Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature

Danilo Kiš, Imre Kertész, and the Myth of the Holocaust

195 Danilo Kiš, Imre Kertész, and the Myth of the Holocaust Rosana Ratkovčić Translated from the Croatian by Irina Krlić In this paper, I present an analysis of how two Central European authors, Imre Kertész and Danilo Kiš, relate to the Holocaust myth, what their reconsiderations about the myth are, and how they, with their work, become involved in the myth and inscribe themselves in it. I investigate what the points of reference in their different experiences and different literary interpretations of the Holocaust are. There is a need to express and present the inexpressibility and incomprehensibility of the deliberate and systematic persecution and destruction of European Jewry, as well as of other groups, who did not fit the a Nazi ideal of a “pure” Aryan race with its notions of ethnic, racial, or religious affiliation, physical or mental abilities, or sexual orientation. I propose that one way in which this expression can be achieved is the construction of an alternative myth. Of course, I do not use the term “myth” in a revisionist sense of negation or denial of the Holocaust. However, I should like to point out that the use of the notion of “myth” in the context of the Holocaust does not relate well to Roland Barthes’s definition, namely that modern myths are a powerful means of ideological modifications of daily signs via which we erase their historical conditioning. By using the notion of the “myth of the Holocaust” I emphasize, rather, that the Holocaust became an untouchable topos in the imaginary of European culture and civilization. Instead, I employ the notion in the context of the work of C.S. Liebman and E. Don-Yehiya, who use the term “the Holocaust myth” in their study of Israeli civil religion, by stressing that “by labeling a story a myth we do not mean it is false,” but that “a myth is a story that evokes strong sentiments and transmits and reinforces basic societal values” (Liebman and Don-Yehiya 7). In his book Selling the Holocaust, Tim Cole points out that “the term myth of the ‘Holocaust’—for all its problematic connotations—is useful for distinguishing between the historical event—the Holocaust—and the representation of that event—the myth of the ‘Holocaust’” (4). Cole draws our attention to this distinction , as noted by Lawrence Langer, who points out that “the two planes on which 196 Rosana Ratkovčić the event we call the Holocaust takes place in human memory are the historical and the rhetorical, the way it was and its verbal reformation, or deformation, by later commentators” (33). Furthermore, Cole quotes P. Lopate, who writes that “in my own mind I continue to distinguish, ever so slightly, between the disaster visited on the Jews and the ‘Holocaust’” (Lopate qtd. in Cole 56). Cole stresses that “the myth of the ‘Holocaust’ may have drawn on the historical Holocaust, but it now exists apart from that historical event” (Cole 4). The inability to distinguish strictly between mythical and non-mythical discourses about the Holocaust is conditioned by the complex nature of passing on of what was experienced to the verbal medium , of the inter-relationship of immediate and mediated historical experience, of individual and collective history, and of historical and cultural memory. Simultaneously , the creation and acceptance of a myth includes the immediate danger of losing interest in it. The danger that a myth in its givens and invariability loses a connection with events that are its starting point and, thus, the meaning of the Jewish and other’s tragedy, people who Nazi ideology established as unacceptable for life in a “pure” state that they aspired to. Therefore, the survival of the Holocaust myth demands its constant reassessment, and at the same time, every attempt of reassessing it becomes a part of it, enriching it with new content and insight, owing to the universality of its acceptance. The works of Imre Kertész and Danilo Kiš I am dealing with here were first published in the 1970s. Kertész’s novel Sorstalanság (Fatelessness) was published for the first time in 1975, whereas Kiš’s Peščanik (Hourglass) was published in 1972 as the last in his sequel Obiteljski cirkus (Family Circus), after the novels Bašta, pepeo (Garden, Ashes) published in 1965 and Rani jadi (Early Sorrows) published in 1969. At the time these works of Kertész and Kiš were published for the first time, there was a similarity between the Hungarian...