Your Beaver
[Salamanca, Spain]
Friday 22 July [1955]
My dear little yourself. I got your telegram, and this morning your letter. Moreover, the French papers aren’t announcing your death, so I suppose Michelle’s still driving with skill and prudence — and without any bad luck. I’ve never had any doubts about Michelle, but luck’s treacherous, so sometimes while dropping asleep I’ve felt the odd tremor of fear. As for the Slave of Hunger, he cried in his sleep all through one night, so affected was he by the story of Hugo coming across the announcement of Leopoldine’s death in a newspaper in a café — I’m reading Maurois’ Olympio.526 Anyway, today I’m reassured — and glad to know that Michelle has been converted to mountains, and that you enjoyed Bellagio. Did you like Aosta? — you don’t say. I couldn’t find our little hotel again either, in Bellagio. I forgot to ask you the other day whether you remembered the ‘Papa-Moscas’ at Burgos, who swallows flies as he strikes the hours: in those days when you and I were so nice, we found him really entertaining.
We left Burgos and sped off to the North-West, across the plateaux of Old Castille and some ‘terrifying’ mountains — very beautiful, actually. We followed the north coast — boring and desolate — till we reached La Coruna, a charming town. First, it’s a port with a good smell of fish and tar. Secondly, all the apartments have verandahs for every room — they call them miradors here — which means that the facades are perfectly flat, white, and made of glass. The town’s known as the crystal town, and it’s quite true that it glitters amazingly in the sunlight and all the buildings look as though they were made of crystal. There was a fiesta, and crowds of people, and it was charming — even though since Pamplona we’d had a horror of the technique consisting in using firecrackers to keep the populace amused. The delight at being in Spain remains, but against that background — since it’s familiar to us after last year — we’re far more sensitive to the horrible aspects of the system: the priests and the poverty. Santiago de Compostella — all churches (amazing ones) and beautiful old arcaded streets, but ringed by filthy hovels — sickened us. And Salamanca where we are this evening — which has the same colours as Rome, a big 18th-century square, and lots of little squares: marvellous, but so poor, so harsh and so desperate under the sun — has made us intensely sad.
Between La Coruna and Salamanca, after visiting Santiago, we stopped for three days in a Galician island.* We bathed and sunbathed and toured the coast by car. It’s rather like Brittany, at the same time as being southern. It’s very beautiful, but the Galicians are sad and glum like Portuguese, and the fishing ports have the same gloomy air. They hate tourists — but out of Galician separatism, not at all out of class consciousness: they were Franco supporters from day one. It’s a strange, lost region, very interesting to see, and from which Andalucia seems a very long way away.
Yesterday, we drove all day through wonderful landscapes before reentering Castille and arriving in the evening at Salamanca — where we’ve just spent the day. It was hot, and I have an idea we’re going to be hot every day from now on. Up to now, it has been ideal: sun and wind, a heavenly climate. I’ve already told you that we’re leaving tomorrow for Valencia, where we’ll spend three days seeing big bullfights with the best matadors of the day. Then we’ll go back down into Andalucia, and up again into Estremadura — ending up in Madrid, On about 31 July I’ll be in Seville, and on about 6 August in Madrid. Write if possible, or at least send a telegram to each address, so that I don’t have bad dreams.
So, I’ve read Olympio. The beginning’s entertaining, and the private life quite well told — though not always. But the way in which it passes over Hugo the public figure and man of the Left is shameful, and in general you get a very poor idea of the fellow. As you warned me, that Maurois’s too petty-minded. Did you know too that Hemingway’s sickeningly anti-Semitic? The Sun Also Rises — quite entertaining to read in Pamplona — is, from that point of view among others, a disgusting piece of work,
I’ve had a note from Violette Leduc, in transports about an article on her by Dominique Aury in the N.R.F. Monique Lange has told me some stories about her. Among other things, when I got the Goncourt527 — speaking of the lunches which we take turns in paying, according to a custom imposed on me by her — she said to Monique Lange: ‘I hope that now we won’t he going Dutch any longer’. MX, also has the impression that in a sense she hates me,
Do you have any news about Nekrassov?528 Is it confirmed that they’ll revive it in September, as Lanzmann has told me? Do you have any news about Merleau-Ponty, or about Paris in general? We get the occasional newspaper, but at least 3 days old (though today we have Wednesday’s) and all full of pictures of Madame Edgar Faure529 — we feel a long way away from everything,
I’m really longing for a letter at Valencia, I’ll write to you again from there, to tell you whether the corridas were fine ones, I’ll post this letter tomorrow in Madrid, which we’ll be driving through, I think you must have had the first one, even though I left out part of the address. Do congratulate Michelle warmly on my behalf and on Lanzmann’s, Make the best of Rome, and have a good rest. Are you working on Jean Sans Terre?530 And car accidents apart, how’s the blood pressure? Do reply, I’m so happy when I get a letter, I kiss you with all my soul, dear little yourself,
Your Beaver
Dear Michelle and dear Sartre, a big kiss to both of you.
Lanzmann
*An island connected to the mainland by a big bridge, which made car trips possible.
Envelope:
M. Sartre
Albergo Nazionale
Piazza Montecitorio
Roma
1958
[Paris]
Sunday [late August 1958]
Dear little yourself. Forgive me for ‘breaking in on your mood’, but I really must communicate to you what’s being said to me insistently from every quarter: people are calling for some article by you that could, as a ‘test case’, also be published as a lampoon. What people are saying — in the Committees, etc.531 — is that publication after 15 September would be too late. Whereas if you send an article at once, it will be a basis for the anti-referendum campaign532 during the whole month of September. I don’t like having to say so, but I think you really must do it: your silence is beginning to make a bad impression, now that the ‘anti’ campaign is seriously getting under way. They’re making a real effort, you know* Lanzmann alone is going to speak at Nantes, at Montargis, and in the Doubs — all within the space of a fortnight. Bulletins are being published, they’re holding meetings in the provinces, and the Communists are determined to pull out all the stops. Things will happen on 4 September if De Gaulle persists in his intention to speak. So an article signed by you seems absolutely indispensable to people here. No need for it to be all that long or complicated. But if you go on remaining silent, it will look dubious: bear in mind that dubiousness is rampant. (Did you see the sickening Merleau-Ponty interview in l’Express?) Basically, what people are asking of you is to declare yourself; and obviously that can be done only in the shape of an article. I swear to you, little yourself, I know that you’ve got the play to do,533 and that Huston must have been after you,534 and so on. But it contradicts everything you’ve done previously if you don’t speak now. Perhaps Servan-Schreiber came and spoke to you? But perhaps he didn’t convince you either.535
I’ve seen lots of people again. Of course, I quarrelled more violently than ever with De Roulet. He says with a snigger: ‘I’m Soustelle’s left hand’,536 and claims that by participating in Soustelle’s campaign against abstentionism he’s helping the Left. I was really naive to think he’d withdraw! He thinks that with ‘good elections’ in November, De Gaulle will be forced to carry out left policies! In the end he left the table in fury, and we made up only very lamely. Bienenfeld, on the other hand, has become a thoroughgoing activist, and despite her self-importance she’s very estimable. Bost is still lost in his amours, Ol
ga sweet but very dejected.
Poor Lanzmann went to L’Express on Saturday morning, to do his article on Joliot-Curie (which they signed Thomas Lenoir). He came back twenty-four hours later, haggard and in despair, not having stopped working for those 24 hours — and moaning.537
1963
[Villeneuve-les-Avignon, Gard]
Saturday [July 1963]
Dear little yourself
I’d really like a few words, just to reassure me that you’re alive, and that Arlette’s a bit less pale than when we said goodbye.538 If it’s raining back there, have no regrets. As I write to you the rain’s coming down in bucketfuls, after a storm that lasted all night (it’s now 9 in the morning) — and it rained the whole of Wednesday morning too.
So, on Monday I met up with Lanzmann, went for a spin on the motorway to get myself used to the car again, listened to his exasperated account of how the Fanon woman and her man had reduced him to slavery, and of the disastrous situation in Algeria (though in Blida he’d seen some interesting people, who’d actually spoken to him about Fanon539). Dinner with him and Judith,540 who was in a great state because she’d just been offered a play that’s very bad but has a big role. I left them at midnight. At 530, woken up by impatience, I took to the road. What with motorways and widened roads, one can drive amazingly fast now and I went like the wind. By 4.30 — having lunched on the way, after Vienne — I was at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. I have a lovely big room opening onto a mediocre garden, with no view and invaded by tennis courts, but where it’s not unpleasant to sit and read or have dinner. In the mornings I work half-heartedly (at that article on women, and subbing V. Leduc541). Then I go for a walk and lunch, come home at about 5, and read. Dinner at the Châteauneuf-du-Pape, one scotch in bed while reading, and to sleep at 10. I’ve revisited the Pont-du-Gard, the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, the Tour-du-Ventoux, some lovely villages, and the countryside — unfortunately overcast by stormy skies. On Thursday evening Lanzmann and Judith dined with me, and we had a few drinks at Avignon. He has gone off again, she’s rehearsing. I’m going to be obliged to see a bit of her — which doesn’t wildly appeal to me. Overall, I’m fine here.
Here’s a letter that was sent directly from Paris to the Prieuré for you542 — it’s a pity we can’t accept.
Have as good a time as possible, get some rest, and write me the odd word or two. I miss you. I’ll be very happy on the 31st. Kisses from me, o little yourself.
Your Beaver
Footnotes
494The Rosenbergs had just been executed, and Sartre wrote an article in Venice for Liberation. Since July 1952, De Beauvoir had begun a seven-year love affair with Claude Lanzmann, a young journalist who had recently joined the editorial committee of Les Temps Modernes (see Force of Circumstance, Chapter 6).
495Trieste, nominally at this time a ‘free city’ under UN protection, in effect remained under a continuation of wartime British occupation until 1954, when a settlement was concluded between Italy and Yugoslavia dividing the city from its hinterland.
496De Beauvoir and Sartre had just spent a month in Amsterdam, then driven down the Rhine and the Moselle to Basel. Lanzmann was supposed to join them there, but instead had a car accident near Cahors.
497A fragment of this letter, written on various scraps of paper including the back of an 18 June letter from Violette Leduc, is missing.
498Newspaper for which Lanzmann was then working.
499Sartre’s L’Affaire Henri Martin (1953).
500Germaine Sorbets was then secretary to Les Temps Modernes.
501Marcel Péju was to be the effective managing editor of Les Temps Modernes from 1954 until 1962.
502Sartre’s play Kean was to be published in 1954.
503In 1948 (see Force of Circumstance, pp. 162-4).
504Chez Point.
505Lanzmann.
506In 1948 and 1950.
507For the past year Sartre had been overworking and suffered from high blood pressure.
508These letters correspond to Force of Circumstance, pp.298-301.
509In 1946, when she gave lectures in Algeria and Tunisia.
510By André Gide (1897).
511In 1946, ‘the man who owned the hotel slipped a poem under my door in which he deplored, between courtly compliments, the fact that I was an Existentialist’ (Force of Circumstance, p.58).
512Delivered in Berlin at a meeting of the Peace Movement: see Force of Circumstance, p.304.
513Sartre had been invited there by the Writers’ Association.
514Preuves was a violently anti-communist journal, the counterpart of Encounter in Britain, funded by the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
515One of the Marx Brothers’ earliest films, (1930).
516Françoise Giroud and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber were the chief reporter and editor respectively of L’Express, then a left-of-centre weekly which was to oppose the Algerian War increasingly firmly.
517Évelyne Rey, actress sister of Claude Lanzmann, with whom Sartre had an affair starting in 1955 and who played the main roles in several of his plays. She committed suicide in 1966.
518De Beauvoir was doing preliminary reading for her article on right-wing thought, ‘La pensee de droite, aujourd’hui’, written for Les Temps Modernes.
519The book in question is Ravages, which appeared in a savagely cut form in the spring of 1955 (see Force of Circumstance, pp.522-3).
520Lanzmann’s brother.
521Lanzmann’s mother and stepfather.
522Leonard Schapiro’s Origins of the Communist Autocracy was written in 1954, so perhaps De Beauvoir had got hold of an early copy of it.
523Les Communistes et la Paix had been published in Les Temps Modernes, the first two parts appearing in 1952, the final part in April 1954.
524The Mandarins, which was to be published in October and win the Prix Goncourt.
525De Beauvoir was working on her article ‘Merleau-Ponty ou le Pseudo-Sartrisme’, a reply to the latter’s Adventures of the Dialectic which had been published in June; Lanzmann — the ‘slave of hunger’ — was writing an article on ‘The Leftwinger’ (see Force of Circumstance, p.317-19).
526A life of Victor Hugo (who personified himself in his poetry under the name Olympio).
527See note 524 above.
528Sartre’s play Nekrassov had opened on 8 June 1955, but had lasted for only sixty performances.
529Edgar Faure was French prime minister (not for the first time) from February 1955 until January 1956.
530Jean Sans-Terre (John Lackland) was a first version of Words (1963), on which Sartre began to work in 1953.
531Local committees set up by the Comité de Résistance Centre le Fascisme, to combat the authoritarian tendencies in the new Gauilist administration that had been in place since May.
532De Gaulle had called a referendum for 28 September, to approve a new presidential constitution for the Fifth Republic.
533Les Séquestrés d’Altona, staged in 1959.
534John Huston was pursuing Sartre for the screenplay on Freud eventually published as The Freud Scenario.
535Sartre did in fact write three articles in L’Express, on 11, 18 and 25 September. He was still in Italy, at Rome, when De Beauvoir wrote this letter.
536Jacques Soustelle (1912- ) was, like Malraux, a Gaullist with a left-wing, anti-fascist past. Appointed governor-general of Algeria in 1955, he had been instrumental in De Gaulle’s return to power in France in 1958.
537This letter is unfinished.
538Arlette el-Kaim had been with Sartre since 1956, and was to be adopted as his daughter and legal heir in 1965.
539Frantz Fanon (1925-61), author of The Damned of the Earth to which Sartre wrote a long preface.
540Judith Magre, an actress who had performed in several of Sartre’s plays.
541The book in question was La Bâtarde (1964).
542Hôtel du Prieuré at Villeneuve-les-Avignon, where Sartre was to join her. The letter presumably contained s
ome invitation.
Simone de Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre
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