Paris, 1929. Two students meet while preparing for one of France's most demanding exams, the agrégation in philosophy. He comes first. She comes second and, at twenty-one, is among the youngest ever to pass it.
Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would never marry. They never shared a home either: separate rooms, separate apartments, separate lives that kept circling back to each other. And whenever they were apart, through war, travel and the long stretches of their work, they wrote.
Letters as a way of thinking together
After Sartre's death in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her. Years later, her own letters to him were published too. Reading them, you don't find a polished romance. You find two people telling each other everything: what they read, who they met, what they ate, what they were writing, what frightened them.
Their letters were where they thought out loud. Long before either of them was famous, the page was the place where they were most themselves.
What their letters teach about staying close
You don't have to share a life like theirs to learn from it. Four things stand out.
1. Closeness lives in details. They wrote about meals, streets, the weather in a hotel room. Big declarations are rare. The texture of a day is what makes someone feel near. 2. Honesty keeps a bond alive. Whatever we think of their arrangement, they promised each other transparency, and their letters kept that promise. 3. Distance can be a space, not a void. Being apart gave them something to write about, and someone to write to. 4. Writing is a way of listening to yourself. Every letter they sent also clarified something for the one who wrote it.
A small practice for this week
Think of someone you love who feels a little far away, whether they live across the world or across town. Write them a letter about one ordinary day. Not the news, the details: what you saw from the bus, what you cooked, what made you laugh. Then post it. A page about almost nothing can bring two people surprisingly close.
Letters that keep you company
If you'd love to receive this kind of closeness, the Letter & Magazine subscription brings a letter and a postcard to your mailbox each month, written to be read slowly, with a meditation and a story about art inside, plus a seasonal issue of "(meditating) On Art". It won't replace the people you love. It might remind you to write to them.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi