La bonne bouche
Kay Dick
All Said And Done Simon de Beauvoir (Andre Deutsch with Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.95) "What value do I place upon the culture I possess? .. In 1962, when I was finishing Force of Circumstances, I was already aware of the contradiction between the intellectual's universal aims and the particularism in which he is imprisoned. It worried me once again when I began this book. I make use of language, a universal instrument; I am therefore addressing myself to all men. But I reach only a limited audience. At the present time many of the young, whom I should particularly like to reach, look upon reading as pointless. So I no longer see writing as a privileged means of communication. And yet I have carried this book on to the end and no doubt I shall write others; I may indeed challenge the worth of the writer that I am, but I cannot tear myself from that writer's personality. I cannot toss my past overboard and deny everything I have loved ... I do not believe in the universal and everlasting value of Western culture, but it has been my food and I love it still. I should like it not to vanish entirely but to be handed on to the rising generation — most of it, at any rate. I quite see that most young people will have nothing to do with some aspects of it and I understand their having rebelled about the way it was taught them. But is there not some way of communicating that which remains valid and which might help them to live?"
It is this deeply considered conviction, this aesthetic touchstone, which radiates throughout Simone de Beauvoir's fourth (one can not with her predict any finality) autobiographical volume, All Said And Done, and offers us ten years (1962-72) not so much of experience realised (although this is exceptionally packed with incident) as an imaginative and intellectual transmutation of such experience. It is a deeply serious, wholly ■ absorbing, and marvellously stimulating testimony which gives a complete feeling of maturity and confidence in the autobiographer who comes through with tremendous honesty and admirable lucidity and precision. Whatever reservations one may previously have had for one jocularly known as La Grande Sartreuse, are here thrown out. This is a splendid person, who had looked at herself, her friends and the world they share with an instinctive respect for truth, having, herself, in her own right, as Simone de Beauvoir, brought her best to a peak of creative achievement in this most contemporary document de nos temps.
With All Said and Done Simone de Beauvoir has declared herself with a rigorous perspective, and stated her case as this relates to personal relationships, literature, art and politics and the whole range of pleasures and pains with a precision that is endearingly relaxed and refreshingly passionate. She recaps with a purpose, this being to acknowledge where her point of view now differs from any previously expressed. She is not afraid to say very simply that she was wrong about this and that, nor to concede that there were facts unknown to her which she has now taken into account. She has, as it were, done her own homework on her past self. One is full of admiration and respect for the wholeness of Simone de Beauvoir's world, meaning her total capacity to take it all in, to accept it, to learn it yet again, and assimilate its new findings as being part of any one person's natural capacity and experience.
The world for her is not an immensity too diffuse; the fact that she has seen so much of it is not in itself a virtue to her, rather a fortunate series of opportunities which her intellectual and social curiosity sought. Nor, appositely, does this larger view Of our planet devalue the deeper spheres of speculation which she finds in her personal relationships and especially in art and literature, which are her basic touchstones to the social and political conflicts that darken the contemporary scene, and which have engaged her ever open interest and with which she allies herself to Sartre, her life companion, with whom she chooses not to live, although they are near neighbours, see each other every day and travel together.
She resights her childhood, her education, her teaching days, her writing: "I have never been able to write when I am caught up by what is actually happening, whether it is very happy or whether it is distressing. I sometimes," she adds, "give myself holidays."
This is usually travel, although often it is rereading which for her acts as a continuous stimulant and measuring-rod. Superb about Wilde, Proust and Rousseau, she is at her inspired best when writing about her reading: "I never stop learning, but knowledge grows so fast that at the same time my ignorance increases." Her excursions back to the French countryside she loved inordinately are packed with tender delights, and her trips abroad with Sartre—especially their idyllic days in Rome — are immediately vivid and make one wish to rush there at once. She is equally compulsive about painting and music. Altogether one is caught up in this woman's
delight of the real pleasures of life. For fits of depression I recommend this book: it drives one to be eager to get out into life aga,111' whether it be into life outside, with it complex social realities, or life within, the ever-enhancing basic stimulation held at the ready for all of us by art and literature. The portrait of Sartre as he relates to he and as she relates to him is beautifully Pe,t: tinent without in any way subscribing to ir! trusion of privacy. She clearly defines Sartre political radicalism, gently correcting the error that he is a Communist party member their socialism is based on intellectual reason.: logic and humanitarian perceptions; neither.' hoodwinked by totalitarianism in social's! clothes. Her reports on Soviet Russia an° China, both revisited, are packed with precise wisdom; in fact her trips to Japan, the USSR the USA, China, Egypt, Israel, India and s°d on are among the most valuable a 11 interesting sections. Admirable also are the portraits she draWs of the people in her life, which reveal Sinioae de Beauvoir to be a friend of great und0r. standing and compassion. Especially fascinat' ing is her sketch of Violette Leduc (who diefi as Simone de Beauvoir was correcting th„e proofs of this book) who, "turned her life int' the raw material of her work, and that gavAe her life a meaning." People in All Said An° Done are as important as the social events which contain them and the art that inspire! them. In' many ways this is a truly. inspirit.* book; it inspires one to live, to look again, t° learn more, to know more deeply the peoP.,1°, and the social systems which constitute oud' world. It throws open the windows, an simultaneously enables one better t° examine the room behind one.
Previous page
