Thursday, 9 January 2014
A memory about Simone de Beauvoir
I was reminded by today's Google Doodle that this was the birthday of Simone de Beauvoir. I love existentialist writers, I am pretty much an existentialist philosophically and de Beauvoir's Deuxième Sexe was one of my mother's favourite non-fiction books for a time (it may still be now). But I have a different memory of the work of Simone de Beauvoir: for me, she was and will remain mainly the author of Le Sang des autres. I gave a course on this novel when I was teaching literature in Liverpool. It was maybe my most popular class, it was probably my best. I miss teaching literature, and today reminded me of this. So joyeux anniversaire Simone. You gave me some of my best working days.
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1 comment:
This quote of hers my favourite: "On the day when it will be possible for
woman to love not in her weakness but in
strength, not to escape herself but to find
herself, not to abase herself but to assert
herself – on that day love will become for
her, as for man, a source of life and not of
mortal danger. In the meantime, love
represents in its most touching form the
curse that lies heavily upon woman
confined in the feminine universe, woman
mutilated, insufficient unto herself."
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