When I first began work at the bookstore, I had just concluded some years working and living with people for whom Hannah Arendt was a matter of frequent discussion. Wrestling with Arendt’s ideas is like wrestling with the angel — the reader is the one who’s going to come out of it with a permanent limp.
During a lull on the floor, I asked my friend — a Jew — what she made of Arendt. She arched an eyebrow. “You want to know what I make of Arendt? I’ll tell you what I make of Arendt.” She marched over to the “Biography” shelf, pulled a trim, blue book and gave it to me. “That’s what I make of Hannah Arendt.”
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| "Go on and wrestle with that, sunshine..." |
For my friend and for many Jews the late revelation that Arendt not only had a youthful love affair with Martin Heidegger, but returned to him after the war and remained his devoted and intimate friend, rendered her a sudden and complete non-entity. Her life’s work was now worse than chaff.
For me the matter is complicated — admittedly, largely because I’m not Jewish, but also because Arendt’s work continually re-frames my own politics and philosophy. Heidegger’s might too, if I were better able to comprehend it. To place the matter in some perspective, I will close with Leo Strauss’s observation:
“Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight. But here is the trouble: the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger.”
These thoughts are spurred by this terrifically frustrating interview with Ann Heberlein, author of On Love & Tyranny: The Life & Politics of Hannah Arendt — frustrating because it flits so lightly around this central complexity/difficulty/or, to use Strauss’s word: trouble. But, hey — it still acknowledges the trouble, which is a start. And it could well be that Heberlein “wrestles with the angel” in this work.
I am looking forward to reading the book, and for that I am grateful for the interview.
Other links:
- “As I watched the white riot at and inside the Capitol building unfold on television that appalling afternoon — thousands of enraged, clueless, and deluded Randy Quaid/Cousin Eddie clones, man-children staging a violent cosplay insurrection for selfies and their social media accounts — a couple of phrases kept running through my head. One was a line from Frank Zappa’s proto-rap number from his 1966 album Freak Out!, ‘Trouble Every Day’: ‘Hey, you know something, people? I’m not black, but there’s a whole lots a times I wish I could say I’m not white.’ You should listen to it” — Indeed, you should. You should also read Gerald Howard’s excellent essay, The Disappointed at LARB.
- Also: returning to Frank Zappa, CBC Radio Ideas recently re-ran a lovely three-part documentary on the man and his music. I am little more than a passing fan — the only Zappa I own is Strictly Commercial, which outs me rather damningly — but I found Dangerous Kitchen deeply engaging, entertaining and moving.
8 comments:
Well, Arendt stuff to pass along. Elias and Pete have just done a chat with Israeli-Canadian Daphna Levit, planned for a while now, up yesterday — latest fruit of Elias’ enthusiasm for Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center. A little over a year ago — don’t recall if I noted this to you at some point — they talked with HAC’s Samantha Hill, whose own new bio study (part of a series) hits in May. (Edition of Arendt poetry also coming from her this year, late, I believe.)
Interesting for me, incidentally, that T. — not a big movie watcher, tends (like her lit-prof mom) to fall asleep in the middle of a flick, or to pull out phone and start scrolling — a couple of weeks ago unexpectedly picked Arendt documentary Vita Activa from a mixed string of titles I’d collected for possible viewing sometime, and stayed with it throughout. (We followed it up some nights later with Germans & Jews, again at her choice — in which she found then some cause for regret, as I wouldn’t stop interrupting the thing with irritable commentary.) By no means a regular topic of conversation around here, so this has been for me occasion for reflection.
Hm. Yes, shared docs are tricky terrain to navigate, I've found. I'll be curious to hear Elias' interviews -- thanks for sharing.
Been listening today, off & on, to Hill’s talk hosted by the U. of Waterloo a year ago. First 8 minutes of video are skippable. Talk itself runs right about half an hour, and the Q & A following is good, I think.
Thanks in turn for graciously receiving! Don’t think I don’t appreciate. ha
Hey, appreciation back atcha -- truly! There was a time when the corner table at the pub got very noisy once Arendt was thrown into the conversation. Thirty years ago, mind you, when tweeting was for children and accomplished birders, but still -- I was a little thrown by the crickets for the first week or two of this posting.
Personal request: is there a platform where SH podcasts can be downloaded? I usually listen to these things while driving or doing room-to-room household chores. If not, no biggie -- I'll just resort to the usual record-and-play method. But any added convenience is a good thing. :)
Turns out the option to let people download was always there, it had just never been enabled. Talked to Elias today, and we’ve got that switched on. (I handle the site and a good deal else for SH, but not the podcast accts.) You’ll find ‘download file’ in the ellipsis dropdown on the Soundcloud page now — looks like this. Thanks for the prompt!
My acquaintance with Arendt was tissue-thin until pretty recently, to tell the truth. Read (or listened to, rather) Eichmann in Jerusalem for the first time only a few months ago, and otherwise have read only scattered essay bits over the years.
About Ettinger’s treatment of Arendt-Heidegger, critical reply such as Carol Brightman’s goes back a few years now. Your post here isn’t about adjudicating, I realize. And nothing is going to make Arendt easy to take, Lord knows.
Actually, there’s a download button appearing on the embedded player I use on the site, I see now. So you don’t have to go to Soundcloud’s show page.
Feeling a little foolish, really, about never having thought to look into this before.
Great "customer" service!
"Adjudicating" -- yeah, for sure not. Arendt was only going to ever be Arendt, and people were either going to have to deal or leave the room. Thanks for the links. I'll be giving them a closer look.
It's been an amusement to ponder Leo Strauss's advances on Arendt (not so amusing for her, to be certain). I can't get over how so many men were so smitten with her. In pictures she almost always presents as plain and dishevelled, if not dumpy -- even as a young woman. Today I discover that early in her widowhood Auden(!) proposed to her!! Shame on me, but today I shall be singing, "I'm Just Wild About Arendt" -- utterly assured, of course, that she'd be anything but wild about me.
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