Purple PRESENTS: EXCLUSIVE READING OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHER BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY’S NEW BOOK ON THE CORONAVIRUS

“Ce virus qui rend fou” is available June 10 from Grasset Editions

Text by Donatien Grau

Bernard-Henri Lévy’s voice is one of the most distinct one can hear: he lives in and tackles the immediate present, but, in the lineage of Talmudic rabbis, he confronts it to the face of all those who searched, as the Psalm goes. He goes to the frontline and he retreats in the library: or the other way round. That is why his word is always informed, from the information of the world in which we live, as well as from the history that precedes us. He always takes a view from above and brings elements to the discussion that no one had previously seen that way. When I say his voice is distinct, it is not only in the metaphorical sense of the “insight”, it is also the auditive experience of hearing his voice, moving through the rhythm of his breath. It truly comes from the inside and goes outside, it waves through the surroundings to share content that is at once interior and exterior, personal and human: it is both inseparably, same as his insights and the tone of his words. We always need to return to the point of view of the human. Bernard-Henri Lévy has been a frequent contributor to Purple, through interviews, essays, and guidance: he stands for the ambitious mandate of the French intellectual. Here, for the first time, especially for the Purple Diary, he reads the beginning of his upcoming book, Ce Virus qui rend fou. He offers fresh insights on the experience we have been living all over the world, its political, mediatic, philosophical, human implications – with and beyond COVID-19 itself.

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