Once again exile, once again the soul

All alone climbing back into its castle.

– Paul Claudel

*

The writer wants his work to be recognized not as a cry rising from his animal self, under the impact of pain, bewilderment or fear, but as the result of a planned creation, that is to say, doubly free; free first of all as a creation, since by its very definition, if we create something it means that the germ of that thing was not wholly contained in the preceding moment.

If we create, it means that there is something new in relation to any anticipation that might have been made at the immediately preceding moment. Free, secondly in the sense of planned, that is to say, as an activity which regulates itself by its own laws. Here we find the second sense of freedom, autonomy, the possibility of acting by the representation of laws and not under the stress of laws. Consequently, this double character implies that the author, when he has taken pains to invent something and create it according to a plan, demands that he be recognized as free because he is the author of a free creation.

– Jean Paul Sartre