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7 A Speck of Dust Blown by the Wind Across Land and Desert: Images of the Holocaust in Lanzmann, Singer, and Appelfeld GILA SAFRAN NAVEH On the issue of preoccupation with historical memory, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nineteenth-century American essayist, critic, and transcendental thinker, once pointedly remarked with a metaphor only too chilling in our context, "Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory?" Now Emerson was witty and at times quite penetrating; here, however, he betrays uncommon shallowness. This attitude with respect to remembering the past fails to understand what the French Jewish writer Marcel Proust perceived so accurately: "reality takes form only in memory." To find significance and meaning in our present life necessitates at some level relating to our historic past. We need to confront it honestly, to reflect upon it, to learn from it, and to build upon it in some constructive way. When confronting the Holocaust to keep it alive in humanity's memory, as writers, we are facing a serious dilemma. We proceed invariably to represent it artistically, which is tantamount to partaking in the process of its mythification. This in turn means that, in essence, when confronting the Holocaust we are dealing inevitably with issues of narrative strategy, rhetoric, and tropes and are moving away from the historical reality of this catastrophic event. In other words, in attempting to reflect about the Holocaust, however honestly, as writers, we come face-to-face with the drama of writing and of representation. To that extent, when trying to re-create the recent past by re-presenting it, namely, by making it present in film or in fiction to the millions who never experienced it, we must ask ourselves a different set of questions. For example, we might want to ask ourselves what kind of writing or cinematic 103 104 GILA SAFRAN NAVEH images are capable of revealing with most vigor the particular, as well as the universal aspects of the Holocaust, and relate most effectively the deeds of history ? In other words, we need to ask ourselves questions about the kind of artistic techniques which can make the Holocaust "real" to us, despite the lack of its presence (or, as Derrida would put it, despite "the absence of its presence"). A great deal has been said and written lately about representational "acting out," the rhetorico-narrational tactics by which one is compelled "to regress" and experience the event "as if s/he were part of that tragic event, during the Holocaust."1 In essence, this injunction is not unlike the one in the Passover Haggadah, which comments that "every man [and woman] ought to feel as if he himself came out of slavery in Egypt." To ask whether indeed the strategy of "acting out" and "working through" is a more potent narrative approach, capable of eliciting a more appropriate reader/viewer response and remembering, I submit below works by two writers and a writer/filmmaker who utilize this "new" technique. Specifically, I explore whether writing and film do in fact acquire more power by identifying with and forcing the readers/spectators to relive the painful experiences of the victims. On the other end of the continuum, I question whether we can provide a reading of these authors' work that answers the question in the affirmative and whether these answers can be supplied by an admittedly liturgical or ritual reading, or reception, of the authors investigated below. My contention is that a positive answer could prove helpful to those of us having to choose among a plethora of narrative strategies of transmission, and find ourselves in dire need of a reliable model. Admittedly, much has already been written about the Holocaust, but if we inquire how much of what has been written is actually literature, we will find that it is quite a small part. "Literature with a true voice and a face one can trust is very scarce," claims Appelfeld. I tend to agree with Appelfeld, who also states that, "while the literature of testimony remains the authentic literature of the Holocaust and part of Jewish chronology, testimonial literature embodies too many inner constraints — not only psychological — to become literature as that concept has taken shape over the generations."2 We notice that in survivors' remembrance, there is an inherent double bind. The dilemma expressed by Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and innumerable other survivors, less talented and less known, comes immediately to mind. The survivor reveals but at the same time conceals. Clearly...

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