1989, I spent several months living with my grandfather Alfred Unger in Cologne of the Rhineland Germany and discovered the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s fiction in his library. Having read the Trilogy “The Roads to Freedom” I continued with Sartre’s only collection of short stories, entitled “The Wall”, written before his confinement as a German prisoner of war for 9 months from 1940-44 - he had been drafted into the French army 1939. One of these short stories was entitled “Intimité” (Intimacy).

xxxxxxxxxx“’Then we started talking; I wiped his lips with a towel and told him I was fed xxxxxxxxxxup, I didn’t love him any more, and I was leaving. He started to cry and said xxxxxxxxxxhe’d kill himself. But it won’t wash any more: you remember, Rirette, last year, xxxxxxxxxxduring that business over the Rhineland1, he sang the same old tune every xxxxxxxxxxday; there’s going to be a war, Lulu, I’ll have to go, and I’ll get killed, and xxxxxxxxxxyou’ll miss me, you’ll be sorry for all the pain you’ve caused me. ‘Don’t xxxxxxxxxxworry,’ I kept telling him, ‘you’re impotent, it’s grounds for exemption from xxxxxxxxxxmilitary service.’”2

xxxxxxxxxx“’Intimacy’ continues to explore the ever-fascinating terrain of psychopathia xxxxxxxxxxsexualis: husbands who can’t (or, as Sartre would presumably say, won’t) do it, xxxxxxxxxxand lovers who can, but leave a mess on the sheets. The sickly sweet sensations xxxxxxxxxxof a bare leg encountering a snail-like trail of semen have rarely been xxxxxxxxxxdescribed more brilliantly – Sartre, yet again, masterful in his oozy evocations xxxxxxxxxxof the slimier aspects of life. ‘Intimacy’, the story’s title, is a negative xxxxxxxxxxword for Sartre: it implies nasty secrets hidden away, festering in bourgeois xxxxxxxxxxbedrooms or in the ark recesses of the psyche.”3

Just over 10 years later I ascertained that Hanif Kureishi (product of a non-practicing Muslim father from Karachi and an English mother4) had written a novella with the same title as Sartre’s short story. The features shared by Sartre and Kureishi’s “Intimacy”’s are marital breakdown and the flight into sexual compulsion. I have however, discovered nothing to suggest that Kureishi wrote his “Intimacy” as a tribute to Sartre’s original text.

xxxxxxxxxx“This, then, could be our last evening as an innocent, complete, ideal family; xxxxxxxxxxmy last night with a woman I have known for ten years, a woman I know almost xxxxxxxxxxeverything about, and want no more of. Soon we will be like strangers. No, we xxxxxxxxxxcan never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be xxxxxxxxxxdangerous acquaintances with a history.”5

I was inspired to make a piece on intimacy and the sense of touch incorporating the writings of Sartre and Kureishi before being aware that these texts had been interpreted in film: 1994, Dominik Moll set Sartre’s “Intimité” to film in France; Kureishi’s “Intimacy” was filmed in London 2001 by Patrice Chereau (of the two films I have since only seen the latter).