Letters to Sartre

Lettres a Sartre

by Simone de Beauvoir

In 1983 de Beauvoir published Sartre's letters, maintaining that her own to him had been lost. They were found by de Beauvoir's adopted daughter, and published to a storm of controversy in France. Tracing the emotional and triangular complications of her life with Sartre, the letters reveal her not only as manipulative and dependent but Simonealso as vulnerable, passionate, jealous and committed.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Classics, France, Memoir, Biography, History

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Works of Simone de Beauvoir, French writer, existentialist, and feminist, include The Second Sex in 1949 and The Coming of Age , a study in 1970 of views of different cultures on the old.


Simone de Beauvoir, an author and philosopher, wrote novels, monographs, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. People now best know She Came to Stay and The Mandarins , her metaphysical novels. Her treatise, a foundational contemporary tract, of 1949 detailed analysis of oppression of women.

Reviews

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

An ultimately troubling read, knowing the background to de Beauvoir and Sarte’s lives and relationships which are fully documented - if, at times, indirectly - throughout their letters and novels.

How much more rewarding if Sartre’s correspondence could be interspersed within its pages to balance it out. For all its intrigue, this is essentially a one-sided viewpoint of dependence, yet the guilt remains.

‘She moved me - and filled me with remorse - because she’s suffering from an intense and dreadful attack of neurasthenia, and it’s our fault, I think. It’s the very indirect, but profound, after-shock of the business between her and us. She’s the only person to who we have done harm, but we have harmed her…It’s important to see a lot of her, and I’m going to try because I’m filled with remorse.’

[Satyajeet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the fact that Simone de Beauvoir referred to Sartre as “My dear little being.”
She loves everything about him from his "little fingers", ″arms″, and ″lips/lip″ to his ″boring sweaters″ and ″little 'not so round' face.″
Sartre calls her “Beaver,” lovingly!

″When I’m with you nothing seems so terrible as leaving you yet faraway the least little fear is unbearable. I love you passionately. I’m empty and unhappy without you...I love you with something tragic and with complete abandonment.″ she wrote.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a marvelous collection and an intriguing insight into the personal, personable de Beauvoir. The voice we hear isn't the memoirist, much less the philosopher or novelist. Instead we find a human writing to the man she loves. This collection is also one of two perspectives. The first half is of a pining De Beauvoir writing to Sartre who has been deployed amidst the phony war and then, after France's capitulation, being held in a POW camp. As I noted earlier, the Occupation didn't appear to sting the woman. She teaches, she writes. She carries on her affairs with men and women, noting such in detail to her "morganatic" husband Sartre. She catches herself on the rare occasions when she notes a shortage. She recognizes the audacity of saying such to someone in captivity.

The second half of the collection features a postwar de Beauvoir writing to Sartre as she travels the world. She doesn't appear to need him as much. She certainly no longer requires his approval. I was especially moved by her time in the United States. Her portrait of New York City is compelling, almost incandescent. She also spent several weeks working in Gary, Indiana under the wing of her American lover Nelson Algren. The address is listed. I asked my wife this morning if she wanted drive the four hours to Gary to visit the house and alas she said no.

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Aubrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letters are so funny. Especially when you can only access one side of the correspondence. One of the things I love about reading letters is that you get a particular picture of the writer and the reader that one wouldn't get if the story had been told as just that - A STORY.

I read this book most nights before bed - one letter at a time for nearly a year and am feeling a little of a loss. I think I'm going to miss DeBeauvoir!

These letters gave me a very good picture of Paris during World War II and even Chicago and Hollywood in the 1950s. And this couple - DeBeauvoir and Sartre knew everybody! So, the letters are riddled with names of famous philosophers, artists, musicians and politicians.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I put this book on my reading list I was hoping it'd be full of dialogue on the pair's intellectual ideas. I like to think of them as the modern day Abelard and Heloise. There was a little, but very little of that.

For the most part de Beauvoir writes about what she's reading, what she had for dinner or what she observed on a walk. It's mundane, yes, but de Beauvoir is beyond a doubt a fantastic writer and I still found myself drawn in.

The best part of the book for me was following her literary explorations (both her and Sartre were very influenced by literature) and her observations in travel in different parts of the world. Not what I hoped for but great no less.

[azzura · Rating 5 out of 5]

“i’m quite choked with tenderness for you, my love, it makes me a bit pathetic to love you so much” bitch omg…

[Ian "Marvin" Graye]

What We Call Each Other When We Call About Love

I saw this book in a shop today.

I love the fact (but wasn't surprised) that she referred to Sartre as "my dear little being". I'll have to check his volume of letters to see whether he called her "my dear little nothingness".

I was a bit more surprised that she referred to herself as "your charming Beaver." Understandable, I suppose.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard for me to give this book a low score but I really did not love the organization of the book.

I will make it easy for the readers. The narrative gives close to ZERO biography and background of the basis of the letters and the footnotes are often useless. (The following review will absolutely make me sound like a true literature snob, but it will save readers A LOT of time) - If you have little to zero knowledge of who Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Satre are, do NOT read. If you don’t know about the dynamic of their open relationship, do NOT read. If you are not aware of early 20th century European writers, activists, intellectuals, do NOT read. If you don’t really know the WWII history time line and the interaction of French intellectuals at that period had with the communist party, do NOT read. I promise it will be VERY confused and I would get annoyed easy by the content.

The bulk of these letters - 274 pages - takes place between 1939 - 1941, when Sartre was mobilized for WWII and subsequently a prisoner of war. These read more like a journal than anything else because she wrote to Sartre daily and told him pretty much everything about what happened in her life on a sometimes hourly basis. The length of these letters and the details are phenomenal - it's as if nothing was too minute to mention. The next largest section (I LOVED THIS PART) - 84 pages - are the letters she wrote while she was in the America. I quite enjoyed this section because I was particular curious to know how she responded to Satre during this time when she spent passionate years with Nelson Algren - and these letters were BEYOND phenomenal.

I did skim through ALOT of this. Overall, how many repetitive “I love you and miss you” can you read in a day? (3.5/5)

[Isha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t believe I’ve finished this. This book has been with me for two years—I’ve carried it everywhere. Sometimes I’d read a few letters a day, sometimes just one in months.

I feel like I know Simone a little now. This book made me fall in love with non-fiction. Letters have become my new favourite form.

It’s not just a collection of letters to Sartre—it’s the story of a 22-year-old girl growing, evolving. You see how she spends her days, her approach to life, how she slowly and gracefully steps into the world of writing—and most beautifully, how she experiments with her life.

Reading her words almost 80 years later, and still feeling their freshness—that was truly something.

This book has been a journey. I’m not putting it back on the shelf. It’ll stay on my desk so I can open it to a random letter and enjoy it all over again.

[Sydney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I knew there was a reason why I never liked anything written by Simone de Beauvoir. The letters reveal a petty person who seemed to revel in using other people and tattling on it to Sartre (and then there is the endless discussion about what she ate who she ate it with and that passion filled hour). My feelings about Sartre? the jury's still out on how I feel about his writing and these letters do not reveal much about him, other than he had a long term relationship with a pretty despicable person.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read each letter slowly throughout my mornings and now I feel abandoned. “Makes me a bit pathetic to love you so much” Felt as if loving Sarte would be exhausting or loving De Beauvoir. Funny to see how much lack of sympathy they had for other “lovers”. I used to think of her as transcendent, but some actions are ridiculous. Could be out of loneliness not sure, but please punch me in the face, I am in a funk. Thanks for the mundane details since that is the whole point. Nice to see the literary works they shared, very sweet to mention Jane Eyre as “not too boring”. But other than that, who has onion soup and then goes to bed? I understand tomato (no too acidic). Any other soup, please. I am all for the onions, but not before bed does not seem cozy enough.

I like these

“You write about things more than they exist.. trying to describe an object- the gloomy world, or the wretchedness of life”.

“Something you have to swallow down quickly, without really identifying the taste on the way…to extract all the venom, so that you keep it as it is, with all its menace”.

Like the way she refers to Sartre as her “daily bread, dear little being, dear little one” five stars for the names

[Sarah Zahid · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book with high hopes. This is one way correspondence between Satre and Simone. A love affair that was open yet closed from the prying eyes of public.. They never legally tied knots but she often refers to him as "dear husband" . The letters are full of mundane details. Her dinners with family, at one time about a flat bicycle tire and money. The kind of stuff wives write to their long term husbands . But they are still love letters. They are filed with her escapades and she shares them without any qualms. It is an interesting read nevertheless and gives an insight to a relationship which was based on friendship and mutual love for ideas. In these letters Satre appears as a friend and a lover rather than a mentor. In her own words .."this relationship" shaped their writing . The letters do become repetitive. But if you are a Simone fan.. This is recommended .

[nietzscheanista · Rating 4 out of 5]

niisama lugemiseks veits dry…
vb mingite spetsiifilisemate teemade uurimise kohta head moned spetsiifilised peatykid
aga ikkagi 4 tarni sest biiver LOVE BIIVER❤️❤️❤️
ja see cover on lihtsalt niiii kaunis!!!!!! fat rAAMAT


ma lis ytlen et ma ei lugenud viimaseid 100 lk

[Anda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is an interesting book, allowing you to virtually live 70 years ago.
Sartre and Beauvoir were both intellectuals, Sartre even gaining a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964. Their love lasted an entire life. But it was a special type of relationship, what we now call on Facebook an open relationship. They both had affairs, Simone being involved in affairs both with girls and guys. It's very interesting from this point of view.
Also, the book contains the correspondence from the Second World War, when Sartre was a soldier and then a prisoner. Simone wrote to him every day and we can analyse her living and attitude towards love and Sartre. At the end of the book, we have some recent letters, from '47-'51, when Simone travelled in America and Tunis. In America she stayed quite a lot and lived with another man, famous on Hollywood, for a couple months.
This book was a revelation for me because I got to see a very different point of view regarding relationships, I virtually met a very open and flexible personality (Beauvoir).
Though, it's frustrating not having Sartre's response. There are only her letters. Another reason why I gave it 3 stars it's the numerous details you must pass to find something interesting. She explained every day her schedule, her meals and encounters and that can be rather boring sometimes. It's something normal for a correspondence, but the book could be better organised, including also his letters and other annotations.
I would recommend reading first their opera and only later and optional their correspondence. I will continue reading The Second Sex, her best known book.
Although Simone was rather intriguing for me, I am glad I had the change of reading her letters.

[Gacanti Swastika · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s bit too mundane for conversation that spans 30 years between Sartre & Beauvoir

[Lancelot · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I miss you to the point of anguish. I’d like to see you and have you to myself — just to myself — for a long, long while.”

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know that I’ll ever fully read this, but it’s just A1
These folks may have invented the freak flag

[Juan Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[Morgan]

I bought this for my love, Chris, and have been itching to read it since perusing the passages the night before his birthday. I must wait until he has a chance to read it (if ever) before I ask to borrow it! Sarte and de Beauvoir had such a passion for one another, and for writing, that touches me deeply. These letters cause me to long for the cafes that line the Saint Germaine Blvd in Paris...

[Alissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! It is a collection of letters between Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (two great French writers; I love her work in particular). Romantic, engaging, and intense.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am perhaps the wrong person to be reading a book like this.  Generally speaking, one reads the letters of others when one has an interest in them or their lives.  I am, at best, deeply ambivalent to hostile towards the thinking of the author, and I am not that much more fond of Sartre outside of his excellent plays.  As a result, this book is not as enjoyable as it was when I was reading the letters of Jane Austen [1].  Nevertheless, I am in general a fan of letter-writing, even if mine has been frequently disastrous in its result, and these letters are certainly at least interesting from a personal perspective.  If one wants to find out about the personal lives of the author and the recipient of her letters and how they were able to keep up their long-term open relationship, these letters have a lot to say.  Admittedly, though, what these letters have to say is not always very interesting, nor is it very edifying.  The jealousy and unhappiness faced by the author demonstrates in many ways the natural result of her decision to live in such an unconventional and immoral manner, and I'm not the most sympathetic person to her continual carping and whining.

This sprawling volume of more than 500 pages consists of letters from the author to Sartre during six periods of time when the two of them were apart.  The first set of letters, barely 30 pages, consists of her writing to him before World War II from January 1930 to July 1939.  The majority of the letters, almost 300 pages, then take place between September 1939 and March 1940.  In these letters the author engages in a great deal of venting about overly demanding lovers (in one particularly droll example, the author explains how she tried to smooth over the feelings of someone who complained about being fifth place in her affections) and whining about the safety of her second place lover, who like Sartre was called up to the French army.  The third part of the book, and the most poignant, consists of more than fifty pages of letters--it is specified that they cannot be long--that the author wrote to Sartre while he was a German prisoner of war after the debacle of the French defeat in 1940.  After that there are some letters written before and just after liberation between July 1943 and February 1946.  There are still more letters written when De Bouvoir was in America with a couple of her other lovers and dealing with leftist politics as well as publishing issues, before the book closes with some of the later periods of separation between them between 1953 and 1963.

Although in general this book was pretty cringy, it is not as if it is a volume without value at all.  The author signed her letters (usually) as "Your Charming Beaver," which is mildly amusing and makes one wonder if the word beaver has the same sort of double meaning in French as in English, which would make sense given the content of the letters.  The author whines a lot in these pages, going to the extreme of having Sartre (and one of her other lovers) mail letters to a different address so that her jealous roommates are unable to read the letters, as happens a few times to the author's irritation and annoyance.  There is a great deal of deception that takes place here--deceiving lovers as to their importance, deceiving others as to the reasons for wanting to break up or not wanting to enjoy threesomes, deceiving others as to finances and where money is being spent.  At some points, the author seems to be a sexual predator with some of her students, which intriguingly enough was the charge that led her to be removed as a teacher during the Vichy period.  While I would admit that reading this book did not make me more sympathetic about the struggles of keeping a polyamorous relationship going, it does show that Sartre and the author cared a great deal about each other, that she fretted over his well-being as much as if she had been an actual wife, and that they shared a great deal in common when it came to business and philosophy and interest in books and movies.  There are marriages that have been made on worse grounds.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I do so hope you’ve had my letters. Everything I live through is lived through in order to tell you about it, so that it makes a little enrichment of your own life.”

from the surface, this reads as a very tender and sweet collection of letters from simone de beauvoir to jean-paul sartre over the span of thirty years, including world war two and sartre being a prisoner of war. beauvoir was honestly living my ideal life, her days basically filled with long walks in paris, sitting at cafes reading, and then rendezvousing with her copious lovers.

however there is a very sinister side to it as well, i definitely learned a lot, not necessarily from the letters themselves but from my own research to connect the names and places stated in the letters, as obviously beauvoir didn’t write them intending on public consumption. beauvoir and sartre had an open relationship, beauvoir seeking relationships with men and women. it was very interesting to read about this kind of relationship in a historical context, however, the tender and sweet love that they share for each other was not extended to those in their other relationships. it was actually quite uncomfortable to learn about as there was a lot of manipulation of young women between the two of them, beauvoir having her teaching license revoked because she was in a sexual relationship with a minor, sartre having an affair with a 19-year-old and then ADOPTING HER. i literally have no words....

i'm torn between wanting to devour everything the two of them have ever written and never wanting to pick up any of either of their books again. though the idea of reading sartre's collection of letters to beauvoir is very intriguing... it is certainly one of the most interesting relationships i have ever read about.

here is my favourite passage:

“Then I came here and ate a fillet steak with fried bread, potatoes, and artichoke hearts that consoled me for all my troubles: a miracle, I hadn’t thought such a thing still existed. The place is delightful, it makes me feel odd and most extremely poetical to be spending an evening in this little inn, all by myself, just like in the old days when you didn’t yet love me quite so much... I’m choked with tenderness for you, my love, it makes me a bit pathetic to love you so much. Did you manage to get some sleep, my little man? You had nothing for your supper, you poor little person. Write to me very soon, tell me whether your little lip is better... Goodbye, my love. I’m lacerated everywhere by being far away from you after all these days - what a delightful little face you had this morning, curled up beside me in your little cocoon. I kiss you passionately.”

[Muaz Jalil · Rating 2 out of 5]

My 'Little One' or 'Little Being' is what Beauvoir (Beaver) used to call Sartre in almost all her letters.

My mistake was to assume that these letters would be philosophical or intellectual; instead, they are gossipy and matter-of-fact. If you are interested in their affairs and relationships, menage trois, this is great. It might have been scandalous then, but not in 2024.

Three characters stand out the most: Bianca Bienenfeld (lamblin), Jacques L Bost, and Kos Sisters. Bianca was a student of Beauvoir and a lover of both Sartre/Beauvoir.

What comes out is that Beauvoir/Sartre both might have been manipulative but, in some sense, were very transparent and honest with each other, considering the number of relationships they had simultaneously. Also, Beauvoir certainly absolutely adored Sartre...calls him Brainbox when he came up and started writing Being and Nothingness ( Jan 1940). There is also a discussion about Nausea.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels very weird rating someone's private correspondence. What exactly is the measure of quality here? This is made doubly weird since I've only previously read short essays and extracts of her work (I will rectify this soon...ish), so my biggest impression of her is through letters she didn't intend for someone like me to read.

Nevetheless, I found them a worth while read (and an enjoyable one). She had the misfortune of living through interesting times, and since she her letters address the situations she finds herself in the historical context alone is worth paying attention to. Philosophy seeps into her letters relatively rarely given what she's famous for, but still emerges here and there to offer some ideas. The details of her life and adventures are also pretty intriguing, so the collection has that gossip-rag intrigue of looking into someone else's life.

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

These hilarious and very personal love letters show the inside view of an experimental and apparently jealousy-ridden polyamorous relationship among people who would eventually become famous in the high culture world (it begins well before they achieve fame).

Set in France before, during, and after WWII - her mini-travel narratives are the best parts. She's the main character. She's a clever, funny, and extremely immature person who devotes much time to gossip and complaint about her lovers, some of whom are her teen students.

It's worth it to do some research on the characters in her letters.

[Yolanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sartre and de Beauvoir had an open relationship (she, among other things, was involved with both men and women). Maybe I am quite conservative in love, so I don’t place any value on open relationships, however, I didn’t expect so much romanticism from her. It’s a shame not to have his responses as well. Both knew many famous people of that time (philosophers, musicians, artists…), and it’s nice that they are mentioned. It’s also interesting to learn about life in those times, but many parts are quite boring where she talks about what she ate and what she saw while walking, for example.
Three stars for me, just because I adore Simone’s style.

[Ik · Rating 1 out of 5]

In all honesty, I didn't finish this collection of letters. I expected them to be about existentialism (my bad). Instead, they contained Simone's minituous account of every day life. It's quite repetitive and after a while I gave up wrestling through it. I also find the way she addressed Sartre rather demeaning; 'little man', 'your little book', and so on. But that might be love, lost in translation.

[Lio Smits · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het voelt altijd zo onjuist om persoonlijke brieven te lezen, maar dit kadert zo veel. Het dagelijks leven van Beauvoir in al zijn glorie en verval, haar devotie aan filosofie, haar humor, haar wanhoop, haar bedenkelijke overheersingsdrang en misbruik van studenten. Ook komt duidelijk naar voren hoe haar band met Sartre voornamelijk een van intellectuele aard is, aangekleed met een licht romantisch jasje, terwijl vaak het omgekeerde wordt beweerd.

[Andrew Knoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually a surprisingly insightful read - Simone's day to day life embodies many aspects of existential philosophy in many ways. The stereotype of Sartre and Beauvoir of them being daily cafe-dwellers is not an exaggeration! If nothing else, this book illuminates day-to-day schedules that one in America can only read or dream about.