Rachel Bespaloff, who discovered the power of vulnerability in her war poem

Rachel Bespaloff’s “On the Iliad” is widely regarded as one of the great books of the twentieth century, yet it remains a concise and largely overlooked work. It is therefore an excellent initiative on the part of Cristina Guarnieri, editorial director at Castelvecchi and, amongst other things, a translator, to discuss it at the Festivalfilosofia in Modena. A new edition from Castelvecchi is about to hit the bookshops, restoring for the first time the original French text published in New York in 1943. The European editions currently in circulation are in fact based on a typescript to which Bespaloff made numerous amendments during her exile in the United States. The new edition, translated and edited by Guarnieri, brings the corrected text back to light, highlighting all the variations.

First of all, let’s ask Guarnieri to tell us a little more about this little-known philosopher. “Rachel Bespaloff,” he tells us, “was a pianist, a dancer, a conductor and, finally, a philosopher. Of Jewish-Ukrainian origin, she spent the years of the Second World War in exile, having endured Nazi persecution. In fact, her entire life was marked by exile: born in Bulgaria, she grew up in Geneva, where she trained in dance and music. In 1918, she moved to Paris, the only place she ever felt was home. At the Opéra Garnier, she taught music and eurythmy, and her choreography helped to subvert the canons of classical dance. Meanwhile, she wrote philosophical essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Šestov, which earned her the admiration of intellectuals such as Jacques Maritain, Jean Wahl and Gabriel Marcel. The Nazi occupation of France forced her into exile: in 1942, she set sail from the port of Marseille for the United States. America would be the setting for her personal tragedy (she took her own life in 1949), but it was also the place where she published On the Iliad and taught French literature at a college in Massachusetts.”

In Bespaloff’s book, war – the central theme of the Iliad – is not simply an evil to be condemned, but a reality that seems to be part of the very fabric of human existence. We therefore ask Guarnieri whether this is not precisely one of the most radical aspects of Bespaloff’s interpretation. “‘In On the Iliad,’ the editor replies, ‘war is polemos, an inescapable conflict, intrinsic to existence. It is not a question of absolving or condemning it – as Simone Weil does. In her essay, she writes a striking sentence: “War is waged, endured, cursed or sung about; it is not judged, any more than fate is.”’ In Homer, Bespaloff finds an ethic, a method for dealing with it, not a moral code. It is true that the Iliad is a ‘poem of strength’, the brute force whose limits and self-destructive outcome Homer clearly illustrates. But she also discovers another form of strength within it: the strength of vulnerability. A strength embodied by Priam, who kisses the hand of the man who killed his son. By invoking the right to mercy, this supplicating king not only secures Hector’s body, but also awakens humanity and tenderness in Achilles. ‘The Slayer becomes once more a man steeped in childhood,’ writes Rachel. Here, for her, ‘the prestige of weakness’ emerges. Whilst brute force triggers a destructive process, this different paradigm of strength breaks the automatic cycle of violence, ushers in something unexpected and creates the conditions for a ‘sacred truce’. This, for me, is what makes it modern.”

In the book, there is a very stark contrast between men, exposed to pain and death, and the gods, eternally safe. It is as though vulnerability itself makes men greater and the immortals, paradoxically, poorer. At least, that is how it seemed to us. “Yes,” Guarnieri tells us: “The gods lack finitude. They know neither death nor risk, which is what makes a life authentic. With them, the tragic tone disappears, and we enter the realm of the comic. Bespaloff portrays them as operetta characters, protagonists of a farce: they are ridiculous gods who watch human suffering with indifference. The comic register therefore has a dark undercurrent: the human condition is neither guaranteed nor preserved, and it is upon this radical lack of protection that the tragic heroism of humans arises. In the absence of the divine, the poet steps forward; for Bespaloff, the poet is the true heir to the absent god. Through his song, the poet ensures that human tragedy endures for eternity.”

Towards the end of the book, a very powerful idea seems to emerge: to condemn or acquit power would be almost tantamount to condemning or acquitting life itself. We might therefore ask whether this is the point at which a reading of Bespaloff’s Iliad also becomes a universal reflection on the human condition. “Reading Bespaloff’s book,” says Guarnieri, “invites us to reflect on the human condition in general but, at the same time, shifts us away from this perspective. Because it turns existence into an art of the particular, articulated through proper names: Hector, Thetis, Helen, Priam, Achilles. Each of them is a unique response to the chaos of the world. Hector, who, before his farewell, ‘clutches his loved ones in a final glance’, is a powerful representation of what each of us experiences when we lose the things we love most. There you have it: Greek poiesis reconnects thought with the concreteness of life. It shows us that reasoning about meaning is not enough. Philosophy is not enough and, if it claims to rise above human contradictions, it becomes nothing short of a sham. Poetry, on the other hand, does not spare us from the clash with reality, but knows how to extract form from chaos. Thus, through poetic language, Bespaloff manages to capture those moments that are the true epicentre of his philosophy. The moment is the time of encounter, of friendship, of hospitality. It is the time capable of countering violence, and every form of impiety, with the power of a conjunctive particle: ‘and yet’. For Bespaloff, the Iliad is strewn with these moments that interrupt the automatism of force – pauses in which men cease to be barbarians to one another and rediscover their humanity.”