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The Words: The Autobiography of Jean-Paul Sartre
«J'ai commencé ma vie comme je la finirai sans doute : au milieu des livres. Dans le bureau de mon grand-père, il y en avait partout ; défense était de les faire épousseter sauf une fois l'an, avant la rentrée d'octobre. Je ne savais pas encore lire que, déjà, je les révérais, ces pierres levées : droites ou penchées, serrées comme des briques sur les rayons de la bibliothèque ou noblement espacées en allées de menhirs, je sentais que la prospérité de notre famille en dépendait...»
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
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About the author
Jean-Paul Sartre
837 books12.1k followersJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.
Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.
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March 2, 2025
Sartre was - at the outset of his career, as well as at its end - a man without hope.
Like so many socially-minded intellectuals of a practical cast in mid-century, Jean-Paul Sartre leaned seriously toward socialism, Marxism and even, briefly, communism.
But practical people refuse not to act. And Sartre had few illusions, which made practical action for a better world imperative.
And the inevitable disillusionment followed...
That is why Les Mots, The Words, seems so sad to us now.
Disillusioned and prematurely aged by the beginnings of a long series of strokes, Sartre could no longer act confidently or decisively.
And without hope in his own - and mankind's - future, life was brutal.
Sartre always had seen the end of his life as an impassable obstacle to self-fulfillment, the dark side of the dichotomy Being/Nothingness.
For as proof of the perceived utter futility of the human predicament, the climax of his philosophical magnum opus, l’Être et le Néant states baldly, "Man is a hopeless passion."
But at about the same time as that work, across the Channel, as Sartre’s discouraging words rallied France to alternative political action, T. S Eliot was urging in wartime London:
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness….
Had Sartre read, and heeded Eliot’s words he might have become a different person, in touch with his deepest emotions. But Sartre had already achieved recognition and notoriety at a very young age. So he simply became his persona.
Clinical, aloof and detached - Cool.
Sartre was cool when James Dean was a toddler. He thus inspired generations of the with-it and hip youngsters of the fifties, sixties and seventies.
He assumed the role of philosopher without Knowing Himself - and thus mocked Socrates. Was that cool?
Later books of his like this one find Sartre trying to play catch-up on that count. But he was a Johnny-Come-Lately to the game of self-knowledge. To know yourself you have to BE yourself. Sartre was a Matchstick Man.
He utterly lacked everyday warmth, poor soul!
But - in the darkness of postwar Britain, the best strategy for T.S. Eliot was to accept so many great losses in a spirit of faithful brokenness, admitting personal frailties before God, so that:
the Darkness will become the Light.
For Eliot followed the dictum of the cryptic Presocratic, Heraklitos: ‘The way up IS the way down.’
Hope from the ashes of hope.
For through the darkness of Faith there comes the great joy of a New Day.
As it came for Eliot, with a new marriage made in Heaven, and a joyous and dignified summation to his life.
***
In the end, Sartre finished his life as he had begun his early years, WITHOUT hope.
But as he looked back on his life in this at times light and charmingly whimsical book, he saw many lost childhood memories.
But they were all mixed with the feeling that his life was slowly ebbing away without purpose or meaning.
At least he had his many friends and the company of de Beauvoir.
But uncompromising till the end, he rejected the ordinary hope that makes life bearable for the rest of us, because he rejected himself.
In spite of this, in Les Mots we see Sartre opening up about his personal space for the first time - which he was to continue obliquely in his great study of Flaubert - l’Idiot de la Famille - the Family Idiot.
For now he was no longer an untouchable and lapidary world icon. His disguise had worn too thin...
Now he was just frail and human like us. But worn out by his despair.
You know, there IS hope available even for Postmoderns like Sartre, and us.
Postmodern branches, as Messrs Kierkegaard, Barth and Kung have proven, can be grafted easily and well onto Christian roots.
To find out How to do this, all we have to to is Read their books -
And Heed them well.
Like so many socially-minded intellectuals of a practical cast in mid-century, Jean-Paul Sartre leaned seriously toward socialism, Marxism and even, briefly, communism.
But practical people refuse not to act. And Sartre had few illusions, which made practical action for a better world imperative.
And the inevitable disillusionment followed...
That is why Les Mots, The Words, seems so sad to us now.
Disillusioned and prematurely aged by the beginnings of a long series of strokes, Sartre could no longer act confidently or decisively.
And without hope in his own - and mankind's - future, life was brutal.
Sartre always had seen the end of his life as an impassable obstacle to self-fulfillment, the dark side of the dichotomy Being/Nothingness.
For as proof of the perceived utter futility of the human predicament, the climax of his philosophical magnum opus, l’Être et le Néant states baldly, "Man is a hopeless passion."
But at about the same time as that work, across the Channel, as Sartre’s discouraging words rallied France to alternative political action, T. S Eliot was urging in wartime London:
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness….
Had Sartre read, and heeded Eliot’s words he might have become a different person, in touch with his deepest emotions. But Sartre had already achieved recognition and notoriety at a very young age. So he simply became his persona.
Clinical, aloof and detached - Cool.
Sartre was cool when James Dean was a toddler. He thus inspired generations of the with-it and hip youngsters of the fifties, sixties and seventies.
He assumed the role of philosopher without Knowing Himself - and thus mocked Socrates. Was that cool?
Later books of his like this one find Sartre trying to play catch-up on that count. But he was a Johnny-Come-Lately to the game of self-knowledge. To know yourself you have to BE yourself. Sartre was a Matchstick Man.
He utterly lacked everyday warmth, poor soul!
But - in the darkness of postwar Britain, the best strategy for T.S. Eliot was to accept so many great losses in a spirit of faithful brokenness, admitting personal frailties before God, so that:
the Darkness will become the Light.
For Eliot followed the dictum of the cryptic Presocratic, Heraklitos: ‘The way up IS the way down.’
Hope from the ashes of hope.
For through the darkness of Faith there comes the great joy of a New Day.
As it came for Eliot, with a new marriage made in Heaven, and a joyous and dignified summation to his life.
***
In the end, Sartre finished his life as he had begun his early years, WITHOUT hope.
But as he looked back on his life in this at times light and charmingly whimsical book, he saw many lost childhood memories.
But they were all mixed with the feeling that his life was slowly ebbing away without purpose or meaning.
At least he had his many friends and the company of de Beauvoir.
But uncompromising till the end, he rejected the ordinary hope that makes life bearable for the rest of us, because he rejected himself.
In spite of this, in Les Mots we see Sartre opening up about his personal space for the first time - which he was to continue obliquely in his great study of Flaubert - l’Idiot de la Famille - the Family Idiot.
For now he was no longer an untouchable and lapidary world icon. His disguise had worn too thin...
Now he was just frail and human like us. But worn out by his despair.
You know, there IS hope available even for Postmoderns like Sartre, and us.
Postmodern branches, as Messrs Kierkegaard, Barth and Kung have proven, can be grafted easily and well onto Christian roots.
To find out How to do this, all we have to to is Read their books -
And Heed them well.
November 15, 2024
قارب خشبي رقيق
نصف غريق
به كائن وحيد
يمضي من بحار إلى محيط
يحفر خطواته بصلابة
في غرين جزر غريبة
بيده بوصة
تحفظ ألحانه التي ينساها
عند كل مضيق
بلا صديق
ينزع لافتات إرشادية من الغابات
يتوهم أن الطريق يتسع لمغامرة أجمل
دون وسيط
بالآخرين يضيق
لكنه مضطر لترجمة الرحلة
إلى كلمات
تلمس قلب
ذاك القارئ الغريب
عند الشاطئ البعيد
كلمتك.. صوتك.. خطك
لن تكتب وحدك.. مهما اغتربت.. ابتعدت
مهما رأيت خلفك وامامك وحولك مساحات فراغ رمادية.. مساحات عدم صامتة
سيظل قلب واحد يخفق لك.. يمد كفا دقيقة رقيقة
أنامل ممتدة في صفحة يدك مثل قلم يحفظ اسمك وهمسك.. ويحتضن تدفق نهر شمسك
وستشرق كلماتك في نهر صفحته
أدرك سارتر أن سيرته كلمات، مثلما أدرك من قبل أَن الاختيار موقف
الكلمات تمنحنا موضوع التامل، نمنحها رؤانا، نسجل بها مواقفنا
نستجمع في مكوناتها هوبتنا
سيرتنا ضوء نلقيه على بعض علامات كوننا الذي يجوب مجرة عالمنا الذهني
فنكتب ما دار في كهفنا المغلق بشفرة يمكن لبعض البشر أن يتصوروا ذاك العالم كما جرينا فيه وجرى فينا
السيرة الذاتية هي مشوار في جغرافيا العلامات ووضع بصمة في تاريخ الرموز
الكلمات أفعال، الكلمة محطة اساسية ينطلق منها قطار الذات في طريق صياغة الوجود
من عقل الذات تولد الكلمة، تخرج من ينابيع الرغبات والأحلام والعواطف متطهرة في بحيرة الََمحبة، مدعمة بركائز المنطق، ساعية بوعي تدفعه الإرادة في عالم صاخب نحو طاقة مغناطيسية مشحونة لاستقبالها في نفس تتوق لخصوبة التشكل
كلمات المغكربن تجوب الكون متطلعة لمراصد الباحثين عن شفرة الرحلة في دروب السالكين سبل السير في البراري والرياض والبحار، يطوفون بديار التحضر والعمران، عل بصمات الزمان على الجدران تمنحهم معرفة بخفابا المسار واتجاهات المدار
في جدار الحروف نثبت صورة من نحب، اختيارنا، الصوت الساري من نداء حبيب يتحدث عن الكتب والأفكار و��ا يصرح بوجده، الذين منحونا عاطفة لا تحسبها أسهم البورصة، الذين منحونا الألم، الذين لم يمنحونا شيئا لأنهم يبحثون عن أنفسهم، تنقسم جزيئات الحروف لتحمل شحنة التناقضات التي تتناثر في مجرة النفس، تولد الكلمات بريئة كأجنة تصرخ في حضانات السطور، تلتقطها حواس من لا يعرفنا، يتبناها، يكون لها أبا أو أما او حبيبا، أو زوج أم، أو زوج أبا، أو غريما
تتركنا الكلمات تنفصل عنا وهي تمد حبال الوصل
نتمنى أن تصل كما كانت عندنا قبل أن نكتبها
مسكينة كلماتنا فهي غريبة، تجوب الصفحات والأثير، يطردها بعضهم كمن يبعد الذباب عن رأسه، يصرفها بعضهم عن مقعده الذي اعتاد المكوث فيه، يتسول بها بعضهم كمن يتخذ الأطفال وسيلة لابتزاز عاطفة السائرين، يجرحها بعضهم، بمزقها بعضهم، يغير هويتها بعضهم، تتوه عنا كقط تم تسريبه بعيدا وما عاد يجد الحضن الذي ألفه
في وهج العاطفة تتشكل حروفنا، أطفال صارخة، حرة، فرحة، تنطلق نحو عاطفة تراسلها خلف ستار الصمت، تتلامس، تتضام في خيط لا يراه سوى آخر هو أنت الذي عند من أحبك، حروفنا تجيد المراوغة والتخلص من سياج القبيلة المضروب في ساحات الخيال
حروفنا تجري عبر فضاء متعب بحمولة مراكب الغربة السارية في نهر بلا مصب، تحتضن وجوها طردتها أشباح المدن الشاحبة
حروفنا تشتري علب الألوان من غابة المطر وترسمنا في صفحات بلا أرقام
كلمات مشتركة تنمو في حديقة لم نزرها لأنها في خيالنا
في نسيج الخيال ينطبع واقعنا كلمات نحدد مساحتها وألوانها ورقتها وخشونتها وبشاشتها وعبوسها، نضع لها حدودا وقيودا احيانا كثيرة، نطلقها محلقة أحيانا، نرسم بها في فضائنا الاجتماعي والحضاري لوحة مواقفنا وخريطة حضورنا
تصبح الكلمات سيرة، تتركنا وحدنا، وتمضي في مسارات لم نعهدها داخل عقول لم نرها
كان عقل رضا طريقك إليها
نصف غريق
به كائن وحيد
يمضي من بحار إلى محيط
يحفر خطواته بصلابة
في غرين جزر غريبة
بيده بوصة
تحفظ ألحانه التي ينساها
عند كل مضيق
بلا صديق
ينزع لافتات إرشادية من الغابات
يتوهم أن الطريق يتسع لمغامرة أجمل
دون وسيط
بالآخرين يضيق
لكنه مضطر لترجمة الرحلة
إلى كلمات
تلمس قلب
ذاك القارئ الغريب
عند الشاطئ البعيد
كلمتك.. صوتك.. خطك
لن تكتب وحدك.. مهما اغتربت.. ابتعدت
مهما رأيت خلفك وامامك وحولك مساحات فراغ رمادية.. مساحات عدم صامتة
سيظل قلب واحد يخفق لك.. يمد كفا دقيقة رقيقة
أنامل ممتدة في صفحة يدك مثل قلم يحفظ اسمك وهمسك.. ويحتضن تدفق نهر شمسك
وستشرق كلماتك في نهر صفحته
أدرك سارتر أن سيرته كلمات، مثلما أدرك من قبل أَن الاختيار موقف
الكلمات تمنحنا موضوع التامل، نمنحها رؤانا، نسجل بها مواقفنا
نستجمع في مكوناتها هوبتنا
سيرتنا ضوء نلقيه على بعض علامات كوننا الذي يجوب مجرة عالمنا الذهني
فنكتب ما دار في كهفنا المغلق بشفرة يمكن لبعض البشر أن يتصوروا ذاك العالم كما جرينا فيه وجرى فينا
السيرة الذاتية هي مشوار في جغرافيا العلامات ووضع بصمة في تاريخ الرموز
الكلمات أفعال، الكلمة محطة اساسية ينطلق منها قطار الذات في طريق صياغة الوجود
من عقل الذات تولد الكلمة، تخرج من ينابيع الرغبات والأحلام والعواطف متطهرة في بحيرة الََمحبة، مدعمة بركائز المنطق، ساعية بوعي تدفعه الإرادة في عالم صاخب نحو طاقة مغناطيسية مشحونة لاستقبالها في نفس تتوق لخصوبة التشكل
كلمات المغكربن تجوب الكون متطلعة لمراصد الباحثين عن شفرة الرحلة في دروب السالكين سبل السير في البراري والرياض والبحار، يطوفون بديار التحضر والعمران، عل بصمات الزمان على الجدران تمنحهم معرفة بخفابا المسار واتجاهات المدار
في جدار الحروف نثبت صورة من نحب، اختيارنا، الصوت الساري من نداء حبيب يتحدث عن الكتب والأفكار و��ا يصرح بوجده، الذين منحونا عاطفة لا تحسبها أسهم البورصة، الذين منحونا الألم، الذين لم يمنحونا شيئا لأنهم يبحثون عن أنفسهم، تنقسم جزيئات الحروف لتحمل شحنة التناقضات التي تتناثر في مجرة النفس، تولد الكلمات بريئة كأجنة تصرخ في حضانات السطور، تلتقطها حواس من لا يعرفنا، يتبناها، يكون لها أبا أو أما او حبيبا، أو زوج أم، أو زوج أبا، أو غريما
تتركنا الكلمات تنفصل عنا وهي تمد حبال الوصل
نتمنى أن تصل كما كانت عندنا قبل أن نكتبها
مسكينة كلماتنا فهي غريبة، تجوب الصفحات والأثير، يطردها بعضهم كمن يبعد الذباب عن رأسه، يصرفها بعضهم عن مقعده الذي اعتاد المكوث فيه، يتسول بها بعضهم كمن يتخذ الأطفال وسيلة لابتزاز عاطفة السائرين، يجرحها بعضهم، بمزقها بعضهم، يغير هويتها بعضهم، تتوه عنا كقط تم تسريبه بعيدا وما عاد يجد الحضن الذي ألفه
في وهج العاطفة تتشكل حروفنا، أطفال صارخة، حرة، فرحة، تنطلق نحو عاطفة تراسلها خلف ستار الصمت، تتلامس، تتضام في خيط لا يراه سوى آخر هو أنت الذي عند من أحبك، حروفنا تجيد المراوغة والتخلص من سياج القبيلة المضروب في ساحات الخيال
حروفنا تجري عبر فضاء متعب بحمولة مراكب الغربة السارية في نهر بلا مصب، تحتضن وجوها طردتها أشباح المدن الشاحبة
حروفنا تشتري علب الألوان من غابة المطر وترسمنا في صفحات بلا أرقام
كلمات مشتركة تنمو في حديقة لم نزرها لأنها في خيالنا
في نسيج الخيال ينطبع واقعنا كلمات نحدد مساحتها وألوانها ورقتها وخشونتها وبشاشتها وعبوسها، نضع لها حدودا وقيودا احيانا كثيرة، نطلقها محلقة أحيانا، نرسم بها في فضائنا الاجتماعي والحضاري لوحة مواقفنا وخريطة حضورنا
تصبح الكلمات سيرة، تتركنا وحدنا، وتمضي في مسارات لم نعهدها داخل عقول لم نرها
كان عقل رضا طريقك إليها
July 18, 2017
کتابِ "کلمات" را میتوان به جرأت در میان چهار اثرِ ادبی بزرگ در قلمروی ادبیات فرانسه سدهی بیستم در ژانرِ "زندگینامهی خودنوشته" دانست. سه کتابِ دیگر اینها هستند: "اگر دانه نمیرد" از آندره ژید، "ضد خاطرات" آندره مالرو و "مرد اول" آلبر کامو. هر چند برخلاف سارتر، مالرو کودکیاش را مهمترین بخش زندگیاش نمیداند: "تقریباً همه نویسندگانی که میشناسم کودکیشان را دوست دارند. من از کودکیام بیزارم."
کلماتْ یا واژهها بدونِ شکْ زیباترین کار ادبی سارتر است. او نخست عنوانش را" ژانِ بیزمین" گذاشته بود. خودش توضیح داده است که مقصود از بیزمین، آدمی است بدون تبار و بدون ملک و مال: "همان که من بودم." بعد عنوان کتاب را به واژهها تغییر داد :"گویی جهان از طریق من به زبان تبدیل شده باشد." نثرِ زیبا اما موجز آن نشان از بازنگری پیدرپی او در متن کتاب میدهد. هیچکدام از کارهای دیگر او حتی تهوعْ چنین دقت هندسی را نمایان نمیکند. واژهها، کودکیست که میخواهد با دیگری ارتباط برقرار کند، با جهان، اما نمیتواند و کتاب شرح این خواستن و نتوانستن است.
در کلمات سهم قصه کمرنگ شده است. بازگشتی است به سالهای نخستین سدهی بیستم. در خانهی پدربزرگ و در فاصلهیِ خواندن و نوشتن. کلمات سارتر موازنهای است بین واژگان و چیزها، میان نومینالیسم و رئالیسم و میان خواندنِ زندگی و خودِ زندگی. گزارشی از زندگی است و سبک روایی آن بسیار شبیه به تهوع است.
هرچند کلمات یک زندگینامه خودنوشته است و نویسنده تلاش کرده است تا به صراحت دربارهی خود و واقعیت زندگیاش سخن بگوید، نباید این نکته را از یاد برد که متن به دلیل وابستگی به ناخودآگاه مؤلف و نیز به مجازهای زبان هرگز نمیتواند بیان دقیق و شرح ابژکتیو زندگی سارتر باشد. هیچ زندگینامه خودنوشتهای نمیتواند.
برای مطالعه نقد جامعی بر این اثر کتاب سارتر که مینوشت جناب بابک احمدی را ببینید.
کلماتْ یا واژهها بدونِ شکْ زیباترین کار ادبی سارتر است. او نخست عنوانش را" ژانِ بیزمین" گذاشته بود. خودش توضیح داده است که مقصود از بیزمین، آدمی است بدون تبار و بدون ملک و مال: "همان که من بودم." بعد عنوان کتاب را به واژهها تغییر داد :"گویی جهان از طریق من به زبان تبدیل شده باشد." نثرِ زیبا اما موجز آن نشان از بازنگری پیدرپی او در متن کتاب میدهد. هیچکدام از کارهای دیگر او حتی تهوعْ چنین دقت هندسی را نمایان نمیکند. واژهها، کودکیست که میخواهد با دیگری ارتباط برقرار کند، با جهان، اما نمیتواند و کتاب شرح این خواستن و نتوانستن است.
در کلمات سهم قصه کمرنگ شده است. بازگشتی است به سالهای نخستین سدهی بیستم. در خانهی پدربزرگ و در فاصلهیِ خواندن و نوشتن. کلمات سارتر موازنهای است بین واژگان و چیزها، میان نومینالیسم و رئالیسم و میان خواندنِ زندگی و خودِ زندگی. گزارشی از زندگی است و سبک روایی آن بسیار شبیه به تهوع است.
هرچند کلمات یک زندگینامه خودنوشته است و نویسنده تلاش کرده است تا به صراحت دربارهی خود و واقعیت زندگیاش سخن بگوید، نباید این نکته را از یاد برد که متن به دلیل وابستگی به ناخودآگاه مؤلف و نیز به مجازهای زبان هرگز نمیتواند بیان دقیق و شرح ابژکتیو زندگی سارتر باشد. هیچ زندگینامه خودنوشتهای نمیتواند.
برای مطالعه نقد جامعی بر این اثر کتاب سارتر که مینوشت جناب بابک احمدی را ببینید.
July 17, 2018
برغم الترجمة السيئة إلا أنه من أفضل ما قرأت لسارتر
لو أستطيع لجعلت كل عبارة إقتباسا وملأت به الجودريدز
مذهل
...
July 24, 2020
Les Mots = The Words, Jean-Paul Sartre
The Words is Jean-Paul Sartre's 1963 autobiography. The text is divided into two near-equal parts entitled 'Reading' and 'Writing'.
Jean-Paul Sartre's famous autobiography of his first ten years has been widely compared to Rousseau's Confessions. Written when he was fifty-nine years old, The Words is a masterpiece of self-analysis.
Sartre the philosopher, novelist and playwright brings to his own childhood the same rigor of honesty and insight he applied so brilliantly to other authors. Born into a gentle, book-loving family and raised by a widowed mother and doting grandparents, he had a childhood which might be described as one long love affair with the printed word.
Ultimately, this book explores and evaluates the whole use of books and language in human experience.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هفتم ماه آوریل سال 2008 میلادی
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: ابوذر صداقت؛ تهران، سفینه، ؟، در 195ص؛ موضوع زیستنامه ی خودنوشت نویسندگان فرانسوی (ژان پل سارتر) - سده 20م
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: حسینقلی جواهرچی؛ تهران، کاوه، 1344، در پنج و 337ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، دنیای کتاب، 1396؛ در 337ص؛ شابک 9789643463663؛
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: زرین پور؛ تهران، موسسه انتشارات شهریار، 1348، در 287ص؛ چاپ دیگر نیلوفر، 1387، در 243ص؛
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: ناهید فروغان؛ تهران، ققنوس، چاپ دوم 1386، در 216ص؛ چاپ سوم 1388؛ شابک 9789643116064؛
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: امیر جلال الدین اعلم؛ تهران، نیلوفر، 1387، در 243ص؛ شابک 9789644483721؛
نقل از سارتر: انسان محکوم به آزادی است؛ پایان نقل
زیستنامه ی خونوشت «ژان پل سارتر» است؛ که نخستین بار در سال 1963میلادی، نگاشته شده است.؛ «ژان پل سارتر»، در روز بیست و یکم ماه ژوئن سال 1905میلادی، در پاریس به دنیا آمدند؛ پدر ایشان «ژان باپتیست سارتر (سال 1847میلادی - سال 1906میلادی»، افسر نیروی دریایی فرانسه بودند، و مادرشان «آنه ماری شوایتزر (سال 1882میلادی - سال 1969میلادی)»، دخترعموی «آلبرت شوایتزر»، پزشک معروف، و برنده ی جایزه ی صلح نوبل، بوده است.؛ «ژان پل» پانزده ماهه بودند، که پدر ایشان به علت «تب»، از این دنیا رفتند.؛ پس از آن، مادرش به نزد والدین خویش در مودون بازگشتند.؛ و ...؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 02/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
The Words is Jean-Paul Sartre's 1963 autobiography. The text is divided into two near-equal parts entitled 'Reading' and 'Writing'.
Jean-Paul Sartre's famous autobiography of his first ten years has been widely compared to Rousseau's Confessions. Written when he was fifty-nine years old, The Words is a masterpiece of self-analysis.
Sartre the philosopher, novelist and playwright brings to his own childhood the same rigor of honesty and insight he applied so brilliantly to other authors. Born into a gentle, book-loving family and raised by a widowed mother and doting grandparents, he had a childhood which might be described as one long love affair with the printed word.
Ultimately, this book explores and evaluates the whole use of books and language in human experience.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هفتم ماه آوریل سال 2008 میلادی
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: ابوذر صداقت؛ تهران، سفینه، ؟، در 195ص؛ موضوع زیستنامه ی خودنوشت نویسندگان فرانسوی (ژان پل سارتر) - سده 20م
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: حسینقلی جواهرچی؛ تهران، کاوه، 1344، در پنج و 337ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، دنیای کتاب، 1396؛ در 337ص؛ شابک 9789643463663؛
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: زرین پور؛ تهران، موسسه انتشارات شهریار، 1348، در 287ص؛ چاپ دیگر نیلوفر، 1387، در 243ص؛
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: ناهید فروغان؛ تهران، ققنوس، چاپ دوم 1386، در 216ص؛ چاپ سوم 1388؛ شابک 9789643116064؛
عنوان: کلمات؛ نویسنده: ژان پل سارتر؛ مترجم: امیر جلال الدین اعلم؛ تهران، نیلوفر، 1387، در 243ص؛ شابک 9789644483721؛
نقل از سارتر: انسان محکوم به آزادی است؛ پایان نقل
زیستنامه ی خونوشت «ژان پل سارتر» است؛ که نخستین بار در سال 1963میلادی، نگاشته شده است.؛ «ژان پل سارتر»، در روز بیست و یکم ماه ژوئن سال 1905میلادی، در پاریس به دنیا آمدند؛ پدر ایشان «ژان باپتیست سارتر (سال 1847میلادی - سال 1906میلادی»، افسر نیروی دریایی فرانسه بودند، و مادرشان «آنه ماری شوایتزر (سال 1882میلادی - سال 1969میلادی)»، دخترعموی «آلبرت شوایتزر»، پزشک معروف، و برنده ی جایزه ی صلح نوبل، بوده است.؛ «ژان پل» پانزده ماهه بودند، که پدر ایشان به علت «تب»، از این دنیا رفتند.؛ پس از آن، مادرش به نزد والدین خویش در مودون بازگشتند.؛ و ...؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 02/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
March 27, 2021
O analiză strălucită a unui caz clasic de impostură infantilă. Păcat că Sartre n-a observat că impostura și snobismul l-au urmărit tenace pînă la adînci bătrîneți. Un volum greu de găsit, din păcate. Transcriu cîteva pasaje pentru eventualii curioși:
„O certitudine transparentă strica totul: eram un impostor. Cum să joci comedia fără să știi că o joci?... Mă întorceam spre persoanele mature, le ceream să-mi garanteze meritele: ceea ce însemna să mă afund în impostură”.
„Marie-Louise nu credea în nimic, numai scepticismul o împiedica să fie atee”.
„Am fost salvat de bunicul meu: el m-a aruncat fără să vrea într-o nouă impostură [scrisul], care mi-a schimbat viața”.
„Batjocoriți, bătuți, anumiți autori zăcuseră pînă la ultima suflare în oprobriu și în noapte, gloria nu le încoronase decît cadavrele: iată ce voi fi... În zilele în care eram prost dispus, mă vedem murind pe un pat de fier, urît de toți, disperat, chiar în clipa în care Gloria începea să sune din trompetă...”.
„Scriu întruna. Ce altceva să fac. Nulla dies sine linea! E obișnuința și apoi e meseria mea. Mult timp mi-am luat condeiul drept spadă: în prezent cunosc neputința noastră. N-are importanță, fac, voi face cărți; e nevoie de ele oricum, acest lucru servește la ceva. Cultura nu salvează nimic și pe nimeni, ea nu justifică. Dar este un produs al omului care se proiectează, se recunoaște în ea. Singură această oglindă critică îi oferă imaginea sa”.
„O certitudine transparentă strica totul: eram un impostor. Cum să joci comedia fără să știi că o joci?... Mă întorceam spre persoanele mature, le ceream să-mi garanteze meritele: ceea ce însemna să mă afund în impostură”.
„Marie-Louise nu credea în nimic, numai scepticismul o împiedica să fie atee”.
„Am fost salvat de bunicul meu: el m-a aruncat fără să vrea într-o nouă impostură [scrisul], care mi-a schimbat viața”.
„Batjocoriți, bătuți, anumiți autori zăcuseră pînă la ultima suflare în oprobriu și în noapte, gloria nu le încoronase decît cadavrele: iată ce voi fi... În zilele în care eram prost dispus, mă vedem murind pe un pat de fier, urît de toți, disperat, chiar în clipa în care Gloria începea să sune din trompetă...”.
„Scriu întruna. Ce altceva să fac. Nulla dies sine linea! E obișnuința și apoi e meseria mea. Mult timp mi-am luat condeiul drept spadă: în prezent cunosc neputința noastră. N-are importanță, fac, voi face cărți; e nevoie de ele oricum, acest lucru servește la ceva. Cultura nu salvează nimic și pe nimeni, ea nu justifică. Dar este un produs al omului care se proiectează, se recunoaște în ea. Singură această oglindă critică îi oferă imaginea sa”.
June 5, 2024
The Words is one of the most interesting autobiographies I've read. Although it mainly covers the first ten years of the life of Jean-Paul Satre, there are flashes back and forth that provide the reader with a sufficient understanding of his later life.
Divided into two parts called reading and writing, this autobiography describes in detail how the foundation was set for Satre in his journey of becoming an acclaimed writer and philosopher. It is also a detailed self-analysis of how his thoughts were formed and shaped which saw future expression through many of his writings. The lifestyle and his relationship with his mother and maternal grandparents, especially his grandfather, bear direct and indirect influences on shaping his life and thoughts. They are so well described here that one can see how his philosophical views slowly and steadily developed.
Apart from being interesting as a good insight to the philosopher/writer himself, this autobiography is a great inspiration to budding writers. There are so many informative tidbits to stimulate the mind of aspiring writers. It really inspired me, and I learned quite a few things. I was especially struck by what he said about his childhood imaginations and how they and his love for talking of things in detailed exaggeration helped him develop his thinking and writing. It made me think of things in a new light.
This autobiography was both an interesting and a productive read, interesting in that we get a glimpse into the life of one of the greatest philosophical writers of all time, and productive in that it stimulated me into exploring a new phase of my writing.
Divided into two parts called reading and writing, this autobiography describes in detail how the foundation was set for Satre in his journey of becoming an acclaimed writer and philosopher. It is also a detailed self-analysis of how his thoughts were formed and shaped which saw future expression through many of his writings. The lifestyle and his relationship with his mother and maternal grandparents, especially his grandfather, bear direct and indirect influences on shaping his life and thoughts. They are so well described here that one can see how his philosophical views slowly and steadily developed.
Apart from being interesting as a good insight to the philosopher/writer himself, this autobiography is a great inspiration to budding writers. There are so many informative tidbits to stimulate the mind of aspiring writers. It really inspired me, and I learned quite a few things. I was especially struck by what he said about his childhood imaginations and how they and his love for talking of things in detailed exaggeration helped him develop his thinking and writing. It made me think of things in a new light.
This autobiography was both an interesting and a productive read, interesting in that we get a glimpse into the life of one of the greatest philosophical writers of all time, and productive in that it stimulated me into exploring a new phase of my writing.
June 4, 2024
This work is one of the best autobiographies I know. It's true; you must love Sartre and adore him even a little so as not to tire. However, understanding a writer's journey from his childhood in books allows you to dream and idealize the author. He tells his life through episodes and anecdotes and analyzes it, not always being tender with himself, even if we sense a peaceful and calm speech. However, he did not write it just before his death but long before, in full glory. The text is a tribute to those who inspire us, to those who make us discover a passion, and finally, a hymn to beautiful letters.
July 13, 2020
The Words, Jean-Paul Sartre's autobiographical work on childhood remembrance, is split into two parts - Reading & writing, and, looking back from the point of view of an almost sixty-year-old Sartre, moves on many levels. Told with a philosophical romanticism for the past, Sartre opens up about his first acquaintance with books, and about his first desire to become a writer, which, having been partly raised by a grandfather who was surrounded by a world books comes as little surprise.
After first writing about his grandparents and their families, his story moved on to his parents, how they met, and of losing his father at a very young age. Little Jean was then seen as the centre of attention during his first ten years, and thus developed a selfishness, something which the older Sartre didn't try to hide from when writing this book. The young Sartre might not come across as wholey likeable, but at least the older Sartre was being honest, and not making himself out to be the model child. He even ended up being expelled from school for writing a bad dictation.
Jean-Paul was a hermit in the company of other children, with his grandfather being the most influential person in his development, and he only fell in love with writing superficially and theatrically to begin with, simply to impress his watchers. But it's evidently clear that from a certain age he lived for books, and writers were seen as his best friends. His hyper-developed sensitivity to angst and boredom, even led a nine-year-old Sartre (yes just nine!) to start pondering on the existential holes in people's lives. And the rest, as they say, is history.
So as well as being a childhood memoir, The Words also explores parts of Sartre’s craftemenship in existentialist philosophy, and is generally seen as Sartre closing his literary career. This book is an impressive display of the deeply literary nature of Sartre, is written in way that is intelligent, spontaneous, sometimes difficult, sometimes playful, but most importantly, always honest.
After first writing about his grandparents and their families, his story moved on to his parents, how they met, and of losing his father at a very young age. Little Jean was then seen as the centre of attention during his first ten years, and thus developed a selfishness, something which the older Sartre didn't try to hide from when writing this book. The young Sartre might not come across as wholey likeable, but at least the older Sartre was being honest, and not making himself out to be the model child. He even ended up being expelled from school for writing a bad dictation.
Jean-Paul was a hermit in the company of other children, with his grandfather being the most influential person in his development, and he only fell in love with writing superficially and theatrically to begin with, simply to impress his watchers. But it's evidently clear that from a certain age he lived for books, and writers were seen as his best friends. His hyper-developed sensitivity to angst and boredom, even led a nine-year-old Sartre (yes just nine!) to start pondering on the existential holes in people's lives. And the rest, as they say, is history.
So as well as being a childhood memoir, The Words also explores parts of Sartre’s craftemenship in existentialist philosophy, and is generally seen as Sartre closing his literary career. This book is an impressive display of the deeply literary nature of Sartre, is written in way that is intelligent, spontaneous, sometimes difficult, sometimes playful, but most importantly, always honest.
January 27, 2012
What did Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Ernesto “Che” Guevara (1928-1967) have in common?
Prior to reading this book, I did not know that they saw each other when they were both still alive. This is my first book read written by Sartre and three years ago, I read John Lee Anderson’s Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Before Sartre’s image in my unsophisticated (read: zero knowledge in philosophy) mind was this old professor talking inside his wood-paneled and fully-carpeted office about the things like existentialism that was so deep I would never ever understand what he was saying. On the other hand, prior to the Anderson’s book, I used to see the image of Che Guevara printed on the t-shirts of some hip teenagers. I had some clues who he was because of the communist posters my handsome brother brought home when he was still in studying in a radical university. But not all young Filipinos: one caller in a morning show thought that Guevara was some kind of a band soloist so he asked what latest rock song he recorded.
Thanks to printed words. Thanks to books. We can read them and we can be informed. We can choose not to be ignorant. We can also contribute to influencing future generations by writing too. We can make books of our own.
The importance of reading and writing to his life. This is basically the main theme of this book, The Words by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. At the age of 59, he wrote this book about the first 10 years of his life on earth. He was exposed to books at a very young age. He remembered looking at the volumes and volumes of similar hardbound books stacked in his grandparents’ room. He did not know what were those but he loved to touch them and hear the flipping of the crisp pages. From then on, he resolved to himself that he would not only read those books someday but he also become a writer.
Same thing happened to Che Guevara. His parents also loved to buy and read books. In the above-mentioned Anderson’s biography of Guevara, one of Che’s childhood friends recalled that he could barely navigate inside the living room of the Guevaras because of the many stacks of books and magazines on the floor.
So, what made Sartre and Guevara in common? (1) They both loved to read; (2) They both believed and supported Marxism; (3) They actually saw and talk to each other in Cuba in the 60’s. In fact, when Guevara died in 1967, Satre declared “He is not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age and the era’s most perfect man”; (4) I both have read something about them. Ako na! (Me already!).
Next in my to-be-read is the childhood days of Sartre’s girlfriend, Simone de Beauvior, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.
Prior to reading this book, I did not know that they saw each other when they were both still alive. This is my first book read written by Sartre and three years ago, I read John Lee Anderson’s Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Before Sartre’s image in my unsophisticated (read: zero knowledge in philosophy) mind was this old professor talking inside his wood-paneled and fully-carpeted office about the things like existentialism that was so deep I would never ever understand what he was saying. On the other hand, prior to the Anderson’s book, I used to see the image of Che Guevara printed on the t-shirts of some hip teenagers. I had some clues who he was because of the communist posters my handsome brother brought home when he was still in studying in a radical university. But not all young Filipinos: one caller in a morning show thought that Guevara was some kind of a band soloist so he asked what latest rock song he recorded.
Thanks to printed words. Thanks to books. We can read them and we can be informed. We can choose not to be ignorant. We can also contribute to influencing future generations by writing too. We can make books of our own.
The importance of reading and writing to his life. This is basically the main theme of this book, The Words by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. At the age of 59, he wrote this book about the first 10 years of his life on earth. He was exposed to books at a very young age. He remembered looking at the volumes and volumes of similar hardbound books stacked in his grandparents’ room. He did not know what were those but he loved to touch them and hear the flipping of the crisp pages. From then on, he resolved to himself that he would not only read those books someday but he also become a writer.
Same thing happened to Che Guevara. His parents also loved to buy and read books. In the above-mentioned Anderson’s biography of Guevara, one of Che’s childhood friends recalled that he could barely navigate inside the living room of the Guevaras because of the many stacks of books and magazines on the floor.
So, what made Sartre and Guevara in common? (1) They both loved to read; (2) They both believed and supported Marxism; (3) They actually saw and talk to each other in Cuba in the 60’s. In fact, when Guevara died in 1967, Satre declared “He is not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age and the era’s most perfect man”; (4) I both have read something about them. Ako na! (Me already!).
Next in my to-be-read is the childhood days of Sartre’s girlfriend, Simone de Beauvior, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.
August 22, 2018
Faith, even when profound, is never entire.
There is considerable audacity in a project of this nature. The famed philosopher/playwright/novelist creates a memoir fifty plus years into the past, a poking about in a small child's mind. I hazard to say there's a some fancy in these pages. Much as Sartre notes throughout most of his childhood he was acting, I assume the great thinker feels compelled to craft something of stature to merit his adult achievement. I will be honest: I don't remember much of my early life. One or two images of leaving Michigan ages 3-4. There are a few flutters after that. My adoptive mother telling everyone I was reading at age two. Was I? I have always had books and much like Sartre I feel indebted. Also, just like the author I had flowing curly locks, a surprise I guess after being bald for 14 months. The stories bifurcate there as Sartre benefited from his grandfather's library and I read comics and books from the local public library. Both of us constructed constant narratives where we were the heroes. He was encouraged to write. I was given a typewriter and I filled notebooks in junior high when I should have been learning geometry.
The second section Writing isn't as magical as the first Reading. He broaches his burgeoning narrative structures, slowly evolving in a stumbling gait --and how everything was ultimately enriched by attending school. That period of his life so deserved a further extensive treatment, if only his adolescent friendship with Paul Nizan. Outside of his widowed mother and tacit grandmother, women do not feature large in this vision. His partial blindness, his diminutive stature, his less than ideal looks all reflect upon this but without explicit comment.
There is considerable audacity in a project of this nature. The famed philosopher/playwright/novelist creates a memoir fifty plus years into the past, a poking about in a small child's mind. I hazard to say there's a some fancy in these pages. Much as Sartre notes throughout most of his childhood he was acting, I assume the great thinker feels compelled to craft something of stature to merit his adult achievement. I will be honest: I don't remember much of my early life. One or two images of leaving Michigan ages 3-4. There are a few flutters after that. My adoptive mother telling everyone I was reading at age two. Was I? I have always had books and much like Sartre I feel indebted. Also, just like the author I had flowing curly locks, a surprise I guess after being bald for 14 months. The stories bifurcate there as Sartre benefited from his grandfather's library and I read comics and books from the local public library. Both of us constructed constant narratives where we were the heroes. He was encouraged to write. I was given a typewriter and I filled notebooks in junior high when I should have been learning geometry.
The second section Writing isn't as magical as the first Reading. He broaches his burgeoning narrative structures, slowly evolving in a stumbling gait --and how everything was ultimately enriched by attending school. That period of his life so deserved a further extensive treatment, if only his adolescent friendship with Paul Nizan. Outside of his widowed mother and tacit grandmother, women do not feature large in this vision. His partial blindness, his diminutive stature, his less than ideal looks all reflect upon this but without explicit comment.
May 4, 2024
تنبلتر از آنم که به دنبال چیستی و چرایی نوشتن این کتاب توسط نویسنده بیفتم. بخصوص که تصور میکنم کتاب ناگهان پایان یافته است. آن منطق زیبای روایت که بیهیچ کم و کاستی کل دوران کودکی نویسنده را تداعی میکند، پایانی همسان را باید نوید میداد اما کتاب کاملاً ناگهانی و با بیحوصلگی به اتمام رسیده است. آنچه که در این کتاب، همپای جذابیت موضوع توجهام را جلب کرد، طبیعی بودن روایت بود. شاید در ترجمه نتوان قضاوت قطعی داشت اما نویسنده عینیت و تخیل را همپای اندیشهها و تصورات کودکی خود پیش میبرد و خواننده گذر وقت و فرایند خواندن را متوجه نمیشود. دوست داشتم این کودکی در بخشهای پایانی به بحثهای فلسفی نیز برسد.
1403/02/15
1403/02/15
July 16, 2020
Les Mots is probably the most personal and honest book Sartre ever wrote. A poignant look prevails from the first to the last page, as he unravels his most inner memories, dissecting to the last particle the place each of them had in forming the future author’s identity. For the most part, he had a joyful childhood living with his maternal grandparents and his mother, after his father died when was only one year old.
This family situation (the word Situation echoes the philosophical term and his famous series published in several volumes by Gallimard, that constitutes some of the most original essay writing of the 20th century) proved the perfect environment to nourish his artistic talent. The figure of Charles Schweitzer, his grandfather, is crucial to his development. He was a model and a teacher to his grandson. It is in his impressive library at home that the child discovered the realm of literature early on, an encounter that would prove fundamental in his upbringing. An only child surrounded by adults in the center of family life, this prevailing devotion towards him developed into his narcissistic personality later on.
In a remarkable section of compelling and organic prose, he describes his first encounter with books:
J’ai commencé ma vie comme je la finirai sans doute : au milieu des livres. Dans le bureau de mon grand-père, il y en avait partout ; défense était faite de les épousseter sauf une fois l’an, avant la rentrée d’octobre. Je ne savais pas encore lire que, déjà, je les révérais, ces pierres levées ; droites ou penchées, serrées comme des briques sur les rayons de la bibliothèque ou noblement espacées en allées de menhirs, je sentais que la prospérité de notre famille en dépendait.
I found my religion, he sustains, nothing was more important than a book. In the library I saw a temple.
J’avais trouvé ma religion : rien ne me parut plus important qu’un livre. La bibliothèque, j’y voyais un temple.
The book is divided in two halves, each representing a major and central discovery: read and write. In books he discovered his fascination with fantastic stories, a seed that would flourish later on into his writing. A lonely child, literature became his passion and later, when he began writing, the creation of his own stories offered a unique view of the world around him.
Two characters are clearly present in this extraordinary work: Sartre the philosopher, writing the book in 1963 and Sartre the literary figure, that is the child discovering in the art of fiction a means of expression. This juxtaposition of the two identities explains why Les Mots is an essay of auto existential psychoanalysis. A situation (now I refer to the philosophical term), according to Sartre, is what stimulates us to make a free decision. When a situation arrives, it is through it that we choose what we will become. Following this logic, the 8-year-old Jean-Paul Sartre, of his own will and in all liberty, chose to be a writer.
A peine eus-je commencé d’écrire, je posai ma plume pour jubiler. L’imposture était la même mais j’ai dit que je tenais les mots pour la quintessence des choses. Rien ne me troublait plus que de voir mes pattes de mouche échanger peu à peu leur luisance de feux follets contre la terne consistance de la matière : c’était la réalisation de l’imaginaire.
This is without a doubt, an impressive literary work.
This family situation (the word Situation echoes the philosophical term and his famous series published in several volumes by Gallimard, that constitutes some of the most original essay writing of the 20th century) proved the perfect environment to nourish his artistic talent. The figure of Charles Schweitzer, his grandfather, is crucial to his development. He was a model and a teacher to his grandson. It is in his impressive library at home that the child discovered the realm of literature early on, an encounter that would prove fundamental in his upbringing. An only child surrounded by adults in the center of family life, this prevailing devotion towards him developed into his narcissistic personality later on.
In a remarkable section of compelling and organic prose, he describes his first encounter with books:
J’ai commencé ma vie comme je la finirai sans doute : au milieu des livres. Dans le bureau de mon grand-père, il y en avait partout ; défense était faite de les épousseter sauf une fois l’an, avant la rentrée d’octobre. Je ne savais pas encore lire que, déjà, je les révérais, ces pierres levées ; droites ou penchées, serrées comme des briques sur les rayons de la bibliothèque ou noblement espacées en allées de menhirs, je sentais que la prospérité de notre famille en dépendait.
I found my religion, he sustains, nothing was more important than a book. In the library I saw a temple.
J’avais trouvé ma religion : rien ne me parut plus important qu’un livre. La bibliothèque, j’y voyais un temple.
The book is divided in two halves, each representing a major and central discovery: read and write. In books he discovered his fascination with fantastic stories, a seed that would flourish later on into his writing. A lonely child, literature became his passion and later, when he began writing, the creation of his own stories offered a unique view of the world around him.
Two characters are clearly present in this extraordinary work: Sartre the philosopher, writing the book in 1963 and Sartre the literary figure, that is the child discovering in the art of fiction a means of expression. This juxtaposition of the two identities explains why Les Mots is an essay of auto existential psychoanalysis. A situation (now I refer to the philosophical term), according to Sartre, is what stimulates us to make a free decision. When a situation arrives, it is through it that we choose what we will become. Following this logic, the 8-year-old Jean-Paul Sartre, of his own will and in all liberty, chose to be a writer.
A peine eus-je commencé d’écrire, je posai ma plume pour jubiler. L’imposture était la même mais j’ai dit que je tenais les mots pour la quintessence des choses. Rien ne me troublait plus que de voir mes pattes de mouche échanger peu à peu leur luisance de feux follets contre la terne consistance de la matière : c’était la réalisation de l’imaginaire.
This is without a doubt, an impressive literary work.
October 25, 2024
Autobiographisch-dynamisierter Materialismus gegen das fetischisierte Selbstbild
Inhalt: 4/5 Sterne (intensive Selbstzerfleischung)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (hakelig-holprig, bemüht)
Erzählstimme: 5/5 Sterne (in hohem Grade selbstreflektiert)
Komposition: kein/5 Sterne (Autobiographie)
Leseerlebnis: 5/5 Sterne (mäanderndes in die Tiefe Bewegen)
Nachdem Sartre sich an Baudelaire (1946) und Jean Genet (1952) abgearbeitet hat, stand das Großprojekt Der Idiot der Familie über Gustave Flaubert in den Startlöchern. Um sich aufzuwärmen, schrieb er zuerst über sich, und zwar in der Autobiographie Die Wörter, die lakonisch unsentimental einen Abschied von Jean-Paul Sartres impliziten Glaubensvorstellungen vollzieht:
Wenn ich schrieb, so hieß das lange Zeit, daß ich den Tod und die maskierte Religion darum bat, mein Leben dem Zufall zu entreißen. Ich war ein Mann der Kirche; als Militant wollte ich mich durch die Werke retten; als Mystiker bemühte ich mich darum, das Schweigen des Seins durch ein lästiges Geräusch von Wörtern zu enthüllen, wobei ich vor allem die Dinge mit ihren Namen verwechselte. Das ist: Glauben.
Hart mit sich ins Gericht gehend, rekonstruiert Sartre sein eigenes Aufwachsen bei Albert Schweitzers Onkel, Charles, einem Sprachlehrer. Verrat an der Herkunft wird in der Familie großgeschrieben: Der Urgroßvater, mit dessen Lebensgeschichte das Buch beginnt, verrät den Lehrerberuf seines Vaters, um Krämer zu werden. Sein Großvater verrät den Wunsch der Familie, Pastor zu werden, und wird wiederum Lehrer, und Sartre verrät den Wunsch des Großvaters, Lehrer zu werden, und wird Schriftsteller. Bis auf den Krämer-Großvater verbleiben alle in der Welt des Glaubens:
Ich habe das geistliche Gewand abgelegt, aber ich bin nicht abtrünnig geworden: ich schreibe nach wie vor. Was sollte ich sonst tun? Nulla dies sine linea. Schreiben ist meine Gewohnheit, und außerdem ist es mein Beruf. Lange hielt ich meine Feder für ein Schwert: nunmehr kenne ich unsere Ohnmacht. Trotzdem schreibe ich Bücher und werde ich Bücher schreiben; das ist nötig; das ist trotz allem nützlich. Die Kultur vermag nichts und niemanden zu erretten, sie rechtfertigt auch nicht.
Um Rechtfertigung seines Daseins geht es Sartre aber zeitlebens bis ins hohe Alter, bevor er seinen Wunsch nach Bedeutung ablegt und sich gänzlich seiner Introspektion und existenziellen Psychoanalyse widmet, den Mensch als Phantasma durchschreitend und -schreibend. Die Wörter zeichnet sich durch unbarmherzige Selbstzerfleischung aus, eines Menschen, der gegen seinen Begriffsrealismus ankämpft, um endlich Nominalist zu werden, die Dinge also nicht mit der Wirklichkeit, das Benannte nicht mit dem Namen zu verwechseln.
Gewiß, ich bin kein begabter Schriftsteller; man hat es mir zu verstehen gegeben; man hat gesagt, ich sei ein Schriftsteller der Fleißübungen. Ich bin ein Schriftsteller der Fleißübungen, meine Bücher riechen nach Schweiß und Mühe, ich gebe zu, daß unsere Aristokraten sie übelriechend finden müssen; ich habe sie oft gegen mich geschrieben, was heißen will: gegen jedermann, in einer geistigen Spannung, die schließlich meine Arterien überanstrengt hat.
Der Stil holpert, stokelt sich vorwärts, rappelt, rumpft, aber stets mit der Intensität desjenigen, der etwas zu erzählen hat, der etwas aufschreiben will, um es endgültig hinter sich zu lassen. Insofern handelt es sich bei Die Wörter um ein emanzipatorisches, gegen den Schreibenden selbst gerichtetes Projekt und liest sich durchweg kohärent und konzise, teilweise ein wenig zu verdichtet, verkürzt, ja fast hermetisch.
Hierin gleicht der Text Hermann Brochs Psychische Selbstbiographie (1942), Michel Leiris Mannesalter. (1939) oder Roland Barthes Über mich selbst , nur mit der ganzen Wucht des überwundenen klerikalen Platonismus und für sich stehend ein fast heroisches Unterfangen, denn im Unterschied zu den anderen steht Sartre als Galionsfigur einer ganzen epochalen Bewegung, die sich plötzlich durch ihn, ihren Urheber, missverstanden fühlen musste.
--> deshalb +1 Stern
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Inhalt: Jean-Paul Sartres Autobiographie. Albert Schweitzers Vater ist ein Bruder von Sartres Großvater, also ist dieser Cousin seiner Mutter, Onkel seines Großvaters und Sartres Großcousin. Thematisch in „Die Wörter“, wie sehr Sartre Kirchenmann geworden ist. Zwei Kapitel: „Lesen“ und „Schreiben“. „Lesen“: Der Vater stirbt früh, 15 Monate nach Sartres Geburt. Die junge Mutter Anne-Marie (18 Jahre) zieht zu ihren Eltern, Charles (61) und Louise Schweitzer, nach Elsass-Lothringen. Die Erzählgegenwart befindet sich 1963 (Sartre blickt zurück). Bald ziehen sie nach Paris, wo Charles ein Sprachinstitut leitet. Sartre möchte als etwas gelten, d.h. er will vermisst werden: „Nur Sartre fehlt“. Er spielt den Pausenclown, reißt Possen, zieht Grimassen. Nachdem Schneiden seiner Haare, wird Sartres Hässlichkeit sichtbarer. Keiner spielt mit ihm. Er geht mit seiner Mutter ins Kino. Er wächst zusammen mit dem Kino auf. „Schreiben“: Schreib- und Fabulierlust von Sartre, tastet sich an den Sadismus heran, unerfolgreich. Madame Picards Ausruf: „Er wird Schriftsteller.“ Charles sieht in ihm einen Wunderknabe. Sartre erkennt, er ist kein Held. Er schreibt, um dem Großvater zu genügen. Gelingt nicht. Wiederkehrendes Motiv: Existenzberechtigung, Fahrkarte im Zug. Ersatzreligion: Literatur, mit Gott selbst hat es nicht geklappt. Schreiben für die Unsterblichkeit, Verwechseln der Wirklichkeit mit den Worten, die die Wirklichkeit beschreiben. Er lebt ein postumes Leben. Zwei wichtige Ereignisse: Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges. Er entdeckt seine Fehlbarkeit. Zweitens Sartres Eintritt in das Lycée Henri IV. Klagt lieber sich selbst als das Universum an. Er wird transsubstantiierter Mann der Kirche. Atheistischer Märtyrer.
… vgl. typische Autobiographien wie Johann Wolfgang Goethes „Dichtung und Wahrheit“, wie Henry Millers „Wendekreis“-Romane, etwas selbstverliebt, eigendarstellerisch, aber mit härtester Selbstentblößung. Siehe auch Hermann Brochs: „Psychische Selbstbiographie“.
… interessant vor allem aus der durchgängigen Selbstreflexion heraus, der Rechtfertigungsstrategien, das Überwinden von Traumata, die Selbstdiagnose. Intensiv, auf eigene Kosten, mit philosophischen Schwung. Es fehlt aber an begrifflichen Psychologisierungen, etwas konfus, und beliebig im Ausschnitt. Etwas kurz.
--> 4 Sterne
Form: Hakeliger, ruppiger, bemühter Stil, holprig, wie es dem nüchternen Existentialismus entspricht, nicht poetisch, weniger schwungvoll, kein Fluss, ein Stottern und Rattern und Radebrechen. Stilistisch nur durch die Präzision interessant, wenig ärgerliche Anschlusskomplikationen, dennoch sehr einfache Sprache.
--> 2 Sterne
Erzählstimme: Klare Reflexion aus dem Nachhinein heraus, stets zusammengezogen, verdichtet, kontextualisiert, nirgendwo falsche Pauschalisierung, sehr authentisch, differenziert, auf sich bezogen. Zweite Reflexion stets vorhanden, Selbstdiagnosen, Selbstbeschreibungen, die aufgenommen, weiterentwickelt werden, konzis, fruchtbar, eindringlich, ans Eingemachte gehend.
… vgl. Emil Cioran, Henry Miller, sehr ernüchternder Blick auf sich selbst.
--> 5 Sterne
Komposition: Keine, da Autobiographie, Chronik. Ohne Bewertung.
Inhalt: 4/5 Sterne (intensive Selbstzerfleischung)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (hakelig-holprig, bemüht)
Erzählstimme: 5/5 Sterne (in hohem Grade selbstreflektiert)
Komposition: kein/5 Sterne (Autobiographie)
Leseerlebnis: 5/5 Sterne (mäanderndes in die Tiefe Bewegen)
Nachdem Sartre sich an Baudelaire (1946) und Jean Genet (1952) abgearbeitet hat, stand das Großprojekt Der Idiot der Familie über Gustave Flaubert in den Startlöchern. Um sich aufzuwärmen, schrieb er zuerst über sich, und zwar in der Autobiographie Die Wörter, die lakonisch unsentimental einen Abschied von Jean-Paul Sartres impliziten Glaubensvorstellungen vollzieht:
Wenn ich schrieb, so hieß das lange Zeit, daß ich den Tod und die maskierte Religion darum bat, mein Leben dem Zufall zu entreißen. Ich war ein Mann der Kirche; als Militant wollte ich mich durch die Werke retten; als Mystiker bemühte ich mich darum, das Schweigen des Seins durch ein lästiges Geräusch von Wörtern zu enthüllen, wobei ich vor allem die Dinge mit ihren Namen verwechselte. Das ist: Glauben.
Hart mit sich ins Gericht gehend, rekonstruiert Sartre sein eigenes Aufwachsen bei Albert Schweitzers Onkel, Charles, einem Sprachlehrer. Verrat an der Herkunft wird in der Familie großgeschrieben: Der Urgroßvater, mit dessen Lebensgeschichte das Buch beginnt, verrät den Lehrerberuf seines Vaters, um Krämer zu werden. Sein Großvater verrät den Wunsch der Familie, Pastor zu werden, und wird wiederum Lehrer, und Sartre verrät den Wunsch des Großvaters, Lehrer zu werden, und wird Schriftsteller. Bis auf den Krämer-Großvater verbleiben alle in der Welt des Glaubens:
Ich habe das geistliche Gewand abgelegt, aber ich bin nicht abtrünnig geworden: ich schreibe nach wie vor. Was sollte ich sonst tun? Nulla dies sine linea. Schreiben ist meine Gewohnheit, und außerdem ist es mein Beruf. Lange hielt ich meine Feder für ein Schwert: nunmehr kenne ich unsere Ohnmacht. Trotzdem schreibe ich Bücher und werde ich Bücher schreiben; das ist nötig; das ist trotz allem nützlich. Die Kultur vermag nichts und niemanden zu erretten, sie rechtfertigt auch nicht.
Um Rechtfertigung seines Daseins geht es Sartre aber zeitlebens bis ins hohe Alter, bevor er seinen Wunsch nach Bedeutung ablegt und sich gänzlich seiner Introspektion und existenziellen Psychoanalyse widmet, den Mensch als Phantasma durchschreitend und -schreibend. Die Wörter zeichnet sich durch unbarmherzige Selbstzerfleischung aus, eines Menschen, der gegen seinen Begriffsrealismus ankämpft, um endlich Nominalist zu werden, die Dinge also nicht mit der Wirklichkeit, das Benannte nicht mit dem Namen zu verwechseln.
Gewiß, ich bin kein begabter Schriftsteller; man hat es mir zu verstehen gegeben; man hat gesagt, ich sei ein Schriftsteller der Fleißübungen. Ich bin ein Schriftsteller der Fleißübungen, meine Bücher riechen nach Schweiß und Mühe, ich gebe zu, daß unsere Aristokraten sie übelriechend finden müssen; ich habe sie oft gegen mich geschrieben, was heißen will: gegen jedermann, in einer geistigen Spannung, die schließlich meine Arterien überanstrengt hat.
Der Stil holpert, stokelt sich vorwärts, rappelt, rumpft, aber stets mit der Intensität desjenigen, der etwas zu erzählen hat, der etwas aufschreiben will, um es endgültig hinter sich zu lassen. Insofern handelt es sich bei Die Wörter um ein emanzipatorisches, gegen den Schreibenden selbst gerichtetes Projekt und liest sich durchweg kohärent und konzise, teilweise ein wenig zu verdichtet, verkürzt, ja fast hermetisch.
Hierin gleicht der Text Hermann Brochs Psychische Selbstbiographie (1942), Michel Leiris Mannesalter. (1939) oder Roland Barthes Über mich selbst , nur mit der ganzen Wucht des überwundenen klerikalen Platonismus und für sich stehend ein fast heroisches Unterfangen, denn im Unterschied zu den anderen steht Sartre als Galionsfigur einer ganzen epochalen Bewegung, die sich plötzlich durch ihn, ihren Urheber, missverstanden fühlen musste.
--> deshalb +1 Stern
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Inhalt: Jean-Paul Sartres Autobiographie. Albert Schweitzers Vater ist ein Bruder von Sartres Großvater, also ist dieser Cousin seiner Mutter, Onkel seines Großvaters und Sartres Großcousin. Thematisch in „Die Wörter“, wie sehr Sartre Kirchenmann geworden ist. Zwei Kapitel: „Lesen“ und „Schreiben“. „Lesen“: Der Vater stirbt früh, 15 Monate nach Sartres Geburt. Die junge Mutter Anne-Marie (18 Jahre) zieht zu ihren Eltern, Charles (61) und Louise Schweitzer, nach Elsass-Lothringen. Die Erzählgegenwart befindet sich 1963 (Sartre blickt zurück). Bald ziehen sie nach Paris, wo Charles ein Sprachinstitut leitet. Sartre möchte als etwas gelten, d.h. er will vermisst werden: „Nur Sartre fehlt“. Er spielt den Pausenclown, reißt Possen, zieht Grimassen. Nachdem Schneiden seiner Haare, wird Sartres Hässlichkeit sichtbarer. Keiner spielt mit ihm. Er geht mit seiner Mutter ins Kino. Er wächst zusammen mit dem Kino auf. „Schreiben“: Schreib- und Fabulierlust von Sartre, tastet sich an den Sadismus heran, unerfolgreich. Madame Picards Ausruf: „Er wird Schriftsteller.“ Charles sieht in ihm einen Wunderknabe. Sartre erkennt, er ist kein Held. Er schreibt, um dem Großvater zu genügen. Gelingt nicht. Wiederkehrendes Motiv: Existenzberechtigung, Fahrkarte im Zug. Ersatzreligion: Literatur, mit Gott selbst hat es nicht geklappt. Schreiben für die Unsterblichkeit, Verwechseln der Wirklichkeit mit den Worten, die die Wirklichkeit beschreiben. Er lebt ein postumes Leben. Zwei wichtige Ereignisse: Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges. Er entdeckt seine Fehlbarkeit. Zweitens Sartres Eintritt in das Lycée Henri IV. Klagt lieber sich selbst als das Universum an. Er wird transsubstantiierter Mann der Kirche. Atheistischer Märtyrer.
… vgl. typische Autobiographien wie Johann Wolfgang Goethes „Dichtung und Wahrheit“, wie Henry Millers „Wendekreis“-Romane, etwas selbstverliebt, eigendarstellerisch, aber mit härtester Selbstentblößung. Siehe auch Hermann Brochs: „Psychische Selbstbiographie“.
… interessant vor allem aus der durchgängigen Selbstreflexion heraus, der Rechtfertigungsstrategien, das Überwinden von Traumata, die Selbstdiagnose. Intensiv, auf eigene Kosten, mit philosophischen Schwung. Es fehlt aber an begrifflichen Psychologisierungen, etwas konfus, und beliebig im Ausschnitt. Etwas kurz.
--> 4 Sterne
Form: Hakeliger, ruppiger, bemühter Stil, holprig, wie es dem nüchternen Existentialismus entspricht, nicht poetisch, weniger schwungvoll, kein Fluss, ein Stottern und Rattern und Radebrechen. Stilistisch nur durch die Präzision interessant, wenig ärgerliche Anschlusskomplikationen, dennoch sehr einfache Sprache.
--> 2 Sterne
Erzählstimme: Klare Reflexion aus dem Nachhinein heraus, stets zusammengezogen, verdichtet, kontextualisiert, nirgendwo falsche Pauschalisierung, sehr authentisch, differenziert, auf sich bezogen. Zweite Reflexion stets vorhanden, Selbstdiagnosen, Selbstbeschreibungen, die aufgenommen, weiterentwickelt werden, konzis, fruchtbar, eindringlich, ans Eingemachte gehend.
… vgl. Emil Cioran, Henry Miller, sehr ernüchternder Blick auf sich selbst.
--> 5 Sterne
Komposition: Keine, da Autobiographie, Chronik. Ohne Bewertung.
September 13, 2016
This book is an awesome display of the deeply literary and ‘religious’—religious in the sense of considering all the world and one’s self to be profoundly significant and purposive in every part— nature of Sartre. It explains so much about him. The title, The Words, refers to the way he attached a supremely high value in the first half of his life to reading, writing, and being read. This is an autobiographical account of his first ten years of life which were so formative for his adult life. I cannot emphasize enough how very much of Sartre’s philosophy is explained here. I was actually shocked to discover in his first decade alone so many unveilings to the meaning AND motive for his later work.
Sartre was once tempted to think it funny that people wondered if he even had a childhood. “When I was thirty, friends were surprised: ‘One would think you didn’t have parents. Or a childhood.’ And I was silly enough to feel flattered.” This was due to Sartre’s early-adult abandonment of his past which he believed could only be interpreted from his future. Now, Sartre is writing this book in his sixties and finding value in his earlier life like he thought he would, but in a different way. I truly believe he grew to appreciate each moment of his life in itself, rather than as a chronicle to lure others into loving himself, which he couldn’t do. “Because I did not love myself sufficiently, I fled forward. The result is that I love[d] myself still less…”
Sartre’s father died when he was two years old, and his mother moved with him into her parents’ home. It was an upper-middleclass home steeped in education, impassioned politics, and family tension which would indelibly shape his psyche and self-esteem for the rest of his life. His relationship with his mother was much like brother and sister, even as an adult to a child at times, and he accustomed himself to calling her by her name “Anne Marie.” The cause of this was his grandfather’s contempt for Jean-Paul’s father, who died very inconveniently, and the subsequent belittling treatment of Anne Marie by his grandfather who was irked to have his daughter again as his dependent-plus-one leveled, in Jean-Paul’s mind, the roles of Jean-Paul and his mother. Anne Marie was treated as an importunate child, but Jean-Paul was coddled as his grandfather’s alter-ego, and praised from a young age for his precocity. Actually, he was a spoiled brat, and he knew it, and it wasn’t long before he despised himself for the pretentious, melodrama with which he stooped to please his grandfather and sustain his image as a child prodigy. Sartre developed a persona that existed solely to please others around him, and his authentic abilities and desires were hidden deep beneath a veneer that was for him hardly comfortable or satisfying. “Even in solitude I was putting on an act… I sank deeper and deeper into imposture. Condemned to please, I endowed myself with charms that withered on the spot.” He developed many neuroses during his younger years, and may never have outgrown some of them. His feeling of superfluity and absolute insignificance apart from the attention of his doters, which was inconsistent at best and frankly demoralizing, hollowed-out his sense of security and worth, and he increasingly repressed and compartmentalized his less favorable habits, interests, and personality traits to survive socially. The result is that he loathed himself and all identity-pimps.
He fell in love with writing only superficially and theatrically at first, determined to impress his watchers. He then introverted so far that he couldn’t find his way out for a long time, and he wrote himself into an self-awareness coma by creating fictions in which he was always a delivering hero and the world was celebrating him eternally. It was during this time he began to live ‘posthumously’, imputing meaning to his life by imagining how his ideas and fantastical exploits would be read by people after he was dead. Only then did he believe his life would be explained and his value to others would be etched in stone as a form of ‘legacy’ which has been a maelstrom for many heroes and celebrities who have unwittingly wasted their life in this denial of self. Much of this early tortuous introspection and self-loathing was because he had no friends—he wasn’t permitted to attend schools which didn’t ‘recognize��� his genius—and when he finally made friends at a school he was allowed to attend, he began the slow process of breaking out of what was quickly becoming a sociopathic escapism (“the human race became a small committee surrounded by affectionate animals”), though he would never completely overcome the desire to see his life as a book which would justify all of his actions in some future reader’s mind.
In his later years, he began to be grieved about his early and late inauthenticity. He relates that while writing Nausea he was “fake to the marrow of my bones, and hoodwinked.” And yet, as much as he tried to escape it, he resorted to the ‘elitism’ of criticizing everyone, but at the same time,
“I was I, the elect, chronicler of hell, a glass and steel microscope peering at my own protoplasmic juices…I doubted everything except that I was the elect of doubt.”
In trying to get back to the beginning of his insincerity and objectified, artificial persona, he found an infinite regression of personas that was forever creating new masks for him to unmask. This was a foreshadowing of his theory of the spontaneous and transcendent ego which is beyond our reach, for it inspires and directs our reach. Any sense of self that we discover or delineate has become an artifice, a forgery of the real self which is impelling the discovering and objectifying a decoy ‘self’. Trying to get to the back of the cogito probably kept him busy for a while, and this, along with a fear of death, inflamed his neuroticism. “I lived in a state of terror; it was a genuine neurosis.” I’m truly saddened to think how many psychoses and suicides a little Zoloft back in the day might have prevented.
Sartre was truly oppressed by the thought ingrained in him, mostly by his grandfather’s behavior, that he was not needed anywhere, or had any importance to anyone. He felt completely superfluous. I think his psyche and nervous system was scarred by having to play-act for his grandfather so much. He literally did not feel significant or valuable, and was looking for ways to make himself feel ‘real’.
“We were never in our own home…This caused me no suffering since everything was loaned to me, but I remained abstract. Worldly possessions reflect to their owner what he is; they taught me what I was not. I was not substantial or permanent, I was not the future continuer of my father’s work, I was not necessary to the production of steel. In short, I had no soul.”
At nine years old (c’mon!!) he was thinking about the existential ‘holes’ people leave behind when they aren’t at a party or gathering and people notice that they are ‘not there’. This spoke to Sartre of necessity, and he so badly wanted to feel necessary in a way that his absence would be palpable and would shake the world. It affected his whole outlook on his literary career, and Sartre admitted that it still affected him in his later years. His desire to write in such a way that he would be immortalized and ‘missed’ when he was dead consumed him. He later realized the flaw of living solely that you would be remembered, and labeled this “posthumous” thinking; and yet he couldn’t shake the need to leave a profound impression with others about his past being, whether or not he was still ‘being’ or not. This probably illuminates his more matured ideas about intersubjectivity and our connection to others that is irreducible and fundamental to our consciousness and being. Could it be that Sartre so badly felt the need to be needed, that he invented a philosophy in which this need is proof of our ontological interconnectivity? Or, could Sartre have felt more intensely and consistently this need we all have, and rightly surmised a possible reason for it that better explains its appearance than any other theory? I think both.
Sartre gives an excellent analogy about how he began to feel which may communicate more to the reader in imagery than Sartre could explain in abstract philosophy.
“Since nobody laid claim to me seriously, I laid claim to being indispensable to the Universe. What could be haughtier? What could be sillier? The fact is that I had no choice… I had sneaked onto a train and fallen asleep, and when the ticket-collector shook me and asked for my ticket, I had to admit that I had none. Nor did I have the money with which to pay my fare on the spot. I began by pleading guilty. I had left my identity card at home, I no longer even remembered how I had gotten by the ticket-puncher, but I admitted that I had sneaked on to the train. Far from challenging the authority of the ticket-collector, I loudly proclaimed my respect for his functions and complied in advance with his decision. At that extreme degree of humility, the only way I could save myself was by reversing the situation: I therefore revealed that I had to be in Dijon for important and secret reasons, reason that concerned France and perhaps all mankind. If things were viewed in this new light, it would be apparent that no one in the entire train had as much right as I to occupy a seat. Of course, this involved a higher law which conflicted with the regulations, but if the ticket-collector took it upon himself to interrupt my journey, he would cause grave complications, the consequences of which would be his responsibility. I urged him to think it over; was it reasonable to doom the entire species to disorder under the pretext of maintaining order in a train? Such is pride: the plea of the wretched. Only passengers with tickets have the right to be modest. I never knew whether I won my case. The ticket-collector remained silent. I repeated my arguments. So long as I spoke, I was sure he wouldn’t make me get off. We remained face to face, one mute and the other inexhaustible, in the train that was taking us to Dijon. The train, the ticket-collector, and the delinquent were myself. I was also a fourth character, the organizer, who had only one wish, to fool himself, if only for a minute, to forget that he had concocted everything.”
Writing this book in his sixties, he was able to understand the genesis of his motives for writing, and he could see that he would never be fulfilled by writing in the way he originally thought he could be. “For the last ten years or so I’ve been a man who’s been waking up, cured of a long, bitter-sweet madness.” He could see that his “eagerness to write involves a refusal to live” in that he would always be inclined to think of writing as a need to be loved and justified as a legend, a story, an object in the mind of some other existent.
“My individuality as a subject had no other interest for me than to prepare for the moment [death] that would change me into an object…I was charging my descendents to love me instead of doing so myself.”
He does a wonderful job of sniping the false pride of ‘legacy’ in himself and his culture. A desire to leave a legacy is a loathing of the present moment for the sake of being a chapter in someone else’ history, a drawing in some children’s book, that no longer risks hunger, humiliation, or danger of any kind. It is an agreement for one to die if everyone will tell good stories about them. “I became my own obituary.”
His loud, self-affirming declaration at the end of the book is as bold and clear as any man who has ever spoken a word in his own defense and fought for his own honor, or humbly but confidently surrendered himself to the gallows he would justly hang on. “What remains [of my work]? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any."
I love Sartre’s writing. Absolutely love it. It’s genius, meandering, spontaneous, anti-climactic, playful, enigmatic, and always, always honest. He reminds me of Wittgenstein. I often wonder if the two ever interacted. Both of their M.O. seemed to be anti-elitism (“Never in my life have I given an order without laughing, without making others laugh”), anti-institutionalism, spontaneity, and an emphasis on ‘knowing the world through relation’. I love when he tells on himself for being disingenuous, then tells on himself for telling on himself (“I’m always ready to criticize myself, provided I’m not forced to”). He is a fountain of messy, sudden, and superlatively powerful ideas. From a young age he liked word puzzles, and I think he created cryptic messages for diligent readers to unlock, though I think the point is not memorization but assimilation—if you don’t have to work for what you know, you don’t really know it to your core. Sartre notices and says all the things we’ve been taught for so long not to notice or say, and having dumbfounded you, leaves without knowing what you made of it. It was enough for him that he said it…the rest of your life is up to you, as the rest of Sartre’s own life and meanings are left to him. “Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a ‘talent’; my sole concern has been to save myself.”
His early childhood ideas and experiences were emotionally and cognitively overwrought and perhaps frantic by some people’s standards, but his hyper-developed sensitivity to existential angst and boredom allowed him to help people realize with devastating accuracy the tradition-vacuum into which modern man and academia has fallen, and the way to climb out. Sounds like a rough road, experiencing such psychological torment before the age of ten and much to follow after, but I’m glad he wrote about it for the postmodern explorer. Thanks Sartre my brother.
Sartre was once tempted to think it funny that people wondered if he even had a childhood. “When I was thirty, friends were surprised: ‘One would think you didn’t have parents. Or a childhood.’ And I was silly enough to feel flattered.” This was due to Sartre’s early-adult abandonment of his past which he believed could only be interpreted from his future. Now, Sartre is writing this book in his sixties and finding value in his earlier life like he thought he would, but in a different way. I truly believe he grew to appreciate each moment of his life in itself, rather than as a chronicle to lure others into loving himself, which he couldn’t do. “Because I did not love myself sufficiently, I fled forward. The result is that I love[d] myself still less…”
Sartre’s father died when he was two years old, and his mother moved with him into her parents’ home. It was an upper-middleclass home steeped in education, impassioned politics, and family tension which would indelibly shape his psyche and self-esteem for the rest of his life. His relationship with his mother was much like brother and sister, even as an adult to a child at times, and he accustomed himself to calling her by her name “Anne Marie.” The cause of this was his grandfather’s contempt for Jean-Paul’s father, who died very inconveniently, and the subsequent belittling treatment of Anne Marie by his grandfather who was irked to have his daughter again as his dependent-plus-one leveled, in Jean-Paul’s mind, the roles of Jean-Paul and his mother. Anne Marie was treated as an importunate child, but Jean-Paul was coddled as his grandfather’s alter-ego, and praised from a young age for his precocity. Actually, he was a spoiled brat, and he knew it, and it wasn’t long before he despised himself for the pretentious, melodrama with which he stooped to please his grandfather and sustain his image as a child prodigy. Sartre developed a persona that existed solely to please others around him, and his authentic abilities and desires were hidden deep beneath a veneer that was for him hardly comfortable or satisfying. “Even in solitude I was putting on an act… I sank deeper and deeper into imposture. Condemned to please, I endowed myself with charms that withered on the spot.” He developed many neuroses during his younger years, and may never have outgrown some of them. His feeling of superfluity and absolute insignificance apart from the attention of his doters, which was inconsistent at best and frankly demoralizing, hollowed-out his sense of security and worth, and he increasingly repressed and compartmentalized his less favorable habits, interests, and personality traits to survive socially. The result is that he loathed himself and all identity-pimps.
He fell in love with writing only superficially and theatrically at first, determined to impress his watchers. He then introverted so far that he couldn’t find his way out for a long time, and he wrote himself into an self-awareness coma by creating fictions in which he was always a delivering hero and the world was celebrating him eternally. It was during this time he began to live ‘posthumously’, imputing meaning to his life by imagining how his ideas and fantastical exploits would be read by people after he was dead. Only then did he believe his life would be explained and his value to others would be etched in stone as a form of ‘legacy’ which has been a maelstrom for many heroes and celebrities who have unwittingly wasted their life in this denial of self. Much of this early tortuous introspection and self-loathing was because he had no friends—he wasn’t permitted to attend schools which didn’t ‘recognize��� his genius—and when he finally made friends at a school he was allowed to attend, he began the slow process of breaking out of what was quickly becoming a sociopathic escapism (“the human race became a small committee surrounded by affectionate animals”), though he would never completely overcome the desire to see his life as a book which would justify all of his actions in some future reader’s mind.
In his later years, he began to be grieved about his early and late inauthenticity. He relates that while writing Nausea he was “fake to the marrow of my bones, and hoodwinked.” And yet, as much as he tried to escape it, he resorted to the ‘elitism’ of criticizing everyone, but at the same time,
“I was I, the elect, chronicler of hell, a glass and steel microscope peering at my own protoplasmic juices…I doubted everything except that I was the elect of doubt.”
In trying to get back to the beginning of his insincerity and objectified, artificial persona, he found an infinite regression of personas that was forever creating new masks for him to unmask. This was a foreshadowing of his theory of the spontaneous and transcendent ego which is beyond our reach, for it inspires and directs our reach. Any sense of self that we discover or delineate has become an artifice, a forgery of the real self which is impelling the discovering and objectifying a decoy ‘self’. Trying to get to the back of the cogito probably kept him busy for a while, and this, along with a fear of death, inflamed his neuroticism. “I lived in a state of terror; it was a genuine neurosis.” I’m truly saddened to think how many psychoses and suicides a little Zoloft back in the day might have prevented.
Sartre was truly oppressed by the thought ingrained in him, mostly by his grandfather’s behavior, that he was not needed anywhere, or had any importance to anyone. He felt completely superfluous. I think his psyche and nervous system was scarred by having to play-act for his grandfather so much. He literally did not feel significant or valuable, and was looking for ways to make himself feel ‘real’.
“We were never in our own home…This caused me no suffering since everything was loaned to me, but I remained abstract. Worldly possessions reflect to their owner what he is; they taught me what I was not. I was not substantial or permanent, I was not the future continuer of my father’s work, I was not necessary to the production of steel. In short, I had no soul.”
At nine years old (c’mon!!) he was thinking about the existential ‘holes’ people leave behind when they aren’t at a party or gathering and people notice that they are ‘not there’. This spoke to Sartre of necessity, and he so badly wanted to feel necessary in a way that his absence would be palpable and would shake the world. It affected his whole outlook on his literary career, and Sartre admitted that it still affected him in his later years. His desire to write in such a way that he would be immortalized and ‘missed’ when he was dead consumed him. He later realized the flaw of living solely that you would be remembered, and labeled this “posthumous” thinking; and yet he couldn’t shake the need to leave a profound impression with others about his past being, whether or not he was still ‘being’ or not. This probably illuminates his more matured ideas about intersubjectivity and our connection to others that is irreducible and fundamental to our consciousness and being. Could it be that Sartre so badly felt the need to be needed, that he invented a philosophy in which this need is proof of our ontological interconnectivity? Or, could Sartre have felt more intensely and consistently this need we all have, and rightly surmised a possible reason for it that better explains its appearance than any other theory? I think both.
Sartre gives an excellent analogy about how he began to feel which may communicate more to the reader in imagery than Sartre could explain in abstract philosophy.
“Since nobody laid claim to me seriously, I laid claim to being indispensable to the Universe. What could be haughtier? What could be sillier? The fact is that I had no choice… I had sneaked onto a train and fallen asleep, and when the ticket-collector shook me and asked for my ticket, I had to admit that I had none. Nor did I have the money with which to pay my fare on the spot. I began by pleading guilty. I had left my identity card at home, I no longer even remembered how I had gotten by the ticket-puncher, but I admitted that I had sneaked on to the train. Far from challenging the authority of the ticket-collector, I loudly proclaimed my respect for his functions and complied in advance with his decision. At that extreme degree of humility, the only way I could save myself was by reversing the situation: I therefore revealed that I had to be in Dijon for important and secret reasons, reason that concerned France and perhaps all mankind. If things were viewed in this new light, it would be apparent that no one in the entire train had as much right as I to occupy a seat. Of course, this involved a higher law which conflicted with the regulations, but if the ticket-collector took it upon himself to interrupt my journey, he would cause grave complications, the consequences of which would be his responsibility. I urged him to think it over; was it reasonable to doom the entire species to disorder under the pretext of maintaining order in a train? Such is pride: the plea of the wretched. Only passengers with tickets have the right to be modest. I never knew whether I won my case. The ticket-collector remained silent. I repeated my arguments. So long as I spoke, I was sure he wouldn’t make me get off. We remained face to face, one mute and the other inexhaustible, in the train that was taking us to Dijon. The train, the ticket-collector, and the delinquent were myself. I was also a fourth character, the organizer, who had only one wish, to fool himself, if only for a minute, to forget that he had concocted everything.”
Writing this book in his sixties, he was able to understand the genesis of his motives for writing, and he could see that he would never be fulfilled by writing in the way he originally thought he could be. “For the last ten years or so I’ve been a man who’s been waking up, cured of a long, bitter-sweet madness.” He could see that his “eagerness to write involves a refusal to live” in that he would always be inclined to think of writing as a need to be loved and justified as a legend, a story, an object in the mind of some other existent.
“My individuality as a subject had no other interest for me than to prepare for the moment [death] that would change me into an object…I was charging my descendents to love me instead of doing so myself.”
He does a wonderful job of sniping the false pride of ‘legacy’ in himself and his culture. A desire to leave a legacy is a loathing of the present moment for the sake of being a chapter in someone else’ history, a drawing in some children’s book, that no longer risks hunger, humiliation, or danger of any kind. It is an agreement for one to die if everyone will tell good stories about them. “I became my own obituary.”
His loud, self-affirming declaration at the end of the book is as bold and clear as any man who has ever spoken a word in his own defense and fought for his own honor, or humbly but confidently surrendered himself to the gallows he would justly hang on. “What remains [of my work]? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any."
I love Sartre’s writing. Absolutely love it. It’s genius, meandering, spontaneous, anti-climactic, playful, enigmatic, and always, always honest. He reminds me of Wittgenstein. I often wonder if the two ever interacted. Both of their M.O. seemed to be anti-elitism (“Never in my life have I given an order without laughing, without making others laugh”), anti-institutionalism, spontaneity, and an emphasis on ‘knowing the world through relation’. I love when he tells on himself for being disingenuous, then tells on himself for telling on himself (“I’m always ready to criticize myself, provided I’m not forced to”). He is a fountain of messy, sudden, and superlatively powerful ideas. From a young age he liked word puzzles, and I think he created cryptic messages for diligent readers to unlock, though I think the point is not memorization but assimilation—if you don’t have to work for what you know, you don’t really know it to your core. Sartre notices and says all the things we’ve been taught for so long not to notice or say, and having dumbfounded you, leaves without knowing what you made of it. It was enough for him that he said it…the rest of your life is up to you, as the rest of Sartre’s own life and meanings are left to him. “Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a ‘talent’; my sole concern has been to save myself.”
His early childhood ideas and experiences were emotionally and cognitively overwrought and perhaps frantic by some people’s standards, but his hyper-developed sensitivity to existential angst and boredom allowed him to help people realize with devastating accuracy the tradition-vacuum into which modern man and academia has fallen, and the way to climb out. Sounds like a rough road, experiencing such psychological torment before the age of ten and much to follow after, but I’m glad he wrote about it for the postmodern explorer. Thanks Sartre my brother.
December 4, 2016
Ohne Vater aufgewachsen sucht der kleine Sartre von Kindesbeinen an nach der Berechtigung seiner Existenz. Er entzückt die Erwachsenenwelt, indem er schon als Kleinstknirps die Kunst des Lesens erst simuliert, dann tatsächlich im Eigenstudium erwirbt. Er spielt Theater (im umfassenden Sinn des Wortes), sucht in Büchern und im Kino, einer ganz neu aufgekommene Unterhaltungsform, nach Vorbildern.
Trotz aller Rollen, die er mit Inbrunst annimmt, scheint es doch, als würde die Welt nicht begreifen, dass nur noch einer fehlt: Sartre!
Als er sich schließlich in der Rolle des Schriftstellers versucht, sind die Weichen gestellt...
Sehr interessant fand ich, dass Sartres Großeltern noch ganz der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft Frankreichs angehören, wie sie uns bei Victor Hugo begegnet. Die frühen Erinnerungen könnten noch die eines Proust sein, trotz der drei Jahrzehnte Unterschied. Daran mag man erkennen, dass der gesellschaftliche Wandel immer schneller vonstatten geht. Schon bald wird es die Form des Bürgertums nicht mehr geben, der Sartres Großeltern angehörten. Insofern klingen auch Motive an, die mich bei Benjamins Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert so sehr berührt haben.
Ich hatte nicht mehr in Erinnerung, wie humorvoll DIE WÖRTER geschrieben ist und wie gut lesbar. Der Leser muss keine großen philosophischen Vorkenntnisse haben, um das Buch lesen zu können und ein Bild vom jungen Sartre zu bekommen.
Trotz aller Rollen, die er mit Inbrunst annimmt, scheint es doch, als würde die Welt nicht begreifen, dass nur noch einer fehlt: Sartre!
Als er sich schließlich in der Rolle des Schriftstellers versucht, sind die Weichen gestellt...
Sehr interessant fand ich, dass Sartres Großeltern noch ganz der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft Frankreichs angehören, wie sie uns bei Victor Hugo begegnet. Die frühen Erinnerungen könnten noch die eines Proust sein, trotz der drei Jahrzehnte Unterschied. Daran mag man erkennen, dass der gesellschaftliche Wandel immer schneller vonstatten geht. Schon bald wird es die Form des Bürgertums nicht mehr geben, der Sartres Großeltern angehörten. Insofern klingen auch Motive an, die mich bei Benjamins Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert so sehr berührt haben.
Ich hatte nicht mehr in Erinnerung, wie humorvoll DIE WÖRTER geschrieben ist und wie gut lesbar. Der Leser muss keine großen philosophischen Vorkenntnisse haben, um das Buch lesen zu können und ein Bild vom jungen Sartre zu bekommen.
September 26, 2012
Until this book and except for some of his political writings I've never much liked Sartre. The first exposure to him was in high school through three of his dramas. Read quickly and never seen performed, I wasn't impressed. The second was Nausea, an early novel also read in high school--I couldn't finish it. The third, in college, was the collection, Essays on Existentialism. I found myself in profound disagreement with his take on depth psychology. The fourth, in seminary, was Being and Nothingness. Here, as earlier with Nausea, I felt I was reading the symptomatology of a neurotic, not philosophy. Still, I did enjoy some of his political pronouncements and found myself in broad agreement with existentialist philosophy as it was attributed to him by other authors and in some of his essays.
The Words, however, was a pleasant read. The very concept of essaying an autobiography of one's youth was intriguing. Here Sartre considers primarily his first ten years and the three most influential figures of his childhood: his widowed mother and her parents, the Schweitzers (yes, apparently Jean-Paul was distantly related to Albert, though he receives but scant mention herein). Of the three, most important was his grandfather, the great authority figure who, directly and indirectly, appears to have led young Jean-Paul to a career as a writer.
Most of this book, however, is not about persons. Most of it appears to be an effort to describe a state of mind, Sartre's state of mind as a boy and, by implication, how that led to his being what he found himself to be at the time of his writing of this autobiography as a fifty-nine year old man. Here, naturally, one suspects a great deal of second-guessing, of the present overlaying the past--and indeed Sartre devotes a good deal of attention to the centrality of teleology to his developing sense of personhood and purpose.
Only at the book's end does Sartre seriously deal with the influence of the Protestant and Catholic idealogies which were among the givens of his upbringing. I found this approach illuminating and wish there had been more of it.
The Words, however, was a pleasant read. The very concept of essaying an autobiography of one's youth was intriguing. Here Sartre considers primarily his first ten years and the three most influential figures of his childhood: his widowed mother and her parents, the Schweitzers (yes, apparently Jean-Paul was distantly related to Albert, though he receives but scant mention herein). Of the three, most important was his grandfather, the great authority figure who, directly and indirectly, appears to have led young Jean-Paul to a career as a writer.
Most of this book, however, is not about persons. Most of it appears to be an effort to describe a state of mind, Sartre's state of mind as a boy and, by implication, how that led to his being what he found himself to be at the time of his writing of this autobiography as a fifty-nine year old man. Here, naturally, one suspects a great deal of second-guessing, of the present overlaying the past--and indeed Sartre devotes a good deal of attention to the centrality of teleology to his developing sense of personhood and purpose.
Only at the book's end does Sartre seriously deal with the influence of the Protestant and Catholic idealogies which were among the givens of his upbringing. I found this approach illuminating and wish there had been more of it.
April 30, 2018
Demolidor
" Tornei-me traidor e continuei a sê-lo. É em vão que me entrego inteiro ao que empreendo, é em vão que me entrego sem reservas ao trabalho, à cólera, à amizade; eu sei que me renegarei num instante,eu quero é já me traio em plena paixão,pelo pressentimento jubiloso da minha traição futura".
" Tornei-me traidor e continuei a sê-lo. É em vão que me entrego inteiro ao que empreendo, é em vão que me entrego sem reservas ao trabalho, à cólera, à amizade; eu sei que me renegarei num instante,eu quero é já me traio em plena paixão,pelo pressentimento jubiloso da minha traição futura".
August 5, 2020
Ova Sartrova auto-biografija je (uz Moju borbu) najbolja takva do uzrasta 10 godina. "Čitalac je shvatio da ja mrzim svoje detinjstvo i sve ono što je od njega još u životu," kaže Sartr. Morao je da napiše Reči zbog te mržnje, da raskrsti sa detinjstvom. Nije mu doduše ništa nedostajalo, odrastao je u finoj građanskoj porodici, neprestano u centru pažnje.
Ima tu naravno naknadne pameti, pošto Sartr 50 godina kasnije vidi stvari drugačije nego što ih je video njegov mali-ja. Priča kako su te godine uticale na njegove ideje i filozofiju, ali uzroke objašnjava na osnovu posledica. Naučnici bi rekli - nije ti dobar naučni metod. Ali dobra je psihološka vežba.
A u centru svega su knjige i razvoj njega kao čitaoca i kao pisca (kaže doduše da nikad nije imao talenta za pisanje, samo naporan rad i upornost); knjige su mu jedini prijatelj i važnije od ljudi.
"Ja sam svoj život počeo onako kako ću ga bez sumnje i završiti: među knjigama. U dedinoj sobi za rad bilo ih je svuda; bilo je izdato naređenje da se prašina sme brisati samo jednom godišnje, u oktobru, pred početak školske godine. Još nisam znao ni da čitam, a već sam duboko poštovao te stećke. Nisam nikada skupljao bilje niti kamenom gađao ptice. Ali knjige su bile moje ptice i moja gnezda, moje domaće životinje, moja štala i moja polja; biblioteka je bila ogledalo u kojem se ogledao čitav svet; ona je imala njegovu beskrajnu gustinu, njegovu raznovrstnost; neočekivana iznenađenja. Ja sam bio našao svoju veru: ništa mi se nije činilo važnije od knjige. Biblioteka, to je za mene bio hram."
Ovo je jedna od knjiga u kojima više uživaš kasnije, razmišljaju��i o pročitanom i vraćajući se citatima. Manje za vreme čitanja. Ima ih takvih.
Ima tu naravno naknadne pameti, pošto Sartr 50 godina kasnije vidi stvari drugačije nego što ih je video njegov mali-ja. Priča kako su te godine uticale na njegove ideje i filozofiju, ali uzroke objašnjava na osnovu posledica. Naučnici bi rekli - nije ti dobar naučni metod. Ali dobra je psihološka vežba.
A u centru svega su knjige i razvoj njega kao čitaoca i kao pisca (kaže doduše da nikad nije imao talenta za pisanje, samo naporan rad i upornost); knjige su mu jedini prijatelj i važnije od ljudi.
"Ja sam svoj život počeo onako kako ću ga bez sumnje i završiti: među knjigama. U dedinoj sobi za rad bilo ih je svuda; bilo je izdato naređenje da se prašina sme brisati samo jednom godišnje, u oktobru, pred početak školske godine. Još nisam znao ni da čitam, a već sam duboko poštovao te stećke. Nisam nikada skupljao bilje niti kamenom gađao ptice. Ali knjige su bile moje ptice i moja gnezda, moje domaće životinje, moja štala i moja polja; biblioteka je bila ogledalo u kojem se ogledao čitav svet; ona je imala njegovu beskrajnu gustinu, njegovu raznovrstnost; neočekivana iznenađenja. Ja sam bio našao svoju veru: ništa mi se nije činilo važnije od knjige. Biblioteka, to je za mene bio hram."
Ovo je jedna od knjiga u kojima više uživaš kasnije, razmišljaju��i o pročitanom i vraćajući se citatima. Manje za vreme čitanja. Ima ih takvih.
November 7, 2019
خواندن و نوشتن، مامن هر انسانی است که در شبیه شدن به الگوهای اجتماعی، نابلد و تاتوان است. چقدر سارتر، خوب به جای بیشتر آنها که خود را نویسندگان بزرگ آینده میدانستند، حرف زده است. چقدر همه چیز دقیق است و مطابق واقع.
پسری کوتاه و نه چندان مطابق معیارهای جذابیت کودکان زمانهاش، پناهش را در جهان دیگری میبیند که قهرمان افسانهای اش خود اوست. جایی که «ژان پل سارتر»، نام بزرگی است.
چه خوب که جهان طوری میچرخد که نام پسرک، حقیقتا بزرگی خود را از آن بیرون بکشد.
پسری کوتاه و نه چندان مطابق معیارهای جذابیت کودکان زمانهاش، پناهش را در جهان دیگری میبیند که قهرمان افسانهای اش خود اوست. جایی که «ژان پل سارتر»، نام بزرگی است.
چه خوب که جهان طوری میچرخد که نام پسرک، حقیقتا بزرگی خود را از آن بیرون بکشد.
May 20, 2023
I used to trot along looking tough, my hand in my mother's, confident that I could protect her. Is it the memory of those years? Even today, I cannot see an over-solemn child talking gravely and affectionately to its child mother without pleasure; I like these gentle yet shy friendships which spring up far away from men and against them. I stare at these childlike couples for a long time, and then I remember that I am a man and look away.
Before, I saw my life in images: my death inducing my birth and my birth projecting me towards towards my death; as soon as I stopped seeing this reciprocity, I became it myself and stretched myself to breaking-point between these two extremes, being born and dying with every heart-beat. My eternity to come became my concrete future: it left its mark on every second of frivolity and it was, at the centre of the deepest concentration, a still deeper absent-mindedness, the emptiness of all plenitude and the trivial unreality of reality; it killed, from a distance, the taste of a caramel in my mouth and the joys and griefs in my heart; but it preserved the emptiest of moments for the sole reason that it would come at last and that it brought me nearer to it; it gave me the patience to live...I lived serenely in a state of extreme urgency: always in front of myself, everything absorbed me but nothing held me back.
Culture saves nothing and nobody, nor does it justify. But it is a product of man: he projects himself in it; this critical mirror alone shows him his image.
...my one concern was to save myself - nothing in my hands, nothing in my pockets - through work and faith.
Before, I saw my life in images: my death inducing my birth and my birth projecting me towards towards my death; as soon as I stopped seeing this reciprocity, I became it myself and stretched myself to breaking-point between these two extremes, being born and dying with every heart-beat. My eternity to come became my concrete future: it left its mark on every second of frivolity and it was, at the centre of the deepest concentration, a still deeper absent-mindedness, the emptiness of all plenitude and the trivial unreality of reality; it killed, from a distance, the taste of a caramel in my mouth and the joys and griefs in my heart; but it preserved the emptiest of moments for the sole reason that it would come at last and that it brought me nearer to it; it gave me the patience to live...I lived serenely in a state of extreme urgency: always in front of myself, everything absorbed me but nothing held me back.
Culture saves nothing and nobody, nor does it justify. But it is a product of man: he projects himself in it; this critical mirror alone shows him his image.
...my one concern was to save myself - nothing in my hands, nothing in my pockets - through work and faith.
October 21, 2009
This shit is pretty good. Sartre is smart. What more can i say? This is about his childhood. i dont know how he remembers so much shit. maybe he is a robot? maybe i am a robot? the key here: sartre is an awesome writer. Thats enough.
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June 23, 2018زندگی هر چه پوچ تر باشد مرگ تحمل ناپذیرتر میشود
May 10, 2019
فهم زبان سارتر در این کتاب بسیار دشواره و طبیعتا ترجمش هم کار سختی بوده.نگاه فیلسوفانهی سارتر به بچگیش جذابیتهایی داره اما به نظرم خوندنش خیلی واجب نیست.
February 24, 2017
"Δεν υπάρχει καλός πατέρας, είναι κανόνας· κι ας μην κατηγορούμε τους ανθρώπους αλλά το δεσμό της πατρότητας που είναι σάπιος. Τίποτα καλύτερο από το να κάνεις παιδιά, αλλά και το να έχεις παιδιά τι εκφυλισμός! Αν ζούσε, ο πατέρας μου θα είχε πέσει πάνω μου φαρδύς-πλατύς και θα με είχε συνθλίψει. Για καλή μου τύχη, πέθανε πολύ νέος· ανάμεσα στους Αινείες που κουβαλούν στην πλάτη τον πατέρα τους, εγώ περνάω από τη μία όχθη στην άλλη μόνος και όλο απέχθεια γι' αυτούς τους αόρατους γεννήτορες που καβαλικεύουν τους γιούς τους εφ'όρου ζωής· άφησα πίσω μου έναν νεαρό νεκρό που δεν πρόλαβε να γίνει πατέρας μου και που σήμερα θα μπορούσε να είναι ο γιός μου.Ήταν άραγε καλό ή κακό; Δεν ξέρω, αλλά προσυπογράφω ευχαρίστως την γνώμη ενός διαπρεπούς ψυχαναλυτή: Δεν έχω Υπερεγώ"
December 15, 2020
Grįžau prie šios knygos, nes šiuo metu skaitau dešimteriopai didesnės apimties žydų rašytojo Amos Oz autobiografinį romaną "Pasakojimas apie meilę ir tamsą". Manau, kad tiems, kurie ruošiasi skaityti paminėtą knygą, verta pirmiau perskaityti Ž. P. Sartro "Žodžiai". Skaičiau prieš daug metų, bet įspūdis išliko geras.
August 19, 2019
كلماتك يا ساتر...
في كتاب الكلمات لجان بول سارتر يحكي سارتر عن مذاكرته من الطفوله وكيف بدا شغفه للقراءة منذ الصغر حتي اصبح كاتبا ..
ادركت لقرأتي لكلمات سارتر ان الحياة ربما تكون كلمات ليس لها صوت ولا تردد ولكنا تخترق القلب حتماً ❤❤
في كتاب الكلمات لجان بول سارتر يحكي سارتر عن مذاكرته من الطفوله وكيف بدا شغفه للقراءة منذ الصغر حتي اصبح كاتبا ..
ادركت لقرأتي لكلمات سارتر ان الحياة ربما تكون كلمات ليس لها صوت ولا تردد ولكنا تخترق القلب حتماً ❤❤
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March 13, 2023Abandon à la p.117
September 3, 2024
«افکار درونیام هیچگاه مرا به برتری از دیگران رهنمون نکرد … موجودیت یک انسان ثمرهی انسانهای دیگر است و او به همان اندازه ارزش دارد که دیگران.»
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کتاب اتوبیوگرافی بود از بخشهایی از زندگی سارتر که برعکس اونچه که خود نویسنده قصد داشت از نظر منِ خواننده شاهکار نبود. منو خیلی به فکر فرو نبرد و چیز زیادی به من اضافه نکرد.
زندگینامهی کامل هم نبود و بیشتر دوران کودکی سارتر رو دربر داشت که خیلی متفاوت از زندگی بقیه نبود و اتفاقات جالب یا خیلی متفاوتی رو هم شامل نمیشد.
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کتاب اتوبیوگرافی بود از بخشهایی از زندگی سارتر که برعکس اونچه که خود نویسنده قصد داشت از نظر منِ خواننده شاهکار نبود. منو خیلی به فکر فرو نبرد و چیز زیادی به من اضافه نکرد.
زندگینامهی کامل هم نبود و بیشتر دوران کودکی سارتر رو دربر داشت که خیلی متفاوت از زندگی بقیه نبود و اتفاقات جالب یا خیلی متفاوتی رو هم شامل نمیشد.
February 27, 2013
«Ήθελα να είναι ένας αποχαιρετισμός στη λογοτεχνία και την ωραία λογοτεχνική γρ��φή. Ήθελα οι άνθρωποι που θα το διαβάσουν να βρεθούν παρασυρμένοι σε ένα είδος αμφισβήτησης της λογοτεχνίας από την ίδια την λογοτεχνία». Αυτά μας λέει ο Σαρτρ στη συνέντευξη που παρατίθεται στο επίμετρο του βιβλίου. Έγραψε τις «Λέξεις» με λογοτεχνικότητα γιατί ήθελε να απαλλαγεί από αυτή, να δείξει πως η λογοτεχνικότητα έχει πεθάνει. Μιλούσε ο φιλόσοφος μέσα του∙ ο λογοτέχνης κατάφερε εντελώς το αντίθετο, γράφοντας την αυτοβιογραφία του με όρους τόσο λογοτεχνικούς, με προσεγμένη και την κάθε λεπτομέρεια, άφησε ένα βιβλίο υποδειγματικό στην αφήγηση που μαρτυρά πως εκείνος ο μικρός μυθοπλάστης των νεανικών του χρόνων δεν πέθανε ποτέ.
«Οι Λέξεις» είναι η αυτοβιογραφία του φιλόσοφου του υπαρξισμού που εκτείνεται από την παιδική του ηλικία ως την… παιδική του ηλικία. Καλύπτει το κρίσιμο χρονικό διάστημα από τη στιγμή που κατάλαβε τον εαυτό του γύρω στα 6 ως τα 10-11 περίπου, όπου όλα των έσπρωχναν προς τα βιβλία. Όταν ήταν ακόμα μωρό ο πατέρας του πέθανε, κι αυτό τον σημάδεψε. Λέει ο ίδιος :«αν ζούσε ο πατέρας μου θα είχε πέσει πάνω μου φαρδύς-πλατύς και θα με είχε συνθλίψει. Για καλή μου τύχη πέθανε πολύ νέος∙». Για καιρό μένει με τη μητέρα του που του συμπεριφέρεται περισσότερο σα συνένοχη μεγάλη αδελφή και τους παππούδες του. Το σπίτι του παππού του Καρλ Σβάιτσερ είναι γεμάτο βιβλία κι εκεί μυείται πολύ νωρίς στην τέχνη της ανάγνωσης, διαβάζει αριστουργήματα και καταλήγει να συμπαθεί τις περιπέτειες και τα περιοδικά φαντασίας. Δεν τον στέλνουν σχολείο, είναι ο αγαπημένος του παππού, της μαμάς, τον κανακεύουν, τον λατρεύουν. Και του δίνουν προορισμό στη ζωή «αυτό το παιδί θα γράψει», όπως άλλοι θα έλεγαν «θα γίνει γιατρός ή δικηγόρος». Γράφει μυθιστορήματα και ιστορίες στα 6, τα 7, τα 8 του, τα ξεχνά, τα ξαναπιάνει, είναι ένα μοναχικό παιδί που μεγαλώνει ανάμεσα σε ενήλικες και βιβλία και έχει ανάγκη την αποδοχή και των δυο.
Η γραφή του Σαρτρ είναι μαγνητική, δε σε αφήνει να αφήσεις το βιβλίο κάτω. Κατάφερα να ταυτιστώ με την παιδική ηλικία ενός νομπελίστα (κι ας το αρνήθηκε), υπαρξιστή φιλοσόφου που έμεινε ορφανός μωρό και γεννήθηκε εκατό χρόνια πριν από μένα, να βρω κομμάτια του εαυτού μου, να κάνω μαζί του την δική μου αυτοκριτική∙ άντε τώρα βρες άκρη. Ο ίδιος λέει πως στάθηκε αυστηρός απέναντι στο παιδί που ήταν, για μένα η διάθεση ακύρωσης έβγαλε συμπάθεια και ευαισθησία για το παιδάκι που υπήρξε. Αποφάσισε, όπως λέει στη συνέντευξη, να μη συμπεριλάβει το σεξουαλικό του ξύπνημα (παίζαν με ένα κοριτσάκι το γιατρό), ούτε τα μετέπειτα χρόνια του σε μια επαρχιακή πόλη όταν η μαμά του ξαναπαντρεύτηκε (τα πιο δύσκολα της ζωή του). Με λίγα λόγια προστάτεψε τον νεαρό μυθιστορηματικό Σαρτρ από τις κακουχίες του μέλλοντος, τον άφησε παιδικό και ατόφιο στα μάτια του λογοτεχνικού κοινού και νόμισε πως τελείωσε με αυτόν. Αμ δε, εξήντα χρόνια μετά αποδεικνύεται πως μέσα από την πένα του τον παρέδωσε στην αιωνιότητα.
http://diavazontas.blogspot.gr/2012/1...
«Οι Λέξεις» είναι η αυτοβιογραφία του φιλόσοφου του υπαρξισμού που εκτείνεται από την παιδική του ηλικία ως την… παιδική του ηλικία. Καλύπτει το κρίσιμο χρονικό διάστημα από τη στιγμή που κατάλαβε τον εαυτό του γύρω στα 6 ως τα 10-11 περίπου, όπου όλα των έσπρωχναν προς τα βιβλία. Όταν ήταν ακόμα μωρό ο πατέρας του πέθανε, κι αυτό τον σημάδεψε. Λέει ο ίδιος :«αν ζούσε ο πατέρας μου θα είχε πέσει πάνω μου φαρδύς-πλατύς και θα με είχε συνθλίψει. Για καλή μου τύχη πέθανε πολύ νέος∙». Για καιρό μένει με τη μητέρα του που του συμπεριφέρεται περισσότερο σα συνένοχη μεγάλη αδελφή και τους παππούδες του. Το σπίτι του παππού του Καρλ Σβάιτσερ είναι γεμάτο βιβλία κι εκεί μυείται πολύ νωρίς στην τέχνη της ανάγνωσης, διαβάζει αριστουργήματα και καταλήγει να συμπαθεί τις περιπέτειες και τα περιοδικά φαντασίας. Δεν τον στέλνουν σχολείο, είναι ο αγαπημένος του παππού, της μαμάς, τον κανακεύουν, τον λατρεύουν. Και του δίνουν προορισμό στη ζωή «αυτό το παιδί θα γράψει», όπως άλλοι θα έλεγαν «θα γίνει γιατρός ή δικηγόρος». Γράφει μυθιστορήματα και ιστορίες στα 6, τα 7, τα 8 του, τα ξεχνά, τα ξαναπιάνει, είναι ένα μοναχικό παιδί που μεγαλώνει ανάμεσα σε ενήλικες και βιβλία και έχει ανάγκη την αποδοχή και των δυο.
Η γραφή του Σαρτρ είναι μαγνητική, δε σε αφήνει να αφήσεις το βιβλίο κάτω. Κατάφερα να ταυτιστώ με την παιδική ηλικία ενός νομπελίστα (κι ας το αρνήθηκε), υπαρξιστή φιλοσόφου που έμεινε ορφανός μωρό και γεννήθηκε εκατό χρόνια πριν από μένα, να βρω κομμάτια του εαυτού μου, να κάνω μαζί του την δική μου αυτοκριτική∙ άντε τώρα βρες άκρη. Ο ίδιος λέει πως στάθηκε αυστηρός απέναντι στο παιδί που ήταν, για μένα η διάθεση ακύρωσης έβγαλε συμπάθεια και ευαισθησία για το παιδάκι που υπήρξε. Αποφάσισε, όπως λέει στη συνέντευξη, να μη συμπεριλάβει το σεξουαλικό του ξύπνημα (παίζαν με ένα κοριτσάκι το γιατρό), ούτε τα μετέπειτα χρόνια του σε μια επαρχιακή πόλη όταν η μαμά του ξαναπαντρεύτηκε (τα πιο δύσκολα της ζωή του). Με λίγα λόγια προστάτεψε τον νεαρό μυθιστορηματικό Σαρτρ από τις κακουχίες του μέλλοντος, τον άφησε παιδικό και ατόφιο στα μάτια του λογοτεχνικού κοινού και νόμισε πως τελείωσε με αυτόν. Αμ δε, εξήντα χρόνια μετά αποδεικνύεται πως μέσα από την πένα του τον παρέδωσε στην αιωνιότητα.
http://diavazontas.blogspot.gr/2012/1...
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