the boisi center interviews no. 61: October 6, 2011 tzvetan todorov is a philosopher, theorist, and literary critic from Bulgaria. He has been a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris since 1968, and honorary director there since 2005. He spoke with Boisi Center associate director Erik Owens following his presentation on the modern applications of the 5th-century Augustine-Pelagius debate on human liberty. owens: You grew up behind the Iron could be described without any mention this formal perspective either, not any Curtain. How has this influenced your of ideological components. This was my more than the Bulgarian. This was not work? professional profile at the time I was for any ideological reasons, but because leaving Bulgaria, and it remained so of the dominance in France of a sort of todorov: Very strongly, but in differ- for maybe ten more years. My original biographical and sociological approach to ent periods of my life, it influenced it in intention was to spend just one year in literature. The standard expression was different ways. I was twenty-four when I France, but this year became three years “life and work,” when you were writing left Bulgaria. This means that I had com- a thesis, you had to study all the events pleted my university studies, I had the of the author’s life, everything that was equivalent of a master’s degree. Before written on him, all the versions of his that I spent five years at the University works. This approach didn’t pay much of Sofia studying Slavic philology, that attention to the internal interpretation is, Slavic languages and literatures— of meaning, within the work itself. For a Bulgarian, Russian, and that of other certain number of years, my orientation Slavic countries. The study of literature was an attempt to remedy to that lack. in Bulgaria had to be conducted within a strict ideological framework. Literature My very first work was an anthology of was supposed to illustrate the major the Russian formalists. The Russian tenets of the communist ideology that we formalists were a group of literary critics were living in, and so the interpretation and scholars in the years just before of all writers was reduced in a way either and after the revolution, in a time of a to illustrating the communist idea, or relatively great political freedom. So, in to contradicting it, in which case they a way, I felt similar to them, fifty years deserved a more or less severe criticism. later. They were interested in the formal aspects of literary works, which allowed My first reaction to this was to get inter- because I decided to take a doctorate, them in the years after the revolution to ested in those aspects of literary works, sort of a Ph.D.; after that I married and avoid any political engagement. I selected of texts, which could escape from any my life became a French life instead of a and translated their writings and the ideological control. That’s how I became Bulgarian life, the way it is now. book was well received in France. At that a “formalist” in my youth—as a reaction In France I tried to learn more about time, there was an intellectual wave or a to the obligation to refer constantly to ide- the formal structure of literary works, fashion of structuralism, and this analy- ology. I tried to grasp the meaning of the but that wasn’t easy. In fact I discovered sis of literature appeared as an ingredient text by studying the grammatical struc- that French literary studies—because of a structuralist world view and way ture of its sentences, the choice of words, this was the larger framework of my of approaching study in humanities or the structure of narrative, of metaphor, interests—were not concerned with social sciences. of various literary devices, all things that 1 the boisi center interview: tzvetan todorov After ten or fifteen years living in France, tific institution devoted to pure research, wasn’t sure to know well. The fall of the my whole being was transformed, of which allowed me to choose freely the Berlin Wall acted as a kind of liberation course, because of the many differences topics of my work. I immersed myself in for me. Maybe the regime had to stop in the two situations, and I realized one this subject and spent three years work- existing in the real world so that I could day that there was no reason why in con- ing on it. I went to Mexico for a series of deal with it clearly enough in my mind. fronting literary works I should exclude lectures on another subject, but managed While it was alive, it was hard for me to everything concerning values, ideas, and to learn some Spanish, enough to read step outside of it, although I had lived meaning. At that point I started chang- the documents, and had discussions already for twenty-five years in France. In ing my attitude, using what I had learned with some specialists. The study of the a way its existence inhibited me. earlier as a tool, but no longer as an aim. conquest and the immediate aftermath As soon as the Wall fell, I felt I could deal I became interested in a certain number of the conquest became for me some- freely with this subject of totalitarianism of topics which in different ways were thing like a parable of the encounter of and thus with its opposite, democracy. still related to my Bulgarian identity, but The first book I wrote in this context was again, in a rather indirect way. called Facing the Extreme, an analysis One of them was the very fact that I was “I was convinced of what happened to morality in the raised in one context—geographical, concentration camp. I only know about cultural, ideological—which was Eastern that morality these experiences from the writings of Europe, the Balkans, an earlier part of didn’t disappear other witnesses, but there is a continuity the Ottoman Empire, with cultural in- between the life in and out of the camps, fluences coming from that past, but also there, as it was the camp was like a magnifying glass for belonging to the Slavic tradition, with the rest of the totalitarian world. Now, a major influence from Russian litera- frequently said, I was convinced that morality didn’t ture. And now I was living in France, in disappear there, as it was frequently said, Paris, which was “the capital of arts and that it was not a that it was not a purely Hobbesian world letters,” as it was perceived in Bulgar- purely Hobbesian of man becoming a wolf to other men, ia, and the French had different idols, or of war of all against all. If one read different gods that they were praying to. world of man carefully the testimony that came from I experienced a split within myself that the concentration camp, one could find all immigrants know about: I became si- becoming a wolf transformations of morality, rather than multaneously Bulgarian and French, and to other men, its disappearance. So that in a way, this was condemned to a permanent silent time again, but in a more positive way, I translation, not so much between two or of war of all was still dealing with what I experienced languages, but between two cultures. So in the first twenty-four years of my life. one of the topics of my research became against all.” That was a long answer to your short the tension between the unity of man- question. kind and the variety of cultures in which we are all necessarily immersed. owens: It actually provides a nice segue cultures. I wasn’t talking about myself, I for another question I wanted to ask. At The first work I did in this context was wasn’t interested in autobiography, but in the core of all political theory and theol- no longer about the Russian formalists, a way this biographical bias was behind ogy is a conception of human nature, or but about the conquest of America. This the words, was what motivated my work. here moral anthropology. I wonder if you event, especially in its early stages, be- In the following years, there was another could say a bit about your own under- came an amazing encounter of two parts change. I talk about it in this little book- standing of moral anthropology and how of humanity that had totally ignored each let, The Totalitarian Experience. The con- it influences your political theory today. other, and the outcome were not only mil- trast between my two worlds, the Bulgari- lions of victims but also some splendid todorov: I feel strongly opposed to an and the French, was not only cultural, documents—from the very beginning, at a kind of nihilistic attitude towards hu- it was also political. This brought me to the end of the 15th and especially in the man nature, morality, and basic human another major topic; I became more and 16th century—in Spanish and in native instincts. It isn’t the only view present in more interested in totalitarianism—the tongues. It was a wonderful example for contemporary debate, but it is extremely world in which I was raised and which my topic! By that time I had been hired in strong, maybe in France more so than in was also a part of myself in ways that I the CNRS, that marvelous French scien- the United States.