Becoming Beauvoir

by Kate Kirkpatrick

  53MDD 160.

  54Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, p. 42; HdB, Souvenirs, p. 67.

  55See SLBdB, ‘Chronologie’, MPI lxi.

  56MDD 208.

  57See DPS 58–61, 66, especially 16 August 1926.

  58Simone de Beauvoir, Carnets 1927, unpublished holograph MS, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 54–5; cited in Margaret A. Simons, ‘Introduction’ to ‘Literature and Metaphysics’, PW 264.

  59PL 265–6.

  60DPS 55, 6 August 1926.

  61DPS 55, 6 August 1926.

  62DPS 63, 12 August 1926.

  63DPS 63, 12 August 1926.

  64See DPS 65, 63.

  65DPS 67, 16 August 1926.

  66SLBdB, ‘Chronologie’, MPI lxi.

  67DPS 68, 17 August 1926.

  68See DPS 112, 12 October 1926.

  69DPS 162, 5 November, 1926.

  70DPS 164, 5 November 1926.

  71See Bair, p. 112.

  72See Elizabeth Fallaize, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir, London: Routledge, 1990, p. 84.

  73MDD 171–3.

  74DPS 232, 20 April 1927.

  75MDD 195.

  76DPS 246–8, 6 May 1927.

  77DPS 246–8, 6 May 1927.

  78MDD 82. See Isaiah 6:8. In Genesis 22:1 Abraham also uses the same words, in the passage famously discussed by Kant and Kierkegaard about the ethics of the Akedah.

  79MDD 188.

  80MDD 193.

  81DPS 265, 28 May 1927.

  82DPS 277, 7 July 1927.

  83DPS 279, 10 July 1927.

  84DPS 274, 29 June 1927.

  85MDD 158.

  86See Bair, p. 119.

  87DPS 163, 5 November 1927.

  88The category that Sartre is thought to have ‘added’ to the Hegelian in-itself and for-itself, the pour autrui, is in fact found in the works of Alfred Fouillée, whom both Sartre and Beauvoir read in their teens. (See Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, volume 2, The Hague: Springer, 2013, 472–3.) And Beauvoir’s ‘within’ and ‘without’ distinction may be indebted to Bergson’s metaphysics, which employs a similar distinction (see The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Anderson, New York: Citadel Press, 1992).

  89See Bair, p. 124.

  Chapter 3

  1CJ 255–62, 4 January 1927.

  2See George Pattison and Kate Kirkpatrick, The Mystical Sources of Existentialist Thought, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, especially chapters 3 and 4.

  3MDD 234–43.

  4MDD 239.

  5See Bair, p. 124.

  6MDD 262.

  7DPS 277, 7 July 1927.

  8MDD 314. The ‘personality’ was a concept discussed by Henri Bergson and others Beauvoir was reading during this period. In Time and Free Will, Bergson wrote that ‘we are free when our acts spring from our whole personality, when they express it, when they have that indefinable resemblance to it which one sometimes finds between the artist and his work’. Beauvoir would go on to write a thesis on the philosophy of Leibniz for the Diplôme d’Études Superieures under the supervision of Léon Brunschvicg. Leibniz had written that the place of the other [la place d’autrui] is the true point of perspective in politics and in ethics. See ‘La Place d’autrui est le vrai point de perspective’ in Jean Baruzi, Leibniz : Avec de nombreux textes inédits (Paris: Bloud et cie, 1909), p. 363.

  9MDD 265.

  10DPS 277, 7 July 1927.

  11To my knowledge, the thesis did not survive; this was confirmed in conversation by Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir and Jean-Louis Jeannelle.

  12MDD 295.

  13Bair, p. 124.

  14MDD 137.

  15MDD 138.

  16MDD 138.

  17CJ 771, ‘résumé de ma vie’.

  18MDD 74.

  19MDD 125.

  20MDD 132.

  21MDD 161.

  22HdB, Souvenirs, p. 39.

  23HdB, Souvenirs, p. 43.

  24MDD 41.

  25MDD 138.

  26MDD 141.

  27DPS 262, 21 May 1927.

  28DPS 284, 18 July 1927.

  29It is strange that Beauvoir associates ‘reason’ with men here, and ‘heart’ with women, because in French philosophy there is a tradition according to which the ‘heart’ is a separate faculty of knowing. The ‘heart’, as Blaise Pascal famously put it, ‘has its reasons which reason does not know’, namely, reasons that move us by intuition or desire, not deduction.

  30Jules Lagneau, De l’existence de Dieu, Paris: Alcan, 1925, pp. 1–2, 9. Lagneau claimed that rational arguments for God’s existence were bound to be less successful than a ‘moral proof’ rooted in the human desire for perfection.

  31DPS 289, 20 July 1927.

  32DPS 299, 1 August 1927.

  33See CJ 733, 20 July 1929.

  34DPS 303, 304, 5 and 6 August 1927.

  35DPS 311, 7 September 1927.

  36See ‘Notes for a Novel’, a manuscript dated to 1928, in UM 363–4.

  37‘libre de se choisir’, ‘Notes for a Novel’, UM 355.

  38Cited by Jean Lacroix, Maurice Blondel: Sa vie, son oeuvre, avec un exposé de sa philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), p. 33.

  39‘Notes for a Novel’, UM 367.

  40DPS 315, 3 October 1927.

  41This letter is quoted in Bair, p. 137.

  42See MDD 349–60.

  43Cited in MDD 354.

  Chapter 4

  1MDD 323.

  2MDD 313.

  3In French, ‘la douceur d’être femme’. Résumé de September 1928–1929, CJ 766.

  4Sheila Rowbotham claims that Beauvoir ‘began an affair’ (‘Foreword’ to SS 12); Fullbrook and Fullbrook (2008) draw inferences about their sexual intimacy that I do not take to be warranted by Beauvoir’s texts. See Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Sex and Philosophy: Rethinking de Beauvoir and Sartre, London: Continuum, 2008.

  5Bair, p. 129.

  6MDD 321.

  7SLBdB, ‘Chronologie’, MPI lxv.

  8CJ 704, 22 June 1929.

  9CJ 709, 25 June 1929.

  10Cited in MDD 331. The original, in her diaries, can be found in CJ 707, 25 June 1929.

  11MDD 331–2.

  12Bair, pp. 144, 142–3.

  13HdB, Souvenirs, p. 90.

  14A 245.

  15Sartre, Jean-Paul, with Michel Contat and Alexandre Astruc, Sartre by Himself, New York: Urizen Books, 1978, pp. 21–2.

  16MDD 334.

  17See CJ 720, Monday 8 July 1929.

  18See CJ 721, 10 July 1929.

  19Sartre, Jean-Paul, with Michel Contat and Alexandre Astruc, Sartre by Himself, New York: Urizen Books, 1978, p. 23. See also CJ 723, Thursday 11 July 1929.

  20MDD 337.

  21CJ 724, 12 July 1929.

  22CJ 727, 14 July 1929.

  23CJ 730–1, 16 July 1929.

  24MMD 339.

  25CJ 731, 17 July 1929.

  26CJ 731, 17 July 1929.

  27Le Nouvel Observateur, 21 March 1976, 15; cited in Gerassi, Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century, vol. 1, London: University of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 91.

  2814 July 1929 journal entry, Zaza: Correspondence et carnets d’Elisabeth Lacoin (1914–29), Paris: Seuil, 1991, pp. 304, 367.

  29CJ 731, 17 July 1929.

  30CJ 734, 22 July 1929.

  31CJ 738–9, 27 July 1929.

  32See Jean-Paul Sartre, Écrits de jeunesse, Paris: Gallimard, 1990, 293 ff.

  33CJ 740, 29 July 1929.

  34CJ 731, 17 July 1929; MDD 343–4.

  35MDD 344.

  36Bair, pp. 145–6; FF 16.

  37CJ 734, 22 July 1929.

  38Maurice de Gandillac, cited in Cohen-Solal, Sartre, p. 116.

  39Moi, 2008, p. 37.

  40Moi, 2008, pp. 44–5.

  41MDD 343.

  42Moi, 2008, p. 71.

  43Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Considerations by the Way’, from Complete Works, vol. 6, ‘The Conduc
t of Life’, 1904.

  44CJ 734, 22 July 1929.

  Chapter 5

  1CJ 744, 3 August 1929.

  2Bair, p. 148.

  3CJ 734, 22 July 1929.

  4CJ 749, 8 August 1929.

  5Letter from Hélène de Beauvoir, cited in Bair, p. 148.

  6See CJ 749–50.

  7CJ 753.

  8CJ 756.

  9CJ 757.

  10CJ 757.

  11CJ 757.

  12CJ 758, 2, 3, 4 September 1929, ‘l’ami incomparable de ma pensée’.

  13CJ 759. 2, 3, 4, September 1929.

  14DPS 76, 21 August 1926.

  15CJ 760, 6, 7, 8 September 1929.

  16CJ 762, 10 September 1929.

  17Gerassi, Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 90. Maheu confirmed that he had been Beauvoir’s first lover in another interview with Gerassi; see Bair, p. 628.

  18PL 62.

  19CJ 763.

  20Alice Schwarzer, After the Second Sex: Conversations with Simone de Beauvoir, trans. Marianne Howarth, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984, p. 84.

  Chapter 6

  1VED 40.

  2PL 12. SLBdB, ‘Chronologie’, MPI lxvi.

  3WT 50.

  4PL 14.

  5CJ 789.

  6CJ 795.

  7CJ 788, 24 September 1929.

  8CJ 783, 20 September 1929.

  9The distinction is attributed to Sartre in PL 19; for its use in the diaries see CJ 801–2, 14 October 1929.

  10DPS 274, 29 June 1927.

  11PL 22.

  12PL 24.

  13PL 27.

  14PL 25.

  15CJ 801–2.

  16CJ 807.

  17CJ 808, 23 October 1929.

  18CJ 808, 814.

  19PL 15–16.

  20CJ 815, 3 November 1929.

  21CJ 825, 12 December 1929.

  22CJ 824, 12 December 1929.

  23CJ 828, 13 December 1929.

  24Maheu, copied in SdB to Sartre, 6 January 1930, LS 3.

  25CJ 824, 12 December 1929.

  26PL 52–3.

  27CJ 839, 9 June 1930.

  28CJ 839, 9 June 1930.

  29HdB, Souvenirs, pp. 71, 96.

  30For Beauvoir’s debt to Schopenhauer see Christine Battersby, ‘Beauvoir’s Early Passion for Schopenhauer: On Becoming a Self’, forthcoming.

  31PL 52.

  32CJ 839.

  33CJ 842, 6 September 1930.

  34CJ 842, 6 September 1930.

  35CJ 814–15.

  36Sartre to Simone Jollivet, undated (1926), in Witness to My Life, pp. 16–17.

  37PL 40.

  38PL 41.

  39PL 42. See also MDD 343–5.

  40MDD 145.

  41CJ 827.

  42SS 710.

  43PL 70–74.

  44PL 47.

  45PL 61.

  46CJ 848–9, 31 October 1930.

  47CJ 848–9, 31 October 1930.

  48PL 59.

  49PL 51.

  50PL 54.

  51FC 287.

  52Cohen-Solal, Sartre, p. 43.

  53PL 82.

  54PL 71.

  55PL 56.

  56PL 57.

  57PL 76.

  58PL 78.

  59PL 88.

  60Bair, p. 177.

  61PL 94.

  62PL 95.

  63PL 80, 101.

  64PL 106

  65Bair, p. 176.

  66Colette Audry, ‘Portrait de l’écrivain jeune femme’, Biblio 30(9), November 1962: 3–5.

  67Bair, p. 173, citing an interview with Audry.

  68PL 128.

  69PL 128.

  70Cited in Bair, p. 201.

  71PL 16.

  72PL 134.

  73PL 129.

  74Jean-Louis Viellard-Baron claims outright that what would later be called the ‘phenomenological approach’ in French philosophy and the study of religion is what Bergson called ‘concrete metaphysics’. See ‘Présentation’ to Jean Baruzi, L’Intelligence Mystique, Paris: Berg, 1985, p. 16.

  75See DPS 58–61, 66 especially 16 August 1926.

  76Anon. ‘Views and Reviews’, New Age 1914 (15/17): 399. My thanks to Esther Herring for bringing this to my attention.

  77PL 143.

  78PL 145.

  79PL 17, 18.

  80PL 15.

  81SLBdB, ‘Chronologie’, MPI lxx. On the Nozière affair, see Sarah Maza, Violette Nozière: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.

  82PL 149.

  83PL 181.

  84SLBdB, ‘Chronologie’, MPI lxxii–lxxiii.

  85See Cohen-Solal, Sartre, pp. 99–100. Jean-Pierre Boulé, Sartre, Self-formation, and Masculinities, Oxford: Berghahn, 2005, p. 165.

  86PL 184.

  87PL 186.

  88Cohen-Solal, Sartre, p. 100.

  89PL 153.

  90PL 162.

  91WD 87.

  92Jean-Paul Sartre, War Diaries, trans. Quintin Hoare, London: Verso, 1984, p. 76, quoting Rodolphe Töpffer.

  93Nicolas of Cusa and many others called God ‘the Absolute’; see WD 77; PL 207.

  94PL 107.

  95PL 206–9.

  96PL 210.

  97PL 213.

  98SdB to Sartre, 28 July 1935, LS 6–7.

  99PL 212.

  100PL 222.

  101See Eliane Lecarme-Tabone, ‘Simone de Beauvoir’s “Marguerite” as a Possible Source of Inspiration for Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Childhood of a Leader”’, trans. Kevin W. Gray, in Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb, Beauvoir & Sartre: The Riddle of Influence, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

  102See Jean-Louis Jeannelle and Eliane Lecarme-Tabone, ‘Introduction’, MPI x.

  Chapter 7

  1HdB, Souvenirs, p. 115.

  2Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers, Marriage as a Fine Art, trans. Lorna Scott Fox, New York: Columbia University Press, 2016, p. 6.

  3Although she changed the date to 1917 on her marriage certificate at the mairie. See Hazel Rowley, Tête-à-tête, p. 59.

  4PL 165.

  5PL 166.

  6WML 249, SdB to Sartre, 24 January 1940.

  7John Gerassi interview with Olga Kosakiewicz, 9 May 1973, Gerassi collection at Yale.

  8PL 218–19; WML, S to SdB, 3 May 1937.

  9PL 220.

  10PL 220.

  11Beauvoir, ‘Jean-Paul Sartre’, PW 232.

  12PL 221.

  13Simone de Beauvoir, interview with Madeleine Gobeil, ‘The Art of Fiction No. 35’, Paris Review 34 (Spring–Summer 1965).

  14Simone de Beauvoir, cited in Bair, p. 194.

  15Cited in Rowley, p. 357: SdB to Olga, 6 September 1935; Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir archives.

  16PL 226.

  17PL 239.

  18PL 261.

  19PL 246.

  20PL 260.

  21PL 260.

  22DPS 267, 3 June 1927.

  23Interview with Deirdre Bair, cited in Bair, p. 200.

  24PL 276–7.

  25Bair, p. 203.

  26PL 288, 290.

  27PL 315.

  28PL 316.

  29SdB to S, 10 September 1937, in LS 9.

  30Quoted in Nouvelle Revue Française, January 1970, p. 78.

  31Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, ‘Avant-propos’ to Correspondences croisées, p. 8.

  32Cited in PL 327.

  33Bair, p. 197.

  34See Sarah Hirschman, ‘Simone de Beauvor: professeur de lycée’, Yale French Studies 22 (1958–9), cited in Jacques Deguy and Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Simone de Beauvoir: Ecrire la liberté, Paris: Gallimard, 2008.

  35Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, p. 18; Jacqueline Gheerbrant and Ingrid Galster, ‘Nous sentions un petit parfum de soufre …’ Lendemains 94 (1999): 42.

  36SdB to Bost, 28 November 1938, CC 136.

  37SdB to Sartre, 19 January 1940, LS 262.

  38Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, p. 25.

  39Bianca wrote a book about their relationship, A Disgra
ceful Affair, under her married name, Bianca Lamblin, after her agreement with Beauvoir (never to reveal her name) was broken by the publication of Deirdre Bair’s biography (see pp. 8–9 for Lamblin’s reasons for writing after so many years).

  40In an interview with Alice Schwarzer, see Schwarzer, Simone de Beauvoir Today, p. 112.

  41See Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, pp. 6, 25.

  42Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, pp. 6, 9.

  43Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, pp. 8–9.

  44Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, p. 171.

  45Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, pp. 6–7.

  46WML, undated, Sunday July 1938, p. 145.

  47SdB to Sartre, 15 July 1938, LS 16.

  48SdB to Sartre, 27 July 1938, LS 21 (translation modified).

  49Bost to SdB, 6 August 1938, CC 52.

  50CC 74 and passim.

  51Bost to SdB, 3 August 1938, CC 47.

  52SdB to Bost, 30 July 1938, CC 33.

  53SdB to Bost, 22 August 1938, CC 57.

  54SdB to Bost, 21 September 1938 CC 86; SdB to Bost, 27 August 1938, CC 62.

  55Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Avant-propos to CC 12.

  56SdB to Sartre, 6 July 1939, LS 30.

  57SdB to Bost, 28 August 1938, CC 64.

  58Bost to SdB, 13 September 1938, CC 79.

  59SdB to Bost, 21 September 1938, CC 84.

  60SdB to NA, 8 August 1948, TALA 209.

  61SdB to Bost, 25 August 1938, CC 59.

  62SdB to Bost, 2 September 1938, CC 69.

  63SdB to Bost, 28 November 1938, CC 136.

  64See Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, p. 5.

  65Lamblin, A Disgraceful Affair, p. 39.

  66SdB to Bost, 5 February 1939, CC 233.

  67‘what kind of reality does the consciousness of another have’, SdB to Bost, 24 May 1939, CC 373.

  68Bost to SdB, 25 May 1939, CC 376.

  69SdB to Bost, 4 June 1939, CC 386.

  70Bost to SdB, 7 June 1939, CC 391.

  71SdB to Bost, 8 June 1939, CC 397.

  72PL 319–20.

  Chapter 8

  1WD 40, 2 September 1939.

  2Bair, p. 201.

  3WD 51, 5 September 1939.

  4WD 85, 3 October 1939.

  5André Gide, The Journals of André Gide, trans. Justin O’Brien, New York: Knopf, 1948, vol. II: 1914–27, p. 91, 16 October 1914.

  6WD 61, 14 September 1939.