No, Sartre was not Simone de Beauvoir’s only great love

We know his writings AS Memory of a young girl (1958), The Mandarins (1954), for which he received the Prix Goncourt, or his famous essay, The second sex (1949). Simone de Beauvoir was a feminist theorist, a thought writer and a committed woman.

She was also a woman in love. Although throughout her life she formed a legendary intellectual couple with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it was with the American writer Nelson Algren that she experienced a true passion.

What does the graphic novel say? Sweet mornings » ?

This passionate relationship that lasted fifteen years, spent between France and Chicago, is at the center of the graphic novel, Sweet mornings, by Ingrid Chabert and Anne-Perrine Couët. Through this comic, the two artists have chosen to tell this great love story, often unknown to the general public, which began in 1947.

Simone de Beauvoir was invited that year by the French Institute to participate in a series of conferences in the United States. On the advice of a friend he then contacted the American journalist Nelson Algren.who was to act as a guide during his stay in Chicago.

Love at first sight is instant and the club tour will only seal their love. The two lovers will live from this moment on, for fifteen years, a torrid adventure and a transatlantic epistolary affair.

Simone de Beauvoir, symbol of freedom

In Sweet morningsthe philosopher leaves room for the woman : the one who fell in love with an American writer as attractive as he was enlightened, who gave in to his desires and who embraces them. However, although the graphic novel chronicles the nocturnal love at first sight between Beauvoir and Algren, it transports readers, over the years, through their romantic relationship.

It is easy to understand that this passionate and erotic relationship, spent in the United States, forged the independence we know of the French author. On the other side of the Atlantic, Simone is in love with freedom: that of writing, that of loving, but also that of being honest with her two lovers. Beauvoir never hid the love triangle in which she and Algren were trapped.

Undecided between his sincere love and his necessary love, “the little beaver” de Sartre, however, will always see it coming back to mind. Despite the strength of her American idyll, the thirst for work, the debates on existentialism and the need for research will always bring Simone de Beauvoir back to Paris. Marriage and monogamy will not have trumped her work.

Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece

In Sweet mornings, readers will also discover the extent to which Nelson Algren was a support in his lover’s literary career. Their relationship was nourished by each other’s writings. If Simone de Beauvoir encouraged him during the writing of The man with the golden armpublished in 1949, the same year, it is precisely the author from Detroit who inspired his most legendary work, The second sex.

Simone de Beauvoir questions her status as a woman and intellectualizes the beginnings of her reflections together with Sartre. But it will be Nelson Algren who will compare it with reality. He thus makes her understand that to talk about the female condition and give birth to her feminist work, must be inspired by the situation of African Americans.

Alongside her American lover, the philosopher discovers the reality of life. The visits to the bad bars of Chicago, as well as Algren’s dark past, will, in fact, allow Simone de Beauvoir to deal with the status of racial minorities, far from the golden life of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

When reality and fiction merge

This is not the only impact that Nelson Algren had on the literary work of Simone de Beauvoir. Seven years after their meeting, the writer dedicated her flagship novel to himThe Mandarinswinner of the Goncourt Prize.

The book will also be partly inspired by their love story. One of her characters, Anne Dubreuilh, during a professional trip to America, will meet a writer from Chicago, Lewis Brogan, with whom she will fall passionately in love after a wise and platonic life alongside her husband. .

Nelson Algren nourished thought as much as the fictional work of Simone de Beauvoir. Eventually their love took on various forms of writing, from essays to novels, including letters. The lovers, in fact, often corresponded in epistolary form. In 1981, moreover, Simone de Beauvoir made public part of the 300 exchangedbefore her adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, published them in a posthumous work, soberly titled Letters to Nelson Algren (1999).

Ultimately, Simone de Beauvoir was far from her image of an icy and cerebral woman of letters. She was also a sentimental woman, who never denied her emotions. Reason and feelings coexisted. Many elements that demonstrate the philosopher’s independence throughout her life.

Sweet mornings paints the portrait of a fiery, dueling, free and complex feminist and feminine model. Proof of this is the ring with which Simone de Beauvoir is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery next to Sartre.

This was offered by Nelson Algren the day after their first night; a passage to which the graphic novel by Ingrid Chabert and Anne-Perrine Couët returns in a symbolic and poetic way to show how her transatlantic lover will have counted until the end.

You can find out Sweet mornings by Ingrid Chabert and Anne-Perrine Couet, in bookstores from 26 October published by Steinkis.