Unedifying spectacle of Sartre and Beauvoir

I read Sartre’s plays in French class in high school, and loved them. I’m going to pass on the unedifying spectacle of the actual person:

Unwittingly or not, Sartre set the stage for trouble. In 1929, when he and Beauvoir began their affair, he proposed that each would have “contingent” relationships, meaning they would sleep with others, and that they would be completely “transparent,” meaning they would tell each other everything.

So after Beauvoir slept with her 17-year-old student, Olga Kosakiewicz, Sartre tried to seduce Olga, too. When Olga rejected him, he seduced Olga’s sister, Wanda. When Beauvoir slept with another student, Bianca Bienenfeld, Sartre did. He also seduced Beauvoir’s former student, Nathalie Sorokine, with whom Beauvoir was sleeping. When Beauvoir had an affair with Claude Lanzmann, Sartre started one with Lanzmann’s sister, Evelyne.

They would all be a “family,” Sartre said.

Sometimes it worked, lovers and friends drinking, dining, swapping partners in the Montparnasse section of Paris. But there were also tears and jealousy. Sartre died in 1980, Beauvoir in 1986. The family is now divided into feuding camps. Sartre’s is led by Ms. Sartre, with whom he had a brief affair when she was 19 and he was 51. Beauvoir’s is headed by Ms. Beauvoir, w

ho describes her relationship to Beauvoir in “Tête-à-Tête” as “carnal but not sexual.”

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