SARTRE, Jean-Paul (1905-1980)

SARTRE, Jean-Paul (1905-1980)

Autograph manuscript, first draft
N.p.n.d. [c. 1956–57], 17 ff. in-4°, on graph paper, in blue ink
Slight browning in places, a few insignificant tears
A small marginal loss on one leaf, not affecting the text
Several words crossed out by Sartre

An exceptional working manuscript for his play Les Séquestrés d’Altona

Containing numerous unpublished variants not retained in the final manuscript

The most important corpus of the Les Séquestrés d’Altona in private hands according to the Item census

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The first six leaves form an initial core that the author would later develop.
They contain the episode of the torture of the Russian partisans (Act IV, Scenes 5–7), which Frantz refuses to confess to Johanna—though Leni will eventually force him to admit it (the newspaper being brought in, Act IV, Scene 8). Between these two crucial passages appears “beauty and emptiness” (f°6, referring to Act II, Scene 8).

The characters still bear their provisional names:
– Peter would become Frantz.
– Évelyne (Évelyne Rey, the stage name of Évelyne Lanzmann, Claude’s sister, Sartre’s mistress, and an actress) would become Johanna.
– Wanda Kosakiewicz (Sartre’s lover and an actress—he wrote plays partly to give her roles) plays Frantz’s sister, Ilse, that is, Leni in the final state of the text.
– There is also mention of Évelyne’s husband, Ernst, who would become Werner.

Leaves 6 to 13 form a sequence corresponding to a dialogue between the father and his son (Act V, Scene 1). Leaf 7, an interpolation, seems to reflect a possibility Sartre did not retain: Peter wants to sleep with Évelyne, but is incapable of doing so because of impotence.

The fifteenth leaf corresponds to a scene between Frantz and Werner, already named as such; it therefore represents a later stage of the text. This dialogue would not be kept in the final version.
The following leaf could be linked to Act I, Scene 2: Johanna does not want to remain in Altona (Pléiade, p. 871).

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Two distinct writing phases can be discerned within this corpus. Moreover, it appears to belong to a stage beyond the “pre-draft” level, judging by the variations in the characters’ first names and the relatively few deletions made by Sartre.
In a pre-premiere interview given to Madeleine Chapsal, Sartre stated: “It took me a year and a half to write… I finished it three weeks ago, in August, during the break in rehearsals. It was much more difficult than Huis clos.” Overworked by the writing of Critique of Dialectical Reason and by the political tensions of 1958, Sartre narrowly escaped a collapse brought on by excessive use of corydrane, alcohol, and barbiturates. Still unfinished in early October 1958, the play was postponed for a year, Sartre having agreed to consult a doctor who prescribed immediate rest. These details show that Sartre had embarked on a truly monumental play (Pléiade, p. 1953). The work premiered on 23 September 1959 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, in a production by François Darbon.
Most of the drafts for Les Séquestrés d’Altona are now preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which acquired them at the Michelle Vian sale in 1985. Nearly all manuscripts related to the play had been kept by her. Another group of 40 leaves was purchased in 1996 by the Beinecke Library at Yale University.