Simone de Beauvoir
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary that you might not
have understood in the report on Simone de Beauvoir, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| une agrégation | ~teaching credential |
| aisé | (adj) well-off, comfortable |
| athée | atheist |
| le centenaire | centenary, 100-year anniversary |
| se consacrer | to devote oneself |
| délaisser | to abandon |
| échapper | to escape |
| engagé | (adj) politically committed |
| nouer | to tie, bond |
| subir | to undergo, endure |
| Notes | |
| la Force de l'âge | There is a slight mistake here: the title of the second book is actually la Force des choses. |
| Polytechnique | Ultra-elite engineering grande école |
| Prix Goncour | France's best-known literary award, first granted in 1903 |
| Nelson Algren | American leftist writer famous in the late 40s and early 50s for his books chronicling the seamy underside of life among America's poor. His best-known work, The Man with the Golden Arm, won the first National Book Award and was turned into a great film, with Frank Sinatra playing the morphine-addicted drummer/poker-dealer hero. Algren also wrote A Walk on the Wild Side, which later gave Lou Reid his famous song title. Algren and Beauvoir met in 1947, when she came to the United States on a four-month lecture tour. He was her guide to Chicago, and they quickly became lovers. When she returned to Paris, they remained in regular contact by letter but saw each other again only fleetingly. The 300 letters she wrote to him (in English) over the next 17 years have been published in the U.S. as A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren. Much of their interest lies in the fact that she was explaining her Paris world to an outsider and therefore revealing many details she might otherwise have ignored. One reviewer described the letters as a mixture of pillow talk and politics. At one point she wrote: "Beloved, how I long and long to be in your arms. There was an article about Sartre in the newspaper today, with pictures. We tried to stop fascism again, but still no luck. Wish you were here!" It is clear she loved Algren as a kind of anti-Sartre and had with Algren the sexually fulfilling relationship that she could not have with the walleyed philosopher. (At another point she describes Sartre as "a warm, lively man everywhere, but not in bed.") Though she teasingly calls Algren her "husband," there was never any question of her leaving Paris or accepting Algren's marriage proposals. For his part, he was unable to visit Paris because he was refused an American passport on account of his left-wing views. Beauvoir's awardwinning Les Mandarins, set in the world of the left-wing intellectual elite, was dedicated to Algren, who featured in the thinly disguised character of the American writer Lewis Brogan. But around this time, their relationship began to sour. Algren accused her of using their affair as material for the book and denounced her in the American press. The letters sputtered on until 1964, by which time Algren had suffered a breakdown and entered a long decline. He continued to write novels, but he had lost his creative genius. When Beauvoir died in 1986, she was buried with his ring on her finger. |
| Simone de Beauvoir French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
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| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
| Sound files and transcript
were
originally published in Champs-Élysées audiomagazine (read my review) and were published here with the permission of Champs-Elysées, Inc. |
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| Listening Index French Dictionaries | ||||
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