of La Part dufeu adumbrate the subtle exploration
of the filial / paternal theme that characterises the later play.
The case of Feller and son is especially complicated. The anonymous
boy is McCarthy's nephew, so his mother was, like her brother, an Irish
Catholic. This being so, the boy is not strictly speaking Jewish since, in
orthodox Judaic tradition, Jewishness (however construed) is transmitted
by the maternal line. 22 This might explain why he is apparently unashamed
to denounce the Rosenbergs as "communists. And Jews". 23 By way of
aggravation, Sartre has Feller tell the psychiatrist that his late wife
(McCarthy's sister) was frigid, uncommunicative, and possibly "in love
with her brother". 24 So we have echoes again here of Les Mains sales and
Hugo's dispassionate, pseudo-sibling marriage to Jessica, and pre-echoes
of the phantasm of incest acted out by Frantz and Leni in Altona, and
mused upon by Sartre in Les Mots.
As if this pot-pourri of pungent themes and this cauldron of highlycharged
emotions were not yet a sufficiently explosive concoction, Sartre
supplements it with Feller's sense of alienation from his colleagues. A
well-intentioned leading figure who nevertheless becomes a focus of
21 "GOLDSCHMITT—Je veux que tu lui paries. / FELLER, tristement—Lui
parler? Tu pourrais lui parler, toi? / GOLDSCHMITT—Moi, non. Mais il t'aime. /
FELLER—Tu crois qu'il m'aime? / GOLDSCHMITT—A sa manifcre, oui. /
FELLER—ficoute. Je vais lui parler" (Theatre complet, 1187).
22 However, "according to the Reform movement, a person whose father is a Jew is
also a Jew" (http://www.jewfaq.org/cgi-bin/search.cgi?Keywords=mother). For an
opinion as to whether Jewishness should be construed as a religious affiliation or a
racial one, or both or neither, see http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm.
23 "[D]es communistes. Et des juifs" (Theatre complet, 1188).
24 "[A]moureuse de son frfcre" (ibid., 1190).