Poetry, Ontology, and Autobiography in Gide and Sartre

An examination and comparison of Sartre's condemnation of poetry in Carnets de la drôle de guerre and Qu'est-ce la littérature and Gide's censure of it in his autobiography, Si le grain ne meurt , reveals that the former rewrote in terms of temporality and ontology a critique that the latter had already formulated in a more literary language. Both disparage poetic diction as an intransitive use of language and criticise the poet as a narcissist who seeks to produce an essential image of himself in his poetic objects—thereby negating the temporality of the subject, which is characterised by becoming. Poetry is thus inherently autobiographical, but inauthentically so. Having ostensibly set up an opposition between poetry and narrative prose, they then undermine the dichotomy by revealing that poetry and narrative are temporally and ontologically equivalent: both freeze time and imply an essentialist conception of subjectivity. This view of poetry runs counter to a presumption shared by many critics of autobiography that poetry is a particularly appropriate vehicle for the expression of the decentered modern subject. Having rejected both poetic and narrative autobiography as inauthentic, Gide will turn to the exploration of non-linear narrative in Les Faux-monnayeurs, a precursor to the French new novel; Sartre will ostensibly, but ambiguously, bid farewell to literature in Les Mots.