Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr is a book by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

 about the writer Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

. It was first published in 1952

1952 in literature

The year 1952, in literature involved some significant events and new literary publications.-Events:*J. L. Carr takes over as headmaster of Highfields Primary School, Kettering, which will eventually furnish the subject matter for his novel, The Harpole Report.*November 25 - Agatha Christie's play...

. Sartre described it as an attempt "to prove that genius

Genius

Genius is something or someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight....

 is not a gift but the way out that one invents in desperate cases." Sartre also based his character Goetz in his play The Devil and the Good Lord

The Devil and the Good Lord

The Devil and the Good Lord is a play by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The play concerns the moral choices of its characters, warlord Goetz, clergy Heinrich, communist leader Nasti and others during the German Peasants' War...

(1951) on his analysis of Genet's psychology and morality.

Introduction

In the introduction to this book, the heart of Sartre's discussion of Genet is his description of Genet as belonging to that family of people who are known by the barbaric name of "passéistes", which Sartre defines in the opening pages of Saint Genet as one who defines all of his experiences based on a period of time in one's youth where a spiritual metamorphosis occurs. Sartre notes that Genet selected those experiences in his writing which occurred between the ages of 10 and 15. This constitutes what Sartre referred to as the sacred liturgical drama. Sartre likens this to a rite of passage in primitive societies. The essence of this rite is one of death, not an actual death, but a death of one's innocent youth and a re-birth as another person. i.e., the death one can look back to as opposed to the physical death which awaits us.

Sartre believes that Genet, in his writing, identifies a significant event in one's youth where one realizes that one is beyond remedy. Sartre states that Genet carries within himself, the "vertigo of those beyond repair". He wishes to die again. In an instant, he gives himself away to those cathartic crises which multiply and are thus carried to the sublime realization of their first fascination: crime, capital punishment, poetry, the orgasm and homosexuality. Which in each case, allows us to re-discover the paradox of who we were before and after this defining event.

Sources

• Sartre, Jean-Paul
  Jean-Paul Sartre
  Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
  
  . 1952. Saint Genet, comédien et martyr. In Oeuvres Complétes de Jean Genet I. By Jean Genet. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
• White, Edmund
  Edmund White
  Edmund Valentine White III is an American author and literary critic. He is a member of the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing.- Life and work :...
  
  . 1993. Genet. Corrected edition. London: Picador, 1994. ISBN 0330306227.