Against Ease
Laure Adler is not a woman to mince words. She begins a long conversation with George Steiner: ‘There’s this thing, this arm, this deformity, this physical thing.’ Has Steiner’s withered arm made him suffer, she asks? He answers: ‘It has enabled me, I think, to understand certain conditions, certain kinds of anguish on the part of the sick that are difficult to grasp for the Apollos of this world, for those blessed to have a magnificent body and terrific health. What are the connections between physical and mental suffering and certain intellectual endeavours? That is something we still do not understand very well. Let’s never forget that Beethoven was deaf, that Nietzsche was subject to terrible migraines, that Socrates was very ugly. It is so interesting to try and see in others that which they may have had to conquer. When I meet someone I always aks myself: what has he or she lived through? What has been his or her victory — or signal failure?’