Literary engagement in J.-P. Satre’s book Words

The study analyses the value of freedom in literature and the questions of literary engagement in J.-P. Satre’s book Words. In this work the elations between the concept of existential freedom and “obligation” to act, to continuously complete the culture. The individual is free and he/she is identical to self when chooses (“form”) his/her essential traits, creates his/her future, but at the same time he/she represents certain order and relation to the surrounding environment. “Engagement” is related to the necessity to express clearly perceptible and enlightened things in consciousness in literature (especially in prose). The theoretical analysis of the work are the principles of existential outlook formed in J.-P. Satre's philosophy and his essay “What is Literature?”. Words is existentially open work. The freedom and engagement of literature can be interpreted in many ways. The depth of text’s meaning is great. Epic, psychological and symbolic codes hide one below another. The main problem lines can be seen in the autobiographical plot. Engagement directs us to the source and freedom and its form: the individual’s formation. The respective plot attempts to tell the reader “something” what could not be named in the narrative time, but constantly emerged in later periods of life. Childhood (adolescence) experience is in consciousness images and recollections which are independent from will and desires. The child’s world in Words is the world of people close to the narrator who is imitated by the child. At the same time one is looking for one's own place in relation to it. The literature starts with learning “to read”, continues as the imperative “to write\" and becomes the road to the internal man's truth and his/her authentic existence.Švietimo akademijaVytauto Didžiojo universiteta