Necropolis/Piligrim amongtheshadows the HumanandTruth. PilgrimAmongtheShadows(firstpublishedin1967)isthusan exceptional anduniquetaleofadeathcampexperienceunveilstheauthor’s journey He isoneofthemajorchroniclers ofconcentrationcamp horrors, alongwithPrimo Levi, story ofacitizenTrieste, acityonlyostensiblylimitedbytime andspace,acitywhere “A harrowing book,visitingadeathcampandthere-emergence ofunbearableimages, modern-day, tragicOdysseusreveals hispilgrimageintothewords ofshadows,where survivors ofdeathcamps,post-warfightersfordemocracy, individualswhobelievedin harrowing lifeexperienceoftheauthorhimselfandallvictimsfascistregime, himself (andallofus)through theonlyviablemeans:love.’s oeuvre portraysthe spirits ofthosewhohadnotreturned.Hedoesawaywithdialoguecompletely, yethis Biography isthekeytoPahor’s oeuvre, inwhichhechronicles theepicofSlovene “The author’s sensitivity, graceandtheacutenessofhisviewworldpeople the centralsubjectisintertwinedwithhistoricaleventsandpersonalexperience.This “Pilgrim AmongtheShadowsisanexceptionalwork,belongingfordecadesamong and theessenceofallhisworks,whichcanbesummedupinasinglethought:The he instilslifeanddignityintoinvisiblefriendswithwords andemotionsredeems and, indirectly, theEuropean individualintheirstruggleforsurvival.Henarratesthe “A storywhosebeautyrightfullyplacesitsidebywith theworksofPrimoLevi “Forbidden languagesare generous andsturdy, from the ashes theyhaverisen “It isimpossibletooverlook thebraveanddirect perspective ofBorisPahor. portrayed instunningdetailandwithanexceptionalanalyticalforce.” fuse withtragicmemoriesinthiswonderfulandshocking book.” “The authoratteststoSlovenianthoughtandoriginality.” writing exceedsandaugmentsthememoirprose. On Pahor´swork “A heart-rending andbeautifulbook.” Imre KertészandRobertAntelme.” the beststoriesofdestruction.” Elena Loewenthal(LaStampa) Paolo Rumiz(LaRepubblica) and becameapoem.” Süddeutsche Zeitung Dominique Dissidour and Imre Kertész.” Evgen Bavčar Tatjana Rojc Le Monde La Croix

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photo by Jože Suhadolnik Boris Pahor Necropolis/Piligrim among the shadows The book was translated by Michael Biggins / Excerpt is the chronicler of the 20th century. Born in It’s a Sunday aftenoon, and the smooth and sinuous on 26th , he witnessed asphalt strip that leads ever higher into the mountains is first-hand the fascist persecution of the not as desolate as I would have wished it to be. Cars Slovene community which became part pass me or retun down into the valley, toward Schirmeck, of Italy after the collapse of the Austro- and the volume of tourist traffic disrupts, defiles, even, Hungarian Monarchy and the Treaty of the calm I had anticipated. Admittedly, my car and I are Rapallo in 1920. Still a child, he witnessed now a part of the motorized procession. I had hoped that mass persecution and the torching of the if there was no other traffic but me, my former intimacy Slovene Culture Center, burning of Slovene with this place would keep my intrusion from distorting books, of first, family and place the dreamlike images that have lived untouched in the names, the prohibition of the use of the Slovene shadows of my mind ever since the war. I realize that language in public and schools. After having been some vague resistance is forming in me—resistance to stripped of identity, he was sent to a number of German the fact that this mountainous region, such an integral concentration camps (Dachau, Struthof, Dachau again, part of our inner world, should be laid bare, made Dora Mittelbau, Harzungen and Bergen Belsen). After the war accessible. My resistance is tinged with jealousy, because these outsiders are coming he advocated the need for a Slovene democratic system. His life to sightsee in the place that witnessed our anonymous captivity. But—and I sense experience has had a profound impact on his literary work as well as his this unmistakably—their eyes will never see the abyss of desolation that was our historical and socio-political writings and essays. Pahor’s literary oeuvre is punishment for believing in man’s dignity and freedom. At the same time I feel an renowned in Europe and the United States and he is considered one of the unbidden and gently ersistent satisfaction that this mountain in the Vosges is no longer classic writers of the 20th century. the site of a distant, self—consuming fury of destruction; that it has become, instead, the destination of endless crowds which, naïve and guileless though they may be, Boris Pahor: [email protected] are sincere in their wish to experience just a hint of the inconceivable fate of their lost brothers. Maybe in the ascent here there is something of the fervor of religious pilgrimages to the remote peaks of holy mountains. But nothing in this pilgrimage is even remotely connected to the blind idolatry that Primus Truber so fervently opposed when he exhorted the to discover their own inner enlightenment and not Some books by Boris Pahor spend themselves in superficial, pompous ritual. People all over Europe are coming together on high mountain terraces where human evil wrung victory after victory out of Zgodba o reki, kripti Moje suhote Trg Oberdan in dvorljivem golobu Zalivi human pain and nearly set the seal of permanence on destruction. It isn’t the search for miracle that brings these modern pilgrims. They come here to tread on truly holy ground, to pay homage to the ashes of fellow creatures who by their mute presence have raised in our hearts, an immovable landmark of human history.

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