Tete-a-Tete (51 page)

24
.
PL,
p. 252.

25
.
Ibid., p. 253.

26
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 274.

27
.
John Gerassi interview with Olga Kosakiewicz, May 9, 1973. Gerassi collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

28
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 76.

29
.
Ibid., p. 77.

30
.
On her marriage certificate (in the
mairie
of the sixth arrondissement) Olga's birthdate is given as November 6, 1917. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir confirms that this is wrong. Without a birth certificate (it was in the U.S.S.R.), it was easy for Olga to fudge the truth. She wanted to make herself look younger than Bost, who was born on May 6, 1916.

31
.
PL,
p. 273.

32
.
S de B to Olga, September 6, 1935, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir archives.

33
.
PL,
p. 281.

34
.
Beauvoir wrote to Olga: “I know that often you do not realize your worth,” September 6, 1935.

35
.
Madame Kosakiewicz to S de B, August 11, 1935, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir archives.

36
.
PL,
p. 292.

37
.
Olga Kosakiewicz Bost, phone interview with Deirdre Bair, 1982, Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir,
p. 200.

38
.
Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir,
p. 194.

39
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
pp. 61–62. The irony is that Sartre had spent years working on his own character, trying to control emotions he considered weak. At the age of twenty-one, he told Simone Jollivet, “I was born with a personality to match my face: foolishly, stupidly emotional, cowardly, self-indulgent. My sentimentality can make me teary-eyed about the least little thing” (undated letter, 1926, Witness, p. 4).

40
.
Sartre gives this longing to Mathieu, in
The Age of Reason,
trans. Eric Sutton (New York: Knopf, 1947), p. 73, but he often expressed this longing himself.

41
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 78.

42
.
PL,
p. 313.

43
.
Ibid.

44
.
Sartre to S de B, April 1937, in
Witness,
p. 79.

45
.
PL,
p. 141.

46
.
S de B to Olga, October 1, 1935.

47
.
Sartre to S de B, May 3, 1937, in
Witness,
p. 100.

48
.
PL,
p. 343.

49
.
Adieux,
p. 159.

50
.
Sartre's mad protagonist in his short story “Erostratus” was inspired by uorno.

51
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 4.

52
.
PL,
p. 353.

53
.
John Gerassi interview with Wanda Kosakiewicz, March 23, 1973. Gerassi collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

54
.
Mouloudji comments that Wanda was a formidable walker and would trudge for hours, with the steady rhythm of an alpine hunter. Marcel Mouloudji,
La Fleur de l'âge
(Paris: Grasset, 1991).

55
.
Sartre portrays this taxi scene in
The Age of Reason.
It's one of the instances where Ivich” is based on Wanda as much as on Olga. “He leaned towards her;…he laid his lips lightly against a cold, closed mouth; he was feeling defiant; Ivich was silent. Lifting his head, he saw her eyes, and his passionate joy vanished. He thought: ‘A married man messing about with a young girl in a taxi,' and his arm dropped, dead and flaccid; Ivich's body straightened with a mechanical jerk, like a pendulum swinging back to equilibrium. ‘Now I've done it,' said Mathieu to himself, ‘she'll never forgive me.' He sat huddled in his seat, wishing he might disintegrate".

56
.
S to Wanda Kosakiewicz, undated. [February 1937], Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir archives.

57
.
PL,
p. 353.

58
.
Gerassi interview with Sartre, October 27, 1972.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE PROSPECT OF WAR

1
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 78.

2
.
Influential friends of Sartre, Charles Dullin and Pierre Bost (Jacques-Laurent Bost's elder brother, and a reader at Gallimard), had asked Gaston Gallimard himself to look at Sartre's rejected manuscript. Gallimard declared it “splendid” and “inspired.”

3
.
PL,
p. 377.

4
.
PL,
p. 372.

5
.
A selection of Sartre's letters to Wanda from Greece were published in
Les Temps modernes,
Oct.–Dec. 1990, nos. 531–33, pp. 1292–1429.

6
.
PL,
p. 380.

7
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
pp. 248–49.

8
.
Ibid., p. 122.

9
.
S to S de B, September 1937, in
Witness,
p. 142.

10
.
Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir,
p. 197.

11
.
Quoted in
Nouvelle Revue Française,
January 1970, p. 78.

12
.
Bianca Lamblin,
A Disgraceful Affair,
trans. Julie Plovnick (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996), p. 19.

13
.
S de B to Bost, November 28, 1938,
Correspondance Croisée, 1937–1940
(Paris: Gallimard, 2004), p. 136.

14
.
Lamblin,
A Disgraceful Affair,
p. 20.

15
.
Ibid., p. 25.

16
.
S to S de B, July 14, 1938, in
Witness,
p. 155. (Trans. modified.)

17
.
S to S de B, Wednesday, July [20] 1938, in
Witness,
p. 164. Beauvoir cut several graphic passages from the published version.

18
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 285. The character in Sartre's short story “The Childhood of a Leader,” a young man who is obsessed with seduction, has the same problem with his facial muscles when he is bent on conquest. “The corners of his mouth hurt because he had smiled so much.”

19
.
S to S de B, May 1937,
Witness,
p. 110. (Trans. modified.)

20
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 269.

21
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 269, and
Adieux,
p. 311. In a
Playboy
interview in May 1965, Sartre told Madeline Gobeil: “Feminine ugliness is offensive to me. I admit this and I'm ashamed of it.” (
The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre,
vol. 1,
A Biographical Life,
comp. Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka [Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974], p. 466.)

22
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 267.

23
.
S to S de B, Sunday, July 1938, in
Witness,
p. 166.

24
.
S to Wanda Kosakiewicz, undated [1938], Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir archives.

25
.
S de B to S, July 15, 1938, in
Letters,
p. 16.

26
.
S de B to S, July 27, 1938, in
Letters,
p. 21. (Trans. modified.)

27
.
S de B to Bost, August 22, 1938, in
Correspondance,
p. 57.

28
.
Bost to S de B, August 3, 1938, in
Correspondance,
p. 47.

29
.
Bost to S de B, August 6, 1938, in
Correspondance,
p. 50.

30
.
S de B to Bost, September 2, 1938, in
Correspondance,
p. 69.

31
.
The novellas
When Things of the Spirit Come First
(
Quand prime le spirituel
) would eventually be published in 1979. Despite their immaturity, they are lively and engaging, with ironic wit and pungent observations. Sartre found numerous passages good.

31
.
S de B quotes his comment in a letter to Bost, December 22, 1938 Correspondance, p. 162.

33
.
PL,
p. 380.

34
.
She Came to Stay,
trans. Yvonne Moyse and Roger Senhouse (New York and Cleveland: World Publishing, 1954), p. 341.

35
.
Ibid., p. 368.

36
.
Reviewers also talked about the semipornographic aspect of the book. Its publication was another occasion on which Beauvoir was given a hard time by her parents. “My father has read your book,” she told Sartre. “He's outraged by the
obscenities, and by the fact that you dedicated the book to Kos, whom he suspects of being your mistress.” S de B to S, January 3, 1940,
Letters,
p. 240.

37
.
Lamblin,
A Disgraceful Affair,
p. 39.

38
.
Ibid., pp. 42–43.

39
.
My interview with Bianca Bienenfeld Lamblin, June 29, 2002, Paris.

40
.
S to Bienenfeld, July 1939 (undated), in
Witness,
p. 190.

41
.
. S de B to Bost, February 5, 1939, in Correspondance, p. 233.

42
.
S de B to Bost, November 11, 1938, in
Correspondance,
p. 106.

43
.
S de B to Bost, November 27, 1938, in
Correspondance,
p. 133.

44
.
Bost to S de B, May 25, 1939, in
Correspondance,
pp. 375–76.

45
.
S de B to Bost, June 4, 1939, in
Correspondance,
p. 386.

46
.
S de B to Bost, June 8, 1939, in
Correspondance,
pp. 396–97.

47
.
S to S de B, late July 1939, in
Witness,
p. 200.

48
.
Bost to S de B, August 19, 1939, in
Correspondance,
p. 414.

49
.
S to Wanda, September 21, 1939, Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir archives.

CHAPTER FIVE: WAR

1
.
PL,
p. 446.

2
.
S to S de B, September 9, 1939, in
Witness,
p. 240.

3
.
S to S de B, September 4, 1939, in
Witness,
p. 232.

4
.
S to S de B, September 7, 1939, in
Witness,
p. 236.

5
.
S to S de B, September 12, 1939, in
Witness,
pp. 241–42.

6
.
S to S de B, October 2, 1939, in
Witness,
p. 275.

7
.
October 10 and 11, 1939,
Carnets de la drôle de guerre, Sept 1939–Mars 1940
(Paris: Gallimard, 1995), pp. 116–21. (This new French edition includes the first notebook, Sept.–Oct. 1939, which turned up in June 1991. It is not included in the earlier English edition.)

8
.
S to S de B, September 26, 1939, in
Witness,
p. 265.

9
.
This is my comment, not his. Wanda had left school before her baccalaureate, and her letters are full of mistakes.

10
.
November 26, 1939, Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 47.

11
.
Sartre,
War Diaries,
p. 63.

12
.
S to S de B, December 1, 1939, in
Witness,
p. 377.