Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [30]
March 16, 2008
Well, I’m glad you brought up the subject yourself, because I don’t think I would have dared to ask you straight out: Deep down, dear Bernard-Henri, why are you a “politically committed intellectual”?
For many years, twenty or thirty years maybe, people have come up to me and, without me even asking, told me things they have probably never told anyone, things they’d possibly never thought—consciously thought through—before they told me. This is precisely why I became a novelist. (Actually, let’s be precise: this is the reason I wrote a number of novels.) Nothing otherwise predisposed me to it: I’ve always preferred poetry, I’ve always hated telling stories. But from the beginning I felt (and I still feel) a sort of duty (the word seems strange, but right now I can’t think of another one): I was required to save these phenomena, to furnish as best I could a retranscription of the human phenomena that so spontaneously appeared before me.
The context here is different: you’re not some aging sales rep in a hooker bar in Pattaya, or a wife-swapping social worker trying to breathe new life into her relationship. You’re more than capable of retranscribing the human phenomenon you represent without the need of a scribe; nonetheless, I’d like to think that, like others, you sensed in me those characteristics that led me to become and gradually to identify myself with the role of the recorder.
The lack of a sense of the ridiculous, for a start. A politically committed intellectual is not, to my mind, as you may have gathered, someone ridiculous. I can picture it, I can imagine the half-smiles, whatever you like, but deep down I don’t feel that a politically committed intellectual is ridiculous; because deep down I feel that very few things are ridiculous. I’ve probably withdrawn too much from any concrete sense of social belonging—and by the same token, withdrawn a little from humanity (but let’s not get ahead of ourselves)—to truly have a sense of the ridiculous.
You will have gathered, too, that you can tell me you’re a disaster tourist without provoking any real disapproval (besides, coming from so far and having no real power, how could you not be something of a tourist?). Disapproval is a mental category I use rarely. And yet I do have a sense of good and a sense of evil, indeed they can appear with surprising violence when called on (I never seek to excuse a criminal; I never relativize an act of charity). But I call on them very rarely, a minima. And I am happy to live in a peaceable world in which the moral fiber of a man is rarely truly tested, where most actions are morally neutral.
Don’t worry, I am going to get around to talking about myself. Following your example—first the honorable reasons, then the more questionable ones, and so on to the worst—I’ll explain why I am not a politically committed intellectual.
(Leaving aside the fact that, in any case, I’m not an “intellectual”; otherwise I’d need to explain why I studied at an institute for agronomics rather than khâgne* or Sciences Po, but that’s another matter.)
To talk about political commitment, I have to go back to Russia, where I’ve been twice, in 2000 and 2007. The first time was impressive. In the deserted avenues of Moscow, 4×4s with tinted glass windows thundered past. The restaurants and the cafés were empty—except for Westerners; in the streets and the doorways, young people shared bottles of beer and vodka (drinking in the bars was much too expensive for them). A few young women were dressed like prostitutes; the others were barely modernized babushkas.
Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to drive through Moscow; the cars now are Nissan Micras, Volkswagen Golfs. The restaurants and the cafés are full of Russians who drink according to their budget;