[The Ceremony of Farewells] is an account of the decade preceding Sartre's death. The title is itself a recollection of a poignant moment, as Beauvoir explains: "'Then this is the ceremony of farewells!' Sartre said to me as we were leaving each other for a month at the beginning of one summer. I had a presentiment of the meaning these words would one day assume. The ceremony lasted ten years. It is these ten years that I recount in this book." The record is annalistic, the same kind of detailed year-by-year account of events and her reactions to them that Beauvoir employed in the first three volumes of her autobiography. But there her stated intention was to keep herself as the center of focus and to speak of Sartre only insofar as his existence was intertwined with her own. In the preface to The Ceremony of Farewells she states that she has recorded these ten years as she had lived them, but that the book is devoted wholly to Sartre. If she has spoken also of herself, it is because "the witness is a part of what he witnesses." The book is dedicated "To those who loved Sartre, love him, will love him." Indeed, it has been written for them by one who is of them….
[Beauvoir's chronicle] is not a dramatic tale. Prone as Sartre was to look upon his life as a series of conversions, his was not the death of an Ivan Ilych. Perhaps what is most remarkable is the fact that Sartre tried, almost beyond the bonds of realism, not to change his way of life….
This is a free excerpt of 269 words. There are 1,551 words (approx.
5 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our De Beauvoir, Simone 1908–: Critical Essay by Hazel E. Barnes Access Pass.
