TO YEHUDI MENUHIN
2 July 1973 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Yehudi,
That meeting at the French Embassy was much too brief. We arrived late, having had to go to a banquet of the Master Carpenters – and so I was dressed in all my finery, and when people did not fail to comment on the fact that I was so plainly overdressed, I would reply, ‘I cannot help it – a certain vulgarity of personality – a certain exhibitionism – will out’, and, let me tell you, some people thought that I meant this perfectly seriously, and Lord Trevelyanfn701 was much taken aback, and said to somebody else, when he thought that I was not listening, that he had not previously thought of me in these terms, but one sometimes has to revise one’s views. I was very pleased by this. I wish you would let me know about your summer arrangements – perhaps we could meet quietly, somewhere, sometime and not always at the grandest possible assemblies to which our noble descent naturally entitles us to be invited – I really should be grateful. […]
Fondest love to Diana, and I wish we could meet.
Yours,
[Isaiah]
TO DOUGLAS VILLIERSfn702
11 July 1973
[Headington House]
[Dear Mr Villiers,]
[…] Arthur Koestler does not do justice to my argument. It is not, to use his words, ‘that unreason, however irritating or maddening, must be tolerated’, or that Jews or anyone else ‘have a right to be guided by irrational emotion’. My thesis was and is that to demand social and ideological homogeneity, to wish to get rid of minorities because they are tiresome or behave ‘foolishly or inconsistently or vulgarly’ (these are indeed my words), is illiberal and coercive and neither rational nor humane. This is the position that, in very different forms, I attributed to Plato, to T. S. Eliot and to Arthur Koestler: it forms the heart of that ‘integralist’ nationalism in Europe in the last century and a half, and now almost everywhere, which tells men to assimilate to the prevailing ethos inwardly, not merely in outward observance of the prevailing laws and customs; or else get out, or, at best, acquiesce in the treatment accorded to not very desirable outsiders, what Charles Maurras and his followers used to call métèques.fn703 The notion that differences should not (or cannot) be tolerated, and should therefore be ironed out, and so obliterated, is what, in my view, distinguishes barbarian from civilised societies.
Mr Koestler, if I interpret him rightly, thinks that the mere existence of unassimilated minorities, especially those which are unclear about the nature of their identity, is bound to cause friction, and that it is therefore rational for them, in their own interests as well as those of the majority, to see to it that at any rate their grandchildren come to form part of that majority; whereas I hold the view that this is neither desirable, since variety is not an evil but a good, and the disappearance of any peaceful human species with a rich past is a gratuitous loss to mankind; and moreover, however feasible for individuals, evidently not practicable for the mass. Even if we do not revert again to the terrible fate of the German Jews, the experience of Jews in the Soviet Union – the grandchildren, in many cases, of men and women who believed in and practised assimilation with enthusiastic fervour – seems to indicate that the process does not work on the (pathetically) hoped-for scale: the grandparents may force themselves to eat sour grapes, but the teeth of the grandchildren are set on edge. I do not, of course, expect my admired friend Arthur Koestler to accept this view: nor, I feel sure, does he expect me to accept his. But whereas I think we are none the poorer for such differences, he probably thinks that this, too, is a symptom of a lack of serious respect for logic and the belief in the final solubility by a collective act of radical choice, of important social problems. On this, too, we must continue to disagree: I shall continue to tolerate and, indeed, respect his view, even if he does not consent to tolerate mine. […]
[Yours sincerely,
Isaiah Berlin]
H. L. A. Hart, R. M. Hare, Stuart Hampshire, A. J. Ayer, by Mark Boxer
TO BERNARD WILLIAMS
18 July 1973
Headington House
Dear Bernard,
Thank you very much for ‘The Self ’:fn704 it reached me at the very moment at which I was about to leave for Italy, and it shall accompany me wherever I move. I need hardly say that I am a fan, not to say addict, of your style and content both. Thank you also for your address.
As for the New Statesman, the piecefn705 was apparently written by Francis Hope,fn706 and seemed to me almost below the level of Jilly Cooper,fn707 a kind of self-confident, pathetic effort at liveliness, sub-Gellner, no good at all. Stuart, whose piety towards the New Statesman in some way survives everything, was particularly shocked that I should have been described as Warden of Nuffield: ‘Really, the New Statesman must have copy-readers? Sub-editors? This is illiteracy! This is beneath all contempt!’ I thought poor Freddie, too, had been badly treated by the cartoonist, Mark Boxer.fn708 As for the nasty things about Stuart, you and me, I expect no other: we are none of us defeated enough not to provoke the spleen, and knock off chips from the shoulders, of those who are. That last remark has the rare merit of sounding like Rowse and yet containing truth.
Much love to you both, I leave in literally three minutes’ time.
[IB p.p. Pat Utechin]
TO LIDIYA CHUKOVSKAYAfn709
25 July 1973 [editorial translation of Russian manuscript]
Headington House
[Dear Lidiya Korneevna,
[…] what you sent me is very very interesting: and I am terribly grateful: I have read both the 1908 article about Tolstoyfn710 and the lettersfn711 at least twice – with the greatest pleasure (as indeed almost everything which your father published). The article on Tolstoy – despite the rapturous tone (which I myself find most ‘attractive’) I personally consider one of the best pieces ever written about Tolstoy – K[orney] I[vanovich] emphasises in Tolstoy that very ‘negative capability’, about which the poet John Keats once wrotefn712 – and which Renanfn713 quite wrongly attributed to Turgenev in his speech at the funeral in Paris – that fantastic ability to transpose himself into others – another – Anna, Pierre, Denisov, a horse (it was Turgenev who once said to Tolstoy that he had probably himself been a horse and can recall his ‘previous life’ – Oh God! What horrible grammatical [mistakes] I’m making in my letter to you, like some semi-literate child!) – and to transplant the reader into other bodies – each with its own centre and own atmosphere, with its personal ‘melody’ – and not on to some nameless pin, on to which qualities – attributes – are skewered, i.e. those gleaming but dead vignettes, so beloved of the most famous French writers, Balzac and Flaubert and even Proust. All this is subtle, and profound and brilliant and, just as everywhere in KI’s case, – incredibly fascinating – not academic, not literary, but ‘spontaneously’ full of life and ‘reality’ – but sparkling as in Herzen’s writing – naturally, as in Tolstoy’s own case (nineteenth century) – and making it lighter and merrier and it does not weigh down the spirit as is the case after reading say Matthew Arnold (or Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky) or any German whatsoever – Lukács and especially Тhomas Mann.fn714 What also seems interesting to me is that (although this is not mentioned for a variety of reasons) Tolstoy’s attitudes are those of a land-owning nobleman. All live people in his work are either aristocrats or belong to that part of the world with which aristocrats – or rather landowners – maintained close ties – only peasants of a particular type (i.e. his own – not Karataev), and also cows, horses, dogs, rivers, trees, sky, earth; other creatures are sometimes extremely wooden and the peasants are stylised: holy, simple, paysans – while the middle class – the bourgeoisie – doesn’t exist at all! The worlds of Dostoevsky or Chekhov seem to be inaccessible to him. He is God – the creator only of the world of Tolstoy’s relatives and friends and acquaintances: only the nobility. Yet he creates a complete illusion: when you read him, no other world exists. Everything lives through him: pantheism: pan-Tolstoyism – everything is given his names, as in Adam’s paradise – there are no other things, people, Nature, names or words. Yet I shouldn’t hold forth like this – endlessly – and bore you – the totally innocent one – for giving me such real pleasure. One more thing about Tolstoy and KI: he protests at Tolstoy’s philosophising, as in his day Flaubert had protested (‘il moralise! et il philosophise’),fn715 an oak – Nature – God, the creator of heaven and earth, shouldn’t suddenly start talking – and giving lectures. That is why the late B. L. Pasternak said to me once (when I told him that Akhmatova turned on Chekhov), that Chekhov was the only Russian writer who never addresses the reader – (‘he dissolved everything in art – that’s our answer to Flaubert’ – his own words) – and rightly so. Still, it seems to me – and once I even published a short book about it – (‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’ – which was written as an article) – that in that split – between unquenchable interest in everything (‘noble’! or is that a false or vulgar accusation?), an understanding of the whole diverse, colourful, widespread universe – on the one hand, and the stubborn wish to subordinate all of that to a single, simple, central moral-cum-spiritual principle – to explain everything, to simplify everything, to make everything transparent, clear and brought together – a little green stickfn716 – and to do this with words and not through art and imagination (which stems from the Devil), which changes everything and encourages whims, this is ‘tension’ – friction – this is the collision, which is so brilliantly described by KI (when he says that in many cases the didactic is presented as art, but it is the opposite with Tolstoy – he presents the creative as didactic) – that is the actual electricity, which sparks in his work – that friction – when the scythe hits a stone – which underlies the thoughts and emotions of Tolstoy’s ‘heroes’ (‘Why do I do this? Live this life?’, ‘Maybe all this is fantasy and dishonest self-delusion? – mauvaise foi’fn717 – that is what Turgenev mocked and irritated Tolstoy horribly) – it is precisely that which sets everything in motion: without it, would he have become a second Dickens (second not first) or simply a realist? Well, as Turgenev said, ‘Enough’!fn718 I’m ageing and becoming a chatterer! But if I had known about KI’s article in 1949 or 1950, when I wrote (or rather hastily dictated) my book-article about L[ev] N[ikolaevich], then I would have written it differently or wouldn’t have written it at all: after all KI had already said the key thing: what a pity that it had remained unknown for so long! […]
IB by Mark Boxer
With deep gratitude and ‘Sympathie Intellectuelle’
Isaiah Berlin
PS My God, everything has turned out not as it should be – illiterate and clumsy! I’m like a pianist who doesn’t want to play, because he fills himself with horror – the sounds are all wrong. Forgive me for this scribble and for the whole of this ‘epistle’.]
TO JEAN FLOUD
23 August 1973 [manuscript]
Paraggi
Dear Jean,
Jerusalem was full of movement: Casals, aged 96, was fêted everywhere: he plays, conducts, shouts at players, cries, but when not engaged in music, has to be wrapped in shawls (I long for that) & carried by his young Puerto Rican wife. An inconceivably vulgar American Hollywood scene – Salute to Israel or something like that – organized by a millionaire with the help of a ‘party-architect’ – a new profession – constructor of parties – relevant guests, décor, music, sound effects – greeted Mrs G. Meir: She was acclaimed to the strains of an aria out of Hello Dollyfn719 with Golda in place of Dolly. Even the vulgarest Israelis were embarrassed by the hidden chorus in the Tomb of David: but she herself apparently loved it, wept, was in a state of endless bliss. I thought I shd have [a] little leisure. But as always I had to function like a dentist or psycho-analyst. Client after client – 14–15 hours a day. […] Here it is v.v. hot. Really you shd go to the Holy Land: its humours are made for a Judenkennerfn720 like you: Germans, Russians, ‘Anglo-Saxons’ (that is Stoke Newington & Leeds) you’d be amused & horrified & touched by it all. We return on the 15th – Sorry for this non-letter. Exhausted.
Love.
I.
TO GERSHOM SCHOLEM
25 August 1973 [manuscript]
Paraggi
Dear Gershom,
I went to Jerusalem, and I returned; the most astonishing phenomenon was Pablo Casals at 96: his legs are weak and his appetite for food feeble, but the sounds he extracts from his cello are firm, beautiful and loud: and he conducted all those young Russian Jews with unbelievable force and clarity (he was never a good conductor, but a conductor) interspersed with speeches in broken English about what art is & what it means to him. I saw him meet Ben Gurion in a room: B.G. looks like a very well made wax-work of himself, ruddy, healthy looking, beautifully finished, but without memory or interest in what goes on. Casals congratulated him on his age (he is nine years younger than C.) & then, later, said triumphantly ‘the old gentleman is rather gaga, no?’ […]
Yours,
Isaiah
TO NOEL ANNAN
31 August 1973 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Noel,
I have only just got your piece on Mauricefn721 and your letter. You are unduly unselfconfident: it is a vivid, warm-hearted, intensely readable piece, and nobody else could have written about the Old Boy as you have and revealed all the things which, in my official address, I could not speak about – and anyway, which you know better and describe brilliantly. I read it with vast pleasure and admiration and some disagreement. […]
Also, on p. 6, my book on Marx. This is doubtless what Maurice wrote, but it is pure fiction. Fisherfn722 did not say this: and I therefore suffered no wound: he merely said that squeezing the book into Home University format – from its original vaster size, which I pleaded for in 1936 – ‘would be the making of the book’.fn723 Maurice, however, did tell me (and others) that the book read like a ‘translation from the Latvian’, which was mildly irritating: and I think he meant it, but I did not go by his literary opinions much, which was one of the sources of trouble, of course.fn724 Fisher said nothing about the book, so far as I know: and certainly would not have said this to Maurice, whom he found entertaining but vulgar, and never said a real thing to. However, since Maurice wrote this, let it stand: though Fisher’s daughter,fn725 head of St. Hilda’s – who knows the facts – will write to me and express indignant denial. Maurice thought poorly of me as a writer, and this did not worry me enough: one of the sources of trouble – indeed, the ultimate one – was my total inability to admire his later works: he dedicated a book to me: even that I could not read. He felt this, and it infuriated him. The same is true of Sylvester Gates, whom Maurice admired extravagantly, and loved, and who had been a friend, but thought Maurice’s work worthless and avoided seeing him in his last ten years, because he said Maurice talked of nothing but his academic honours: hon. doctorates, etc. (he had quite a lot of these – at Harvard and Paris and so on, besides England, and you might mention those?) and he found his company intolerably boring: Maurice knew nothing of this and complained that Sylvester was always out when he telephoned: where was he all the time? Let me continue with counter-views: all our Maurices are bound to be different – like the Socrateses and Platos and the Xenophons – but I should like to make my points:
Generosity. Yes: of course: he was impulsively generous: to you, to Renée Ayer in 1939–40 – to others, poor undergraduates, Adrian Bishopfn726 (who was all the things Maurice conveyed to you he took him to be), also ungenerous: to those who asked for help but who bored him: or gave him guilt: rather like his refusal to support G. E. Moore for a degree at Oxford – ‘too obvious’ he said: he meant that he was a Bloomsbury divinity and therefore hateful to him: snubbed by Bloomsbury as he had been, so brutally. In Italy, with us, Maurice stood nobody any drinks, and bartered shamelessly even when we simply could not get enough lire to keep going: of course this should not be hinted at: his attitude to money was very neurotic: he could not bear to think of it and kept telling me about his forthcoming poverty – but left £130,000. The neurosis was very severe. But habitually generous he was not: only to some, only explosively: sporadically: like all his volcanic, eruptive gestures.
On Humphryfn727 and Dunbabin.fn728 You should know that while he quite liked Humphry House (my intimate friend) House despised him openly: yet Maurice did not mind, because he thought Humphry despised us all: as for Dunbabin, Maurice loathed him. So the whole thing is a piece of typical rhetorical fantasy: he just chose to say this, as a kind of turn: he was, as you know, capable of saying to X that Shelley was a muddled watery mess, and five minutes later to Y (D. Cecil, say) that he was the noblest poet in the English language. This cost him, apparently, nothing: it was part of a wild, impulsive, careless playing: he was easily carried away by poetry, by painting, by people, he adored the momentary crest of a wave, he hated careful, cautious calculation – all truth – but integrity was an empty concept to him. He lied like a trooper, to win, to enhance life, to humiliate an enemy, to do good to a friend, to get out of a corner: and was terrified of being found out (‘pig’s eyes’ etc.): it was very disarming and warm-hearted – but not a word could be believed.
He was not devoted to Sparrow. Not at all. He created much of him in his youth (as with us all) but by the 1950s he feared John: that he might say, do anything: loathed his views genuinely, liked his company – a lot of former intimacy could be drawn on – but not him. All this was in part reciprocated: John loved ‘the old (i.e. pre-war) Maurice’ and thought the Warden a ‘noisy bore’. M’s death depressed John and brought his own condition home to him. All this I am sure of. So do modify your statement a little! His true friends, whom he adored, were (1) Dadie – could do no wrong; (2) Boothby; (3) Cyril Connolly. With these he felt entirely happy. Also, more or less, with Elizabeth Bowen. And Roy Harrod, whom he thought snobbish and ridiculous, but was bound to by deep old friendship. He was very fond of you, although, of course, he said terrible things, as about us all. He was grateful to Tony Q.fn729 (‘works like a s…, talks like a s…, and isn’t one’), to his own junior colleagues at Wadham, liked Stuart but not really, disliked Freddie (to do with Joan Leigh Fermor,fn730 with whom he was deeply in love), and, oddly enough, devoted to me. He was envious, and not of me alone. He thought I was far too lucky: too much undeserved good fortune: he was deeply irritated by my knighthood. He was against my going to Wolfson (and made a scene on Council which embarrassed everybody). But although I was an acquired taste, I was acquired for life. As of course I owed him a fantastic portion of my whole life. He really did form me in the 1930s, after his adoration of the aristocracy (very strong in the 1920s) came to a deliberate, willed, end. I really do owe him an unbelievable part of what I am, think, feel. So when the OM came (‘a rich man’s CH’, he said to Cyril Connolly) I was terrified of his reaction. I thought he would hate it too much – he did so want it – so I wrote him a perfectly sincere hymn of praise and apology for my getting it rather than him: he rose nobly above his feeling and wrote you (and me too) as he did. It cost him a great deal, I am sure, and was very sweet and heroic. He would have minded less if K. Clark had got it, since he loved him, and was unaware of the Clarks’ steps to avoid him at Christmas: efforts by some of his friends to evade him, as you know, became horrid and contemptible in the last years. I think you go on a bit too much about his envy of me (everyone testifies to it, alas: and Sparrow won’t regret the appalling things he said: and Stuart made some bad blood in his day) – it should, I think, either be balanced by something on the basic devotion which bound us to the end – only when we were alone – it was always marvellous then – terrible in company quite often – or left out or played down as of little importance. Otherwise it singles me out as an object of horrid feelings, which seems to me embarrassing and out of focus. In this connection: do not, I beg you speak of my ‘deprecating’ tact. True, I did always pipe down, else the bile did rise: he was eaten by envy (not jealousy). But not ‘deprecating’ – just terrified – anxious to propitiate – ‘propitiating’ – or even ‘anxious’ to be more correct. I was simply afraid of unprovoked fury: and I did love him much more – towards the end – than I respected him (this was true of all his old friends and everyone in Oxford – including Bob Boothby and K. Clark – not Dadie perhaps?), and he knew, alas, that I had not enough regard for his love – he tried to praise mine – and that was unconvincing and went wrong too. Still, I did, somehow, become a firm fixture in his universe. He thought things came much too easily to me; and thus was offensively critical and life-diminishing, critical of him and of myself. He believed in publishing and not looking behind one – and half knew his books were not much good, and, of course, sometimes believed that, after all, there they were – the shelf of them – shored up against the Enemy: Page,fn731 Gow,fn732 Lobel,fn733 Fraenkel,fn734 Trevor-Roper – the scholars who thought him, some of them, a charlatan and a corrupter of youth (Murray thought that – and all the Germans – and Momigliano, all but Mynorsfn735 and Symefn736 among the authentic). As his obsessive fever – worse than the paranoia and the terror of the blackmailer at the door which never left himfn737 – was fear of death, he was preoccupied by it, and could not keep off the subject. And he was (and this is worth saying something about) deeply, deeply unhappy: after the disaster of the war – no job and all that – no real happiness. The V[ice-]C[hancellorship] had staved things off a bit – he was proud and happy of the big votes he got in elections to Council – but the poacher turned gamekeeper suffered: he longed to be with the old ‘immoral front’ (his phrase), and had cut that possibility off for ever. Then we went for our à deux journeys to Italy in 1947, and often his wounds were bared: and our real friendship was cemented then: too much, alas, the green-eyed goddess puts this out of proportion.
You praise him for his appointments: oh dear! You are a thousand times right: appointments are everything. The Old Boy – when I was on boards of electors with him – started off with one candidate. Then, if he saw the tide turning against him, swiftly switched: the Russian appointments were poor: I asked him why, e.g., he preferred some worthless British Council Greek to Steven Runciman. I got a terrible wigging: Steven was pronounced a worthless Cambridge queen whereas the Greek ‘knows how to treat great men’. He stopped Wade-Gery’sfn738 extension, though he was a friend and admirer, because there was no other way of getting rid of Fraenkel, who was the greatest scholar of his time, though rude to Maurice. This is gradually turning into an indictment of M’s academic role: let me say that he was a super-excellent Vice-Chancellor, and adored those years; and a splendid Warden; they all said he did no homework and cheated and deceived them and was terrible in the last year, but he doubled their size, put them on the map, and they were, rightly, intensely proud of him, and his loyalty to, and defence of, anybody at Wadham, bad, good, indifferent, was passionate, uncompromising and magnificent. Like Brendan at the MOI in the war, after Cooper, morale went up:fn739 nobody could criticize anybody in Wadham with impunity. As an Oxford figure there was none like him: he outshone everyone, more than Sheppardfn740 in Cambridge – and his mere presence made the life of dons and undergraduates more worth living – they felt it, even his detractors, even Boase, Sparrow, Hayter, all the Deans of Christ Church – than any other human being. His scholarship was very erratic: you quote a joke about my busyness: the Russian words, doubtless authentically his, are, alas, illiterate: it is as if one said: ‘From Shakesbeard up of the Miltons’. It is a terrible giveaway and his translations have real howlers in them which a hack would avoid. Nor do I think him an intellectual: his interest in ideas – as opposed to [ ] or spiritual experience – was minimal: and, whether as a result of Joseph or not, he was made uneasy by philosophy. I think your indictment of the inhumanity of intellectuals is generalised from too narrow a Bloomsbury base […]. But Maurice was very uncomfortable about all such; he lived by concrete images, feelings, visions above all, and warm blood.
Do I go too far in picking on bits here and there? Maybe. After all, your piece is of Maurice as you knew him; and if this is what you saw, then in the name of Tolstoy, Bloomsbury and all, this is what you must say, and there’s an end on’t. Three more things: (a) I should, in your place, leave out bits on matutinal habits (what is ‘the brush’?), the call on you in your bedroom, and four-letter words. The particular readers of this book are liable to mild queasiness: der grosse Publikumfn741 is used to it by now, but not this public, even the women whom Maurice loved best – so I think: it is a purely personal squeamishness. (b) The poems: the dirge to Adrian is marvellous, of course, and the bit you quote is very moving: the one about the great rogue Goronwy Rees etc. is, I think, unintelligible without elaborate footnotes. The three All Souls election songs – or the one on, say, Rowse – would be less esoteric. Maurice was, all his life, terrified of his poems falling into the hands of anyone outside the charmed circle.fn742 (c) If you do want me in the piece, with all that truly undeserved praise, which, of course, delights me, then I would beg you to do a little more than simply to say that I was a disciple (which is absolutely true) and say something about my patient swallowing of all those insults reported by kind friends, my acceptance of it as inevitable, given his attributes – it was a price for friendship I was ready to pay – and a word or two on the fact that, despite it all, and my natural discomfort when one of these quips was repeated, a friendship, and a very deep and lifelong one, it remained – while the relationship with, e.g., Sylvester, John Sparrow, Henry Yorke,fn743 was no longer such, though this you will probably not wish to say, if only because you have no direct impression of this.
One more thing: you might talk to just one neutral observer about Maurice and John, Maurice and me, Maurice and Cyril [Connolly]: say to Ann Fleming, whom Maurice adored to his dying day, who may not have adored him, though she gave him much pleasure, and who talks about him and his attitude to you, me, whoever it might be, with a kind of disinterested, very un-malicious penetration. She is surprisingly good on him, and on John too. M’s love of her was greater than for Barbara:fn744 second only, in my time, to that of Joan Eyres-Monsell, who, I suspect, was the greatest single love of his life, of either sex, and who (in some senses) loved him too.
So: I have said too much, and probably been nastier than I meant to be. I react perhaps too strongly when that central nerve of my Oxford life is touched. Discount it all, I beg you. Destroy this compromising document, and if you prefer this, treat it as if it was never written. Your piece is characteristically pro-life, and pro the open word, and brings out all the generous, uncalculating, liberal (the decision not to go to the Greece of the colonels was a terrible sacrifice for him: he asked me; I said he was right; he was very pleased indeed and grateful; I begged him to come to Italy instead), for the young, the reckless, the non-Franks (he supported him, but neither liked nor admired him) – the new, untried, and the reason of the heart. The Dawkins story he came back to again and again.fn745 He did so die. It is a very moving and appropriate finish: both his and yours. I could not read it without unexpected tears.
Love
[Isaiah]
[…]
TO MICHAEL BROCK
4 September 1973 [manuscript]
Paraggi
Dear Michael,
As soon as we had ceased speaking amid (at my end) all that terrible Heathrow din, I was smitten with doubts, as I always am, about everything […]. Yet, on reflection, it seemed to me, as the aircraft shook disagreeably over the Alps, that this is right. Leonard has always taken the line about the hap’worth of tar: & this is a shining example of the rule: Having refused to let drop block E – he & he alone initiated the process which culminated in the present difficulties: the tug of war must & can only be between Universal House & the firms engaged on constructing the College: the buildings are the Wolfsons’ (why did Crossman in the Times call them Wolfsohn: they won’t like that) memorial: we must keep out. […]
As for us, we are surrounded by fires: the 5th in 8 days: near our house: at 1 a.m. & the like: most terrifying: no pumps, no extinguishers, peasants wild with hypotheses about the complicity of local police, municipal authorities, property developers: all to do with propaganda for a road & abolition of preservation: to raise prices. Exciting & disturbing. We may survive.
Isaiah
TO SHIELA SOKOLOV GRANT
24 September 1973
Wolfson
Dear Shiela,
It is really terrible about the Irish visit. The painter, Derek Hill, has asked us to the Wexford Festival, and we have accepted, but then, perhaps rashly, we agreed to go to his house in Donegal as well, because he says he wants to draw Aline. He is a very nice and gifted, but easily irritated man (just like you – I am less irritable, but possibly not so nice and gifted), and since he obtained little publicity for his portrait of me, commissioned by the College, would like, I suspect, for me to circulate copies of it to the daily press which, as you may well imagine, I am not exactly anxious to do. He is now talking about the ‘unveiling’, which, again, I wish to avert. Anyway, I do not wish to provoke him further: he has written sharply to me saying that if all I have available is four or five days in all (and I cannot, in the middle of term, go away for longer) there can be no question of our plunging down to the South – we must return from him via Belfast. So that is another beautiful scheme blown up; I longed to come, and so did Aline, despite your uncalled-for ironies about the style of life to which we are accustomed. But it is evidently not to be this time. The slender, yet hitherto unbroken, thread which has preserved our relationship for forty years must not be allowed to grow thin; I am not afraid of it snapping, only of its wearing so thin through lapse of time and lack of effort that it could become attenuated to the point of invisibility. This must not be allowed to happen. […]
Meanwhile, I really am desolated by the turn of events.
Yours, ‹with fondest love –
love –›
Isaiah
In the early afternoon of 6 October Egyptian and Syrian ground forces launched simultaneous attacks on Israel across the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights. The day chosen was Yom Kippur, the holiest in the Jewish year, and a day of prayer and fasting: the Israelis were caught unprepared, and, at the points of engagement, were outnumbered, and during the next 48 hours the Egyptians and Syrians secured their greatest territorial gains of the war. After some 72 hours Israel’s reservists began a counter-attack: Israeli forces eventually crossed the Suez Canal, driving a wedge 20 miles into Egypt, and recovered the Golan Heights, advancing to within 35 miles of Damascus. On 22 October a US–Soviet-brokered ceasefire was adopted at the UN, and urged on the warring parties: that it eventually came into effect owed much to the shuttle diplomacy of the American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Although the Israelis could claim success in the conflict, they had also sustained serious losses in bitter and prolonged fighting on two fronts, and the mood in Israel after hostilities ended was anything but triumphant. Before the war there was speculation that US policy in the Middle East was changing in response to the country’s need to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia, and also to the more aggressive stance being taken by other oil producers, notably Libya, towards US backing for Israel. The supply and cost of oil was increasingly a factor in the calculations of Western governments, a worrying development for all Jews, whether in Israel or in the Diaspora.
8 October 1973 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Dan,
Thank you very much for your letter of 25 September. This is not a very good day on which to reply to your peaceful enquiry. Even Israel’s worst enemies are unlikely to accuse her of violating the Syrian and Egyptian borders on this particular day; but that is not, alas, the point. I imagine that the Arab motives, apart from the obvious ones, are to create a situation in which the Powers will feel moved to impose a ‘solution’; that whatever ‘solution’ is imposed will be more favourable to the Egyptians, even the Syrians, than the present borders; that the only resistance to this will come from Israel, who will thus, again, be put in the dock as the only body obstructing the peace, the free flow of oil, the security of the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco etc: and that then Mr Kissinger and Mr Brezhnev get together, and twist the arm of Israel and, perhaps, appear to do that to the Arabs as well, which would do something to protect Arab leaders from assassination by Black September, which they would otherwise risk, if they were willing to engage on some peace initiatives themselves. Is this too fanciful? It may well be. At any rate, this is the realm of international relations, about which, as you know, I know nothing. On the assumption that life must go on, letters answered, peaceful enterprises not abandoned in the face of the most worrying and upsetting and embittered events, I will try to answer the points in your letter as if all we were looking forward to was the Feast of the Tabernacles, the Rejoicing of the Law, etc. […]
[Isaiah]
PS I have no idea when this letter will reach you, so I had better hold it back for a day or two, until the situation is a little clearer. We are glued to our sets, so are all the Israelis in and about St Antony’s. The Israel Embassy has told them not to go back – the reservists I mean, so they are frustrated, worried, profoundly sympathetic, morally, politically, to Aline and me.
26 October 1973 [carbon]
Wolfson
Dear Mac,
In addition to the other black clouds by which the world horizon is at present so thickly covered, let me darken a tiny corner of it still further by telling you briefly the sad tale of the buildings of Wolfson College. As a college we are doing quite well – morale is high, as it always is in England under conditions of enforced collective suffering – our finest hour is going on a little too long, but it still remains moderately fine. Academically we are doing quite well, and it is, indeed, despite the inevitable eccentricity of some British academics, of whom we have our share, a far more rational body of persons, both dons and graduates, than e.g. All Souls, or New College, or City University New York, or, dare I say it, even some corners of Harvard seem to me to have been. The situation about the buildings is somewhat different.
The contractors, Messrs Shepherds of York, swore they would complete the building by about a year and a half ago. They have made several similar oaths since then; last May they were convinced that all would be finished by July – there was visible ocular evidence that this was absurd, but the formula continued to be repeated. […]
When will it all be ready? The architects say that if the builders persist in behaving as they have done for the last year or two, there is no answer to this question. The deepest reason for all this is, I suspect, that the builders are in doubts about a satisfactory settlement from Leonard (the situation between Israel and Egypt seems very analogous). Will Mr Macmillan survive to perform the opening say a decade hence? Will the fellows?
I must now come to the official point of this letter. Leonard wonders whether the Ford Foundation would consider matching, or at any rate helping with, the additional grant which will have to be made if the building is to be paid for. I think I can guess your answer, despite Leonard’s wistful memories of two million sterling in 1967 when he was unwilling to match that sum in full. If you would rather disregard my enquiry, I think I could interpret your silence correctly – nevertheless, I should be grateful if you could send me a letter I could forward to Leonard […].
I don’t feel as gloomy as all this sounds – perhaps that is just natural irresponsibility due to the thought that I shall retire from my office in the summer of 1975: there are conclaves and meetings of fellows all over the place to discuss the succession; the atmosphere seems friendly and gay. Do come and see us, both privately and officially. Love to Mary, and from Aline.
Yours,
Isaiah
TO LIONEL TRILLING
8 November 1973
Wolfson
Dear Lionel,
[…] I saw with great pleasure your and Diana’s names on that very dignified and impressive pro-Israel document printed in the New York Times: how much better than the rather vulgar and almost strident document that is being circulated to Oxford dons, and indeed throughout British universities. I signed an incredibly pompous document to The Times,fn746 simply because there was nothing else to sign, and I wanted to line up. No doubt it is easier for Americans at this particular juncture; our Government is now straightforwardly pro-Arab and makes no secret of it; Mr Wilson expresses pro-Israeli views. All oppositions have always been pro-Israel, and all governments pro-Arab: but the cynicism and hypocrisy with which we surrendered to the oil interests does stir people’s consciences, and has induced a sense of mild national humiliation for which both Conservatives and, I suspect, the Arabs, will ultimately pay, both politically and financially – pay not very much, but pay. As for Israel, it is bound to be carved up sooner or later: the fact that the butcher is likely to be flesh of their flesh […] does not make this operation more palatable to them. As Felix Frankfurter’s wife (still living, but in a very sad state) once said to me, ‘They’ (the Jews of Palestine at that time) ‘haven’t a friend in the world. I am all for them.’ With South Africa and Nixon as their only friends, they really do not need all those Arabs and Africans as enemies. If they are tried too hard, they are capable of a gigantic Masada,fn747 by which, in the end, the Chinese alone will profit. But I must not allow my apocalyptic imagination to run too wild.
Yours ever, ‹with love from Aline & to Diana of course of course –›
Isaiah
TO AGNES HEADLAM-MORLEYfn748
26 November 1973 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Agnes,
I was deeply touched by your letter – both by what it said and by the fact that you wrote it at all. The moral stuff of which people are made is, in the end, all that matters. As P. G. Wodehouse said (a quotation much loved by our friend Maurice B. who brought it into many public utterances) ‘The trouble about you, old boy, is that you haven’t a soul, and it’s the soul that delivers the goods.’ All that you say is true and moving: particularly about Sir Alec [Douglas-Home], whose face alone conveys all that you attribute to him. He is much adored by many persons, but never was by me: I too have met him, but cannot talk to him, and have never much wanted to. Of course they will go on in Israel, too stubbornly perhaps, and without a thought of the outside world: but it seems to me that the only difference between Egypt and, say, Libya, is that Egypt thinks that it can destroy Israel by stages, whereas Libya wants one fell swoop; and when Israelis say that ‘the full rights of the Palestinians’ is a polite equivalent for a dissolution of the State of Israel, I should like to believe this to be false or exaggerated, but the evidence is all the other way. The Israelis have been and continue to be unwise in some ways, but not wicked, and their only real friends in Europe have been Adenauerfn749 and Willy Brandt – he told them that he was astonished by the degree of hostility to them – quite independently of the need to keep in with the Arabs – he found in Ted Heath. They feel bitter and are desperate, and I do not blame them and feel more strongly about the whole thing than ever. Did you read Baffy Dugdale’s memoirs?fn750 Entertaining and moving at the same time, I found them. Meanwhile, if the Arabs go on as they are doing, there is a real danger of a huge economic recession in the West, and a vast crisis during the next five years or so before alternative fuels are developed out of solar energy, etc.: which may lead to upsets and violence, and will play into Chinese hands rather too much.
It was marvellous of you to go to the rally – more than I did myself – I feel guilt and gratitude to you. Bless you.
Yours ever,
[Isaiah]
TO NICOLAS NAB OKOV
22 January 1974
Headington House
Carissimo druzhishche! Dearest Starina!fn751
If you cannot read my beautifully articulated manuscript cards, I have no alternative but to have recourse to technical aids. I am glad to hear that you have left your lazarettofn752 and are at home. Perhaps you should not travel quite so much. Remember what Pascal said – ‘Tous les maux du monde vont de ce, qu’on ne reste pas tranquillement dans une chambre.’fn753 You and I are notorious non-practitioners of that art. In spite of his official duties, Chip was: nevertheless, he is no more and all you say about him is entirely true. I enclose a small tribute of my own, of which a copy, I gather, has been sent to Avis, for whom it was principally intended.fn754 I shall always mourn his passing, and so will you: the combination of intelligence, gaiety, cosiness, and what you rightly call his honour and total freedom from Central European characteristics, were a great asset in our lives – quite apart from America, Russia, the world etc. […]
I keep brooding about Israel – it cannot be denied that Kissinger has for the moment saved them from another war with Egypt, which was not all that remote. The entire performance is extraordinary.fn755 […] My impression is that the relationship between the White House and our government here has become somewhat attenuated: I cannot conceive how Kissinger and Douglas-Home can have the faintest rapport: and I do not believe that he and Heath are made for each other; I may be mistaken, but in the interests of the Western world, Western values, Israel […] etc. the Europe–American line must not be totally snapped, even for half an hour. And I feel that this is something to do with the influence of, if not intellectuals in the pure sense, at any rate Kay Graham’s world, which overlaps with ours very considerably. The new British Ambassador, who glories in the beautiful name of Ramsbotham (the Hon. Sir Peter),fn756 who entertained us so nicely in Tehran, is aware of this. I have warmly urged him to cultivate the intelligentsia. I have a feeling that President Johnson was, after all, driven out of power by the universities, that the attack on Nixon, whatever its consequences, is formidable and proceeds from the eggheads – they alone keep up the tension. This is an unusual situation: perhaps it was so in Russia in a way in 1916–17, but people were not conscious of it, at least, not so much […]. Nothing like this has ever happened in England – the Labour Government pretended it was so, but it was not really the case – there were a few economists, statisticians etc., but such intellectuals as there are in England (and there is no real English intelligentsia) were out of account. But in America it is a potent force. In France there was a tornado in 1968 and that was that; in England students occupy buildings but the ultimate effect is not decisive; in America, Kent State made a difference of a radical kind.fn757 I hope someone is recording all this.
In Israel there are two really grave dangers only: one is Jerusalem, which they cannot bring themselves to let go of, intelligibly enough, and which Husseinfn758 must go on demanding if he is to survive. Possibly Kissinger will do the trick again with some enormously elaborate network of a Lebanese type by which there is a complicated system whereby a Jewish Mayor is succeeded by a Muslim, succeeded by a Christian, all the Holy Places are extraterritorialised and have stamps and coins of their own, and a complicated network of little Vaticans intertwine in a semi-internationalised enclave – the Old City – governed by some mixed commission of Israelis and Jordanians. I do not suppose that this would work for long, but it might at least ‘defuse’ the situation for a little while. What would really be fatal to the Israelis would be a Palestinian State on the West Bank. If Hussein takes it, they can tolerate that, I should guess: an independent State would only be used by the Russians and/or the Chinese as a platform for anti-Israeli operations, and would mean the end of Israel as a state. Of that I feel convinced. If there is a referendum under the guns of the terrorists, they will surely vote for Arafat, even though all those Arab lawyers, doctors etc., of whom the towns are full, cannot want that. Still, there is at the moment some kind of gleam of light at the end of the corridor, and this is more than the Israelis hoped for when Aline and I were there and general depression reigned. […] I do not really fear betrayal of Israel: I have a feeling that sheer indignation with the behaviour of England and France in the recent crisis is for the moment enough to buoy up support of Persia, Turkey, Israel etc. against the potentially pro-Russian Arab powers like Syria and Iraq. But I shall desist from all this idle speculation – Aline, my faithful wife, is standing over me and says that I have talked at you for something like an hour now and that it is time to stop. She sends her love to you and to Dominique, and so do I. We shall see you in March: she hopes that you have received her postcards as well as mine from Mishkenot, and that you will forgive my aimless garrulity – the idle reflections of a superfluous person. We are the last representatives of that noble class. My stepson Peter shows strong tendencies in that direction, but he has not had the benefit of the wide Russian steppe, that breadth of soul, that inability to stop.
Yours ever,
тот же старый другfn759
IB
TO AUBREY MORGAN
4 February 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Aubrey
[…] I wrote that little piece about Chip Bohlen principally for his wife, Avis, since I thought that the obituary in the Times, although perfectly adequate so far as the public facts were concerned, did not bring out his private side at all, and I thought that she would want someone to say something about that. I thought it OK. My piece was preceded by a very proper one by Sir W. Hayter, and a slightly absurd one by Patrick Reilly,fn760 who served with him both in Moscow and in Paris, and who simply talked about what a wonderful bag of birds he was able to shoot down in the company of General de Gaulle – that reminded me of The Times of about forty years ago – some things in England do not change much, although our present situation really is beyond words. There is a kind of lack of appetite for action and life, which worries me, as it would you, if you were here; I may be over-pessimistic but both our great parties seem vaguely paralysed by events and look upon them as external forces about which very little can be done, instead of something that can be radically modified by enough energy and imagination. Hence my admiration for Winston and other men of will and feeling, provided they are not monsters or want a form of life which one is against.
But I won’t go on preaching. I am grateful also for Con’sfn761 manuscript note – I am not in the United States at present, although I may be coming for about one week – in and out – to deliver a lecture in Urbana, Illinois, of all places, simply as an excuse for going to the United States – as, you may imagine, I long to do from time to time – it invigorates me as nothing does, no matter how dark the situation may seem. I cannot go away too far for too long because of my mother: she is ninety-four, has ceased to recognise me, but is, nevertheless, alive, and I dare not go away to places from which I cannot return at very short notice fairly rapidly in case I am summoned by doctors to her bedside. Hence, I can only go for short flights within a narrow radius, but seven–ten days in the United States is a risk I am prepared to take. I went to the Holy Land in December, just to see what was happening, and it really is a pathetic scene. Here is a people, quite apart from personal feelings of our own, which thought it had its fate in its own hands and was able to direct itself: indeed, they were obviously much too confident, indeed, rather cocky. Suddenly they feel that they have become the plaything of powers that they cannot control (unlike Britain, which may feel this, but is, in fact, not that, at any rate yet) and are like a boy which has got prizes all the way along until he suddenly fails in some frightfully elementary examination. It is all very well to speak of how good it is to be made to face realities, but it is hideously painful too, and they were in great disarray when I was there, and quarrelling among themselves; and yet, despite all the dangers which still face them – some of them seem convinced that there will be another war in a year or two, which they are not at all sure of winning – their desire for life is very great. It is, in the end, exhilarating to talk to them, although they are talking Hebrew more and more, and English less and less and communication is gradually, for me, becoming not as easy as it used to be.
I continue to be a liberal, as you are. It is obviously much easier to plump for one side or the other and not move along a terribly narrow causeway between extremes – between the old who hate the young, and the young who hate the old, between the pompous establishment on one side and mindless, bearded, somewhat hysterical layabouts on the other. But it cannot be helped. So one is made, and so one must continue (this noble stoicism does not exactly correspond to the inner quaking to which I am liable, but I like to think that I conceal that fairly successfully, at least from the graduates of my own college). I retire in the summer of 1975, and about enough too; at the present I have to consider such problems as what has to be done when a young man asks for married quarters with a lady not strictly his wife, and that sort of thing. I would rather be doing that than be in Heath’s shoes. I do hope we shall meet soon; I look for news of you from John and Ruth.
Yours ever,
[Isaiah]
Marie Berlin died on 13 February after a long illness; she was buried the next day at Willesden Green Jewish cemetery, next to IB’s father, Mendel, who had died in December 1953: ‘She was not a happy or contented widow.’fn762
16 February 1974 [manuscript]
Headington House
Dearest Jean,
Thank you for your note. My mother seems to have died peacefully: the nurse noticed, at about 3 a.m., that she seemed to be breathing less loudly (she had bronchitis of sorts) than before: & then that she had in fact stopped breathing. I was told four hours later. The funeral took place on the next day, and it was all over. In a sense, of course, I had been expecting it for a long time: and tried to imagine how it wd affect me – my mother had ceased to have any contact with [the] external world for some months before she left it – but it was different and much more painful, & slow & cumulative. Not grief: (and of course one wonders if one is a superficial brute: should I not be in deeper distress? Why do I not cry? How can I, as I obviously can, face the world? Should I not [be], am I not, ashamed?) but a sense of utter solitude: Verlassenheit:fn763 gone is not only the oldest root in one’s life which bound one to some infinitely solid & indestructible past on which one leant, half consciously, in all crises & moments of appalling discouragement & self contempt, but also the one & only human being of whom one knew that, no matter what, she wd always be pleased to be with one solely because one was who one was: & not for any attributes – because one was this or that, or loved her, or helped her or whatever: this is instinctual & irreplaceable & the snapping of that cord is final & leaves one as a kind of accidental being, without a purpose, without a divine plan, – I understand the existentialists very well: one exists: but one might just as well not have been: it makes no difference. That is what I feel. No doubt it will pass: time does heal: but it is an eerie sensation […].
Love
Isaiah
TO NICOLAS NAB OKOV
19 February 1974
Headington House
Dearest Nicolas,
So, it has happened at last, and my mother is no more. True, at 94, and for the last three months out of all contact with the external world – she grew smaller and smaller, thinner and thinner, until she looked like an immobile waxwork – I used to dread seeing her, and understood why Plato, Christian tradition etc. looked upon the body as a mere prison of the soul, a mere lantern not intrinsically connected with the light or darkness within it. Latterly she developed a mild bronchitis, and the nurse who looked after her reported that she was breathing somewhat heavily, the doctor pacified me and said there was no need to go to London, especially as I was having flu at the time; then the nurse, who sat in her room, telephoned to say that her breathing, which had been perfectly even, suddenly became, it seemed to her, perfectly quiet; when she went to look she saw that she was dead. I have no objection to expiring in this fashion: better than Stravinsky in hospital with a diagnosed disease; she died last Wednesday, the 13th, three days short of 94; on Thursday we buried her in Willesden Cemetery by my father, on whose tombstone there is a poem in the medieval style written by an enthusiastic but not very gifted rifmoplyot,fn764 who performed the function of Cantor in the family synagogue. He praised his virtues in rhyming verse modelled on the 11th century Arabo-Hebrew poets of Spain. The inscription on my mother’s tablet will be somewhat plainer, and will not record her one-day’s apprenticeship to Rimsky-Korsakov.fn765
Although I went over this event a great many times in my mind, when it actually happened it was as if the roof of the house had lifted, and although Evelyn Waugh thinks that this opens one’s gaze to the radiance of eternity, in my case it merely induced a sense of homelessness, the snapping of the last root which connected me with my origins. Dear Niouta [Kallin], and dear Wolff,fn766 and dear Salome appeared at the funeral, which moved me deeply; so did Mr Edelberg, who used to sell chocolates to her, and wept in a welter of German-Russian Riga broken phraseology; Mr Edelberg used to be a fellow-traveller, but moved sharply to the right at the age of 80; he was known as Chokoladnik, and called himself that. The grocer, the greengrocer and the butcher sent representatives – not dovol´no,fn767 as Turgenev so grandly remarked. […]
I had always supposed that when my mother died I should experience, in addition to a sense of desolation, a certain shameful sense of relief, as people often say they do. I experience none. There is obviously something wrong with my concept of liberty.
Yours ever,
Исайяfn768
TO STUART HAMPSHIRE
23 February 1974 [manuscript]
Headington House
Dear Stuart,
No, not a dull blow exactly: but a sense of desolation and amputation: as if an entire world of words, symbols, allusions, reference had vanished. And of course, guilt: I shd have seen her more often when she was lonely and unhappy, shd have been more patient when I did, shd not have contradicted what seemed to me (this is always so in family relations, I know, and yet …) obstinate absurdities, or fantasies, or prevarication: and so on: all this comes lashing back at me now and will go on doing so, less persistently, I suppose, with time: but I am ashamed of the legend of what a devoted son I was: the truth is different: she irritated me too often and too easily. Having said all this, I must admit that her loss of contact with the external world did make the end easier to bear for me at least: and my debt to her is gigantic as you know too well: all the Herderian beliefs are founded on the rich & firm tradition in which I was brought up for ten years.
You once remarked that I now was closer in my opinions to those of my mother than I was in the late thirties: I cannot make up my mind about that: I doubt it: I remember you said to me on the boat to Ireland in 1936 “I thought I was talking to a socialist and a positivist: but I find you are a Zionist and a phenomenologist.” I was & I am: ora e sempre:fn769 and you? were & are a patriot and an intentionalist & Hume-rejecter, a Vichian & quasi-Hegelian rerum naturafn770 ontologist: are you not? in scientific-Freudian clothing? I am convinced of it.fn771
My dogmatic confidence in my own judgment, which used to irritate Maurice so, comes from my mother (she liked Maurice very much). I am glad you felt at ease with her: no doubt her scrutiny of basic values was sharpened by being in such absolute exile: Sir George [Weidenfeld], Goronwy, Burgess, were shot down at once; Rachmilevichfn772 for lack of heart; Scholem for vanity and envy; & so on: Herbert H. she pitied, you passed with flying colours (Freddie too was sent spinning): she had enormous vitality, fantasies of what she might have been, passionate love of Ibsen, Hamsun,fn773 D. H. Lawrence, Gorky’s Lower Depths,fn774 Verdi, Carmen, all forms of full blooded self assertion, and like Maurice, dislike of those who shush people, recoil from coarse vitality, and display refined, thin lipped disapproval. After academic relationships and artificial milieus, talking to her did revive me: & I shall miss that (& have missed it) quite apart from all other obvious feelings, very much indeed: & I suppose I do owe my Judaeocentricity (as you like to think of it) to her & her world & Russian-Jewish cultural roots, to her: my father had none of that. Oh dear: the disappearance of Hollycroft Avenue is a genuine trauma. It was much more real than any other home I’ve ever had: after it all else are chambres meublé[e]s.fn775 I am sure you understood that better than anyone at all: I am glad you did & do: it is a source of great comfort.
yrs
Isaiah
The Berlins spent ten days in America in March 1974; IB lectured at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign on the evening of 15 March, and afterwards they spent time in Washington and New York before returning to England on Saturday 23 March.
26 April 1974 [manuscript]
Headington House
Dear Walter,
Your letter arrived while I was in America for about a week: else I shd have told you earlier how grateful for it I was and am. My mother died most peacefully: at one moment she was breathing; at the next one she ceased. I need not tell you what, no matter how often and how vividly one anticipates it, when it comes, it is like: for you know it. My mother was indeed a very fully formed Jewish personality, and was a proud and worthy representative of a tradition and a culture: my beliefs and outlook, such as they are, derive directly from the firm & unswerving Jewish education I was given: even more from her dauntless character which I, with my hesitations, self doubt, lack of absolute values or that magnificent heart-wholeness which she exhibited, could never really measure up to. My life, at my advanced age, is cracked by this: it is as if a huge part of my heart had blown off. I loved my father, but although I felt terribly sad, his death did not sweep away my past; my mother’s death has broken a vital link: I am happy to see that your father is ninety: long may he live: but when he is gathered to his fathers, you will, I think, also feel a sense of separation, a gulf to divide you, from the past: painful and eerie. My mama was a doughty fighter for all Jewish values: anima naturaliter Sionista:fn776 I feel very feeble and inadequate when I think of her: but the older I get, the more I find that I return to her firm values: perhaps this is the ossification of old age: what people call becoming reactionary: if so, I cannot help it: beside her firm view of persons & what counts in them, & in particular the emancipation of the enslaved, colonialized, Jews, half resentful, half acquiescent, half envious of, half ashamed of longing to be accepted by, strangers – on all this I owe my views to her. She was a very shatterer of illusions: Emile Marmorsteinfn777 and Abie Halpern,fn778 who were much given to them, quailed before her: she was not a compromiser & lacked sympathy with human weaknesses: in that respect like Weizmann, Moses, B.G., etc: no Aharonism,fn779 no appeasement: she admired resolution, vitality, power: wholly unlike her sister, Ida Samunov, who succoured the halt, lame, blind, long before she became one herself. But I must not go on so: thank you ever so much: may we soon meet again. And love from Aline & to Beaty.fn780
Yours,
Isaiah
TO ALAN BULLOCK
30 April 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Alan,
[…] I know nothing about Bevin before 1945fn781 – at least nothing save what was in the newspapers, etc. The Labour Party was mildly pro-Zionist while in opposition, as all oppositions have tended to be: it is only when they are the government that the policy, for obvious reasons, changes radically: personal feelings probably have little to do with it. Thus, Bevin certainly must have appeared on some Zionist platform, or signed some pro-Zionist resolutions, and, as you say, Weizmann […] probably did try to deal with Labour politicians, on the assumption that they would be friendly. Do I believe that Bevin was anti-Semitic? No more so, before 1945, I daresay, than any other normal trade unionist. I think that all horny-handed sons of toil tend to look with suspicion and some dislike on bourgeois intellectuals, Jews, diplomats, dons etc. etc., much as, for example, say, Khrushchev did. This is instinctive, natural, true I should think of all countries. But I suspect that when Bevin disliked, he disliked more strongly than most; and that when he went to the Foreign Office, the people there were at once so nervous and anxious to please – and hard-working too – that he found ascendancy there exceedingly easy. Those who tried to guide him – e.g. Frank Roberts – he conceived a dislike for; those who flattered him openly, and grossly, like Bob Dixonfn782 – and I saw this in Moscow in November 1945 (the only time I ever met Bevin) – he accepted. I have never seen so much butter piled so openly and hugely as was done by Bob Dixon and Clark-Kerr,fn783 who was Ambassador in Moscow. All this went down extremely well; and Clark-Kerr very cynically told us all that that was precisely the technique he was going to use, and my God, it worked.
I say all this only to underline the fact that shrewd, tough, highly intelligent and large-minded as Bevin undoubtedly was, he was endowed with a vanity which was also colossal; and those who abraded it, for example, Laski, he disliked (and so did you, and so did I); those who did not, like G. D. H. Cole, he got on with – or so Cole certainly supposed (I never saw them together) – because Cole, although he had his own vanity, was transparently simple and sincere and dedicated, and did not, apparently, irritate Bevin. So it was not just a question of left-wing intellectuals as such that Bevin disliked – only those who were awkward with him, or frightened of him, or not at all on the same wavelength, and that, I daresay, went for Zionist officials, few of whom could be described as left-wing intellectuals. He did, of course, have one or two Jewish friends – notably Montague Meyer,fn784 whose sonfn785 is such a friend and ex-employer of Wilson. I knew Mr Montague Meyer – he owned a farm in the country in which Bevin stayed – for he was a timber-merchant and did business with my father. He was not at all a nice man. He was able, ruthless, and very clear about his values. He once said to my father, ‘Remember, Mr Berlin: I am not a gentleman above £5,000.’
I think Charles Webster is probably right: I do not think that Bevin had much to do with Jews of one kind or another before 1945, but that famous phrase about ‘wanting to get to the head of the queue’ came tripping very naturally from his tongue. But I agree with you: I think his anti-Semitism was probably of an average kind, and would have played no part in his general attitudes and policies, if it were not for Palestine and 1945. After that, I think he conceived an image of Palestine as a country full of Laskis, clever, quick, specious, glossy, arrogant, ghastly, doing down a lot of simple, slightly brutal, but essentially decent Arab Bevins, stimulated thereto by a lot of fat, cigar-smoking Jewish capitalists in New York, who did not go themselves, but sent leaky ships in which some of the Laskis tended to be drowned, but those who landed bedevilled the British administration and the simple Arab folk who should have been unionised before now. Something like that. I do not think this is altogether a caricature.
I have no specially hostile feelings about Bevin – but when I saw him in Moscow in 1945 (as I have told you before), I had never seen anyone so xenophobic and so vain. There is just one remark that I remember. Someone made some critical remark about Stalin. He said, ‘I don’t know why you say that – he’s just another fellow trying to make his way along; nothing wrong in that’, which was quite funny. I have no evidence whatever for special anti-Semitism on Bevin’s part before 1945, or indeed, evidence about anything to do with him at all; but then, a good many leaders of the Labour Party, for example, Dalton,fn786 who put in a plank into the Labour platform of 1945 which went beyond the wildest dreams of the Zionists,fn787 was personally distinctly anti-Semitic, as anybody who knew him will testify. So was Attlee (as Roy Jenkins could tell you), so was Herbert Morrisonfn788 (as John Foster could tell you). The only one who was not – in a relevant position – was Creech Jones,fn789 who was terrified of Bevin, and did complain in private that Bevin’s anti-Semitism went a bit too far, beyond the norm; Christopher Mayhewfn790 is, in this sense, a direct descendant of all Bevin’s attitudes, but would claim, I think, not to be anti-Semitic at all, though, in fact, by now he certainly is quite deeply so, unlike, say, Beeley, who is not, for all his passionate anti-Zionism. […]
Yours,
[Isaiah]
At a meeting of the Council of the British Academy on 22 May 1974 the question of the successor to Sir Denys Page as President was considered, and a strong consensus emerged in favour of IB. He was unanimously elected at the Annual Meeting of the Academy on 10 July, there being no other nominations. Henceforth he would have to be more discreet in his comments on academic matters, in public at least. In an interview with the Dutch journalist Kornelis Pollfn791 earlier that year he had indulged in a characteristic ‘boutade about sociologists’, denouncing ‘the mumbo-jumbo that often passes for scientific terminology’.fn792 He afterwards wrote to Poll:
I wish I thought that I had not said these things – but I fear, knowing myself as I do, that I most probably did: for I certainly said something of the sort, though not so sharply or offensively, more than twenty years ago in an English periodical,fn793 and I have not altogether changed my opinions since. I spoke with vehemence because I thought that what I was saying before was becoming a little dull, and seemed to bore you, and ended by boring myself: so I switched to a subject on which I hold sharp, though not necessarily just or acceptable, views. What I remember very clearly is that I did say that there was much sociology that was extremely useful to social workers of many kinds […]. I then added that in the past there have been sociologists who made bold and important generalisations, whether valid or not, very well worth investigating – […] that men of this calibre have formulated generalisations which, if true, would make a considerable difference to men’s lives: what I went on to say was that a good many academic sociologists, the vast industry that sociology has become, do not do this; and then I made all those jokes which you, to my distress, so faithfully report.fn794 I remember asking you particularly not to mention this, as it was a mere squib, an exaggeration, intended to provoke, and to be made in private, but not a balanced judgement for which I am ready to accept responsibility: any decent sociologist (‘my best friends’ – this was a typical piece of irony which I hoped you would not report – indeed, you promised me not to) would reject with justified indignation an attack upon serious specialists because of the excesses and absurdities of their less gifted or less scrupulous colleagues. I am ashamed, I must confess to you, to appear before Dutch, or indeed any, readers as someone who does not recognise the genius of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sociologists […], nor of the more brilliant of our own contemporaries.fn795
In mid-May, at around the time that he was approached about becoming the next President of the British Academy, IB wrote again to Poll, further qualifying his remarks.
TO KORNELIS POLL
27 May 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Mr Poll,
It is I who plainly owe you an apology. I am very sorry indeed to have moved you even to slight anger – as you may imagine, this is the last thing that I should have wished to do, as it all seems to me ultimately and principally my own fault. I know that I talk much too fast, swallow my words and sentences, and cannot complain if people sometimes misunderstand – this has happened before and I ought to have learnt by past experience not to let myself be interviewed by the most sympathetic, humane and civilised persons, in their interest as much as my own. […]
Now, as to sociology etc., believe me, I did beg you most seriously, and not half-jokingly, not to quote me on this particular topic – indeed, I told you about the awful trouble which an irresponsible statement of this nature on my part had caused me at Harvard and elsewhere. I certainly meant to draw a contrast between empirical sociology, which can certainly be useful, if nothing else, and grand generalisations which are seldom if ever arresting enough to be capable of changing our convictions or behaviour, even if they are true. If you tell me that I did not say this to you, I do, of course, believe you entirely – one sometimes remembers what one knows oneself to believe rather than what one actually said – and this must be so in this case. I am now convinced that I did not say this and you could not possibly have reported it. What worried me, of course, was the possibility that these remarks might be taken seriously: I am about to undertake a task which may involve me in activities that may make some difference to British sociologists – and the last thing I would wish them to believe is that I have a rooted prejudice against them as a body. Perhaps I have; but I certainly intend to do my very best to behave as if I had not, as fairly and impartially as I possibly can. If they read your piece, their suspicion of me (for which there may, indeed, be some basis, I fear) will be greatly strengthened, and this would certainly make my task much more painful and difficult. This, as well as concern for justice and truth, moved me to write to you as vehemently as I did. I wish I could believe that a sociologist reading the statements attributed to me would take them to be a harmless, ‘half-joking’ piece of deliberate caricature. If I were a sociologist, I think I might take offence, and look upon the author of these remarks as a dogmatic, prejudiced, old-fashioned Oxford obscurantist, an enemy of all true progress, which courageous pioneers and innovators are fighting for against the conservative resistance of hidebound, prejudiced, traditionalist, philistine members of the reactionary establishment. This, too, may be a caricature, but it seems to me much closer to the beliefs and emotions of most sociologists in my country than I like to believe. […]
At the age of 65 I ought to have known myself well enough not to have allowed myself to stray into all those paths merely because I enjoyed our talk so much. It really is my fault, and a proper apology is certainly due to you.
Yours sincerely,
[Isaiah Berlin]
TO AMITZUR ILANfn796
6 June 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Amitzur,
I have read half your thesis with much enjoyment and instruction and fascination. You tell the story very vividly as a political tale of pressures and policy, and I shall write to you again when I have finished reading – I must interrupt it now in order to examine in the Politics B.Phil.
So far, I have the following comments to make: I do not believe that Weizmann or Wise were simply deceived by Roosevelt, though, of course, they were to some extent taken in by his easygoing affability. You are perfectly right when you say that until, say, 1943 or so, Roosevelt, who did not go into the matter deeply, thought that some arrangement acceptable to Zionists could be fixed up by some means or other, and that after strategic political and economic considerations began to weigh on him more heavily in midwar, he became more cautious and secretive, and began to play seriously with the Arabs. Nevertheless, by temperament he was inclined, as you surely also think, to keep all options open and all the balls in the air, for as long as he possibly could: he jollied along the Jews and the Arabs, and everybody else, without formally making up his mind about what he would do in the end, postponing or ignoring issues if they became too awkward, and thereby irritating his own government departments and cabinet and foreign powers, who could never pin him down unless the matter became crucial. I daresay that he would, in the end, have let down the Jews, particularly after the meeting with Ibn Saud – or if there was too much produced [sic] he would have backtracked on that too. I do not think that Weizmann was unaware of this ‘artful dodger’ aspect of the great President: but he had poor cards to play and assumed, I still feel rightly, that given Roosevelt’s immense popularity and personal power, he stood a better chance of any degree of success by negotiating with him, and the important figures in Washington, than by relying on agitation among Jews and other sympathisers, which, if it went too far, would (as in fact it sometimes did) exasperate and antagonise those who, in fact, made the policy. The part he played in getting the Negev from Truman showed that this policy of personal diplomacy sometimes worked wonders for him.fn797 […]
I did not expect you to agree with me about the fact that Israel was built in Weizmann’s image: yet I still say that the State which emerged in 1948 – mixed trade-union/capitalist, politically and emotionally left of centre, a society with a mixed economy, uncommitted to any one social or political doctrine, governed by institutions inherited from and influenced by the British Mandatory [sic], parliamentary, loose in texture, inclined towards the West from the beginning – was much more Weizmannite in conception than anything that Berl K.fn798 or BG or either socialists or Revisionists officially wanted. The later evolution of Israel is another matter: especially the history of Mapai and its right wing opponents,fn799 which certainly abandoned the Lib– Lab Weizmannite non-ideology, at least in part. About that too we might argue.
Meanwhile, thank you very much for sending me your piece, which I only stopped reading with the greatest reluctance – the B.Phil. theses are terribly dreary.
Yours sincerely,
[Isaiah]
TO MCGEORGE BUNDY
22 July 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Mac,
I was very sorry, and so was Aline, that you could not visit Oxford in June – I think you would have enjoyed it and even perhaps (who knows?) have been impressed by the Wolfsonianum. I still cannot get them to accept Romulus and Remus as the emblem – I cannot pretend not to understand why not. I have a very fine she-wolf on my walls which I conceal when Leonard W. pays me visits.
As you know, we have our formal opening on 12 November when we shall have the Chancellor, the Rt Hon. Harold Macmillan, Sir Isaac and Mr Leonard and their ladies, members of the Wolfson College Trust and the Wolfson Foundation (I wonder if Lord Z[uckerman] will honour us; we shall certainly invite him), and so on, followed by five to six hundred assorted figures, all of whom will have to stand while I ramble inconsequently, followed by pithy remarks by Leonard and, I hope, one of his marvellous orations by the Chancellor, who will declare the buildings open (although they will clearly have been that for some time). What about the Ford Foundation? Would you like to be represented by anyone? […]
I ought to add that the National Union of Students have announced that there will be a nationwide series of demos in a week in November – it is sure to be our week on the principle that the worst always happens. Arab terrorists may seek to assassinate Sir Isaac, Leonard, me etc. etc. Irish terrorists collaborating with them may wish to do the same if Mr Edward Heath accepts Leonard’s insistence that he be present too as his guest.fn800 Some of these things are not quite as improbable as one might think – far from it, alas – I thought I would just add this, having just had a talk with the police. I shall feel some relief if I survive at 7 p.m. on 12th, when all that remains is the College dance, unlikely to be of central interest even to the students, who have started to boil just as yours have subsided.
Meanwhile, my successor, the Hon. Sir Henry Fisher, wonders if it would be a good thing for him to present himself to the Ford Foundation and meet yourself and, perhaps, some members of the Foundation. While I do not feel that this is urgent, he would rather like it, and would be prepared to go to New York for the purpose. I honestly do not think that he is doing it in the hopes of favours to come (although he may), but as an elementary courtesy. […]
His chief rival, as you may have heard, was Michael Brock, to whom I remain deeply devoted and whose part in building up this establishment was so far ahead of anybody else’s that his hopes of succession were perfectly natural and justified. All choices involve losses, and many involve acute disappointment – he has, of course, behaved beautifully, as one would expect, and will be staying on, at any rate for the time being. Fisher is being very nice to him and I am deeply grieved on his behalf, as is half the College, more than half if you include the graduates, who have no voice in these matters, but who love him greatly. The majority (technically only a recommendation to the University Council) was a perfectly clear one, and Sir Henry Fisher got nearly two thirds of the votes, and I think he will do very well if he is ready to delegate enough of his work (I was rather too good at that, but nothing disastrous seems to have happened in spite of it). The partnership with Brock was intimately happy, and I look on the whole thing with great pleasure and, probably, not enough guilt – all thanks to you, as you well know, without whom Leonard would not have budged a millimetre. There is no doubt that there is a clear sense in which it is all your fault, although I am ready to accept some share in the blame, although so far no one has said a cross word, not even dear Lord Z. who is immensely affable when we meet.
I leave in mid-March – so that is when my successor wants to enter upon his office – and shall then be an old retired person. I look forward to that greatly – you and Maryfn801 must come and stay if you can. In the spring you shall be invited to the Annual Banquet of the British Academy – that is as remarkable collection of academics as has ever been assembled under one roof – say the word and a handsome engraved invitation will be sent to you. This is the last piece of patronage I am ever likely to have. There is nobody I would so much enjoy extending it to you as yourself.
Yours ever,
[Isaiah]
WALTER EYTAN
22 July 1974
[Wolfson]
[Dear Walter,]
I was very sorry to miss you on the 18th. I knew I would have to and I wrote to your father so – I do admire his magnificent control of all his faculties and senses: even my mother was not as sound of limb and spirit as he is at that age. As for the British Academy, I was assured that if I declined there would be no President. Nobody else seemed anxious to take on the job. I pointed out all my clear shortcomings, but as I am giving up this College next March I had no real valid excuse except incompetence, which, in the past, has not proved fatal to that institute. You are quite right about the need for a sense of humour – academics are not the easiest of men, as you well know, and there is really no other way of lowering splendid outbursts of violent feeling which from time to time punctuate academic discussions about, e.g., candidates for election and distribution of grants. I hope to have something to gossip with you about in that kind of connection.
Yours ever,
[Isaiah]
TO ARTH UR LOURIE
22 July 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
[Dear Arthur,]
It was characteristically kind of you to send me that very nice cable – all I can say is that the job is not at all a sinecure and involves having to make speeches, negotiate with the Government and other similar things which I dislike acutely and am not at all good at. Why then did I accept? Sheer vanity, I expect, a secret passion to go on being called President of something, and general folly. I suspect that the reason for my being chosen is that all the really formidable scholars knock each other out, and I owe this honour to my Shazar-likefn802 nature, except that in his own way he was really a very good speaker and inspired quite a lot of American Rabbis – a thing I am conspicuously incapable (and not very desirous) of doing. Thank you ever so much and my love to Jeannett.
[Isaiah]
In the early hours of 17 June 1972 the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC, were broken into. Statements by the suspects that they were working on behalf of a key member of the campaign to re-elect President Nixon were strenuously denied by the White House, and that November Nixon won a landslide victory at the polls. But two investigative reporters at the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, spearheaded a classic piece of investigative journalism that eventually exposed the administration’s involvement in criminal activities designed to secure the President’s re-election. After a protracted legal process during which Nixon further abused the privileges of his office, refusing to hand over tapes of Oval Office conversations implicating him in criminal conspiracy, the Senate prepared to vote for impeachment. To avoid this Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974. Though never indicted, he was later pardoned for all Watergate-related crimes by his successor, Gerald Ford. The pardon did not extend to members of his staff, some of whom were later tried and imprisoned for their part in ‘Watergate’.
TO ROWLAND BURDON-MULLER
11 September 1974 [manuscript]
Venice
Dear Rowland,
Thank you ever so much for your letter: indeed I remember telling you how unattractive I found Nixon when he came to London vice Eisenhower, to attend some solemn function – a memorial to the unknown G.I. – I think. He went on to Oxford where he won golden opinions: not just from the radical A. J. P. Taylor who – largely in order to swim against the stream of respectable opinion – claims he found him charming – but the Rhodes Scholars, mostly Democrats, who were taken with him. I argued in vain: they did remember the dirty Californian campaign, Helen Gahagan Douglas,fn803 Governor Brownfn804 and all; but it all seemed vague and past. In Italy & France, of course, all this indignation seems bizarre: all politicians are crooks, mostly to line their own pockets – Nixon at least did it to increase his power & that of his junta – what is so shocking about that? At our time of life? His only crime was to have been found out etc. Some of the more squeamish ones do rather recoil before the gangster argot of the published tapes: but the rest – and my dear friend John Sparrow, who hates high minded liberal sentiments, wrote a long letter to the Times declaring that Nixon had been hounded by the press: how could justice be obtained in such an atmosphere etc.?fn805 But by and large the English feel much as the Americans do: the French, Germans, Italians, do not. The Anglo-Saxon countries think “the Continent” cynical, the accused believe the Anglo-Americans to be deeply hypocritical. This is like the nineteenth century. The histories of our time will give very different versions: Kissinger will emerge as a major transformer of international relationships. His CIA connections, Chile, etc. will be forgotten or condoned: Nixon will emerge oddly: more intelligent than Harding,fn806 a man of bold initiatives, yet evidently blind not only to ordinary moral considerations but to the reactions of his own people: with a deep psychological flaw, a crony of gangsters and crooks, a great deceiver and con-man, yet also self deceived to a degree: all this quite apart from his bad character and crimes. Now there is the row about Ford’s pardon.fn807 The desire to forget if not to forgive is intelligible: people recoil from a long trial, appeals, new trials, which block out more politically important issues, & continue the nightmare: & yet reverence for law, constitution, justice is bound to be overwhelming in a nation whose bonds are not cultural or racial or religious or even linguistic or dynastic etc. but founded on a set of written principles which are evidently being flouted: Ford is behaving like a monarch, a prince who can pardon freely: I see this is painful to Americans even if they hate & despise Nixon.
Meanwhile my friend Mrs Graham emerges as the triumphant victor in this great imbroglio: I wish her well: she has behaved with much courage – but if she hadn’t been rich … I do see what the Left feel & mean.fn808 Personally I wd rather they went on with the trials: amnesties are not for malefactors of great wealth or power, as T. Roosevelt used to call them.
Meanwhile here we are in Venice where I am due to deliver a lecture at the Fondazione Cini this afternoon: in English which nobody here will understand: done rapidly & nervously, as always by me, when in unfamiliar surroundings – followed by dinner with Italian Profs – a seminar tomorrow morning, God knows in what language – followed by luncheon with the Conte Cini, the founder & benefactor, an old Fascist gerarc{h}a (I suspect) no better than Nixon, if less influential. Does the statute of limitations hold after 30 years? Shd we give our moral feelings a holiday vis-à-vis all the French & Italian aristocracy, old & new, who behaved so dubiously? Are we to forget say the Duchess of Windsor’sfn809 pro-Nazi sentiments & not mention them before the surviving friends who paint pathetic pictures of her loneliness, deafness, isolation? Is the opposite only vindictive? Does one remain in the same room with Sir O. Mosley and his wife? I shd love to hear your views on this.
And now I must go & prepare the lecture which nobody will understand – a torture to all concerned –
with much affection –
Isaiah
TO BRUCE PHILLIPSfn810
1 October 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Mr Phillips,
I reply to your letter of 5 September, about the discussions between Miss Charvetfn811 and Professor Freeborn about Belinsky. I must begin by making it clear that I am perhaps not a good person to consult in this connection, since my opinion of Professor Freeborn’s writings is no better than his of mine: and that is certainly not at all high. […]
Let me, despite this, try to put the matter as objectively as I can. It seems to me that the proposition that Belinsky’s life and works are ‘curiously separate’ is the very opposite of the truth. Professor Freeborn rightly says that Belinsky has been ‘frozen into the progressive pose of a piece of official Soviet statuary’ by Soviet critics. But from this it does not follow that Belinsky’s life is separable from his views. There is no man whose life and writings are more intimately intertwined. This is true not only of his letters – which are among the most moving written in Russian – but also of his critical essays, and entire literary work, on which his reputation and influence, both in his own lifetime and after, depended and still depend. Whether or not Belinsky was ‘neurotic and ailing’ is comparatively irrelevant to the intensely personal character of his tone, the fact that he transmuted the philosophical doctrines, German or French, into his own personal experience and idiom – this, whether he understood or misunderstood Kant, Fichte,fn812 Schiller, Hegel, Comte, the young Hegelians and so on. Belinsky was always preaching, and it is the painfully genuine depth of feeling, the unimpeachable integrity, the moral passion which he pours into his succession of constantly changing positions that is responsible for the enormous impact that his personality and life and words made on his contemporaries, and altered the direction of Russian writing, both by direct influence and reaction against it during the century that followed his death in 1847. The fact that his life, feeling, writing are all of a piece is by now a truism, stressed by all who have written about him, so that to seek to divorce his opinions (and their philosophical sources) from his life and relationships with contemporaries seems to be astonishing – more eccentric, in his case, than it would be in that of any other writer. Contemporaries with whom his life was bound up – Bakunin, Turgenev, Katkov, Botkin, Herzen, Nekrasov – were subject to the same foreign influences, read the same philosophical texts, and the whole life of that circle – the founding fathers of the Russian intelligentsia – is unintelligible without some knowledge and understanding of their metaphysical and moral opinions, as well as their personal circumstances and characters and histories. This needs rather more than – or at any rate something different from – efficiency in literary analysis. The standard life of Belinsky, written in the 1870s by Pypin,fn813 and the essays by Ivanov-Razumnikfn814 would be worth translating even now provided that they were furnished with an expert introduction.
I can only say that when I write or talk about this subject, which I have done now for more years than I can remember, I could not conceive of omitting constant references to the ‘intellectual climate’, which in turn presupposes some grasp of Western, and not merely Russian, intellectual history: one might perhaps write about Dostoevsky or Tolstoy without this – with far more difficulty about Dostoevsky – but in the case of Belinsky it would stultify the subject. This may sound somewhat sweeping, but I think it is no more than the obvious truth. As for psychological studies of writers in the past – say, a quasi-psychoanalytical approach – these seldom seem convincing to me, unless done by an expert at once singularly cautious, knowledgeable and imaginative, e.g. Erikson on Luther.fn815
This is my view for what it is worth, but perhaps others, better qualified than I, may think differently.
Yours sincerely,
[Isaiah Berlin]
TO NOEL ANNAN
17 October 1974
Wolfson
Dear Noel,
Thank you for ‘Man of Action’fn816 – it really is an idiotic title: considering that the other men of action are David Cecil, Ernst Gombrich, Stephen Spender, John Wainfn817 etc., it seems marvellously ludicrous, as the BBC recognise. There is a party there that wishes to abolish it on the grounds that the hour could be better spent in broadcasting contemporary British works – there is no prospect that would depress me more, but do not, as Namier used to say, spread this too far.
As for my retirement, I look forward to it more than I can say – the burdens of the British Academy are quite enough for my back. As for the rest, I shall spend time on some very obscure topics in the field of the history of ideas – at once obscure and difficult without scholarly training, pedantic without being precise, general without being of interest to anyone outside a very narrow circle.
[…] Toscanini. Of course he altered things. I do indeed know the strange tempo of, for example, the third movement of the Eroica, and he tended to fly things through – especially in Mozart, which he was not good at […]. What I meant was that, while he was actually conducting and one saw him as well as heard him, the authority was such that one believed at the time that this and only this was the truth – the intensity and the seriousness and the sublime terribilità totally subdued one – not exactly pleasure, only absorption and a kind of terror. The tautness spread to oneself, and all other interpretations seemed thin or vulgar for years afterwards. And still do: save for [Bruno] Walter in Mozart and Schubert, Beecham one can never tell when – he was very bad and very good depending on the mood etc. – and Klemperer in Beethoven and, I suppose, Mahler. The rest are not fit to tie the shoelaces of these men. All arts have their beginning, rises and peaks. Conducting was invented in Paris in the late 1830s, rose to a great height between 1870 and 1914 – Toscanini was the greatest exponent, unless Mahler was, and then elaboration and decline. So Vico; so, I fear, Spengler;fn818 but I think this is true of a given period of art; and (a truism) Toscanini was the actual Everest, Karajan and Solti are mere Apennines covered with villas; the pure white ice and snow – even the luxuriant hills and valleys (Furtwängler)fn819 – are no more.
Yours,
Isaiah
TO DOROTHY SHIRLEYfn820
18 October 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Mrs Shirley,
I am most grateful to you, and, indeed, deeply touched by your letter about the musical programme that I was responsible for. I wish we were not called ‘Men of Action’ – it sounds like a hollow parody when one thinks of David Cecil, Professor Gombrich, John Wain and myself! I am glad you feel like this about ‘Casta diva’fn821 – it is certainly what the angels sing. I heard Callas sing it, not on that terrible occasion of which you speak in Rome, but in Covent Garden twice, and in Rome in the Teatro Argentina at least once. She sang it marvellously, with wonderful regal dignity and splendour. Nor have I heard her record of it; I daresay it is better than Ponselle’s.fn822 But I was introduced to it by Rosa Ponselle – and I remain loyal to her. The purity of her tone – the record is not very good – the lyrical sweetness, the touching, wistful, romantic, nostalgic quality is extraordinary and, although the 78 recordfn823 is not, perhaps, very good, transformed my whole conception of what Italian opera could do, and after that I never looked back. I shall certainly listen to the Callas record. I am sure you are right.
As for Toscanini, he was so authoritative that every other performance of, say, Beethoven’s symphonies, and certainly the Verdi Requiem, sounded thin and unconvincing to me ever after […]. If he is conducting in the heavenly sphere, the angels must be terrorised – he does not allow anyone any authority to dictate how things should be done – the inhabitants of paradise are fortunate: but the performing angels must be going through – I do not say what. Thank you ever so much for your letter: it really did give me great pleasure and I am most grateful. One never knows what anyone else feels about one’s own tastes, and it sets one up tremendously.
Yours sincerely,
[Isaiah Berlin]
4 November 1974
Headington House
Dear Stephen,
[…] The persecution of Israel is really becoming sinister: at first, all good people were for it because it was an underdog, then they turned against it because it was an overdog, now it is clearly an underdog again but I fear that won’t penetrate until there is no dog at all. There is no mistake they haven’t made – putting the religious party into the government again seems lunacy to me. The fact that it is the Zealots who engineered the doom of Jerusalem in 70 ad seems to me a ghastly thought.fn824 The policy of the Foreign Office towards them seems to me beyond words odious: it is done with such fearful relish – disinterested malice disguised as expediency – this is practically the only thing I ever agreed with Crossman about: his disinterested malice was, at least, not disguised as anything. […]
Yours,
Isaiah
TO HAROLD ROSENTHALfn825
7 November 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Mr Rosenthal,
I am truly flattered by your invitation to me to contribute to Opera for its silver jubilee.fn826 I suppose I could describe my first experience of Chaliapin singing Boris in St Petersburg in 1916, when I was seven, or Figaro as performed in a cinema in Istanbul where the second act appeared to take place in a seraglio (will this compromise my Turkish visa for ever?), or the occasion during German inflation when Siegfried’s horses ate Hagen’s beard (alas, I did not see this myself, but Nicolas Nabokov says he did; I wonder if it is cheating to describe this as having happened to him). In short, I could probably produce a brief farcical piece which would provide hideous evidence for Peter Hall’s view that people are merely patronising about opera, but whether I can get this done by, or soon after, Christmas is a problem, as I have a terrible term before me, but I will do my best and warn you if the enterprise fails. Do not count on it! […]
Yours sincerely,
[Isaiah Berlin]
TO IAN WILLIAMSfn827
20 November 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Mr Williams,
Thank you for your letter of 11 November. About determinism the situation is somewhat more complicated than I think is generally supposed. I do not believe that indeterminacy – Heisenberg’s Principle – is all that relevant. Even if I cannot determine the position and velocity of a given particle simultaneously, this does not seem to me to entail randomness or freedom in any intelligible sense. Popper’s supposition that the act of prediction itself makes a difference to what is predicted, since it is an event in the universe with its own causal consequences, is, perhaps, more relevant, but if I were told that someone outside my system were able to predict everything that I did, the fact that such an observer could not predict his own conduct would not console me much. If someone were to come into a room and give me a sealed envelope and ask me to describe all my experiences for, let us say, a quarter of an hour, everything that I saw, heard, observed, thought etc., so far as I was able; and after I had done that, if I were to open the envelope and find a great part of this accurately described, I should certainly be shaken, wouldn’t you?fn828 Would you not feel that something in your belief about freedom of the will had been gravely affected? However, I daresay that, in theory, determinism can be neither proved nor disproved unless it is an empirical theory. If it is, then at least evidence for or against it can be accumulated (as I believe). […]
Yours sincerely,
[Isaiah Berlin]
9 December 1974 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
[Dear Mac,]
[…] I wish you had been able to come to our opening. It went off, we can say, satisfactorily – not without previous alarms and excursions. The Wolfsons, as you know, never open buildings etc. without bringing with them an enormous train of relations, friends and clients of various sorts. The difficulty is to know how many they will actually bring. If one settles on a dozen, sometimes another dozen is announced at the last moment, and this creates appalling logistical problems. At the stone-laying by the Queen, they produced Lord Fraser of Glasgow, a Co-operative leader, whom no doubt Sir Isaac acquired twenty or thirty years ago: he was a red-faced, jolly old party, who came with quite a jolly wife. Lord Fraser reappeared on the list, but this time turned out to be head of the Conservative Central Office:fn829 there is at least one other Lord Fraser, who will doubtless appear at the next festival […]. He also invited Ted Heath, who at the last minute declined to be a mute spear-bearer in the opera.
Worse was to come: he also invited the Israeli ambassador and his wife, who of course accepted at once.fn830 Michael Brock, in his innocence, explained to the General Meeting of the College, attended by graduates and everybody else,fn831 about security measures which the police had to take in view of this. An Indian lady asked in what capacity the Ambassador was coming – ‘as a College guest’, Michael replied, correctly (all guests are College guests) but incompletely. There was apparently a moment of tense silence – I was not present, otherwise I might have explained that it was the Wolfsons’ day and we did not intend to scrutinise the political attributes of their guests. In due course a very neurotic Persian, with strong pro-Arab sympathies and no love for the Shah, whipped up a certain amount of sentiment in College. Dull rumours of impending counter-measures began to circulate. The ceremony was arranged for a Tuesday. On Sunday, a letter was delivered to Michael, written by a girl whose Christian name had been changed that month from Sheila to Liam (she is a Durham miner’s daughter and Liam is a man’s name), a graduate of the College, to the effect that though she did not deeply love demos, there would be one, including a large number of easily procurable Arabs (who hold themselves in readiness in St Antony’s for such eventualities), to block and obstruct the long street down which the Wolfsons, Macmillan, the heads of colleges, etc. would be moving. On Sunday evening I telephoned Leonard and warned him that this might take place: he reported it to his father and they both got into a most tremendous flap (kindly destroy this letter – after all, the future of the College is probably at stake). First Isaac announced he would not be coming; then Leonard desired me to communicate with the Israeli ambassador, Gideon Rafael, in case he suddenly felt that a terrible cold was coming upon him. ‘Am I to tell him’, I asked, ‘that the publicity involving your name, which The Times and the Guardian would be sure to give, might embarrass you if he came?’ I was instructed to keep their interest in the matter totally out of it, which in a sense I could understand. I then telephoned His Excellency to tell him what was impending. I asked myself whether, supposing he said something like ‘Would you prefer me not to come?’, I should reply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. It was clear that I would have to deny any such preference – too cowardly and humiliating and improper and disgusting; but then, why was I telephoning? To tell him that the Wolfsons would not care for the ensuing publicity, I suppose: would it be proper to tell him that? To say anything at all? Should one not behave with lofty dignity and take what comes as it comes? Torn by such thoughts I rang up the ambassador in a state of mounting angst: after I had informed him, he said briskly, ‘Oh, we get this all the time. I’ll tell my people, thank you’ – and rang off. That put an end to my perplexities and I felt much better.
I then sent for Liam and addressed her for two and a half hours. I explained that we were not going to veto the Wolfsons’ friends, and that her friends had got the whole thing wrong. Worn down by me she finally agreed to call it off, and all was well. Macmillan made one of his best speeches – wildly amusing and appropriate, and apart from forgetting Sir Isaac Wolfson’s name for three minutes – fou rirefn832 was only just avoided – colleagues and honoured guests behaved with impeccable self-control while he fumbled through his mind and his notes – it was all perfectly traditional and satisfactory. Shep Stone appeared arm in arm with Alan Bullock, but Mr Heapsfn833 occupied the dais: I liked him very much; I thought he was a shrewd, amusing and intelligent man, and he displayed commendable sangfroid in view of the fact that his clothes had been stolen that morning and he appeared in curious, borrowed garments (for God’s sake don’t reveal to him that I told you this).
Now everything is calm again. My impending retirement is viewed without undue impatience. The press produced very reasonable accounts of the College – the buildings, persons and purposes. The Times did produce a headline about how little money we hadfn834 – true enough, but a cause of some displeasure to Leonard – my effort to persuade him that it might stimulate some unknown millionaire to give us something provoked the comment ‘I would rather be envied than pitied.’ I wondered afterwards which I should prefer, if these were the only alternatives: the latter, I think, but mankind, I dare say, can be divided into these two categories.
Do come and see the College: if possible while I am still here, i.e. before 15 March, but if that is impossible, after that: it really would be worth your while, if only architecturally. Rostropovichfn835 is to play for us for free on the 20th, with the proceeds to found the College Musical Society. So we shall at least begin with a bang. I wish you could be there, but I suppose that is impossible. Solly Zuckerman sent us a most affable telegram to celebrate our opening. As a reward, I shall invite him to the banquet of the British Academy on 24 April – if you are in Europe, do come to it too. You will not only have the exquisite pleasure of hearing me mumble a few million well chosen words, but the PM also: can you possibly resist that?
This country is genuinely in rather a bad way. Whatever may happen in the short run, the United States has enough appetite for life, sheer vitality, apart from resources, to recover and march forward in some direction – that I do not doubt at all. This is equally true of Germany. The bright prospects of the French future seem to me exaggerated. As for this country, I would really rather not speak – for once I am in a Joe-like condition. In the end, I dare say all Cassandras turn out to be right – but our chickens are coming home to roost earlier than even Joe vaticinated (that is a good word).
Much love to you, much love to Mary,
[Isaiah]
TO F. T. DAVIESfn836
13 December 1974 [carbon]
Wolfson
Dear Tommy,
[…] No head of college, I regret to say, can now get anyone into his College. The old patronage system lingered on – the President of Magdalen, for instance, used to be given three places to which he could appoint the sons of old friends, etc., but even that is gone, and admissions are done, so far as I know, in every single college, by committees on which (as in the case of, e.g., Wadham) the head of college does not even sit. Hampshire would be delighted to help, but is genuinely powerless. I should guess that great potentates like Lord Franks at Worcester, Lord Trendfn837 at Lincoln, and the other Lords may preside over their admission committees, but the general rule is that the tutor for admissions is in charge, and to him one has to apply. Your Dutch friend will scarcely believe this, but it is so – I have had to write to this effect to incredulous friends of Aline’s in France, and my own in America (e.g. to George Kennan, and at least one senator) in the case of graduate students. They do not believe it, but it is true, truer of Oxford than of Cambridge. There is no reason in the world why the boy should not be put down for Wadham in the normal way, although St Peter’s College is probably a better bet – for anyone academically not too strong. The head of that college, Sir Alexander Kirkland [Cairncross],fn838 once a Treasury knight, has a sense of international obligations, and anyone you know ex-Treasury, e.g. Lord Sherfield,fn839 could probably apprise him of the case – that is the best I can do. These are the times which we live in – gone are the days when even I, a humble figure in New College, could get a young Dutch man, whose father was my father’s business associate, into Wadham in Warden Bowra’s golden days in the dear old 1940s.
How is your health? Portofino was sad without you last summer. Will the mosquitoes keep you away again? I hope not.
Yours,
[Isaiah]
13 January 1975
Headington House
Dear Noel,
[…] I shall not be able because of these Wolfson lectures – Tuesday at 5 p.m. – to come to the Covent Garden board this month or next. There is a matter which could perhaps be taken up in my absence (or perhaps it will have been settled out of court by then, but I should be grateful if you would ask Tooley). I had booked the Box on the 21st of this month, and invited eleven guests. Today I was informed that our new Patron, the Prince of Wales, wanted to come that night, and would I yield? Of course I did – I suppose I can stuff them all into the King’s Smoking Room except for one or two who will have to be laid off as they are too old and grand to be accommodated in that wagon-lit. Of course I yielded with as good a grace as possible – there was nothing else one could possibly do, and I was ‘happy’ to do it, in the best interests of the house, etc. But I wonder if the question of notice might be established: how long in advance do Royal personages have to say before ousting commoners, or even peers? Garrett would have had no difficulty in establishing a doctrine – Clausfn840 will, I think, need a ‘lead’ from Lord G. and you – and in agreement with Sainsbury,fn841 who, as we know, cares deeply about these matters. But do bring it up and say that I behaved with my usual anxiety to please but that some ruling needs to be communicated to the Palace. It is very worrying to think that our Royalty have (a) become musical, and (b) have these gratuitous gaps in their schedules. ‹I am not complaining. But I am a tiny bit more republican than I was.›
Yours ever,
Isaiah
TO NOEL ANNAN
Thursday 16 January 1975 [manuscript]
Headington House
Dear Noel,
Second thought: don’t, I beg you, raise the question of what kind of notice Royalty ought to give before booking the Box: I shd feel acutely embarrassed if I were thought to have made even a minor fuss about this: the Drogheda’s were constantly displaced by the Duchess of Kent, the Q[ueen] Mother etc. – the price of involving oneself in traditional nonsense must be paid. If I am shifted towards Republicanism, it is out of personal pique: not a worthy motive. So please say nothing. […]
Isaiah
TO I. F. ST ONE
13 February 1975 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
[Dear Izzy,]
Since we last met here in Oxford I have been reading your articles in the New York Review with agreement and admiration: indeed, on the Nixon issue there was surely vast consensus; quite apart from all the talk about national self-purification and a new beginning, the mere fact that so many people of otherwise differing views could feel a sense of moral solidarity (and the great luxury of justified common indignation) surely has done quite a lot to restore the faith of decent persons in their own fellow citizens after the Vietnamese nightmare – and you, in particular, must have felt a strange sensation in finding yourself part of the huge majority – the United Front – of masters and men, conservatives and radicals, which normally happens only during revolutions or when a declaration of war is felt to be just (what happens next is quite a different matter, as we all know). But your latest article on the Middle East I did find disturbing, not for its theses, with which I personally agree, but for its tone and implications about what Jews may and may not do, which have taken me aback. That you should protest against the argument of Mr Robert Tuckerfn842 (whoever he may be) or the other man you mention, who think it possible and perhaps desirable to occupy a part of the Arabian coast and seize the oil wells, I understand well enough; and your opposition to hawks, whether in Israel or America; and your fears about a combination of the two, and a pre-emptive war, seizure of Arab territory, etc., I share; you think this stupid, dangerous and a form of the old, wicked gunboat diplomacy, and, in addition, surely counter-productive to those who try it. I see nothing to object to here. Since I agree that the proposals are dangerous and wrong and incite to aggression, I too wish that Commentary had not accepted the article.
But when you say they should not have published it because the journal is issued by the American Jewish Committee, that such attitudes are likely to incite anti-Semitism, in short, that it is not for Jews to advocate or even publish such policies – I disagree; I simply cannot believe that you mean it. For is this not precisely the same consideration that caused fears in the breasts of many highly-placed American Jews in 1939–40 about protesting too vehemently against Hitler, for fear of being thought warmongers – of being accused of dragging America into a Jewish war? I remember very well my conversation in 1941, before America entered the war, with the late Admiral Lewis L. Strauss,fn843 who vigorously supported his old chief, Herbert Hoover,fn844 and was inclined towards America First,fn845 though he did not perhaps go so far as the Rosenwalds,fn846 whose position was exceedingly undignified at that time. It was the selfsame argument as that which was used by Lindberghfn847 in the same year, when he warned the Jews against inciting America into war, a speech which justly caused his political ruin. Do you really wish to maintain that someone who thinks a given course right or expedient or worthy of discussion should not utter it because he is a Jew and this may cause hostility in some circles? You would not, I feel sure, use this argument in warning Jews, as they used to be warned by the leaders of the Jewish bourgeoisie, in Germany, in Russia, in America, against being socialists or Communists because this would identify Jews with subversion, and compromise the entire community? The reason for objecting to an invasion of a portion of the Arabian coast for the sake of the oil wells is that it is politically stupid and dangerous and morally wrong, whoever advocates it. But if someone, however wrongly in one’s own view, thinks it politically expedient and/or morally right, it seems to me altogether unacceptable to order him to remain silent because he is a Jew, is suspected of having ‘an interest’, and this may irritate the dominant majority. You (of all people) who believe in freedom of thought and freedom of expression, cannot possibly be defending this. […]
I realise that the chauvinism of some circles among American Jews angers you; that the refusal of, say, the religious party in Israel to recognise that they have done a wrong to the Arabs seems as intolerable to you as it does to me; and that you dread a second Holocaust, which you think Jewish and American hawks are bringing nearer. But there is justice for the Jews as well as the Arabs: mere survival on the edges of an Arab State on the West Bank, into which foreign armies are allowed to march, whether Arab or Russian, does not augur well even for survival, let alone normal development, of Israel. Yet you do not allow that this could be a terribly worrying factor, even for the mildest of Israeli doves; nor that the majority of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel would certainly settle for a return of the West bank, Gaza, etc., to the Arabs if this really did mean a high probability of peace in the foreseeable future. I think that you have a feeling that Jews or Zionists have sinned, and therefore must behave particularly well – beyond the standard required of others – suicidally, if need befn848 – in order to avoid Hobbes’s maxim that anything is preferable to a violent death, and in order to live in the light of the principle that perfect justice is preferable to survival or anything else. Can this really be your view?
[…] Israel’s attitude to the Arabs leaves much to be desired, morally as well as from a utilitarian point of view. I have not forgotten Deir Yassin or Kibbiya,fn849 and do not regard Arab atrocities as cancelling responsibility for that, and, indeed, have said so in print. But I detect in your argument a nervous feeling that the Jews have, as expected, gone and misbehaved again; that they need constant watching lest they get once more into the wrong company (in this case, of Gentiles who are concerned not with Israel but with oil for the USA); a desire to condemn Jews if they do not attain a moral standard which you do not really demand from others; and a feeling that you have a right to say this because you are a Jew, and therefore feel it right to be ashamed of them, and tell them so in public, before everyone. This seems to me to do them an injustice. The State of Israel, from which I have just returned, is, after all, despite everything, a far more democratic, open, human society, in which violently critical things are said in public, for which men would be jailed and sometimes done away with in the rest of the Middle East. The mood of the majority is very, very unlike that of the minority of hawks into whose hands the PLOfn850 are playing; they are ready for large concessions to live in peace with Arabs who are now bent on destroying them. Nevertheless, Israel is described as ‘fascist’, ‘criminal’, deserving of immediate destruction, by Arabs, radicals, Communists everywhere, which even Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir,fn851 Jean Daniel,fn852 and all but the extremist French Left, find nauseating and have at last rebelled against. In America, among Jews, only Chomsky and Miss Arendt seem to me really to think this, and this seems to me a depressing form of self-induced vanity and blindness. You are free from this, and I continue reading you, whatever you may say, because I feel deep personal affection for you and great respect, but think you – on this issue – truly mistaken. I know that you are not afflicted by the terrible lack of heart of which Scholem rightly accused Hannah Arendt. Why, then, do you say these unfair things?
Yours ever,
[Isaiah]
TO MORTON WHITE
Postmark 22[?] February 1975
[Headington House]
Dear Morty,
[…] The British Academy: I am, I fear, ‘in command’, and long to tell you about its inner workings – the terrible pressures put on by disgruntled members of Scottish and Northern Irish universities about lack of representation – also, of course, by the sociological world: after all, we must have something like 3,000 sociologists in England, and how many of them are members of the BA? After every effort, and immense travail, first one (a nasty but exceedingly able demographer called Glass), then, after more travail, the questionable Gellner, whom the Philosophy Section refuses to include in its ranks. Meetings are much as you must imagine them to be – slightly pompous, shot through with undertones and half-suppressed biases and hostilities both between the disciplines and their representatives; occasionally comical, but the kind of thing both you and I are perfectly used to. What terrifies me far more is the awful annual speech at the ‘Banquet’, at which the guest of honour is the Prime Minister – not the sort of thing I do at all well, or, indeed, at all. God! Meanwhile, the University has had its excitements: there is the great Bhutto controversyfn853 – the Council of the University, in its lunacy, offered a degree to the Prime Minister of Pakistan; my colleague Gombrich, son of Gombrich, denounced this as conferring an honour on a man he regards as a bloodstained tyrant, if not directly responsible [for] yet somehow acquiescing in the massacre in Daccafn854 which led to the deaths of various professors whom he knows personally and professionally (he is a Sanskrit scholar), at best a man under a cloud. He is ably seconded in this by Herbert Hart. On the other side is the entire establishment, plus Trevor-Roper, whose pupil Bhutto was, and disreputable characters who think that the University should not have offered him the degree, but, having done so, should not now withdraw it – plus those who denounce the University for hypocrisy – if we gave degrees to Truman (Nagasaki),fn855 Selwyn Lloyd (Suez),fn856 Mrs Gandhi (the Nagas),fn857 why suddenly stick at Bhutto? Perhaps we should stop giving degrees to politicians altogether (which I should favour), but since we do … etc. Tremendous excitement, votes, Bhutto’s degree voted down by a majority of two. Then it was discovered that two persons who had no legal right to vote were presentfn858 – the result, a tie: the Vice-Chancellor, had this tie been revealed at the time, could and should have broken it, but cannot legally do so retrospectively (one cannot cast one’s vote backward over one’s shoulder). More meetings, more excitement, more stuff in the press, more ancient friendships severed – a kind of local Munich or Suez. I cannot get excited about this at all and sit comfortably on the fence contemplating the entire scene not without, I fear, intense amusement. It is the kind of thing that makes universities ridiculous, and yet a moral standard never wholly does, even if it gets itself tangled up in legal niceties, as this one has done. Then there is the appointment of Lord Goodmanfn859 to the Mastership of University College: he is amiable, capable, a marvellous fixer, disinterested, very funny, of a monstrous appearance – he will go down excellently with the undergraduates, fairly well with the dons, not quite so well with the heads of other colleges, and I suspect will not be too happy here himself. His world is that of the Lords, property-developers, right-wing Labour MPs, the jolly, bohemian, non-U world; whether the pedantry and pomposity and the cathedral-close, still rather Trollopian, atmosphere of Oxford, is really something he can comfortably settle into, I rather doubt – but he may. There is no doubt that we shall now get more money for music, drama, University College, and I daresay the Oxford Synagogue. He is a warm-hearted Jew of a very unconcealed kind, loves London, loves Israel, loves society, and really does make very funny jokes. An odd appointment, all the same. But not disreputable (unless, like me, you believe that all such appointments should, on principle, go to academics, or at least intellectuals; I do believe this, but I think I am in a minority – and what is reputable and disreputable in such cases I suppose depends on some kind of Humean consensus of our Kulturkreis).fn860
I am delighted to hear about Steve and about Nick. After all, one’s children worry one more than any other single element in one’s life – don’t deter them from academic life. Hypocrisy is everywhere. Some people can protect themselves against involvement and pursue decent lives, addicted to subjects. Others, like you and me, respond to every tremor in the circumambient world. Your children may well belong to the former kind.
Yours,
Isaiah
TO BERNAR D WILLIAMS
24 February 1975
Headington House
Dear Bernard,
By all means come to Onegin […]. As for Rosenkavalier, of course it is a vulgar work. (The word has one sense which is pretty clear to those who think in these terms, as anybody who thinks consciously about either life or art cannot help doing […]. Nothing that Strauss wrote wholly avoids vulgarity, and this applies to Mahler too, and to Rachmaninov, to the entire Mitteleuropa–Slavic world of art of that period, until the sharp, cold, neobarbarian winds of Stravinsky, Kandinsky, the Bauhaus etc. – and Central Europe, for these purposes, includes Italy too. I fully understand the enthusiasm for the new Franco-Russian music of Virgil Thomsonfn861 as a ‘cleansing storm’ after the appallingly stuffy suffocating claustrophobia of the overblown late romanticism of Wagner’s heirs. I prefer the picture postcards of Granadosfn862 and Rimsky-Korsakov, of the period.) […]
Yours,
Isaiah
TO PETER GAYfn863
4 March 1975 [carbon]
[Wolfson]
Dear Peter,
Thank you very much for the copy of the letter to T-R. I too wrote to him, and had an answer in which, of course, he speaks of his philo-Semitism, and does not see why a sociological hypothesis about the causes of an event should not be made public, etc., and enlarges on his speculation about ‘subliminal’ motives. It is all very implausible, and his outburst, I think, quite ghastly – it tells us a good deal more about his subliminal condition than about that of others. I shall reply to his letter and tell him apropos of leftwing plots that the Editor of the New Statesmanfn864 is reported to have spent Christmas with Mr Bhutto. I am glad you wrote.
Yours ever,
[Isaiah]
4 March 1975 [manuscript]
Headington House
My dear Hugh,
Thank you for both your letters. I have, since writing to you, found myself defending you against charges of anti-semitism, ‘racialism’ and the like, which came not so much from Jews (not more than two or three of whom have talked to me about this issue) as from non-Jews: I happened to visit two (undergraduate) College S.C.R.s in turn, and the matter was discussed in both: I have no idea who most of the persons there may have been: I haven’t your eye (forgive me – but I cannot resist saying this) for Jews, and defended you to these strangers on the ground that I knew you to be free from all anti-Jewish feeling, and that consequently you had used the words attributed to you without fully appreciating their likely effect. I am not sure that this last is really what I think – I cannot persuade myself that you did not know that the combination of ‘left wingers’ and Jews is, by now, charged with historical associations – at least from the days of La France Juivefn865 and the Dreyfus case to Sir O. Mosley not to go any further – so that the use of this formula, even if it is a true description of a situation, can be provocative and unfair. And this indeed, is what caused me to react – not to over-react if the feelings of the indignant dons I have referred to, none of them, so far as I could tell, Jews, are any symptom – as I did and do. You say that if something is true, why shd it not be publicly stated? Many things are true – private feelings, ‘subliminal’ motives – which ought not to be stated publicly if decencies are to be preserved and gratuitous cruelty avoided – as I am sure you will agree. But in this case I shd be inclined to doubt or dispute your account of the facts: you say that the majority of those who spoke against Bhutto were Jews: Lambert? Gretton? Elvin? Do you really call Father Levi a Jew? this leaves us with only Hart and the mysterious Bentley. Nor do I believe that the Holocaust acted ‘subliminally’ on Jews or anyone else, but, if at all, consciously, in the sense of making people sensitive to charges of being implicated with governments or parties accused, whether rightly or wrongly, of massacres in Vietnam or Africa or wherever. But this is a matter of interpretation. Let me say again that I hold you both innocent of all racial prejudice and shd not dream of suspecting you of anything of the kind. But I wonder whether, in some moods, you do not (‘subliminally’ perhaps) divide men into gentlemen and the rest, and include Jews & leftists, with some clear exceptions, among “the rest”: and that this influenced your (I continue to think) unfortunate analysis, and conjured up the image of a “Jew-watcher’. But of course, I accept all that you say, and let that be the end of [the] matter so far as you and I are concerned. I cannot, alas, be there on Thursday for I find that I promised to take 3 guests to Covent Garden long before all these things – so I wrote to J.C. & apologized some weeks ago. I fear the matter may go on repercussing: not so far as I am concerned.
Yrs ever
Isaiah
P.S. I am told that the editor of the New Statesman spent Christmas with Mr Bhutto: what would the abbé Barruel,fn866 the plot scenter and unveiler, have made of that? I hope you are better.
IB retired from the Presidency of Wolfson on the Ides of March (15 March) 1975. A dinner was held in College at which speeches were made by Godfrey Lienhardt and IB, and musical entertainment provided by a Junior Research Fellow, a graduate student (who had also tried to put into words his feelings about having been at the College under IB’s presidency), and IB’s successor as President.
TO HENRY HARDY
15 [sc. 16] March 1975 [manuscript]
Wolfson
From the ‹ex-›*President
Dear Henry,
To say that I was touched, even moved, by your letter would be a grave understatement. We all go about avoiding the least suspicion of sentimentality, or even a bubble of too obvious emotion, nevertheless feeling will out, and your letter means far more to me than I shall ever be able to say, even to myself; my gratitude to you is immense, not only for this expression of feeling which cannot have been altogether easy to put in words, but for everything: to you particularly, but indeed also to those in Wolfson to whom you are closest: for what they have done for the College in general & for – & to – me in particular. There is no substitute for warmth of heart, moral and intellectual spontaneity, candour, honesty, perceptiveness, unswerving nobility of purpose, public spirit, sheer human decency. I offer you this unsolicited testimonial with all my heart. And I can truthfully say that the entire Wolfson experience has been the best, happiest, and, I must admit, gayest in my long life. I shd have said, in my cracked-pizzicato valedictory speech how marvellous I thought the graduates had been: I do think it, odd flurries and sudden whirlpools & rapids and all: the College has genuinely, it seems to me, avoided the tensions and divisions and suspicions and factions that other establishments seem prone to: & those who nevertheless claim to find or even try to create them seem to me a minute, negligible number: & even they, when met face to face, turn out to be very nice and well meaning if (slightly) confused. Am I being unduly complacent? I expect so. If so, you must put me right. Anyway I have been terribly happy: I have worked harder, experienced more transforming events, felt stronger emotions in other contexts, but never, never have I been happier, liked and respected more people, or simply felt surrounded by a warmer & sweeter human society. I must not go on. Only to say that I (& Aline) are, & always will be infinitely grateful to you for all kinds of things: that I am deeply grateful for your literally unforgettable letter: & that we must continue to collaborate – a source of great satisfaction to
Yours
Isaiah
* Well after midnight.
P. S. The musical “number”fn867 was a masterpiece: save that I was never in “intelligence” – only “information” – much less grand