Faculty Book Review--February 2006
Hazel Rowley's
Tete
a Tete:
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Satre
By Richard Beattie
I have been
frequently confronted with the term “public intellectual” lately. It
was used often in a biography of poet Stephen Spender I read several
weeks ago, it came up in a conversation I overheard about Andre
Breton, and most recently, is commonly invoked by Hazel Rowley in
her book Tête-à-Tête about the relationship between Jean-Paul
Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I’m not entirely convinced we have
“public intellectuals” any more. If so, we certainly don’t have them
in the same way our predecessors in the 20th century
enjoyed them. Too difficult to multi-task now. Now you’re either an
“intellectual” or a “celebrity”. It’s hard to be both. As a culture,
we are as fascinated by our artists, as we are fascinated by their
work. In time, it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two
(much to the chagrin of those who wish to be judged only by the body
of their work). The 1950’s had Tom and Viv, Iris Murdoch and John
Bayley, and Jean-Paul and Simone. We have Britney and Kevin, Tom and
Katie, or Ashton and Demi. Before Tom Cruise accuses me of being
glib, let me move on…
Rowley is very upfront and honest about the fact that Tête-à-Tête is not biography, precisely, of either Sartre or de Beauvoir, but the history of their long relationship, and the work produced during it. I suppose I should provide some background for those of you who might, inexplicably, need it (Good God! What are we doing with our curriculum?!). Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher, editorialist, journalist, novelist and playwright, coined the term “existentialism” as a label for his collected philosophical ideas.
Quite popular in the 20th century among certain groups, existentialism rejected the notions of an ordered universe, of any directing, guiding force behind life. Instead, it insisted that only individuals can place a stamp of authenticity on their existence. The mechanism of this authenticity is action: the things we do every day. Getting up at 7:00 or 7:15 is a choice we make, and says something about who we are and what we believe to be true. The French experience of World War II affected Sartre significantly, and it was at that point that he embraced what he saw as his responsibility for political action, a responsibility he would act upon for the rest of his life. His views became widely known in the late 1940’s and 1950’s when he became the darling and elite of the Western intelligentsia. Many of you may have read fellow existentialist Albert Camus’ The Stranger. Camus and Sartre were quite close until a quarrel over the Soviet Union ended their friendship. They never spoke again. Camus was killed in a car accident in 1960 and Sartre delivered the eulogy. It is one of the century’s great injustices, that, for many years, Simone de Beauvoir, a brilliant thinker and writer in her own right, was known mostly for being Sartre’s lifelong “partner”.
Sartre and de Beauvoir met for the first time in 1929 when, through a mutual friend, they were introduced and were studying for the competitive national teacher’s examination together. These institutionalized exams represented the highest academic achievement in France and would determine ones academic future in the teaching profession (and you thought the SAT’s were pressured…) What has become famous as part of the legend, is that when the results were posted, Sartre had been awarded the first place finish, a hair’s width ahead of the second place finisher…Simone de Beauvoir. As Rowley reports, what we know now is that there were many who thought that de Beauvoir should have received the first place ranking, but it was decided to award that honor to the older, male, Sartre (sitting for the exams for the second time). Sartre would go on to write Being and Nothingness, the existentialist bible; and de Beauvoir would write All Men Are Mortal and The Second Sex which was a provocative, startling tract that anticipated 30 years of feminist thought in the west.
But what captured the attention of many, and has continued to, the subject of Rowley’s book, was the turbulent, unorthodox relationship between the two deep thinkers. In good existentialist form, they rejected conventional morality and “bourgeois” values, and lived what is best known now as an “open” relationship. This would have been good stuff for Entertainment Tonight and US Weekly. From reading Rowley’s book, one gets the impression that this was a little more difficult for de Beauvoir than it appeared to be for Sartre (which is to say, not difficult at all), and in some nicely written and touching segments, Rowley highlights the dilemma de Beauvoir faces: a strong, independent woman who doesn’t want to feel dependent on Sartre, yet can’t always fight those feelings off. Part of the pact they made very early in their relationship was that although they would take other lovers, they would tell each other everything about these relationships, what they called “contingent” affairs. I must admit, Sartre comes off as a bit more duplicitous in Tête-à-Tête than de Beauvoir does, and this may have to do with Rowley’s sympathies (she did her doctoral thesis on de Beauvoir), or maybe it’s my own “bourgeois” morality raising it’s dull Babbitt head. There is too much self-serving moral flexibility in Sartre’s behavior for my tastes. On the other hand, it should be noted, that there seems little that was “convenient” about Sartre and de Beauvoir’s arrangement. In fact, much of the time it was devastating and tortuous. You have to hand it to them. Here are two people who put their money where their mouths were.
Their fictions were autobiographical. Were their autobiographies fictionalized? Hard for me to be cynical (for once). The bulk of Rowley’s research comes from the voluminous correspondence between Sartre, de Beauvoir and all the other characters that revolved in orbit around them. Their voluminous correspondence is now a matter of public record. Sartre’s letters were published after his death in 1980, and de Beauvoir’s were published in 1990 after her death in 1986. At one point de Beauvoir, considering the autobiographical nature of her novels expresses concern, not for herself, but for how certain revelations will hurt other people. And indeed, they did. Additionally, Sartre and de Beauvoir are brutally honest with one another, and Rowley is inclined to be honest about both of them. Sartre’s insensitivity and fickleness, his addiction to amphetamines, his petulance and stubborn insistence on the good intentions of Stalin. For her part, de Beauvoir suffers jealousy, yet that doesn’t stop her from procuring women for Sartre, or falling in and out of bed with other men. Clearly the paradox is this: to prove their commitment to one another, they had to demonstrate independence from one another. That is how they defined their relationship, and even as late as 1990, it continues to shock some people.
What, if anything, does this sensationalistic, counter-cultural behavior have to do with the work? In the case of Sartre and de Beauvoir, it means almost everything. For an existentialist, life is all, and what we do with that life means even more. One might even make the assertion that without each other, none of the work produced by these two would have been produced, at least not in the form in which it eventually existed. Which makes the contributions of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir not only a contribution of the hand or the pen, they become contributions of the heart. On Sartre’s gravestone there is this inscription about Simone de Beauvoir: There is one thing that hasn't changed and cannot change: that is that no matter what happens and what I become, I will become it with you.