SARTRE CORTEGE PLUS THOUSANDS END IN CRUSH AT THE CEMETERY
Author: Agence France-Presse
Date: Sunday, April 20, 1980
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER OBITUARY
Jean-Paul Sartre made a final journey through the streets of Paris yesterday,
accompanied by thousands of mourners paying their last respects to the French
philosopher-writer as they accompanied his hearse through the neighborhood
where he lived most of his life.
The diversity of the huge crowd that followed the funeral cortege in a
two-hour march from Broussais Hospital, where Sartre died at age 74 on
Tuesday, through Paris' 14th Arrondissement to Montparnasse Cemetery, was an
unspoken tribute to the extent of his influence throughout the 20th century.
Spontaneous and completely disorganized, Parisians and foreigners of all
generations moved along behind and in front of the hearse, which was covered
with immense wreaths of flowers provided by Sartre's publisher, Gallimard, the
leftwing daily Liberation, which he helped found in 1972, and other groups.
"I came all the way from Zurich just to be here today," a 60-year-old
Swiss woman said as the cortege left the hospital. "Sartre was tremendously
important for my generation. He had the courage to stand behind his
philosophy."
Growing to an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 as it moved toward the
Montparnasse area made famous in the 1940s and '50s by Sartre, his lifelong
companion Simone de Beauvoir and other Parisian intellectuals and artists, the
crowd included a sprinkling of well-known personalities.
Among the throng were actress Simone Signoret, actor Yves Montand,
Socialist Party official Michel Rocard and philosopher Andre Glucksmann, who
accompanied Sartre when he met with French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing
last year.
Although no major incidents marred the passage of the cortege as it wound
toward Montparnasse, a young boy waiting at the cemetery was injured in the
crush when a tombstone fell on him, fracturing his right arm.
Security forces at the cemetery where clearly overwhelmed by the mass of
onlookers and had difficulty preventing Simone de Beauvoir from being mobbed
as she descended from the family car to pay her last respects.
Onlookers perched on top of monuments to the dead inside Montparnasse
Cemetery - where the poet Charles Baudelaire, the sculptor Brancusi and the
libertarian socialist Proudhon are buried - watched as mourners filed past for
hours, many casting flowers on the grave, after the empty hearse departed.
Remembered by his friends as a lover of life who knew how to appreciate a
good joke, Sartre might have been amused by the totally non-traditional nature
of his funeral.
There was no apparent traffic control as the cortege moved through the
streets of the capital, blocking bewildered weekend motorists, their cars
packed with tennis gear, and preventing an impatient bride in a flower-
bedecked car from getting to the church on time.
"Until about three years ago, Sartre came here every Sunday with Simone de
Beauvoir, chain-smoking, drinking scotch and discussing the state of things,"
a longtime resident of the area recalled as the cortege passed the Coupole a
Montparnasse cafe that served for years as a hub of intellectual excitment.
Born in Paris in 1905, Jean-Paul Sartre remained a controversial figure
throughout his long itinerary as a French intellectual, dedicating his life to
his doctrine that, in a world without God, man is free and therefore
responsible for his actions.
Known here and abroad first as an existentialist philosopher, gaining
renown among the wider public through his drama, Sartre also took on worldwide
notoriety through his politics.
A supporter of the French resistance movement during World War II, an
anti-colonialist during the Algerian war, Sartre consistently threw his
support behind causes he believed in, no matter how small.
In 1964 he refused the Nobel Prize for literature on the grounds that such
honors could interfere with a writer's responsibilities to his readers.
In 1968 he embraced the cause of the student revolt that ripped through
France, scandalizing both the establishment and the Communist Party.
Having declined to meet both Presidents Charles DeGaulle and Georges
Pompidou, Sartre met last year with President Giscard d'Estang, using the
opportunity to make a plea for the Indochinese boat people.
"I want to always remain an appeal for living," said Sartre two years ago
in a radio interview.
"He was courageous until the very last moment," said a woman in her 60s to
explain her presence among the boisterous cemetery crowd.
Their Spanish accents punctuating the hum of French voices, an Argentinian
couple added, "We came because he was a free man."
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