Philippe entre Sartre et Poulou. Genèse manuscrite d'un personnage

Abstract

Ail agree that in Sartre's novel cycle Les Chemins de la liberté there figures a young man, a general's son-in-law, whose problem is that he is nineteen years old in 1938 (thus, as well, he is not subject to conscription). How is this character, Philippe Grésigne, put together in the rough drafts ? In his preliminary notes Sartre creates a portrait of an adolescent who is far more complex, more intelligent and completely lost -lost not just in political terms but also in emotional ones as well. In developing this idea prominence has been given to three entirely crossed out manuscript pages, in order to follow Sartre imagining this character who cannot be dissociated, in the rough drafts, from Rose, his mother. The avowed feelings of Philippe towards his mother (the Œdipus complex, which Sartre openly derides in the definitive version) are not quite as devoid of nuance as the final text may lead us to believe. By bringing Philippe to life under his pen, Sartre imagined what he might have become had he not chosen to take refuge in writing, and had the war not snatched him up. Contrary to Sartre from 1939 onwards, Philippe is too young to answer to the requisitioning of his times.