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24/06/13 10:30 Turning Abruptly from Friendship to Love: Sartre's Love Letter to Simone de Beauvoir | Brain Pickings Página 1 de 9 http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/06/21/sartre-love-l…utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer411e0&utm_medium=twitter Search about support contact bookshelf newsletter literary jukebox sounds newsletter Brain Pickings has a free weekly interestingness digest. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week's best articles. Here's an example . Like? Sign up. Name Email subscribe donating = loving Brain Pickings remains ad- free and takes hundreds of hours a month to research and write, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and value in it, please consider becoming a Member and supporting with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner: $7 / month You can also become a one- time patron with a single donation in any amount: labors of love Turning Abruptly from Friendship to Love: Sartre’s Love Letter to Simone de Beauvoir by Maria Popova “I am mastering my love for you and turning it inwards as a constituent element of myself.” As a lover of spectacular love letters, especially ones between history’s creative and intellectual power couples — like those between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Charles and Ray Eames, and Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin — I was delighted to come upon a gem from legendary French existentialist philosopher, novelist, and political activist Jean- Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905–April 15, 1980) to celebrated French writer, intellectual, and feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908–April 14, 1986). In this beautiful missive from the spring of 1929, found in the altogether wonderful collection Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone De Beauvoir, 1926-1939 (public library), 24-year-old Jean-Paul writes to 21-year-old Simone Jollivet — herself the eventual masterful writer of breakup letters — at the dawn of their romance, shortly before he proposed marriage, which Simone turned down; instead, the two embarked on their famous lifelong open relationship.

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Brain Pickings has a freeweekly interestingness digest.It comes out on Sundays andoffers the week's bestarticles. Here's an example.Like? Sign up.

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Brain Pickings remains ad-free and takes hundreds ofhours a month to researchand write, and thousands ofdollars to sustain. If you findany joy and value in it, pleaseconsider becoming a Memberand supporting with arecurring monthly donationof your choosing, between acup of tea and a good dinner:

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labors of love

Turning Abruptly from Friendship toLove: Sartre’s Love Letter toSimone de Beauvoirby Maria Popova

“I am mastering my love for you and turning it inwards asa constituent element of myself.”

As a lover of spectacular love letters, especially

ones between history’s creative and intellectual

power couples — like those between Frida Kahlo

and Diego Rivera, Virginia Woolf and Vita

Sackville-West, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred

Stieglitz, Charles and Ray Eames, and Henry

Miller and Anaïs Nin — I was delighted to come

upon a gem from legendary French existentialist

philosopher, novelist, and political activist Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905–April 15, 1980) to

celebrated French writer, intellectual, and

feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir (January

9, 1908–April 14, 1986).

In this beautiful missive from the spring of 1929, found in the altogether

wonderful collection Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre toSimone De Beauvoir, 1926-1939 (public library), 24-year-old Jean-Paul writes to

21-year-old Simone Jollivet — herself the eventual masterful writer of breakup

letters — at the dawn of their romance, shortly before he proposed marriage,

which Simone turned down; instead, the two embarked on their famous lifelong

open relationship.

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24/06/13 10:30Turning Abruptly from Friendship to Love: Sartre's Love Letter to Simone de Beauvoir | Brain Pickings

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My dear little girl

For a long time I’ve been wanting to write to you in theevening after one of those outings with friends that I will soonbe describing in “A Defeat,” the kind when the world is ours. Iwanted to bring you my conqueror’s joy and lay it at yourfeet, as they did in the Age of the Sun King. And then, tiredout by all the shouting, I always simply went to bed. Today I’mdoing it to feel the pleasure you don’t yet know, of turningabruptly from friendship to love, from strength to tenderness.Tonight I love you in a way that you have not known in me: Iam neither worn down by travels nor wrapped up in thedesire for your presence. I am mastering my love for you andturning it inwards as a constituent element of myself. Thishappens much more often than I admit to you, but seldomwhen I’m writing to you. Try to understand me: I love youwhile paying attention to external things. At Toulouse I simplyloved you. Tonight I love you on a spring evening. I love youwith the window open. You are mine, and things are mine,and my love alters the things around me and the thingsaround me alter my love.

My dear little girl, as I’ve told you, what you’re lacking isfriendship. But now is the time for more practical advice.Couldn’t you find a woman friend? How can Toulouse fail tocontain one intelligent young woman worthy of you*? Butyou wouldn’t have to love her. Alas, you’re always ready togive your love, it’s the easiest thing to get from you. I’m nottalking about your love for me, which is well beyond that, butyou are lavish with little secondary loves, like that night inThiviers when you loved that peasant walking downhill in thedark, whistling away, who turned out to be me. Get to knowthe feeling, free of tenderness, that comes from being two. It’s

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hard, because all friendship, even between two red-bloodedmen, has its moments of love. I have only to console mygrieving friend to love him; it’s a feeling easily weakened anddistorted. But you’re capable of it, and you must experience it.And so, despite your fleeting misanthropy, have you imaginedwhat a lovely adventure it would be to search Toulouse for awoman who would be worthy of you and whom you wouldn’tbe in love with? Don’t bother with the physical side or thesocial situation. And search honestly. And if you find nothing,turn Henri Pons, whom you scarcely love anymore, into afriend.

[…]

I love you with all my heart and soul.

* De Beauvoir would come to have a number of young female lovers, whom she’d usually introduce to Sartre

over the course of their relationship.

Complement with Sartre on why “being-in-the-world-ness” is the key to the

imagination and De Beauvoir on ambiguity, vitality, and freedom.

Donating = Loving

Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If

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Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of

tea and a good dinner:

♥ $7 / month

You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out onSundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what toexpect. Like? Sign up.

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