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Everything I am explaining to you, esteemed friends and colleagues, was prior to the Història del pensament europeu. Anyone who wants more practical information on our man, can consult two sources in particular: the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The latter, which is the one I had closer at hand, says, in its fifteenth edition:
Adrià Ardèvol i Bosch (Barcelona, 1946). Professor of aesthetic theory and the history of ideas, earned a doctorate in 1976 at Tübingen and is author of of La revolució francesa (1978), an argument against violence in the service of an ideal, in which he calls into question the historical legitimacy of figures such as Marat, Robespierre and Napoleon himself, and with skilful intellectual work, compares them to the bloodthirsty dictators of the twentieth century such as Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet. Deep down, at that moment, young Professor Ardèvol couldn’t give a rat’s arse about history: as he was writing the book, he was still indignant, as he had been for years, over the disappearance of his Sara ↑Voltes-Epstein (Paris, 1950–Barcelona, 1996) without any explanation and he was feeling that the world and life owed him one. And he was unable to explain it all to his good friend Bernat ↑Plensa i Punsoda (Barcelona, 1945), who, on the other hand, often cried on Ardèvol’s shoulder over his misfortunes. The work caused ripples in French intellectual circles, which turned their back on him, until they forgot about it. Which was why Marx? (1980) went unnoticed and not even the few remaining Catalan Stalinists noticed its appearance in order to annihilate it. Following a visit to ↑Little Lola (La Barceloneta, 1910–1982), he picked up the trail of his beloved Sara (vid. supra) and peace returned to his life except for a few specific incidents with Laura ↑Baylina (Barcelona, 1959?), with whom he hadn’t been able to decently end a relationship that he acknowledges was very unfair, mea culpa, confiteor. For many years it’s been said that he is milling over a Història del mal, but since he’s not entirely convinced of the project, it will be slow to come to fruition, if he ever feels up to the task. Once he regained his inner peace, he was able to dedicate his efforts to the creation of what he considers his finest work, La voluntat estètica (1987), which received the enthusiastic support of Isaiah ↑Berlin (cf. Personal Impressions, Hogarth Press, 1987 [1998, Pimlico]), and, after years of feverish dedication, to the culmination of the impressive Història del pensament europeu (1994), his most internationally known work and the one that brings us today to the Assembly Hall of the Brechtbau, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of this university. It is an honour for me to have the opportunity to present this modest introduction to the event. And I struggled to not get carried away by subjective, personal memories, since my relationship with Doctor Ardèvol dates back many years to the hallways, classrooms and offices of this university, when I was a new professor (I was once young too, dear students!) and Ardèvol was a young man desperate with a heartache that led him to spend a few months sleeping around until he got into a very complicated relationship with a young woman named Kornelia ↑Brendel (Offenbach, 1948) who put him through some real tribulations because she, who wasn’t as pretty as he thought anyway, even though it must be noted that she looked like she was good in bed, insisted on having new experiences and that, for a passionate Mediterranean man like Doctor Ardèvol, was hard to bear. Welclass="underline" it would have been for a cold, square Germanic man, too. Don’t ever speak a word of this, because he could take it very badly, but I myself was one of Miss Brendel’s new experiences. Let me explain; after a huge basketball player and a Finn who played ice hockey, and after a painter with fleas, Miss Brendel opted for another sort of experience and she looked at me and wondered what it would be like to bed a professor. In fact, I have to confess that I was just a hunting trophy, and my head, with a mortarboard cap, hangs over the fireplace of her castle beside the Finn’s with its bright red helmet. And that’s quite enough of that, because we haven’t come here today to talk about me but to talk about Doctor Ardèvol. I was saying that his relationship with Miss Brendel was torment, which he was able to overcome when he decided to take refuge in his studies. Which is why we should erect a monument to Kornelia Brendel beside the Neckar. Ardèvol finished his studies at Tübingen and read his doctoral thesis on Vico that, I’ll remind you although there is no need, was praised highly by Professor Eugen Coșeriu (vid. Eugenio Coșeriu-Archiv, Eberhard Karls Universität) who, old but lucid and energetic, is nervously moving his foot in the front row although the expression on his face is a satisfied one. I’m told that Doctor Ardèvol’s thesis is one of the most requested texts by students of the history of ideas at this university. And I’ll stop here because all I’ll do is keep singing his praises: I’ll let the fatuous and conceited Doctor Schott have the floor. Kamenek, with a smile, slide the microphone towards Professor Schott, winked at Adrià and sat more comfortably in his chair. There were about a hundred people in the assembly hall. An interesting mix of professors and intrigued students. And Sara thought how handsome he looked, with his new suit jacket.
It was the world premiere of the suit jacket that she had made him buy as a condition of her accompanying him to Tübingen for the presentation of his Història del pensament europeu. And Adrià, seated at the table beside those illustrious presenters, looked towards her and I said to myself Sara, you are my life and this is a dream. Not the profound, scrupulous and sensitive presentation by Kamenek, with slight, discreet concessions to a more personal and subjective tone; not the enthusiastic speech by Professor Schott, who insisted that Die Geschichte des europäischen Denkens is a major reflection that must be disseminated to every European university and I beg you all to read promptly. I beg you? I order you all to read it! Professor Kamenek didn’t refer to Isaiah Berlin and his Personal Impressions (vid. supra) in vain. I would have to add, if you’ll allow me, Professor Kamenek, the explicit references that Berlin makes to Ardèvol both in conversation with Jahanbegloo and in Ignatieff’s canonical biography. No, none of this is the miracle, Sara. Nor the Lesung that will surely last a good long hour. That’s not it, Sara. It’s seeing you here, in the chair where I sat so many times, with your dark ponytail spilling down your back and you looking at me, holding back a smile and thinking I’m handsome in my new suit jacket, isn’t that so, Professor Ardèvol?
‘Excuse me, Professor Schott?’
‘What do you think?’
What do I think. My God.
‘Love, that moves the sun and the other stars.’
‘What?’ Puzzled, the professor looked at the audience and turned his confused gaze on Adrià.
‘I’m in love and I often lose the thread of things. Can you repeat the question?’
The hundred or so members of the audience didn’t know whether to laugh or not. Nervous glances, the half-frozen smiles of deer in the headlights; until Sara broke out in a generous laugh and they were able to follow suit.
Professor Schott repeated the question. Professor Ardèvol answered it with precision, many people’s eyes gleamed with interest, and life is wonderful, I was thinking. And then I read the third chapter, the most subjective, which I had devoted to my discovery of the historical nature of knowledge before reading a single line of Vico. And the shock I felt when I discovered his work on the suggestion of Professor Roth, who unfortunately is no longer among us. And as I read I couldn’t help thinking that many years back Adrià had fled to Tübingen to lick his wounds over his sudden, inexplicable desertion by Sara, who now was laughing with satisfaction before him; that twenty years earlier he went through Tübingen sleeping with everyone he could, as had been pointed out in the presentation, and wandered through the classrooms searching every girl for some feature that reminded him of Sara. And now, in Room 037, he had her before him, more mature, looking at him with an ironic smirk as he closed the book and said a book like this requires many years of work and I hope I don’t feel inspired to write another for many, many, many years, amen. And the audience rapped their knuckles on the table with polite enthusiasm. And afterwards, dinner with Professor Schott, Dean Vartten, a thrilled Kamenek, and two female professors who were fairly mute and timid. One of them, perhaps the shorter one, said in a wisp of a voice that she had been moved by the human portrait that Kamenek had given of Doctor Ardèvol, and Adrià celebrated Professor Kamenek’s sensitivity while Kamenek lowered his eyes, a bit confused by the unexpected praise. After dinner, Adrià took Sara for a stroll through the park, which in the last light of day gave off a scent of cold spring bursting forth, and she kept saying this is all so lovely. Even though it’s cold.