Deveopment of the Artistic Self THE DEVELOPMENT OF T

The unorthodox nature of homosexuality undoubtedly affects the narrative environment of Proust and Gide. In a way that attains significance if one knows their personal histories, the literary egos of these two figures and what must be taken as their professional need to function effectively in a comfortable social, intellectual, and emotional universe, serve to insulate them from the preoccupation with homosexuality of their fictional alter egos. To be sure, The Immoralist and Remembrance of Things Past take as a fundament of their texts the connection between the emergence of individual identity, in private, and the identity that individuals project into the world. Yet both Gide and Proust make a fictional presentation of sexual identity that is an unreliable presentation of their own sexual fundament. They deal with homosexuality as an issue of character, but they do not unambiguously impose their personal sexual selves on their protagonists. Instead, they conceal beneath layers of character and incident what today would be called their sexual preferences, granting such preferences to secondary characters or to the environment in which their protagonists move. One has to wait for Genet for a modernist author's portrayal of a homosexual self as a direct analogue of personal existence, though as a playwright Genet is not confined by a narrative point of view. Instead he may present a whole range of "selves"

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tence, but he is different from either in that he seems more determined to assert that human beings do not encounter despair or absurdity but make it, even though it was not of their making. This paradox sets up a situation in which the human being is morally obliged, not merely encouraged, to become the hero of his own life: "I am responsible for my very desire of fleeing responsibilities. To make myself passive in the world, to refuse to act upon things and upon Others is still to choose myself, and suicide is one mode among others of being-in-the-world" (Sartre 710). For Sartre, what is chosen as the mode of projection of self into the world seems to be less important than the chooser's acknowledgment that he bears absolute responsibility for the choice made. But in fact Sartre's personal history suggests that the choice itself also has a moral content that cannot be ignored. His actions in the French Resistance during World War II, which were quite similar to those of Camus, illustrate the point. It is therefore curious that Sartre's essays seem intent on elaborating a valueless morality, when he repeatedly writes himself into an argument that obliges the reader to opt on behalf of a severe ethical rationale for life. Neither
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Remembrance Past, Arnheim Arnheim's, Kafka's Burrow--or, Assingham Gide's, VERSUS SELF, Proust Regained, Camus Artist, Self Sartre, Self Kierkegaard's, Sartre Camus, human experience, collateral campaign, modernist literature, remembrance past, unto death, sickness unto death, burrow builder, versus self, own life, modern period, modern existence, self versus self, world war ii, involved collateral campaign, yes burrow builder,
Approximate Word count = 10669
Approximate Pages = 43 (250 words per page)