My hero Jean Genet

My hero Jean Genet
by Ahdaf Soueif

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/05/jean-genet-hero-ahdaf-soueif

Imprisoned for petty crime repeatedly in the 1940s, Genet had at the
same time produced the masterpieces that attracted the attention and
solidarity of Cocteau, Sartre and André Breton

Ahdaf Soueif
5 June 2010

The last week has been difficult. So has the last month, and the last
year. In times like these there are particular voices one longs to
hear. I've found myself turning to Jean Genet, particularly to Un
captif amoureux, the book in which he describes his "Palestinian
revolution, told in [his] own chosen order".

Genet liked rebels. Having written a homage to the young leader of
the Paris student revolution, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, in 1968, and spoken
on behalf of the Black Panthers at Stony Brook in 1970, he spent a
year with the young fighters of the Palestinian revolution in their
camps in Ajloun, Jordan. The fruit of this visit came in 1986.

Genet's last work before Captif was completed in 1961. Three years
later, following the death of his companion Abdalla Bentaja, he
destroyed his manuscripts and left France. He had always had a
conflicted relationship with his homeland. Born in 1910, abandoned
and brought up by the state, homosexual, imprisoned for thieving at
16, sent out to join the foreign legion at 18, then imprisoned for
petty crime repeatedly in the 1940s, he had at the same time produced
the masterpieces that attracted the attention and solidarity of
Cocteau, Sartre and André Breton. When he left in 1964 he was one of
France's most eminent writers, but in an interview with Australian
radio he said he no longer had the need to write: "I have nothing
further to say."

But in 1982 he visited Shatila camp in Beirut after the massacre of
the Palestinians. And then he wrote.

Un captif amoureux is an amazing legacy. When Genet died of throat
cancer, the corrected proofs of his book were neatly stacked. On top
of them a note exhorts: "search for the image". "It's not enough," he
writes in Captif, "just to write a few anecdotes. What one has to do
is to create and develop an image or a profusion of images." And he
shows us how it's done. Captif is a masterclass for artists seeking
to find, not an accommodation, but a creative fusion between their
art and their political sensibilities.

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