Here’s the first paragraph of the introduction included in my edition, written by Jean-Paul Sartre:
Our Lady of the Flowers, which is often considered to be Genet’s masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell. The exceptional value of the work lies in its ambiguity. It appears at first to have only one subject, Fatality: the characters are puppets of destiny. But we quickly discover that this pitiless Providence is really the counterpart of a sovereign -- indeed divine -- freedom, that of the author. Our Lady of the Flowers is the most pessimistic of books. With fiendish application it leads human creatures to downfall and death. And yet, in its strange language it presents this downfall as a triumph. The rogues and wretches of whom it speaks all seem to be heroes, to be of the elect. But what is far more astonishing, the book itself is an act of the rashest optimism.
Wow. Now that is a book I would really like to read. But is Our Lady of the Flowers that book? In the end, I’d have to say no.
The backstory here is important. Sartre continues to explain:
French prison authorities, convinced that “work is freedom,” give the inmates paper from which they are required to make bags. It was on this brown paper that Genet wrote, in pencil, Our Lady of the Flowers. One day, while the prisoners were marching in the yard, a turnkey entered the cell, noticed the manuscript, took it away, and burned it. Genet began again. Why? For whom? There was small chance of keeping the work until his release, and even less of getting it printed. If, against all likelihood, he succeeded, the book was bound to be banned; it would be confiscated and scrapped. Yet he wrote on, he persisted in writing. Nothing in the world mattered to him except those sheets of brown paper which a match could reduce to ashes.
Sartre’s rhetorical questions are important ones. Why? For whom? Because the truth seems to be that Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers entirely for himself, and not just to occupy his mind while serving time in prison, but also to aid in his masturbatory fantasies.
No wonder Our Lady horrifies people: it is the epic of masturbation. The words which compose this book are those that a prisoner said to himself while panting with excitement, those with which he loaded himself, as with stones, in order to sink to the bottom of his reveries, those which were born of the dream itself and which are dream-words, dreams of words. The reader will open Our Lady of the Flowers, as one might open the cabinet of a fetishist, and find there, laid out on the shelves, like shoes that have been sniffed at and kissed and bitten hundreds of times, the damp and evil words that gleam with the excitement which they arouse in another person and which we cannot feel.
And this, to me, is key to understanding what one is reading, and whether the words can approach the heights that Sartre describes in his opening paragraph. Can they, in other words, be both the scribblings of masturbatory fantasy AND the transcendent work of genius that presents fatalism in oddly optimistic triumph?
When one looks at the descriptions that Sartre chooses and compares them to Genet’s actual words and the intent behind those words…
I have already spoken of my fondness for odors, the strong odors of the earth, of latrines, of the loins of Arabs and, above all, the odor of my farts, which is not the odor of my shit, a loathsome odor, so much so that here again I bury myself beneath the covers and gather in my cupped hands my crushed farts, which I carry to my nose. They open to me hidden treasures of happiness. I inhale, I suck it in. I feel them, almost solid, going down through my nostrils. But only the odor of my own farts delights me, and those of the handsomest boy repel me. Even the faintest doubt as to whether an odor comes from me or someone else is enough for me to stop relishing it.
...one can only come to the conclusion that the genius one is dealing with here is Sartre’s, not Genet’s. For, I think, it is Sartre who sees a pattern that Genet did not intend. Remember, it is Sartre who said:
The exceptional value of the work lies in its ambiguity.
In other words, it is a canvas upon which the reader can paint any picture he desires. And remember, he also said:
It appears at first to have only one subject, Fatality: the characters are puppets of destiny. But we quickly discover that this pitiless Providence is really the counterpart of a sovereign -- indeed divine -- freedom, that of the author. Our Lady of the Flowers is the most pessimistic of books. With fiendish application it leads human creatures to downfall and death.
As masturbatory fantasy, it ends and can only end with one object in mind: the mad, rushing relief and pleasure of self-gratification. The characters in such a play are, of course, puppets of destiny, twisted and turned into whichever contortion the unrestrained freedom of their author desires and dictates. And remember, he also said:
And yet, in its strange language it presents this downfall as a triumph. The rogues and wretches of whom it speaks all seem to be heroes, to be of the elect. But what is far more astonishing, the book itself is an act of the rashest optimism.
Yes, the characters Genet creates are doomed to suffer a single and inevitable fate, but in doing so they give their author his tremulous joy in the bleakest of circumstances. In this regard, they are heroes -- they, specifically, are Genet’s heroes -- and, if he is painting them at all, he can paint them in no other light.
Genet’s genius -- if it exists -- has to be embodied in this dual understanding of his text. There are glimpses that Genet intends Sartre’s more subversive understanding…
Don’t complain about improbability. What’s going to follow is false, and no one has to accept it as gospel truth. Truth is not my strong point. But “one must lie in order to be true.” And even go beyond. What truth do I want to talk about? If it is really true that I am a prisoner who plays (who plays for himself) scenes of the inner life, you will require nothing other than a game.
...but none of these glimpses are enough to convince me that Genet is possessed of an understanding of any deeper intention than an attempt to occupy the carnal directives of his enlightened and imprisoned mind.
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