Sartre and the Lobsters by Dan Meth
I.
Usually, when one thinks of the lobster and its role within the cultural imagination, one immediately recalls Salvador Dalí and his surrealist telephone (and also, of course, his Dream of Venus exhibition in which semi-nude female models wore fresh seafood costumes, including lobsters covering their sexual organs).
And one remembers also the 1978 single by the B-52s, Rock Lobster, which quickly became their signature tune: click here to view an amusing performance of the track on the popular music show Countdown in 1980.
What I didn't know about until very recently, however, was the story of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his (drug-induced) relationship with an imaginary lobster and a cast of crabs ...
II.
Many people are familiar with the fact that Sartre liked to smoke a pipe. And, being French, it can be taken as a given that he also puffed his way through a fair few packs of fags in his time and liked to knock back the red wine and black coffee.
But not so many people know that he also consumed an impressive quantity of illicit drugs, including amphetamines and the naturally occurring psychedelic compound mescaline; the latter known for its hallucinogenic properties and the drug of choice for many artists and intellectuals (including Aldous Huxley, who famously described his experiences in the 1954 work The Doors of Perception).
Sartre took mescaline shortly before publication of his first book, L'imagination in 1936.* Unfortunately, he had what might be characterised as a bad trip and for many months afterwards imagined he was being stalked by crustaceans (mostly crabs).
Even when the effects of the drug must surely have worn off, Sartre remained convinced when feeling low that he was being followed by a giant lobster, always just hidden out of sight, and consulted Jacques Lacan in the hope that he might free himself of his invisible marine companion (whether this helped, I don't know; Lacan concluded that the philosopher simply had a fear of loneliness).
Notes
* It should be noted that Sartre didn't go off, like Artaud, to the Mexican desert in order to experiment with mescaline; he had it injected under controlled conditions and observation at the Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris, at the invite of his old school chum, the physician and psychoanalyst, Dr. Daniel Lagache.
For an interesting essay on how Sartre's crustacean obsessions influenced his work, see Peter Royle, 'Crabs', in Philosophy Now, Issue 67, (May/June 2008): click here.
For a related post on Elsa Schiaparelli's lobster dress (and Kosmo Kramer's lobster shirt), click here.
Thanks to Tim Pendry for kindly suggesting this post.
