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Lot #376
Jean-Paul Sartre Autograph Letter Signed with Recommended Reading: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Plato, and Freud

"It's not this Paris that I promised you"—Sartre writes his lover from war-torn Europe, recommending books by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Plato, and Freud

Estimate: $6000+

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Description

"It's not this Paris that I promised you"—Sartre writes his lover from war-torn Europe, recommending books by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Plato, and Freud

ALS in French, signed “J. P. Sartre,” two pages both sides, 8.25 x 10.25, no date but circa June 1940. Letter to his mistress, the French theatre actress Wanda Kosakiewicz. In part (translated): "No, of course, I do not complain, I'm not mad at all and if I had been I would not think about it anymore, I have only one desire, but it is vain, it is to hold you in my arms; I have too many worries for you: your radio and then this bombardment of Paris that I learned this morning. New York announces on the radio a thousand victims, 250 dead and six or seven hundred wounded. Fortunately today I received a letter from you telling me that you are leaving. But I dare not rejoice, my sweet little girl, because I know what sinister life you will find in Laigle…I'm gnawing a bit because I wanted so much to get you out of Laigle and now you're back forced and forced and it's me who sends you there…I imagine that Paris will become more and more sinister, it's not this Paris that I promised you. The one where I wanted to see you live, it is with the old moons in our memories…I love you stronger than ever. I understand very well what you mean when you write that the relationship between people seem to you reduced to nothing and I see how it can be done. But me, it's the opposite, it exasperates them on the contrary and I feel fierce to keep them. My love, whatever may happen catastrophic, you are my life and I will not be deprived of my life…

For books, I can not remember the list I gave you, but I'll do another one. These are often a bit difficult but interesting books. Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation, Nietzsche: The Will for Power / The Genealogy of Morals, Heidegger: What is Metaphysics, Scheler: Nature and Form of Sympathy, Freud: Three Essays of Psychoanalysis / Psychoanalysis / The Dream, Delbos: Figures and Doctrines of Philosophers, Bergson: The Creative Evolution, Plato: The Banquet - Phaedrus - Phaedo - The Republic…It may seem a little off-putting and obscure at first but whatever you understand, you can only progress and then of course you just have to ask me for explanations.

This bombing worried me yesterday. I'm happy to think you're leaving. My parents will get the hell out of it too and the Beaver [Simone de Beauvoir] will be evacuated if it gets too hard…My sweet little Wanda, you know I think you're becoming a person, slowly and surely. You are a thousand times better from this point of view, in this war, than I would have dared to hope for it last year. What it takes is that you are a person without losing anything of your authenticity and it seems to me that this is just how it happens…You have never been so precious to me. I love you passionately. I'm dying to not be able to hold you in my arms and kiss you all over your body." In fine condition, with a few short edge tears. Accompanied by an export certificate from the French Ministry of Culture.

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