THE BETRAYAL OF THE INTELLECT - PMM 419

BENDA, JULIEN.

La trahison des clercs.

Paris, 1927. 8vo. Uncut and unopened in the original green printed wrappers, also the back-strip, and the original white dust-jacket (fastened on spine) with the black and green lettering. Dust-jacket with some minor browning, likewise the extremities of leaves (the part that would usually have been cut). All in all a very nice copy. 306, (2) pp.

First edition of this "major event in political thought between the two wars" (PMM), "The Treason of the Intelligentsia". Number 98 out of 170 copies on "vélin pur fil" out of a total of 3.862 copies (62 copies were printed on "Madagascar", 170 on "vélin pur fil" and 3.650 on "alfa satiné").

"The "Clerc" is what Benda conceived the intellectual to be, someone disengaged from the mere contingencies of the existence and fighting for ideals that went beyond the demands of a given moment in space and time. In violent and brilliant invective, he attacked the intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for having fallen short of this ideal by becoming the devoted advocates not of ideals, but of groups or existences, material and transient, such as a nation or a social class. The title of Benda's manifesto became a kind of catch phrase which, by a curious irony of fate, inverted its original sense, and came to be used as a term of reproach for the intellectuals who shut themselves off from the march of events in an ivory tower.
"La Trahison des Clercs" achieved a world-wide popularity and was translated and reprinted over and over again... After the war, some of his magic seemed to have departed... but "La Trahison des Clercs" continues to be read; and its invigorating attack on over-involvement deserves not to be forgotten." (Printing and the Mind of Man, p. 252).

"The publication of the latter in 1927 was undoubtedly one of the major events of political thought between the two wars." (Printing and the Mind of Man, p. 252).

PMM 419.

Order-nr.: 41469