Letters

14 July 1946
4 Eastbourne Road
Chiswick
London W4

Well now (your letter of 10 July) – I am truly very sorry to have been, even for a moment, a further problem & embarrassment for you. Thank you however for writing frankly. Please don’t think that I ‘expect’ anything of you – beyond, I hope, your continued friendship. We have expressed to each other our sincere ‘sympathie’ – that remains, I think? For the rest, our ways lie pretty far apart and I see no reason why our relationship should be a problem for either. Please, please don’t distress yourself about it. I well realize that your moral and emotional situation must be most unhappy – I sympathise very profoundly. I will not be a complicating factor. You know that I care about all this; I have become very attached to you & shall certainly remain so, but I don’t think there is any cause for agitation in that.

I am trying to work, but London is more nerve rending than ever. I have finished ‘Etre et le Néant’, thank God, with much admiration & some flutters of criticism. It stops just where I want to begin; I suppose I shall now have to do some thinking for myself. (Or shall I just wait till Sartre publishes his Ethics?) MacKinnon at Oxford seems to be going through some sort of spiritual crisis & can’t see me. A bunch of goddamn neurotics I have for friends. I have continued a little with Pierrot & find this the one soothing occupation in a somewhat ragged world.