Lest we conclude that Flaubert’s concept of art as the imagining
of being is merely the subjective outpouring of a disturbed mind, the
last move in Sartre’s argument links this concept with the “objective
neurosis” of French society in the 1830 s and 1840 s, which left its artists
no choice but “neurotic art” (l’art ne ́vrose), namely, a complex of atti-
tudes that stressed detachment, solitude, derealization, failure (l’e ́chec),^48
misanthropy and nihilism – features we recognize from Sartre’s
depiction of the world of Baudelaire and Mallarme ́. The French under
Louis-Philippe were developing a self image that was positivist and
utilitarian, as personified in Flaubert’s father.^49 Not surprisingly, Sartre
sees the younger son’s choice of neurotic art in the crisis of 1844 both as
an anti-utilitarian reaction and as a prophetic anticipation of France’s
opting for the unreal in the person of Napole ́on III, the latter in flight
from the dark side of its image as revealed by the massacres of 1848.^50
For Sartre, this is the deep reason for Flaubert’s popularity in the
Second Empire: the unreal was addressing the unreal. “At Pont-l’E ́veˆque
a cycle was initiated; at Sedan, it was completed.”^51 In a manner that we
have come to expect from Sartre, biography has broadened into social
criticism; analytic individualism has been subsumed into the concrete
universal of dialectical reason.
It is in this context, and armed with the concepts ofThe Imaginary
and Search for a Methodas well as the terminology of Being and
Nothingnessand theCritique, that we address five topics that pervade
(^48) Conduit d’e ́chec(failure behavior) is “behavior with two objectives, the more superficial being
to reach a definite goal and the more profound being to fall short of it” (FIv:p.no.;IFiii: 173 ,
emended).
(^49) SeeFIv: 618 ;IFiii: 656 – 657. The table conversation between Flaubert’s father and mother
(skeptical scientism versus a weak but traditional religious belief) echoes Sartre’s childhood
recollection of similar exchanges between his grandparents (seeWords 63 f.). “At first, then,
the contradiction is not in him but rather in family structures. There is a collective Flaubert
pride but also a Flaubert anxiety, which translates the objective conflicts of the period.” The
industrialization of society “meant economic and social transformations demanding a com-
50 plete overhaul of institutions” (FIi:^487 ).
The “June Days” of 1848 refer to the violent uprising of the workers on June 23 – 26 when the
National Workshops that gave them employment at public expense were closed. The
government called on General Cavaignac, a successful military leader in Algeria, to quell
the riots, which he did with severity. It is believed that ten thousand people were either killed
or injured. The general sent four thousand of the insurgents into exile in Algeria. Sartre
51 reads this as the unmasking of the violence inherent in capitalist society.
FIv: 559 ;FIiii: 595.
400 Existential biography: Flaubert and others