LETTERS: Hannah Arendt-William Shawn Correspondence 1960-1972.
Hannah Arendt Correspondence
with
William Shawn
1960-1972
Arendt, Hannah, et al. Hannah Arendt-William Shawn Correspondence, with related material. 1960-72.
Thirty-one typed letters from Hannah Arendt to William Shawn, together with his typed carbon and telegram responses; as well as several letters from readers regarding her piece on the Eichmann trial; five letters from Rita Vaughan at Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich; and four letters from Mary McCarthy (the executor of Arendt’s estate). Arendt’s letters span from 1960 to 1972.
Arendt and Shawn’s relationship was a mixture of deep respect and formality; evidenced by the fact that throughout their years of correspondence and undeniable affection for each other, they never addressed each other by their first names; letters from Shawn always begin “Dear Dr. Arendt,” and letters from Arendt, “Dear Mr. Shawn.” The bulk of Arendt’s correspondence is composed on her beautiful Riverside Drive, New York stationery. The typed black signature line at the close of each letter suggests she wrote them out long hand first or perhaps dictated them to an assistant. This literal underscoring of her signatures heightens the formality of her letters.
Also included are three lengthy typescripts; the first, a draft letter to the journalist Samuel Grafton, who was writing a piece for Look magazine in response to Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem; 13 leaves; undated; with inked annotations throughout. Grafton had sent Arendt a letter on September 13, 1963, in which he asks her thirteen questions about some of the arguments she raised in her book, and her reactions to the book’s reception. Her typescript draft contains insights to her thinking and her writing process, the importance of which cannot be overestimated. For example, there was critical response to her choice of subtitle, “A Report on the Banality of Evil;” in her draft to Grafton, she expounds on her choice:
I meant that evil is not radical, going to the roots (radix), that it has no depth, and that for this reason it is so terribly difficult to think about it, since thinking, by definition, wants to reach the roots. Evil is a surface phenomenon, and instead of being radical, it is merely extreme. We resist evil by not being swept away by the surface of things, by stopping ourselves and beginning to think, that is, by reaching another dimension than the horizon of everyday life. In other words, the more superficial someone is, the more likely will he be to yield to evil. An indication of such superficiality is the use of clichés, and Eichmann, God knows, was a perfect example.
This typescript is working evidence of Arendt’s pellucid intellect and the consideration she put into her work.
The second is a 27-page Xerox copy of an annotated typescript; unaddressed; dated June, 1964. It is a “Note to the Reader,” for a revised and enlarged edition of Eichmann in Jerusalem, also including a “Postscript.”
The third is a 19-page Xerox copy of an annotated typescript for Arendt’s article on Bertoldt Brecht. In a letter to Shawn dated November 14, 1965, Arendt requests that he send her the first version of the Brecht article, for a lecture she was preparing to deliver at Cornell. Shawn replies on November 17, and encloses the Xeroxed typescript.
The earliest letter in this collection is dated August 11, 1960; a short, innocuous-sounding note asking Shawn if she could report on the Eichmann trial for the New Yorker. This early communication belies the importance of the trial – and the flood of reader responses Arendt’s piece would prompt. She writes, “I am very tempted to attend the Eichmann-trial in Isreal. I am writing you today to inquire whether The New Yorker would be interested in one, possibly two articles on the case.”
Eichmann’s trial began on April 11, 1961 – in a letter from dated April 15, Arendt reveals, “The trial is interesting and the atmosphere in which it takes place is often
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