Mitoslar ve Sartre'in Paradoksu

Abstract

The theatre during the period between the two wars and during the 1940's is marked in France by an abundance of plays treating ancient myths that were contemporarily reshaped and adapted over and over again and that inspired writers and artists for centuries. Thus, this article examines Sartre's existential play, Tloe Flies, which makes reference to the contemporary interpretation of the myth of Orestes and Elektra represented by political and social events during the dark years of France under German occupation. Illustrating in the play that the idea of liberty is essentially based on the act of accomplishment, Sartre shows that man is nothing other than what he does. Man is a being that is projected into the future and who fully self-actualizes through his own actions. In doing this he is in opposition to the Christian and humanist points of view that affirm respectively the primacy of the essence and the existence of a 'human nature'. Nevertheless, in this theorization, he paradoxically utilizes myths, these 'great collective principles', these archetypical models that through the centuries, illustrate the symbolic aspect of 'human truth'.