Simone de Beauvoir’s handwriting is uneven, as if she would rather be writing with her left hand. In a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre, she mentions the “difficulty of putting words to thought.” The sentence appears in multiple drafts, each time slightly altered.
Her daily routine included early mornings near the Seine. She describes this time as “liberating,” though the record repeats the word without elaboration. The repetition itself becomes the detail.
A draft of The Ethics of Ambiguity contains a crossed-out passage: “Man is condemned to be free.” In a later version, it returns as “Man is free.” The deletion is small. The shift is not.
In the margins of her notebooks, Simone de Beauvoir leaves fragments: dates, names, places. A café receipt. A train ticket to the countryside. These objects remain pressed between pages, as if the texture of daily life were inseparable from her thinking.
A photograph taken in Italy shows de Beauvoir and Sartre standing side by side, looking outward. His arm rests lightly at her shoulder. Neither turns toward the other. The image records proximity without exchange.
In letters to her publisher, de Beauvoir writes repeatedly about translation. The same words recur: difficulty, nuance, audience. She returns to them as though circling something that refuses to settle into a single language.
A loose fragment appears on a separate page: “The freedom to choose is a freedom to be chosen.” It is not attached to any draft. It remains unclaimed.
Her notebooks are filled with lists: groceries, books, obligations. One page contains only names—Camus, Merleau-Ponty, Algren—each accompanied by a date or brief note. The entries read more like records than reflections.
A receipt from the Café de Flore appears between manuscript pages. A faint note reads: “Wednesday, 10 am.” No further context is provided.
In another draft of The Ethics of Ambiguity, de Beauvoir struggles with “the other.” The sentence is written, crossed out, rewritten. The idea persists without resolution.
A photograph from 1950 shows her seated at a desk surrounded by papers. Her hands are clasped. Her expression remains unreadable. The image predates publication by a year.
In a letter to Sartre, she mentions his illness. The tone is careful, almost formal. Concern appears, but does not announce itself.
Her notebooks collect borrowed voices: Nietzsche, Proust, Hegel. Quotations overlap with her own handwriting, sometimes indistinguishable from it.
One notebook contains brief dated entries—March 15, April 2, May 10. Weather. Routine. A sentence or two. Nothing more.
A bookstore receipt lists The Phenomenology of Mind. It is dated 1948.
Elsewhere, diagrams appear beside paragraphs. Faces. Arrows. Maps of Paris. The page becomes a surface for thinking rather than a record of conclusions.
A letter mentions Sartre’s plans for a novel. De Beauvoir describes her own writing as “slow and painful.” The phrase returns later in another letter.
The phrase “the ambiguity of freedom” appears again and again across notebooks, never quite the same.
In her handwriting, letters loop and connect. A sentence reappears in multiple versions: “Freedom is not the absence of constraint, but its own constraint.” The order changes. The tension remains.
Photographs show her near water, near stone, near shelves of books. The settings change. The posture does not.
In one notebook, she works through bad faith. Sentences are crossed out repeatedly, as though the idea resists containment.
Another café receipt reads: “Wednesday, 3 pm.”
A draft returns to responsibility. Again, the sentence is revised and revised.
Letters mention Marxism. Reservations are noted. The tone remains measured.
Fragments accumulate. Dates pass. The notebooks continue.
Nothing resolves. The work remains open.