ARGUMENTS
261
ROBERT LOWELL
Both Hannah Arendt and Lionel Abel have written with
such intelligence and force that any comment by me is likely to seem
weak and impertinent. I particularly wish to avoid saying anything about
the Jewish committees, or Abel's unanswerable, "What would you have
done?" and "What could you have done ?" I do think he distorts the
painfully patient examination Miss Arendt gives this question. Her
portrait of Eichmann, far from being lenient, is a masterpiece in render–
ing the almost unreadably ·repellent. I never felt she was condescending,
or hard, or driven by a perverse theory, or by any motive except a heroic
desire for the truth.
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