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

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: A Violence from Within Christopher Benfey 1 Part I: A HundredYears of Pontigny 15 Pontigny-en-Amérique Laurent Jeanpierre 19 The Vision of Helen Patch Elissa Gelfand 37 The OSS Pays a Visit Leah D. Hewitt 43 The Philosophical Model of a Counter-Institution Jacques Derrida 46 Part II: Poetry and Philosophy 57 Reflections on Wallace Stevens at Mount Holyoke Stanley Cavell 61 Thoughts on Wallace Stevens’s Contribution at Pontigny-en-Amérique: Response to Cavell Jeffrey Mehlman 80 Postscript: Response to Mehlman Stanley Cavell 84 Henry Church and the Literary Magazine Mesures: “The American Resource” Claire Paulhan 89 Part III: Art and Artists 101 Romantic Reverberations Jed Perl 105 Robert Motherwell and the Modern Painter’s World Mary Ann Caws 114 The Critical Moment: Lionello Venturi in America Romy Golan 122 Part IV: Creativity and Crisis 137 Medievalism and Pontigny Nadia Margolis 141 Gustave Cohen at Pont-Holyoke: The Drama of Belonging to France Helen Solterer 145 The Tiger Leaps: Louis Aragon, Gustave Cohen, and the Poetry of Resistance Jeffrey Mehlman 162 Poetry and Reality: Roman O. Jakobson and Claude Lévi-Strauss Andrew Lass 173 Jacques Hadamard and Creativity in the Sciences Donal O’Shea 185 Part V: Conversations in Exile 203 A Tale of Two Iliads Christopher Benfey 207 Hannah Arendt on Action and Violence with Reference to Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff on Homer’s Iliad: A Conversation Jerome Kohn and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl 220 Concerning the Label Emigrant: Brecht’s Conversations in Exile and the Century of Refugees Holger Teschke 240 Part VI: Remembering Rachel Bespaloff 247 Rachel Bespaloff and the Nostalgia for the Instant Olivier Salazar-Ferrer 251 Rediscovering Rachel Bespaloff Monique Jutrin 260 viii Contents Searching for Rachel Bespaloff Alyssa Danigelis 264 Blend and Belong Renee Scialom Cary 268 Memories of Rachel Bespaloff Barbara Levin Amster 271 Pauvre Rachel Naomi Bespaloff Levinson 273 Conclusion: Encounters of Hope Karen Remmler 279 Contributors 283 Index 287 Contents ix This page intentionally left blank xi Illustrations “Les Entretiens de Pontigny”program, front page frontispiece Jean Wahl and Wallace Stevens at Mount Holyoke College, August 1943 2 Marianne Moore and her mother at Mount Holyoke College, 1943 10 Façade of the church, Pontigny, photo by David Heald, 1986 20 Jean Wahl speaking at the Entretiens de Pontigny Conference, Mount Holyoke College, 1944 29 Jean Wahl, Gustave Cohen, and Helen Patch at the Entretiens de Pontigny Conference, Mount Holyoke College, 1943 39 “Les entretiens de Pontigny / 2ème semaine / du 9 au 15 Août,” program, 1943 62 Wallace Stevens lecturing at Pontigny-en-Amérique, 1943 63 Signatures of Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Henry and Barbara Church, J. P. Bishop, and others in the register 97 Signatures of Masson, Motherwell, Bespaloff, Bourgeois, Hayter, and others in the register 106 Robert Motherwell, Jour La Maison Nuit La Rue, 1943 118 Robert Motherwell, Mallarmé’s Swan no. 2, 1944 119 André Masson, Lionello Venturi, George Boas, and Marc Chagall at Mount Holyoke College, 1943 124 Portrait sketch of Gustave Cohen 151 Boris Mirkine-Guetzevitch, Gustave Cohen, and Jacques Hadamard at Mount Holyoke College, 1942 154 Jean Wahl and Jacques Hadamard during the Entretiens de Pontigny Conference, Mount Holyoke College, 1944 195 Rachel Bespaloff, Marcelle de Manziarly, and Henry and Lotte Rox at the Entretiens de Pontigny Conference, Mount Holyoke College, 1944 217 Scene from staged reading of Brecht’s Conversations in Exile, November 7, 2003, Pontigny symposium, Mount Holyoke College 244 Roundtable honoring Rachel Bespaloff: Naomi Bespaloff Levinson, Olivier Salazar-Ferrer, Renee Scialom Cary, and Barbara Levin Amster, Mount Holyoke College, 2003 252 Rachel Bespaloff as a child 274 Rachel Bespaloff, about eleven years old 274 Rachel Bespaloff, age eighteen 275 Rachel Bespaloff, when she was teaching at Mount Holyoke College in the 1940s 275 xii Illustrations ...