Jean Genet - The Criminal and the Saint

French literature has always been considered as one of the best, its writers some of the most colourful and adventurous characters infusing their work with intriguing edge. Many would mention Arthur Rimbaud as an example, but when it comes to it, Jean Genet's life was not only twice more so interesting, but also more prolific and diverse in literary and artistic output, and dare I say it, could be turned into a great movie. It certainly was a great source for inspiration of his impressive oeuvre as a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and film maker.

Genet was born in 1910 to a young prostitute, who gave him up for adoption in his early life, Genet's first adoptive family turned out to be loving and attentive, but with the second one he was turning out to rebel, disappearing on adventures in the night, dressing up in women's clothes and squandering money given to him for the family's shopping. Finally at sixteen he was sent to Mettray Penal Colony for thieving. This reform institution was meant to prepare the apprehended misfits for their future as field hands, soldiers and labourers so it prohibited any studies so not to give ideas to them about bettering their socially determined lot. Genet, who was a voracious reader, disobeyed and came across Ronsard, a poet from the times of Renaissance, who influenced many of his erotic writings. When his confinement finished three years later he signed up with the Foreign Legion to shorten his time in the penal colony, but since he kept on with his adventurous side, Genet was 'dishonourably' discharged six years later when he was caught in flagrante with another man.

During his time in the army, Genet discovered Dostoyevsky, who inspired him to adopt an attitude towards art - Genet proclaimed that he only liked works of art that destroyed themselves as if they were both players and targets in an artistic shooting gallery. The comparison with Arthur Rimbaud comes to focus again as Genet became fascinated by him and tried to emulate him. Whilst his literary God gave up writing and poetry at the age of 21, Genet continued on writing although he stopped writing for periods of time, sometimes on purpose, sometimes due to depression, and unlike his idol Genet earned money from his work. He also admired Stephane Mallarme and for reasons we will explore later on, Alberto Giacometti, whose influence of humility and an attitude that encompassed a belief in a common humanity even lifted him from one of his suicidal depressions.

He saw most of Europe as a vagrant, petty thief and male prostitute and predictably ended up in prison, where he started writing poetry, whilst there, he also completed a novel, 'Our Lady of the Flowers', and after his release he sought out the darling of the French art scene, Jean Cocteau, who helped him to publish it. Being a published author didn't prevent the French authorities to pursue him for petty thievery again and again, another one of those sojourns saw another of his novels, 'Miracles of the Rose' written and later released. With these offences rapidly accumulating, in 1943 he finally faced court that threatened to serve him with a heavy sentence, but Cocteau passionately defended him. Cocteau convinced the judge that Genet was the greatest writer of the modern times and likened Genet to Rimbaud, telling the judge that "one did not imprison Rimbaud". His defence worked and Genet was off the hook. Five years later the threat came to hang above him yet again, Cocteau as well as Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Claude and Pablo Picasso amongst some other influential people petitioned the president who after a year issued a pardon, it was the end of not only Genet's troubles with authorities, but the end of him being able to present his persona as a criminal and someone in the margins of society.

Although he was such a prolific and versatile writer and artist, the conflicts between his publishers meant that his works were only available in expensive and limited editions, which was a main reason that his readership was limited till mid 70's. Another problem was that abroad only his major works were translated, much of his poetry and many of his essays were either not translated at all or they appeared only in rare journals. Even today at least a quarter of Genet's oeuvre remains to be published.

And although Genet tried to be like Rimbaud in so many ways, another trait distinguishes him, Rimbaud's ideals went dead with his adventures to Africa. Genet however remained interested in politics and even became active. He was involved in protests to raise awareness of the bad treatment of immigrants in France; he stayed three months in USA, attending a trial of the Black Panther leader, Huey Newton, and published in journals of the organisation. Genet also went off to spend six months in Palestinian refugee camps. He was present in Beirut when the massacres of Sabra and Shatila happened and was deeply shaken by it, seeing the dead, murdered bodies with his own eyes; he was one of the first Europeans to do so. Another cause in which Genet joined Focault and Sartre was in protesting police brutality against Algerians. The experiences and his reactions to what he witnessed in USA, Jordan and Lebanon were roots of two works - 'Prisoner of Love' (published posthumously) and 'Four Hours in Shatila'.

As much as his writing was original and its structure unorthodox, mostly built on loosely connected variety and streams of narratives as visual collages or montages in written word, his theatrical plays differed from the standard, so much so that the theatre's avant-garde adopted the way Genet defined performance into a many-faceted rituals. And even though the plays do single out a political or social issue, they are not in any way propagandising a viewpoint, they do not advocate an action.

In Genet's universe there are forces which tantalise his protagonists, but the most important thing is that inside this universe it is not the energy, love or any kind of moralising that is preserved. Rather one could say that this very universe is dominated by the preservation of Power. In its multiple manifestations, its own struggles that ex facto are existing within the society there can be at times moments of peace, moments of love. In his study 'Saint Genet', Jean Paul Sartre, writes about Genet's work "His stories are not stories. They excite you and fascinate you; you think he is describing facts and suddenly you realize he is describing rites", and one can ponder if Sartre in this remark describes Genet's work or some of his own, namely 'The Flies' or the 'No Exit'. It was this conception of Genet's work that accused him of nihilism. Even in the aftermath of the WWII Genet acknowledges the face of terror yet refuses to become nihilistic.

In his short film, 'Un Chant D'Amour' - 'A Song of Love' (1950), the plot is typically about the sexual fantasies between the homosexual prisoners and their warden. Yet, that leaves many questions unanswered.

In the beginning of the film a prisoner is trying to offer flowers to some other prisoner through his window and at this point the plot shifts to a different level and has nothing to do with the prison as an institution, the attitudes that can be observed there. It is an exercise of power, a power that prevents prisoners to enjoy their love and that very power that leads the warden to be abusive. It's not only an exercise of mundane power, but divine. The prison can be viewed as an allegory of the Garden of Eden. In a next scene, and surely one of its most poetical ones, a prisoner rubs himself against the wall and shares his cigarette smoke with his beloved through a straw. It is the moment of temptation. The always vigilant warden watches through a hole in the door, appears and starts beating one of the prisoners. At this point the prisoner retreats into an imaginary world and the warden keeps beating him up but the whole feeling is that the warden foresees prisoner's wishes and that he punishes him exactly for his desires and wishes. And at the end he pushes his gun inside the mouth of the prisoner forcing him to lick it; he knows what the prisoner is thinking about at this point.

At the end of the film while the warden is leaving the prison the prisoners manage to exchange the flowers from the window. To say that the warden is a representative only of the society which represses the desires in a way does injustice to the film and the ideas in it. The warden is also the God in a brilliant twist of the Eden fable, where God is identical with the Devil, and instead of Adam and Eve there are two male prisoners.

There are no facts here, as Sartre observed; the viewer is unaware not only the reason why the men are in prison, if the plot is occurring exactly due to their imprisonment or, and what's more important, if there exists any repetition of the events. A rite by definition is customary, repetitive and demands a subject or a clique to be the only interpreters of the acts involved. If there's a rite this is surely the entrapment of the walls of the prison, the gestures of desire and love. In terms of love the offering of flowers at the beginning and its ending also demands to question the possibility of love's attainability. Only with the exit of the warden - society and/or God, can it be attained - though it still remains uncertain if fully so.

The film is from the eyes of the warden, and just as the warden, the viewer watches too, thus being placed into the same position. The uncertainty of the accomplishment of love sits in the fact that with the exit of one warden, there are still those who remain watching.

In "Les Bonnes" - "The Maids" (1947), one of his most famous theatrical plays he takes on a true story; namely the one of the Papin sisters who murdered their employer and her daughter. Whilst Jean Paul Sartre took this case to present his ideas about class struggle, Genet took a more encompassing tack.

The story is about four characters, Solange and Claire (the maids), Madame and Monsieur of which one - the Monsieur, is absent. As expected Genet not only parodies the social identities and transformations in a game of power but achieves so much more.

Sartre once again, writing about the play, understands very well that the true events are distilled and the fact that there are two maids, just like the Papin sisters - is symbolic, and that there must be a deeper reason for that. Sartre believes that "'The Maids' are the mysterious cipher of the pure imagination and also of Genet himself. There are two of them because Genet is double: himself and the other. Thus, each of the two maids has no other function than to be the Other, to be--for the other--herself-as-other." Yet Genet posits that the connection and the correlation of oneself with the Other exists in everyone to some degree. The main problem is that Sartre critically puts Genet in the middle of the play and thus depriving it of understanding by twisting it into something else. Once again Sartre approaches his own work in the work of Genet.

The maids are two, only because you need two mirrors opposing each other in order to produce infinite images of the space between. And in between, almost evaporated stands the Madame (and the audience of the theatre), staring at her reflections, images similar but not identical. The maids imitate their Madame, they bring to light her suppressed desires and faults, they manufacture almost parallel universes into which their Madame could be something different and at all times the Madame refuses to see what the others see. From that point of view the Madame is a true tragic character. Because she fails to see that there can be no possible unity. On that point Sartre recognises that very "phantom of unity" and that the "mainspring of this new whirligig is one when we want to see two, two when we want to see one: the ancillary couple as a criss-cross of appearances. And the bond that unites these two is the manners. How could it be otherwise, since the Master convinces the servant that there is no other way to become a man than to be a master...?"

In the play Genet directly attacked not only the notion of the Nietzschean 'Übermensch' in the way it was identified with the aristocrats and the upper middle classes but also the social struggles and a certain approach which de facto added a quelque noblesse and idealism to the side of the oppressed. In the play the Madame is murdered but the manners outlive her; the latter have a mummified substance and are the true immortals, the only unquestioned inheritors and regulators of the society.

'The Thief's Journal' is probably his most famous work of fiction, it's a semi-autobiographical recollection of his rag-clothed journey through Europe, and he takes the reader along with him across the continent through the romances with various men: criminals, con artists, pimps and a detective. Genet puts bourgeois concepts and 'virtues' on their heads, he hangs them unflinchingly upside down. Just like Orwell would do in '1984', where he points out at hypocritical political propagandising...."War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery" and so on, Genet does so for the social sphere. Genet uses the tool of religious language to present crimes as holy rituals and the criminals as the priests and monks. Though some of this work is said to be written in reply to Jean-Paul Sartre, to whom together with his lover, Simone de Beauvoir, the book is dedicated, it is also a reply to Rimbaud. In a letter to a friend, dated 1871, Rimbaud wrote, "the Poet makes himself a seer by a long, immense and systematic derangement of all the senses." What Genet is stylistically doing here is replying that he is indeed the seer that Rimbaud had talked about. On the other hand, Genet has exhausted the autobiographical material of his criminal past in his fiction with this work.

His future novelistic work was a break not just in a setting and themes, which turn to his political interests, but in his addressing of his readers too. Whereas in majority of works up till then his modus operandi was to mock them, in 'Prisoner of Love' influenced by events outside of his own sphere Genet begins to speak to his readers with a genuine feeling. He also turns away from subverting values, but openly writes in favour of courage, perseverance and loyalty in a straightforward manner. Yet he still remains unengaged. His prose stylistically remains visual and non-linear. Maybe as his life was getting to its close, communication rather than seduction and ridicule became his priority.

I have set out to capture the essence of his work via the example of his turbulent life and some of his major works, it is impossible to cover Genet's entire work due to its depth and prolific nature within the parameters of an article. However it is recommended to each and every reader to examine this important and essential writer.

I will also take the opportunity here to explain the reason for the chosen title. In one of his interviews Genet outlined his ideas of what "saintete - saintliness"represents to him. He described it as "the most beautiful word in the French language"; he went on to say how in his criminal youth all the dreams of social betterment, dreams in which he could become a person of some social standing, were out of reach. The only one left to desire was to be a saint, which meant a negation of a human being. The relationship that he described between saint and criminal was that of solitude, for Genet they are both outside of society and both lack the commonplace social contract and both are frightening to the rest.

Throughout most of his works Genet mentions flowers, and although his style of writing is often lyrical and beautiful, they are not a mere aesthetic literary tool, but an important symbol. Genet discloses the reason behind his choice in 'The Thief's Journal' where he states that "The fragility and delicacy of the former [the flowers] are of the same nature as the brutal insensivity of the later [the convicts]. Should I have to portray a convict - or a criminal - I shall so bedeck him with flowers that, as he disappears beneath them, he will himself become a flower, a gigantic and new one." This principle applies for his other works also. He is transcending the experience of the world through recurrent and connecting symbol of flowers.

In the beginning of the article I've briefly mentioned the existence of a deep artistic connection between Giacometti and Genet. Both of them tried to deprive human beings, to denude them from all social conveniences, manners and covers in order to find what existed beneath that surface. Giacometti found something that could shape even the bronze. Genet, in "The Thief's Journal" notices that "there is a close relationship between flowers and convicts". Genet added the flowers. And they weren't wreaths.

With thanks to Polymeris Voglis for his insights regarding Genet's theatre and cinematic work.




Petra Whiteley

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