Malentendu à Moscou by Simone de Beauvoir

 Malentendu à Moscou

by Simone de Beauvoir, published by L'Editions de L'Herne is a novel on ageing. 

This book has been released only after the departure of the beloved writer. Companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone loved to spend every year with Sartre in Russia in particular at the beginning of the 1960s invited by literary associations.

France and Russia have always had cordials relationships and french language has always been considered by russians their second language, spoken fluently by a large part of the population.

In part auto-biographical, Jean-Paul Sartre was enthusiastic to return to Russia every year living the experience with joy because he had a lover in that land. In this case Beauvoir avoids to tell this,  putting in the story an element maybe of more interest: differentiations of expectations of a navigated couple, during a trip in a distant land in their maturity.

Nicole and André decides of spending some time, a month to Russia, the ex U.R.S.S. One of the children of Andrè, Macha, in fact, is married with a russian man and they live there. At first the couple is thrilled and anxious to visit places and people: later, when Nicole discovers that Andrè, after all, would want to stay more, start a discussion with him opening a sort of internal fracture. 

Nicole in part jealous of the relationship, very good established by Andrè with Macha, at the end will understand the point of view of her husband and vice versa and the couple will continue the existence together. The thematic of ageing is strong and returns continuously: in a chapter Simone will write: "Les Années donnent aux vins leur bouquet, aux meubles leur patine, aux hommes l'expérience et la sagesse" Years donates to the wines their bouquets, to the furniture the patina, to men and women experience and wisdom.

She doesn't see bodies of elderlies people, as Fitzgerald writes once, in destruction. Simone reads the maturity with the lense of a differentiation of points of view and a different living if compared to the youth, but remaining solid: there is respect for ageing, and first of all for a couple united and comforted by the presence of the other one.

Highly recommended book if you want to understand internal and external dynamics of a couple.

I thank L'Editions de l'Herne for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori