At the cusp of adulthood, I became absorbed by Jean-Paul Sartre: the idea that man is nothing but what he makes of himself gave a kind of liberation I had not yet imagined. After reading Sartre, I turned to Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir 1926–1939 and Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre. These books, though framed around Sartre, reveal as much,perhaps more of de Beauvoir.
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, the first volume of her autobiography, follows her life from birth to her student days at the Sorbonne. In her early diary she wrote: I want life, the whole of life. I feel an avid curiosity; I desperately want to burn myself away, more brightly than any other person, and no matter with what kind of flame. That same hunger infuses every page: the loss of faith, the careful observation of friendships, the fierce attachment to reading.
As I closed the final pages, a quiet regret: that I could never know her in person. Only the books remain: The Prime of Life, the next volume, is the most widely read in France, though it, and the later volumes, have long fallen out of print in English editions.
Reading an autobiography, I listen for the books its author loved. For de Beauvoir, literature displaced faith: Literature took the place in my life that had once been occupied by religion: it absorbed me entirely, and transfigured my life. Among the books she names with particular tenderness is Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes, a novel she returned to again and again.
>Sounds like a wonderful read and I know what you mean about the regret of not getting to meet the person. After spending a year researching Ginsberg and going to San Fran and New York, seeing where he lived and played, going to his archives at Stanford and reading his letters and journals etc. etc. It was so sad that I would never meet him.I too fell for Sartre in my teens and read all of the Roads to Freedom trilogy while in high school and then moved onto his books of philosophy. But I have not read much de Beauvoir, I must remedy this. Thank you for this post. Sartre and de Beauvoir are the quintessential intellectual couple.
>I cannot recommend these memoirs highly enough. To follow on I am reading de Beauvoir's diaries written during her time at the Sorbonne, the period covered in the last quarter of Dutiful Daughter. They are a fascinating contrast.
>The sentiment that remains on reluctantly reading the final pages is regret that I did not know Simone de Beauvoir in person.Yes. I completely relate to this, and am so glad you loved this and that the English translation is good. I have the next volume on my shelves and plan to read it before going to France this May. Also agree that de Beauvoir put several other books on my mental TBR, including Alain-Fournier. Still have to check out the letter collections you mention, as well!
>Emily, I am currently enjoying de Beauvoir's 'Diary of a Philosophy Student'. It covers the period of the last quarter of 'Memoirs.' She quoted freely from the diary in the 'Memoirs', but reading the raw diaries of the time provides a rich contrast to her interpretation fifty years after the period.