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00:30It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman.
00:34With Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir, however,
00:37it was one of the few happy times when the great woman
00:41did not languish in her famous partner's shadow,
00:44but was equally lauded in her own right.
00:47Indeed, their relationship began in 1929,
00:50when de Beauvoir gave a presentation
00:52on the 17th century German philosopher Leibniz,
00:55impressing Sartre,
00:57who pursued the 21-year-old philosopher and author.
01:00While not monogamous,
01:02the two were lifelong companions from then on.
01:05Together, they were at the forefront
01:07of the existentialist movement,
01:09with Sartre penning such notable works
01:11as Being and Nothingness in 1943,
01:14de Beauvoir following four years later
01:16with The Ethics of Ambiguity,
01:18which is often regarded as the most accessible introduction
01:22to the philosophy of French existentialism.
01:25Together, de Beauvoir and Sartre travelled around the world,
01:28teaching and lecturing.
01:30They met world leaders like Fidel Castro,
01:32were among a host of European authors
01:34invited by Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev
01:37to attend his reception for writers
01:39at his holiday villa near the Black Sea.
01:42In 1966, she and Sartre travelled to the Middle East,
01:46meeting with Dr Sawat,
01:48the United Arab Republic Deputy Premier
01:50for Cultural and National Guidance.
01:53They also visited Cairo University
01:56as part of their quest to examine the causes
01:58of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.
02:02De Beauvoir's work spanned many genres.
02:05Her fiction included metaphysical novels
02:07like 1943's She Came to Stay,
02:10based on the menage-a-trois she conducted with Sartre
02:13and one of her female students.
02:15She also wrote essays, monographs, biographies
02:19and her autobiography.
02:21Her most famous work, however, was The Second Sex,
02:24which she produced in 1949,
02:27marking her forever as one of the founding mothers
02:30of the women's liberation movement.
02:33De Beauvoir and Sartre had very particular principles
02:36when it came to awards and literary prizes.
02:39Sartre even turned down the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964,
02:43becoming only the second person to do so
02:46after Boris Pasternak in 1958.
02:49But in mid-1970s, De Beauvoir went against
02:52a 30-year practice by agreeing to attend
02:55the 7th Jerusalem International Book Fair.
02:58Her reasons for doing so were, she said,
03:00to voice her solidarity with the State of Israel
03:03in the face of condemnation from the United Nations
03:06Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
03:12At the presentation, attended by Yitzhak Rabin
03:15and the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kolek,
03:17she talked about the Jewish state
03:19and also discussed the second sex,
03:21expounding on her belief that many women
03:23were actually complicit in their own subjugation,
03:26content to remain dependent upon their husband
03:29and ignorant of what they could actually do with their freedom.
03:32On the 15th of April, 1980,
03:35De Beauvoir finally said goodbye to Sartre,
03:38after half a century with him,
03:40when he died aged 74 of an oedema of the lung.
03:44He was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris
03:47and 50,000 mourners attended his funeral.
03:50Some people were trampled in the throng and others fainted.
03:54De Beauvoir needed assistance to even get to the graveside,
03:57where she was flanked by such notable figures
04:00of the French arts world as Simon Signoret,
04:02Juliette Greco, Yves Montand and François Sargon.
04:06After Sartre's death, De Beauvoir continued to work,
04:10publishing A Farewell to Sartre,
04:12in which she edited his letters to her
04:14in order to avoid hurting people in their circle who were still alive.
04:18She also kept editing Les Temps Modernes,
04:21the journal they had founded together after World War II,
04:24right up until her own death from pneumonia
04:27on the 14th of April, 1986.
04:30She was buried next to Sartre at Montparnasse Cemetery,
04:34as inseparable in death as they'd been in life.
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