The absolute truths of Simone de Beauvoir. Biography Simone de Beauvoir personal life
The biography of the woman, which will be discussed in this article, is not like any other. It was an original personality, possessing a special view of the world, endowed with philosophical thinking.
Simone de Beauvoir was strikingly different from most of her contemporaries. This writer and philosopher was a free, free, strong and confident supporter of feminist views and female emancipation.
Our heroine was born in France in 1908 in a wealthy family that belonged to an ancient family of aristocrats. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was the very religious daughter of a wealthy banker. Simone's childhood, like that of her younger sister, was spent in prosperity, luxury and a "correct" upbringing.
From an early age, the girl attended a school where girls from noble families were prepared for a worthy future. From an early age they were convinced that the meaning of life lies in the family, a good rich husband and children. They were taught to worship God, pray for the sins of man, and be chaste. Simone believed that her life would be completely devoted to this and tried not to deviate from this destiny even in her thoughts.
Everything changed when the head of the family lost all his savings and the family had to move from luxurious apartments to a small cramped apartment. Then the girl realized that it would not be possible to change the situation of the family with prayers, it was necessary to receive a decent education. At the age of 15, Simone becomes an atheist and begins to try herself in the literary field. It is this direction that will become the main one in her life. For three years, from 1926 to 1928, Simone de Beauvoir received three diplomas: in literature, philosophy and art.
And sex, tenderness and excessive frankness are just impulses of human nature that do not deserve special attention. Simone did not aspire to have a husband and children (her concept of personal life did not imply the goal of having children of her own, which is why she did not have any).
While still a student, the writer met the famous philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre. The man was unsightly, short in stature, and besides, he was blind in one eye. But the breadth of his knowledge, wit and philosophical ideas close to her views fascinated the young lady for life. It is with this man that Simone de Beauvoir will be with her all her life, but she will never call him her husband.
But after a year and a half, Beauvoir had to leave to teach philosophy in Rouen, and her companion to another city. The means of communication were letters that friends periodically exchanged. This soon became a habit, and in the future, even while in the same city, they exchanged messages as signs of frankness and sincerity of souls.
At this time, Sartre, in order to get rid of physical loneliness, begins dating 19-year-old Olga Kazakevich. The young lady temporarily saves the man from bad thoughts and becomes the mistress of not only Jean-Paul himself, but also Simone de Beauvoir.
In her book The Second Sex, the French emancipe describes the same-sex relationship of people. The problem that the writer raises is that the female intellect and the carnal essence are incompatible in one female form. This is what the writer is talking about.
In the late 1930s, when existentialism became one of the leading trends in philosophy, two works by Jean-Paul Sartre came out of print. The first, Nausea, revealed a new type of hero in the literary world. To endow the hero of the book with the qualities that he possesses, Sartre was prompted by Simone. And the author, in gratitude, dedicated "Nausea" to his woman. And Olga, out of a sense of justice and nobility, dedicated a collection of stories "The Wall". Soon the war began. Sartre was called to the front, and all the worries about the "members" of their family fell on Simone de Beauvoir: lovers, girlfriends and advisers.
Civil spouses and their views have become very popular in society. Their works inspired young people to great aspirations, forced them to rebuild their thinking and change their attitude to life.
By that time, Sartre had already developed the final formula of love. For him, love is a conflict that does not give complete freedom to a person. The ideal option is a “lonely hero”, who is always in search of his place in life and the conditions that satisfy him at the moment. Beauvoir, on the other hand, had a concept based on the illusory nature of love, which comes from social foundations and restrictions. Relations, in her opinion, should be built in the form of cooperation with each other.
After the death of her partner, she lost all interest in life and outlived him by only 6 years. Her death came almost on the same day as that of Sartre - April 14, 1986. The “spouses” were buried in the same grave, where to this day fans bring flowers and stones.
- "second floor".
- "Tangerines".
- "A very easy death."
- "Broken".
- "The Power of Circumstances"
- "All men are mortal."
- "Transatlantic Romance. Letters to Nelson Ohlgren ”(came out after the death of the writer).
She was different, unlike her contemporaries. Free, free, winged like a bird. François Mitterrand called her “an exceptional personality”, Jacques Chirac called her “an entire era”. Since the middle of the 20th century, all of Europe has been fascinated by her philosophical ideas. And in America, the reading public immediately sold out a million copies of her fundamental, without exaggeration, work called The Second Sex. In it, Simone consistently and convincingly told how, over the course of thousands of years, a woman became the “booty and property” of a man. The fact that the learned lady herself was never anyone's prey, much less property, did not prevent a deep insight into the essence of this eternal topic.
The immutable qualities of the original personality - adventurism, willfulness, the desire to challenge public opinion - were in Simon, apparently from birth. Otherwise, why would a pious girl, brought up in a respectable religious family, suddenly renounce marriage and children, proclaim herself absolutely free from all existing “prejudices” on this topic, begin to write defiant novels, preach the ideas of women’s independence and speak frankly about atheism, rebellion and revolutionary change? Mademoiselle de Beauvoir never concealed her eccentricity and spoke about it openly, including on the pages of her “memoirs”, noting that from childhood she was inclined to consider herself unique. She explained that her "superiority over other people" came from the fact that she never missed anything in her life - and in the future her "creativity greatly benefited from such an advantage." And Simone very early made a conclusion for herself, which became one of the fundamental ones in her subsequent “philosophy of existence”: living at twenty does not mean preparing for your fortieth birthday. And yet - life, following Simone, is an attitude to the world, making his choice of attitude to the world, the individual determines himself.
comprehend realityYour own choice - to feel the fullness of life, to comprehend reality in a variety of manifestations, to experience them and comprehend - an inquisitive nature, Simone de Beauvoir, made as a teenager. First, she tries to realize her plan in religion, prayers, sincere faith in God, then the feeling of this fullness will come to her for daily intellectual work, later - for literary creativity.
Simone de Beauvoir was born at the beginning of 1908, on January 9, in Paris. Although for her the beginning of the year will subsequently not be the first day of January, but September 1st. Her father, Georges de Beauvoir, was a lawyer, a good family man, but at the same time an enthusiastic and gambling man. At the beginning of the First World War, he gave his fortune under loans to the tsarist government of Russia and lost it. Simone's mother, Françoise, a religious and strict woman, raised her two daughters in the same way as they then raised children in wealthy aristocratic families. The girls were sent to the Cour Desir College, where the main subject was the Holy Scriptures. (Simone was then in her sixth year.) Education at this educational institution meant the formation of pious girls from young students, convinced of the faith of expectant mothers. Subsequently, Simone recalled how, having crouched at the feet of the blond God, she was thrilled with delight, tears flowed down her cheeks and she fell into the arms of angels ...
But with the loss of her fortune, the habitual way of her family has undergone major changes. Parents were forced to move to a small apartment, do without servants, lead a more modest lifestyle - find themselves in an unusual environment. And the sisters, accordingly, lost their dowry, and with it - the chances of a good marriage. Understanding this, Simone decided at all costs to master some profession in order to earn her own living, and began to study with a vengeance, while remaining a pious young lady who takes communion three times a week. But one day, at the age of 14, an event happened to her that largely influenced her future fate: according to Simone, she was undeservedly reproached and offended by a word by her spiritual mentor, Abbé Martin. While he was talking, “his stupid hand pressed on the back of my head, made me lower my head, turn my face to the ground, until my death, it will force me ... to crawl on the ground,” Simone recalled. This feeling was enough for her to change her way of life, but even in new circumstances she continued to think that the loss of faith was the greatest misfortune. Being in a depressed state, posing many questions about the essence of life, Simone came to books in which she searched and found many answers, sometimes such: religion is a means of curbing a person.
Books gradually filled the spiritual void around her and became a new religion that led her to the philosophy department of the Sorbonne. In the discovery of the book world and new names in it: Cocteau, Claudel, Gide and other writers and poets, Simone was helped in many ways by her cousin Jacques ... He also told her about the life of Paris at night, about entertainment in bars and restaurants. And her rich imagination immediately interpreted his stories as adventures, which she lacked so much to feel the same fullness of life. And she also wanted to be at home less - communication with her parents tired her daughter, especially traditional dinners with relatives and conversations known to her to the smallest detail at such dinners.
When, during the summer holidays of 1926, these relations escalated to the limit, she went on a trip to Paris at night, taking her younger sister with her.
What didn't your parents like about her? It seemed to them that she had “fallen out” of normal life, that her studies had made her detached from reality, that she was going across everything and everyone. Why was Simone conflicted? Because it seemed to her that they were trying to teach her all the time, but at the same time, for some reason, no one ever noticed her growing up, becoming, academic success. Simone's age-related maximalism reached its climax, and now, under the pretext of participating in public brigades, she ran away from home in the evenings and roamed the racks of night bars, studying the mores of the public present there. Having seen enough of everything, Simone summed up that she saw another life, the existence of which she had no idea. But "sexual taboos turned out to be" so tenacious for her that she could not even think about debauchery. In this sense, the “fullness of life” did not interest her yet. About herself at the age of seventeen, she writes that she was an extremist, "wanted to get everything or nothing." “If I fall in love,” Simone wrote, “then for the rest of my life, then I will surrender myself to the feeling all over, soul and body, lose my head and forget the past. I refuse to be satisfied with the husks of feelings and pleasures that are not connected with this state.
MeetingOn the eve of the epochal year of 1929 - the meeting with Jean Paul Sartre - Simone de Beauvoir was already unlike other intellectuals. She was in her 21st year, and he was in his 24th. He noticed her himself, but for some reason first sent his friend to her. When the whole company began to prepare for the final exams, Sartre realized that he had met the most suitable life partner, in which he was surprised by the “combination of male intelligence and female sensitivity.” And she, in turn, subsequently wrote: “Sartre exactly corresponded to the dreams of my fifteen years: it was my double, in which I found all my tastes and passions ...” She admitted that “as if she had met her double” and “knew that he will remain in her life forever. From now on, after successfully passing the exams, where Sartre got the first, and Simone - the second place (the chairman of the examination committee explained that Sartre had unique intellectual abilities, but Simone was a born philosopher), she, together with him, began to overthrow the aesthetic and social values \u200b\u200bof modern society, following the original philosophical doctrine - humanistic existentialism. He saw the social catastrophes of the 20th century as a "world of absurdity" in which there is no place for either meaning or God. The only reality of this being is a person who himself must fill his world with content. And in him, in this man, there is nothing predetermined, laid down, because, as Sartre and De Beauvoir believed, "existence precedes essence." And the essence of a person is made up of his actions, it is the result of his choice, more precisely, several choices in a lifetime. Philosophers called the will and striving for freedom the stimuli of actions, and these stimuli are stronger than social laws and "all sorts of prejudices."
Upon graduation, Sartre was drafted into the army for a year and a half. And Simone remained in Paris, continued to study. After the army, he received a professorship at Le Havre and began to enjoy special attention from the students: a great original, a skilled rhetorician, a man of extensive knowledge, he was the ruler of their thoughts. But Simon was not embarrassed by his hobbies on the side, as is commonly believed and as she, however, wrote herself. Their union was generally special, unlike the usual unions. Young people called their relationship a morganatic marriage and said that they were in this state in two guises: sometimes they played poor and contented bourgeois, sometimes they presented themselves as American billionaires and behaved accordingly, imitating the manners of the rich and parodying them. Sartre, in turn, noted that, in addition to such joint reincarnations, Simone also “bifurcated” on her own, “turning” either into Castor (Beaver, she received this nickname from friends during her student years), or into a capricious Mademoiselle de Beauvoir. And when suddenly reality became boring to him, both of them explained this by the fact that Sartre was briefly inhabited by the soul of a sea elephant - an eternal sufferer - after which the philosopher began to grimace in every possible way, imitating elephant anxiety.
They had no children, no common life, no obligations, trying to prove to themselves that this is the only way to feel radical freedom. In their youth, they amused themselves with all kinds of games and eccentricities. “We lived then in idleness,” recalled Simone. Jokes, parodies, mutual praise had, she continued, their purpose: “they protected us from the spirit of seriousness, which we refused to recognize as decisively as Nietzsche did, and for the same reasons: fiction helped to deprive the world of oppressive gravity by moving it into the realm of fantasy…
Judging by the recollections of Simone, she really was madly in love and infinitely happy from the consciousness of the one who was next to her. She in every possible way noticed the extraordinary nature of her chosen one, said that his tenacious, ingenuous attention grasped “things alive”, in all the richness of their manifestation, that he inspired her with the same timidity that was inspired later only by some crazy people who saw intricacies in a rose petal intrigue. And how can you not become delighted when next to you is a person whose thoughts alone fascinate? “The paradox of reason lies in the fact that a person - the creator of necessity - cannot rise above it to the level of being, like those soothsayers who are able to predict the future to others, but not to themselves. That is why I guess sadness and boredom at the basis of human existence as a creation of nature, ”Sartre wrote in a Parisian newspaper in the late 1920s.
In general, the Sartrean “aesthetics of negation” of this period turned out to be very consonant with Simone’s thoughts, and his social portrait was then seen by her as follows: “He was an anarchist to a much greater extent than a revolutionary, he considered society in the form in which it existed worthy of hatred and was quite pleased that he hated it, what he called the "aesthetics of negation" was in good agreement with the existence of fools and scoundrels and even needed it: after all, if there was nothing to smash and crush, then literature would be worth little.
Crab fight
“The original writer, while he is alive, is always scandalous,” Simone remarked. Consequently, it is also necessary to expose the vices of bourgeois society in a scandalous way, a scandal is generally a catalyst for the knowledge of society, just as a person's internal conflict leads to the knowledge of his hidden qualities. Both Simone and Sartre were great supporters of the study of various extreme human states, including mental ones. Simone admitted that they were always attracted to neuroses and psychoses, that they showed purified models of behavior and passions of people who are called normal. It is known that not only Simone and Sartre had a craving for such observations, many writers, poets, philosophers drew the necessary “material” from such observations, studies of the human soul.
Madmen attracted Simone and Sartre with their multifaceted, complex and at the same time surprisingly accurate revelations of the existing reality, with which madmen, as a rule, are at enmity. This looking-glass of the human soul excited philosophers, moved them to analyze the psyche, actions, and states of man. In addition, at the beginning of the 20th century, psychologists and psychiatrists came to grips with the issues of human psychopathology. And of course, Simone and Sartre read and studied the works of K. Jaspers, Z. Freud, A. Adler. Sartre also tried to compose his own methods of cognition of personality. Simone, as she could, helped him in this. But the philosopher is literally mired in this abyss. He also tried to experience anomalies in the perception of the real world on himself, causing “shifts” of reality by injecting mescaline, a hallucinogenic drug, after which Sartre began to have nightmarish visions in the form of a battle with crabs and octopuses ... At the end of the drug, they disappeared.
In addition to madmen, philosophers were fond of friendship with all kinds of outcasts, like the author of The Diary of a Thief, Jean Genet, or Boris Vian, a scandalous writer who overthrew the morality of bourgeois society. It is surprising that such rebels, sometimes with very dubious biographies and occupations, attracted Simone and Sartre much more than, for example, individuals who achieved technical achievements in those years, such as flying into the stratosphere.
Red tape
Paris in the 20-30s of the XX century was, as you know, the epicenter of the arts, fashion and, of course, philosophy, which was then assigned the role of "the key to the truth." Here Jean Paul and Simone continued their teaching activities, having received the positions of teachers of philosophy. It is worth saying that during this period, and in the future, they never lived under the same roof, they deliberately settled in different hotels, but met daily. Communicated with artists, came to their cafes and workshops, spent time in cinemas...
Five years after the formation of this intellectual union, a constant mistress appeared in the life of Simone and Jean Paul - the Russian aristocrat Olga Kozakevich. She seemed to tease this couple, showing passion for her, then for him. And then one day, Jean Paul, contrary to established traditions, not to be separated from Simone, spent the entire vacation with Olga, leaving his beloved intellectual in Paris. Remembering Kozakevich, Simona said that with all her behavior she was against conventions, prohibitions, social taboos. “She claimed to escape from the captivity of the human lot, to which we also submitted not without shame.” “She indulged in pleasure without measure, she happened to dance until she fainted. They say that Sartre offered the “rebel” Kozakevich a hand and heart, while continuing to experience the most genuine feelings for Simone ... After the refusal, Jean Paul, of course, did not grieve - he spread to her sister, Wanda. And Simone pretended that nothing special was happening, although who, except Sartre, could feel what de Beauvoir really experienced at such moments. In general, this piquant topic has been discussed more than once, while it is constantly noted that Simone herself was even more frank in her connections on the side. As if she went on vacation with one or another student, and then introduced them to Sartre. Allegedly one of those was Bianca Lamblen, who later became a famous philosopher.
timelessness
At the end of the 30s of the XX century, the way of life of Simone and Sartre changed, and not so much the image itself, but their attitude to what was happening in the world - the events of those years left their mark on their worldview. The Spanish Civil War, the defeat of the Republicans, the activity of the Italian fascists ... The rise of Nazism in Germany.
With the outbreak of World War II, Sartre was mobilized, and in June 1940 he was captured by the Germans. Simone at that time taught in Paris and studied literature. She wrote the novel "The Girl Is Invited to Visit", where the main character - the guest - broke the life of one married couple. But in general, recalling the literary life of the 1940-1943s, de Beauvoir noted that the artistic word was then in decline. An event for her was only the story of A. Saint-Exupery "Military Pilot" (1941).
Sartre returned from captivity in 1943 and immediately launched an active work: he published Simone's book in a good publishing house, persuaded her to take up literary work, joined the Resistance, founded the Komba newspaper, in which he published pro-communist articles and, of course, popularized his philosophy - humanistic existentialism. At the same time, Simone and Sartre became close to A. Camus, whom the philosopher met at a rehearsal of the play "Flies". Their friendship acquired new acquaintances, and at the end of the war, a rather large circle of intellectuals was organized around Sartre, Simone and Camus. Spiritually uplifting time contributed to new ideas, new policies. The latter entered then firmly into their lives. Simone recalled how Gaullists, communists, Marxists fraternized in 1945 ... As Camus concluded on this occasion: “Politics is no longer inseparable from individuals. It is a direct appeal of a person to other people.
In 1945 Sartre left for New York. He didn't take Simon. For many years of their creative union, he took such a step for the first time. There he fell in love with actress Dolores Vanetti Ehrenreich and stayed in the United States, where Simone also flew after some time.
|
|
In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir had another landmark meeting in the USA. Nelson Algren, an American writer, invited a French woman to accompany her around Chicago. (She flew to the USA at the invitation of several American universities and stayed there from January to May.) And another great feeling came to Simone at the age of 39. Their romance lasted 14 years, as Nelson, who later suffered from love and separation, wrote, she exhausted him over the years, rejecting the proposal to create a family and marriage at the very beginning.
“My dear Nelson. How is it that you, the proud one, know that my feelings for you are unchanged? Who told you this? I'm afraid they haven't really changed. Oh, what torments of love and joy, what pleasure I experienced when I read your letter ... ”- Simone wrote on December 15, 1948 in one of 304 letters to her lover, whom she called her “beloved husband.” These letters were subsequently published by Simone's adopted daughter Sylvia le Bon de Beauvoir. It is not by chance that this correspondence is called “The Transatlantic Romance” - it contains all solid feelings, and next to them are considerations about everything that is happening around: “Darling, dear. Here I am again in Algiers, under the window there is a huge garden of palm trees, I see a lot of pink and purple flowers, houses, pine trees, and behind them - ships and the sea, pale blue ... We saw with what helpfulness the United States wants to "help" us »to organize an army capable of defeating the USSR? Tell them that they overdid it and we did not appreciate their efforts. The idea that the French should take part in the war is rather strange. Stalin is hated to the same extent as Wall Street, what to do? .. "
Glory
In 1949, Simone published a book that blew up public opinion. First, The Second Sex saw the light in France, and then in almost all Western countries. The very idea of this socio-biological, anthropological work was suggested to the writer by Sartre, who had incredible intuition towards her. And this feeling did not disappoint him. His companion coped with the task brilliantly, she began with an analysis of the myths of different peoples, in which ideas about the role and purpose of a woman were established and reflected, and then, following the chronology, she analyzed numerous works on this “eternal question”, trying to understand why the accepted by all difference: a man is a full-fledged person, the subject of history, a woman is a dubious creature, the object of his power. In a special way, Simone highlights the work of Poulain de la Bar "On the equality of both sexes." She accepts the author's point of view that the unequal position of men and women in society is the result of the subordination of women to brute male power, but by no means the destiny of nature. In general, in feminist literature, the book "The Second Sex" occupies a special niche; several generations of women, despite the understandable reaction of the church fathers, considered it a kind of Bible. But the most important thing is that until now this research is the most fundamental in its field. And then, in 1949, it appeared just in time. In Russia, The Second Sex was published only after almost half a century since the publication of the book in France. But what about this book? Even if the "Memoirs of a well-bred maiden" in the press was also refused. In her book Ultimately, Simone de Beauvoir notes how Tvardovsky himself could not decide to publish Sartre's Lay (1964), for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, which, as you know, he refused.
Of course, the book "The Second Sex" caused a flurry of responses, among which were extremely negative ones. A. Camus went on a rampage, saying that De Beauvoir had made a French man a target for contempt and ridicule. The Catholic Church was especially indignant, and she had good reason for that.
And yet, after 1949, Simona became very popular, she was invited to give lectures, make presentations in different cities and countries. In 1954, her fame warmed up again. The published novel "Tangerines", describing the history of her love relationship with Nelson Algren, seemed to readers very frank. Simone was awarded the Prix Goncourt, and Algren himself was indignant: he did not expect that his feelings would become public property. Simone did her best to reassure him, explaining that this work was by no means a mirror of their relationship, that she only extracted the quintessence from these relationships, describing the love of a woman who looked like Simone and a man who looked like Nelson.
|
In my Parisian apartment. 1976 Photo by JACQUES PAVLOVSKY/SYGMA/CORBIS/RPG |
specialcor
Perhaps a new hobby helped Simone to decide on such a plot: in 1952, she fell in love with Claude Lanzmann, a correspondent for the New Times newspaper, in which Sartre and Beauvoir worked as editors.
The new chosen one was young - 27 years old, fresh, pleasant, smart, gallant, infinitely courteous and ambitious to a good extent. Not to fall in love with such a Simon just could not. She frankly recalled later how his closeness freed her from the burden of age. Although 44 years - is this the age for existential philosophy? Surprisingly, Simone's feelings were so deep that she invited the chosen one to her apartment, which she had never offered to anyone before, and he moved. They were together for seven long and happy years.
Arletta
Simone's new infatuation in no way lessened her attention to Sartre: they saw each other every day, although he also had his own special love story at that time under the name of Arlette Elkaim, a young and pretty Jewish girl from Algeria. And here, it seems, Simone's self-control finally failed: she felt how much Sartre was carried away. So much so that he even started avoiding his best friend. The last straw was that Jean Paul decided to adopt Elkaim. In response, de Beauvoir adopted one of her friends, or students, Sylvia le Bon (mentioned above), who became the heiress of De Beauvoir's work. But despite certain disagreements in their personal lives, Simone and Sartre continued to be at the epicenter of socio-political events. They were also keenly interested in Soviet reality.
In 1955, during a short stay in the USSR, Simone watched Mayakovsky's play The Bedbug, noting that for her and Sartre the theme of the play was very close: it was impossible to accept the vices and extremes of modern philistinism. But one should not think that both philosophers accepted the “new world” of the Land of the Soviets unconditionally: both of them had acquaintances in France with Soviet immigrants, dissidents and had no illusions about the Soviet regime. And yet, "the transformation of the Soviet man into a man of labor" was interesting to them.
In 1956, the uncompromising Sartre, in an interview with Express magazine, spoke out with a frank condemnation of Soviet aggression in Hungary, saying that he completely cut off relations with friends from the USSR. And in 1961, Sartre and Beauvoir received an invitation to visit Moscow from the Writers' Union and accepted it: cultural life in different countries has always interested them. It is noteworthy that after this visit, relations between the USSR and France became noticeably warmer. Simone got the following curious impression from this trip: “In the USSR, a person creates himself, and even if this does not happen without difficulty, even if there are heavy blows, retreats, mistakes, everything that happens around him, everything that happens to him , filled with weighty meaning.
In 1970, Sartre fell seriously ill, and Simone devotedly took care of him. April 15, 1980 he died. Subsequently, in the book "Adieu" Beauvoir will write: "His death separated us. My death will unite us." She outlived her master and friend by six years, having spent these years alone: with the death of Sartre, the energy that was amazing for everyone gradually began to leave her. The horizon disappeared, the goals disappeared. And once, with all her being, Simone expressed Kantian optimism, unconditional for her: you must, therefore, you can.
Sartre rested in the Montparnasse cemetery, where, by a strange coincidence, the windows of her small apartment overlooked. She was gone in the spring. April 14, 1986 She died in one of the hospitals in Paris, whose staff could not believe that Simone de Beauvoir herself was living her last days within their walls: she left alone, no one came to her and inquired about her well-being. And who dared to suggest that Simone could grow old and leave? She became a legend during her lifetime, and legends, as you know, are eternal ...
Today in Russia, when a woman feels her own “I” more and more deeply, not at all being carried away by the problems of feminism, but simply touching on issues more significant and global than the spheres of life and sex that bothered her, she involuntarily faces what she felt and carried through her life Simone de Beauvoir. "Ideas come into the world together with people", many people would like to step into eternity, but most often people belong only to their time. Simone de Beauvoir will be dear to future generations for what she was looking for, although she did not find a stable relationship between the female class and the worldview of the intellectual.
Simone de Beauvoir's book "The Second Sex", written already half a century ago, although it dissolves in many new problems associated with the second millennium, however, in some respects does not cease to be relevant, as it gives a woman an accurate idea of herself, both biological, historical and religious person. No matter what they say about de Beauvoir today, no matter how they “wash” her in the press and sermons, she looked reality in the eye and, by the example of her own life, proved the likelihood of a new nature of relationships between men and women.
Written in the late forties, the book "The Second Sex" has not ceased to be significant today, despite the women's riots of the thirties, the promotion of noble collective farmers, the glorification of certain personalities of the Soviet period (war veterans, astronauts and members of governments). Individual cases are not the rule. The appearance in the 60s of some fantastic works of fiction on the themes of the Amazons of our day, written mainly by men, only by the nature of their authors' noticeable fear before the onset of the female class confirm the correctness of these judgments.
Now let us recall the fate of the writer herself. The civil wife of the famous French existentialist philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir was born into a prosperous and by no means poor family of a lawyer and a zealous Catholic. Her childhood, as she later admitted, was happy and cloudless. After graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy and writing a work "for the rank", Simone de Beauvoir has been teaching philosophy in Marseille for all the thirties. In the early forties, she begins an affair with the philosophy teacher Jean-Paul Sartre, who became her lifelong friend. As a writer, she takes part with him in the resistance movement. Their participation in these events is ambiguous, and is still disputed by some peers, because they did not endure the hardships that befell those who fought in the Resistance with weapons in their hands. But Simone de Beauvoir forever had a guilt complex due to the fact that she did not know the feeling of hunger, was not cold and did not feel thirsty. In moral terms, the lack of such an experience oppressed her much more than a conscious refusal to have children. In the end, the children were replaced by numerous books, where she tried to understand herself and, for example,
An example of what children are as a form of continuation of the human race. "I have always had a need to talk about myself ... The first question that I always had was this: what does it mean to be a woman?" I thought I would answer it right away. But as soon as I carefully looked at this problem, I realized, first of all, that this world was made for men; my childhood was filled with legends and myths composed by men, but I reacted to them in a completely different way than boys and youths. I was so excited by them that I forgot to listen to my own voice, my own confession ... ".
Simone de Beauvoir writes a lot, but, taking up a pen, she always strives to create only a significant, programmatic work, be it a novel, an essay or an autobiographical story. She reflects on the fact that, unlike many living beings, only a person realizes that his life is finite, that he is mortal. And during this short life, people do not have complete freedom, they always face the problem of responsibility in communicating "with others." And the greatest difficulties arise in communication between the sexes. Simone de Beauvoir sees the possibility of agreement between them not in the sphere of sex and orientation to the privileged status of a man, but in a joint search for the meaning of life.
At the end of the 20th century, de Beauvoir's books devoted to the "third age" began to be remembered, where she managed to convey the magnificence of life, the anxiety and longing of mature years, the scandalous collision of her own consciousness with the process of dying, disappearing into oblivion.
They also remembered the books in which she talks about her "Roman holidays" with Sartre, about the topics of their conversations and conversations, about what worried them throughout their lives, about the fantastic success of Sartre, about his influence on the youth and minds of his contemporaries.
Simone de Beauvoir herself did not have the ambition of her husband, but she certainly basked in the rays of his glory, let's say with a French touch - "renome", until she earned her own fame with her distinctly expressed "feminism". The philosophical writings of Simone de Beauvoir note a balanced objectivity, insight, outlook, a good style, an enlightening beginning, but not everyone in society liked her, she was scolded by both Marxists and Catholics. They believed that her "purely feminine" rebellion was not a justification for the need for emancipation, but evidence of unbridled pride and humiliation.
shitty soul. The calm harmonious state of Simone de Beauvoir, as she admitted, was destroyed more than once throughout her life, and the writer subjected her fate to ruthless analysis both in works of art and in scientific research.
"My heroine is me," she quotes Maria Bashkirtseva. Indeed, most of her novels are autobiographical. So, for example, in her first novel, The Guest, about the life of a couple whose harmonious harmony is destroyed by a young creature intruding into their lives, she describes her relationship with Jean Paul Sartre. It is no secret that the great philosopher was constantly surrounded by young admirers.
For her, the writer's work is also a way of self-knowledge: "A man acts and thus knows himself. A woman, living locked up and doing work that does not have significant results, cannot determine either her place in the world or her strength. She ascribes to herself the highest meaning precisely because no important object of activity is available to it ...
The desire to live a woman's life, to have a husband, a home, children, to experience the spell of love is not always easy to reconcile with the desire to achieve the intended goal.
Did she succeed in this reconciliation herself? Most probably not. But she consciously chose her path. And all her life she tried to prove that a strong relationship is possible between a man and a woman, not due to their biological essence. That is why she refused to have children. That is why she was always close to Sartre even when their mutual passion faded and each of them had their own personal life. Their amazing civil union was legendary. It was believed that none of them wanted more. Every public appearance of a famous philosopher was expected by journalists, who always know more than others, like a sensation: with whom will he appear today? But Sartre persistently demonstrated his loyalty to Simone de Beauvoir.
Was she beautiful? Probably not. If you can say that about a Frenchwoman. And she was a real Frenchwoman. She loved beautiful and fashionable clothes and had excellent taste. In the photographs of the period of a romantic relationship with Sartre, a self-confident, charming woman looks at us. But later she had to listen to so many nasty things and accusations against her that, they say, she had a complex of an ugly woman. The independence of her thinking and bright public
cations in defense of women's emancipation contributed to the creation of the image of a feminist alien to earthly joys. Simone did not deny these accusations.
But ten years after her death in 1997, the book "Transatlantic Love" was published - a collection of letters from Simone de Beauvoir to the American writer Nelson Algren, in which we see another, unofficial, non-fighting side of the writer's life. She wrote hundreds of messages to her beloved man - evidence of her passionate and jealous human love. For the sake of meeting her beloved, this, by no means a celestial, flew across the ocean on rather frail “steel birds” in the fifties, discovered at first cities like Chicago and Los Angeles that did not attract her, read literature that she did not like from afar, started unnecessary acquaintance. Often she could not fall asleep without writing another letter to Nelson, without at least saying a word of love to him in writing. Unlike all her books published earlier, "Transatlantic Love" reveals to us the writer as a completely earthly woman who dreams of a family, of a beloved who meets her on the threshold of the house, giving her the most ordinary warmth and comfort. "... I even sleep, waiting for you," she writes. Letters like this were written daily by Simone de Beauvoir from 1947 to 1964. In letters, they often addressed each other: "my husband", "my wife". However, she was not destined to marry Nelson, as they dreamed about it. The reason must be sought in the very enduring legend of Sartre and de Beauvoir, in the writer's deep connection with France, and in Nelson's personal life. The Atlantic Ocean firmly connected, but also seriously separated the two artists, creators of their own life, their own biography. We don't know everything yet. After all, the truth often does not match the legends. It should take more than a decade...
Sartre and de Beauvoir are buried in a joint grave in the Montparnasse cemetery. The graves of writers are now less visited than the graves of chansonniers and pop musicians. However, the French put signs of love and gratitude on them - flowers and stones. On the grave of Sartre and de Beauvoir are red carnations and pebbles, similar to pebbles picked up on the seashore.
Simone de Beauvoir(1908 - 1986) - French writer, existentialist philosopher and public figure, friend of Jean-Paul Sartre. She was one of the most influential feminists of the 20th century. Her most famous works were The Second Sex, the story "Lovely Pictures" and the novel "Tangerines", awarded the Goncourt Prize in 1954.
We have selected 10 quotes from her books:
| You think that a man is dear to you, but in fact you value a certain idea of yourself, a certain illusion of freedom or surprise, mirages. ("Lovely Pictures") |
| No man would agree to become a woman, but they all want women to be. ("second floor") |
| Why, in fact, this man, and not another? Weird. You find yourself all your life with someone in the same team only because at the age of nineteen you met exactly him. ("Lovely Pictures") |
| Utopians exalt a woman for her femininity, and this is the surest way to harm her. ("second floor") |
| It is difficult to argue with an interlocutor who, while talking about the world and other people, constantly talks about himself. ("Tangerines") |
| Do you know who adults and even old people are? Children bloated with age. ("Misunderstanding in Moscow") |
| Humanity gives preference not to the giving birth sex, but to the killing sex. ("second floor") |
| On the day when a woman will be able to love because of her strength and not because of weakness, when she will love not in order to run away from herself, but in order to affirm herself, - on that day love will become for her, as well as for men, not a mortal danger, but a source of life. ("The Allusion of Love") |
| It takes a lot of strength, - he said quietly, - a lot of pride or love, to believe that human actions matter and that human life overcomes death. ("All men are mortal") |
| There is only one good: to act according to your convictions. ("All men are mortal") |
We also recommend
Switching power supply: repair and refinement
Remote control of light
Swimming lessons for preschool children
Notes for the master - home household alarms
Clock propeller on Atmega8
Device and relay application examples, how to choose and connect a relay correctly Microcontroller and relay simple switching circuits
Loading...