Elsewhere, he draws the swirling plumes of her cigars, and writes how they “seduce every man and woman in the Romanisches.” He makes us feel the passion that Arendt and Martin Heidegger felt for each other. And he shows how words themselves can be erotic, on one page sketching a letter that Heidegger slipped under Arendt’s door. He depicts Arendt and Heidegger’s first embrace, and their high-level philosophical exchange of thoughts as they shed clothes. Surely this is the first book to depict Arendt lifting her shirt over her head and wearing only a bra. The sequence of images as she and Heidegger make love is sensual and erotic, not tawdry or exploitative.

¶ 5:16 PM