Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [42]
I have absolutely no idea in what sense Barrès understood it, and I confess that I don’t really understand. (In what sense can reopening a case that was badly conducted constitute a cause of disorder? Isn’t this how the judicial process normally works?) I don’t really know anything about Barrès; I remember starting La Colline inspirée,* slogging through and finally giving up without finishing the book. In a nutshell, I can’t say he is an author that particularly impressed me.
I later heard he was some sort of nationalist. In short, someone not very interesting. Developing an overweening national pride is always a sign, to my mind, that you have nothing much else to be proud of.
Okay, I know what you’re going to say: Barrès is an important author, I read the wrong book. In that case, tell me which book I should read, because so far, in my opinion, quite frankly, Barrès is a nonentity.
Let’s wait until I’ve read Barrès; but where does the German soldier fit into all this? No, of course I wouldn’t have done it. I think I would have trouble killing a pig, And you’re right, it’s not (or not principally) about cowardice. The expression I find odious, almost unbearable, is a simple, anodyne phrase (one that you didn’t use, but if I had to be disagreeable, let’s say I think it was implicit in “with a heavy heart” and “dragging your feet”; thankfully, in the end, you didn’t say it). This simple phrase which, to my mind, carries within it every crime is “The end justifies the means.”
With the appropriate judicial proprieties, yes, maybe, I think I could kill. I could manage to be part of a firing squad. (Though I am happy never to have had to do so; I know that, in any case, the condemned man is blindfolded, and I wouldn’t want to have to look him in the eye, but I would fire, yes, I would fire, if I believed that the man had been fairly tried.)
I am not really convinced, to finish with those points on which we disagree, by the distinction you make between the Basques and the Chechens. The Basques (some Basques) believe it is important to have an independent Basque state; they fought for it under Franco, they went on fighting under various successive Spanish governments; in what sense has the nature of their cause changed, simply because they are now fighting a democracy? As for the Chechens, I don’t know much about them; I don’t think that an independent Chechnya has existed in past centuries. From time to time there has been a movement in favor of independence (isn’t there some mention of it as early as Tolstoy?); it’s quashed, usually by military force, by the Russian government of the day. So yes, from all I know, I do still consider it an internal matter for Russia.
What precisely confers legitimacy on a nation? The length it has existed? A common will? I wonder. If it is a common will, I don’t understand why people don’t use the simple means of a referendum on self-determination. In the case of Corsica, the outcome would be a foregone conclusion (I say this because I know the area quite well). In the case of the Basque country, of Chechnya, of Flanders? I confess, I don’t have a clue.
The case of Tibet is very different. Tibet has an age-old, a millennial existence; it was a sort of theocracy that developed a very interesting variant of Buddhism. And then brutally, fifty years ago, it was invaded by Communist China. At that point the resistance began, under the leadership of their spiritual leader, who was forced into exile. Since then, the resistance has never ceased.
I do not personally consider the Dalai Lama to be a “pure spirit,” I consider him rather to be a tactician and a subtle one. And if, at the present time, he refuses to call for a boycott on the Beijing Olympic Games, I suspect