[MD] The MoQ and Politics?

[Mary]

January 14th, 2011 Charlie Rose interview with Bernard-Henri Levy,
reproduced in its entirety.  You will not find this in written form
elsewhere.	
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Michel Houellebecq, Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take
on Each Other and the World, Random House, 2011, paperback.

I think he has something to say that adds to the conversation topic, "The
MoQ and politics".  Levy speaks with a French accent, which I will make no
effort to disguise.  

Which is worse, injustice or disorder?

[Rose]
Tonight Bernard-Henri Levy is here.  He is a philosopher, an activist, a
journalist, and a filmmaker.  A few years ago he began a correspondence with
fellow French intellectual and novelist Michel Houellebecq.  Their 6 months
of letters are collected in this book, "Public Enemies..."  The book became
a bestseller in France and in Europe.  I'm pleased to have Bernard-Henri
Levy, BHL, back at this table.  Welcome.

Public Enemies means what?

[BHL]
It means that we are, we were enemies when we began.  We were different
position.  He is a Christian, I am a Jew.  He is a Republican, I am a
liberal.  He's a conservative, I'm a Democrat, and we decided to discuss in
a fair way, in a loyal way, without, without hatred, without poison, in a
civilized way.  This is a principle of the book.  How two enemies can
exchange words, can quarrel, debate, without making war to each others. 

[Rose]
It begins with a phone call or an email, or a ...

[BHL]
It began in a very funny way, yes.  I was at home Sunday afternoon and I
receive a text of Michel Houellebecq, with whom I hardly knew.  And in this
text he tells me more or less that he's at the edge of finishing with life.
I text him back and I tell him, maybe you suicide, but let's have dinner
first.  We have dinner and I ask him what happens?  He tells me I'm despair
because this, his wife, maybe a problem, somebody else, his dog was not so
well too, and last but not least, he told me, there is nobody left to debate
with in this country.  So my reply was, your wife, I cannot do anything,
your mistress, even less, your dog unfortunately not, but debate?  Maybe I
can do.  And this way began this book.  

We decided this very night, not for publication, just for fun.  For the
interest of the thing to exchange letters.  It is an old fashioned way to
debate.  Nobody exchange letters nowadays as you know.  Before people speak,
people shout, people go on TV and scream at each others, even congressmen
and congresswomen and sometimes with tragic consequences.  But exchange
letters?  Taking time to develop an argument.  To prove your cause in a
loyal way.  This is seldom done today, and this is what we decided to do.

[Rose]
Characterize him for me.  Who he was.  Who did you find?

[BHL]
I knew him by cliché, as we all know each other.

[Rose]
And he knew you by cliché.

[BHL]
And he knew me by cliché.  And the beginning of the book is one cliché in
front of the others.  And in the process of the book the cliché breaks and
the image becomes more complex, which means the more precise.  Your image
becomes more precise, becomes accurate, when the cliché breaks.  The cliché
of Houellebecq was the naughty boy of French letters.  He is probably one of
our, if not our best writer in France.  The cliché was he had a big trial
with some Muslim organizations because he said once, maybe he had drunk too
much, he said a very bad thing about a politically uncorrect word about
Islam.  And he was sued and had a very big trial.  This belongs to his
cliché also, he has the image of being very conservative and so on.  And we
tried to break each other's clichés.

[Rose]
He did not believe in action.

[BHL]
I believe in commitment, he does not believe in commitment.  I believe that
if you have a little fame, you have the duty to give it back to the others
and to transform it into deeds and into acts for the others.  He believed
the contrary.  He's an egotist.  He believes that when I go to Darfur, or
when I go to south Sudan it's worth nothing, or that maybe I do it for bad
reasons.  I believe that I have to do it.  So, this is one of our divorce.
Yes.  The question of commitment.  I believe in public intellectuals.  I
believe that to be a public intellectual, as you say in English, is
something.  He believes in pure literature.

[Rose]
He quotes the famous maxim that, "better an injustice than disorder"  Which
you violently disagree with.

[BHL]
Yes, of course.  Yes for me, one injustice is a scandal.  Today, for
example, you have some people who say, why do you care about one single
Iranian woman who is condemned to death stoning - to death, stoning?  It is
just one woman.  It is just one injustice.  Why would you care?  For me,
this woman is, in a way, the center of the world.

[Rose]
And what impact do you believe you have as you go to these different places
to make the case in the public?

[BHL]
It depends.  It depends.  I know, for example, I know that for this woman,
not me, in America, Arianna Huffington, in Canada, Ethan Weismann(?), and my
group in France, if we had not rung the bell, if we had not tried to a lead
public opinion, she would have been dead since last July.  She would have
been dead with a face turned into a pulp.  Of course she'll be dead.

[Rose]
Do you believe she'll be stoned?

[BHL]
I believe now that she will not ... I pray while I say it, and I hope I'm
not saying the wrong thing, but I think she will not be stoned, no, because
of this public opinion movement, because you have some women and some men
all around the world who believe that an injustice is much worse than a
disorder, to take this part of the book where we quarrel a lot.  Houellebecq
thinks that a disorder is worse.  I think that injustice is the worst.  It
is two conceptions of the world.

[Rose]
So this series of letters begins with the fact that he talks about your
public image, and his public image, and all of that.  And then you come back
to the point of saying, perhaps this conversation should focus on why
there's so much hatred.  That that ought to be the subject of our dialog,
not how we're perceived, because how we're perceived matters little to you.

[BHL]
Yes.  Look at America today.  This atmosphere of hatred.  This poison which
you feel in the public debate.  On one side the ... the.   And you saw what
happened in Arizona.  The Arizona killings.  So, of course you have hatred
which is something that you breathe like the air, and the role of
intellectuals, of writers, should be to cool down this quantity of hatred.
This is what I think.  This is one of the reasons why we made this book.  To
show how you can be of very different opinions and disagree on everything
and nevertheless, to remain sweet, to remain civilized, and to move your
position.  I moved on some points.

[Rose]
What did you move on?

[BHL]
I moved, for example, we have a strong discussion about Russia, Moscow and
Russia.  

[Rose]
He said, in fact, that he likes the post-Soviet Russia.

[BHL]
Exactly.  And I begin to tell him that for me, this post-Soviet Russia is
something terrible. That Putin is another way of despotism.  For me, when we
begin this discussion, the Russia is the country where you have some free
journalists shot dead in the entrance of their house.  And he tends to
convince me that Russia might be in the process of joining the concert of
civilized nations.  He convinces me in part.  Not completely, because I
continue to believe that Putin is a dictator and that Putin is far from
being a Democrat, of course.

I convince him, probably about Jewishness.  What it means to be a Jew.  What
is the real metaphysical meaning of being a Jew.

[Rose]
What does it mean for you?

[BHL]
What it means for me, I try to explain to Houellebecq, that to be a Jew
means that you have the responsibility of the world.  You have an old school
of rabbis in eastern Europe who say the following:  God created the world,
then he withdrew from the world and he left it to mankind, and the men and
women have the duty, with words, deeds and words, prayers and letters to
build some columns of letters who are like the architecture of the world
which prevent the world from decaying, from falling, from falling apart.
This is the most - what the part of the modern thought of Jewish teaches to
you.  The words are the very thing which keeps the world together.  Without
words, without letter, without the deeds and the prayer, the world should
fall into dust again.  To be decreated.  What Jewishness teaches us that
there is a creation of the world and there could be the decreation of the
world, and only man and prayer and study of the man can prevent creation
from turning into decreation.  On this point, I think that I convince him a
little.  He's not here to reply, but it's my feeling at the end of the book.


[Rose]
Why does he live in Ireland and not in Paris?

[DHL]
Because he is a misanthrope.  Because he went probably to the place in the
world where he's sure to have the least people to speak with, and to speak
in French.

[Rose]
At the end of these 23 letters, do you think that you gave him, or helped
him to understand a reason to live?  Did you restore some passion in him
because of the nature of the exchange?  That there was purpose for his
intellect?

[DHL]
It would be very pretentious of me to say that, and very arrogant, but what
I can say, and what one can perceive in the course of the book, yes.  The
book begins in a very despair, a very pessimistic tone and it finishes
another way.  For example, Houellebecq is convinced, not only that he has a
pack against him, the mob running after him and preventing him from writing,
but he even believes that society is made for that.  The conviction of
Houllebecq is, Question, What is society?  Reply, society is this which
prevents artists to exist and to perform.  I'm not completely in agreement
with that, and maybe I convince him a little on that.  That the situation is
not so desperate.  

My opinion in the book is that artists are always stronger than the pack.
Artists, writers, like him or like me, maybe, are always stronger and
survive the mob when the mob is against them.

[Rose]
What about the President's words after Tucson?  Do you think those words had
perfect pitch?

[DHL]
I think he had the necessary words at this precise moment of your history.
You are, you, American people, are at a crucial moment for sure, and I think
that Barack Obama found the words, calling for union, reconciliation, common
values.  He re-found the words from his very beginning, at the convention of
2004, of course yes.  On one side you have some political responsibles who
speak about blood libels, and on the other side you have Barack Obama who
speak of civic union.  Exactly the contrary.

[Rose]
There's been too much bad rhetoric on all sides.  There's not one place
that's owed too much angry rhetoric, and the President's in the middle of
all that.

[DHL]
Probably.  What is sure is that America is a pragmatic country.  America is
a country where it was preconceived that ideologies do not exist.  You live
in America in the illusion that you are safe of ideologies.  Ideologies was
in Europe, and America was pragmatism.  Today, ideologies are coming in
America.  This is a new stage in your history.  Ideologies coming systematic
thoughts, doctrinaires and so on, and one has to learn how to deal with
that.  We know that in Europe since two centuries how to deal with
ideologies who can kill again.  Ideologies are organized speeches which can
justify, legitimize the murder.  You are making the experience of that in
America today.