The Mandarins
In her most famous novel, The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir takes an unflinching look at Parisian intellectual society at the end of World War II. In fictionally relating the stories of those around her --Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler, Nelson Algren --de Beauvoir dissects the emotional and philosophical currents of her time. At once an engrossing drama and an intriguing political tale, The Mandarins is the emotional odyssey of a woman torn between her inner desires and her public life.
The Mandarins Accessories
 She Came to Stay
The Second Sex
The Ethics Of Ambiguity
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Perennial Classics)
All Men Are Mortal
Nausea
Woman Destroyed (Pantheon Modern Writers)
Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography
Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
Letters to Sartre
The Mandarins Reviews
". I will allow the reader an oppurtunity to read through some quotes within The Mandarins. I'll be dead for others and yet I'll never have known death ". This is more than just a book, it is a statment about the inability of man to get out of that black box. " [.]. to be no one, all things considered, is sthg of a privilege [.].". ". what kinds of lives is she revealing, and why exactly is she doing so.
What does she aim in revealing such information about the lives of those intellectual elites and personnas that she describes to the world. a habit is never bad, despite what they say.". and so goes the fallacy of choice. " To survive is, after all, perpetually to begin to live again ". " No I shan't meet death today. That's why they invented that dreadful compromise: commemoration". is it that I really believe in a dream, or is it stubborness due to pride, defiance or a sense of self-satisfaction.
to live is to die a little.". And, on another note, one ought to think about the message De Beauvoir is transmitting through her words. its unhealthy to insist on living in the past, but you can't be very proud of yourself when you realize you've more or less disowned it. becoming aware of my skin is the act of sex.".
" If you think you're nothing, that you can do nothing, that you have rights to nothing, what can you expect to make of yourself. Thus, s/he will decide whether the book is worthwhile or not. ". ". ". no matter how much socially constructed reality is, when we try to get out, we put ourselves back in a box with that same box. Not today or any other day.
". ".
" you learn so much about a man when you are in bed with him". ". But, how rewarding it is when you find the other in yourself.".
THE RIGHT MOMENT IS IMMEDIATELY.". ". it's strange to lose yourself absolutely in another.
It is a formidable read, but worth the effort, less as a novel, but more as a snapshot of a time in which we did not live, but with elements of our current life in post-Soviet Russia still as relevant today as they were 60 years ago. What we got was a lively discussion about idealism, returning to life after a war, trying to make sense of values and priorities. Most of us felt a sense of accomplishment by actually finishing the book. The Mandarins was the book of the month for an expat book club based in Moscow, Russia. We chose the book for the following reasons: life and values in post-war France, politics torn between Soviet Russia and communism on the left and the US and capitalism on the right, feminism, intellectualism.
In all events, I was happily surprised by the scope and emotion she conveyed with the book, despite its aforementioned dry tone.
This review is probably a bit of a turn-off to prospective readers, but in actuality the book is a stunning achievement, and well worth reading for those ignorant people like me who know nothing about post-WWII France, the intellectuals, etc.
I knew nothing about de Beauvoir's relationships to the characters she wrote about, and their connections to the people she knew (mine being an archaic charity shop edition with an extremely non-commital and uninformative blurb).
Additionally, she not only gives us these clever trains of thought, but portrays accurately the treacherous uncertainty of involving oneself in politics, faced with a world of high society idiots who clasp the strings of power, being from the viewpoint of intelligent, but innefectual revolutionaries.
Somewhat like Lessing's Shikasta, I felt it to be one of those massively long pieces which led quite slowly to the finale, and yet at the same time the slowness was important to lay the seed of thought in my head of what she was trying to tell the reader.
Simone gives us all of this information, but in a truly poetic and retrospective manner, portraying the uncertanties, political, moral and emotional dilemmas that these intelligent people had to justify to themselves, with realistic exactitude.
This chilling message she conveyed, to me resonated icily with the present day; a double echo from what it was then, and what it still is today - perhaps a comment on the human condition in a big world.
There are some wonderful descriptions, and neither did I find them overly dramatised, but again I found myself questioning them as to their pros and cons, wondering what they had lost or gained going through the translation process.
The quality of writing was doubtless a little undermined by its English translation (probably through no fault of the translator), and so in my opinion deserves little comment - the style can be a little dry at times, though not exactly boring.
And when oppressive governments continue to threaten our personal liberties, the philosophical questions that haunted de Beauvoir when her novel was published fifty years ago remain just as relevant today. G. Merritt THE MANDARINS is truly a masterpiece and a life-affirming work of genius. (In her fiction, de Beauvoir drew heavily from her own life and the people in it.
359)or one may listen instead to the life-affirming beat of the heartas the heart continues to beat, and it beats "for something, for someone" (p. This novel is the work of a brilliant mind wrestling with big thoughts during Europe's darkest hour, and it is easy to understand why it won France's highest honor, the Prix Goncourt. That settles everything" (p. 610). Certainly, THE MANDARINS may be read as a love story examining the complex dilemmas posed by love and marriage (i.e., existential relationships are easier in theory than in reality).
As a result, many readers of THE MANDARINS have drawn comparisons between her character Anne to de Beauvoir, Henri to Camus, Anne's husband to Sartre, and Anne's daughter to de Beauvoir's lover, and just as many readers have approached her novel primarily as an thinly fictionalized account of de Beauvoir's passionate affair with Algren). In the confusing aftermath of a world war, when oppression and fascism threatened personal freedom, de Beauvoir insightfully struggles with the question, "where do we go from here." in THE MANDARINS. However it also succeeds on a more profound level. In the end, one must decide to either founder in apathythings "are never as important as they seem; they change, they end, and above all, when all is said and done, everyone dies.
Set amidst the ruins of post-World War II Paris, THE MANDARINS (1954) provides a fictional portrait of Simone de Beauvoir's existential, intellectual circle of friends, which included her lifelong partner, Jean-Paul Sarte, Albert Camus, Aurthur Koestler, and her lover, Nelson Algren. Her fascinating circle of intellectual characters demonstrate that life is difficult and confusing, and to live a meaningful life, we must accept the responsibilities that come with freedom.
The Mandarins would have to be at the top of that very short list. At times. For days after I put the book down, I found myself literally pining for the company of Anne, Lewis and Henri. But it's redeemed time and again by the keen intelligence Beauvoir brings to bear on her characters and herself. Without a doubt. Is there any greater testament to a novel than that. The resulting book succeeds on so many levels: as roman a clef (Camus, Sartre, Koestler, and obviously Algren all feature prominently), as novel of ideas (of the "where do we go from here." variety), as a love story (really two love storieswe can't forget Henri/Camus, whose story takes up half the book)., as a Jamesian exploration of brash New World vs. But surprisingly few novels deal with civilians faced with the task of rebuilding the devastated world around them.
exhausted Old World culture, and finally as a portrait of an intelligent, civilized woman wrestling with her darkest impulses in the wake of Europe's darkest moment.Is the book overly long. There are plenty of great books and films about the squalor of life during wartime, and even more about shellshocked soldiers coming to grips with life during peacetime. Most critics, here and elsewhere, have tended to focus on the book as Beauvoir's record of her affair with Nelson Algren, but like all great artists, Beauvoir transforms the raw material of her life into something far more profound and encompassing, especially as it is played out against the grand, ruined backdrop of postwar Paris. Probably. Melodramatic. Too cluttered with phrases of the "smiled knowingly" variety.
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