Jean Paul Sartre

source : Five Dials
My Darling Beaver
HOW TO WRITE A LETER
Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir
These few letters from Sartre to Simone de
Beauvoir are taken from the collection Witness
to My Life, which was published after Sartre’s
death, translated by Lee Fahnestock and
Norman MacAfee, and edited by de Beauvoir
herself.
From playful declarations of affectionand detailed descriptions of everyday life, tophilosophical conjecture and in-depth discussionsof books, the letters offer a fascinating
insight into one of the most famous relationshipsof the twentieth century and are testament toan incredible intellectual affinity which lasted a lifetime. Yet, blithely interwoven with the
intimacy of shared ideas and emotions are also Sartre’s unflinching accounts of his affairs with other women, and although complete honesty and transparency was a fundamental tenet of the pair’s relationship, these are still difficult to read without squirming with jealousy on de Beauvoir’s behalf. But perhaps I should reserve judgement about Sartre – at any rate, that’s what his eerily prescient words in the letter of 16th September seem to implore us to do. – Anna Kelly July, 1939 · My darling Beaver, When it comes to you, my little darling, everything is idyllic. I got both your letters at the same time. You’ve finally read Heidegger, it’s worth your while and we’ll talk about it. The day after tomorrow I’ll see you, my love. I can’t sit still. I have little stirrings of hope now (I was logy and drowsing) but I’m
also more nervous. Now I can tell you that prospects weren’t at all rosy these past days. When I arrived there was fear of war for the following day (there was an aborted coup in Danzig, the papers are now calling it the July 2 coup), and I was petrified that war would erupt while I
was still in Saint-Sauveur. Do you realize what that means? And then later, on Tuesday, things calmed down. But then on Wednesday I got a letter from Tania that annoyed me, pure delirium of passion on my part. And then I calmed down. I’m so nervous and out of sorts here
that yesterday, while reading an idiotic and sentimental scene from a piece in L’Illustration, suddenly I was teary-eyed. With no thought or qualms on my part but due, I think, to the strangely larval, overagitated state in which I find myself. But it’s over. On the other hand, I think I’ve done some excellent work. You’ll be the judge of that. I love you with all my heart, my little one. You are my haven, and I need you. I send you all my love. Late July, 1939 · My darling Beaver, I received your two delightful letters, which I read without skipping a single one of the descriptions (which are very spare, incidentally), and I was very moved by your small compliments. Dear God, how nice you are, my Beaver. You fill me with regrets and longings, and yesterday I was completely morose not to be with you. Who wanted this? you will ask. I did, probably, but without you it’s like Paradise Lost. I love you. For now I’m relentlessly devoting myself to my personal life (we said it better, I think: personal doggedness), but personal life doesn’t pay. To tell the truth, Tania is almost always charming and affectionate, and it is very nice sleeping with her, which happens to me morning and evening, for the moment. She seems to get pleasure out of it, but it kills her, she lies on her bed dead to the world for more than 15 minutes after her revels. The thing is, it takes the violence of arguments or the touching quality of reconciliation for me to feel alive. Last night we had a terrific argument but it was worth the effort ( . . . ) Adieu my darling Beaver, she has just arrived and I am finishing right in front of her. You know my feelings, but I don’t
dare to write them, because it’s not that difficult to read upside down.

16th September, 1939 · My darling Beaver,There’s a package for me at the postoffice. A small one. From you? That would be the first sign of you I’ve had since Ceintry. Except that for me to get it the postal clerk has to sign a discharge, and of course the postal clerk isn’t there.
Letters, none. There were 100 this morning for the whole division but of course not one for the AD. That’s already some progress. Our first sergeant hasn’t had a letter in twenty-five days. This silence is beginning to weigh on us. I think that our existence would be different – perhaps more vulnerable – if we had daily news from civilian lives. I’d so like to know
what’s going on in your life. I get the impression that after some few days of gloom, Paris is beginning to come back to life. Am I wrong? Have you gotten back to your novel? Are you giving your attention to ‘the social life’? For me, I feel out of touch with social matters. This war is so disconcerting – still Kafkaesque, and rather like the battle in The Charterhouse of
Parma. It defies thought; I struggle valiantly to catch it, but ultimately everything I think holds good for field manoeuvres, not for the war; the war is always screened, elusive. Actually there’s nothing new. I’m calm, but the calm doesn’t much satisfy me, it isn’t a calm based on good reasons, and I justify myself in my little black notebook. Whoever reads it after my death – for you will publish it only posthumously – will think that I was an evil character unless you accompany it with benevolent and explanatory annotations. In short, I’m
morally a bit disoriented (don’t worry, moral preoccupations don’t spoil my appetite),
like the guy who, getting ready to lift a heavy barbell, suddenly realises it’s hollow and, at the same time, that deep down he was hoping it was. Needless to say, he finds himself flat on his ass.

17 th November, 1939 · My darling Beaver,
No letters from you today. I’d foreseen
it for one of these days, because
the day before yesterday I inexplicably
received two at the same time. Since I
have no anxieties and even find this gap
natural, for the reason I’ve just mentioned,
it allows me to understand all
the better what I miss when a day goes
by without anything from you; it is a
sort of Goethesque wisdom that allows
me to attend the various events of my
life without actually partaking of them.
With your letters I feel Olympian at little
cost, because I regain a world we hold in
common, which is good, be it in war or
peace, like a tormented novel that ends
happily. I think that it comes from the
absolute and total regard I have for you:
the moment that exists, there is that absolute,
the rest must clearly follow, even the
worst. I imagine that is what you must
be feeling when you call me your ‘little
absolute.’ My darling, I love you very
much.
I got an exalted letter from Dumartin
spontaneously proclaiming himself my
disciple, avowing an admiration that is
not intellectual but human, and ending
by asking me to correct twenty pages
of a novel he has just written. There
are a few pages of subtle humour in it
that I liked very much, as when he says,
‘I spent two months of isolation and
individuality in England’. But I am even
more amused by this shower of former
students that still associate me with their
little concoctions, one (Hadjibelli) asking
me for a bibliography, another (Kanapa)
a definition of Aristotle’s physics, the
third that I read his literary work. Alas,
I’ll have to answer them all. I’ll devote
one whole day to it. I’ve finished the
difficult passage in my novel and in a way
that pleases me. But will you be satisfied,
little judge?