Yannick Haenel and François Meyronnis on the 'Gospel of the Whale'

In a new book from Éditions Gallimard, Yannick Haenel and François Meyronnis explore the theme of deliverance through destruction, drawing on Melville's Moby Dick. They argue that modern values—emancipation, democracy, science, progress—are mere substitutes for the Christian beyond, leading to nihilism. The authors contend that the modern drive to produce reality rather than receive it results in total destruction, with Hitler as a precursor. Haenel sees writing as a means to face horror and achieve the sacred, but the reviewer questions whether this merely replaces one demiurgy with another. The book also references Poe, Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Chalamov, Kertész, and Heidegger.