Letters to Sartre

by Simone de Beauvoir

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  I met up with Bienenfeld at the Balzar and worked alongside her, then a quick lunch at the Capoulade and another 3 hours at the Mahieu, upstairs. I must take you there — it’s extremely pleasing to see the Luxembourg all wintry beneath one. My love! When I think how you’re going to see all that again with me! Bienenfeld did something we’ve often talked about. She told me, with an air of feigned anger and self-importance: ‘Sartre wants me to tell him what I think about the Dabit book, so I’m going to have to read all through my little notebook again!’ That taste for a tender authority — reflecting one’s need for a man, to whom one yields with kind indulgence, and the man plays the game and gives smiling orders (like Jouvet with Gibert) — it’s annoying when a woman starts behaving in that way. I’m explaining it badly, because I’m a bit under the weather, but you remember what we said about it.

  I worked till my head ached. Bienenfeld finds Chap. 2 overstated and Elizabeth too disagreeable, but I think she’s wrong and it was all too low-key for the opening of a novel. She made some correct criticisms of detail, but I’m dying with impatience to show you a big chunk of this final version. I’ve bought the Fabre Luce, in order to have my conscience with me. I also bought some food for Bost after leaving the Mahieu, and for you The Revolution of Nihilism232 — but I’ll send that from Megève, since I want to read it. On Saturday you’ll get The Monk and I’ll pick another two surprises from your list.

  I called in at the post office and found your letter. Bost hadn’t written, but he writes dutifully most of the time. He’s no longer writing to Kos., in reprisal, but that gives me no pleasure; I don’t care either way — I no longer feel that emotional involvement.

  After that I met Sorokine from 5.30 to 8, then Kos. from 8 to 11, and now I’m writing to you. Tomorrow I’ll tell you all about Sorokine — it was amusing. I’m beginning to feel squeezed. I’d like to press some button that would painlessly inter my serious affair.233

  Now I’m off to sleep, most dear little beloved being. With you in Paris, how wonderful it’ll be! O my beloved, how I feel your love, but how I long to feel yourself in flesh and blood on my arm and experience Paris with you. I love you, my darling. We’re as one, o you my other self, my tiny beloved charm

  Your charming Beaver

  I can see only one advantage to your quarrel with Wanda, and that’s the risk that the whole business could come out anyway. My disappearance will coincide with those 5 days of your leave which will be so oddly cancelled — getting the 2 Kos. sisters to swallow that will be the real bitch! The older one’s already suspicious. And someone might meet us — in which case you won’t appear in a good light.

  [Paris]

  Thursday 21 December [1939]

  My dear, dear love

  How sweet your letters are, my little one! Of course I wasn’t complaining about them — quite the contrary. What I was saying about them didn’t mean that at all; it was just a premonition of what you’ve now explained. What’s more, beware of false simultaneity! The letter where I was. saying that referred to earlier letters of yours — it was just an impression which has already vanished long ago. My love — my little caring one — how united I am with you, and what succour I find in you!

  I’ve told you about the evening with Bienenfeld. I’d had to make a big effort to explain some Descartes to Sorokine, so I was in a state of tension — but happy tension, seeing that I’d given an excellent lesson. The result was a nervous overflow of vitality, under orders to be kind but with a certain lack of adjustment. It’s for similar reasons, I think, that Kos. is just now more truly odd than ever in my eyes — because of her pals presumably. There’s a way of being watchful in your casualness, of letting yourself go in a controlled way, of becoming less adjusted without loss of awareness, which works people up in their relations with themselves: false relations with themselves, transposed into social ones. It’s a kind of art — with as much bad faith as that of Faulkner or Dos Passos — and which creates ambiguous objects. I felt my behaviour with Bienenfeld was of this kind.* I don’t know if you see what I mean, since I’m obviously never like that with you.

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  I stopped my letter yesterday to sleep, but now I’m carrying on. So I went to Les Vikings and settled down with Sorokine in a booth at the rear. She had too much of a headache to work, so we spent an absolutely delightful moment just talking. She was all tender and confiding and happy, talking without embarrassment of the time when our relations were ‘pure and chaste’. And with all the grace in the world she recounted to me all the little thoughts she has harboured about me since the first day. She even showed me a little diary, dating from the first term of ‘38, where her own little existence and the dawn of our relations were recorded in snatches. I talked to her about all that too — and she’s so pleasing in her anxiety to know me. I read her some passages from my black diary, and as she listened she clasped my hand and plied me with passionate questions about myself. She says: ‘I love you’ now, and offers me her lips quite naturally, as if it were a lawful romance. She’s gauche, but never graceless as Bienenfeld can be. Indeed, there’s a quite moving grace in the play of her features and her written language and her speech. She really has a moving little soul — I know none that produces a truer sound. Never the least trace of anything social — no appearance. I’ve honestly been slow to yield — I’m not getting vainly carried away — but I can’t find any fault with her, merely limits. If I were free, I’d surrender myself enthusiastically to this affair. Yesterday I was smitten and she could sense it — it made her really happy. I get on very well with her. I told her lots of things about what tarts and brothels are — all of which she listened to with rapt interest. She’s rereading Intimacy and is in transports over it this time round. She’s sensitive to the style, and was delightedly quoting me expressions of yours that she finds charming. She asked me for explanations of the obscenities in it - but only in my room and with her face turned to the wall. I call her a frightened doe, which drives her wild with rage. It does, all the same, strike me as odd to be passionately loved in this feminine, organic way by two individuals: Bienenfeld, who ‘immersed herself in my face in that photo for a quarter of an hour, and Sorokine. I don’t feel myself to be the real object of those passions — they’re directed through me towards a dream image. This is especially true of Bienenfeld, for Sorokine has greater stamina, critical sense, curiosity, defences, and deep concern for my inner self. As you used to say of yourself and Wanda, W. loves you because you’re you — and it’s the same with Sorokine and me. Whereas Bienenfeld — rather like Poupette — loves strangers, endowed with every virtue, whose virtues are necessary to the beauty of her love. Sorokine brought me another charming drawing. The Boubou is in transports over her drawings, and finds them full of talent. That amuses me, reminding me of the years when Kos. was still a child — with her grace of language and expression in general, her tyrannical nature, and her enclosed little girl’s world. Sorokine lacks ‘aristocracy’, bodily grace and the Kos. poetry, though. On the other hand, she has the greatest depth of feeling imaginable. She often drives me mad with anger — like this morning, when she refused to understand Descartes — but she never irritates me: all is pure and of good quality. I have the highest esteem for her. As much as for Bost, for example. Bienenfeld’s great loss in my mind is a loss of esteem. She has too much, far too much, self-importance; and too much that’s social and appearance — a great deal of appearance, of both feeling and thought.

  Very well, so I had a delightful time. I like taking that girl out and showing her things — she takes such pleasing advantage of it. But I had to leave her, in order to go and meet Kos. She, at least, isn’t a burden to me. It’s like a deep, old friendship, presenting itself more or less as what it is — and neither more nor less than the reason why it presents itself. We went to the College Inn. I’d never seen her quite so gloomy, and yet quite amiable — exceptionally so, in fact, and even gay on occasion. These days
she’s really moving. But the conversation was dismal. Yet that didn’t make the whole evening dismal. My work, and Sorokine, had made my day a full one, and I liked the place, and I felt in sympathy with Kos. And then your letters — and Bost’s too — bind me solidly to the best part of my life. Yes, my love, my life’s a happy one, there’s nothing lousy about it — everything’s full, precious and solid. It touched me when you said you found our love as moving as the Argentina.234 That’s just how it seems to me. And all the gay friendship, filled with mutual esteem, that exists between Bost and me, and between Bost and us, strikes me likewise as really valid and pleasing — especially since I find him intensely appealing at present. In that College Inn I was like my heroine, amid lots of fine objects that were real and strong. It was redolent of war — but war-as-refuge, in its other, non-cruel aspect. One nice thing was that the pianist turned up with some friends, in uniform; he played, his friends played the piano too, and they were gay in an appealing way because they expressed it through their craft. When I heard The Man I Love’, tears almost came to my eyes — that’s a tune from our past, my sweet little one. Our affair seems as moving to me as a beautiful novel. I love you, my little one, come quickly!

  There you are. I wrote to you when I got home, then slept for 7½ hours and at 8.30 went to the Dôme and worked. Then school. Then lunch with Sorokine, to whom I explained Descartes a bit. But instead of reading him, she tries to reinvent him at every step — so I grew angry, but with a pure anger. Teaching at H.IV, then back to pick up my letters: one from you, two little ones from Bost. And I’m writing from the Versailles. I’ll work for two hours, then see Bienenfeld.

  Apparently that Rosa Goetschel, who used to write poems and who brought me flowers at my mother’s last year, told Sorokine — in reference to me — ‘I love her as passionately as if she were a man.’

  On the subject of tarts who work in brothels, Sorokine said to me in deep astonishment: ‘Poor things! They must be utterly dazed! What interest could anyone take in handling them?’ But the pleasing thing was the naive, total sincerity of such a question.

  Goodbye, most dear little one, little beloved one.

  Send the Shakespeare back quickly, and the other books too. You’ll get some more on Saturday.

  I love you, my beloved. I’m happy. I kiss you most tenderly, little beloved one.

  Your charming Beaver

  Enclosed: a letter from the Boxer — very touching.

  *I wasn’t playing on words, and I wasn’t ‘excited’ — a description of myself that I detest.

  Le Dôme

  Friday 22 December [1939]

  My love

  Here’s a long letter from you, o little most worthy one! Listen, the novel called L’Eau trouble by (I think) a certain M. Vaseray began as follows: ‘A ray of sunlight caressed the sleeper’s cheek.’ I was outraged by this, but you maintained that it was permissible. However, that was a development of your own thought, in which you partly had yourself in mind — don’t you remember? You were arguing, in a sense, that this was an event existing for consciousness, even if consciousness couldn’t for the moment grasp it. But such an argument would have big implications and cannot, I think, be sustained.

  I don’t know if I should tell you the whole story of my evening yesterday, since — out of solidarity — it’ll finish off Bienenfeld in your eyes. I’ve never felt so chilled by her. Well, I worked at home — putting the final touches to my second chapter — then went to meet her at the Mahieu. She was tired and a bit glum. We had dinner at the little Alsatian restaurant, given over to conversation and explication of Kant. Then we saw The Petrified Forest at the Ursulines, which is a marvellous film: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart are equally marvellous, and the subject is strange and pleasing. I’d like you to see it in January.

  We went back to Bienenfeld’s place straight away. I’d been tensed up, and remained so throughout the journey: I hate her little jokes and her sprightliness and her gentle authority. She was making travel plans for the 3 of us to visit America, and was picturing us camping out in Arizona. ‘But Sartre doesn’t like the wild’, I told her irritably. ‘Oh, he’ll like this.’ ‘No he won’t like it’, I answered — with an obstinacy matching her own. ‘All right, we can leave him in New York with some little American girl, then!’ (knowing smile). ‘Heh! Heh!’ I got out through gritted teeth. We went upstairs, we went to bed, and she stripped naked saying: ‘I find it ridiculous, putting on a nightie just to take it off again.’ I can’t convey to you the reasonable, sedate quality which this little phrase, uttered in this way, imparted to our transports of passion. It reduced me to a state of bleak frigidity — and frigidity gave way to hatred. It was the first time I’d ever felt that: a real hatred of sleeping with a woman I don’t love. I articulated it to myself even as she was marvelling at the tender expression on my face. She’s all nervous explosions, and the more passion she puts into them the more nervous and clumsy her caresses become. And I was enduring that clumsiness of hers with malicious irony — it couldn’t have been more disagreeable. I’ve got to the point where her every expression, and her voice, and everything she says, all grate on me. She sees nothing of it — she couldn’t be happier.

  We got up at 8, and at least I slept very well I went to the Mahieu and worked there for a generous 3 hours, on a crucial conversation at the beginning — quite a difficult one too — between Pierre and Françoise. How impatient I am for your opinion, my dear little one! And then I had lunch at the Biarritz with Kanapa, Levy and Bienenfeld. Kanapa handed me my ticket and seat reservation: I’m beginning to feel I’m really going — and am terribly pleased about it.

  After that, 3 hrs of school. Sorokine picked me up there afterwards, and I called in at the post office — where there was a nice little letter from Bost — and at my place: a note from Merleau-Ponty, who isn’t coming on leave till later. Now I have to go and say goodbye to the Gerassis, then see Kos. at 6.30. I still haven’t got anything ready for my departure — but I’ll do it all tomorrow.

  I’ve already told you I find Bienenfeld rather like Poupette, in the sense that she endows what she loves with an abstract value, but has no real concern for it. I’ve often mentioned to you her bluntness when I spoke to her about Bost, for example. That goes on. She’ll never ask a question about, for example, my real feelings for Kos., or my relations with Sorokine, or what kind of state I’m in regarding your absence. She never for a single instant strives to know me, but takes me for granted — like a mathematical postulate — and builds her life upon that. I honestly don’t have much feeling left for her. But, my sweet little one, what to advise you? It’s impossible, I just don’t know. You’ll see yourself when you get back.

  Goodbye, my love, I’ll send you some books tomorrow. I’m pleased to be going to Mont d’Arbois, and shall be sure to tell you all about it. But I’m afraid a host of over-vivid little images of you will come back to haunt me. One — all warm with life — did precisely that yesterday, and it wasn’t pleasant. My craving to be with you again is too strong. I love you, my little one — how I’d like to see you again and kiss you, my love!

  Your charming Beaver

  It’s clever of you to say that, while reading your letters, I’ve been influenced by the viewpoint of your notebooks — I think there’s much truth in that. And perhaps my own moroseness formed a little cocoon around me. I love you, my little one.

  Chalet-Hotel-Restaurant

  Ideal-Sport

  Megève

  Sunday 24 December [1939]

  Most dear little being

  How pleasant it is to write to you from here. I’m in the lounge of Chalet Ideal-Sport — which you know so well, my sweet little one. The sun’s setting, and there’s a big moon in the sky, and through the window I can see the snowy mountains and the sky, clear save for a single bar of ashen cloud. I’m not melancholy — on the contrary, everything here seems precious to me. It’s not yet you, but it’s your dear memory that I
’ve just recovered, as though it had been waiting for me — all embalmed by the cold — at the top of this little mountain. You’ve been with me all day, my love. All these places are full of you and your tenderness, and when I touch my skis it’s as if I were giving you a little kiss. This is my 6th year of winter sports, my love, and the first without you. For five years we went up and down little slopes together, full of love for one another — and I can still see you with that little putty-coloured jacket at Montroc, at Chamonix with your ugly red pullover, and at Megève with your beautiful white jacket. I’m all melting with tenderness for you, my love, and with longing to touch your little flesh-and-blood person — in a fortnight, perhaps. O my little one, I do so want to be with you again!

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