Jean-Paul Sartre - The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821–1857, An Abridged Edition

Jean-Paul Sartre

Translated by Carol Cosman

Abridged and Introduced by Joseph S. Catalano

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2023 by The University of Chicago

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Published 2023

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-82231-0 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-82232-7 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-82230-3 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226822303.001.0001

LIdiot de la famille ditions GALLIMARD, 19711972

The University of Chicago Press published Jean-Paul Sartres entire work The Family Idiot in five volumes between 1981 and 1994. The present volume is an abridged edition highlighting the Works main ideas.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sartre, Jean-Paul, 19051980, author. | Catalano, Joseph S., editor. | Cosman, Carol, translator.

Title: The family idiot : Gustave Flaubert, 18211857, an abridged edition / Jean-Paul Sartre ; translated by Carol Cosman ; abridged and introduced by Joseph S. Catalano.

Other titles: Idiot de la famille. English

Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022034885 | ISBN 9780226822310 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226822327 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226822303 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Flaubert, Gustave, 18211880. | NovelistsBiography. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French | PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Existentialism

Classification: LCC PQ2247 .S313 2023 | DDC 843/.8dc23/eng/20220824

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034885

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Joseph S. Catalano

When the French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre (190580) was in his seventies, going blind and aware of his approaching death, he wrote and published a 2,800-page biography of Gustave Flaubert (182180). The French publisher Gallimard brought out the work in three volumes from 1971 to 1972. An English translation was made by Carol Cosman and published by the University of Chicago Press in five volumes from 1981 to 1993.

Cosman writes in her translators note in her first volume:

LIdiot de la famille, or The Family Idiot as I have called it, is Sartres last major work and a kind of summa of everything in the way of his philosophic, social, and literary thought that had gone before. It is, as Sartre says, an exercise in methodologya case in point illustrating the procedure formulated in Search for a Method. But of course Sartre uses this exercise to lead us on an exhaustive search for Flaubert, whose person and persona provide opportunity for the empathetic, imaginative reconstruction of a psyche, for social analysis, for investigations of epistemological and ontological issues, for literary and linguistic speculation.

Granting all the above, we might still rightly ask, Why all the effort?

The title of this massive work gives a clue to its importance, The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 18211857. Was the French novelist Gustave Flaubert regarded as the idiot of the Flaubert family? Sartres answer is yes! Was this only when Gustave was young and through some early mistaken judgment about his abilities, and did it change when Gustave became famous? Sartres answer is no! The idiot scribbles, they said, when Gustave was young, and when Gustave was famouslook, he continues to scribble.

Surely the members of Flaubert family were not idiots themselves. How could they have held such a view of one of their children? The answer, for Sartre, comes in paying attention to the ways these parents viewed their projected family life. The eminent doctor Achille-Clophas Flaubert and his wife Caroline had plans for their children, and, Sartre observes, when parents have decisive plans, their children have destinies. Clearly there is nothing wrong in parents having some kind of plans for their children. For Sartre, however, all the written evidence points to these particular parents aiming for their children to be reflections of themselves.

For a long time, the family plan seemed to work out. Achille, the firstborn son, was bright, quick to learn the alphabet, and awake to all that went on about him. He fulfilled his destiny by becoming a doctor like his eminent father. Later, after Gustave was born, Caroline, the only daughter, was similarly a quick learner, and she made a good match in marriage like her mother, for whom she was named. From birth, however, Gustave was different. He was slow, backward, appearing always to be in a fog, doing whatever crazy thing his parents might suggest as if words had no real meaning for him. It was as if he suspected what they wanted of him and was unable or unwilling to conform to the family plan.

He paid a price for his resistance. Sartre does not mince words: Gustaves relationship with his mother deprived him of affirmative power, tainted his relationship to the word and to truth, destined him for sexual perversion; his relationship with his father made him lose his sense of reality (Cosman 2:69). We might be tempted to put all the blame on the father alone, but Sartre makes a case that the mother refused to put herself on the side of her children, particularly Gustave.

There was also another facet to the family life, one that particularly affected Gustave. The childrens destiny was controlled by a return to the older notion of the right of primogeniturethe firstborn son was to be the Flaubert child. Mother Carolines firstborn was, in fact, a son, Achille. No doubt, she would have dutifully cared for a firstborn daughter, but the expectation of a son would have shadowed this birth. When a daughter, another Caroline, was born, she was the only daughter and thus had her own special place within the family. Gustave, however, was at birth an in-between, a second son who could never surpass the firstborn status of his older brother nor would ever receive the gendered status of his sister.

Finally, there was another consideration that made Gustaves childhood life somewhat ambiguous. The family wanted more children, particularly sons, but there were deaths, one before Gustave was born and one after. As far as sons were concerned, only the first seemed both strong and fully awake to the world: Big brother Achille became, alone, the fragile hope of a family plagued by death. When Gustave arrived, the chips were already down (Cosman 1:101).

The chips are down recalls the language of Being and Nothingness, and the general implication is that reflective decisions about how we should behave frequently follow on more basic earlier attitudes that Sartre refers to as our fundamental project. Not everything we do calls into question our general view of life; this would be burdensome. But now and then we do encounter the ever-present possibility of radical changeconversions. I will return to this idea, but for the present it is sufficient to note that the phrase the chips are down refers not only to the precarious position of Gustave as a child who might die but more specifically to his twofold secondary place within the family, second-born son but also fragile in body and slow in mind. Thus, whatever attention was given to Gustave, this attention arose from the lived doubt whether he would survive and, if he did survive, whether he would make the grade as a Flaubert.