"The Dreyfus Affair" [by David Lehman]

Louis Begley writes well and is a good guide to one of modern history's great tragic causes celebres, the court-martial of French artillery Captain Alfred Dreyfus [left] on trumped-up charges of treason in 1894. The evidence was fabricated, the trial closed to the public, and Dreyfus was convicted and imprisoned on devil's island off the coast of French Guiana. His real crime was that he was a Jew and France was embracing anti-Semitism with the lust of a pimp eyeing Catherine Deneuve. Emile Zola (J'Accuse] and others rose to Dreyfus's  defense. Nevertheless Dreyfus suffered five years of solitary confinement before the verdict was overturned. In 1906 the French high court exonerated Dreyfus. Despite his mistreatment by the French army, the assassination of his character, and the degradation and suffering he endured in prison, Dreyfus wanted nothing more than to return to active military service. He served at the front in World War I with an artillery command close to Verdun, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was decorated with the Legion d'honneur.

Begley's Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters is published as part of a "why it matters" series by Yale University Press. it is a cogent little book, certainly worth reading, though my disquietude was awakened by the jacket copy that asked whether the Dreyfus case was "merely another illustration of the rise in France of a virulent form of anti-Semitism." That merely bothered me, and I note that the preface of this brief book, the last eighteen pages of its opening chapter, and its coda strongly imply that the lesson of the affair, the reason it matters to us today, is that it warns us against such "crimes and abuses" committed against "some Guantanamo detainees" in the aftermath of the terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001. Is that really what makes Dreyfus relevant to us here, now? Or isn't the resurgence of a virulent  anti-Semitism -- the demonizing of the Jews and of Israel (Islamic dictatorships and religious authorities make no distinction between them); the chorus of voices calling for the annihilation of Israel; the campaigns of hatred and violence targeting Jews; the re-surfacing of the vicious Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the murders; the beheading of an American journalist after forcing him to tell the camera that he is a Jew and that his mother was a Jew, as if that were a capital offense; -- isn't all that reason enough to recall the Dreyfus Affair in its unhappy detail? Do you mean to tell me that this infamous episode in modern history, this outrageous injustice, is not finally about the Jews and those who would vilify them but about something else entirely, the depredations of the Bush Administration? I fear that this sort of reasoning may itself be evidence of the phenomenon that it evades.

BTW, this is the publisher that has withdrawn, from a book just weeks away from publication, the Danish newspaper cartoons that offended Islamic bigots in 2005. The book, by a Brandeis professor named Jytte Klausen, is called "The Cartoons That Shook the World." Reproduction of the illustrations would seem to be an inevitable and indispensable part of any study of them. To withdraw the pictures is a craven act of self-censorship founded on no principle nobler than the adage to let sleeping dogs lie, especially when they are killers. Let the pictures be published. If enough people make enough of a fuss, maybe Yale University Press will buckle to the pressure. They seem to be good at that.

-- DL

Comments

[Larry Epstein]

This is a very insightful review, David. I think you've found the heart of much misreading of the past. The comparison of Dreyfus to terror detainees is inapt, to put it mildly.

I'm also glad you noted the connection of this book to Yale University Press' cowardly act, one justly and widely condemned. I had a horrible experience with this Press myself. I wonder how many other authors did as well.

[DL]

Thank you, Larry. I have heard scare stories about the purgatorial trials -- get me rewrite! -- authors have endured on the way to a non-tendered contract for a book hotly pursued by YUP. And then they wind up publishing a book (and I'm not mentioning its title) that takes a great subject and manages to make it dull. YUP has behaved very badly in the case of the Danish cartoonists. The discrepancy between stated ideals (lux et veritas) and actual practice is outrageous.

[Sarah Sarai]

The "merely" is also part of the desire-to-trend to soften all hard news, to place us in a post-ethnic culture, but yes it ("merely" and other gestures and sidestepping) is specific to anti-Semitism. And, yes, I've gotten into arguments about the distinction between Jewish and Israel, partly because I'm unhappy, very, with Israel. (You may write me off as I'm a hybrid, Jewish father (b.1906, Manhattan), Christian mother (Queens) and exquisitely sensitive on many points. And I honor father and mother.) But yay for Begley. He's such a good writer.