Letters to Sartre Page 25
This morning I went to work at the Dôme. I really like Thursday mornings at present, from 8.30 to 10: they have the charm of a brief, threatened pleasure — seeing that I have school afterwards. I went to pick up my letters: a little one from you, which I read at the post office, and a long one from Bost which I read on the Métro. He seems to love me particularly just at the moment, and has a most agreeable way of saying so. He wonders what effect seeing me again will have on him — and so do I: it makes me feel quite queasy in advance. What’s more, it’s funny, but when you write: ‘end of the war at Christmas’, that makes me more scared than joyful. I don’t believe it enough for joy to carry all before it, and there remains a vague fear of expecting too much from that return of life: a fear of myself faced by the happy event; a fear of craving, disappointment, tension — I don’t know. In a sense, it’s so comfortable being glum and hopeless.
Two hours of school. They’ve reopened the Vaugirard station, so I’m only 3 min. away from the Métro (to school). Then Sorokine — and then two hours at H. IV, where I had the class in stitches about magic. Then I bought myself some books, of which I was in sore need, with the library money — I’m still waiting for my 5,000 F. Then I worked at the Mahieu. And I’m still there — Kos. is going to meet me here.
I’m glad, because this time I’ve written you a long letter.
My love, I live in the certainty that I’m going to see you in a month’s time. Perhaps I’ll be disappointed, but for the moment that makes everything easy for me. My love, never, never, have I felt your love so intensely
Your charming Beaver
[Paris]
Friday 24 November [1939]
Most dear little being
Well, so I wrote you a long letter yesterday evening. It was just 7.30 when I’d finished — I was at the Mahieu and expecting Kos. precisely at that time. No Kos.! I wrote to Poupette, then wrote up my little journal at length — which I enjoyed doing. By the end I was getting twinges in my elbow, from having written for 2½ hours without drawing breath. For with the novel you have to wait for the phrases to come, but with the correspondence or the journal your hand’s always lagging behind your thoughts. All that time on my own was like a real godsend, since with Kos. and Sorokine I always have a festive feeling when they deprive me of their presence for a while. I so like being alone, and above all I’ve such a plethora of pastimes I enjoy — like my journal, or reading. All the same, at 9 I was beginning to worry — and on such occasions the idea that ‘she has found out something’ comes to haunt me, and I have a dreadful feeling of impending disaster. Meanwhile, a fellow came along and offered me some little sets of folding images, which could be combined in such a way that Hitler’s head could be attached to the bodies of a gorilla, a pig, or a hippopotamus, depending on the purchaser’s taste. It’s the first time I’ve seen that kind of patriotic vulgarity — and it doesn’t seem to be having much success, actually. Meanwhile, in the washrooms at the Mahieu, an old woman peddling toiletries, filthy and toothless, prowled round me saying: ‘It’s pretty that little turban. Did you make it yourself? How many metres did it take? But you have to be young to wear that.’ Meanwhile, Kos. still wasn’t arriving.
Finally, at past 9, she showed up with a distraught air. She’d been trying to get some suitcases moved (the suitcases left behind last year at that hotel in Montmartre) and had been held up. And quite apart from that, ever since she has begun working at the Atelier again she has been like last year, in a perpetual frenzy. She’d worked all day learning to speak verse and, though she’d achieved some results, was nevertheless looking very drawn. At a singing class with Abondance however, she’d had a success: she’d found she had such a big voice that she’d drowned out all the rest and Abondance had congratulated her warmly. I took her to have dinner at Mirov’s, where you can eat well, undisturbed, and with excellent music. She explained to me that at the Atelier she was constantly ‘on display’ to other people, and I recalled the Kos. of last year — that constructed, arrogant, stupidly vain personage whom I detest. With me she’s really touching, for even when she’s all nerves, she strives to remain confiding, amiable, friendly. But then our moralism always supervenes — esteem has crumbled — and I view her like a spectacle. I think: ‘she says that. . .’, ‘she thinks she feels that. . .’, ‘she claims to think that. . .’ — and I no longer ‘feel with’ her, it’s finished.
I’ve also had the following thought about my relations with her: that the strength of a relation with somebody comes from the fact that you indicate yourselves together in the future (to use Heidegger’s vocabulary). But Kos. doesn’t indicate herself in the future — or in so far as she does do so, she indicates herself alone. That’s why, at best, you can say: ‘at this moment I’m fine with her’ — it remains something immanent. It’s always Proust’s passive idealism, in the sentimental domain. The connecting link: transcendence, future, activity of consciousness, reveals itself as profoundly true in the sentimental domain.
[...]
Goodbye, my dear little one — it’s thanks to you that I’m happy. And if my happiness makes you blissful, that forms a judicious circle. I love you and am altogether with you. I kiss you with all my Beaver’s might
Your charming Beaver
[Paris]
Saturday 25 November [1939]
Most dear little being
I’ve been happy today, happy because of your letters. First, this morning I received your Wednesday letter, which moved me very greatly. Dear little being, of course you should write whatever comes into your head, without any feeling of responsibility towards my expectations. The miraculous thing about your letters is that precisely I don’t expect anything. I tell myself every time that the next letter you send me will be a bit more humdrum (as happens with me, I think), and if that were to occur I shouldn’t be at all troubled — it would strike me as merely normal. But then, every time, the short and somewhat perfunctory letter I was quite reasonably expecting turns out to be for the next day: every time it’s a long letter that arrives, rich and tender, to surprise me. But don’t feel obliged to give me that surprise — please understand that. Follow your heart, but also your exhaustion and your mood. That’s what I do myself.
So there was this very moving letter written at the Ecrevisse, and then Bienenfeld had the charming kindness (she’s recovering those pleasing inspirations of old) to send me the letter you’d written her about our relations. And that touched me, my dear little one, even though you weren’t being sincere with her. It touched me that you should speak of me like that. And it at once clothed your relations with herself — and herself — with a kind of authenticity in my eyes that had long been lost. Moreover, she enclosed it with a very sensible, ordinary letter that I’m sending you with my own. All in all, lies and truth correct one another admirably, and you and I have done good work. We just need to take a bit of trouble, and that little person will succeed in being happy without bothering us too much — don’t you think?
I’ve also had a truly charming letter from Bost. He’s quite inventive now in his tenderness, and graceful when he’s being inventive, and my relations with him are worth more than those silly passionate jealousies. After I’d read your letter and his this morning, I felt fulfilled as no woman in the world can ever have been. But what overwhelms me most of all, my sweet little one, is to feel in your cold (as you claim) little self so many fresh, teeming little Erlebnisse. A plague on whited sepulchres, my love! — I won’t speak of it again for a long while.
So I worked yesterday till 7 at that Cujas, where I happened to be: novel, journal, letters to Bienenfeld and Bost. That made more than 4 hours of novel in my day. Alas! my love, I shan’t be able to show you anything when you come on leave — the draft’s too muddled. Unless, that is, your approach makes me change my style of work, so that I finish a few chapters in January — but I don’t think so. What I shall ask you to do is reread the whole beginning carefully in one go — it’ll take you 3 or 4 hou
rs — and give me general advice, then compare this with my own critical comments and discuss the whole thing at proper length. Simply writing this fills me to the brim with impatience and longing.
At 7 I went to the Mahieu. It was raining cats and dogs. At the Mahieu were Gégé and Gerassi, but not Stépha, who was confined to her bed because they’d spent too long and impassioned a night of poker. Gégé was in transports because Pardo’s on holiday somewhere or other, and she’s sleeping with Nogues every night — after which she’ll pass back into Denonain’s hands, after which she’ll return to Pardo, with whom she’s not getting on at all well. Gerassi was depressed about money matters; they’re penniless and wondering what to do. They’re thinking of leaving for America as housekeeper-and-butler: apparently it brings in 4,000 F. each per month, with board and lodging, at dollar rates — but it’s not much fun. We chatted for a while in a tiny bar opposite the St Jacques church and I ate some pate and some chocolate — since they didn’t want to have dinner. Then we went to the Ursulines. We arrived in the middle of a film of which we saw the beginning later, and which is fantastic: The Edge of the World. It all takes place on a faraway island in the Orkneys, with cliffs and storms, and perilous climbs, and magnificent camera-shots. And then there was a film with Mae West, Every Day’s a Holiday‘, which was incredibly funny — it’s impossible not to take to that woman. We left the cinema and Gégé took a taxi to rush off and join Nogues, while I came back on foot with the Boubou.
[...]
I rose at 7.30, went to C. See, called in at the post office, and read my letters at the Versailles — with the joy I’ve told you of- then worked. I’ve begun the chapter from Gerbert’s viewpoint, which I’m really enjoying. I made up Bost’s parcel, ate at the Dôme while rereading your letters, then worked some more. At 5 Sorokine came to my room. She was terribly affectionate — all yielding and confiding. She asked me in a whisper if I kissed my Russian girl friend in the same way I kissed her. I told her I didn’t any longer. She told me she’d like to discuss all that with me. And then we did some philosophy — Descartes’ Meditations. She’s not at all stupid, she could be really good at philosophy — it’s a pity.
[...]
I love you, little being. I’m moved by your love, it’s a brand new happiness for me, it’ll amaze me till the day I die that you should love me like this. My heart’s content if, through my love, you can feel how you’re all perfumed yourself. I kiss you, my dear little one, as if you were at my side, with your eyes all rosy with sleep, and we were falling asleep together.
Your charming Beaver
[Paris]
Tuesday 28 November [1939]
Most dear little being
This time, even in the evening mail there was no letter from you. No letter from Bost either — I’m feeling a bit abandoned. But not over much, since I know I’ll get some tomorrow. I’ve just found out something rather annoying: my family’s returning to Paris tomorrow evening. If it’s only my parents that’s all right, it’ll even save me from having to go down to the Limousin. But I’m scared stiff that Poupette may be coming too and I’ll be obliged to see her. I’ll have to give her at least one evening a week, and even though it’ll be an evening of movies or at the Opera I’m appalled at the prospect, since she won’t be satisfied with that. Bienenfeld too is making threatening noises about coming back to Paris, and then — what a regiment of women on my poor hands! But I hope that since Poupette no longer has a studio in Paris — thanks to the clever furniture-storage arrangement — she’ll hang on down there at least for a while. I’ve just had a card from my mother, saying my father has found a job (which is one comfort) and they’re returning post haste.
Yesterday evening, we didn’t go to the Poisson d’ Or after all. There’d been some mix-up, and Wanda had an appointment with the Lunar Woman — and who knows what else? — so just Kos. and I went and had dinner at that little Restaurant Pages. Then we went to sit in the front section of the Dôme, which was quite surprising and delightful. There are no brasiers but just the tables and chairs, which are widely spaced and where nobody was sitting anyway. The floor’s covered by thick yellow matting the colour of horse manure — and the windows, of course, are shrouded in blue material. I don’t know if you can picture what it looks like — something comfortable and temporary, like an encampment or the interior of a log-cabin — with its own quite particular charm. It was very well heated too. Kos, had a Baudelaire with her, which I leafed through in her company and was delighted by — partly thanks to the war, because like my memories the masterpieces of the human spirit now have a retrospective character, which makes them all perfumed and precious. They appear situated in a finite history and no longer immersed in an indefinite time. Moreover, there’s no poet in the world quite like him and, if that’s poetry, I like poetry. Often quite rhetorical — and with platitudinous lapses even in the best poems — but it’s marvellous. Kos. was practising reciting a poem about a ‘soft enchantress’,209 which is beautiful but has an almost obscene couplet in the middle which she finds too embarrassing; so she’d chosen one of the poems entitled ‘Spleen’ — the one beginning: ‘I have memories and to spare for a thousand years of life’ — and was reciting it as though it were a semi-madman speaking, part ironical but pretty nutty. It made a fine effect. I wonder what Dullin will think of it — I’ll know in a little while and tell you all about it. It’s interesting to see beautiful lines being worked on like that. It’s the only way of exploring all the nuances and giving them their full weight — i.e. the usual old story of objects being enriched only through the variation of techniques, and through the wealth of uses to which they’re put. In that sense, the performer’s art is incredibly valuable.
[...]
Goodbye, my love. I feel odd without a letter, and stupidly anxious. But it must be just the mails. Tomorrow morning I’ll rush to the post office. I love you, my dear little one, my darling, as strongly as ever. In less than a month, I’ll be seeing you.
Your charming Beaver
I’m going to have 10 pupils for private lessons — 2 hrs a week, as a group. How much shall I ask for? 20 F. per head, per hour? That would make a splendid sum, but I don’t quite dare. It’s only till Christmas, but it’ll make 8 hours at least. I’ll pay all our debts.
[Paris]
30 November [1939] — Thursday
My love
I’ve just bought you a huge bundle of books. I’ll send half off tomorrow morning (there was such a queue at the post office that it discouraged me), and keep the other half for a week to read, then they’ll go off too. I’ve had your letter of the 27th, and really enjoyed the story of the quarrel with Pierre. As for what you tell me about your mother, the funniest thing is that according to what she told me yesterday, Tante Marie probably won’t send a thing and it’s your mother who’ll have to take care of the parcels.210
As for me, I called in at the post office after seeing her and doing a bit more work. I found a charming letter from Bost there, and have had two more today that have really cheered me up, especially since he explains how with Kos. he has always missed a certain spiritual kinship, complicity and deep commitment — and he agrees with lots of things I was saying to him about her. With me directly, moreover, he’s really pleasing and affectionate — which delighted me. He has received my illegal parcel safely.
[...]
At half past midday Sorokine was waiting for me, all idyllic. We ate in the little brasserie near my school, then went by Métro and on foot to H. IV. She expounded to me all the reasons why she liked me so much, and handed me a long letter in which she asks me to talk to her about everything, tell her all about my life, force her to work — and hundreds of other things too. She makes demands all the time but does it with considerable grace, and I’m becoming more and more attached to her. School. Then I bought your books, and then called in at the post office: your letter and two from Bost, which I read at the Versailles. I came back here, then went to see the dressma
ker again — I’m going to be beautiful. Wanda had just been seeing Mouloudji; she’s going to put him in her room and move in with the Lunar Woman (they’re going to live in some shared studios — something I fear may turn into an escapade). She and the Lunar Woman told me some ‘marvellous stories’ about a real tough guy, a lover of Youki’s and friend of Mouloudji’s, whom they’d just seen at the Dôme. The Lunar Woman was trying on an extremely lovely dress, but I saw her bosom — it’s worse than anything I’d been led to expect.
There you are. I came back down here to write, it’s 7.30 and I’m going to do some correspondence until Kos. arrives at about 9. All three of us are going out, and I’ll enjoy seeing Wanda. I haven’t done any work, but I was too tired in any case. I’ll get down to it again tomorrow — since after a good night I’ll be feeling fresh for sure.
Goodbye, my love. I’m annoyed not to know if you’re leaving or not. I love you, my beloved. Every evening I think of the next day’s letter and that justifies the coming day. I live only through you and for you, my sweet little one. I have a burning desire to see your little face again, to kiss it, and to squeeze you in my arms.
Your charming Beaver
[Paris]
Friday 1 December [1939]
Most dear little being
Another very sweet letter from you today. But how annoyed that Emma business makes me. In order to do things properly, I’ll need to begin applying on the 10th and to have the papers by then. If the worst comes to the worst I’ll do without them, but at least I need some specific information. That casts a shadow over my day. If it weren’t for that I’d be blissful today — it’s wonderfully agreeable to find oneself restored to good health and with a clear head. I still have my horrid spot, but I’ve resigned myself to that.