At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails With Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
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10 ‘Beautiful and hard as steel’: Sartre, Nausea, 252.
11 Ghost story: Sartre, Words, 95–6. Lucien: Sartre, ‘The Childhood of a Leader’, in Intimacy, 130–220, this 138.
12 Berlin tree: Gerassi, Sartre, 115 (interview of 23 April 1971).
13 ‘It’s not just a question’: Sartre, Words, 101.
14 ‘There is a part of everything’: quoted in Francis Steegmuller, Maupassant: a lion in the path (London: Macmillan, 1949), 60.
15 Necessity idea from film: POL, 48.
16 Chaplin: POL, 244. Keaton: ASAD, 197.
17 ‘Wet with existence’: Sartre, Nausea, 148.
18 Honey and sucking: BN, 628–9. For a note on how to translate ‘le visqueux’, see BN, 625n.
19 Marcel gave him the idea: Gabriel Marcel, ‘Existence and Human Freedom’, in The Philosophy of Existence, 36.
20 Fronds of algae: Sartre and Jacques-Laurent Bost in Sartre By Himself, 41–2.
21 ‘Il y a’: Levinas, On Escape, 52, 56, 66–7. Levinas developed the ideas further in ‘Il y a’, an article of 1946 incorporated into De l’existence à l’existant (Existence and Existents) in 1947. His friend Maurice Blanchot also used the concept.
22 ‘As if the emptiness were full’: Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, tr. R. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 48 (radio interviews with Philippe Nemo, Feb.–March 1981).
23 ‘As though they no longer’: Levinas, Existence and Existents, 54.
24 Escape through art, etc.: Levinas, On Escape, 69, 73.
25 Observed similarities: see Jacques Rolland, ‘Getting Out of Being by a New Path’, ibid., 3–48, this 15 and 103n4; and Michael J. Brogan, ‘Nausea and the Experience of the “il y a”: Sartre and Levinas on brute existence’, Philosophy Today, 45(2) (Summer 2001), 144–53.
26 Reading Husserl and Heidegger too much: Sartre, War Diaries, 183–4. He returned to Heidegger during the war, reading it in German. Amazingly, no full French translation of Being and Time appeared until a privately printed one by Emmanuel Martineau in 1985, then a Gallimard publication by François Vezin in 1986. See Gary Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 106n.
27 Should not accept brute Being: Levinas, On Escape, 73.
28 ‘A swelling, like a bubble’: Sartre, Witness to My Life, 16 (Sartre to Simone Jollivet, undated letter of 1926).
29 Phenomenologists’ novels not dull: Beauvoir, ‘Literature and Metaphysics’, in Philosophical Writings, 275.
30 Beauvoir encouraging suspense: POL, 106. Whodunnit: Sartre By Himself, 41.
31 Sartre’s and Gallimard’s titles: Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 116.
32 Heavy head: Beauvoir, She Came to Stay, 164.
33 ‘But the situation is concrete’: cited by Merleau-Ponty, ‘Metaphysics and the Novel’, in Sense and Non-Sense, 26–40, this 26.
34 ‘Reality should no longer’: POL, 365.
35 ‘It’s a table’, and other remarks here: Sartre, War Diaries, 83–5.
36 ‘I’m no longer sure’: MDD, 344.
37 Women in the École normale supérieure: Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, 49.
38 Merleau-Ponty’s looks: Beauvoir, Cahiers de jeunesse, 362 (29 June 1927).
39 ‘Limpid’, and mother liked him: MDD, 246–8.
40 Happy childhood: Emmanuelle Garcia, ‘Maurice Merleau-Ponty: vie et œuvre’, in Merleau-Ponty, Œuvres, 27–99, this 30, citing radio interview with Georges Charbonnier (22 May 1959). Merleau-Ponty’s happy childhood is also mentioned by Beauvoir in MDD, 246 and FOC, 70.
41 ‘Is present, the dough’: Sartre, The Family Idiot, I, 141.
42 ‘He is not violent’ and ‘I feel myself’: Beauvoir, Cahiers de jeunesse, 388 (29 July 1927).
43 ‘A small band of the chosen’ and most other remarks in this and following paragraphs: MDD, 246–8.
44 ‘Oh, how untormented’: MDD, 260.
45 Brother: Beauvoir, Cahiers de jeunesse, 648 (12 May 1929).
46 ‘Invulnerable’: Lacoin, Zaza, 223; MDD, 248. See the letters in Lacoin, Zaza for the whole story, especially 357, 363, 369.
47 Bourgeois hypocrisy: Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 151–3; MDD, 359–60.
48 Haircut: Sartre, Words, 66.
49 ‘About contingency, violence’: Sartre By Himself, 20.
50 Sartre’s gang: MDD, 336.
51 Beauvoir not wanting to follow mother: POL, 77.
52 ‘There was a kind of balustrade’: POL, 23.
53 ‘We dropped it’: Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, 212 (Beauvoir to Algren, 8 Aug. 1948).
54 Failures in honesty: see Todd, Un fils rebelle, 117; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 172.
55 Necessary and contingent loves: POL, 22.
56 ‘Languorous excitement’ and ‘feelings of quite shattering intensity’: POL, 63.
57 Sartre on his sexuality: Beauvoir, Adieux, 316.
58 ‘The luminous sparkle’, almond trees, lights: MDD, 7.
59 ‘Jackets and skirts’: FOC, 245.
60 Marseilles explorations: POL, 89–90.
61 Mont Mézenc: POL, 217–18.
62 Stuck in a gorge: POL, 93.
63 Alpine fall: POL, 301.
64 Sartre climbing a hill: BN, 475–7.
65 Skiing: BN, 602–5, esp. 605 for waterskiing.
66 Books, pipes, pens: Sartre, War Diaries, 251.
67 ‘On an evening out’: ibid., 244.
68 Tips, wads of cash: Sartre, ‘Self-Portrait at Seventy’, in Sartre in the Seventies (Situations X), 3–92, this 68.
69 ‘Theirs was a new kind of relationship’: Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 183.
70 Sea elephant: POL, 19.
71 Beauvoir tending to lose herself: POL, 61.
72 Telling every detail of day: see Lanzmann, The Patagonian Hare, 265; cf. Beauvoir, She Came to Stay, 17, where she gives this urge to her protagonist Françoise.
73 ‘But Castor’: Alice Schwarzer, Simone de Beauvoir: conversations 1972–1982, tr. M. Howarth (London: Chatto & Windus/Hogarth, 1984), 110.
74 Canadian film: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, interviewed by Madeleine Gobeil and Claude Lanzmann, dir. Max Cacopardo, for Radio Canada TV broadcast, 15 Aug. 1967.
Chapter 6: I Don’t Want to Eat my Manuscripts
1 ‘Anything rather than war!’: David Schalk, Roger Martin du Gard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 139n., citing a letter of 9 Sept. 1936, as well as similar lines in a novel. See also Weber, The Hollow Years, 19.
2 ‘I have no wish’: POL, 358.
3 ‘What is so detestable’, and buildings falling: David Gascoyne, Paris Journal 1937–1939 (London: The Enitharmon Press, 1978), 62, 71.
4 Bombs falling, and only tyranny: George Orwell, Coming Up for Air (London: Penguin, 1989; originally published 1939), 21, 157.
5 Stream of consciousness: Sartre credits both Woolf and Dos Passos: Sartre, ‘Please Insert 1: 1945’, in The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV, 22–3, this 23.
6 Omelettes: Sartre, The Reprieve, 192, 232.
7 ‘A hundred million’: ibid., 277.
8 ‘A philosophy that was not just a contemplation’: Sartre, War Diaries, 185.
9 Proposal to move Husserl documents to Prague: Josef Novák, On Masaryk (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), 145.
10 Malvine Husserl and the rescue of the papers: for this and the whole account that follows, see Van Breda, ‘Die Rettung von Husserls Nachlass und die Gründung des Husserl-Archivs — The Rescue of Husserl’s Nachlass and the Founding of the Husserl-Archives’, 39–69.
11 ‘Les cons!’: Sartre ended The Reprieve with Daladier saying this on leaving his plane: Sartre, Le Sursis (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 350; Sartre, The Reprieve, 377.
12 Debates on peace: POL, 336.
13 Fink and Landgrebe: see Ronald Bruzina, Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 522, and his ‘Eugen Fink and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’, in Toadvine & Embree (eds), Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, 173–
200, this 175.
14 Husserl portrait: see Husserl, ‘Recollections of Franz Brentano’ (1919), in Shorter Works, eds P. McCormick & F. Elliston (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 342–48; and Spiegelberg, ‘The Lost Portrait of Edmund Husserl’, 341–2. (Husserl’s daughter kept it on the wall of her apartment in Freiburg, and a photograph of it there has been used to reconstruct its appearance: see plates in Spiegelberg.)
15 Brentano papers: J. C. M. Brentano, ‘The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano’, Revue internationale de philosophie, 20 (1966), 477–82, this 479. (The author is Brentano’s son.)
16 Husserl Archives: see Husserl-Archiv Leuven, Geschichte des Husserl-Archivs = History of the Husserl Archives, and the site http://hiw.kuleuven.be/hua/, as well as a list of Husserliana volumes at http://www.husserlpage.com/hus_iana.html.
17 Merleau-Ponty’s visit: Van Breda, ‘Merleau-Ponty and the Husserl Archives at Louvain’, in Merleau-Ponty, Texts and Dialogues, 150–61, this 150–52; Bruzina, ‘Eugen Fink and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’, in Toadvine & Embree (eds), Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, 173–200, this 175. The whole volume is useful on the relationship of their ideas.
18 Unnoticed Lebenswelt: Husserl, Crisis, 123–4; see also D. Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: an introduction (Cambridge & New York: CUP, 2012), 178–217. Husserl’s analysis has a lot in common with that of sociologists such as Max Weber and W. I. Thomas, as well as Alfred Schulz, who later wrote an eloquent essay about disruptions to the ‘world’ of a stranger abroad, partly based on his own experience as an émigré fleeing Nazism (Alfred Schutz, ‘The Stranger: an essay in social psychology’, American Journal of Sociology, 49(6) (May 1944), 499–507. Husserl may also have been influenced by the ethologist Jakob von Uexküll, who wrote of the Umwelt or environment experienced by different species. A dog, for example, has a world rich in smells but not in colours. J. von Uexküll, Theoretical Biology (London: Kegan Paul, 1926).
19 Proprioception: Husserl, Crisis, 107–8; 161–4.
20 Others: ibid., 331–2.
21 Home-world, alien-world and Greeks: Husserl, ‘The Vienna Lecture’, in Crisis (Appendix I), 269–99, especially 279–89.
22 ‘I know by my own experience’: Marcel, ‘On the Ontological Mystery’, in his The Philosophy of Existence, 27.
23 ‘The largest and, as I actually believe’: Dan Zahavi, ‘Merleau-Ponty on Husserl: a reappraisal’, in Toadvine & Embree (eds), Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, 3–29, this 7, quoting a letter from Husserl to Adolf Grimme, published in Husserl, ed. Iso Kern, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (Husserliana XV) (1973), lxvi.
24 Solaris sea: Safranski, Martin Heidegger, 78.
25 History took hold of them: POL, 359.
26 ‘Was it preferable?’: POL, 372.
27 ‘Used to cure his chilblains’: Koestler, Scum of the Earth, 21.
28 Journey to Paris: POL, 375; Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 39 (1 Sept. 1939).
29 University of Louvain: Van Breda, ‘Merleau-Ponty and the Husserl Archives at Louvain’, in Merleau-Ponty, Texts and Dialogues, 150–61, this 152.
30 Husserl’s urn: Van Breda, ‘Die Rettung von Husserls Nachlass und die Gründung des Husserl-Archivs — The Rescue of Husserl’s Nachlass and the Founding of the Husserl-Archives’, 66. Destruction of the portrait: Spiegelberg, ‘The Lost Portrait of Edmund Husserl’, 342.
31 Edith and Rosa Stein: Borden, Edith Stein, 13–15.
32 Stein’s papers: ibid., 16.
33 Valhalla: ‘Die heilige Nazi-Gegnerin’, Süddeutsche Zeitung (17 May 2010).
34 Burial of Malvine Husserl: Van Breda, ‘Die Rettung von Husserls Nachlass und die Gründung des Husserl-Archivs — The Rescue of Husserl’s Nachlass and the Founding of the Husserl-Archives’, 66. Husserl’s ashes: Herbert Spiegelberg, The Context of the Phenomenological Movement (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), 192n.10, citing information from their daughter, Elisabeth Husserl Rosenberg.
Chapter 7: Occupation, Liberation
1 Gas masks, headlights: Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 42–3 (3 Sept. 1939).
2 ‘Sartre’s pipe’, and gas mask: ibid., 43–6 (3 Sept. 1939).
3 Blacking out windows: ibid., 58 (11 Sept. 1939).
4 Turning grey: Koestler, Scum of the Earth, 40.
5 ‘Foreign’: Camus, Notebooks 1935–1942, 170 (March 1940).
6 ‘No future’: ibid., 176 (undated, but early 1940).
7 Sartre writing all day: Beauvoir, Adieux, 387–8. Ping-Pong: Sartre, Quiet Moments in a War, 97 (Sartre to Beauvoir, 6 March 1940).
8 ‘If the war goes on’: Sartre, Witness to My Life, 312 (Sartre to Beauvoir, 24 Oct. 1939).
9 Sending books: Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 153 (14 Nov. 1939), and Sartre, Witness to My Life, 409 (Sartre to Beauvoir, 15 Dec. 1939).
10 Bost: Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 295 (30 June 1940).
11 ‘The narrow chest’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The War Has Taken Place’, in Sense and Non-Sense, 139–52, this 141.
12 Aron: Aron, The Committed Observer, 66.
13 Merleau-Ponty in hospital: Emmanuelle Garcia, ‘Maurice Merleau-Ponty: vie et œuvre’, in Merleau-Ponty, Œuvres, 27–99, this 43–4.
14 Beauvoir’s flight from Paris: Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 272–6 (10 June 1940).
15 Return on German truck: ibid., 290 (30 June 1940).
16 ‘It seems to me’: Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 51 (7 Jan. 1941).
17 Nazis in Paris: Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 288 (30 June 1940).
18 ‘Repugnant’: POL, 464.
19 Cooking: POL, 511.
20 Ski clothes in bed: POL, 474. In classes: 504.
21 ‘I aimed at simplification’: POL, 504. For turban: see also Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 166 (22 Nov. 1939).
22 Bourgeois homilies: POL, 465.
23 Reading Hegel and Kierkegaard: Beauvoir, Wartime Diary, 304 (6 July 1940); POL, 468–9. See also Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, 159.
24 Reading Heidegger: Sartre, War Diaries, 187 (1 Feb. 1940); Sartre, ‘Cahier Lutèce’, in Sartre, Les Mots, etc., 914; also see Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 153.
25 ‘I’ve begun to write’: Sartre, Quiet Moments in a War, 234 (Sartre to Beauvoir, 22 July 1940). Her letters arrived: 234 (Sartre to Beauvoir, 23 July 1940).
26 His eyes: Sartre, War Diaries, 17 (17 Nov. 1939). Being blind in one eye: Sartre, ‘Self-Portrait at Seventy’, in Sartre in the Seventies (Situations X), 3–92, this 3. The escape: Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 159.
27 His own skin was the boundary, and ‘On my first night’: Sartre, ‘The Paintings of Giacometti’, in Situations [IV], 177–92, this 178.
28 Sartre’s complaints to Beauvoir: POL, 479–80.
29 Eating her stews: POL, 503–4.
30 Lost briefcase: Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 166.
31 ‘Of not knowing what to do’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 231.
32 Paulhan’s poems: Paulhan, ‘Slogans des jours sombres’, Le Figaro littéraire (27 April 1946). See Corpet & Paulhan, Collaboration and Resistance, 266.
33 Tricolours: Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 101 (17 July 1941).
34 Merleau-Ponty and Sous la botte: Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 164; Bair, Simone de Beauvoir, 251–2; Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 231. School and portrait: Marianne Merleau-Ponty, personal communication.
35 Cycling holidays: POL, 490–91. On their visits to Gide, Malraux and others, interpreted as Resistance activity: Lévy, Sartre, 291–2.
36 Sartre somersault: POL, 491. Tooth: 495–6; 505.
37 ‘Gave up their seats’ and ‘do not go imagining’: Sartre, ‘Paris Under the Occupation’, in The Aftermath of War (Situations III), 8–40, this 11 (originally published in La France libre, 1945).
38 Guéhenno refusing to give directions: Guéhenno, Diary of the Dark Years, 195 (22 Feb. 1943).
39 Merleau-Ponty being rude: Mer
leau-Ponty, ‘The War Has Taken Place’, in Sense and Non-Sense, 139–52, this 141–2.
40 Jewish friends: POL, 512, 525.
41 ‘You would phone’: Sartre, ‘Paris Under the Occupation’, in The Aftermath of War (Situations III), 8–40, this 15–16.
42 ‘It was, precisely, a nothingness’: POL, 535.
43 ‘The moment I began living’: James Baldwin, ‘Equal in Paris’, in The Price of the Ticket, 113–26, this 114.
44 Meeting Genet: POL, 579–80; see also Beauvoir, Adieux, 272.
45 Meeting Camus: POL, 539.
46 ‘A simple, cheerful soul’: ibid., 561. Funny, emotional: FOC, 61. In 2013, the discovery of a brief letter from Camus to Sartre confirmed the warmth of their early friendship: see Grégoire Leménager, ‘Camus inédit: “Mon cher Sartre” sort de l’ombre’, Le nouvel observateur (8 Aug. 2013).
47 Camus’ father: see the autobiographical novel, Camus, The First Man, 55; Todd, Camus, 5–6.
48 World of absences: Camus, The First Man, 158.
49 ‘A certain number of years’: Camus, Notebooks 1935–1942, 3 (May 1935).
50 Sun: see Camus, ‘Three Interviews’, in Lyrical and Critical Essays, 349–57, this 352 (interview with Gabriel d’Aubarède for Les nouvelles littéraires, 10 May 1951).
51 Sun in The Stranger: Camus, The Stranger, 48, 51, 53.
52 ‘To the tender indifference’: ibid., 111. Inspiration for the novel also came from Camus’ experiences of travelling in central Europe in 1937, and feeling disoriented because he could not speak the language or understand how to behave: see Camus, Notebooks 1935–1942, 45.
53 ‘Even within the limits’: Camus, ‘Preface’ (1955), The Myth of Sisyphus, 7. See also David Carroll, ‘Rethinking the Absurd: le mythe de Sisyphe’, in E. J. Hughes (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Camus (Cambridge: CUP, 2007), 53–66, esp. 53–7.
54 Sisyphus: Homer, Odyssey, Book XI, 593–600.
55 ‘Weariness tinged with amazement’: Camus, Myth of Sisyphus, 19. Why go on living: 11–13.
56 ‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy’: ibid., 111.
57 ‘Resigned everything infinitely’: Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 45.
58 Soccer, ‘is claiming to render’, and Hume: Sartre, ‘The Stranger Explained’, in Critical Essays, 148–84, this 173. Sartre’s example is rugby, but I’ve adapted it in honour of the fact that Camus played soccer.