Artists, Intellectuals, and World War II: The Pontigny Encounters at Mount Holyoke College, 1942-1944

Rachel Bespaloff and the Nostalgia for the Instant

251 Rachel Bespaloff and the Nostalgia for the Instant Olivier Salazar-Ferrer A woman of great classical intelligence, both impulsive and fragile, Rachel Bespaloff gave in to misfortune and despair by committing suicide in exile, in the United States, in 1949. And yet, she had always shown a remarkable lucidity in the midst of her suffering, and was ready to recommend to her best friends (Gabriel Marcel, Jean Grenier, Jean Wahl) the torment of doubt as a means of sharpening one’s thinking. Like Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, or Milena Jesenká, Franz Kafka’s friend, she was one of those Jewish women passionately attached to the truth as justice of knowledge. Her sense of decency prevented her from revealing her personal hell, so she turned to the historical hell that reflected her own. The Jewish genocide amplified her own tragedy. She developed an even deeper form of despair, in which her indignation rebelled against the impossible played out as historical fact. Her friendship with Leon Shestov had taught her to dislike idleness of mind. Her intellectual exchanges with Daniel Halévy, Julien Green, Jean Grenier, Gabriel Marcel, Boris de Schloezer, Jean Wahl, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre brought out her inflexible and vigilant consciousness in her questioning of Judaism and Christianity.1 Her contemporaries, however, reacted to her essays with condescension. A woman philosopher in 1930 was a bit like a woman in the nineteenth century wearing men’s clothes. Philosophical societies at the time were still a male preserve. Yet, she was a remarkable commentator who thought of her critical approach as both an invigorating in-depth analysis and a manner of putting the analyzed work to a spiritual test. In her writing, the dialectical method, which she mastered to perfection, was not weighed down by the slightest introspective remark, inasmuch as she did not submit to any philosophical dogmas, to any kind of politics, aesthetics , or any moral code. Her glimpses of happiness were to be found in music. As a virtuoso pianist, capable of conducting an orchestra, she found a kindred spirit in Shestov’s translator, de Schloezer, who was also a musicologist. Before 1940, she was a woman of wit and learning, haughty and passionate, whose essays on Heidegger and Kierkegaard made such a powerful impression on Gabriel Marcel and Jean Wahl that they decided to publish them immediately in the Revue Philosophique.2 This led to the publication of a book, Cheminements et carrefours (1938), an assessment of existential philosophy and literature. During her exile at Mount Holyoke, Bespaloff continued to publish a series 252 OlivierSalazar-Ferrer of remarkable articles in magazines such as Fontaine, Esprit, and Renaissance, based in New York, as well as in Les Lettres Françaises, Roger Caillois’s magazine , which was published in Argentina. Her last book, On the Iliad, the English version of which followed shortly after the first French edition, seemed to echo Simone Weil’s essay “The Iliad, or, The Poem of Force.”3 Oblivion then Roundtable honoring Rachel Bespaloff: (front to back) Naomi Bespaloff Levinson, Olivier SalazarFerrer , Renee Scialom Cary, Barbara Levin Amster. Mount Holyoke College, 2003. Photograph courtesy Mount Holyoke College Office of Communications. RachelBespaloffandtheNostalgiafortheInstant 253 effaced the memory of this woman, who died in the remote United States, leaving her friends a few scattered manuscripts written in a sparkling style, together with the image of an unfulfilled life. Taking Shestov’s despair regarding time as her starting point, Bespaloff searched for a reconciliation with one’s existence through analogy with the harmony of the musical instant. What could one expect from the instant other than the intuition of eternity? Was such a wisdom of the instant attainable during such a tragic period of history? This was the question that guided her interpretations of Heidegger’s work, of Charles Péguy’s, of D. H. Lawrence’s, of Jean Grenier’s, and of Montaigne’s. Two Antithetical Disciples: Benjamin Fondane and Bespaloff Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944) and Rachel Bespaloff represent two antithetical but equally tragic disciples of Leon Shestov (1866–1938). Fondane adopted the master’s irrationalism without reservation, while Bespaloff raised a number of doubts against him in order to take the path of classical wisdom that had been invigorated by Shestov’s disquieting interrogations. Bespaloff’s handwritten dedication on the copy of Cheminements et carrefours addressed to Shestov is clear: “You must be asking yourself: ‘Why has she dedicated this...