JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Writing287negation. And the supreme dignity of the work—a false positivity—lies in itsvampirization of being (and primordially language); its fabric is, and must remain,imaginary. Therefore the artist can choose to show our world or a possible world inthe brightest colors; the imperative simply demands that those colors, in one way oranother, denounce their own nonbeing and that of the depicted object. In other words,absolute-art demands a suicide swiftly followed by genocide. And together theseoperations—one subjective, the other objective—can only be imaginary. Absolute-artrequires entrance-into-literature the way in certain times and places people enteredinto religion. But as this conduct is purely fictive for the writer, it could be called hisentrance-into-the-imaginary-realm. The Objective Spirit demands that he chooseunreality as a rigorous refusal of the real (which he may subsequently depict, but asthe real refused); but since this option is itself imaginary, its precariousness is evidentto the author and denounces him as a traitor to art, possibly forever, indeed as a traitorto himself unless that precariousness has the consistency and irreducibility of aneurosis, or a suffered option. Of course neurosis as a solution, as the only possiblesupport for the vow of unreality, is not imposed by the imperatives of 1850; thosedemand simply that the artist become other than man, that he attain this state throughan ascesis and maintain himself there. But in this impossibility born of contradictorydemands, neurosis emerges as a possible solution. And it amounts to this fascinatingsuggestion: let us behave as if all those insurmountable difficulties were resolved; letus, indeed, start from this solution, leaving to our bodies the task of finding and livingit; let us write beyond the negative convulsions of our decrepitude.Notes1 The same is true in different degrees regarding the spectator’s attitude before otherworks of art (paintings, symphonies, statues, etc.).2 In practical life a means may be taken for an end as soon as one searches for it, andeach end is revealed as a means of attaining another end.3 This last remark may arouse some readers. If so, I’d like to know a single goodnovel whose express purpose was to serve oppression, a single good novel whichhas been written against Jews, negroes, workers, or colonial people. “But if thereisn’t any, that’s no reason why someone may not write one some day.” But youthen admit that you are an abstract theoretician. You, not I. For it is in the name ofyour abstract conception of art that you assert the possibility of a fact which hasnever come into being, whereas I limit myself to proposing an explanation for arecognized fact.