Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction (review)

154 SHOFAR Spring 1998 Vol. 16, No.3 editing standards observed in the professional languages ofcontributors blemishes many multi-language anthologies and is evident in this one as well. Theatralia Judaica II contains no list of contributors, so it is difficult to determine whether the writers of the four English-language essays are native speakers; their haphazard approach to English!American editing standards suggests they are not, all the more reason for the editor to scrutinize their work carefully for lapses in format. In this reviewer's opinion, this excellent anthology reflects a major dilemma attending publication in the age of global communication: choosing the most appropriate medium for delivering the message. Its editor acknowledges the worldwide audience ofHolocaust studies. A publication dealing with as fascinating, important, and timely a subject as Israeli-German relations deserves and is sure to command an international readership. Yet the eleven German essays of the anthology's total of fifteen, due to their intricacy of language and argumentation, require the linguistic skill ofa native speaker. In this instance, then, the medium seems too limited for its subject as well as the needs of its potential audience. In spite of publication delay and effort involved, the international community of Holocaust scholars, world Jewry, and especially citizens ofIsrael-whose theater is after all one of the main subjects of this study-might have been better served with English translations. Ute Stargardt Department of English Alma College Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction, by Sara R. Horowitz. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. 276 pp. $17.95 (p). One ofthe truisms about the Holocaust is that it was an unspeakable crime. At the same time, anyone who has ever written about it has expressed the imperative need to give voice to the horrors of the genocide lest the crime be forgotten. Thus, the Nazi assault against the Jews is regarded simultaneously as a silencing event and also as one that must be described, transmitted, remembered. Since to remember an historical event invariably requires finding a place for it in words, and since adequate words in this instance are notoriously lacking, the Holocaust has come to occupy a highly problematic space between language and silence. Literary scholars have long recognized this dilemma and, indeed, have identified it as one of the defining characteristics of Holocaust literature. One of the earliest and most influential attempts to clarify the origins and nature of this linguistic crisis -George Steiner's Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman (l967)-gave emphasis to these concerns in its very title. Numerous other Book Reviews 155 critical books (by Alexander, Avisar, Ezrahi, Langer, Rosenfeld, Young, among others) have likewise focused on the verbal gaps and tensions, the radical fractures and silences, within Holocaust literature. These go to the core of the historical trauma and, as much as anything can, help us understand the nature of its testimonial and other literature. Sara Horowitz's Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction is, thus, the latest in a well established body of critical studies that engage problems of "language and silence." Horowitz focuses in particular on mute characters in Holocaust fiction and demonstrates that these recurring figures, together with related motifs of fractured speech and a telling silence, are emblematic of the tensions alluded to above. She has read widely in the literature, knows it well, and deals with it across various gemes. Among the many authors who figure into her study are Jorge Semprun, Charlotte Delbo, Jerzy Kosinski, Jakov Lind, Primo Levi, Piotr Rawicz, Andre Schwarz-Bart, George Steiner, Aharon Appelfeld, Jean Amery, Ida Fink, Michel Toumier, Art Spiegelman, Louis Begley, Claude Lanzrnann, and Elie Wiesel. In reading works by these and other writers, Horowitz seeks to disclose muteness in testimony and also muteness as testimony. By and large she succeeds, although her success is often belabored and has resulted in a book that is repetitious and unnecessarily diffuse in its focus. Voicing the Void does not mark any significant conceptual advances in Holocaust literary studies, but it is useful for the close readings the author presents of a number of significant works. Many of these...