Farewell ceremony

Author's name: Simon de Boufouardar Publication: Al-Takween for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2021 Literary classification: Biographies and Memoirs Book overview: Sartre told me at the very beginning of summer, as if we were going to part for a month: "So, are these farewell ceremonies?" A feeling overwhelmed me that, in some sense, these words would have a certain meaning one day. Those ceremonies lasted ten years, and those are the ten years I narrate in this book. "Farewell Ceremonies" I conducted these dialogues with Sartre during the summer of 1974 in Rome and Paris at the beginning of autumn. Sometimes he was tired, responding to me unclearly, or perhaps I lacked inspiration, so I asked meaningless questions. I deleted some dialogues that seemed insignificant to me, while others I collected according to their topics and nearly chronological order, trying to put them into a readable form. There is a vast difference, as we know, between sayings recorded on a tape recorder and properly written texts, but I did not attempt to write them in the literary sense of the word because I wanted to preserve their spontaneity. Therefore, the reader will find in it disconnected passages, hesitations, repetitions, and even contradictions; I kept them as they are because I feared distorting Sartre’s words or sacrificing their connotations. They do not add an unexpected revelation to him, but they allow the reader to follow the labyrinths of his thought and listen to his living voice.