Figure 2. Hannah Arendt. Postcard to Karl Jaspers, 28 February 1955. Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach, Germany. Karl Jaspers Archiv.
can see I went right to the Olschkis’—an oasis in the desert. You were much in our thoughts.”6 To which Olschki and his wife added a personal note: “In time Frau Arendt will find still more camels of this breed in this particular desert.”7 Leonardo Olschki had become a camel in the desert of Berkeley. He had learned how to adjust to the barren conditions by escaping into pure culture and scholarship, but Arendt resisted this world-denying metamorphosis (Figure 2). The notes, as it turned out, were contrived, as Arendt pointed out almost a month later in a letter to Jaspers: “The postcard I wrote there wasn’t altogether honest. I wrote what he, and she in particular, so obviously wanted me to write. . . . That happens to me sometimes. And then, it is also somehow true that this is a beautiful desert, of all the deserts the most beautiful. The only problem is that the Olschkis’ can’t be an oasis for me anymore. I can’t return to that world of pure culture, which isn’t even very pure.”8 Arendt understood that Olschki had turned scholarship into an escape from the desert-world, and she knew that accepting his invitation to join him in the oasis of “pure culture” would have been a flight from the world. As she pointed out in her final lecture at Berkeley, “we ruin the life-giving oases when we go to them for the purpose of escaping.”9 What Arendt was seeking was an oasis that would help her avoid succumbing to the desert conditions of a professional academic life but would not also become an escape from the world. She found this oasis in her friendship with Eric Hoffer. As she wrote to Jaspers: The first real oasis I found appeared in the form of a longshoreman from San Francisco who had read my book and was
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Figure 3. Hannah Arendt. Letter to Eric Hoffer, 13 March 1955. Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, Calif. Eric Hoffer Collection. Courtesy The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress. Copyright© 1942–1950 by Hannah Arendt. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust.
in the process of reading everything of yours that is available in English. He writes himself—and publishes, too—in the manner of the French moralists. He wanted to know everything about you, and I mean everything, and we were friends right off. He showed me San Francisco the way a king shows his kingdom to an honored guest. He works only three or four days a week. That’s all he needs. With the rest of his time he reads, thinks, writes, goes for walks. His name is Eric Hoffer, of German background but born here and without any knowledge of German. I’m telling you about him because his kind of person is simply the best thing this country has to offer. And don’t forget that I met him through a colleague, and he has lots of friends at the university. You couldn’t take him to Olschki’s house, and that speaks against Olschki.10
Hannah Arendt on the Oasis of Friendship
John Douglas Macready
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