Four SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR AS MEDIATOR for FOREIGN

Four

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR AS MEDIATOR FOR FOREIGN LITERATURE IN LES TEMPS MODERNES Stève Bessac-Vaure

This chapter studies the role of Simone de Beauvoir in Les Temps Modernes, a French journal edited by Jean-Paul Sartre. Beauvoir played a pivotal role, being in charge of literary publications. This function allowed her to publish works of numerous foreign authors according to her existentialist conception of literature, a conception that mixes philosophy and fiction to promote human freedom. By favoring foreign existentialist literature, Beauvoir contributes to the development of a transnational literary movement. She is in stark opposition to another international literary movement, socialist realism, whereas Sartre was a Communist fellow traveler.

1. Introduction

According to Nicole Racine, while “female intellectuals were long left out of intellectual history” (2003, p. 341, translation mine), Simone de Beauvoir endures as one of the most renowned, analyzed French intellectuals. Howev- er, her role in Les Temps Modernes—a politico-cultural journal edited by Jean-Paul Sartre—remains underappreciated. At its inception, in 1945, Beau- voir was on the editorial board along with Raymond Aron, Colette Audry, René Etiemble, Michel Leiris, Albert Ollivier, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Paulhan, Jean Pouillon, Pierre Uri, and Sartre. The intention of the journal was to enable readers—intellectuals and students alike—to understand the world by publishing literature and studies on international events. Contributors to Les Temps Modernes promoted dem- ocratic socialism with national independence, then called neutralism, a political movement that attracted numerous French intellectuals. In 1948–1949, neutralist intellectuals founded the Rassemblement Démocratique Révolu- tionnaire (RDR), which was a political failure. To have political influence on the proletariat, Sartre also chose to become a fellow traveler in 1951. Many contributors to this existentialist publication did not agree with Sartre’s choice to sympathize with the Communists, which is why the journal kept a neutralist policy during the time he was a fellow traveler . The majority of articles published in Les Temps Modernes defended a neutralist policy whereas the articles that alluded to Sartre’s fellow traveler affiliation were few. Because Sartre did not write many articles for Les Temps Modernes, his influence on the readers weakened. After Aron and Paulhan left the journal, Beau- 58 STÈVE BESSAC-VAURE voir and Merleau-Ponty played central roles. However, Sartre was the only name that appeared on the publication, credited as the Editor. This begins to explain the under-appreciation of Beauvoir’s role. From 1945 to 1950, she often published her own writings, even contributing excerpts from The Se- cond Sex (2010). But after 1950, she published very little of her work in the journal, and from 1951 to 1956, Beauvoir wrote only four articles for Les Temps Modernes. Historians such as Anna Boschetti and Michel Winock seem to grant Beauvoir a strictly passive role. Winock details how Beauvoir took care of the journal’s administration: the “procedures related to obtaining rationing paper, the model and cover choices, and talks with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty” (1997, p. 551, translation mine; see also Boschetti, 1985). By her own admission, Beauvoir also took care of layout for Les Temps Modernes after Paulhan’s departure (Beauvoir, 1963, p. 1:91). However, Beauvoir was actually in charge of the journal alongside Merleau-Ponty. She described this period of her life to Nelson Algren in a letter of 1949: “So, here I am in Paris again. I don’t enjoy so much being there, but I have to take care of T. M. since Merleau-Ponty is going to New York and Mexico” (Beauvoir, 1997, p. 250). Apart from administrative tasks, Beauvoir led the literary department of Les Temps Modernes, a significant aspect, because she considered literature to be a way to discover the world, as she posited in “Littérature et métaphysique” (Literature and metaphysics) (1946). She introduced numerous foreign authors, in accordance with the journal’s choice to foster an international perspective, because existentialist philosophers believe the problem of the human condition is the same everywhere. How was Beauvoir, a writer, transformed into a “cultural mediator” for foreign literature? In the Cold War context and that of Sartre’s fellow travel- ing with the Communists, what decisive criteria influenced her publication preferences? In what ways did her practice as cultural mediator allow her to convey her existentialist philosophy, and how did she reconcile philosophy and literature? Based on an analysis of Les Temps Modernes over the period of 1952– 1956, Beauvoir’s correspondence with Algren, her essay on literature (1946), and her autobiographical works, I will discuss Beauvoir’s mediation in practice: its criteria, its channels, its beneficiaries. In the absence of polls, it is difficult to evaluate how readers perceived these literary choices, but her role undoubtedly allowed her to broadcast her philosophical-literary ideas, ideas that conflicted with the contemporary communist literature marked by socialist realism.

2. Simone de Beauvoir, a Literary Mediator

In her memoirs, Beauvoir wrote, “I was working on my essay and keeping busy at Les Temps Modernes. Every time I opened a manuscript I had a sense of adventure. I read English and American books no one had heard of in