letters to her as “Mon charmant Castor” and dedicated his masterwork,
Being and Nothingness“au Castor.”
As agre ́ge ́s, Sartre and Beauvoir were now eligible for teaching
appointments to a public high school (lyce ́e). But Sartre had first to
complete his military service. At the suggestion of Raymond Aron, who
was already in the Meteorological Corps, he applied to do so as a
meteorologist, and was accepted for six months of training at Saint-
Cyr near Paris, starting in November of 1929. He then spent twelve
months of service at Saint-Symphorien near Tours, where he had the
leisure for writing that he would again enjoy nearly a decade later when
he held the same position as a draftee in Alsace during the so-called
“phoney war.” Meanwhile, Beauvoir spent her time tutoring and teach-
ing in Paris, while taking every opportunity to meet Sartre either near his
barracks or during his frequent leaves in the city. In 1931 she accepted an
appointment to a lyce ́e in Marseilles. Upon completion of his service,
Sartre was assigned to teach in a lyce ́e in Le Havre, and in 1932 Beauvoir
managed a transfer to a lyce ́e in Rouen, an hour by train from him.
Not long after their initial encounter, the two had decided to commit
to each other in a “necessary” relationship that would not exclude the
possibility of “contingent” relations with other people. This “open” or
“morganatic” marriage, as they sometimes called it, would last for the
rest of their lives, despite many “contingent” and one or two more
serious challenges from third parties along the way. Among the most
serious challengers were two Americans, the author Nelson Algren for
Beauvoir and the French-born actress, journalist and poet Dolore`s
Vanetti in the case of Sartre. Sartre had been deeply involved for a while
with a distant cousin, Simone Jollivet, known as “Toulouse” – an early
love predating his acquaintance with Beauvoir – and later with the
Kosakiewicz sisters, Olga and Wanda. Olga, in particular, formed a kind
of triangle with Sartre and Beauvoir, which Beauvoir transposed in her
first successful novel,She Came to Stay(L’Invite ́e).^17 Sartre’s adopted
daughter and literary executrix, Arlette Elkaı ̈m-Sartre, notes that “love
for Olga haunts theCarnets[War Diaries].”^18 Sartre usually continued to
be friends with his various lovers even to the point of offering them
(^17) Simone de Beauvoir,She Came to Stay(New York: Norton, 1999 );L’Invite ́e(Paris: Galli-
18 mard,^1943 ). It is dedicated to Olga Kosakiewicz.
Arlette Elkaı ̈m in Jean-Paul Sartre,CDG-F 276 ,n. 2.
26 An elite education: student, author, soldier, teacher