Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

by Simone de Beauvoir

Elizabeth Mabille,

hectograph

slater;

cousin Jeanne,

madapollam

Guite Larivière,

Musée Grévin

I believed in the absolute equality of human beings.

‘But it’s shameful that poor people should not be allowed to have the vote!’

Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,

Vaulabelle’s History of the Two Restorations

fustigate

fulgurations

Gaston Boissier’s Archaeological Walks

Intellectual Life, by Père Sertilanges,

Ollé-Laprune’s Moral Certainty which

The lady we went to see described to us the attractions and also the difficulties of librarianship; I was put off by the thought of having to learn Sanskrit;

As a degree in classics held out greater possibilities – or so my father thought – and as there was a possibility that Zaza might be allowed to follow a few of the courses, I agreed to sacrifice philosophy for literature.

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.

On the syllabus that year were Lucretius, Juvenal, the Heptameron, and Diderot;

As for me, after reading learned tomes and translating Catullus all day, I would spend the evenings doing mathematical problems.

for examinations in literature, Latin, and general mathematics, and I was learning Greek;

Charles Maurras’

France’s hedonism filled me with indignation. All he looked for in art was the satisfaction of egotistical desires:

‘Why have words, when their brutal precision bruises our complicated souls?’

Ramon Fernandez,

Jean Prévost,

Foujita

Theagenus and Euphorion

and he was counting on marriage as Pascal had counted on holy water, to give him the faith he lacked.

Alain Fournier and Jacques Rivière;

Suzanne Boigue

Francis Jammes

Alain Fournier.

Max Jacob’s Cornet à dés.

Richard Block’s La Nuit Kurde.

At the Sorbonne, my professors systematically ignored Hegel and Marx; in a big book on the progress of conscience in the western world, Brunschvig had devoted a bare three pages to Marx, whom he placed on the same level as one of the obscurest reactionary thinkers.

Heine’s famous line: ‘Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.’

‘O, well-belovèd, it’s too late now, my heart is breaking, A break too deep for bitterness, and I have wept so long . .

In the boulevard Saint-Michel, students found a happy hunting-ground in the Librairie Picard: I would stand there looking through the avant-garde magazines which in those days came and went like the flowers that bloom in the spring.

Pierre Nodier

Mohrange, Friedmann, Henri Lefebvre, and Politzer;

Paul Boncour

One thing I knew: I detested the extreme right.

Simone Weil.

Blanchette Weiss.

Now, during the daytime, I would visit all the exhibitions, and go for long prowls round the galleries of the Louvre.

One morning in the library at the Sorbonne, instead of doing Greek translation, I began ‘my book’. I had to study for the exams in June; I hadn’t enough time; but I calculated that next year I would have more free time and I made a promise to myself that I would then without more ado write my very own book

Michel Riesmann

I passed in general Philosophy. Simone Weil headed the list followed by me, and then by a student from the Normale called Jean Pradelle.