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.
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The Mandarins Reviews
I have read a part of The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir. The version I am reading is in 3 parts, and I read the first part which has the subtitle: Anne. The Mandarins is a roman-à-clef which describes the intellectual left-wing millieu in post WW2 Paris. The central character of the account is "Henri" which is considered to be Albert Camus. It's interesting to see the left-wing movement at this place and time. All the people in the millieu continously suffer bad conscience because many of their political friends died in the resistance and in concentration camps inflicted by the Nazis and Fascists during WW2, so they feel somehow guilty about still being alive. Henri is the editor of a small newspaper L'espoir (The Hope), but it's difficult for him to stay independent, he needs money for the newspaper to survive. They are several parties who are willing to support him, like the communists or SRL (a liberal, non-Communist political group), but they all want to suppress the independance of L'espoir. Also American agents contact Henri offering him support, but on the condition that he must not write critical about the Portuguese dictator Salazar, because the Americans are negotiating army bases on the Azores with Portugal. Henri is a person asking questions and as he says himself in the novel: That if you continue asking questions the meaningnessless of life eventually stares you in the head. So the great void is lurking all the time in Henri's life. The book somewhat describes a male chauvinsistic millieau. The womans in the book mostly play the role of lovers to often infidel men. Often a young womans insight into the political intellectual affairs of the men goes through the bed. One gets a sense of a young Simone de Beauvoir sitting on the lap of these older intellectual men taking notes for her novel. It's quite interesting to witness the intellectual left-wing at this place and time. The people are quite earnest about their political aims, they see it as a struggle for life and death about the future of the world. The men also feel insulted in their France national pride. During WW2 they had envisioned themselves in a postwar world forming the new world, but then they come to learn that France is just a little part of Europe having little to say to the greater powers of the world like USA and USSR. It's intesting to see the development of movements in history. The socialism somewhat started with philosophers like Marx in the mid 19th century. In the mid 20th century people are still very earnest about their cause. And then you look at left-wing today in Europe, which is a middle-class phenomena, using some of the same phraseology but actually only feeling contempt towards the lower classes of society.
My reactions to Simone's massive novel about life with J.P. Sartre, Albert Camus, and Nelson Algren are violently mixed. It's fascinating to read about an era where prize-winning novelists were resistance fighters and political organizers, and though they're continually bemoaning their powerlessness, I'm amazed by how much what they do and say matters in their vanished world. On the other hand, it's discouraging the way Simone turns Sartre into a plaster saint, and Camus into a heroic godlike creature every woman desires. The big revelation this novel delivers is how focused on men the author, a feminist icon, was, and how hostile she is to all women other than herself. It wasn't just the era she lived in, because Colette, born a generation before Simone, wrote many warm and appreciative portraits of women, and didn't delude herself about the flaws in the characters of the men she loved.
One of the philosophical preoccupations of the novel is Sartre's idea of "Bad Faith", which as I interpret it, is the creation of a morality or an ideology that protects us from the anxiety of having to make choices about our life. The Camus character in the novel is continually struggling with one anguished choice after the next about freedom, betrayal, life and death, but the choices of the women are limited to choices between one man and another. And even then, the choices about when to end the love affairs are almost always made by the men. Perhaps Simone's bad faith about the inability of women to be happy without being the acolytes of men is what makes her style pedantic and turgid, resembling James Michener far more than her literary predecessor, the clear-eyed and elegant Colette, so that the novel is slow going, relying on the basic vitality of the times and the characters to pull you along.
Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins is the best book I have read in years.
The Saturday Review; "There is no doubt about the brilliance of the mind behind the writing of The Mandarins" Do not miss it!
Roda Lerpold
I will allow the reader an oppurtunity to read through some quotes within The Mandarins, so that s/he will decide whether the book is worthwhile or not...
" [...] to be no one, all things considered, is sthg of a privilege [...]"
" No I shan't meet death today. Not today or any other day. I'll be dead for others and yet I'll never have known death "
" 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 ? "
"... 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. That's why they invented that dreadful compromise: commemoration"
" To survive is, after all, perpetually to begin to live again "
"... is it that I really believe in a dream, or is it stubborness due to pride, defiance or a sense of self-satisfaction ? "
"... a habit is never bad, despite what they say..."
"... it's strange to lose yourself absolutely in another. But, how rewarding it is when you find the other in yourself..."
"... the right moment is immediately..."
"... to live is to die a little..."
"... becoming aware of my skin is the act of sex..."
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. 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. 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.
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