Hannah Arendt's Storytelling

Author(s): ELISABETH YOUNG-BRUEHL

Source: Social Research, Vol. 44, No. 1, Hannah Arendt (SPRING 1977), pp. 183-190
Published by: The New School
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970279 .
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Hannah Arendt's
' BY ELISABETH
Storytelling / YOUNG-BRUEHL

XTannah Arendtlovedto tellstories.She toldhercherished

storiesagain and again, witha charmingdisregardformere
facts(senone vero,e benetrovato) and unfailingregardforthe
life of the story.She was also a collector,a connoisseur,of
quotationsand whatVico called "goldensayings."Her stories
and her sayingswere the threadswithwhichshe wove her
conversations and herworks.She knewthatshe livedin "dark
times," times in whicha long traditionhad unraveledand
scatteredin a vast mental diaspora to the ends of the
memoriesof men. But she viewedthisruptureas a signthat
the threads,the thoughtfragments,were to be gathered,
freelyand in sucha wayas to protectfreedom,and made into
somethingnew,dynamic,and illuminating. She was heiressto
an aphoristictechnique;thecapitamortua of thebrokentradi-
tion were assembledwiththis technique,reincarnated,full-
bodied and vital."Insofaras the past has been transmitted as
tradition, it possessesauthority;insofaras authoritypresents
itselfhistorically,it becomestradition."But when the past is
nottransmitted as tradition,itcan be freelyappropriated;and
when such free appropriationpresentsitselfhistorically, it
becomesthe occasionfordialogue. Hannah Arendtused the
image of Penelope's weavingto describe thinking;what is
thoughtis rethought, ceaselessly,spurredby internaland ex-
ternaldialogue. And she knew verywell the differencebe-
tweenthisprocessand writing.For writingshe had tools of
assemblage- large silverscissorsand quantitiesof Scotchtape.
Many of Hannah Arendt's stories were what has been

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184 SOCIAL RESEARCH

called, since Callimachus wrote his Aetia, etiological tales.

When she told, for example, how Walter Benjamin (another
collector of quotations) was tripped up by his bucklicht Mdnn-
lein (his littlehunchback) whenever he came into the vicinity
of success, she was in the Ovidian mode of how the mulberry's
berries got to be red. She told tales about how people appear
and move about in the world, easily or uneasily, about their
words and their deeds. She did not tell the Story of Philoso-
phy,she told the storiesof the philosophers. She knew thatin
Greece of the Golden Age "mankind first discovered the
human condition on earth, so that from then on the mere
chronological sequence of events would become a story and
the storiesworked into a history,a significantobject of reflec-
tion and understanding."1She reworked the stories,without
reliance on the chronological sequence of events,into a collec-
tion of significantobjects of reflectionand understanding- a
collage, a mobile. She told how Thales fell into a well while
star-gazing,to the amusement of a Thracian peasant girl,and
this storybecame the storyof the dangers of unworldliness.
And, ratherthan condemning the Thracian girl,as Hegel did,
Hannah Arendt admired her common sense. But she also told
how Thales the astronomer predicted a good year for olives
and bought up all the olive presses to rent out at a profit,and
this storybecame the storyof the possibilityof relating star-
gazing and shrewdness,of the far reaches of common sense.
Telling these stories,she broughtthe philosophersout of their
chronological residences and into what Karl Jaspers called
"the common room" of present conversationand communica-
tion. And even while she did this, she kept her fine sense of
the mysteriesof empathy; she once claimed, very insistently,
that only G. K. Chesterton had ever really understood St.
Thomas Aquinas- as one fat man to another.
She told the stories of the philosophers, but she never re-

1Hannah Arendt,"Karl
Jaspers:Citizenof theWorld?"in herMenin DarkTimes
(New York: Harcourt,Brace & World,1968),p. 89.

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 STORYTELLING 185
duced their thoughtsor their works to mattersof individual
psychology.When she wrote a laudatio for Karl Jaspers, she
looked to Cicero for guidance: "in eulogies . . . the sole
consideration is the greatness and dignity of the [persons]
concerned."2She praised Jaspers not as an individual but as a
person who appeared in public with and through his
works- manifesting,thus, his humanitas.Her public praise of
Jaspers,who was both her teacher and her friend,illuminated
his relation to public life. This praise is also appropriate for
Hannah Arendt herself:

Jaspers'affirmation of the public realm is unique because it

comes froma philosopherand because it springsfromthe
fundamentalconvictionunderlyinghis whole activityas a
philosopher: that both philosophy and politics concern
everyone.This is whattheyhave in common;thisis the reason
theybelongin the publicrealmwherethe human personand
his abilityto prove himselfare whatcount.3

The convictionthat philosophy and politicsconcern everyone

was one thatJaspers and Hannah Arendt shared; it is the key
to understandingher activityas a philosopher as well as his. It
is also the key to understanding how she drew a distinction
between what concerns everyone and what is private, indi-
vidual.
Always critical of romantic subjectivismand its attendant
confusion of introspectionand thinking,she stated her rea-
sons clearly in her early work,Rahel Varnhagen:

. . . introspection
accomplishes twofeats:itannihilatestheactual
existing situation
bydissolving it in mood,and at the same time
it lends everything subjectivean aura of objectivity,publicity,
extremeinterest.In mood the boundarybetweenwhatis inti-
mateand whatis publicbecomesblurred;intimaciesare made
public,and public matterscan be experiencedand expressed
onlyin the realmof the intimate - ultimately,
in gossip.4
2 Hannah Arendt,"Karl
Jaspers:A Laudatio,"in Men in DarkTimes,pp. .71-80.
3Ibid., p. 74.
HannahArendt,
RahelVarnhagen:
TheLifeofa Jewess
(London:EastWestLibrary,
1957),p. 16.

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186 SOCIAL RESEARCH

When Hannah Arendt told stories,she did not gossip in this

sense; she told of people in the world, not of the worlds in
people. Thus she used the objective and objectifiedcategories
of times when the public and the private were distinct; she
spoke of Fama and Fortuna, she spoke of deformation profes-
sionellewhere others would not have feared to rush in with
psychological analyses. When she spoke of the "banality of
evil" rather than of Adolf Eichmann's perversityor sadism,
she spoke as one who cared more for clarityand what con-
cerns everyone than for vengeance.
The quality of her mercy was its relation to the person in
the world. "To judge and to forgiveare but two sides of the
same coin . . . whilejustice demands that all be equal, mercy
insistson inequalityimplyingthat every man is, or should be,
more than whateverhe did or achieved."5 Those who commit
crimes must be brought before the law; but there are other
courts as well, and otherjudges. Brecht's case was tried in the
poet's court: "a poet's real sins are avenged by the gods of
poetry," whereas "mere intellectuals or literati are not
punished for their sins by loss of talent."6Heidegger's Gelas-
senheit,his worldless releasement into thinking's serenity,
blinded him to the very tyrannywhich is deadly to thought,
which can destroy the thinkingspace.
The mercy which acknowledges inequality, which allows
that a person can be, should be, more than his works and
deeds, is the public face of a humaneness which, if turned
only inward, is sentimentality.For this introversion,Hannah
Arendt had no sympathyand very littlemercy. She admired
the virtue of not feeling sorry for yourselfas much as any
other virtue. She realized- to use her own words-

how deadly ridiculousit would be to measure the flood of

eventsby the yardstick - to meet,for
of individualaspirations
instance,theinternational
catastropheof unemployment witha
desire to make a career and with reflectionson one's own
5 Hannah Arendt, "Bertolt Brecht: 1898-1965," in Men in Dark
Times,p. 248.
6Ibid.,
pp. 242, 249.

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 STORYTELLING 187

thecatastrophe
successor failure,or to confront of thewarwith
theideal of a well-rounded or to go intoexile,as so
personality,
many. . . did, withcomplaintsabout lostfameor a broken-up
life.7

She was a harsh criticof those who wroteonly of "psychologi-

cal deformation,social torture,personal frustrationand gen-
eral disillusion," who were not even worthy of the title
nihilists.These writers"did not cut deep enough- they were
too much concerned with themselves- to see the real issues;
they remembered everythingand forgot what mattered."8
The breakdown of traditionwhich Hannah Arendt viewed,
in political terms, as the decline and fall of the nation-state
and, in social terms, as the rise of mass society,she experi-
enced, in spiritualterms,as the spread of nihilism.Fullyaware
of the political and social dangers of nihilism,she was also
aware that nihilismcan have as its correlate- though it is very
rare- free thought,the "beaten pathwaysof thought"having
been swept away, dynamited.
Neither of her great teachers,Heidegger and Jaspers,had a
Philosophy,a system,a beaten path. For both, thinkingwas a
motion. Heidegger left traces of his movement- what he
called Wegmarken,pathmarks- and Jaspers left systematiza-
tions,thought-schemata,alwaysremindingthatthese were not
systemsor formulae. Hannah Arendt described Heidegger's
seminars in words that well describe her own:

Whatwas experiencedwas thatthinkingas pure activity - and

thismeansimpelledneitherby the thirstforknowledgenor by
the drive for cognition- can become a passion whichnot so
much rules and oppressesall other capacitiesand giftsas it
ordersthemand prevailsthroughthem.We are so accustomed
to theold oppositionof reasonversuspassion,spiritversuslife,
that the idea of a passionatethinking,in whichthinkingand
alivenessbecomeone, takesus somewhataback.9
7ibid.,pp. 225-226.
8Ibid., 220.
p.
9 HannahArendt,"Martin
Heideggerat Eighty,"
NewYorkReviewofBooks,Oct. 21,
1971,p. 52.

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 188 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Thinking can be a silent dialogue between self and self; it

can be- as it was forJaspers- a present dialogue, communica-
tion; it can also be an "anticipated dialogue with others"- as
she described Lessing's thought,adding that"thisis the reason
why it is essentially polemical."10 These forms of dialogic
thinkingneed "no pillars and props, no standards and tra-
ditions to move freelywithout crutches over unfamiliar ter-
rain."11But Hannah Arendt was well aware thatsuch dynamic
thinkingis not easy to practice "with the world":

For long ago it became apparentthatthe pillarsof the truths

have also been the pillarsof the politicalorder,and thatthe
world (in contrastto the peoplewho inhabitit and movefreely
about in it) needs such pillarsin orderto guaranteecontinuity
and permanence,withoutwhichit cannotoffermortalmen the
relativelysecure,relatively imperishablehome theyneed.12

It was Hannah Arendt's deep sense of responsibility,as a

thinker, for the world's needs and for thinking "with the
world" that made it possible for her to cut so deeply, to
remember everythingand not to forget what matters.
The virtueof not feelingsorryfor yourselfand the capacity
not to forgetwhat mattersmanifestedthemselvesin Hannah
Arendt's life and thoughtin two interconnectedqualities: reti-
cence and self-confidence.Her reticence was similar to that
which she claimed was a necessityfor poets, because a poet is
"someone who must say the unsayable, who must not remain
silenton occasions when all are silent,and who must therefore
be careful not to talk too much about thingsall talk about."13
And, for her, this reticence particularlyconcerned "the realm
of the intimate."Her self-confidencewas very similar to that

10Hannah Arendt,"On
Humanityin Dark Times: Thoughtsabout Lessing,"in
Men in Dark Times,p. 10.
11Ibid.
12Ibid.
13Arendt,"BertoltBrecht:1898-1956," 228.
p.

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 STORYTELLING 189

which she recognized in the poet Auden; it was a self-

confidence "which does not need admiration and the good
opinion of others and can withstand self-criticismand self-
examination without falling into the trap of self-doubt.This
has nothing to do with arrogance, but is easily mistaken for
it."14Such self-confidencedepends on a refusal to indulge
comparisons of oneself with others.
Perhaps she recognized these qualities of her own in poets
because they are qualities related to respect for language.
Auden and Brecht were able to leave their hearers and
readers "magicallyconvinced that everyday speech is latently
poetic"; she was able to leave her hearers and readers magi-
cally convinced that everyday speech is latentlyphilosophic.
Her convictionthat philosophy and politicsconcern everyone
was tied to her understandingthat both have theirlives in the
language everyone speaks. When we say "philosophy" and
"politics" we are speaking Greek. In language "the past is
contained inextricably,thwartingall attemptsto get rid of it
once and for all."15It was Hannah Arendt's peculiar giftto be
able to open up our words and find in them the surviving
threads of our tradition.
Her sensitivityto language was one facet of a capacity- it is
perhaps not inappropriate, even though she would have
smiled a wordlysmile at the word, to call it an innocence- to
appreciate the sheer appearance of things, "the wonder of
appearance." During her last summer,in Switzerland,she told
all her visitorsthe storyof the neighbor'scat- how the cat had
mourned the loss of her kittensfor three days, crying and
wanderingabout the yard,and then had resumed her routine.
When Hannah Arendt told the story to me, as dinner was
being prepared, she ended it by quoting the Iliad in Greek

14Hannah Arendt, "Reflections(W. H. Auden)," The New Yorker,

Jan. 20, 1975, p.
39.
15Hannah Arendt, "Walter
Benjamin: 1892-1940," in Men in Dark Times,p. 204.

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190 SOCIAL RESEARCH

with a strange,profound simplicitythat did justice at once to

her own life, to Priam's, and to the cat's:

vvv Be ixvrjaw/jLeSaBopirovl
Kai yap t rjvKO/JLS Nid/fy efivqcraro ctitov->
ttj rjep BwBeKa iraiBes ivl fLcyapounv 6'ovto,
c£ /xcv SvyaTtpes, c| 8 vtces ^ojovtc?.

Now let us thinkof supper.

For even fair-hairedNiobe thoughtof eating;
She whose twelvechildrendied in her halls,
Her six daughtersand her six vibrantsons.

ERRATUM
In Sir Isaiah Berlin'sarticle,"Vico and the Ideal of the Enlight-
enment,"in the Autumn 1976 issue of Social Research,the sen-
tencebeginningon the 12thline fromthe top of page 653 should
read: "For Vico, as a Christian,thiscan onlybe a matterof faith,
not (evenfinite)reason: the beneficent waysof Providencemaybe
observed,described, believed in, but not demonstrated, without
making man, not Providence, the sole creative force in the
universe."

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