Letters to Sartre [Paperback]

Simone de Beauvoir (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 1993

Recently published for the first time in France, letters written by Simone de Beauvoir to one of the world's most acclaimed philosophers shed light on their relationship and her obsessive need to communicate with him.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Belying her public persona of the liberated woman, de Beauvoir's epistolary outpourings to longtime companion Jean-Paul Sartre reveal her obsessive need to record for him the minutest details of her life.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Found in a cupboard and published last year in France, these ``lost'' love letters follow upon Deirdre Bair's magnificent Simone de Beauvoir (1990) with revelations about the author of The Second Sex and the exact nature of her extraordinary relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. This passionate, intriguing correspondence (finely translated by Hoare) begins in 1930, when Beauvoir is 21. The bulk Beauvoir writes almost daily from Paris during WW II, when Sartre is in the army and then a prisoner. (The streets, she writes, are ``beautiful and sinister after 11--almost deserted, save for constant police patrols, on foot or bicycle, with big capes and gleaming helmets.'') Here, in perhaps her most authentic voice, Beauvoir presents herself to Sartre as a devoted lover, desperate for his letters, calling him ``my life's own self.'' Along with quotidian facts of money, classes, and cafes, of reading Dead Souls or watching a James Cagney movie, come wonderful observations--``There are tiny memories which tear at my heart...whereas I'm left quite unmoved by the big, serious things''; or, ``belief and desire are really one and the same.'' What is bound to stir debate is Beauvoir's breathtaking honesty with Sartre about her ``contingent'' relationships and the fact that, to the end of her life, she gave to the public but a partial and polished view of these affairs. In particular, Beauvoir describes her ongoing emotional and physical involvement--every intrigue and skirmish- -with three former students who were also lovers of Sartre. (``But what barren nourishment--all these people who aren't you!'') The passion and openness persist in letters written from America (1947- 51), where, through the ``wire lattice-work'' of the Brooklyn Bridge, she sees ``red sky'' and ``gulls on the water,'' or questions her affair with Nelson Algren (``was it my own sadness that made him gloomy that first month?''). Essential reading for anyone wanting to fathom this still towering, contradictory, revolutionary feminist, what she wrote, and what she made of her life. (Illustrated with ten autograph letters.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 531 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (May 3, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559702125
• ISBN-13: 978-1559702126
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #456,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intimate and Beautifully Written, October 29, 2008

By 

C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Letters to Sartre (Paperback)

As a life-long student of philosophy, the relationship between Simone De Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre, the most famous of the French existentialists', was a love affair of the heart, body and soul; one of the most infamous relationships of the 20th century.

These letters reveal a caring, loving Simone and her intellectual concerns between 1930 and 1963. What make these letters interesting are the many characters one meets in her novels are mentioned by their real names rather than their novelistic pseudonyms.

De Beauvoir is known more as one of the first driving forces for the ideals of Feminism, however, she was also a prize-wining novelist, political activist, philosopher and diarist. She also loved Sartre beyond measure.

The relationship between them, as written in the Introduction by De Beauvoir's daughter, was a "...notorious `morganatic union' allowing contingent loves." They had an `open relationship', one where other lovers were permitted yet they remained lifetime companions and lover's until Sartre's death in 1963.

What the letters also reveal, aside from her contemporaries actual names, was the couple's intellectual and relationship jealousies. As to there `self-created myth' of open relationship bliss, nothing could be farther from the truth...these jealousies existed.

As a professional writer, De Beauvoir wrote everyday. In one of her letters she mentions that one day during the week, she didn't have time to put pen to paper, she writes, "A day without writing tastes of ashes." She was an incessant scribbler, as her large body of work reveal.

Interestingly, as I've written somewhere before, reading letters, especially love letters, makes me feel like a violator or voyeur. That said, these letters are an important contribution to philosophical history, therefore, from an historical standpoint, that feeling of voyeurism is irrelevant.

If you are interested in the philosophy of existentialism and beautifully written love letters, (a vanishing art form) this text is highly recommended.