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| Simone de Beauvoir, philosopher |
The Hunger |
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I tried to be frank with myself: Where did these resistances and prohibitions stem from? Is it my Catholic upbringing which has left me with such a fixation on purity that the slightest allusion to fleshy things causes me this indescribable distress?
Obviously I did not hold that one should languish in perpetual virginity.
I . . . surrendered my virginity with glad abandon: when heart, head and body are all in union there is high delight to be had from the physical expression of that oneness. At first I had experienced nothing but pleasure, which matched my natural optimism and was balm to my pride. But very soon circumstances forced me into awareness of something which I had uneasily foreseen when I was twenty: simple physical desire. I knew nothing of such an appetite: I never in my life suffered from hunger, or thirst or lack of sleep. Now, suddenly, I fell victim to it. I was separated from [Jean-Paul] Sartre for days or even weeks at a time.
My body had its own whims, and I was powerless to control them; their violence overrode all my defenses. I found out that missing a person physically is not a mere matter of nostalgia, but an actual pain. From the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet a poisoned shirt was woven across my body.(Paris, late 1920s)
from Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir (Penguin, © 1958) and The Prime of Life by Simone de Beauvoir (World Publishing, © 1962)
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