another with a strict necessity.” But unlike the abstractness of music or
even of the theater, the film unveils the humdrum duration of our daily
lives, revealing its inhuman necessity. “At the same time, the motion
picture is of all the arts the closest to the real world: real men live in real
landscapes” (Contat and Rybalkaii: 58 ). It is this art that will instruct
young people about the beauty of the world in which they live: the poetry
of speed, machines, and the inhuman and splendid inevitability of
industry – the kind of “wisdom” set forth by Sartre’s favorite Charlie
Chaplin inModern Times.
Nor was this high-school address his only foray into adult education.
While at Le Havre, Sartre gave a series of public talks on major
twentieth-century authors such as Faulkner, Dos Pasos, Gide, Conrad,
Virginia Woolf, Hemingway and even his friend Nizan. Many of these
were eventually published in the prestigiousNouvelle Revue Franc ̧aisein
the late 1930 s. One set has recently come to light.^5
(^5) Some of these were later reprinted in the initial volume of his essays and occasional pieces
calledSituations. Simone de Beauvoir rather unexpectedly phoned Annie Cohen-Solal one
morning in 1982 asking her to drop by her apartment for something that would interest her.
She presented her with the 313 -page manuscript of Sartre’s notes for his second set of five
“chats” (causeries)onLa Technique du roman et les grands courants de pense ́e contemporaine
(Technique of the Novel and Major Currents of Contemporary Thought) delivered at the “Lyre
havraise” hall in the winter of 1932 / 1933. These are now transcribed along with comments by
Annie Cohen-Solal, Anne Mathieu and Julien Piat inLes confe ́rences du Havre sur le roman,
E ́tudes sartriennesno. 16 (Paris: Ousia, 2013 ); the essay series is hereafter cited as ES. Sartre’s
“chats” of the previous year on “L’individu dans la litte ́rature contemporaine” (“The
Individual in Contemporary Literature”) seem to have been lost. But the “chronology” of
ORlists Sartre as delivering “lectures on German philosophers and on literary subjects ” in
the academic years 1931 – 1932 and 1932 – 1933. We know that could not have been the case. Of
course, if the announced topic for one of these lectures was actually the topic of Aron’s lecture
in Sartre’s absence ( 1933 – 1934 ) or of Sartre’s talks after his return the following year, then the
link to the Gurvitch book is no indication of Sartre’s familiarity with Husserl prior to the
“epiphany” over the apricot cocktail. One wonders if a bibliophile like Sartre in preparing his
lectures would have read an important work by Georges Gurvitch entitledCurrent Tendencies
in German Philosophy(E. Husserl,M. Scheler,E. Lask,N. Hartmann and M. Heidegger),
published in 1931 by Vrin with a preface by Le ́on Brunschvicg (seeMe ́moires 40 ). These were
so-called “free lectures” that Gurvitch had delivered at the Sorbonne over three previous
years. Aron insists that they preceded Husserl’s influential ( 1929 ) lectures at the Sorbonne,
Cartesian Meditations. Though Sartre, unlike Merleau-Ponty, did not attend those lectures, if
he did read the Gurvitch book, it seems additional evidence that his introduction to Husserl
was not that epiphanic conversation with Aron that Beauvoir says it was. John Gerassi agrees,
citing conversations that Sartre had with Fernando (Gerassi’s father) “who had been Hei-
degger’s classmate in Husserl’s class” (Gerassi,J-P S. Hated Conscience, 113 ). Further
evidence comes from the notebooks of a Japanese nobleman, Shu ̄zōKuki, who visited
50 Teaching in the lyce ́e, 1931–1939