Vol. 7 · No. 2 · 2001 · pp. 58-75 (18)

Isabelle Grell-Feldbruegge

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Abstract

… but he still lives in me. Certain details obstinately resist. If I insist, he will rise up and dominate me. … I can't stand it any longer. I make him into a character, whom I can torment in my own way. (Saint Genet)

Those who know Sartre's work and those who, after all the recent publicity, have yielded to the temptation to take down from their bookshelves the works of "the little man," as some close friends called him, will understand that this article is about the chief character of Sartre's unfinished trilogy of novels known as Les chemins de la liberté—Daniel, Mathieu's fellow-student at the École normale, Daniel the "archangel," Daniel the shamefaced pederast, Daniel the gaping wound, Daniel the strange hero, Daniel the recurrent figure in many of Sartre's works. We do not intend to offer yet another explanation of this handsome young literature professor's convoluted character to the explanations that already exist, nor to interpret yet again his detestation of mankind and his prayers to God, which the author openly mocks. What we wish to do in these few pages is firstly to shed light on the procedures of Daniel's imagination and evolution, and secondly to analyze how the author's goals changed as, while writing the trilogy, he evolved from Gallimard's up and coming star into the symbol of the search for freedom, the spokesman whom some disagreed with, criticised, despised, while others glorified him and praised him to the skies. We would like to try and elucidate the evolution of this character, steering between the free future of a literary work in progress and the ungraspable heart of darkness. We do not, of course, naively hope to penetrate all the secrets of Sartre's imagination, or image in action, in the brief confines of an article. If we manage to shed some light on the novelwriting method, to show the procedures and understand them on the basis of what can be seen, we will have achieved our purpose.