Sartre received a public funeral and a separate private cremation

Evidence

The film footage shows only the first of two ceremonies. In a quieter event the following week, the coffin was dug up and the smaller coffin inside it removed so that Sartre could be cremated. His ashes went to their permanent spot, in the same cemetery but less accessible to a large procession. The funeral was for the public Sartre; the second burial was attended only by those close to him. The grave, with Beauvoir’s ashes interred next to him when she died six years later, is still there, kept well tidied and occasionally flowered. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 80

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘public Sartre vs private Sartre’ split in the double funeral echoes the broader theme in existentialism of the public persona versus authentic self — connects to how the book will frame Sartre’s celebrity against his inner life. — connects to: About fifty thousand mourners attended Sartre’s 1980 funeral in Paris. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 78