A philosopher with a poetic style? That apparently was what the world needed in the early years of the 20th century, as Henri Bergson achieved a level of fame and adulation that has never been matched by any philosopher since then.
“Both Bergson’s admirers and his critics called him a poet,” writes Dr. Emily Herring in this new book which is not really a biography but a vehicle to explore the extraordinary way his thoughts were appropriated by the public on both sides of the Atlantic. If Einstein became the pop star of science, Bergson became the pop star of philosophy.
To his critics, which included Einstein, “Bergson’s poetic style was synonymous with ambiguity and lack of rigour. But for Bergson’s supporters, his appeal came from his capacity to use language to express what language usually hides and to undo the deeply entrenched habits of thought that had rendered philosophical debates sclerotic.”
A specific example of this is given by Herring as she relates a dinner party conversation that took place around 1914. The famed American writer Edith Wharton sat next to Bergson. She asked him how it could be that while she could memorise useless things, that “when it came to poetry, my chiefest passion and my greatest joy, my verbal memory failed me completely?”
At the time, his one-line answer left her disappointed. But, as Wharton related in her autobiography, “It was only afterward that I saw he had really said all there was to say.” The one-liner he delivered was “It’s just because you are dazzled.” In the words of Herring, “He no doubt meant that she was too distracted, almost hypnotized by the beauty of the verses. Poetry left her in a dreamlike state that was antithetical to the tension required to be fully attentive.” Wharton was, quite literally, dazzled by poetry!
The importance of attentiveness here is easily overlooked. Most of the time we consider practical things, what Bergson termed our “attention to life.” He wrote that “The cerebral mechanism is designed precisely so as to repress almost all of the past into the unconscious.” It is there that our past is preserved. “It likely follows us around, at each instant, in its entirety…This is the sense in which we are said to have an unconscious memory.” Alas, this is the only mention of the unconscious in the book, and while this is not an academic book on the mind, Herring should have done a lot more with the unconscious mind to explore Bergson’s approach. (Even though it is most associated with Freud, the term unconscious was first used as a noun in English in 1818, by Coleridge, no less).
Another famous ‘Bergsonian’ one-liner comes from the same period as the response he gave to Wharton. Bergson regularly lectured at the Collège de France in Paris, which was packed by members of the public eager to hear any words of inspiration from him. After one such lecture, a woman “demanded that he distil the essence of his philosophy in a few words. With his characteristic dry wit disguised as smooth deference, he replied ‘I simply argue, Madam, that time is not space.’ These four words deliver a concise but accurate characterization of durée, the central notion of Bergson’s philosophy.”
Before getting into durée, I would like to suggest here an analogy with music: specifically the music of Erik Satie (1866-1925), whose life overlapped that of his fellow-Frenchman Bergson (1859-1941). Satie’s music (the French composer Arthur Honegger stated) “reverts to a primitive simplification of language.” And in 1897, the symbolist poet Mallarmé wrote “Poetry is the expression, through human language reduced to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meanings behind different facets of existence.” (this quote is given by Herring, but not the mention of Satie). Bergson was referred to, by his detractors, as a symbolist writer.
In the one-liners by Bergson I have just given, I believe that in his one-on-one engagement with the public, he approached philosophy as Satie approached music and as Mallarmé approached poetry. It was Bergson’s ability to reduce the complexities of philosophy to a simplified language, reduced to its essential rhythm, that made him so appealing. Consider this: in 1913 he gave a series of six lectures at Columbia University in New York City. “By the second lecture, two thousand people were requesting a ticket.” And he delivered his talks only in French! Even when he went for tea with the wives of the Columbia faculty, 1,000 people showed up. Can you imagine that happening today for any philosopher?
Even though Herring does not invoke the music of Satie, I feel confident in my analogy because Bergson himself used a musical analogy to explain durée. “Durée,” he wrote, “is the continuous progression of the past, gnawing into the future and swelling up as it advances.” What we most remember are detached events that are part of this growing whole. “These events,” wrote Bergson, “are the drums that ring out every now and again in the symphony.”
France had indeed “produced a radically original philosopher,” writes Herring, a man who was popular everywhere. “In Britain alone, over 200 articles and books about Bergson were published between 1909 and 1911.” (In 1911 he did deliver a speech about consciousness, in fluent English, in the city of Birmingham). In America, The New York Times branded him “the most dangerous man in the world.” To find out why, you will have to buy the book!
Bergson, Herring concludes, “needed to be something of a poet to be able to report back on his forays into unveiled reality.” Although Herring does not make the analogy, Bergson was in some sense like the ‘strong poet’ described by Harold Bloom: an autonomous figure who knows what he wants and has the wherewithal to get it. “All the enthusiasm and aspirations of the age converged in Bergson’s philosophical imagery,” she says. “Bergson was able to give form to the confused and all-consuming feelings of a generation.” But when that generation was wiped out in World War I, Bergson’s philosophy was quickly forgotten. When he died in 1941, only a handful of people attended his burial.
Photo of Bergson in 1927 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. PD-US.
A delightfully fantastic book:
Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson brought Philosophy to the People, is by Basic Books. It lists for $32.
Emily Bergson has a PhD in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Leeds