Sartre's second century

Hidden Wordplay in the Works of Jean-Paul Sartre 151
terms of "grey", gris, and "shadow", ombre. But just as a person can, for
Sartre, not only encounter a wall but can actually become one, so can one
not only be in shadow but also be a shadow. Examples of this abound in
Sartre's work:
A couple of shadows got up, slipped between the tables and made off.
Mathieu remained alone outside the cafe. 26
A man alone, forgotten, eaten by shadow, in the face of this perishable
eternity [...]. There had once been a gentle, timorous man who loved and
walked about in Paris. The man was dead. 27
All human lives melted into the shadow. 28
Shadows came and went in the white light of a cafe [...]. This to-ing and
fro-ing of the shadows continued [...]. Some shadows stopped and he saw
men coming towards him. 29
These passages are taken from Le Sursis and relate to the effect on the
French people of the Munich crisis in 1938. The following passage comes
from La Mort dans Vame, where Mathieu and his soldier colleagues await
their fate in the face of a German advance, about which they have been
kept in ignorance. They are wondering whether further resistance is
possible:
Everything is asking us our opinion. Everything. A great interrogation
surrounds us: it's a farce. We are asked the question as if we were men;
they want to make us believe that we are still men. But no. No. No. What a
farce, this shadow of a question put by a shadow of war to semblances of
men. 30
See (Euvres romanesques, 1676.
26 "Un couple d'ombres se leva, glissa entre les tables et s'en fut. Mathieu restait
seul a la terrasse" {Le Sursis, 1046).
27 "Un homme tout seul, oublte, mangg par 1'ombre en face de cette gternife
p&issable [...]. II y avait eu un homme tendre et timord qui aimait Paris et qui s'y
promenait. L'homme dtait mort" (ibid.).
"[T]outes les vies humaines se fondirent dans l'ombre" (ibid., 1047).
29 "[D]es ombres passaient et repassaient dans la lumifcre blanche d'un cafe [...].
[C]e va-et-vient des ombres continua [...]. Quelques ombres s'arr§t£rent et il vit
des hommes qui venaient vers lui" (ibid., 1061).
30 "Tout nous demande notre avis. Tout. Une grande interrogation nous cerne: c'est
une farce. On nous pose la question comme a des hommes; on veut nous faire
croire que nous sommes encore des hommes. Mais non. Non. Non. Quelle farce,