Additional Book Information
Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9781681375892
Pages: 272
Publication Date: November 30, 2021
Rahel VarnhagenThe Life of a Jewish Woman
by Hannah Arendt, introduction by Barbara Hahn
Rahel Levin Varnhagen, was, Hannah Arendt writes, "neither beautiful nor attractive . . . and possessed no talents with which to employ her extraordinary intelligence and passionate originality." Arendt sets out to tell the story of Rahel's life as Rahel might have told it and, in doing so, to reveal the way in which intellectual and social assimilation works out in one person's destiny. On her deathbed Rahel is reported to have said, "The thing which all my life seemed to me the greatest shame, which was the misery and misfortune of my life—having been born a Jewess—this I should on no account now wish to have missed." Only because she had remained both a Jew and a pariah, Hannah Arendt observes, "did she find a place in the history of European humanity."
Praise
This book was written more than 40 years ago and the woman it deals with lived more than 170 years ago, but the story of Rahel Varnhagen survives the passage of time.
—Lore Dickstein, The New York Times
Arendt's insight into the psychology and the situation of pariah and parvenu is essential.
—Kirkus Reviews
If you know about Rahel Varnhagen, it's probably because of Hannah Arendt.
—Talya Zax, Forward