Sartre's second century

180
Chapter Twelve
is hard to imagine the actor's mobilisation (from couch to office, and back
to couch) as anything other than farcical. This is an impression that sits
uneasily alongside Feller's statement that—despite his material comfort
and professional commitment and satisfaction—he is "afraid", and wants
the doctor to help him find out why. Nor does it chime with the gravity of
the themes next introduced, themes familiar from one earlier and one later
play:
I am being put on trial, in the shadows. One day I shall be judged. [...] I
want to defend myself, to recover my life from their hands. [...] Who can
judge my life if God doesn't exist? Others? 17
Trial, persecution, self-defence, judgment at the hands of others: these are
very recognisable Sartrean preoccupations, not only from Huis clos {In
Camera, or No Exit, 1944) but also from Les Sequestres d'Altona, and it is
true to say that they suffuse the whole of Sartre's drama.
Then, almost in the same breath, Feller envisages the prospect of
nuclear annihilation:
War means the death of mankind. You know it does. The hydrogen bomb
will swallow up the earth's atmosphere. Will turn it in to a moon. Doesn't
it bother you to think of dying without mankind surviving? It terrifies me.
Mind you, there'd be an advantage: nobody would judge me. But it's like
dying twice. [...] Man is wicked. Mad and wicked. 18
Here there are resonant, almost verbatim pre-echoes of Sartre's last two
plays, Les Sequestres d'Altona and Les Troyennes {The Trojan Women,
1965): visions of Armageddon, the extinction of the species, the positive
need for judgment by one's peers, alongside the dread of it; preverberations
of Frantz von Gerlach's apologias and condemnations, and of
the dire prognostications of Euripides's Greek chorus.
And so the litany of familiar themes continues. In his very next
speech—and we are on only the third page of dialogue—Feller discloses
his affinity with Goetz von Berlichingen, hero of Le Diable et le bon Dieu
"[0]n me fait mon proems, dans 1'ombre. Un jour je serai jug£. [...] Je veux me
ddfendre, leur arracher ma vie des mains. [...] Qui peut juger ma vie si Dieu
n'existe pas? Les autres?" (ibid., 1185).
18 "La guerre, e'est la mort de l'homme. Vous le savez. La bombe k l'hydrogfcne
bouffera T atmosphere de la terre. En fera une lune. £a ne vous dit rien de mourir
sans que les hommes survivent? Moi $a me fait horreur. II y aurait int£r§t pourtant:
personne ne me jugerait. Mais e'est deux fois mourir. [...] L'homme est mdchant.
Fou et m£chant" (ibid.).