Stacy Atkins
October 26, 2004
English 2250
Dr. Robert Hughes
“Why Write?”
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) wrote a series of essays under the title “What is Literature?”
An excerpt from “Why Write?” translated by Bernard Frechtman, Sartre tries to answer just that
question.
Art is a means by which we generate significance within ourselves. Sartre writes: “One of
the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in
relationship to the world.” Art, as well as (and including) literature (and music, for that matter),
Sartre says, is not an object, but a work. It requires the engagement of a viewer, or a reader, or a
listener. The relationship established generates the significance of the work of art. The marks on a
canvas or the words on a page are meaningless until viewed and contemplated and assigned
meaning.
The relationship between an artist or an author and the work of art produced is different
from that of the viewer or reader and the work of art. For the artist or author, it is a subjective
creative process through which art is produced. The artist or author accomplishes an objectivity
which is the result of the revelation of subjective discovery. And it is this objectivity which is
revealed to a viewer or reader which in turn generates a subjective response. This reciprocal
interaction is essential to art, and it is a demonstration of freedom.
Sartre says that there is only one way of attiaining freedom: by recognizing it, having
confidence in it, and then requiring of it an act (in its own name), thereby demonstrating confidence
in its existence. Writing is an act of freedom, a demonstration of the freedom to think. Reading is
a demonstration of the freedom to participate in the author’s reality. Freedom is essential in the
creation of art, for it is a choice. It is a freedom to choose the revelation (for the artist/author, and
for the viewer/reader) it is the freedom to choose to engage the revelation, for, like the artist but in
the case of writing, the author is no more than a guide and writes to address himself to the freedom
of his readers.