The ways of freedom

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The Paths of Freedom (French: Les chemins de la liberté ) is an unfinished four-part novel cycle by Jean-Paul Sartre about existentialism , responsibility and the dilemma of commitment, before and during the Vichy regime . The technically bold, large-scale work, which can also be understood as an examination of Joyce , Dos Passos and Faulkner , was published between 1945 and 1949 (four volumes in the German edition totaled around 1150 pages). Michel Contat speaks of a romance-like philosophy.

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The three novels L'âge de raison , Le sursis and La mort dans l'âme develop around Mathieu, a socialist philosophy teacher and a group of friends. The trilogy should have been followed by a fourth novel, Drôle d'amitié , but Sartre failed to complete it and only two chapters took shape.

The books were designed in response to the events of World War II, and in particular the occupation of France by the Nazis, and they embody certain shifts in the author's views on action in life and in literature, which are then reflected in the work L'existentialisme est un humanisme , which met with opposition in all camps.

There are:

Sartre began work on the first volume in early 1939, so he wrote in the present tense, literally. In the following period he was exposed to the uncertainty of a war "that seems to get stuck". From one day to the next, in 1945 Sartre became the thought leader or conscience of an entire generation and, on the other hand, was confronted with changed moral conditions in view of the new world order. In 1959, Sartre was still thinking of resuming work on The Last Chance .

The novel series was also prepared as a thirteen-part television series for the BBC in 1970 with Michael Bryant in the role of Mathieu.

meaning

“ Sartre understands situation to mean the totality of what determines human existence from outside: the body, the social milieu and the historical situation into which he was born. The freedom of man consists in the fact that he can accept or reject a situation, that is to say that he also creates it in this sense. Man not only stands in history , he also makes it, whether he is active or passive in relation to it. "

- Anneliese Botond : Kindler's new literary lexicon , Volume 14, Page 781 f.

From a technical point of view, Sartre completely removes the distance from the action, so the reader is also in the evoked moment in his unimpaired relativity and subjectivity. An overview may only shine through in the complex Der Aufschub .

The contemporary criticism of the first two volumes was benevolent, but wanted to wait for the continuation, which then turned into a disappointment for Sartre.

Sartre rejected the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 in order not to allow himself to be captured.

"According to the consistent atheist [Sartre], man is fully responsible for his actions because all world order comes from his freedom."

- The Brockhaus literature: in eight volumes

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Parts of this article were in the first version on January 26, 2009 a translation of the corresponding article from the English language Wikipedia in the version of January 25, 2009. A list of the authors is available here .
  2. ↑ a b c Walter Jens (ed.): Kindlers new literature lexicon . Vol. 14, p. 781
  3. ↑ Contat in The Last Chance , p. 180
  4. ↑ Contat, p. 13
  5. ^ Contat, p. 181
  6. ^ Contat, p. 182
  7. ↑ Contat, p. 191
  8. ↑ Contat, p. 205. First published in Les Temps Modernes November / December 1949 (Contat, p. 9). Contat sees the two chapters as mourning work for his friend Paul Nizan († 1940).
  9. ↑ imdb.com
  10. ↑ Contat, p. 208 f.
  11. ↑ (to the person). Werner Habicht (Hrsg.): The literature Brockhaus: in eight volumes . Bibliographisches Institut & FA Brockhaus AG, Mannheim 1995, fundamentally revised. and exp. Paperback, ISBN 3-411-11800-8 , Volume 7, Page 139