"The Beauty of Hatred: From the Wars of Religion to Céline," a lecture co-sponsored by the Department of Romance Studies, the Renaissance Colloquium, and the French Studies Program.

What happens when hatred is so extreme that it is disinterested in anything but itself, that it becomes autotelic and self-sustaining? It then resembles strangely a work of art; it becomes an aesthetic category. This is the main thesis of Jan Miernowski’s latest book entitled La Beauté de la haine. Essais de misologie littéraire (Geneva, Droz, 2014).

“Beauty” should not be understood here as a positive judgment of any kind, but as the conceptual expression of the power of literary studies which have the unique capacity to grasp the most abject and deadly human passion.

In his talk, Jan Miernowski will show the transformation of hatred into an aesthetic category on two examples which are very different because of their historical contexts but which are also linked by their lethal artistic aspirations: the pamphlets of the Wars of Religion in France and Ferdinand Céline’s Anti-Semitic pamphlets directly preceding the Holocaust.