Sartre's second century

Contemporary Perspectives 177
has the consequence of dispersing widely a focus that needs to home in
intensely on the moral agony of the central figure, for that surely is the
very stuff of the drama, the inner mental conflict that will lead Abraham
Feller to self-destruction.
For the same reason, the topicality of Sartre's enterprise is problematic.
Whereas Clooney is assisted by historical perspective in creating a period
piece—at one level, even a costume drama—most of whose protagonists
have themselves passed into history, Sartre is conversely impeded by the
temporal immediacy of his subject and subjects. For example, he planned
dialogues featuring Trygve Lie and Joe McCarthy, scenes unlikely to carry
conviction if only because both men were still alive and neither was prone
to express himself in French. Moreover, Feller himself had died less than
two years prior, and in bizarre, not to say suspicious, circumstances. An
anonymous article in Time magazine—"Death of an Idealist"—described
how his wife had tried to restrain him physically from leaping out of a
twelve-storey window, but to no avail. Feller's depression was, it seems,
too deep and overwhelming and, according to the Time report, chiefly
attributable to the recent intense scrutiny of UN personnel by a Federal
Grand Jury and the McCarran sub-committee:
Feller, under no suspicion himself, was the UN's legal adviser on the
subject. The hearings uncovered seventeen among the 200 Americans on
the UN staff who refused to say whether or not they have engaged in
subversive activities. [Former UN Secretary General Trygve] Lie angrily
charged that Abe Feller's suicide had been brought on by the extra strain of
defending Americans at [the] UN against "indiscriminate smears and
exaggerated charges". 6
Inspired by Marcel P6ju's article on the subject in Les Temps
modernes, 1 Sartre was evidently approaching a veritable minefield of
contention and controversy, a subject rich in themes that recur elsewhere
in his plays and scenarios, namely: the role of the intellectual and his
relations with institutions, the state, politics and history; the social and
political status of the Jew; the individual's place in, and fidelity or
treachery towards, the group; the functions and validity of professional
psychoanalysis; family relationships, especially those between father and
son; tribal and class struggles for political power and dominion; the
Time, 24 November 1952. Lie had resigned as Secretary General on 10
November 1952. Feller killed himself—if that is indeed what happened—three
days later, on 13 November.
7 See Pdju, Les Temps modernes.