Cataclysmic Redemption in Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces

CATACLYSMIC REDEMPTION IN ANNE MICHAELS' FUGITIVE PIECES A BACKWARD GLANCE: CATACLYSMIC REDEMPTION IN ANNE MICHAELS' FUGITIVE PIECES By GERALDINE D. OSHMAN, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School ofGraduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment ofthe Requirements for the Degree Master ofArts McMaster University Copyright by Geraldine Oshman, August 2002 MASTER OF ARTS (2002)McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: A Backward Glance: Cataclysmic Redemption in Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces (English) AUTHOR: Geraldine D. Oshman, B.A. (Towson University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Roger L. Hyman NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 104 11 ·" Abstract Five decades after the event, portraying the Holocaust continues to be a precarious and controversial endeavor. The overall posture of Holocaust representation has been to underline the nonsensical and destructive nature ofthe event as it extends into the post-Holocaust generation's collective memory. While traditional representations ofJewish catastrophe have relied on ancient Biblical and non-biblical archetypes, originating with Adam's fall from God's grace and mankind's eventual restitution from his fall to be delivered in messianic time, Holocaust narratives have in general not carried a message ofredemption, nor have they offered any closure to the event. Not only does Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces render a transformative narrative, but the closure in Part I ofthe novel reaches a level ofredemption. This work addresses the problems with the restorative nature ofthe novel through untangling the dense metaphors, the plot structure and characterization, and by drawing on survivor accounts, psychoanalysis, historiography and literary criticism. I look closely at how Jakob recovers his past, reaches redemption, and how he ultimately comes through the trauma ofthe Holocaust while remaining on the edges ofthe event. Likewise, I discuss how the tenuousness ofBen's potential recovery from the transmitted past of his parents deconstructs the restorative closure offered in Jakob's story. That the novel is structured into two parts is significant to my reading; this work shows how the first part ofthe novel with its rich, lyrical discourse and fulfilling outcome is complicated by the second part which is notably less poetic and does not culminate in explicit restoration. This thesis demonstrates how the novel's parts complement each other, structurally forming a unified story that ultimately offers no real closure. I suggest a possible solution to the problem ofredemption in Fugitive Pieces by reading Jakob's story as a myth based on the traditional Judaic archetypal\ restitution and Ben's story as an interpretation ofthe actual experience ofthe post-Holocaust ' generation. --~- 111 Acknowledgements Mostly for Saulius, whose faith in me could only be surpassed by his love. For Lois Devereux Oshman, 22 July 1926-14 July 200 I Joseph Martin Oshman, 15 September 1963-16 December 2000 and Brom~ V alkiiniene, 10 March 19 I 0-14 November 1999 Jn Memoriam IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Efficacy ofRedemptive Language 10 Chapter Two: Responsibility to the Other 40 Chapter Three: The Recover-ability ofMemory and the Past 61 Conclusion 91 Bibliography 100 v List of Abbreviations Des Pres, Terence. '·Holocaust Laughter?"- "HL" The Survivor S Friedlander, Saul. Probing the Limits ofRepresentation -PLR "Trauma, Memory, and Transference" "TMT" Langer, Lawrence L. Admitting the Holocaust -AH The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination HLI Holocaust Testimonies HT Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity EI God, Death, and Time GDT Rose. Gillian. Love's Work-LW Mourning Becomes the Law MBL Roskies. David. "The Library ofJewish Catastrophe" "LJC" The Literature ofDestruction LD Scholem, Gershom. Kabbalah K On the Kabbalab and Its Symbolism OKS Steiner, George. Language and Silence LS "The Long Life ofMetaphor: An Approach to the 'Shoah"' "LLM" V1 Introduction Recording the Jewish experience has long been a history ofrecording violence. Beginning with the First Destruction ofthe Temple in Jerusalem in 587 BCE., then the Second in 70 C.E., one cycle ofviolence gave way to another. Among them was the Moors' expulsion ofthe Jews from Spain in the 15th century, Tsarist Russia's 19dt-century pogroms and the countless pogroms ofthe 201h century in Europe. Then came the First World War, and the most devastating catastrophe in recent memory, the Holocaust. As David Ro skies points out, "The immediate problem facing the survivors ofthese catastrophes [of the 20th century] was not how to mourn but simply how to preserve a record of the unfolding disaster. For it was now possible for the modem nation state to wipe out entire populations and hide the fact" ("LJC" 33). And the fact ofpossible concealment has been coupled with an anxiety and urgency to record events. Roskies explains that traditionally there has been an approach to recording catastrophes, writing what he calls "the literature ofdestruction," by presenting the event in terms ofthe ancient archetypes ofprevious catastrophes. "Thus, the modem library of Jewish Catastrophe both grew out ofJewish collective memory and fed back into it" (35). Throughout the centuries and throughout numerous exiles, the Jewish response to catastrophe has been governed by the Hebrew Bible and the covenantal scheme, I 2 sanctioned rituals for mourning, and ancient archetypes, biblical and post-biblical. The Jewish literature ofdestruction was a three-way dialogue engaging the writer, the Jewish people and the God of Israel, with the basis ofthis dialogue being the covenantal idea of sin-retribution and sin-restoration (Roskies LD 4). With modernity, the use ofarchetypes endured but without the traditional faith in the old covenantal scheme. Nonetheless, such responses, rooted in a paradigm linked to Judaism's archetypal catastrophe -the Fall of Adam- still carry the seed of messianic redemption. Understanding catastrophe by infusing it with a redemptive quality or potential has existed on a sort ofliterary continuum up until the mid-2ot1t century. Roskies shows that as late as World War I, Jewish literature ofdestruction was still relying on an archetypal framework for recording the events ofcatastrophe. However, there was a fundamental change in the Jewish archive ofdestruction: no longer did Jewish writers compose dirge-like, poetic songs after the fact. The literature ofdestruction would draw on eyewitness accounts, and "would render the concrete and sensual particulars ofmodem - violence," essentially literalizing literature ("LJC" 35). When the Germans reinstated ghettos, far too familiar to Jews from medieval times, the approach to recording catastrophe began to rely on tools ofthe social sciences. A modem Jewish archive was developed in ghettos, the most notable being from the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. Emmanuel Ringelblum, founder ofthe Warsaw ghetto archive, described the "new" approach to recording catastrophe: "Every redundant word, every literary gilding or ornamentation grated upon our ears and provoked our anger. Jewish life in wartime is so 3 full oftragedy that it is unnecessary to embellish it with one superfluous line" (quoted in Roskies "LJC" 37-38). Yet, for all its stubborn attention to historical positivism and for all its desire to leave nothing out, the archive named Oneg Shabbes, 1 had become in archivist Chaim Kaplan's words "a sacred task analogous to the building ofthe Tabernacle" (Roskies "UC" 38). The archives continued to document events in the ghetto until the Great Deportation in the summer of 1942 when 275,000 Jews were shipped off to Treblinka in cattle cars. David Roskies and Saul Friedlander have very different views on the response to the Holocaust. Friedlander insists that with the advent ofthe Final Solution, the response to catastrophe incorporating the redemptive messianic age became less convincing when writers confronted the Shoah both during the war and after it. However, Roskies makes reference to examples of secular Jews employing the traditional response ofa redemptive stance to the events ofthe Shoah. He writes, "The eyewitness chroniclers ofmodem Jewish catastrophe ... [d]espite their loss, or lack offaith in a God ofHistory, ... revived the archetypal reading ofthat history" ("LJC" 40): This dichotomy ofthe literature ofdestruction, or to use Lawrence Langer' s phrase, "literature ofatrocity", is clearly discemable in survivor accounts, from Elie Weisel's expression ofutter despair to Viktor Frankl's assertion that the camps held an existential meaning and purpose. As well, this dichotomy has established itself in a genre 1 Oneg Shabbes means "Enjoyment of the Sabbath." The Warsaw ghetto archive acquired this clandestine nickname during the first month ofthe Gennan invasion. 4 ofliterature - "Holocaust literature" - exacerbating the problems associated with the dichotomy and the limits representation. These limits stem from the effect the events have had not only on the victims ofthe Holocaust, but on the whole of society. Whether one views the Shoah as a unique event or one of a series ofatrocities in Jewish history, whether one perceives the event as specifically Jewish or as affecting all of mankind, the phenomenon has had its effect on historians, sociologists, theologians, scholars, students - people from virtually all comers of the globe. The "rupture" so often referred to can be seen as historical, ethical, cultural and linguistic. And so Maurice Blanchot begins The Writing ofthe Disaster, "The disaster

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