beyond his lucidity; for his basic question was: “Can we ever find within
determinism a way out of it?” Can we reverse praxis and rediscover our
subjectivity by reducing both the universe and ourselves to objectivity? He system-
atically applied to Art what was still merely a philosophical principle which later
would become a political maxim: “Create and by creating, create yourself ”
(Faire et en faisant se faire).^29
Flaubert: the final triumph of the imaginary?
Throughout our investigation we have underscored the decisive
presence of the imaginary in Sartre’s life and works. It should come
as no surprise, then, that he would describe his massive “biography” of
Flaubert’s life and times as a sequel toThe Imaginary. The intervening
writings exploit this propensity, whether it be his early likening
of imaging consciousness to consciousness in general as the locus of
negativity, possibility and lack,^30 his appeal to the reconciling of
contradictories “if only in the imaginary” (seeSG 599 ), his critique
of the French Communist Party as lacking imagination, or his prag-
matic appeal to the “as if ” (comme si) as an imaginative reenforcement
of his arguments. Accordingly, his “biographies” focus on distin-
guished artists who “choose” the imaginary dimension to communicate
their views and values. It is as if their choices are ours: even if we find
ourselves mired in the prosaic world of the factual, the dimension of
the imaginary as the realm of negativity, possibility and lack remains
poised to challenge and even undermine our received opinions.
Such was Sartre’s Flaubert, who brought the Sartrean search for the
concrete to full term as the singular universal – the choice to create
Madame Bovary, his alter ego (“Madame Bovary is me”).^31 Christina
Howells phrased it nicely: “We are witnessing the transformation of the
(^29) (M 144 ;F 167 ). Benjamin Suhl has plausibly proposed this as Sartre’s existentialist maxim
as well. See Benjamin Suhl,Jean-Paul Sartre: The Philosopher as Literary Critic(New York:
Columbia University Press, 1970 ), 264. We noted its role on the positive dimension of
30 Sartre’s second ethics.
For an extended treatment of these claims, see Flynn “Role of the Image in Sartre’s
31 Aesthetic,”^431 –^442.
Sartre ascribes this to Flaubert’s “androgynous” nature, adding: “I’m certainly androgynous
(androgynie) myself, which is not a flaw” (Catherine Cle ́mont and Bernard Pingaud, inter-
view with Jean-Paul Sartre,L’Arc 79 [November 1979 ]: 37 ).
Flaubert: the final triumph of the imaginary? 395