Public Enemies (3 page)

By the way, some time later I made an extremely disturbing discovery. I had a literature teacher in the first year of prep at the École Normale Supérieure named Jean Deprun. Although he was thirty years older, he was like a clone of this little Mallah (with the same sort of feverish intelligence, the same large head on a deformed body, the same pale complexion with surprisingly fresh flesh, still looking unworn). I found his manner toward me strange, almost hostile. Without understanding why, I noticed that he avoided making eye contact when he called me up to the board to comment on a poem by Maurice Scève
^*
or a page of
Salammbô
.
^†
Then one day I mentioned his name at a family meal and my father
exclaimed, “Deprun? But I knew him very well.” He told me that during the war, at the Cherchell Military Academy, this eminent scholar, a specialist in the philosophy of anxiety among eighteenth-century writers, had been a sort of forerunner of Mallah, tormented by a league of young males, hounded, bullied, and my father had given him his protection, just as I was to do thirty years later for his reincarnation in Neuilly.

My reason for telling you about this episode, the reason why I’m remembering and telling it, is that I’m always fascinated by the mystery of these ancient gestures that bewitch us, and which we unknowingly repeat.

But even more so, I wanted to tell you that I know all about this merging, potentially criminal group, the lynch mob, avid, bloodthirsty, the “hairless, malignant beast” of which Frantz speaks in [Sartre’s play]
Les Séquestrés d’Altona
[
The Condemned of Altona
],
^*
the “carnivorous species that has sworn [our] destruction,” in a word the great animal “lurking in the familiar eyes of our neighbors,” which is rearing to be “released.” In a sense I know it doubly. I am almost genealogically familiar with its characteristic breath, the quickened step, the warning signs, the war cry, the treachery. But I’ve never really felt that it was targeting me in particular or that I had it coming, that sooner or later my turn would come.

Let’s put it differently.

Having reflected on your question, yes, of course.

Yes, it’s quite clear that this is “the” phenomenon par excellence, that this phenomenon is the basis of social
relations, far more than, say, love, the social contract, or universal affection among mankind. That’s clear.

It’s clear too that inclusion implies exclusion, and that generally whenever two men meet they have agreed to reject and banish a third … In other words, we must be suspicious of what the Greeks called
syncretism
—I’ve always thought that its deeper meaning was not the one claimed by etymology, a “union of several Cretans,” but rather “everyone united against the Cretans” (they were, after all, the least favorably viewed, the most disreputable people in the ancient world). Doesn’t that fit perfectly?

Yet, the more I have gained this knowledge applied to others, the more prolifically I’ve written about its underlying logic, the more I believe, for example—and to reply to one of your other remarks, the more I’ve helped, following the path opened up by René Girard,
^*
to show that revealed religions are not responsible for producing scapegoats but rather help to subdue savagery—the more I feel that my personal case, my experience as a young man or as a man, hardly helped me to reach these conclusions.

It’s odd but that’s how it is.

It doesn’t square with the idea that was our starting point, of the writer who has been disowned, insulted, dragged into the mud, et cetera. But it’s the truth.

One last thing.

You seem skeptical when I say that the things written about me and that I discover from time to time on diabolical Google are significant for me only insofar as they keep me
informed of the state of play, what my adversary is up to, his weaknesses if any, and how to react appropriately.

You’re wrong.

I can assure you that this is also true.

As soon as I’ve read them and immediately drawn the obvious tactical or strategic conclusions, I forget the articles by those people.

They have no effect on my narcissism.

In the face of assaults, my ego is fireproof, shatterproof.

And there’s a magic slate aspect, so that the malevolence spread in this way evaporates as soon as it stops scattering its effluents and informing me of the position of what Flaubert in a letter to Baudelaire called the adversary’s “batteries” and “carriages.”

In other words—and you were right there—there’s nothing to equal the drive to conquer as an antidote to these two twin poisons, the desire to please and the desire to displease.

There’s nothing to equal a
sense of war
, not only to protect a work, shelter it, give it sanctuary but also to see it through and to hang on to the desire to continue, unshaken by winds, tides, and the ravening pack.

I’d forgotten that phrase of Voltaire’s.

But I have to say that I like it a lot and that’s how I like to think of the writers I admire: living and dying bearing their weapons, making the best of it, like the great Valmont,
^*
that “painter of battles.” That’s how I like to think of myself too, but my battles are like the ones in that book by Pérez-Reverte
^†
that you recommended to me, and which I found gripping … 
But I’ll stop here, dear Michel.

Because otherwise we’ll have to come back to this art of warfare.

I mean the battlefield that is specifically the literary or philosophical scene.

And that state of continual battle dress, which according to the greatest too, sums up the life of a writer.

Kafka, for example …

Kafka, who, as you know, was an admirer of Napoleon and saw in the hesitations of the emperor at the Battle of Borodino or the scene of the withdrawal from Russia, the encrypted truth of those “campaigns” and “maneuvers” that made up his own everyday existence as a novelist …

Believe me—we’ll save time this way.

Dear Bernard-Henri,

I believe you. Initially, your letter produced a sense of shock, but I chose to believe you—and I deserve a certain amount of credit for doing so, because an ego as robust as yours amounts to a mystery, even an anomaly.

The last time I felt so shocked goes back—the comparison is unfortunate, but I can’t help that—to an interview with Yasmina Reza in which she related how Nicolas Sarkozy had greeted the prospect of her book about him. Our president, apparently, accepted with the words “Even if you demolish me, you will make me greater.” I had to read the sentence three times before I accepted the fact: there truly are people whose ego has such power. In moments of rare good humor, I have subscribed to Nietzsche’s famous dictum: That which does not kill me makes me stronger (most of the time I would be tempted, more prosaically, to think, That which does not kill me hurts me, and eventually weakens me). But I think Nicolas Sarkozy has gone one better.

You are not quite there, but then you are not a warrior or a politician but a writer. And such small fry are not noted for their invulnerability to wounded pride. How does a writer
usually react when someone tries to hurt him? Quite simply, he suffers.

Incidentally, it is remarkable to note quite how powerful the writer’s identity is. I don’t know how many films Cocteau, Guitry, and Robbe-Grillet
^*
and Pagnol made, but when we think of them we see them first and foremost as writer. There are,
a contrario
, some people who remember that Malraux was minister of culture. But I have no doubt that a few decades from now, that will be completely forgotten—you only have to think of the faint astonishment we feel now when we remember that Lamartine
really
stood as a candidate for president of the Republic.

The fact remains that you have developed a sort of magic potion that diminishes your vulnerability, and I would be interested in the recipe, especially as I am releasing a film this year and can therefore look forward to a screening of copious insults and spitting—from my traditional enemies and from others I have yet to discover: that about sums up my calendar for 2008.

There is, of course, the Obélix solution—fall into the cauldron as a baby—and the worst thing is that, in your case, that’s probably the right answer, the trouble is, it doesn’t help me much. We all end up becoming like our fathers, more or less; this is a penny that has long since dropped on me with the elegance of a concrete block, and it’s possible that, from your time with your father, you have drawn only powerful, luminous images; in my case, the results are more mixed.

But, then again, the disturbing Chapter 5 of
Comédie
suggests
that your secret may lie in a careful utilization of the
social self
. My first real contact with such realities dates back to 1998, when the ubiquitous Jérôme Garcin, flanked by his sinuous acolyte Fabrice Pliskin, contacted me to invite me, together with Philippe Sollers,
^*
to debate in the columns of their magazine. I can still see their irritated faces when they found out that we had had dinner together the night before. “You’ve met each other before …?” Jaws dropped. Of course we have, arsehole, is that against the law? The two cronies obviously wanted to goad the man with the cigarette holder through the “vitriolic portrait” of him I give in
The Elementary Particles
. The problem was that, at the time, Philippe was completely prepared to forgive me. First and foremost, it must be admitted, because I was in a
position of strength
. That’s the trouble with Philippe, he is a barometer: he attacks me when I’m weak, supports me when I’m strong, he’s a more accurate barometer than an army of frogs.

But I had also spun him a line in suggesting (quite honestly, in fact) that I had had no intention of painting a portrait of the
real Philippe Sollers
, because I didn’t know the
real Philippe Sollers
, only the
media-friendly Philippe Sollers
—someone I knew only too well (and it’s true that
ce cher Philippe
sometimes went too far in his omnipresence in the media; I think things have improved since then—unless it’s simply that I’ve stopped watching TV). Anyway, Philippe immediately got the point: the idea of the
media-friendly Philippe Sollers
spoke to him. Here was a man who had truly integrated the distinction between the
innermost self
and the
social self
.

Since then I’ve occasionally been beset by a nagging, vaguely metaphysical doubt: Is there still a
real Philippe Sollers
beneath the
social Philippe Sollers
? I’m not entirely joking; Cioran notes with some amusement that when the libertine aristocrats of the eighteenth century died in public, crowds flocked to see it, just like to the theater, in the hope that the dying man might produce one last witticism—and in the fear that, whimpering and weeping, he might at the last moment beg to take communion. Staging one’s own death, worrying that it might turn out to be a
flop
? You can see just how far man has been prepared to go in the service of art.

Philippe Sollers is not at that level, because this is not the eighteenth century, and because the Bordeaux bourgeoisie are not quite the aristocrats of the
ancien régime
. All the same, Philippe Sollers on television is about as unpredictable as Jean-Pierre Coffe; but that’s probably the only sensible way to appear on TV: first, consider yourself to be a
permanent guest
; then put together a little schtick, with a few gimmicks, and wheel it out whenever you need to. And carefully bury your
innermost self
, make it all but inaccessible (at the risk, I repeat, of losing it).

Except that this is not what you do either: you appear on television, it seems to me, when you have
something to say
—you’ve written a book, you have some cause to champion, it varies. Your
innermost self
is not kept on a leash and, cher Bernard-Henri, it comes through at times almost violently, and it is doubtless modesty that prevents you from citing among your strengths the capacity for
conviction
and
indignation
.

This, please note, is of no use to me either. In my life, I have never really interested myself in anything beyond the field of
literature, and there is little in that to get truly indignant about. And yet I have known intelligent, sensitive, remarkably cultured people (some of whom occasionally wrote reviews, conducted interviews) who never truly achieved a
position of strength
. It is Jérôme Garcin, not Michka Assayas, who edits the culture section of
Le Nouvel Obs
[
ervateur
]. So what? Who gives a fuck who edits the culture section of
Le Nouvel Obs
? It’s clearly not as important as Bosnia.