SARTRE (Jean-Paul). - Lot 208

SARTRE (Jean-Paul). Born in Paris. 1905-1980. Professor of philosophy. French writer, playwright and philosopher. Major figure in French intellectual life in the 60s. L.A.S. "J.P. Sartre" to "Ma douce petite Wanda" [his mistress Miss Wanda Kosakiewicz]. S.l. [Brumath, Alsace], April 15 [1940]. 3 1/2 pages in-4 on checked paper. SUPERB LETTRE DAMOUR TO WANDA KOSAKIEWICZ DURING THE DRÔLE DE GUERRE: Sartre is delighted to have "finally" received her letter... He tells her of his misgivings about "the lunar woman" [a former mistress Marie Ville, whom he met in Berlin in 1934] and advises her to keep her at a distance.Sartre then recounts his impressions of the previous evening's theater performance... Excerpts: "I finally received your charming little letter today, and I'm so glad I didn't grumble during those days of silence, I wouldn't know where to put myself now. But why are you so afraid of getting angry with me? If you don't get angry first, my dear love, we'll be together for a long time. If you knew how deep in my heart I feel incapable of anger or resentment towards you, you wouldn't be afraid of breaking ice-creams. They've each just doomed you to 7 years of unhappiness, a total of 21 years. But that's too much. In my opinion, on the contrary, you should take some comfort from this very exaggeration, and I wouldn't be far from thinking that it augurs some imminent happiness for you".Saturday evening, I went to the "théâtre aux Armées". I didn't write to you yesterday, because I'm just like you: I'm trembling like a leaf at the thought of falling out with you (but since the Gibert affair [Colette Gilbert, a former mistress of Sartre's], I've had reason to be afraid). It's a very small event. We were piled like dried figs in a tiny, austere Protestant foyer. On the balcony, the officers, invisible except for the occasional white-haired general. The rest of us in a heap. Pieter [another soldier, Pieterkovski] and I were standing to one side, we could see a sea of caps. The curtain went up, and so we saw these soldiers-my God, it was sad to see them distracting us dressed as soldiers"...But there was some pretty good jazz, copied from Ray Ventura's, but with soldiers behind the wooden signs each bearing a letter of the Jazz name. They played two foxes and then announced two rumbas. And as it was Saturday night, the day of the nigger ball, and I hadn't been written to for two days, my heart turned with poetic jealousy, I thought you were dancing the rumba with the niggers, that you were in your nigger world, that glowing, sensual world where I can't follow you, where you're alone. It was almost unbearable to hear those rumbas, and yet I found them superb... You know, I usually think of you in the past tense, or in the future, or in the eternal. But thank God, I don't have much of a sense of simultaneity; it would make me roar like a tiger to imagine that you're now here or there. And here, these rumbas were discovering this simultaneity in spite of myself. It's a funny thing. For me, jealousy is almost exclusively a sense of simultaneity. In fact, I'm not too unhappy about being jealous of you, because there's something violently sensual in my jealousy (...) Outside it was a night-time charm. I love you tremendously, my love, I'm all felted with a long desire for your dear little body, it won't leave me, I'd like to see you again, dear little person, hear your voice and see one of your tender faces again. I've never loved you so much...