JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

298Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsplatonisms) as existing in another world, in an intelligible heaven. It is not only outsidetime and space—as are essences, for instance—it is outside the real, outside existence.I do not hear it actually, I listen to it in the imaginary. Here we find the explanation forthe considerable difficulty we always experience in passing from the world of thetheatre or of music into that of our daily affairs. There is in fact no passing from oneworld into the other, but only a passing from the imaginative attitude to that of reality.Aesthetic contemplation is an induced dream and the passing into the real is an actualwaking up. We often speak of the “deception” experienced on returning to reality. Butthis does not explain why this discomfort also exists after having witnessed a realisticand cruel play, for instance, in which case reality should be experienced as comforting.This discomfort is simply that of the dreamer on awakening; an entranced consciousness,engulfed in the imaginary, is suddenly freed by the sudden ending of the play, of thesymphony, and comes suddenly in contact with existence. Nothing more is needed toarouse the nauseating disgust that characterizes the consciousness of reality.From these few observations we can already conclude that the real is never beautiful.Beauty is a value applicable only to the imaginary and which means the negation of theworld in its essential structure. This is why it is stupid to confuse the moral with theaesthetic. The values of the Good presume being-in-the-world, they concern action inthe real and are subject from the outset to the basic absurdity of existence. To say thatwe “assume” an aesthetic attitude to life is to confuse the real and the imaginary. Itdoes happen, however, that we do assume the attitude of aesthetic contemplationtowards real events or objects. But in such cases every one of us can feel in himself asort of recoil in relation to the object contemplated which slips into nothingness sothat, from this moment on, it is no longer perceived; it functions as an analogue ofitself, that is, an unreal image of what it is appears to us through its actual presence.This image can be purely and simply the object “itself” neutralized, annihilated, aswhen I contemplate a beautiful woman or death at a bull fight; it can also be theimperfect and confused appearance of what it could be through what it is, as when thepainter grasps the harmony of two colours as being greater, more vivid, through thereal blots he finds on a wall. The object at once appears to be behind itself, becomesuntouchable, it is beyond our reach; and hence arises a sort of sad disinterest in it. It isin this sense that we may say that great beauty in a woman kills the desire for her. Infact, when this unreal “herself” which we admire appears, we cannot simultaneouslyplace ourselves on the plane of the aesthetic and on the realistic plane of physicalpossession. To desire her we must forget she is beautiful, because desire is a plungeinto the heart of existence, into what is most contingent and most absurd. Aestheticcontemplation of real objects is of the same structure as paramnesia, in which the real