At the Existentialist Café (60 page)

56
  Sartre and Huston story: Huston,
An Open Book
, 295–6; Pontalis, preface to Sartre,
The Freud Scenario
, viii. ‘Suddenly in mid-discussion’: Pontalis, citing and translating Sartre,
Lettres au Castor
, II, 358.

57
  Manuscript in fire: Beauvoir,
Adieux
, 273; Sartre, ‘On
The Idiot of the Family
’, in
Sartre in the Seventies
, 122.

58
  ‘Statue’: White,
Jean Genet
, 438, citing Jean Cocteau,
Le passé défini
, II, 391.

59
  ‘Disgust’, and ‘it’s very enjoyable’: Genet, interview with Madeline Gobeil (1964), in
The Declared Enemy
, 2–17, this 12.

60
  Sartre on homosexuality: Sartre,
Saint Genet
, 79. For more on Sartre’s views about homosexuality, see his interview of Feb. 1980 in Jean Le Bitoux & Gilles Barbedette, ‘Jean-Paul Sartre et les homosexuels’,
Le gai pied
, 13 (April 1980), 1, 11–14, tr. by G. Stambolian as ‘Jean-Paul Sartre: the final interview’, in M. Denneny, C. Ortled & T. Steele (eds),
The View from Christopher Street
(London: Chatto & Windus, The Hogarth Press, 1984), 238–44.

61
  Genet on homosexuality: Genet, interview with Hubert Fichte (1975), in
The Declared Enemy
, 118–151, this 148.

62
  ‘We cannot follow him’: Sartre,
Saint Genet
, 77. On their arguing: White,
Jean Genet
, 441–4.

63
  Ambiguity: Beauvoir,
The Ethics of Ambiguity
, 9, 127.

64
  ‘I was in error’: FOC, 76.

Chapter 10: The Dancing Philosopher

1
    Merleau-Ponty irritating Beauvoir: MDD, 246. Also see Monika Langer, ‘Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty on Ambiguity’, in Claudia Card (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir
(Cambridge: CUP, 2003), 87–106.

2
    ‘I am a psychological and historical structure’: PP, 482/520.

3
    Sensory metaphors: for more, see George Lakoff’s & Mark Johnson’s
Metaphors We Live By
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) and
Philosophy in the Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought
(New York: Basic Books, 1999), works much influenced by Merleau-Ponty.

4
    ‘All of us are constantly discussing’: Sartre,
The Family Idiot
, I, 18.

5
    Glass, blanket, bird: PP, 238/275–6.

6
    Seeing an object, and stereoscopic vision: PP, 241–2/279.

7
    Proprioception: PP, 93/119.

8
    Knitting: PP, 108/136.

9
    ‘I will never think’: PP, 100/127.

10
  ‘If I stand’: PP, 102/129–30.

11
  ‘Without any explicit calculation’: PP, 143–4/177–8.

12
  Schneider: PP, 105/132–3. His experience was studied by the gestalt psychologists Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein. An extraordinary recent case of lost proprioception overcome by sheer force of will is that of Ian Waterman. He has no proprioception below the neck, yet controls his movements using vision and delibeate muscle control alone. See Jonathan Cole,
Pride and a Daily Marathon
(London: Duckworth, 1991).

13
  Phantom limbs: PP, 83/110.

14
  Third arm: Oliver Sacks,
Hallucinations
(London: Picador, 2012), 270–71.

15
  Leg injury: Sacks,
A Leg to Stand On
, 112. Sacks’ experiences attest to how adaptable we can be. Even more extreme adjustments are described in Jean-Dominique Bauby’s
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
, tr. Jeremy
Leggatt (London: Fourth Estate, 1997), the story of his near-total loss of movement following a massive stroke. Bauby was able to communicate only through eye-blinks, yet even then he was far from disembodied: he still suffered an excruciating range of phantom sensations. His account does bring us about as close to disembodiment as a conscious human can be, and reminds us of the importance of the whole network of bodily sensation, thought and movement for all of us.

16
  Biting baby’s fingers: PP, 368/409–10. Earlier work on imitation behaviour was done by gestalt psychologists and others, and was later followed up by Jacques Lacan. On the phenomenology of social development, see also Max Scheler,
The Nature of Sympathy
, tr. Peter Heath (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954) (originally
Zur Phänomenologie der Sympathiegefühl und von Liebe und Hass
, 1913).

17
  Abandoning usual approach: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Child’s Relations with Others’, tr. W. Cobb, in J. M. Edie (ed.)
The Primacy of Perception
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 96–155, this 115–16.

18
  ‘Fold’: PP, 223/260. See also Merleau-Ponty,
The Visible and the Invisible
, 196 (working notes), where he uses the same image.

19
  ‘Starting from there’: Merleau-Ponty,
The Visible and the Invisible
, 266.

20
  ‘The hold is held’: ibid., 266.

21
  ‘It is as though our vision’: ibid., 130–31.

22
  ‘Flesh’: ibid., 139.

23
  
‘Follow with my eyes’
: ibid., 146. See also Taylor Carman, ‘Merleau-Ponty on Body, Flesh, and Visibility’, in Crowell (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism
, 274–88, especially 278–9.

24
  ‘Rigorously to put into words’: Emmanuelle Garcia, ‘Maurice Merleau-Ponty: vie et œuvre’, in Merleau-Ponty,
Œuvres
, 27–99, this 33, citing radio interview with Georges Charbonnier (22 May 1959).

25
  ‘Only one emotion’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Cézanne’s Doubt’, in
Sense and Non-Sense
, 9–25, this 18.

26
  ‘Not self-satisfied understanding’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Reading Montaigne’, in
Signs
, 198–210, this 203.

27
  ‘It is only a cerebral way’: Stephen Priest,
Merleau-Ponty
(London: Routledge, 2003), 8.

28
  Dancing: Vian,
Manual of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
, 141; Gréco,
Je suis faite comme ça
, 98–9.

29
  English suits, morning coffee, inscribed copy, philosophy and life: all Marianne Merleau-Ponty, personal communication.

30
  ‘Not that they don’t like him’: Sartre,
Quiet Moments in a War
, 284 (Sartre to Beauvoir, 18 May 1948). Sartre reports having heard it as gossip.

31
  Affair with Sonia Brownell: Merleau-Ponty, letters to Sonia Brownell, in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109); also see Spurling,
The Girl from the Fiction Department
.

32
  Plans to move to London: see Merleau-Ponty to Sonia Brownell (15 Nov. [1947]), in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109).

33
  
Meet Yourself
: see ibid., and Spurling,
The Girl from the Fiction Department
, 84. The full title of Prince Leopold Loewenstein’s & William Gerhardi’s book was
Meet Yourself as you really are, different from others because you combine uniquely features present in everyone: about three million detailed character studies through self-analysis
(London: Penguin, reissued in 1942). On the book, see Dido Davies,
William Gerhardie: a biography
(Oxford & New York: OUP, 1990), 290.

34
  ‘Do Mickey Mouse?’ and ‘Have you ever felt?’: Prince Leopold Loewenstein & William Gerhardi,
Meet Yourself as you really are
, 16, 15.

35
  ‘Forming tirelessly’: Merleau-Ponty,
The Visible and the Invisible
, 144. Sartre did of course take into account the importance of bodily experience, but he approached it differently. On this, see especially Katherine J. Morris (ed.),
Sartre on the Body
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and her own
Sartre
(Oxford & Malden: Blackwell, 2008).

36
  ‘We discovered, astounded’: Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in
Situations
[IV], 225–326, this 298.

37
  ‘Register of feeling’: Merleau-Ponty, interview with Georges Charbonnier (May 1959), in
Parcours deux
, 235–40, this 237.

38
  Animals: Heidegger,
The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphyics: world, finitude, solitude
, tr. W. McNeill & N. Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 177. On Heidegger and the body, see Kevin A. Aho,
Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body
(Albany: SUNY Press, 2009).

39
  ‘How did Dasein evolve?’: Polt,
Heidegger
, 43.

40
  ‘Ontical’ matters: BT, 71/45ff.

41
  Outsider subjects: in a series of radio broadcasts in 1948, Merleau-Ponty also described four major topics normally excluded from philosophy: children, animals, the mentally ill, and what were then referred to as ‘primitive’ people (Merleau-Ponty,
The World of Perception
).

42
  ‘The philosopher is marked’ and constant movement: Merleau-Ponty,
In Praise of Philosophy
, 4–5.

Chapter 11: Croisés comme ça

1
    ‘Contingent’ lives: Merleau-Ponty, ‘Man and Adversity’, in
Signs
, 224–43, this 239 (a talk given in Geneva on 10 Sept. 1951).

2
    Sartre on Hiroshima: Sartre, ‘The End of the War’, in
The Aftermath of War
(
Situations III
), 65–75, this 71–2.

3
    Camus on Hiroshima: Camus, ‘[On the bombing of Hiroshima]’, in
Between Hell and Reason
, 110–11: an untitled piece originally published in
Combat
(8 Aug. 1945).

4
    Chain reaction: FOC, 103–4.

5
    Radioactive suitcases: FOC, 119; Sartre,
Nekrassov
, in
Three Plays: Kean, Nekrassov, The Trojan Women
, tr. Sylvia & George Leeson (London: Penguin, [n.d.]), 131–282, this 211–12.

6
    ‘A true international society’: Camus, ‘[On the bombing of Hiroshima]’, in
Between Hell and Reason
, 110–11, this 111.

7
    Kravchenko case: Gary Kern,
The Kravchenko Case
(New York: Enigma, 2007), 452; FOC, 183; Beevor & Cooper,
Paris After the Liberation
, 338.

8
    Rousset case: Tony Judt,
Postwar: a history of Europe since 1945
(London: Vintage, 2010), 214–15.

9
    Sartre on the Rosenbergs: Sartre, ‘Les animaux malades de la rage’ (‘Mad Beasts’), originally published in
Libération
(22 June 1953), and reprinted in Catherine Varlin & René Guyonnet (eds),
Le chant interrompu: histoire des Rosenberg
(Paris: Gallimard, 1955), 224–8. See Contat & Rybalka (eds),
The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre
, I, 285 — the editors commenting, ‘His wrath brought forth one of the strongest things he ever wrote.’ See also Hayman,
Writing Against
, 285.

10
  ‘An unimaginable stupidity’: Arendt & Jaspers,
Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence
, 220 (Jaspers to Arendt, 22 May 1953).

11
  Baby vs humanity: Fyodor Dostoevsky,
The Brothers Karamazov
, tr. C. Garnett (London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1927), II, 251.

12
  ‘I will never again’: Camus, ‘Neither Victims nor Executioners’, 41.

13
  
The Just
: Camus,
The Just
, tr. Henry Jones, in Camus,
Caligula
, 163–227.

14
  ‘People are now planting bombs’: Camus, ‘The Nobel Prize Press Conference Incident, December 14–17, 1957’, in
Algerian Chronicles
, 213–16, this 216n. On this, see Zaretsky,
A Life Worth Living
, 84–5.

15
  ‘The perspective of heads of government’: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Philosophy of Existence’, in
Texts and Dialogues
, 129–39, a talk broadcast 17 Nov. 1959, tr. Allen S. Weiss.

16
  ‘It seems to me’ and ‘injustice against one person’:
Spender,
New Selected Journals
, 220 (30 March 1956).

17
  Yogi and commissar: Koestler, ‘The Yogi and the Commissar’, in
The Yogi and the Commissar, and Other Essays
(London: Hutchinson, 1965), 15–25, this 15–16. Also see his chapter ‘Arthur Koestler’, in Richard Crossman (ed.),
The God that Failed: six studies in communism
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950), 25–82.

18
  Yogi and proletarian: Merleau-Ponty, ‘The Yogi and the Proletarian’, in
Humanism and Terror
, 149–77, this 176. Merleau-Ponty was also motivated by personal dislike of Koestler, partly because he felt Koestler had treated Sonia Brownell badly. See Merleau-Ponty to Sonia Brownell (14 Oct. [1947]), in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109).

19
  Quarrel at Vians’ party: FOC, 120; Sartre, ‘Merleau-Ponty’, in
Situations
[IV], 225–326, this 253; see also Beauvoir,
Adieux
, 267.

20
  ‘Impossible!’ and ‘It
is
possible’, etc.: FOC, 118–19.

21
  ‘He was my friend!’, and account of quarrel: FOC, 149–50.

22
  ‘When people’s opinions’: FOC, 151.

23
  ‘Koestler, you know that’: Spender,
New Selected Journals
, 79–80 (14 April 1950).

24
  French writers in London: Sonia Brownell to Merleau-Ponty (‘Sunday’, undated but probably early 1948, after their Christmas together), in Orwell Papers, University College London (S.109).