Sartre's Room
1964; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 79; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3042697
ISSN1080-6598
Autores Tópico(s)French Historical and Cultural Studies
ResumoJean-Paul Sartre may be said to have begun his career in reaction to the literary and philosophical belief, identified with Proust, that the human mind can control and encompass its surroundings through a subjective process. The consequences of shutting oneself off and acting out an artificial drama in a private arena preoccupy Sartre again and again. It is not coincidental that he should call his second fictional publication La Chambre. I This brilliant short story reveals a room, not lined in cork, but furnished with the trappings of another sort of madness. While its comment upon the Proustian solipsism is irrevocably negative, the precise form of sequestration described has its heroic dimensions. Sartre may believe in engagement, but, perhaps paradoxically, a certain admiration is inspired for the imaginary setting where the desperate paranoiac (in contrast with the complacent believer in the primacy and consistency of the mind) makes his effort-hopeless though it may be-to restore an authentic relation between consciousness and the object. A short article written at this same period by Sartre on Husserl's notion of intentionality clearly states the theme. The traditional fallacy common to rationalism and idealism is a belief in the mind as a consistent, all-containing concept. By Husserl's famous sentence, which Sartre will continue to repeat in later works- toute conscience est conscience de quelque chose -we are made aware of the equilibrium and tension between external things and the
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