NP? Nobel Prize winner Imre Kert�sz re writing, Holocaust, German language

[pynchonoid]

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,814806,00.html


"[...] I like to write in Hungarian because, this way,
I am more acutely aware of the impossibility of
writing. In a letter to Max Brod, in which he reflects
on the situation of the Jewish writer, Kafka speaks of
three impossibilities: it is impossible not to write,
impossible not to write in German, and impossible to
write any other way. Then he says, "We can almost add
a fourth impossibility: it's impossible to write."
Today he might add something else to the list: it is
impossible to write about the Holocaust. We could
continue enumerating the paradoxical impossibilities
ad infinitum. We could say that it is impossible not
to write about the Holocaust, impossible to write
about it in German, and equally impossible to write
about it any other way. 

Wherever he writes, in whichever language, the writer
of the Holocaust is a spiritual fugitive, asking for
spiritual asylum, invariably in a foreign tongue. If
it's true that the only real philosophical question is
that of suicide, then the writer of the Holocaust who
chooses to continue living knows only one real
problem, that of emigration, though it would be more
proper to speak of exile. Exile from his true home,
which never existed. For if it did exist, it would not
be impossible to write about the Holocaust. Then the
Holocaust would have a language, and the writer of the
Holocaust could be integrated into an existing
culture. 

But this can never be. Every language, nation,
civilisation has a dominant Self, which perceives,
controls and describes the world. This always active,
collective Self is the essence with which any large
community, nation, people or culture can, to varying
degrees of success, identify. But where can the
consciousness of the Holocaust find a home? Which
language can claim to include the essence of the
Holocaust, its dominant Self, its language? And if we
raise this question, must not another one follow -
whether it's conceivable that the Holocaust has its
own exclusive language? And if the answer to that
question is "Yes", wouldn't this language have to be
so terrifying, so lugubrious, that it would destroy
those who speak it? [...]

In reality, I belong to that Jewish literature which
came into being in eastern and central Europe. This
literature was never written in the language of the
immediate national environment and was never part of a
national literature. We can trace the development of
this literature from Kafka to Celan and to their
successors - all we have to do is peruse the various
émigré literatures. For the most part, this literature
deals with the extermination of European Jewry; its
language may vary, but whatever the language, it can
never be considered a native tongue. The language in
which we speak lives as long as we speak it. Once we
fall silent, the language is lost too - unless one of
the larger languages takes pity on it and lifts it on
to its lap, as it were, as in the pietà paintings. 

German is the language today that is most likely to do
this. But German, too, is only a temporary asylum, a
night shelter for the homeless. It is good to know
this, good to make peace with this knowledge, and to
belong among those who belong nowhere. It is good to
be mortal. " 


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