Rereading David Grossman’s See Under: Love

Upon its publication in 1986, David Grossman’s See Under: Love was hailed as a masterpiece that introduced innovative treatment of Holocaust themes to Hebrew literature.¹ This path-breaking novel caused a sensation on the Israeli literary scene through its focus on the second generation, as well as through its use of the fantastic and of postmodern narrative techniques.² The novel’s clamorous (mostly positive) reception from critics and the general public was in part a reaction to Grossman’s exuberant prose and enormous imaginative creativity. It was also a function of the ways See Under: Love spoke to a particular era. The author tapped into many issues that had begun fermenting in Israel in the mid-1980s and that subsequently entered public discourse with explosive force. Grossman identified and articulated a cluster of questions that in the coming years achieved increasing prominence in the arts and in psychology, history, and education. In addition, some of the issues highlighted in the novel were beginning to engross more and more audiences far beyond Israel. See Under: Love garnered international acclaim as it grappled with trauma, catastrophe, and memory—topics that were gaining global attention in the late 1980s and 1990s. In short, Grossman’s success at home and abroad aptly illustrates the Hebrew saying: Mihu ḥakham? Haro’eh et hanolad. Who is wise? He who has foresight, who sees what is coming next.

How has this novel held up over time? Now, at a distance of some thirty years, it is possible to reread and reassess this important text by asking how artistic responses to the Holocaust have evolved since 1986 and by considering whether Grossman’s novel was indeed prophetic of emerging trends in Holocaust studies. The essays collected here address such issues as they take a look at See Under: Love in view of later developments—with a focus on Israeli contexts, but with an eye to literary trends elsewhere, too. Or Rogovin examines Grossman’s representations of Nazis and measures them against increasing attention to Holocaust perpetrators in subsequent Hebrew fiction. Mia Spiro looks at monsters and ghosts, a growing phenomenon in Holocaust literature worldwide, to explore how the motif of the “Nazi Beast” plays out in Grossman’s hands. Iris Milner analyzes the humanist ethos of See Under: Love, showing how it fit in with societal outlooks that prevailed in Israel for a period of time, but that ultimately proved short-lived. She also compares Grossman’s novel and its depiction of survivors to a precursor text, Yoram Kaniuk’s Adam Resurrected (1969). Milner points out how nationalist elements of that novel contrast with universalist values characteristic of the later period in which Grossman was writing. Rogovin and Spiro likewise shed light on earlier literary works and cultural assumptions. They thereby suggest how See Under: Love emerged as a pivotal text, heralding new directions in artistic considerations of the Shoah. Rounding out this collection of essays is a piece by Sheila Jelen that focuses pointedly on See Under: Love as a pivotal text: at once a harbinger of a new era and a novel that reflects on literature of the past. Jelen discerns Yiddish elements in Grossman’s work, suggesting how they are indicative of a now burgeoning Israeli interest in Yiddish culture, and she offers the term salvage poetics to explain how Grossman engages voices from a bygone era, thus summoning ghosts from a world destroyed in the Holocaust.

These three essays resonate with but also diverge from one another in a number of compelling ways. Through distinctive approaches, they all examine Grossman’s refusal to settle for reductive or simplistic engagement with the aftermath of catastrophe. Rogovin, Spiro, and Milner, dealing with the literary treatment of victims and victimizers, gravitate toward discussion of difficult moral ambiguities. All four essays contribute to an understanding of how See Under: Love dismantled a once widespread supposition that sabras and Diaspora Jews (especially survivors of the Shoah) were binary opposites. Each of these essays thereby underscores how Grossman’s novel marked a watershed moment. See Under: Love challenged established views of sabra heroism and toughness...