Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre
January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986
June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980
When French existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre was asked how he would like to be remembered (keeping in mind, he HATED accolades and once refused the Nobel Prize for literature), he responded:
“I would like [people] to remember Nausea, [my plays] No Exit and The Devil and the Good Lord, and then my two philosophical works, more particularly the second one, Critique of Dialectical Reason. Then my essay on Genet, Saint Genet…. If these are remembered, that would be quite an achievement, and I don’t ask for more. As a man, if a certain Jean-Paul Sartre is remembered, I would like people to remember the milieu or historical situation in which I lived,… how I lived in it, in terms of all the aspirations which I tried to gather up within myself.”
He seems like a delight.
But, he was pretty smart and a pretty good writer. And fellow existential writer – and feminist social theorist – Simone de Beauvoir, fancied him some. The two had a long relationship and partnership that was anything but monogamous and oh-so French.
Simone de Beauvoir, herself, was best known as a novelist. She was very focused, as was Sartre, with themes of personal responsibility and liberty.
Sartre died exhausted and nearly blind in Paris in 1980. De Beauvoir died six years later – nearly to the day.
Burial
Montparnasse Cemetery – Paris, FRANCE
Specific Location
Division 20; At the northern end of the cemetery, north side of Ave. du Boulevard, just to the west of the main entrance
April 19, 2017 at 9:36 am
Cool blog. Cheers for posting