Sedmiramenný Svícen)

The Menorah (Sedmiramenný svícen)

Author: Josef Škvorecký

First Published: 1964; the second edition in J. Š.: Hořkej svět (Bitter World, 1969), in a different order

Translations: Basque (Mundu mingotsa, 1996); English (five stories in: J. Š.: When Eve Was Naked, 2000); Dutch (De zevenarmige kandelaar, 2004); Bulgarian (in: Bassakso- fon, 2010); Serbian (Gorak svet, 2016).

About the Author: Josef Škvorecký (1924–2012) was born in the North-Eastern Bohe- mian town of Náchod, where he attended school and did his A-levels in 1943. During the war years, he was compelled to do forced labour. After the war he studied English philology and philosophy in Prague at Charles University and received a doctoral de- gree. Having finished his military service at the beginning of the 1950s, Škvorecký started working as an editor in the publishing house SNKLU. In 1958, his first – and most famous – novel The Cowards, written already by the end of the 1940s, could fi- nally be published. A vast number of novels, stories, dramas, essays etc. followed over the next decades. Many of them are based on biographic experiences, such as life in a Czech provincial town before and during the war from the perspective of a local teen- ager, the political difficulties of a young intellectual in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist era, the love for jazz and American culture as a form of resistance in totalitarianism etc. After the end of the Prague Spring, Škvorecký and his wife, the writer Zdena Sali- varová, left Czechoslovakia and took up residence in Canada, where they founded the best known publishing house for Czech exile literature, 68 Publishers. At the Univer- sity of Toronto Škvorecký held a chair for Anglophone Literature until his retirement in 1990.

Further Important Publications: Zbabělci (1958, The Cowards; novel); Lvíče (1969, The Lioness; novel); Obyčejné životy (2004, Ordinary Lives; novella).

Content and Interpretation The Menorah is a cycle of altogether eight stories which was published as a book in 1964 (Ibler, 2012). One of these stories, an untitled text, is a kind of frame narration being presented throughout the cycle in short fragments, between which the seven titled stories are placed (Špirit, 2011, p. 237). The frame narration originates from the story Rebecca already written by Škvorecký in 1947 and textually revised by him for the cycle. Whereas in the titled stories the first-person narrator Danny reminisces about the life of the Jewish inhabitants of the Czech town K. in the time before and during the Nazi occupation and about their tragic end in the Holocaust, the frame story is located in Prague in 1952 and consists for the most part of Danny’s dialogues

Open Access. © 2021 Reinhard Ibler, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056-065 The Menorah (Sedmiramenný svícen) 275

with his girlfriend Rebecca. As the only surviving member of her family, Rebecca re- turned from Theresienstadt to Prague after the war. The cycle’s title The Menorah refers to the Jewish topic, whereas the two epigraphs at the beginning of the book prefi- gure the pivotal problem of suffering and death:

For those who died a long time ago, for those who have been forgotten a long time ago (Škvor- ecký, 1996, p. 143). I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their op- pressors… (Ecclesiastes 4;1) (p. 144; quoted according to The Book of Ecclesiastes).

From the temporal background of the frame story, the apogee of the Stalinist era in Czechoslovakia, the time before and during the war as well as the Holocaust, outlined in the seven single stories, are remembered and valued. Despite the relatively short span of time, a radical change has taken place. There is a form of coexistence between Czechs and Jews also in the postwar years, the conditions for this are, however, no longer the same as before. This can be seen in the case of Rebecca and Danny, the main characters of the frame story. Although they have a love affair, their relationship is tainted by the things that happened notwithstanding the fact that they are not only devoid of any guilt, but that both are victims in many respects. After Rebecca’s surviving and returning, she had not only to realise that people met her with hostility, but that all of her family’s and relatives’ homes were already occupied by Czechs (Holý, 2011b, p. 178). Rebecca’s present life is characterised by her efforts to get along with all of her bad experiences and with her hopeless situation. Her general disorientation also finds its expression in numerous fleeting erotic contacts. Danny, on the other side, feels ashamed of Rebecca’s former and present humiliation by the Czechs, but also speaks for a more nuanced view: “But not all of us were indifferent. After all, there is no one who is absolutely indifferent” (Škvorecký, 1996, p. 174). Danny, using examples, tries to convince Rebecca of his way of looking at Czechs’ behaviour, but she disagrees with him. The story (and with it the whole cycle) is open ended, the final scene offering a pessimistic vision. During a boat trip on a lake, the lovers become wit- nesses to the fight between two catfish, one of them devouring the other, but perish- ing by choking. This complex motif can be interpreted as a symbol of mankind’s hopeless and paradoxical situation. By putting the Holocaust and the subsequent coping with it during the time of Sta- linism into a higher historical, philosophical and existential context, the frame story in a sense bears the cycle’s central message, whereas the seven integrated stories rather appear as single episodes exemplifying and amplifying this message. These stories present tangible insights into a time which at first, in the late 1930s, still shows idyllic features, but soon reveals increasing flaws and breaches heralding the catastrophe. There are several Jewish characters, partly with odd and quirky traits, who all have to suffer different trials. All of them, in some way or other, are connected with Danny. Besides a distant relative (My Uncle Kohn) Danny narrates about his family doctor (Dr Strass) and his private tutor (My Teacher, Mr Katz). The fact that Danny is 276 Entries

taught by a Jew, which is the subject of the last-mentioned story, spelt doom for his father who was deported to a concentration camp, where he perished. But also Dan- ny’s brother and sister do not belong to the indifferent Czechs: they take part in a dan- gerous resistance campaign (see A Story for Rebecca). Also in the following texts var- ious aspects of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews at the time of occupation and Holocaust are presented. So, for example in Mifinka and Bob the Slaughterer the marriage of a Jewish girl and a Christian boy is prohibited by the latter’s antisemitic father. A Jewish newborn is provided with an Aryan identity and thus saved with the help of a German woman (The Cuckoo). Eine kleine Jazzmusik, one of Škvorecký’s most famous narratives, develops as a complex love story against the backdrop of Danny’s jazz band and its problems with the German occupiers.

Main Topics and Problems The Menorah is a work without a homogenous, linear plot. The different plot elements and motifs are rather assembled in a mosaic-like way and subjectively perceived by the first-person narrator (Danny). Over the course of the narration, the macrohistory, major historical events, proceeds in the background, being only briefly indicated. This is also true for the mostly tragic personal events such as deportation or death in a camp. Instead, there are scenes from everyday life in the foreground evoking a feeling of normality or even idyll, a feeling that appears all the more depressing, considering the fact of the catastrophe drawing near or even already happening. Every story of the cycle has its own, independent plot. But, of course, all the texts are interconnected both by the general topic, i.e. the fate of the Jews in a Czech town during the time of occupation and Holocaust, and the fact that all the stories are narrated by the same person and that certain characters and motifs recur in other stories. In this process, the function of the frame story is not only to create the basis of remembrance, but also to unify the individual stories on the level of meaning. The cycle’s title refers to one of the most important religious symbols of Judaism, the menorah or seven-branched candlestick, which is used in important religious ri- tuals (Voß, 1993). According to Jewish numerology, the number seven represents per- fection and completeness: the connection with the seven days of biblical creation is evident. We can assume that the construction of a menorah is, in a sense, reflected in the work’s structure – the seven titled stories representing the menorah’s seven can- dleholders, the frame story, i.e. the “eighth” text, its base and stem. Despite the pessimistic tone at the end of the cycle, these religious associations make us aware of the work’s true concern: to bow to the sufferings of the Jewish people during the Holo- caust and also after the war and to show that there once was a well-functioning com- mon existence of Jews and non-Jews.

Cited Works The Book of Ecclesiastes 4. Available at: https://www.biblestudytools.com/ecclesiastes/4.html [Accessed: 23.11.2019] Holý, J. (2011b). Trauma návratu a šoa v literatuře The Menorah (Sedmiramenný svícen) 277

„druhé generace”. In: J. Holý et al., Šoa v české literatuře a v kulturní paměti. Praha: Akropolis, pp. 169–201. Ibler, R. (2012). Zur Darstellung des Holocaust in der tschechischen Literatur des Prager Frühlings. Josef Škvoreckýs Erzählzyklus Sedmiramen- ný svícen (Der siebenarmige Leuchter). In: R. Ibler, ed., Ausgewählte Probleme der polnischen und tschechischen Holocaustliteratur und -kultur. München: Sagner, pp. 65–80. Škvorecký, J. (1996). Nové canterburské povídky a jiné příběhy. Praha: Ivo Železný. Špirit, M. (2011). Vzpomínky o zkáze. Přítomnost a eliminace šoa u Josefa Škvoreckého. In: J. Holý et al., Šoa v české literatuře a v kulturní paměti. Praha: Akro- polis, pp. 227–252. Voß, J. (1993). Die Menora. Gestalt und Funktion des Leuchters im Tempel zu Jerusalem. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Further References Čulík, J., Pilař., M. (2000). Josef Škvorecký. In: S. Serafin, ed., Twentieth-Century East- ern European Writers. Detroit: The Gale Group, pp. 336–351. Holý, J. (2011a). Židé a šoa v české a slovenské literatuře po druhé světové válce. In: J. Holý et al., Šoa v české literatuře a v kulturní paměti. Praha: Akropolis, pp. 7–65. Holý, J. (2015). The Jews and the Shoah in Czech Literature after WWII. Available at: https://sites.ff.cuni.cz/ holokaust/wpcontent/uploads/sites/122/2015/01/jiri-holy-the-jews-and-the-shoah-in- czech-literature-after-wwii.pdf [Accessed: 23.11.2019]. Kosková, H. (2004). Škvorecký. Praha: Literární akademie. Suchomel, M. (1992). Literatura z času krize. Šest pohledů na českou prózu 1958–1967. Brno: Atlantis. Trensky, P. I. (1991). The Fiction of Josef Škvorecký. New York: St. Martin’s Press.