The Occupation and After: Childhood, Adolescence, and Poetic Vision in Vargaftig and Réda

How does French literature address the Occupation? To what extent do we better understand this increasingly distant historical period? Why is poetry suited to grasping its traumas? This article considers such questions through the poetry and prose of Bernard Vargaftig (1934–2012) and Jacques Réda (b. 1929). Vargaftig offers insight into a distinctly Jewish dilemma of wartime hiding and its aftereffects, while Réda portrays this period as one of adaptation to intriguing new surroundings. Their differing perspectives on historical exigencies and personal suffering share common points regarding how to recuperate or commemorate the past.