"There is something unassimilable about him," Deleuze has written of
Bergson, "object of so many hatreds." ¹ Because of the range and intensity
of ideological appropriations of his thought, and because of the violence
of the attacks leveled against him, a virtual erasure of the discourse of
Bergson occurred. In his Tradition de l'existentialisme ou la philosopbie
de la vie, which charged that existentialism was nothing but warmed-over
Bergson, Julien Benda confronted the problem of erasure in 1947. Citing
a passage from Simone de Beauvoir, Benda observed that one could swear
one was reading L'Evolution créatrice. "Were we not right," he comments
of existentialism, "to say that this metaphysic is nothing new? . . . Judg-
ing from the fact that it never cites Bergson, it seems to have the preten-
sion of being new." ² Benda's remark could be taken as merely anxiety of
influence, but the fact that Benda himself devoted much of his career to
attacking Bergson, often in vitriolic fashion, introduces an ideological fac-
tor into the equation. And Benda has not been alone in his crusade against
the philosopher. He is joined by members of the far right ( Maurras and
Lasserre), the revolutionary left ( George Politzer and Lukàcs), and even
the Catholic Church. Is there any wonder, then, that the figures we have
studied here rarely invoke Bergson by name? Or that, when Thibaudet
mentioned to Valéry that he perceived an affinity between the poet's writ-
ing and that of the philosopher Valéry reportedly responded: "I have read
Bergson as badly as possible [j'ai lu Bergsonaussi mal que j'ai pu]"? ³ Is it
any wonder that Valéry's denial has been taken at face value by most
critics? ⁴

Bergson's obliteration from the cultural scene is stunning. Between 1907
and the First World War, Bergson is said to have been "the most celebrated
philosopher in the world." ⁵ Friend and foe agree on the range and inten-

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