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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16 Biting baby’s fingers: PP, 368/409–10. Earlier work on imitation behaviour was done by gestalt psychologists and others, and was later followed up by Jacques Lacan. On the phenomenology of social development, see also Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, tr. Peter Heath (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954) (originally Zur Phänomenologie der Sympathiegefühl und von Liebe und Hass, 1913).
17 Abandoning usual approach: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Child’s Relations with Others’, tr. W. Cobb, in J. M. Edie (ed.) The Primacy of Perception (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 96–155, this 115–16.
18 ‘Fold’: PP, 223/260. See also Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 196 (working notes), where he uses the same image.
19 ‘Starting from there’: Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 266.
20 ‘The hold is held’: ibid., 266.
21 ‘It is as though our vision’: ibid., 130–31.
22 ‘Flesh’: ibid., 139.
23 ‘Follow with my eyes’: ibid., 146. See also Taylor Carman, ‘Merleau-Ponty on Body, Flesh, and Visibility’, in Crowell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, 274–88, especially 278–9.
24 ‘Rigorously to put into words’: Emmanuelle Garcia, ‘Maurice Merleau-Ponty: vie et œuvre’, in Merleau-Ponty, Œuvres, 27–99, this 33, citing radio interview with Georges Charbonnier (22 May 1959).
25 ‘Only one emotion’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’, in Sense and Non-Sense, 9–25, this 18.
26 ‘Not self-satisfied understanding’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Reading Montaigne’, in Signs, 198–210, this 203.
27 ‘It is only a cerebral way’: Stephen Priest, Merleau-Ponty (London: Routledge, 2003), 8.
28 Dancing: Vian, Manual of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 141; Gréco, Je suis faite comme ça, 98–9.
29 English suits, morning coffee, inscribed copy, philosophy and life: all Marianne Merleau-Ponty, personal communication.
30 ‘Not that they don’t like him’: Sartre, Quiet Moments in a War, 284 (Sartre to Beauvoir, 18 May 1948). Sartre reports having heard it as gossip.
31 Affair with Sonia Brownell: Merleau-Ponty, letters to Sonia Brownell, in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109); also see Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department.
32 Plans to move to London: see Merleau-Ponty to Sonia Brownell (15 Nov. [1947]), in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109).
33 Meet Yourself: see ibid., and Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department, 84. The full title of Prince Leopold Loewenstein’s & William Gerhardi’s book was Meet Yourself as you really are, different from others because you combine uniquely features present in everyone: about three million detailed character studies through self-analysis (London: Penguin, reissued in 1942). On the book, see Dido Davies, William Gerhardie: a biography (Oxford & New York: OUP, 1990), 290.
34 ‘Do Mickey Mouse?’ and ‘Have you ever felt?’: Prince Leopold Loewenstein & William Gerhardi, Meet Yourself as you really are, 16, 15.
35 ‘Forming tirelessly’: Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 144. Sartre did of course take into account the importance of bodily experience, but he approached it differently. On this, see especially Katherine J. Morris (ed.), Sartre on the Body (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and her own Sartre (Oxford & Malden: Blackwell, 2008).
36 ‘We discovered, astounded’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 298.
37 ‘Register of feeling’: Merleau-Ponty, interview with Georges Charbonnier (May 1959), in Parcours deux, 235–40, this 237.
38 Animals: Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphyics: world, finitude, solitude, tr. W. McNeill & N. Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 177. On Heidegger and the body, see Kevin A. Aho, Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009).
39 ‘How did Dasein evolve?’: Polt, Heidegger, 43.
40 ‘Ontical’ matters: BT, 71/45ff.
41 Outsider subjects: in a series of radio broadcasts in 1948, Merleau-Ponty also described four major topics normally excluded from philosophy: children, animals, the mentally ill, and what were then referred to as ‘primitive’ people (Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception).
42 ‘The philosopher is marked’ and constant movement: Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy, 4–5.
Chapter 11: Croisés comme ça
1 ‘Contingent’ lives: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Man and Adversity’, in Signs, 224–43, this 239 (a talk given in Geneva on 10 Sept. 1951).
2 Sartre on Hiroshima: Sartre, ‘The End of the War’, in The Aftermath of War (Situations III), 65–75, this 71–2.
3 Camus on Hiroshima: Camus, ‘[On the bombing of Hiroshima]’, in Between Hell and Reason, 110–11: an untitled piece originally published in Combat (8 Aug. 1945).
4 Chain reaction: FOC, 103–4.
5 Radioactive suitcases: FOC, 119; Sartre, Nekrassov, in Three Plays: Kean, Nekrassov, The Trojan Women, tr. Sylvia & George Leeson (London: Penguin, [n.d.]), 131–282, this 211–12.
6 ‘A true international society’: Camus, ‘[On the bombing of Hiroshima]’, in Between Hell and Reason, 110–11, this 111.
7 Kravchenko case: Gary Kern, The Kravchenko Case (New York: Enigma, 2007), 452; FOC, 183; Beevor & Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 338.
8 Rousset case: Tony Judt, Postwar: a history of Europe since 1945 (London: Vintage, 2010), 214–15.
9 Sartre on the Rosenbergs: Sartre, ‘Les animaux malades de la rage’ (‘Mad Beasts’), originally published in Libération (22 June 1953), and reprinted in Catherine Varlin & René Guyonnet (eds), Le chant interrompu: histoire des Rosenberg (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), 224–8. See Contat & Rybalka (eds), The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, I, 285 — the editors commenting, ‘His wrath brought forth one of the strongest things he ever wrote.’ See also Hayman, Writing Against, 285.
10 ‘An unimaginable stupidity’: Arendt & Jaspers, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 220 (Jaspers to Arendt, 22 May 1953).
11 Baby vs humanity: Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. C. Garnett (London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1927), II, 251.
12 ‘I will never again’: Camus, ‘Neither Victims nor Executioners’, 41.
13 The Just: Camus, The Just, tr. Henry Jones, in Camus, Caligula, 163–227.
14 ‘People are now planting bombs’: Camus, ‘The Nobel Prize Press Conference Incident, December 14–17, 1957’, in Algerian Chronicles, 213–16, this 216n. On this, see Zaretsky, A Life Worth Living, 84–5.
15 ‘The perspective of heads of government’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Philosophy of Existence’, in Texts and Dialogues, 129–39, a talk broadcast 17 Nov. 1959, tr. Allen S. Weiss.
16 ‘It seems to me’ and ‘injustice against one person’: Spender, New Selected Journals, 220 (30 March 1956).
17 Yogi and commissar: Koestler, ‘The Yogi and the Commissar’, in The Yogi and the Commissar, and Other Essays (London: Hutchinson, 1965), 15–25, this 15–16. Also see his chapter ‘Arthur Koestler’, in Richard Crossman (ed.), The God that Failed: six studies in communism (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950), 25–82.
18 Yogi and proletarian: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Yogi and the Proletarian’, in Humanism and Terror, 149–77, this 176. Merleau-Ponty was also motivated by personal dislike of Koestler, partly because he felt Koestler had treated Sonia Brownell badly. See Merleau-Ponty to Sonia Brownell (14 Oct. [1947]), in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109).
19 Quarrel at Vians’ party: FOC, 120; Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 253; see also Beauvoir, Adieux, 267.
20 ‘Impossible!’ and ‘It is possible’, etc.: FOC, 118–19.
21 ‘He was my friend!’, and account of quarrel: FOC, 149–50.
22 ‘When people’s opinions’: FOC, 151.
23 ‘Koestler, you know that’: Spender, New Selected Journals, 79–80 (14 April 1950).
24 French writers in London: Sonia Brownell to Merleau-Ponty (‘Sun
day’, undated but probably early 1948, after their Christmas together), in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109).
25 Aron and Sartre in radio debate: Aron, Memoirs, 218–19; Hayman, Writing Against, 244–5. On their relationship, see Jean-François Sirinelli, Deux intellectuels dans le siècle: Sartre et Aron (Paris: Fayard, 1995).
26 Excrement letter and army officers: Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, 97 (Beauvoir to Algren, 5 Nov. 1947), and 90–91 (Beauvoir to Algren, 25 Oct. 1947, continuation of letter of 23 Oct.).
27 ‘Dreary, flabby mixture’, and ‘what would a man be’: Henri Lefebvre, excerpt from his L’existentialisme (1946), translated in his Key Writings, eds S. Elden, E. Lebas & E. Kofman (New York & London: Continuum, 2003), 9–11. Lefebvre later toned down his views and became more sympathetic to existentialism.
28 Dirty Hands: Sartre, Dirty Hands, tr. Lionel Abel, in No Exit and Three Other Plays, 125–241. Sartre was dismayed when the play was taken up in the US as a propaganda tool by anti-Communists, and in 1952 he declared that he would only sanction performances in countries where the local Communist Party accepted it. Thompson, Sartre, 78.
29 ‘A hyena with a fountain pen’: Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 337. The remark was made at a peace congress in 1948.
30 ‘Decay and moral degeneration’: Klíma, My Crazy Century, 69.
31 Algren and Beauvoir difficulties: FOC, 137.
32 Hallucinations and ‘dwarf forests’: FOC, 143.
33 War fears: FOC, 242; Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 285.
34 ‘You must leave’: FOC, 243.
35 ‘How to get away’: Beauvoir, Beloved Chicago Man, 406 (Beauvoir to Algren, 31 Dec. 1950).
36 Going to US: ibid., 410 (Beauvoir to Algren, 14 Jan. 1951).
37 None of them wanting to flee Communists: FOC, 244.
38 ‘With that boyish air’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 279.
39 ‘Because brute force’: ibid., 274.
40 Merleau-Ponty shocked by Korea: ibid., 275.
41 Duclos and pigeon plot: Jacques Duclos, Mémoires IV: 1945–1952: des débuts de la IVe République au ‘complot’ des pigeons (Paris: Fayard, 1971), 339–492, esp. the autopsy: 404. The experts: 400–401.
42 Aragon’s poem reproduced: ibid., 435–6. Also see Jacques Duclos, Écrits de la prison (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1952).
43 ‘After ten years’ and ‘In the language’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 287; also see Sartre By Himself, 72, and FOC, 245 (for Beauvoir on how it changed him).
44 ‘Write or suffocate’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 287–8. Sartre, The Communists and Peace. Originally published in parts in Les Temps modernes, 81 (July 1952); 84–5 (Oct.–Nov. 1952); 101 (April 1954).
45 Rebellion: Camus, The Rebel, 178, 253.
46 ‘So far but no further’: ibid., 19.
47 Jeanson’s review: Francis Jeanson, ‘Albert Camus, or The Soul in Revolt’, in Sprintzen & Van den Hoven (eds), Sartre and Camus: a historic confrontation, 79–105 this 101. Originally published in Les Temps modernes, 79 (May 1952).
48 ‘I am beginning’: Camus, ‘A Letter to the Editor of Les Temps modernes’, in Sprintzen & Van den Hoven (eds), Sartre and Camus, 107–29, this 126. Originally published in Les Temps modernes, 82 (Aug. 1952).
49 Sartre’s reply: Sartre, ‘Reply to Albert Camus’, in Sprintzen & Van den Hoven (eds), Sartre and Camus, 131–61, this 131–2. Originally published in Les Temps modernes, 82 (Aug. 1952), following Camus’ letter. Also reprinted in Sartre, Situations [IV], 69–105.
50 Camus’ draft reply: Camus, ‘In Defence of The Rebel’, in Sprintzen & Van den Hoven (eds), Sartre and Camus, 205–21. Written Nov. 1952, but published posthumously as ‘Défense de L’homme révolté’, in Camus, Essais, 1,702–15.
51 Beauvoir: The Rebel a betrayal: FOC, 272.
52 ‘The more I accuse myself’: Camus, The Fall, 103. On the novel, see also FOC, 362.
53 ‘We feel that we are being judged’: Sartre, Saint Genet, 598.
54 Beauvoir on being judged: ASAD, 49.
55 ‘The enormous condescension’: E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Gollancz, 1980), 14. The line is often quoted, but rarely in its proper context, which seems relevant here: ‘I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not.’
56 ‘It is perfectly true’: Kierkegaard, Notebook IV A 164; 1843 (D), in A Kierkegaard Reader, eds Roger Poole & Henrik Stangerup (London: Fourth Estate, 1989), 18; Sartre, Saint Genet, 599.
57 Not showing Merleau-Ponty the article: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 289.
58 Merleau-Ponty’s lecture: Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy, 4–5, 63.
59 ‘In a glacially cold tone’ and ‘I hope’: Stewart (ed.), The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, 343 (Merleau-Ponty to Sartre, 8 July [1953]). Stewart’s collection includes (327–54) a translation of the whole correspondence, first published in Le magazine littéraire (2 April 1994), and also included in ‘Sartre and MP: les lettres d’une rupture’, in Parcours deux, 1951–1961, 129–69, and Merleau-Ponty, Œuvres, 627–51.
60 Heat: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 197.
61 No longer ‘engaged’: Stewart (ed.), The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, 327–54, this 334 (Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, undated but before Merleau-Ponty’s reply dated 8 July 1953).
62 ‘Become engaged on every event’: ibid., 338–9 (Merleau-Ponty to Sartre, 8 July [1953]).
63 ‘For God’s sake’ and ‘If I appeared’: ibid., 351 (Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, 29 July 1953).
64 Merleau-Ponty smiling: FOC, 332.
65 ‘Found his security’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 232.
66 Discussing for hours: Marianne Merleau-Ponty, personal communication.
67 Editorial meetings and mutterings: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 292.
68 ‘Alors, c’est fini’: Marianne Merleau-Ponty, personal communication; see also Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 298.
69 Never called: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 301.
70 ‘Casually, with that sad gaiety’: ibid., 301–302. His daughter also remembers a dark period.
71 ‘Light and free as air’ and ‘a living accord’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 300.
72 ‘Sartre and Ultrabolshevism’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Sartre and Ultrabolshevism’, in Adventures of the Dialectic, 95–201, especially 95–6.
73 Beauvoir’s attack: Beauvoir, ‘Merleau-Ponty and Pseudo-Sartreanism’, in Political Writings 195–258. (Originally published in Les Temps modernes, 1955.)
74 Anti-Merleau-Ponty meeting: Roger Garaudy et al., Mésaventures de l’anti-marxisme: les malheurs de M. Merleau-Ponty. Avec une lettre de G. Lukács (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1956). The meeting took place on 29 Nov. 1955. See Emmanuelle Garcia, ‘Maurice Merleau-Ponty: vie et œuvre’, in Merleau-Ponty, Œuvres, 27–99, this 81.
75 ‘Someone was speaking’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 318–19. Marianne Merleau-Ponty also remembers their greetings as cool.
76 Amused looks: ibid., 318. For Spender’s perspective, see Spender, New Selected Journals, 215 (26 March 1956). For Merleau-Ponty’s contributions to this conference, see Merleau-Ponty, ‘East–West Encounter (1956)’, tr. Jeffrey Gaines, in Merleau-Ponty, Text
s and Dialogues, 26–58.
77 ‘One leaves behind reveries’: cited in Paul Ricœur, ‘Homage to Merleau-Ponty’, in Bernard Flynn, Wayne J. Froman & Robert Vallier (eds), Merleau-Ponty and the Possibilities of Philosophy: transforming the tradition (New York: SUNY Press, 2009), 17–24, this 21.
78 Philosophers are awake: Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy, 63.
79 ‘I thought that while I was being faithful’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in Situations [IV], 225–326, this 293.
80 The Mandarins: see FOC, 311; Lanzmann, The Patagonian Hare, 235. Both agree it was Lanzmann who suggested the title.
81 ‘He said first of all’ and ‘I want to kill’, etc.: FOC, 294–6.
82 List and diagram of quarrels: Sartre, ‘Relecture du Carnet I’, (notebook, c. 1954), in his Les Mots, 937–53, this 950–51.
83 ‘A thing is dead’: Beauvoir, Adieux, 275.
84 ‘There was a side of him’ and ‘He was probably’: Sartre, ‘Self-Portrait at Seventy’, in Sartre in the Seventies (Situations X), 3–92, this 64.
85 ‘Merciless towards the failings’: Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, ix.
86 Unfit to teach: Aron, Memoirs, 329.
87 ‘Bonjour’: Todd, Un fils rebelle, 267–8; see also Aron, Memoirs, 447–9, and Hayman, Writing Against, 435.
88 ‘What do you think?’: Aron, Memoirs, 457. The interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy was published in Le nouvel observateur (15 March 1976).
89 Soviet trip and articles: Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 348–9, citing articles published in Libération (15–20 July 1954). See also FOC, 316–23.
90 Delegating writing to Cau: Beauvoir, Adieux, 366.
91 ‘There’s no time!’ and giving up pleasures: Cau, Croquis de mémoire, 236, 248.
92 Bourgeois self-indulgence: see Sartre, ‘On The Idiot of the Family’, 109–32, in Sartre in the Seventies (Situations X), this 111.
93 Beauvoir watching nervously: Beauvoir, Adieux, 174.
94 Twenty pages a day: Hayman, Writing Against, 1, citing Contat & Rybalka in Le Monde (17 April 1980).
95 Breakfast: Huston, An Open Book, 295.