Translating Holocaust Literature

Peter Arnds (ed.)

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Introduction ...... 7

Alan Turnbull The Dresden ArchiveProject. Acontemporaryartwork ...... 13

Tara Bergin Translating the Passion of Ravensbrück:Ted Hughes and Jµnos Pilinszky 23

Alana Fletcher Transforming Subjectivity: Se questo unuomo in Translation and Adaptation ...... 33

Bettina Stumm CollaborativeTranslation:The Relational Dimensions of Translating Holocaust Trauma ...... 45

Gatan PØgny interviews FranÅois Rastier Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz ...... 63

Rita Horvµth “The MagicalProperties of Creative Sameness:The Role of Translation in Anne Michaels’s FugitivePieces”...... 81

Stephanie Faye Munyard Berman and Beyond:The Trial of the Foreignand the Translation of Holocaust Literature ...... 89

Anna Nunan Translating MonikaMaron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text ...... 107 6 Inhalt

Rosa MartaGómez Pato Poetry of Memoryand Trauma and their Translation ...... 125

Bastian Reinert Translating Memory. Acts of TestimonyinResnais, Cayrol, and Celan ..139

Index ...... 153 Introduction

In his testimonyabout his survivalinAuschwitz Primo Levi insisted that “la nostra lingua manca di parole per esprimere questaoffesa, la demolizione di un uomo -our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man” (Primo Levi, If This Is AMan Translated by StuartWoolf [London:Abacus, 1987] 32). If language, if anylanguage, lacks the words to express the experience of the concentration camps, howdoesone write the unspeakable?How can it then be translated?MartinHeidegger’s discussion in his Parmenides lectures from 1942/43oftranslation (Übersetzung,with the stress on the second syllable) as an actofÜbersetzen (with the stress on the first syllable) implies crossing a rivertothe other side, an area where the truth mayemerge from concealment and forgetting (Lethe). Ye tinPrimo Levi’s memoir the actoftranslating in the sense of re-presenting the experience of the Lager to relatives and friends back home in the unlikely case of survivalbecomes acollective nightmare. It reflects one of Levi’s worst fears for life after Auschwitz, thatofaprolonged isolation with his memories, an apt image ultimately for the impossibilityoftranslation. Lager (camp) is one of the words thatLevileaves un-translated. This maybedue to the association with fields of flowers of the Italian campo,but such un- translatabilityalso extends to manyother texts about the Holocaust. The translation of aword like Ungeziefer (bug?cockroach?vermin?insect?) by which Kafkadescribes Gregor Samsa in his story Metamorphosis is similarly charged in the context of racial melancholia and the Holocaust. The limits of representation and translation seem to be closely linked when it comes to writing about the Holocaust –whether as fiction, memoir, testimony– aphenomenon the currentstudy examines.While there is aspate of literature about the impossibilitytorepresentthe Holocaust (see, for example, Saul Friedlander’s seminal Probing the Limits of Representation:Nazism and the Final Solution, [Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1992]), there is hardly anyliteratureon the links between translation in its specific linguistic sense,translation studies, and the Holocaust, aniche this volume aimstofill. The articles in this book have evolved from aconference Iorganized at the 8 Introduction

TrinityLong Room HubatTrinityCollege Dublin in June 2013. The idea for this eventarose while Iwas working on the untranslatabilityofsome of the vo- cabularyinPrimo Levi’s If this is aman,Sebald’s Austerlitz,and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis,realizing that there are German words that are so closely associated with the Holocaust and National Socialism’s brand of biopolitics that they defytranslation into other languages. Our keynote address was held by visual artist Alan Turnbull (Newcastle upon Tyne) whoshared his work on the Dresden ArchiveProjectwith the participants. He focuses on the translation of images (postcards, Alan’s ownpaintings, etc.) over time, frompre-war to post-war Dresden.Althoughnot directly linked to the Holocaust, this project will open our volume on questions of translation, which largely centres around the translation of language. In her essay“Translating the Passion of Ravensbrück:Ted Hughes and Jµnos Pilinszky” Tara Bergin then explores the relationship between the poetics of Hungarian post-war poet Jµnos Pilinszkyand the literalistic approach of his English translator TedHughes. Using as her main example Hughes’s translation of Pilinszky’s poem ‘Passion of Ravensbrück,’ Bergin outlines the process of Hughes’s technique, concentrating on his belief that arough, unrhyming version would be best suited to Pilinszky’s “poor” poetics, even if this meantbeing unfaithful to the formal and metricappearance of the source text.Bergin suggests thatthe de-regularising impactthatliteral translation can have on atext became an effectactively soughtafter by Hughes;one that would not only shape howEnglish-speaking audiences perceivedPilinszky’s first-hand accountofthe Holocaust, but alsoHughes’s ownpoetry. For evidence of this, she concentrates on his controversial 1970 collection Crow,abookwith which, according to critic A. Alvarez, Hughes joined “the selectband of survivor-poets whose work is adequate to the destructiverealityweinhabit.” In her essay“Transforming Subjectivity:Se questo unuomo in Translation and Adaptation” Alana Fletchermentions howPrimo Levi writes in his 2002 retrospective, L’asimmetria elavita (translated in 2005 as The Black Hole of Auschwitz), of the voicelessness he and his fellowinmates at Auschwitz experienced, and howacorrelativeneed to communicate this dehumanizing experience to others brought about the memoirofhis year-long internment, Se questo unuomo (De Silva, 1947) (Black Hole 24). After the memoir’s reprintby Einaudi in 1957, both its popularityand dissemination increased considerably. The processes of translation and adaptation that occur after this pointcon- sistently reveal oppositions between Levi’s notion thatanincreased accessibility and universalityisachieved throughtranslation of the work into multiple languages (as evinced by his comments in the Preface to the German edition of his memoir [1961]), and his feeling thatlanguagelessness is exacerbated by an interchange of multiple languages in which none exchanges the samemeaning Introduction 9 with another.Akind of personal revelation about the waylanguage conceals rather than reveals seems to have been prompted by George Whalley’s dramatic adaptation of Se questo unuomo for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, simply entitled “IfThis is aMan” (broadcast 30 September 1951).Ofthe radio drama, Levi wrote:“[The creators] had understood full well the importance in that camp of alack of communication, exacerbated by the lack of acommon language, and they hadbravely set their work within the framework of the theme of the Tower of Babel and the confusionoflanguages” (Black Hole 26). Fletcher’s article examines fault lines between these two opposing view points on translation and dissemination, focusing on differences between Primo Levi’s guid- ance and reception of straight translations of the memoir into English and German, and his reception of its multilingual adaption for radio by Whalley,a Canadian scholar and poet, World WarIInaval officer,CBC broadcaster,and translator. In his preface to The Drowned and the Saved (1988), Primo Levi describes a nightmare that manyprisoners in Auschwitz shared:they had returned home and begun to tell their stories of suffering to aloved one, but their stories were not believed and not even listened to.Inthe worst cases, the interlocutor turned and leftwithout response. Levi’s description suggests that both the goal and the challenge of translating Holocaust trauma into narrative formisthatofrela- tionship and response. Survivors relate (tell) their stories and invite recipients to relate (connectand interact) in response. While survivors struggle to tell their stories, the crisis of communicabilityoften lies in the recipient’s inabilityto receive, relate and respond to the survivor, resulting in abreakdown of com- munityinthe actoftranslation. Bettina Stumm’s contribution “Collaborative Translation:The Relational DimensionsofTranslating Holocaust Trauma” focuses on the dialogical and relational nature of translating trauma into narrative and the critical role of the respondentinthat process to suggest that one of the primarypurposes of translation is to create or re-create communitywhere trauma has destroyed it. Throughthe work of DoriLaub(Testimony,1992) and Kelly Oliver (Witnessing,2001), she suggests that the practices of relational representation and response involvedintranslating an experience of trauma into narrative can aid in personal healing and communitybuilding.She addresses howthese processes function in practice by examining her ownrole as are- spondentinher collaborativework with alocal Holocaust survivortoprepare her memoirs for publication in 2005. In this process, Stumm transcribed much of the survivor’s storyfrom interviews and translated her broken English (her first languagewas Dutch) into acoherentand chronological narrative account. Throughthis dialogic process of narration and translation arelationship developed that not only challengedthe incommunicability of trauma but also opened aspace for healing and hope. 10 Introduction

As part of this volume’s series of essays on Primo Levi Gatan PØgny then interviews FranÅois Rastier,SeniorResearch Director at the National Centrefor Scientific Research (Paris), and alinguist whowants to synthesize hermeneutics and philologytopromote historical and comparative text semantics. His Ulysse àAuschwitz –Primo Levi, le survivant (Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 2005), which is being discussed in this interview,received the award of the Auschwitz Foun- dation. In her essay“The Magical Properties of Creative Sameness:The Role of Translation in Anne Michaels’s FugitivePieces”Rita Horvath proposes to read Anne Michaels’s novel FugitivePieces about child survivors of the Holocaust and second-generation Holocaust survivors as apoeticway to explore translation as aprivileged mode to deal with historical trauma, especially with the Holocaust, which involves manytongues even on the level of the historical events. In Mi- chaels’s novel, the complex notion of translation is examined throughinter- preting between three languages(English, Greek and Yiddish), between various cultures (Polish Jewish, Ancientand ModernGreek, Greek Jewish, Canadian, etc.), genres, and even gender identities. One of the most potenttheoretical ways in which Michaels’s work re-conceptualizes translation is that it views translation throughits connection to the concept of adoption. In addition to that, Michaelsalso re-conceptualizes the notion of adoption –the adoption of children, parents, culture, vocation, lifestyle, etc –throughits connection to theories of translation and throughemphasizing thatboth adoption and translation involve an irreparable break, viz. an essential discontinuity,and they both re- quire conscious choices.Moreover,these qualities are crucialtraits of both personal and historical trauma. The multilingual nature of Holocaust literature generates acrucial status for translation work and theorywithin our continuing investigation and communication of the Shoah: Such translationcan never be asimple process of linguistic or factual equivalence;iftranslation, by default, transforms an original, then this transformative mechanism necessarily holds significantimplications for the truth of translated history and for the memoryofthose whoperished. Stephanie Munyard’s essay“Berman and Beyond:The Trial of the Foreign and the Translation of Holocaust Literature” analyses the English and German translations of three works by French Holocaust writers: Le sel et le soufre (The Whole Land Brimstone/Salz und Schwefel) by Anna Langfus, Woulesouvenir d’un enfance(Worthe Memory of Childhood/Woder die Erinnerung and die Kindheit) by Georges Perec and La nuit (Night/Die Nacht) by Elie Wiesel. Throughthis analysis, translation ‘tendencies’ will be located within the framework outlined by Berman in his essay: “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, and the impact of such tendencies on the transmissionand reception of Holocaust testimonywill be evaluated. Delving into literarycriticism, argu- Introduction 11 ably,acrucial stage in the approach to translating works of this kind, Munyard looks at howunidentified, un-translated literarydevices such as repetition, alliteration and allegorywithin Holocaust narratives can deconstruct underlying networks of signification and howexpansion, clarification and footnoting mask the infinityofmeanings found in brevityand silence. Furthermore, the paper suggests two further ‘tendencies’: Christianisation and Technicalisation which could be useful in the consideration of how Holocaust works are being translated. It is only by bringingthese tendencies to the forefrontoftranslator awareness, by considering the intentbehind these tendencies and by looking at how not to translate, that translation scholars can moveany closer to the unique set of translation theories or methodologies thatthis field warrants. Anna Nunanargues in “Translating MonikaMaron’s Pawels Briefe as a Postmemorial Holocaust Text” that MonikaMaron rallies against the unreli- abilityofeyewitness testimonyofthe Holocaust, the personal, national and political natureof(post) memoryofWWII and the impactofher Jewish grandfather’s disappearance on her personal sense of identity.Maron’s sensitive examination of the contingentnatureofpostmemoryinrelation to the implications of the loss of her grandfather contribute to the reading of this text as a literarywork that exceeds the boundaries of personal representation and enters the domain of Germanliterarydepictions of the Holocaust. The translation of this postmemorial text into English has been problematic for manyofthe reasons associated with the translation of Holocaust texts in general, such as loss of authenticity, violation of context and connotation and the difficulty of recreating experience throughlanguage, but the precisionand tone of Maron’s text has been obscured in the English translation to the extentthat this rendition of the novel discourages the justifiable positioning of this text centrally in the historyofGermanliterarytextsonthe Holocaust. If,according to Theodor Adorno,writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, what does this imply for the challenges of translating Holocaust poetry?In “PoetryofMemoryand Trauma and their Translation”Rosa MartaGómez Pato has examined the challenges and strategies of translating Holocaust poetry.Asa literarytranslator she focuses on aselection of poems by Ilse Aichinger and Ingeborg Bachmann and howtheir silences and ambiguities can be translated. Gómez Pato argues that these authors have reshaped poetic language after the Holocaust. She maintains that both writers understand literature as utopia and their actofwriting as an attempt to transcendthe limits of languageand to show adifferentreading of the world.Aichinger’s and Bachmann’s poetry is full of hidden meanings and historical, political and religious references, which demand maximum care and attention from the literarytranslator.Inher essay Gómez Pato tries to showhow to translate these signals, and howtotranslatethe new and strange poetic language of these women writers. 12 Introduction

The volume concludes with Bastian Reinert’s article “Translating Memory. Acts of TestimonyinResnais, Cayrol, and Celan.” Dealing with the motivic and rhetorical analogies between Alain Resnais’ documentaryfilm Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard), Jean Cayrol’s French commentary, and both Paul Celan’s German translation of the latter as well as with his famous poem Stretto (Eng- führung), this essayisconcerned with an at least threefold translation process: the translation of memoryintofilm, of film into language, and of one language into another.The translation process at work in Resnais, Cayrol,and Celan thereforeisaprocess of remembering itself –inlight of its intermedial and intertextual implications, its appropriation of historical (cultural) memoryand individual memory, and its memoryformation as an inevitable attempt to constructtheir ownreality. Alan Turnbull

The Dresden Archive Project. Acontemporary artwork

Introduction

For 15 years Icollected postcardsofDresden with no clear idea where it might lead. It didn’t beginasanart project, or indeed aprojectofany kind and items accumulated in boxes, folders and files scattered throughoutthe house. The collection started in ahaphazard wayafter avisit to Dresden in June 1994, where Ihad been invited to showafilm in acultural festival. The citymade astrong impressiononmebecause signs of the past were everywhere in evidence and on returning homeIbegan to collectpostcards of the citytogivemesome sense of howDresden had been before its overnight destruction in the SecondWorld War. Whypostcards?They were documentaryevidence:small in scale, generally affordable, common items. They were usually stamped with adate and thus offered atimeline. Images continuetocirculate when their source is long gone and when Istarted looking for Dresden postcards Icameacross them everywhere:inParis arcades, in Lisbon street markets, in second hand shops in Amsterdam. As an artist I initially hadnothoughtoftranslating this material into my ownpractice, in collecting them Iwas driven by curiositytosee if Icouldbuildupapicture in my mind of the lost city. Whatbegan as acasual interest developed into something of an obsessionand my interest widened to include collecting various kindsofpaper ephemera, photographs, maps and letters posted fromDresden and to Dresden. Anumber of coincidental items accumulated in my collection:two cardswhich Iboughtat differenttimes which Idiscovered to be written by the same sender on the same afternoon and posted to two differentdestinations;arecurring face in two differentgroup photographs from years apart; achoirmaster with his group of boysingers photographed in 1921 and again in 1931. Icollected Prisoner of War letters, army communications in code, and messages frommen awaitingtheir call up papers. In researching the postcardsIbecame aware of terrible ironies. There was asuch agap between the original depictionsofthe city’s tourist sites 14 Alan Turnbull and events that subsequently occurredthere:the Hotel Continental, on Bis- markstrasse by the Hauptbahnhof, which became aGestapo headquarters;the youth hostel in nearby Hohnstein which later incorporated aNazi torture chamber;the elegantfacades of Schlossstrasse where the windows of Jewish businesses were to be smashedonKristallnacht in November 1938;the celebrated Hauptbahnhof –onthe first major railwayline in Germany(Mackey,69) – where trains would departfor Belzec, Theresienstadtand Auschwitz (Taylor). This accumulation of material led me in ever widening circles untilone particular image suddenly demanded more of my attention. It was apostcard of an everydayscene in aDresden park, dated 1890 on the reverse side, and showing ayoung mother with her maid pushing apram. The young woman is glancing back at the photographer with alookthatIfound both arresting and haunting.It was an allusive image that suddenly seemed to sum up everything Iwanted to say about Dresden. Buthow could that be?Itwas aphotograph taken in apark in a Dresden suburb over 50 years before the bombing of the city. What, Iasked myself, had it got to do with fascism, destruction, and the Second World War? The answer layinthe factthat it made me stopand think about an individual and the poignancyofamomentpassing.That turning head, amomentalready passing,was for me mysterious and deeply affecting.Itseemed to representa momentofinnocence and hope. Iscanned the detail at highresolution and pondered over that face and the fate of the individual in the new centurythat lay ahead for her and her child. This was aturning pointinthe projectand the cards and letters changed from being simply acollection largely of architectural sites of aGerman city, to evidence of personal and human experience.

Up to thatpointIhad been troubled by the idea of using this material to make pictures of my own. My concern had been howcould acontemporaryartist deal with asubjectinwhich they have no first hand experience?Particularly if that subjectinvolved amajor historical eventonthe scaleofthe destruction of The Dresden Archive Project. Acontemporary artwork 15

Dresden. In the event, Itried to address thatconcern by concentrating on feelings that are common to us all. Inow began acloser scrutinyofthe postcardsand photographs using a powerful magnifying glass, isolating tiny details from busy street scenes and examining images thoroughly and repeatedly.Within manyofthe cards Ifound details which Ihad previously overlooked, images which made avivid impression: two women with beautiful Jewish faces peeringout of an apartment windowinthe 1920’s;infants standing at the gates of aschool in acard dated 1918;young boys clustered around atelescope looking up at buildingsthat would be completely destroyedwithin their lifetime. The backs of the postcards and letters, with their gestures, handwriting,and cancellations had an impact on my imagination too. As an artist this was an immediate reaction, they were made of paper –something Iwas veryresponsive to –torn, cut, folded, stained, glued down,scribbled over:methods Iwould later use when making prints and collages. Similarly,the bold, flat designs of exhibition and advertising labels were to find aparallel in some of the work I subsequently made. Ididn’t start making artworks immediately;instead Ispentwhat turned out to be severalyears cataloguing the material in order to get to knowthe subject better. Iorganised items into various categories such as Bahnhof, Hotels, Fair- grounds, Royalty,and Propaganda. Primarily engaged in visual research, Ialso consulted historybooks, memoirs and eyewitness accounts, reference books and guidebooks, stamp catalogues and maps during this time. Ephemera from the Third Reich periodprovided evidence importanttounderstand. The propaganda cards of this periodinparticular were interestingonmanylevels, not least fromadesignpointofview. In the 1930’s with the adventoffascism and the need for propaganda from the National Socialist regime one can trace the re-emergenceofdrawn images and colourful designs, exceptionally well produced (Klemperer, 10). There is no doubt that this propaganda, in this formand easily accessible and cheap,was veryappealing to manyGermans. The graphic artists and publishing houses of Dresden and elsewhere produced designafter designthat was bold, colourful and visually positive–visually positive, even though the hidden agenda (and sometimes not so hidden) was often grotesque, racist and violent. These postcard images possess strong formal qualities that makethem so effective.They makeanefficientand considered use of flatdesignand clarityof shape. The diagonal is arecurrentcompositional device, lending the images, and by implication the events portrayed, aforward dynamism. This is particularly evidentincards advertising militaryevents. Another compositional strategywas the use of neo-classical forms, confer- ring astable and permanentqualityto, for instance, images of Hitler,who was 16 Alan Turnbull invariably central and aligned visually and thematically with aspects of traditional German imagery, for instance the ceremonial shield, or the first postage stamp of Saxony.1 Such designs are in marked contrast to the equivalentBritish efforts of the time, which were often jokey and cartoonish. There was little lightness,and no humourinThird Reich propaganda cards. They reinforced the message of the regime in everyinstance, concentrating on adeclamatorystyle that invariably aims at the heroic and is often aggressive. Similarly,inphotography, dramatic lighting was used to great theatrical effect: the first instance in Dresden of floodlit buildings was on the occasion of Hitler’s visit to the cityinMay 1934 (Taylor,55), and manypostcard images celebrated this. Nazi propaganda operated in Dresden and throughout Germany at every level, as remarked uponbyVictor Klemperer in his Dresden diaries. Examples in the collection range from the numerous special postmarks celebrating Army Day to the insidious presence of the swastika in letterhead designs for arange of organisations includingDresden lawyers, the Saxon Bee-Keeper’s Association, and the various local sports and motorcycle clubs. Such ephemera provide a chilling glimpse of ordinarylife under aNazi government.2 This came to adecisiveend of course, in May1945, and in the immediate post- war period, stamps bearingHitler’s head were obliterated with black ink before being used (Deutschland-Spezial-Katalog 1995, 908). To this daythe German law forbids the image of Hitler to be publically displayed.

Dresden obliterated:Destroyed works and documentary artworks

When Ifinally began, work in the studio did not progress smoothly no matter howmuch Ihad thoughtabout it. There was much workingand reworking: painting pictures only to obliterate them or destroythem. Almost following an unconscious parallel to the cityitself, Imade things only to completely wreck them, using as much paint-stripper as oil on canvas. Manyofthese works remained abandoned or unfinished and for atime I altered my approach and looked at the subjectinacompletely differentway, writing shorttextsand imagined narratives suggested by items in the collection. One such item was an envelope –albeit without its contents –sentfrom Dresden to apost office boxinPalestine in January1939. Addressed to aJewish man, one Georg Ritter,itseems to have been sentbyafamily member whohad

1See the Souvenir Card for the ‘The SaxonPostmark Exhibition’, Dresden, July 1938. 2For illustrations see Alf Harper’s Philately of the ThirdReich, Postage andPropaganda,and Roger James Bender’s Postcards of Hitler’s Germany Vol1&2. The Dresden Archive Project. Acontemporary artwork 17 married, as the sender’s details on the reverse is written as Susanne Reidel geb. Ritter (indicating that Ritter was her maiden name). The address of the sender was Fürstenstrasse, located in Johannstadt, an area of the citythat in 1939 had seen particularly virulentanti-Jewish demonstrations including racist posters on all the advertising pillars, and houses with signs such as ‘In this building live no Jews’. 1938 had been ayear of escalating violence against the residentJews. The Februarycarnival hadaspecialprocession whose theme was ‘Children of Israel Move Out’. In October,Dresden’s Polish-bornJews, in spite of being German citizens, had been arrested, assembled at Dresden Neustadt station and deported. In November the synagogue was burned down,and the year had witnessed Kindertransport taking Jewish children to England and beyond (Taylor,69). Agrowing understandingofthe events of this time led me to makewhat Ican best describeasdocumentaryart-works. These took the formofphotographic prints to which Iadded shortcommentaries. Using veryhighresolutionscans it was possible to reveal aspects of the postcard image that were easily over-looked, the commentaryand title further focused the subject. Several of these prints depictparts of the citythat have completely disappeared, for instance the im- portantthoroughfare of Marschallstrasse, with its artschool and American theatre, utterly destroyedinthe bombing and rebuilt under adifferentname: only its direction on the map remains unchanged (Stadt-Plan,Dresden 1928). Imade further documentaryworks using very highly magnified scans to isolate faces from the postcards. Ipaid particular attention to figures from Hitler’s generation and Iassembled aportrait galleryofanonymous faces that I felt hadaresonance for those times;aninnocentyoung girl in aphotographer’s studio at the turnofthe century; aflower-girl from a Blumentag parade;a ballroomdancer;aseamstress;aman in acap on aKDF outing. Hitler was born on 20 April1889, aSaturday;on the following dayVincentvan Goghthen painting in the South of France, wrote to his brother of “these strange days in which manythings seem oddtome” (letter no.760). The very picture he painted in the week of Hitler’s birth was to hang in the citydesignated by the Nazis as the birthplace of the movement. ‘Orchard in Blossom with aView of Arles’ would be donated to Munich’s Neue Pinakothek,then on Königsplatz, in December 1911 where it would hangthroughout all the turbulent years of Hit- ler’s rise to power until1937, when the museum administration put it into storage. Since the painting had been adonation to the state of Bavaria, the Nazis couldn’t confiscate it or offer it for sale, as they did with other works they regarded as degenerate. The painting hangs in Munich to this day.3

3Iam grateful to VanGoghscholar, Matthias Arnold, for the details concerning the movements of this painting within Munich’s museums. 18 Alan Turnbull

Making etchings & collages

Having spentagood deal of time studying the postcards, looking at the faces and imaginingthe characters depicted, Inow felt readytodrawfrom them and make etchings.These works were acounterpointtothe documentarypieces, using the same subject matter but in amore intimateway. The subject,ifIhad to put it into words, would be loss, or an awareness of fragilityand hope. This is howIhandled this big historical subject: Icon- centrated on emotions and experiences that we all have knowledgeof. In this way it was possible for me to makeapainting or printofacasualty of war or a Holocaust victim before they became avictim. Imade portrait etchings from the details of the postcards, sometimes adding images of butterflies and moths as emblemsoffragilityand adding collage elements to suggest afurther narrative. Forinstance in my work ‘A Soldier’s Tale’, the collage elementisapage from abookofmyfather’s, which he carried with him during his militaryservice, ‘Everyman’s Book of Fate and Fortune’. The page lists outcomesofthe roll of the dice, among them:“There are toomany risks”; “Your best chance is agamble”; “Itisdoubtful”.

My work strategywhich followed would seem shocking to acollector:Itook selected items from my archivematerial,old letters, cards, manuscripts –all carefully stored in plastic protectivecovers –downtomystudio and used them directly in making the work. Itoreand cut them up,glued them down,printed The Dresden Archive Project. Acontemporary artwork 19 over them, painted and drew over them. Iwanted to get as closeasIcould to the subject, so Ihad to destroypieces fromthe collection to do it. During this periodIstarted incorporatingbirdimagery, as in the collage work ‘In the Dresden Woods’. To do this Iused engravingstaken from books –another desperate measure, as Ihad to cut up various volumes of 19th centuryorni- thologybooks to get the collage material Iwanted. Ihad ageneral awareness of the iconographyofbirds as spirits of the dead, and that was one of the reasons I used them in this context. During this time Iwould sometimes work over the faces Ihad drawn,replacing them with birds or other images of fragility. In a sense the birds became asymbolofthe whole project:something of beauty that was fleeting.Also,Isimply didn’t wanttomakedark depressing mournful images of suffering. When faced with what is amoral question of what pictures Icould maketo stand alongside historical and Holocaust related archivematerial, my own personal response was to makepictures that demonstrate an alternative to miseryand suffering:somethinghopeful.

Conclusion:The City Within

In workingonthis projectIfound thatitwas possible to approach historical material in acreativeway without being vicarious. On looking back nowatthis work, which Ihaveengaged with on and off over nearly 20 years, Isee it as aform 20 Alan Turnbull of visual translation using evidence from aGerman cityinthe early 20th century into terms that Ihopeare validand worthwhile today. My particular study of Dresden led me to internalise the cityinaveryper- sonal waythat might appear strange. One of the final works fromthe project reflects this. It is adigital printentitled ‘Memories of Dresden 1828–1945’, where Icombined nine images:computer-manipulated photographs placed alongside photographs of installations constructed in the studio.Some of these images are informed by factual events, for instance the auk’s egg (an extinctbird) is included because an auk’s egg was taken from off the coast of Iceland in 1828 and later entered the collection of the Royal Zoological Museum in Dresden;this fragile objectsurvivedthe Second World Warintacthaving been stored in a fortress upriver.Itwas was then taken by the invading Russian army in 1945, not to be returned to the museum for another 50 years or so (Fuller,306). It is an image that combines extinction and survival. Other images in this digital collage piece are imagined:birds flying over Dresden rooftops, or snowfall imagined by achild dreaming of the Christmas market. Again Ichose to use images of innocence and hope rather than destruction and chaos. The Dresden Archive Project. Acontemporary artwork 21

Some years after my first visit, Imade asecond trip to Dresden,this time alone. Having collected the old postcards for so long Ihad in my mind avivid impressionofhow Dresden had onceappeared. If someone had stopped me as I was getting offthe train, and asked for directions to the old market or the river, I could have answered without hesitation. Butwhen Ileftthe station and walked towards the citycentreIfelt likeRip van Winkle. The direction of the streets was the samebut everything was so differentitshocked me. Agreat deal has been restoredofcourse, but much has gone and cannot be replaced. During that trip Isoughtout small details thatIhad noted from the postcards, and felt likeIwas meeting an old friend if Ifound abit of ironwork or discovered something that still remained intact. Ifinally found myself in the exactspot in the park in the Dresden suburb of Weisser Hirsch, wherethe young mother had turned to glance at the photographer in the postcard of 1898, which had so fascinated me. It was amomentthatIimagine manypeople have experienced, when the senseofthe past suddenly givesway to afeeling of connection or even communionwith those whohavegone before us. Whatcame to my mind was a passage in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz,when the central character speaks of “the laws governing the returnofthe past” and goes on to express afeeling that “time did not exist at all,” there being only various interlocking spaces, “where the living and the dead can moveback and forth as they like” (261).

Works Cited

Bender,Roger James. Postcards of Hitler’s GermanyVolumes 1& 2. US:Bender Publishing, 1998. Deutschland-Spezial-Katalog, 1995. München:Michel, 1995. Fuller,Errol. The GreatAuk. Southborough: Fuller,1999. Harper,Alf. Philately of the ThirdReich:Postage and Propaganda. US:Album Publishing Company, 1998. Klemperer,Victor. IShall Bear Witness:The DiariesofVictor Klemperer. London:Phoenix, 2000. Mackey,John P. The Saxon Post. Dublin:Mackey,1978. Sebald, W.G. Austerlitz. London:Hamish Hamilton, 2001. Stadt-Plan:Dresden, 1928 (facsimile). Dresden:Stadtmuseums Dresden, n.d. Taylor,Frederick. Dresden Tuesday 13 February 1945. London:Bloomsbury, 2004. VanGogh, Vincent. The Letters:The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition. Am- sterdam:Van GoghMuseum, 2009.

Tara Bergin

Translating the Passion of Ravensbrück:Ted Hughesand János Pilinszky

In terms of Holocaust poetry,Jµnos Pilinszkyoffers an interesting and unusual perspective.ACatholic, born in Budapest in 1921, Pilinszky was conscripted into the army towards the end of the war,during the Nazi’s retreatfrom the city. Put on atrain but not told where it was going,hearrived one month later in Harbach, Germany, where he saw–among other things –prisoners from aConcentration Camp.1 This experience became the subjectofhis most memorable poems: ‘Harbach 1944’; ‘The French Prisoner’; ‘On the Wall of aKZLager’; and ‘Passion of Ravensbrück’. It also marked an importantstage in his entire poetic outlook. Writing about the influence that the Second World Warhad on the developmentofhis poetic language, Pilinszky explains: “Itgavemethe words of poverty and the touch of the anonymous poets […].After Auschwitz poetry is possible again” (Con- versations with Cheryl Sutton,23;36). He felt anew wayofwriting was called for; one which would accommodate the subjectofthe war without degenerating,as Adorno put it, “into idle chatter” (34). Speakinginaninterview in 1969, Pilinszkydescribed his poetics in negative terms:“Should someone ask, what after all is my poetic language, in truth I should have to answer:itissome sortoflack of language,asortoflinguistic poverty”. He told of howhehad been taught to speak by an aphasic aunt,whose “childlikestammering” had formed the foundation of his mode of expression. Ye tinart,Pilinszky explained, even such a“poor language” can be redeemed: “In artthe deaf can hear,the blind can see, the cripple can walk, eachdeficiency maybecome acreative force of highquality” (The DesertofLove,8). This statementhas immediate relevance not just to Pilinszky’s personal de- velopment, but also to the developmentofanentire generationofsurvivors. It was anew “anti-poetry”or“poetry of survival”, described by Michael Ham-

1Pilinszky tells this storyinForgµcs (81). 24 Tara Bergin burger as:“abareness of utterance always close to the silence fromwhich its minimal stock of words has been salvaged” (276). The trauma, in other words, would be reflected everywhere:inthe subject-matter,inthe theme, in the style itself. Pilinszky’s statementabout his “linguisticpoverty”gains an added significance when we begintoconsider the translation of his poetry into English. The methodoftransition that was employed to convert his work from its original Hungarian resulted in astyle of English verse that would takehis belief in the creativepotential of “deficiency” to anew level, as well as to anew readership. The reasonfor this was mainly due to the factthat the man chosen to translate Pilinszkywas the already well-known English poet TedHughes, whose idiosyncratic approach and personal poetics meant that Pilinszky’s “linguistic poverty”would be portrayed in averyparticular and striking way.

II.

Introducing TedHughesasPilinszky’s translator is acomplicated business, primarily because it isn’t entirely correct:Ted Hughes was Pilinszky’s co- translator;the pointbeing that Hughes couldn’t speak or read anyHungarian. Instead, Hughes worked closely with an intermediary, the Hungarian writer and critic Jµnos Csokits, whose task it was to prepare word-for-wordEnglish versions of the original poems, which he would then send to TedHughes. Hughes would re-shape these rough drafts –what he referredtoas“literals” or “word- for-wordversions” –intoeffective poems in English. The practice of co-translation is not uncommon in the historyofEnglish poetry;poets such as Ye ats, Robert Lowell, and Seamus Heaney have all worked in asimilar waytoHughes. However,there is one importantaspectofHughes’s methodwhich distinguishes him from many other co-translators, which is his interest in the first stage of the process:the provision of word-for-wordversions, with their roughand often strange-sounding sentencesinEnglish. In fact, most desirable for Hughes was aliteral which had been prepared by someone whose mother tongue was not English:toput it crudely,heliked literals which spoke with aforeignaccent,and it was Hughes’s fascination with, and idiosyncratic interpretation of this stage of translation which would informmuch of his decision-making as aco-translator.2 Figure 1belowshows an example of aliteral senttoHughes by Csokits in the

2“we foundthe closest thing to it in translations made by poets whose first language was not English […].” TH, introduction to ModernPoetry in Translation (1983). See Selected Translations (206). Translating the Passion of Ravensbrück:Ted Hughes and János Pilinszky 25 late 1960s. As youcan see, the metrics and rhymescheme are indicated along the left-hand side;this means thatthe semanticmeaning of the original words could be translated as literally as possible without anyneed to alter them for the sakeof conveying the sound of the original.Inaddition, because this is arough draft, Csokits hasprovided Hughes with alternative words, separated by slashes,such as in the title, which Csokits givesaseither ‘Ravensbrück Passion’or‘The passion of Ravensbrück’, or in the first stanza, in which Csokits givesthe word “cubic” as an alternativeto“squared”. Slashes are alsoused, as in stanza two,to indicate aphrase which in Hungarian is oneword:“all/ he /has”. The date at the bottomrefers to the publication of the original.

Fig.1.Aliteral English version of Pilinszky’s poem, made by Jµnos Csokits Reproducedbycourtesy of the Manuscript, Archives and RareBookLibrary, EmoryUniversity.

For Hughes, this temporary, fragmented, and roughdraftrepresented anew and extremely exciting poetic text;one which in its urgentand unadjusted appearance seemed to capture the veryessence of post-war,post-Holocaust poetry. So appropriatedid it seem, in fact, that Hughes felt it would be amistaketotry to improveit, and decided thatwhen it cametore-translating Pilinszky’s poetry, he would trytostayasclose as possible to these initial word-for-word versions made directly fromthe Hungarian by Jµnos Csokits. Thereforehis versions of Pilinszky, for example,donot attempt to reproduce the rhymeormetricpatterns of their originals, an omission which has earned him criticism from some re- viewers.3

3“Whatever he gained in intensity in sticking closely to the meaning of Pilinszky’swords,” wrote George Gömöri, “he lost in his unwillingness to recreate the richness of the poet’s 26 Tara Bergin

Ye tHughes was adamantthat this was the rightchoice. Writing in the introduction to his and Csokits’s translations of Pilinszky’s poems, Hughes ad- mires Pilinszky’s “freakishly home-made, abrupt” syntax, which “can be felt clearly in aword-for-word crib,” and he expresses apreference for the “rawness” and the “foreignness and strangeness” of the “roughest version”. Nothing, concludes Hughes, would conveyPilinszky’s individual style as well “as the most literal crib” (DesertofLove,8;7;14). Hughes’s loyalty to the non-perfectbut striking style of Csokits’s literal versioncreates an interesting parallel to Pilinszky’spersonal desiretostaytrue to the “deficiency” of his ownpoeticlanguage; it also echoes the post-war necessity to ridpoetryofany false ‘beauty’, and to makeittrueand relevant. As the Polish poet Tadeusz Róz˙ewicz said:“Buthereyou are living throughatime which has no parallel in history, and this calls for an utterly new poetry”(349). The effectoftranslation, in other words, became alinguistic representative of the emotional shock of the war:the removal of rhymeand metrics;the concentration on semanticmeaning;the slight irregularityofthe English syntax all pointing towards the need to place immediacy, and asense of the spoken tes- timonybeforeall else. In terms of Pilinszky’s poetry,itmeantthatJµnos Cso- kits’s literal translation offered itself to Hughes as the best and most appropriate metaphor for the original.

III.

More needs to be said, however,about Hughes’s so-called literalistic approach, because while it was inspiredbythe appearance of these roughcribs senttohim by Csokits, it was not always as straight-forward amethod as it initially seems. In other words, Hughes was so passionate about the value of literal translation (he wrote in 1967:“it is the first-hand contact–however fumbled and broken –with that man and his seriousness which we want”), that he activelysought to reproduce it in his final versionsofPilinszky’s poems (1). What this means is that his role was not as passiveasmight be assumed when reading his introduction to the Pilinszky translations, and it is clear that Hughes was more than capable of re-shaping Csokits’s literalsinawaywhich accentuated the irregularities and mistakes,rather than correctedthem. Hughes’s versions would moveawayfrom the literal,therefore, in order makethem appear more literal.

form.” (171). Similarly,Hughes’s American publishers, Harper and Row, didn’t publish his translations of Pilinszky in the US because they felt thathis strictly literal method had “straight-jacketed him” (Selected Translations,ix–x). The volume was eventually published in America by Persea Press, in 1977. Translating the Passion of Ravensbrück:Ted Hughes and János Pilinszky 27

If we compareHughes’sfinal version of ‘Passion of Ravensbrück’ to its literal translation, for example, we can track several decisionsmade by Hughes which have had the effectofemphasising the simplicity and bareness of the literal’s aesthetic, even though this meantheneeded to alter Csokits’s original literal to do so. The first and most obvious is his decision, already mentioned above, to ignore the metrics and rhymescheme indicated by Csokits, so thathis versionretains the prosaic, spoken effectofthe literal’s roughwording. The second change is in the punctuation:Hughes replaces manyofCsokits’s commas with full-stops, and he also shortens the lines, making them sound even more abrupt (Csokits’s “He steps out from among the others” becomes “Hesteps out from the others”). Hughes removes an “and” too, in the first stanza, and changes “head” to “skull”, so thatthe third line of the poem seems even more stark and bare:“The prison garb,the convict’s skull”. In the second stanza, he changes“fearfully” to “horribly”, chooses “visible” instead of “canbeseen” and changes “all/ he/ has” to “everything about him”: “Everything about him is so gigantic,/ everything is so tiny.” The effectisto clarifythe lines, so that the quatrain is exceptionally clear.Herehealso changes the commas to full-stops, so that the lines are again shorter and thereforeseem more direct, and urgent. In the final stanza, Hughes breaks up the quatrain, making the first line into two,and he also inserts adash, again accentuating the fragmentaryand spoken effectofits sound on the ear:

And this is all. The rest – the restwas simply that he forgottocry out before he collapsed.

Here, Hughes chooses to optfor Csokits’s second choice of words in the last line (“collapsed”instead of “fell to the ground”), ensuring that the poem ends quickly,simply,and dramatically, just as the life of the prisoner being portrayed in the poem is ended.

IV.

It is importantatthis stage to remember that Hughes was primarily apoet, not a translator,and that his choices when translating Pilinszky were being affected by,and having an effectonhis ownwriting. 28 Tara Bergin

Around the same time as receiving his literal versions of Pilinszky’s poems, Hughes was writing Crow:fromthe Life and Songs of the Crow,the controversial sequence of poems for which his main aim, he said, was to produce something:

with the minimum cultural accretionsofthe museum sort, something autochthonous & complete in itself, as it might be invented after the Holocaust & demolition of all libraries, where essential things spring again –ifatall –only from their seeds in nature […] (Sagar,27–8).

This statementrecalls not only Pilinszky’s aim as apoetof“linguistic poverty”, but also Hughes’s aim as his “literal”co-translator;inaddition, Hughes was obviously keenly aware of the poetic implications of the Holocaust as apoetin his ownright.Eventhe subtitle of Hughes’s book (from the Life and Songs of the Crow)suggests thatthese poems are in themselves translations, unfinished fragments “rescued fromashattered masterpiece,” as one correspondentwrote, whose “brokenness makes it more authenticthan if it were more shapely or complete” (RichardMurphytoTed Hughes, 19 October 1970, The TedHughes Papers). In general, Crow appears likeatranslation for which there is no actual source text, but in which translation is being used as ameans of challenging and shifting English literaryvalues. “Crow is afurther realization of Hughes’s deconstruction and dismantling of Westernpoeticnorms,” states scholar Edward Hadley;anact of “decomposition” which indicates aleaning,ingeneral, towards the “deconstruction of poetry”(45). Several scholarshaverecognised asimilaritybetweenHughes’s Crow and histranslationsofJµnos Pilinszky–becauseoftheirbleakness, or their simplicity–butwhile thereare clearly importantcorrespondences to be found between thetwo texts,itmay well be that themorerelevantcomparisons are those to be foundbetween Hughes’s approach to translating theformer,and his intentions forwriting the latter.Certainly,makingsuch aconnection allows us to considerthe possibilitythatCsokits’s English literals of Pilinszky had an important, andoften overlooked,roleinthe developmentofHughes’s poetic style in Crow. This is akey point: Hughes’s preoccupation,while composing Crow,withwriting “songs with no music whatsoever,inasuper-simpleand a super-uglylanguage whichwould in away shedeverything exceptjust what he wantedtosay” (Faas, 20), seemstohave agreat dealincommonwithhis intention, when translating Pilinszky, to convey the“simple, helplessaccu- racy” of Pilinszky’s original, by “settling for literalness as afirst principle” (The DesertofLove,13). There are several stylistic devices in Crow which mirrorthose which we have already seen Hughes use in his approach to translating Pilinszky.Particularly interesting in this regardisthe waythat Hughes is composing by negative acts, where he uses gaps and absences to create the sense of urgency and irregularity Translating the Passion of Ravensbrück:Ted Hughes and János Pilinszky 29 so characteristic of both his Pilinszky translations, and the poems in Crow. The oddly phrased opening lines of Crow,for example (“Black was the without eye / Black the within tongue”) immediately demonstrates his preference for aGer- manic, basic, elemental lexis, rather than amore formal, distant, Latinate structure (“external eye”; “internal tongue”). These lines place readers, at the outset, in roughand uneven territory, where asmoothness of sound and formis nearly always avoided by the poet, as if in order to reach amore elemental, and thereforeuncompounded –less ‘compromised’–depiction. Hughes deliberately seeks such roughness and unevenness throughout Crow. He isolates words, uses brackets, inserts long gaps in between words, removes punctuation, strings sentences together without pauses, makes poems in the formoflists, or notes,orquestions and answers, or fragments fromalarger text. Hughes also makes extensiveuse of the dash throughout Crow,amethodwhich we have already seen him use in his translation of Pilinszky’s ‘Passion of Rav- ensbrück.’ In his ownpoems he uses it to fragmenthis text, so that the poem appears more as aset of unaltered notes, jotted down at the scene of discovery, or at the moment of inspiration. The result is that peculiar,staccato effect, similar to that which Hughes ad- mired, and aspired to,inhis translation work. He achieves it in Crow by his tendencytoappear as if he himself is unsure of howtowrite correctly. In ‘Crow’s Undersong,’for example, there are no full-stops or commas;the syntax is off- beat, and unconventional:

She comes with the birth push Into eyelashes into nipples the fingertips She comes as far as blood and to the tips of hair She comes to the fringe of voice She stays Even after life even among the bones

In this poem, the languageisagain almost childlikeinits spontaneous and improvised quality. The oddly placed “the fingertips”, and the unusual structure of “the fringe of voice” creates an un-English, foreign sound, as if Hughes is attempting atypeofself-foreignization. In one way, Hughes is contending here, as Daniel Weissbortobserved, “with his owntalent,” constantly attempting “to transcend [his] verbal brilliance and dexterity,inhis quest for something more basic, aregenerative formofwords” (Selected Translations,ix). Crow,with its bare and unadorned layout, and its simple repetitivevocabu- lary, appears to be aiming for the same kind of clarity, accuracy and authenticity that was so vital to those writing in the wakeofthe SecondWorld War; furthermore, its brokenness and plainness emulates atext which exists at amid-way stage of transitionbefore it has been improvedand re-worked into aformally 30 Tara Bergin complete piece. Just as with his translations of Pilinszky,inother words, the qualities, and states of translationare being used by Hughes in his ownwriting to achieve atruthfulness, and forcefulness, of expression.

Conclusion

TedHughes’s fascination as atranslator with the simplicityand rawness of a rough literal versionisclear for all to see in his writings about his work on translating Pilinszky’s poetry.For him, it seemed to capture the essence of Pilinszky’s vision:“aplace where everycultural supporthas been tornaway, where the ultimatebrutalityoftotal war has becomenatural law, and where man has been reduced to the meremechanism of his mutilated body”(The Desertof Love,11). Ye titisalso evident, and perhaps even more so,inhis ownpoetryin Crow,acollection which, despite its bleakness and crudeness, demonstrates an actof“extending and releasing” that also characterised Hughes’s initial work in translation (Constantine, 1). Whatever Hughes found while working on the Pilinszky poems, therefore–a methodofwriting which involved aspecialkind of striving towards the source – we can find him adapting,extending and utilisinginCrow. At the same time, whatever he was aimingfor in Crow –the developmentofarough and “nearly illiterate” poetic persona –wecan find him achieving in his role as Pilinszky’s translator,throughhis insistence on maintaining acertain poetic asceticism, and adhering to the roughness of the literal text.4 When Hughes was responding to the broken languageofCsokits’s versions, in other words, he was responding to aparticular kind of music;asound which he found both exciting and wholly conducive to Pilinszky’s depictionsofthe war.

Works Cited

Archives

The TedHughes Papers. Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library.EmoryUniversity.

4Inaletter,Ted Hughes described his poetic persona ‘Crow’as“verycrude, nearly illiterate, very rough […]”. To Daniel Huws, 27 October 1966, Letters,261. Translating the Passion of Ravensbrück:Ted Hughes and János Pilinszky 31

Primary Texts

Hughes, Ted. Crow. London: Faber,1970;1972. Print. – Letters of TedHughes. London: Faber,2007. Print. – Selected Translations. London: Faber,2006. Print. Pilinszky,Jµnos. Conversations With Sheryl Sutton. Trans. Peter Jay & EvaMajor.Man- chester /Budapest: Carcanet/ Corvina, 1992. Print. Pilinszky,Jµnos. The DesertofLove. Trans.Jµnos Csokits and TedHughes. London: Anvil Press, 1989.Print.

Secondary Texts

Adorno,Theodor W. ‘CulturalCriticism and Society’ in Prisms,trans. Samueland Shierry Weber. London:Neville Spearman,1967. Print. Alvarez, A. ‘Black bird’. The Observer,11October 1970. Print. Constantine, Helen and David(eds.), MPT 3:12 (2009): Print. Faas,Ekbert. ‘An interview with TedHughes’, London Magazine 10:10 (1971): 5–20. Print. Forgµcs, Rezso˝.‘IWrite to Find My WayHome:the last interview with Jµnos Pilinszky.’ NewHungarianQuarterly 23:87 (1982): 80–85. Print. Gömöri,George. ‘Ted Hughes:Hungarian Connections’. The HungarianQuarterly,49:191 (2008), 167–171. Print. Hadley,Edward. The Elegies of TedHughes. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print. Hamburger,Michael. The Truth of Poetry. London: Penguin, 1969. Print. Hughes, Ted(ed.). ModernPoetry in Translation 3(1967), 1–2. Print. – ModernPoetry in Translation (1983). Print. Róz˙ewicz, Tadeusz in conversation with Adam Czerniawski. The Poetry of Survival. Ed. Daniel Weissbort. London: Penguin, 1991. Print. Sagar (ed.), Keith. The Poet andCritic. London: British Library, 2012.Print.

Alana Fletcher

Transforming Subjectivity: Se questo èunuomo in Translation and Adaptation

Primo Levi writes in his 2002 retrospective, L’asimmetria elavita (translated in 2005 as The Black Hole of Auschwitz), of the voicelessness he and his fellow inmates at Auschwitz-Monowitz experienced, and the subsequentneed to communicate his experience that broughtabout the memoirofhis year-long internment, Se questo unuomo. The memoir, first published by De Silvain 1947, was translated anumber of times following its reprinting by Einaudi in 1958. These translations appear to have enhanced Levi’s reclamationofvoice;as he wrote in his preface to the 1961 Germantranslation, he sawdissemination of his work in multiple languages as increasing cross-cultural understanding. Levi’s reception of another versionofhis memoir,however,amulti-lingual radio adaption created in 1965 for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) by scholar,translator,and former WWII navalofficer George Whalley,reveals an opposing feeling –that languagelessness is exacerbatedbythe interchange of multiple languages in which none can makemeaning.This response, an intense recall of the Babelian clamourinwhich meaning is concealed rather than re- vealed by language, stands in stark contrast to the optimismwith which Levi encouraged and oversawtranslations of his memoir. In this essay, Isuggest that Levi’s oppositional responses to these differentadaptations were prompted by the differenteffects produced by more literal versus more atmospheric reproduction –more specifically,bythe effects these differentinterpretation processeshad on Levi’s process of reclaiming subjectivity. Taking acombination of theories that emphasize the importance of dialogue to subjectivityasmy departure point, Isuggest that Levi’s changing responses to the poweroflan- guage was, in part, afunction of the waydifferentadaptations of Se questo un uomo acted on and reflected his subjectivityand subjectposition. While translation assisted in apost-internmentreconstitution of subjectivitybyre- sponding to and widely disseminating the address contained within Levi’s memoir,transference into the more immersive medium of radio emphasized the subjectposition Levi and his fellowprisoners were forced to inhabit during their internment. 34 Alana Fletcher

Throughout this article, Iwill refer to both the translation and the adaptation process as processes of “remediation.” This termisdrawn from the work of Jay DavidBolter and Richard Grusin, whoargue that all mediation is re-mediation; that is, all media recreates, and is reliantupon, earlier media. While Bolter and Grusin focus on the creation of new media itself, which are always “compelled to define themselves by the standards of the media they are trying to erase” (47, 57), Ifocus hereonthe more work-specific remediation of Levi’s memoir. Iuse this terminaddition to “translation” and “adaptation”tohighlight the similarities between linguistictranslation and media-specific adaptation. Like translation, presentation of awork in anew mediumsimultaneously represents and represents –orre-creates –the work, changing it unavoidably.Intranslating Holocaust narratives, the idea that the translation should actasawitness to the trauma experienced has been central. Anxieties about appropriating or overly altering the words in which asurvivorhas giventestimonyare rightly felt, though such alteration is, as mentioned above, unavoidable;the aim to presenta “differentoriginal” is the tension inherenttoall acts of translation. Speaking about an adaptation and atranslation ofLevi’s memoirastwo kindsofre- mediation highlightsthe factthat this tension of the “differentoriginal” is shared by both processes. The comparison of the two will also,Ibelieve, demonstrate that as-accurate-as-possible reproduction of an original is not always the most effective waytoheal adamaged subjectivity. Before moving on to amore specific discussion of the works at hand, it is useful to examinewhat is meantby“subjectivity,”and howitisrelated to such processesofliteraryremediation. After abrief discussion of some relevant theories aboutsubjectivityasconstituted throughaddress and response, Idis- cuss Levi’s focus on the Lager’s destructionofaddress and response in Se questo unuomo. Ithen describehow the German translation of the memoir can be read as rebuilding these dismantled structures of address and response, and the ways in which Whalley’s radio adaptation of the memoirboth effaces this rebuilding processand immerses the audience in the subjectpositionofthe dehumanized Lager prisoner. In Discerning the Subject,PaulSmith describes the subjectasaconglom- eration of the provisional subjectpositions into which aperson can be “called” by the discoursesofthe world he or she inhabits (xxxv). Aperson is not, however,“simply determined” by the ideological pressures of anyoverarching discourse or ideology, but is also “the agentofacertain discernment” (xxxiv); agency, then, is “the place from which resistancetothe ideological is produced and playedout” (xxxv). RobynMcCallum’s playonthe term“subject”reinforces this notionofsubjectivityasagential:“subjectivity,”she notes,“is an individual’s sense of apersonal identity as asubject–in the sense of being subject to some measureofexternal coercion–and as an agent–that is, being capable of Transforming Subjectivity: Se questo èunuomo in Translation and Adaptation 35 conscious and deliberate thoughtand action” (4). Kelly Oliver’s insistence on the tight-knit association between agencyand dialogue is an importantaddition to these theories. Subjectivity, to Oliver,is

the abilitytoaddressoneself to others combined with the abilitytorespond to others …Atits core,subjectivity is relational and formed and sustained by addressability (the abilitytoaddress others and be addressed by them) and response-ability (the abilityto respondtoothers and oneself).(84)

“Ifthe possibilityofaddress is undermined or annihilated,” she elaborates, “then subjectivityisalso undermined or annihilated” (84). Oliver’s emphasison the importance of address and response to subjectivitycan help us read Levi’s consistentdescriptions of the voicelessness of Auschwitz as references to the annihilation of possibilities for address and response so central to the camp’s dehumanization of its prisoners. Se questo unuomo was rapidly composed in less than ayear:Levibegan to record his experience in Auschwitz-Monowitz sometime at the end of 1945, and in 1946 sentabook-length manuscript to three publishers, including Einaudi (Gordon49). In Black Hole,Levilinks the urgencyofstory-telling to the camp’s languagelessness:“If it was impossible in the concentration camps, it became possible for those few whom fortune permitted to survive to write, indeed communicate, with the world” (24). Levi’s memoirevinces the difficulty of representing what Levi says language has no words to express –the demolition of aman –and foregrounds the role linguistic alienation played in the dehumanizing processes of Auschwitz. These descriptions bring language into focus as the vehicle for the witnessingstructure of address and response, astructure Oliver calls “the lynch-pin of subjectivity” (80). The “demolition of aman,” as Levi so aptly terms it (21),1 is primarily accomplished in the Lager throughadenial of address and response to the prisoners by the mechanismsofthe camp itself. Levi’s realization that words cannot express this particular offense follows the transformation of the deportees into “phantoms” throughaprocess of repeated denials and deprivations in which the destruction of communication is foregrounded.“Nothing belongs to us anymore,” Levi narrates;“if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand” (21). The incomprehensibilityand unresponsiveness of the larger structure of the camp itself is illustrated by its manystrict and unexplainedprohibitions;asone guard responds to Levi’s plea of “why”: “Hier ist kein warum”(24). Levi and his fellowprisoners’ exile from humanityisprimarily accomplished throughadenial of linguistic answerability, or what McCallum calls “ad-

1Unless otherwise indicated, citationsofthe memoir refer to the Woolf translation. 36 Alana Fletcher dressivity.” The experience of the Lager is monologic as opposed to dialogic:it exiles addressivityfrom language, denying,inBakhtin’s words, the answers toward which everyword is directed, and therefore“den[ying] the existence … of another consciousness with equal rights and equal responsibilities” (Bakhtin 292). It is significantthat the Russian word for responsibilityitself, otvetstven- nost,implies both aliteral abilitytorespond as well as amore ethically burdened meaning, as in aliabilityorduty(Emerson 283). Bakhtin’s description of monologism as the self-proclamation ofan“ultimateword” thatis“deaf to the other’s response” (293) is eerily redolentofLevi’s communication-focused descriptions of the dehumanizing processes of Lager.Levi’s perception of the way the Lager’s denial of addressivitytothe prisoners crippled their ownabilityto witness to oneanother is illustrated by scenes of devastating reticence throughout his memoir. The lack of acknowledgementbetween Walter and Levi of Schmulek’s death and of the larger truthhis death conveys (55–6), and the assembled Kommandos’ lack of response to the cryofUltimo,the “Last One,” before he is hanged for sabotage (177),speakvolumes about the cycle of denied address and response. The cyclicality of this dehumanization process is crys- tallized at the end of Se questo when Levi comments that“someone whohas lived for days during which man was merely athing in the eyes of man is non-human” (205). Subject position, as Oliver defines it, is linked to but distinctfrom subjectivity. One’s subjectposition –one’s “relations to the finite world of human history” (82) –influences one’s subjectivity, or sense of agency, addressability, and responsibility. It is possible, of course, to developasense of agencyinspite of or in resistancetoamarginalized or oppressed subjectposition. Due to its re- creation of structures of address and response, translation of Levi’s memoircan be read as just such literaryre-humanization, arebuilding of subjectivitynot only for Levi but for all silenced Holocaust survivors. As Robert Gordonhas pointed out, first-hand accounts of Lager experience were afforded some marginal space in the publishing industry immediately following the Holocaust, but there was asharpdecline in both interest and awareness of the camps in Europe after 1947 (50). The reprintofSe questo unuomo by Einaudi in 1958, and its translations into English (American and British editions) in 1959, into French and German in 1961, into Finnish in 1962, and into Dutch in 1963, representa taking up of the memoirintoanemergentcanon of Holocaust literature. This canonization of survivor-witness accounts indicates alarge-scale reconstruction of the addressabilityand response-abilityofHolocaust survivors. It also introduces the potential for non-authorial changes, which, as noted previously,are usually seen in the context of Holocaust translation as perpetuating the violence of silencing that these survivor-authors are attempting to overcome. In order to guard against this kind of traumatic return, Levi became intimately involved in Transforming Subjectivity: Se questo èunuomo in Translation and Adaptation 37 translations of his memoir. The English and German translations of Levi’s memoir in 1959 and 1961 were both achieved throughclose collaborations between Levi and his translators (StuartWoolf and Heinz Reidt, respectively), and both representimportantaddress-response witnessing processes. Here,I focus on the use of original-language text in the German translation of the memoir in order to set up acomparisonwith original-language use in the radio adaptation. This comparison provides obvious evidence of the wayloyalty to an original can have diverging effects depending on the medium of adaption. The translator of the German edition of the memoir,Heinz Reidt, maintained acommitmenttorespectful address and response of Levi’s words in their editorial collaboration;inresponse to Levi’s anxieties about accuracy,Reidt actually sentLevibatches of his translation to review as they were completed (Alexander 157).2 As away of remainingfaithful to the original text, Reidt repeated Levi’s source-languagerendering of Lagerjargon –language that is not, of course, “source” language, but rather Germancompounds repeated by Levi in agesture towards the unrepresentabilityofconcepts, places, and events internal to the camps. Useofthis German jargon is an attempt at witnessing through accuracy that, unexpectedly,threatens to collapse the distance between the Levi of 1961 and dehumanized Lager counterpart.AsSander Gilman has noted, Lagerjargon is avoided in Levi’s later writings, such as The Periodic Table,in which Levi frames the past “in the discursivetradition of Italian highculture” in order to avoid too-vivid memories of “the ‘real’ languageofthe camps, of Lager jargon,” and to “maintain[n] adiscourse uncontaminated by the linguistic ‘collaboration’ with the enemy” (314). The collapse of subjectivityand subject position threatened by this linguistic “collaboration with the enemy” is realized, Iargue, in the radio adaptation of Levi’s memoirtowhich Iwill next turn, but it does not appear that this collapse obtains in the Germantranslation. In this

2Bycontrast, it appears that Levi had little input into the script producedbyGeorge Whalley and produced by John Reeves at the CBC, and, as Iexplain later, he certainly had no input into the translations of various passages of reported speech in other languages into directspeech. Though there is no evidence of contact between Whalley and Levi,John Reeves did corres- pondwith Levi regarding permissions for the adaptation. In aletter to Whalley dated25July, 1961,Reeveswrote:“Ihavetoday heard thatwecan expecttoget the rightsto‘If This is aMan,’ so please go ahead with the adaptation.” After the script was completed in 1962, Reeves senta copy to Levi,whose response Reeves quotes in aletter to Whalley on 4September 1963. “Levi has acknowledged receipt of the script,” Reeveswrites, going on to quote from his letter from Levi:“mi permetta di esprimere aLei eaiSuoi collaboratorilamia soddisfazione elamia gratitudineper la versione radiofonica di “Ifthis is aman.” Il copione,che ho appena ricevuto, mi pare un ottimo lavoro, sobrio,pertinente esoprattutto intelligente. Noncredo che si serebbepotuto faredimeglio.” Roughly translated, Levi expresses his satisfaction and gra- titude to Reeves and his colleagues for the radio version of “IfThis is aMan”; the script, which he has just received, is verygood –simple, relevant, and above all intelligent,and he does not think it could have been done better. 38 Alana Fletcher particular remediation of Levi’s work, the intrusive natureofLagerjargon is, rather,diminished. Expressing narrative voice in German diminishes the sense that the German language intrudes on the narrator’s consciousness,and, throughfocalization, on ours:the language of the narrator,and thereforeofthe audience, becomes the same as the language in which the camp is run. In this edition, Lagerjargon does in asense make German alien to itself, as it describes a “limit event”3 unnameable by everyday Germanlanguage, but the linguistic intrusion of the jargon into the Italian of Levi’s narrativevoice is gone. This making-commensurable of the language of the camp and its creators with the narration of the memoirseems to have assuagedsome of Levi’s deep distrust of the multiplicityoflanguage. Indeed, as Levi indicates in his final book, The Drowned and the Saved,hethought of this German edition not in terms of the movementawayrepresented by translation, but in terms of areturn, or restoration:“this was, or wanted to be,arestitutioinpristinum,aretroversion to the language in which events had taken place and to which they belonged. More than abook, it should be atape recording” (qtd. Alexander 157). This restoration of linguistic commensurabilitydoesnot have the effectofcollapsing Levi’s presentand past subjectpositions, but rather is recuperative of the ability to communicate he nearly lost. As Levi wrote in the Preface to this edition, it allowed him to “bear witness, to makemyvoice heardbythe German people, to respond to the SS man with the truss,tothe Kapo whowiped his hand on my shoulder,toDr. Pannwitz, to those whohanged Ultimo, and makemyself heard also by their descendants” (qtd. in Black Hole 11–12). Rendering the camp experience into German seems to have healed, however artificially or momen- tarily,the split subjectivities Levi perceived in the multiplicityoflanguages, not the least of which was between his ownand the Germanofthe Lager.The edition performs the recuperativestatementmadebyLeviinits Preface:that“I, number 174517, can speak …Iam alive” (11). It manifests both asocial and alinguistic reclamation or reconstruction of the response and address structure of subjectivity. In Woolf’s English translation, English replaces Italian as the languageof Levi’s reflection, while the linguistic intrusion of German, and of the other

3This termhas been used to describethe Holocaust as an eventthatdisrupted ideas of political and moral communitysoviolently thatitis, in manyways, unrepresentable and incomprehensible. Hayden White describes definition of the Holocaust as alimit event as “the most extreme position” held regarding Holocaust representation, one that asserts that the Holocaust was an “eventofsuch akind as to escape the grasp of anylanguage even to describe it and of any medium–verbal, visual, oral, or gestural –torepresent it, much less of anymerely historical accountadequately to explain it” (30). See also Gigliotti166n9 for auseful list of significantworks in this discourse around representability,including titles from Saul Fried- lander,Michael Rothberg,and Berel Lang. Transforming Subjectivity: Se questo èunuomo in Translation and Adaptation 39 languages Levi encountered, is maintained. It is the Woolf translation from which George Whalley worked when creating his radiodramatizationofSe questo unuomo,and it is this linguistic intrusion into narrative consciousness that Whalley foregrounds. Levi’s reference to the German editionofhis memoir as simulating a“tape recording” is interesting in light of his reception of Whalley’s audio recording:while he sawthe German editionasincreasing cross- cultural understanding,Whalley’s radio playisperceivedtoconfirm the im- possibilityoftruecross-linguisticunderstanding.Isee this reaction as afunction of the immersivenatureofthe radioplay, which creates an experience much more verisimilitudinous than that created by the memoir’s German translation, or by Levi’s memoiritself. Whalley’s remediationimmerses its audience in this subjectposition through what might be termed alinguistic “re-originalizing” of content, an effectcom- pounded by the immersivenatureofthe medium of radio.By“re-originalizing,” Imean that Whalley translated reported speech in Levi’s text into the language in which it is described. The Dutch, French, Hungarian, Polish Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish we hear in the playdonot actually appear in Se questo; though the reader is told that certain characters are speaking in these other languages, their speech is rendered in Italian –or, in the translated texts, it is rendered in the languageofthe narration (in English in the English translation, in German in the German translation).Inaletter to John Reeves at the CBC on 4 December 1961, Whalley described the languagesand dialects he plannedto produce in the play. He notes that, apartfrom afew passagesinwhich single words or concepts are rendered in severallanguages, “the actual foreignwords are normally not rendered, and more often than not the direct speech …isnot given. We shall therefore,” he concludes, “have to invent the words for most of the foreign-language passages and then have them translated into the appropriate language.” As Whalley was not afluentspeaker of anumber of the languages he wished to present, he soughtand received translations fromanumber of collaborators for the passages he “invented,” including Hebrew and Yiddish passages from Rabbi Max Ticktin and Dr.Menahem Mansoor(both at the UniversityofWisconsin), and German passages from Dr.Walter Bauer at the UniversityofToronto. Afascinating typewritten and handwritten package of “last scrapsofforeign language material” –Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, and transliterated Yiddish –isattached to another letter sentbyWhalley to Reeves, on 31 May1962. Translation of these lines back into their original languages, back beyond Levi’s rendering of them, heightens the linguistic fragmentation thatwas smoothed over by Levi’s translation of them into the language of his ownnar- ration. The alienation effectofthis increased linguistic fragmentation is com- pounded by the immersiveeffects of radio.InRadio Drama,Tim Crook takes 40 Alana Fletcher

Marshall McLuhan’s statement“Iliveright inside radio when Ilisten” as the theoretical starting-pointfor his explication of the immersivequalityofradio: rather than being disadvantaged by its lack of visual cues, Crook points out, sound-only drama calls the listener forcefully into its world throughthe music of speech rhythms and vocal inflections. The experience of radio drama is so sensually immersivebecause radio is such apsychological medium:sound evokeswhat Crook calls a“fifth dimension” of experience, the imagination of the listener,inwhich all the senses reside (62). While it is not possible to convey in printthe sense of intrusion the audio versionachieves, Iinclude here two images fromthe broadcast script that demonstrate howthis intrusion occurs, and partofits scope (see Figures 1and 2). These pages, as one can gather from the images, appear side by side. In an innovative formalchoice, Whalley has printed Levi’s narration –taken directly from the Woolf translation –alongside the audio illustration of that narration. When this section is heard, the multi-lingual voices of the right-handpage intrude upon the narration on the left, beginning where the blank spaceintext appears on the left-hand page, and continuing underneathand throughthe second block of text. The effectofthis linguistic fragmentation is much more sudden and overwhelming than Levi’s textualreporting of the multitude of languages he encountered in Lager. The pace –orwhat GØrard Genette calls the “duration” –ofthis audio presentation is part of what creates this immersiveeffect. Writingtends to condense time;for example, Levi’s memoir,which describes ayear-long internment, can be read in about two hours. The radio play, by contrast,conveys events in something much closer to real time. It is made up of one hundred and forty minutes of simulations of the conversations and noises recorded by Levi in his memoir,with reflectionsbyLeviasnarrator interspersed. This “real time” depiction has the effectofquickening time:one cannot escape the sounds of the created environment. Because the sound moves the events of the playatade- termined pace, the listener cannot stopto“weighthings up,” as Levi says, but is constantly moved along within the narrative, unlikethe reader whocan moveat his or her ownpace or stopaltogether.Inthis way, the radioforces the listener to experience an incomprehension and linguistic alienation similar to that of those whoactually experienced the Lager,making the timetabled life of the camp immediate and foregrounding the subjectposition of the prisoner. That linguistic confusion is signalled by the play’s introductoryannounce- mentalso factors significantly into the overall effectofits multiple-language presentation. An introductoryannouncementtothe playsignposts confusion of languages as one of the most importantaspects of Levi’s experience thatthe drama replicates. As the cast list for the final script indicates, this “confusionof tongues” is reproduced following Levi’s original memoir as closely as possible, Transforming Subjectivity: Se questo èunuomo in Translation and Adaptation 41 with the only translation being the substitution of English for Italian (4–5). This substitution is necessary to render the broadcast intelligible to aCanadian audience;however,the manyother languages are deliberately retained so as to hinder the audience’s understanding. As the introductionstates, thoughthe sense of these other languages is often apparentfrom the narrator’s (Levi’s) commentary, “when it is not thus evident, when for amomentwegrope in the bewildermentofalien and incomprehensible speech,then in asense we can enter brieflyintopartofLevi’s experience:for this isolation was areal partofwhat he was made to suffer” (9). Such contextualization in words is an importantaspect of audio presentation, as it helps the audience derivemeaning from apolysemic experience of music, voices, and sound effects. In Andrew Crisell’s hierarchyof radio semiotics, he defineswords as dominating these sound codes, since “The ear will believe what it is led to believe” (214) –that is, the ear hears most readily what it has been readied to hear.The effectiveness of Whalley’s contextualization of his radio drama in terms of linguistic confusioncan be measured by Levi’s response to it:according to Levi,the creators of the playhad “understoodfull well the importance in that camp of alack of communication, exacerbated by the lack of acommon language, and they had bravely set their work within the framework of the theme of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages” (Black Hole 26). Levi’s response to this radio adaptation, so differentfrom his optimism concerning cross-cultural transmission of understandingthroughtranslation in his preface to the German edition of his memoir, is in partafunction of the immersivequalityofthe play. The broadcast’s re-originalized aural polyphony, its signposting,and its temporal realism efface the processes of translation and adaptation that have taken place, by immersing the audience in asimulation of the original environment. The final line of the play’s introduction, in fact, presents it as “‘Ifthis is aman,’ Primo Levi’s personal accountofannihilation” (9). This statement effaces the remediationprocess altogether,positioning the playitself as “Primo Levi’s personal statement.” While the process of translation foregrounds subjectivitythroughits focus on address and response –astructure reinforced by the collaboration between Levi and his translators –the immersive effectofthe radio playforegrounds the dehumanized and alienated subject position into which Levi and his fellowinmates in Lager were “called” or,more accurately,forced. Levi was, throughout his life, constantly battlingpessimism about linguistic difference. It is, perhaps, not so surprising thathis belief in the abilityoftranslation to “limit the damage caused by the curse of Babel” (qtd. Alexander 161) was enhanced by aGerman translation that allowedhim to speak to those whoonce silenced him, while his pessimism about the ultimatein- commensurabilityoflanguages was heightened by aradio adaptation immersing its audience within aBabel of linguistic confusion. 42 Alana Fletcher

Fig.1:This page of the script for George Whalley’s radio adaptation“If This is aMan” provides Levi’s narration.

Fig.2:This page of the script provides the lines of various characters, back-translatedintothe languages reported by Levi. Transforming Subjectivity: Se questo èunuomo in Translation and Adaptation 43

Works Cited

Alexander, Zaia. “Primo Levi and Translation.” The Cambridge CompaniontoPrimo Levi. Ed. Robert S.C. Gordon. Cambridge:Cambridge UP,2997. Print.155–169. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Ed. and trans.Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis:University of Michigan Press,1984. Print. Bolter,Jay Davidand RichardGrusin. Remediation:Understanding NewMedia. Cam- bridge:MIT Press,1999. Print. Crisell, Andrew. “Radio Signs.” Media Studies:AReader. Ed. PaulMarris and Sue Thornham. NewYork:New Yo rk University Press, 2000. Print.210–219. Crook, Tim. RadioDrama:Theory andPractice. NewYork:Routledge, 1999.Print. Emerson,Caryl. The First Hundred Years of Mikhael Bakhtin. Princeton, NJ:Princeton UniversityPress, 1997.Print. Genette, GØrard. “Time and NarrativeinÀlarecherche du temps perdu.” Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Eds. Michael J. Hoffman and Patrick D. Murphy.Durham:DukeUP, 2005. Print. 121–38. Gigliotti, Simone. “Unspeakable Pasts as Limit Events:The Holocaust, Genocide, and the Stolen Generations.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 49.2 (June 2003): 164–181. Gilman, Sander L. Inscribing the Other. Lincoln:UniversityofNebraska Press, 1991. Print. Gordon, Robert S.C. “Primo Levi’s If ThisisaMan and Responses to the Lager in Italy 1945–47.” Judaism 48.1 (Winter 1999): 49–57. Levi,Primo. L’assimetria elavita. Ed. Marco Belpoliti.Torino:Einaudi, 2002.Print. – If This is aMan. Trans.StuartWoolf. NewYork:Orion:1959. Print. – Ist das ein Mensch? Trans. Heinz Reidt. FrankfurtamMain:Fischer,1961. Print. – Se questo unuomo. Torino:Einaudi, 1958.Print. – The Black Hole of Auschwitz.2002. Ed. Marco Belpoliti. Trans. SharonWood. Cam- bridge:Polity, 2005. Print. McCallum, Robyn. “Introduction.” Ideologies of Identity in AdolescentFiction:The Dia- logic Construction of Subjectivity. NewYork:Garland,1999. Print.3–21. Oliver,Kelly.“Witnessing and Testimony.” Parallax Vol.10 No.1(2004): 79–88. Reeves, John. Letter to George Whalley.25July 1961. 1032c–13–6. George Whalley Fonds. Queen’s UniversityArchives, Kingston, Ontario. –Letter to George Whalley.4 September 1963.1032c–13–6. George WhalleyFonds. Queen’s UniversityArchives, Kingston, Ontario. Smith, Paul. Discerning the Subject.1988. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Print. Whalley,George. “IfThis is aMan:AMeditation for Radio Adapted by George Whalley.” CBC SundayNight.24Jan 1965. 5043-SR797 and 5043-SR798. Audio.George Whalley Fonds. Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, Ontario. –“If This is aMan.” Final Script. 1302c–13–4. George Whalley Fonds. Queen’s University Archives, Kingston,Ontario. –Letter to John Reeves. 4December 1961. 1032c–13–7. George Whalley Fonds.Queen’s UniversityArchives, Kingston, Ontario. 44 Alana Fletcher

–Letter to John Reeves. 31 May1962. 1032c–13–7. GeorgeWhalley Fonds. Queen’s UniversityArchives, Kingston,Ontario. White, Hayden. “The Modernist Event.” The Persistence of History:Cinema, Television and the ModernEvent. Ed. Vivian Sobchack. NewYork:Routledge, 1996. Print. 17–38. Bettina Stumm

CollaborativeTranslation:The RelationalDimensions of Translating HolocaustTrauma

In 2005, Iwas hired by the Holocaust Education Center in Vancouver and Ronsdale Press to work with an elderly Holocaust survivor, Rhodea Shandler,to produce her accountofmotherhood and hiding during the Nazi occupation in Holland. Ronsdale Press was keen to publishher story, but what they had in hand was ashortmanuscript that needed to be organized, developed, and doubled in size. My role was to collaborate with Rhodea to takeher storyfrommanuscript to print. Over the course of two months, she and Imet for aseriesofinterviews in her home to develop her story. In the process Ihad to learnwhat kinds of questions invited her to share her memories and which questions inhibitedher.I also had to consider howmyown knowledge, background,and assumptions about Holocaust trauma shaped my questions and framed her answers.Indeed, as Ilistenedtoher answers, transcribed her oral story, incorporated the new material into her original manuscript, and converted her brokenEnglish into a coherentand chronological narrative, Ibegan to consider the ethics of my role in our narrative relationship.Specifically,what were my responsibilities as acol- laborativewitness and respondentinhelping her translateher suffering into storyform? In his preface to The Drowned and the Saved,Primo Levi indicates that the role of the respondentisintegral to the process of bearing witness to stories of Holocaust trauma. He describes anightmare that manyprisoners in Auschwitz shared of returning home, addressing themselves to aloved one, and describing their past suffering with passion and relief, only to have their storynot believed or even listened to.Inthe worst cases, the interlocutor turned and leftwithout even aresponse (12). Levi’s description suggests thatwitnessing Holocaust trauma dependsonanother’s reception and response to function. The address of asurvivorrequires afully present, attentive,and responsive listener to ac- knowledge the suffering in order for it to be expressed. As DoriLaubobserves in his work with Holocaust survivors, “The emergence of the narrativewhich is being listened to –and heard –is…the process and the place wherein …the ‘knowing’ of the eventisgiven birth […] The listener to trauma comes to be a 46 Bettina Stumm participantand aco-owner of the traumatic event:throughhis very listening,he comes to partially experience trauma in himself” (57).1 Laub indicates here that responsive listening is not simply apassivestance but aparticipatorystance, one that involves“suffering with” the trauma survivorinthe process of witnessing his or her story. It assumesarelationship between survivorand respondent characterized by presence and proximity, one that exceeds superficial interaction and professional distance. Throughthis relationship,the survivor’s story emerges. WhatIfind compelling about Levi’s description and Laub’s analysis are their implications for translating Holocaust trauma into narrativeform. In psychoanalysis and trauma studies, we tend to think of translating trauma as afraught practice of communication and formulate it in two main ways:interms of the survivor’s challenge to retrieve repressed traumaticmemories or to represent those traumatic memories in language and narrativeform. The incomprehensibilityand incommunicabilityoftrauma make it difficult for survivors to access, particularly in acognitiveand linguistic way. Indeed, the Holocaust, as a“limit event,” has long provokeddiscussion not only about whether its suffering can be represented or understood but whether it should be, adding an ethical dimension to the dilemmas of transmission.2 In one sense, translating trauma into something knowable and speakable can loosen the hold that it has on the psyche, giving survivors away to beginworking throughtheir memories of suffering. Butatthe same time, it can simplifythe complexities involved in remembering and representing trauma, glossing over the veryreal gaps in memoryand emotional blockages thattrauma produces. Notably,inthis framework, the fraught practice of translation focuses largely on the obstacles that face the survivor, that is, acrisis of communicabilityonthe survivor’s end. WhatLeviimplies in his analysis, however,isthat while survivors maystruggle to reclaim and verbalize their stories of suffering,the crisis of communicability often lies in the respondent’s inabilitytoreceive, relate and respond to the survivor, resulting in abreakdown of community in the actoftranslation. The

1InTestimony:Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (co-written with Shoshana Felman in 1992), Dori Laub describes the processes and pitfalls of interviewing Holocaust survivors in creating the Fortunoff Video Archivefor Holocaust Testimonies housed at Yale University. 2The dilemmas of transmitting Holocaust trauma has been taken up in various ways by such thinkers as CathyCaruth, Shoshana Felman, Saul Friedlander,Geoffrey Hartman, BerelLang, Claude Lanzmann, and Lawrence Langer,amongothers.Inparticular,Dominick LaCapra,in Writing History,Writing Trauma (2001), and Ana Douglass and Thomas Vogler,inWitness andMemory:The Discourse of Trauma (2003), approachthese dilemmas by highlighting both the value and the limitations of interpreting the Holocaust as an incomprehensible and unrepresentable limit event.Inthe process they also examine the ethical complicationsthat emerge in responding to survivors’ accounts. Collaborative Translation 47 challenge of translation, fromthis perspective,isnot so much the incommunicability of trauma itself as it is the collapse of community in telling that trauma throughanother’s lack of response. With this starting pointinmind, Iwill focus on the relational dimension of translating trauma into narrativeformand the critical role of the respondentin this process to suggest that one of the main purposes of translation is to create or re-create communitywhere trauma has destroyed it. Collaborativetranslation naturally has its limitations, but it also has the potential to build bridges between people throughlanguage and kinship in the process of sharing suffering. Iwill beginmydiscussion with the relational and dialogical structure of translation throughthe psychoanalyticwork of DoriLauband George Bonanno.This structure conveys an ethical dimension to translation, the responsibilities of address and response in witnessing trauma with others. To flesh out this ethics, I rely on the philosophical and psychoanalyticfeminism of Kelly Oliver and Bracha Ettinger respectively.Together,their work offers abroader foundation by which to analyze the relational natureofresponsibility underpinning the dialogical process of collaborativetranslation. Ithen turntodiscuss my partnership with Rhodea to showthe complications of translation that emerge in collaboration as well as to highlight how, amidst the complications, arelationship can developthat challenges the incommunicabilityoftrauma and opens spaces to work towards new meaning and ahopeful future.

The Dialogic Structure of Translation in Collaborative Narration

In his article, “Repression, Accessibility, and the Translation of PrivateExperi- ence” (1990), George Bonanno,head of the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Labat Columbia University,describes translation of trauma as apractice of retrieval (what can be remembered) and representation (what can be told) within a dialogic context. Retrieval and representation rely on “translation of …private experiential contents into the language-based dialogue that dominates the therapeutic [and Iwould add, the narrative] process” (455). Translation, in this framework, refers to the collaborativepractice of piecing together various non- verbal, non-cognitive fragments and rendering them into verbal and often narrative form(456–7). The goal of translation, according to Bonannoand Stacey Kaltman, is not simply to access repressed memories, but to construct new meaning from apast traumaticevent(“Assumed Necessity” 191).3 As they

3Notably,there are various psychoanalytictheories regardingthe particular processes and desired outcomes of translating traumaticexperience into verbal and narrative form. For instance, Freudian psychoanalysis and the structural deficit models of psychotherapyem- 48 Bettina Stumm describeit, “the construction of new meaningmay sometimes entail the process of translating the various fragments of traumaticexperience into aunifiedand integrated representation …that makessense in the person’s larger narrative understanding” (191).Ifweconsider the etymologyoftranslation, it starts to becomeclear whythis termisoften used in contextsofpsychoanalysis and narrative construction. Translation suggests a transfer from one formorcon- ditiontoanother (CanadianOED). Given its Latin roots – latus means “to carry” and trans means “over or across” (Oxford Dictionary of EnglishEtymology), translation can signifythe process of carrying fragments of traumatic experience throughlanguage over/across gaps of memoryand cognition so as to change their condition and reintegrate them into one’s understanding and narrative of oneself in the world. It is precisely this language-based dialogue common in therapy and narrative collaboration, that challenges the “black hole” of trauma, as DoriLaubputs it, and makes it possible for survivors to bear witness to their suffering, to bear it with someone, to come to knowitthroughspeaking it, and to reclaim their life and past in the process (Laub70). “For the testimonial process to takeplace,” Laub argues, “there needs to be abonding, the intimate and total presence of an other –inthe position of one whohears. Testimonies are not monologues;they cannot takeplace in solitude.The witnesses are talking to somebody”(70–71). Bonanno and Kaltman concur, noting thatsupportive relationships with friends, family,orother listeners are necessary for survivors to share their suffering and integrate traumatic events coherently into their sense of self and story(191). These thinkers, then, pointnot only to the dialogical structure of translation to testifytoHolocaust trauma, but alsotothe relational structure of dialogue underpinning it. From this perspective,translating Holocaust trauma is, on one level, adialogical practice of retrievaland representation. Butmore funda- mentally,itisarelational process of bonding with someone –asupportive respondent–to witness one’s owntrauma. The abilitytoaddress and respond to others within adialogic relationship is

phasize the non-verbal and non-conceptual (unconscious) modes of memoryand the assumption thattraumatic experience is repressed, whereas other studies (including those by Bonanno)claim that the fragmentary, emotional natureoftraumaticmemories cannot be easily integrated and consolidated with other aspects of normal experience in the brain. Because trauma is encoded differently,assuggested by studiesincognitiveneuroscience (see work by Bessel van der Kolk, Joseph E. LeDoux, Jeff Muller,and John D. Gabrielli, to name a few), traumaticexperience is difficulttoretrieve for neurological reasons rather than for reasons of repression. Due to these differentviews, various psychoanalytic methodsfor retrieving and representing traumatic memoryhavedeveloped. However,most psycho- analysts share the view thattranslationfromnon-verbal fragments and images into verbal and cognitivenarrationisnecessaryfor dealing positively and productively with traumatic experience and memory. Collaborative Translation 49 particularly importantfor rebuildingselfhood and developing asense of ethical responsibilitywith and for others after an experience of trauma. Kelly Oliver calls this process “witnessing” and observes in Witnessing:Beyond Recognition (2001) thatpsychic survivaland human subjectivitydepend on it. “Toconceive of oneself as asubjectistohavethe abilitytoaddressoneself to another,” she writes. “Subjectivityisthe resultof, and dependson, the processofwitnessing – address-ability and response-ability. Oppression, domination, enslavement, and torture work to undermine and destroythe abilitytorespond and thereby undermine and destroysubjectivity. Part of the psychoanalyst’s task in treating survivors is reconstructing the address-ability thatmakes witnessing sub- jectivitypossible” (17). Bearing witness to atraumatic eventthroughadialogic relationshipand translating it into narrativeformbegins to restore the survivor’s subjectivitydamaged by the objectification of oppression. In dialogue, the survivorisable to assertagencyinaddressinghim- or herself as “I” to another person, someone whoresponds by saying “you.” In this dialogic relation the survivorceasestobethe “it” of objectification and trauma and returns to being an “I” and a“you,” ahuman person in relationship with others. This dialogic relationship has an inherentethical dimension. Because “we are by virtue of our environmentand by virtue of relationships with other people,” Oliver argues, “we have ethical requirements rooted in the verypossibilityof subjectivityitself. We are obligated to respond to our environmentand other people in ways thatopen up rather than close offthe possibilityofresponse” (15).4 The pointofcollaborativetranslation, then, is not simply to give the survivorvoice as ameans to regain agencyand asserthis or her subjectposition throughattentive and supportive responses of another.While asserting oneself is critical to establishing one’s “relationships to the finite world of human historyand relations –what we might call politics” (17), it does not go far enough in reclaiming one’sfull personhood damaged in trauma. Agencyneeds to be coupled with responsibility in one’s relationships with others, which is funda- mentally ethical rather than political in nature (17). As an ethics, dialogue is meanttopromotethe kinds of responses that open spaces for survivors to reciprocate,sothey can ultimately movebeyond aposture of self-assertion to

4The philosophical ethicsofHermann Cohen and Martin Buberilluminate this dialogical dimensionintheir descriptions of the “I and you” and the “I and Thou” relationship respectively.RobertGibbs observes,for example, thatfor Cohen,“the ultimate momentisthe discoverythat self-consciousness arises onlyinthe relation of Iand you. […] Ethics is orientated from this relation from youtoI,and so my responsibility begin in this relation” (112). For both Cohen and Buber, this ethical relation between two selves is made manifest in dialogue, in addressand response. “When Thou is spoken,” Buberargues, “the speaker has no thing for his object. […] Buthetakes his stand in relation” (4). In fact, “I become throughmy relation to the Thou;asIbecome I,Isay Thou. All real living is meeting” (11). Dialogue is thus inherently relational, and relationalityisinherently ethical. 50 Bettina Stumm one of mutual responsibilitywith others. It is both in the abilitytosay “I” and in the abilitytosay “you” that the subjectivityofpersonhood can be recovered and flourish with others in its fullest capacity. Given thatdialogic response is so critical for reclaiming subjectivityand promoting mutual responsibility, what precisely does this kind of response involve relationally and howdoesitfunction ethically in the context of collaborativetranslation?Tobegin to answer these questions, let me pointtotwo fundamental characteristics of response. First, response involves being fully, intimately,and unobtrusively presentwith another person. Bracha Ettinger,in her psychoanalyticfeminist work describes this intimate sense of “being with” as “wit(h)nessing” (145).Ettinger,ifIunderstand her correctly,argues that originarysubjectivityoccurs in utero,where mother and child are physically interrelated and entwined. By claiming that subjectivitybegins in the womb, Ettingerchallenges the long-held Freudian notionthat subjectivityisfounded in the complete separation of mother and child at birth:“Becoming-together,” she claims, “precedes being-one”(72), and,assuch, subjectivityisnot simply a trauma of separation, but “the sensation of co-habitation” prior to cognitionor recognition (Pollock 16). If subjectivitybegins in an intimate“encounter” with another (the mother), then the self cannot be seen as aseparateentity, divided from all other selves. Norcan the other be seen as an “absolute separate Other” (Ettinger 144). We are intersubjective beings, constituted by and with each other. This intersubjectivitychallenges trauma, defying boundaries between self and other evidentinsuch limit events as the Holocaust. As Griselda Pollock notes in her introduction to Ettinger’s Matrixial Borderspace (2006), “the Holocaust was enacted within amodel that establishes clear,evenphobically defended frontiers between Self and Other.[…] In the matrixial perspective, where the frontiers become co-poietically transgressive, limits becomethresh- olds, and anonfusional transmissionbecomes possible, such acatastrophe is unimaginable” (11). Understanding others “as opposed to” or “wholly distinct from” oneselfisprecisely the kind of ontological dichotomythatstimulates war and genocide against others. Wit(h)nessing is oneway to usurpthe powerofthis self/other split and the trauma it creates throughavision of originaryhuman interconnectivity. With this in mind, wit(h)nessing can be seen in the context of translating Holocaust trauma as an intimate encounter with the subjectivityand trauma of another:witnessing with. One’s personhoodcan be reclaimed and rearticulated in the intersubjective process of narrativecollaboration.Wit(h)nessing is thus not principally acognitivepractice of understanding the survivor’s trauma, nor is it apolitical practice of recognizing the victimized subjectposition of the survivorand giving him or her voice. It does not see survivors principally as “others” to be analyzed or as “victims” to be cured throughnarrative practice. Collaborative Translation 51

Instead, wit(h)nessing can be seen as ahumanizing process that engages wholly with another person as aperson first, beyond his or her victimhood and marginalized subject position. The pointhereistosimply be present with the other person throughthe relational process of dialogue. As Laub describes it, it is as if the respondentsaystothe survivor, “I’ll be with youall the way, as much as I can. Iwanttogowherever yougo, and I’ll hold and protectyou along this journey” (70). This process requires the response of one’s whole being –cog- nitively,emotionally,physically,and proximately.Itmeans opening oneself to the multi-dimensionality and complexities of another’s personhoodand trauma that exceed one’s knowledge, ontological categories, and empathetic identifications. Since “a significantportion of reconstructive recollections involve… thoughts, feelings, and memories that maybefelt but not easily known or expressed in words,” Bonanno observes, being presenttothe other person must allowfor traumatic experience to be communicated in alternativeand unexpected ways, otherwise than howwemight think or imagine (“Repression” 455). Presence is thus aposture of existential hospitality–whole-hearted, mindful, and embodied openness –inone’s wit(h)nessing with others. The second characteristic of response is reciprocity. In narrative collaboration particularly,response is not unilateral;itcannot simply go one way–from listening respondenttospeaking subject. Partners in collaborative translation are engaged in an actofnarrative co-laboring or co-creating,which requires reciprocityand social exchange to function. In laboring together,partners must address and respond to each other.Such reciprocityisclearly manifest in or- dinaryconversations, where we exchange words with each other (Bakhtin293), but its impact heightened in collaborativecontexts of translation.Throughthe words we share, we exchangepositions with eachother –both grammatically and relationally –and this exchange has ethical ramifications. Grammatically speaking,when Iaddress someoneelse, Iamsituated as an “agent” of averbal action in the nominativecase. When Ilisten, Iamsituated as a“patient” or recipientofanactioninthe accusative case. These positions are reciprocal: the other person is also an agentand apatient. As Paul Ricoeur observes in Oneself as Another (1992), “the agents and patients of an action are caught up in relationships of exchange which, likelanguage, join together the reversibility of roles and the nonsubstitutabilityofpersons” (193). Verbal exchange in dialogue, as Ricoeur notes, reveals aparadox of sorts:weare at once equivalentand ex- changeable (in agrammatical sense)and differentand irreplaceable (as people). We are uniqueselves whose roles are necessarily reciprocal. We cannot dialogue or co-labor if we are located solely in aposition of addressorsolely in aposition of response. This verbal and grammatical exchange in dialogue points to another exchange on the level of relationship:the reciprocityofresponsibility. Relationally 52 Bettina Stumm speaking,the abilityofboth interlocutors to respond and be responsible for each other is crucialfor developing and sustaining an equal partnership.Just as a dialogue becomes untenable or morphs into amonologue when one interlocutor maintains the role of respondent, acollaborativerelationship is impeded when one person maintains aposition of responsibility“for the other” in their interactions. Responsibility, in its veryact of giving voice and agency, can slide into an alternative position of power or narrativecontrol if it is one-sided, resulting in relational imbalance and strained dialogue within the partnership.Evenmore troubling is that collaborators assuming this position of seeming generosity “for the other” can inadvertently takeresponsibility away from vulnerable subjects so thatthey cannot identify as aresponsible agents in the presentorgiveany- thing in return. Such aunilateral responsibilitytends to limit its ownethical reach as it challenges the mutualitynecessaryfor arelationship to function and undermines the survivor’s dignitytorespond and power to be responsible for others.5 In fact, for trauma survivors to regain their subjectivity(or asense of self) damaged by trauma, they must not only be givenvoice and agencytoaddress their trauma to others but also be enabled to takeupresponsibilityfor themselves and for others. In the context of trauma, Dominick LaCapra suggests,we tend to downplaythe importance of asurvivor’s responsibilityinthe desireto uphold his or her victimhood and the enormityofhis or her suffering.A“du- bious consequence of the notion of an unrepresentable excess in traumatic limit events,”hewrites, “is thatitmay lead to …aforeclosure, denigration, or inadequate accountnot only of representation but of the difficult issue of ethically responsible agencyboth then and now” (93). It can be dangerous, LaCapra warns, to render survivors non-responsible or exempt from responsibilitydue to their victimhood.Ifweencourageagencywithout also enabling responsibility, a victimized sense of selfhood will remain. If agencyinvolves responsibility,then a fully functioning subject is responsible for itself and others. Given this formulation, Oliver urges, “we are responsible for the other’s abilitytorespond” (19). As mutual respondents we are responsible to enable each other’s response in and throughthe collaborativerelationship.The power to respond as “responsible agents” and the abilitytoreciprocate response are critical components

5Continental philosopher,Adriaan Peperzak, makes much of this pointwhen he writes, “just as your speech obligatesme, so my speech obligates you; your dignity awakens my responsibility, while my dignityawakens yours. Two…chiastic relationshipsofhighesteem intersect one another,thusforming aknot thatbinds us together in responsibility”(172). Reciprocalreception and response are vital for ethical interaction to persist beyond the initial need of the survivortoobtain help in writing his or her storyand the responsibility of the writer-recipienttodoso. Collaborative Translation 53 of human dignityand flourishing,ones that enable us to engage in amutually beneficial relationship and to tell stories of trauma with others.

The Relational Dimensions of Translation in Narrative Collaboration

In turning nowtomynarrativecollaboration with Rhodea Shandler,Ipropose that translating Holocaust experience into narrative formisnot as straightforward aprocess of wit(h)nessing and reciprocityasthese ethical theories of dialogue suggest. In fact, Ifound thatpracticing presence and reciprocal responsibility in our partnership proved to be more relationally complex, as well as more mutually transformative, than Ihad expected. Ientered ourpartnership with aspecific conceptionofethical responsibilityinmind, one thathad grown out of my academicstudy of trauma theoryand psychoanalysis. Influenced particularly by the work of DoriLaub, Iimagined narrativecollaborators to be situated in arespondentposition with survivors, bearing witness to their victimhood and stories of trauma in ways similar to those of apsychoanalyst:with unobtrusive and total presence. Indeed, the ethical role of acollaborator,I inferred, was to give survivors “voice” to narratetheir stories, journey with them throughthe traumaticmemories as an empatheticguide and protector,and open spaces for them to reclaim their agencythrougharticulating themselves in the context of an open and generous relationship.AsIattempted this formofre- sponsible wit(h)nessing with Rhodea, however,Ifound myself challenged by the veryrespondentposition Itried to inhabit. Istruggled to receive, relate, and respond to her in our collaborativeprocess. Iwanttopointtothree areas of complexitythat emerged,asweconsider the relational dimensions of collaborativetranslation:(1) the difficulty of wit(h)nessing another person’s traumatized subjectposition;(2) the tension of navigating between unilateral and reciprocalresponsibilityinone’s partnership;and (3) the transformative potential of relational kinship in reclaiming and reconstructing subjectivity. As we began our collaboration, Iwas keenly aware of Rhodea’s position as a vulnerable and marginalized subject, avictimwho had been traumatized by years of living in hiding during the Nazi occupation in Holland. Given the suffering she endured, Iwas deeply concerned about howtoattend to her victimhood,especially since Icould not personally identify with her storyand suffering or connectwith her on the grounds of age, race, or background. In fact, Iwas acutelyaware thatmyown identity and background –aGerman-Canadian whose grandfathers had fought in the German Wehrmachtduring World War Two–stood in directopposition to her Jewish one. Ialso worried thatmy 54 Bettina Stumm potential power and narrativecontrol over her story, as interviewer,translator, and writer,would dominateher voice and misrepresenther account. As aresult, I located myself in arespondentposition, engaging with Rhodea as acareful scholar or analyst might with avulnerable and traumatized subject:Iattempted an ethical listening response that was sensitivetoour dichotomous subject positions and the power dynamicsbetween us, while still attending to the narrativetask of translating her experience into apublishable account. Theoretically, my attentiveness to Rhodea’s victimhood and my desire to representher storyaccurately are ethically responsible practices.Inreality, however,Ifound thatmysensitivitytoour dichotomous subjectpositions and my preoccupation with narrative accuracyhindered our collaborativerelationship and my abilitytowit(h)ness Rhodea genuinely as aperson. It was difficult not to makethe Holocaust the defining marker of Rhodea’s being, imbuing her memories of trauma with more significance than her other life experiences and elevating her past suffering aboveher proximate presence with me in our partnership.This inclination was reinforced by the stipulations of my narrative task:myprimaryrole in workingcollaboratively with Rhodea was to help her assemble her first-hand experience of the Holocaust for publication. It was precisely her identity as aHolocaust victim that gave Rhodea’s account historical and market value, not her other characteristics or her presentmodeof being.While Rhodea’s victimhood was the raison d’Þtre for publishing her account, fixatingonithad the potential of reducing her to this particular identity marker and totalizing her subjectivityinterms of her suffering,asifshe were no more than aHolocaust victim. Attending in this waytoRhodea’s victimhood also made it difficultfor me to wit(h)ness her as amultidimensional person with ordinaryfoibles and flaws and to engage fully and meaningfully with her in our proximate relationship.In Writing History,Writing Trauma,LaCapra observes that respondents often “sacralize” the trauma of survivors, deeming it wholly other or “an unrepresentable excess”and inadvertently venerating them on accountofthis suffering (93). As aresult, as Inoted earlier,itcan be difficult to see survivors as ethically responsible agents, both in the past and in the present. Ifound La- Capra’s insightstobeapplicable in my caseasIstruggled to hold in tension Rhodea’s victimhood with her responsible agencyinour interactions. Ifound myself excusing her shortcomings and reducing her responsibility as Isoughtto honour her suffering. In downplaying Rhodea’s responsibility,Ioverestimated my own, taking on (and taking over) responsibilityfor her storyinour narrative partnership.In particular,Ibecame absorbed with getting her story“straight”and fulfilling my responsibilities as narrative collaborator in this task. Itookitasmydutyto formulate with clarity, precision, linear chronology, and explanation her in- Collaborative Translation 55 congruentdescriptions, narrative repetitions, and general vagueness in her story. The result was telling:Inamomentoffrustration during one of our interviews, Rhodea burst out that she was tired of the difficult questions –my attempt to get her storystraight –and would prefer if Ijust cametovisit for tea. Heroutburst suggested to me that she was feeling fatigued by my sense of “care” and more likeanarrative task than avalued person. She was not simply a Holocaust victim in need of alistener to tell her storytoorinneed of an editor to get her facts straight.Whatshe desired, perhaps as much as giving voice to her experiences, was arelationship with me for its ownsake. Hersubjectivity, as it turned out, was not entirely wrapped up in her subjectposition as aHolocaust victim or in the practice of narrativetelling but in ourrelationship itself, which grew throughour dialogic interactions.6 As our relationship began to develop, asecond area of complexityemerged for me:the difficulty of practicingreciprocal response and responsibilityinour collaboration. As Isee it, this complexityarose from atension between disparate objectivesand expectations within the collaborativeprocess. On the onehand, our principal objective was to complete anarrative project:translating Rhodea’s Holocaust memories into apublishable account. My professional role in this projectwas to listen attentively to her from aposition of response and bear the responsibilityofproducing that accountwith her.Onthe other hand, our pri- marymeans to reach this objective was dialogic and relational;we had to builda relationshipinorder to produce astorytogether and thatrelationship depended on mutual address and response to function. To develop arelationship of equality, addressand response must be mutually exchanged:survivors must be enabled to respond and to claim responsibilityinthe narrativerelationship and the text produced. In this exchange,“powerand authoritynever disappear but are shared and contested,” as Holly Laird notes in her work on collaborative writing (12). Sharing authoritydemands anegotiation between two people, a practice of navigating the complicated and contested space between selves who think and do things in distinctand often unexpected ways. Ifound this spaceparticularly hard to navigate in my collaboration with Rhodea. Ifelt unilaterally responsible for Rhodea’s accountand, at the same time, recognized that we were mutually responsible for translating her story between us. Holding these two senses of responsibilityintandem was no easy task, and my assumptions aboutRhodea’s need for agencyand my role as ethical respondentwere challenged at everyturn. Notably,Rhodea did not nicely fit the

6Ihave addressed these complications of attending to Rhodea’s victimhood while overes- timating my ownresponsibilityfor her storytoagreater degree in my article, “Witnessing Others in Narrative Collaboration: Ethical Responsibilitybeyond Recognition” Biography 37.3 (Summer 2014): 762–783. 56 Bettina Stumm position of victim whoneeded my help to unearth her story, find her voice, or claim agency. She was afeistywoman:opinionated, outgoing,and constantly cracking jokes about herself and others. Iquickly came to see thatshe had no difficulty asserting herself, assessing my responses, and announcing where they fell short. Notonly did she not seem to struggle with assertion and agency, she also challenged my expectations about her experiences by ignoring or evading my interview questions that did not suit her and regularly contesting my responses to her suffering and storywith her own. Forinstance, upon entering our col- laborativeproject, Ihad expected to hear about emotional turmoil for families, lovers, and friends being tornapartbythe Holocaust, and there were many moments when Iassumed that Rhodea would exhibit deep distress and anguish in telling her story. However,this was not so.Inone interview,Rhodea told me about having to leave both her five-year old daughter (Elly) and her newborn (Jo) with differentstrangers for months of hiding.After the war,when Rhodea came to reclaim Jo from the family whowas looking after her,Jodid not recognize her mother and clung to her new family,afraid of this stranger (Shandler 129–130). Upon hearing this story, Ifelt dismayed and saddened on Rhodea’s behalf and responded as such, while Rhodea herself was surprisingly matter-of- factand composed. The pain of this experience maywell have caused her to quell her emotions, but her manner of telling nonetheless challenged my expectations and showed my empathetic response for what it was:anattempt to identify with an experience of motherhood and loss that Icould not imagine. In another case, Iwas surprised when Rhodea spokeoffhandedly aboutNa- than, her partner of four years and the father of Elly,being transported to the Nazi internmentcamp at Westerbork. My interview questions reflectthis sur- prise and my assumptionsabout howshe must have felt. While Ibegan with the innocuousquery–“Were youupset when youfound out?” –Islid into in- credulity and reproach when she answered in the negative, and my questions shifted as aresult:“Wasitthat he didn’t meanall that much to you. Or,like, how could you, howcouldyou forget him?” As she tried to explain herself and the situation, Ibegan projecting my ownfeelings onto her story, digging for emotions Iwas expecting but not receiving fromher:“Ididn’t get your feelings as to when youfound out that [Nathan] was transported. How did that make youfeel? Like Iwould have,you know, not gotten outofbed or jumped off acliff or something” (Shandler interview). My over-identification with Rhodea’s trauma in this momentsubverts her voice and her ownexpressionoffeeling in telling her story, highlighting howassumptions can highjack ethical response and take over the other person’s account. While identification and empathywere im- portantmeans for me to connectwith Rhodea, they were also misguided since they were rooted in my expectations–how Ithought Iwould feel if Iwereinher Collaborative Translation 57 shoes –rather than in her experience. In wit(h)nessing Rhodea, Ineeded to hold loosely to what Ifelt in response to her suffering,what IthoughtIknew about it, and what Iexpected her to sayabout it, allowing for her personality and her sense of agencyand responsibility for her accounttoexceed my understanding and emotions in our partnership.Ineeded to open myself to the person she actually was, not the type of victim Iexpected her to be,and accept her own responses to her stories rather than simply impose mine on her. Notably,inour process of working together Ifound that the importance of our narrative projectand my responsible role therein slowlybecame secondaryto our proximate relationship and her responsive role with me. As we met together for our interviews, she often did not wanttonarrateher storyatall, but engage with me aboutmylife and converse about things that were not trauma related, likeshopping, health, her children, and kabbalah. As time passed, some of her off-hand comments suggested thatshe sawour relationship as interpersonal and reciprocalrather than professional and unidirectional. For instance, at the be- ginningofone of our interviews we had the following dialogue:

B. So this is actuallyonly interview number 5out of Iguess 8, it looks like. R. It looks likeahundred times. B. It looks likeahundredtimes, I’m sorry that Itakesolong. I’m trying to be… R. Ihaveabedinthe back room. B. Ha ha ha. R. Ihaveroom,anextra room. Anytime, as amatter of fact, anytime youliketosleep here. B. That’s good to know, when the guy upstairs is toonoisy.I’ll let youknow. (Shandlerinterview)

The movehere is asignificantone. We beginwith the narrativetask and the tedious process of narrative translation, and turntothe personal and the intimate:she offers me aplace to sleep at her home, were Itoneed it. Isee this shift as both areiteration of the relational dimension of our partnership beyond the narrative task, and the importance of her abilitytoreciprocate within ourrelationship throughher hospitalityand generosity towards me.7 Islowlycameto realize that aunilateral sense of responsibility“for the other” can provelimiting and problematic for developing interpersonal relationships with survivors in contexts of narrative collaboration, where mutual response and responsibility are necessaryfor equalitytoexist between partners and,ultimately,for the story to emerge.This tension between responsibilitiesreveals the dynamic and challenging space of collaboration in which power and equality, agencyand responsibility, and generosity and reciprocitymust be continually navigated and

7I’ve also developed this particular incidentand the reciprocal responsibility it reveals in my article, “WitnessingOthers in NarrativeCollaboration” (2014). 58 Bettina Stumm reframed in light of the nature, context, and purpose of the collaborative translation. This brings me to my third point:the transformative potential of kinship that can developinand throughthe collaborativeprocess. Agenuine practice of wit(h)nessing and reciprocityincollaborativetranslation can create an intimate bond of kinship between partners. The mutual vulnerabilityand response that develops throughkinship has the potential to transformhow both partners see themselves and each other,beyond their dichotomous subjectpositions and the roles and power hierarchies associated with them.Throughkinship,subjectivity can be reclaimed and reconstructed in both members of the partnership (not just in the traumatized survivor), and human connection and communitycan be rebuilt where trauma has destroyedthem. This was precisely my experience with Rhodea. Ientered our projectwon- deringhow Icould relate with an elderly,Jewish woman in order to translate her experience into apublishable narrativeofhiding and survivalunder Nazi rule. How couldIunderstand anything of her suffering when all Ihad was textbook knowledge of her trauma and history?How was Itoinvolve myself in her life when our backgrounds were burdened by the hostilities of the past?Inpartic- ular,Ifelt adeep sense of guilt for being Germanand ourhistory of collective perpetration against the Jewish people. Howwould my German identity challenge her abilitytoshare her storywith me and my abilitytowit(h)nessand respond to her?AsIsawit, Rhodea and Ioccupied wholly disparateand even opposing subjectpositions, tied to the past and to her trauma. Focused on the historical-political divide between us, Ilocated ourrelationship within an economyofguilt:Rhodea in the position of victim and myself in the position of accountability, trying to somehow makeupfor the past (and my sense of guilt for it) with my presentresponsibility for her.8 Icould not imagine, up front,that workingtogether in relationship could produce an alternativeperspective of these subjectpositions and sidestep areductive relationship produced by guilt so that we might connectand communicate beyond them. Indeed, in reflecting on my partnership with Rhodea, what Ifind particularly powerful is that she did not determine our relationship as Idid. While Icate- gorized myself as anarrative respondentand guilt-ridden German-Canadian in light of her Jewish identity and victimhood,she did not engage with me on these

8Iuse the phrase “economyofguilt” in light of the work of Jacques Derrida and other thinkers in the French phenomenological tradition whoexamine the economyofthe gift and forgiveness, and by extension, the role of guilt within that economy. An economyofguilt hinges on an exchange of one’s sin against another personwith responsibility to him or her.Ethical responsibility, in short, can become ameans to “pay” for one’s culpabilityofbeing against another.For further discussioninDerrida’s work specifically,see On Cosmopolitanismand Forgiveness (2001), The Gift of Death (1995), and “ToForgive” in Questioning God (2001). Collaborative Translation 59 terms. Throughher openness and embodied presence in our relationship,she undermined my positioning. In fact, she wit(h)nessed me otherwise than Isaw myself, dismantling my perceptions about our difference and my sense of guilt and responsibilityfor her.She invited me into her home. She opened herself freely and shared her life storywith me. She chose to become vulnerable and to trust me in our relationship.And far beyond the parameters of our narrative task, she made space for me in her life,drawing me out of myself and into relationship with her and her family.She thus opened alternative spaces for us to relate, sidelining my self-imposed guilt, breaking down binaries, and challenging the political and professional tenor of my responsibility for her with her personal interconnection with me. She made our personhoodthe primaryfocus of our dialogic interaction rather than her victimhood.AsIseeit, she embodied responsible wit(h)nessing in away that my self-conscious guilt and well- meaningattention to her trauma kept me fromdoing to the same degree. In effect, she showed me the power of relationship to build connection and com- munityacross the lines of difference and chasms between selves that trauma creates and fixation on the past reinforces. In the humanizing process of collaborativetranslation, then, partners have the potential to become real people in each other’s eyes and challenge the lim- iting frameworks for identifying themselves and each other in relationship.This does not mean that unequal power dynamics and differences between partners do not occur,but that proximity, presence, and mutual responsibility can de- stabilize the self/other binaries thatapolitics of differenceand historical enmity create. Throughkinship,partners can open themselves to each other,see themselves and each other differently,and reorientthemselves from atrauma- tized past towards ahopeful future. Whatmyexperiences with Rhodea suggest,insum, is that the collaborative process of translating Holocaust trauma fromexperience into narrative is fun- damentally relational, bridging the psychological and political gaps between people that trauma creates by means of new connections and communication. On apsychological level, trauma silences by means of its incoherent, inexpressible, or excessive nature, and it separates sufferers from others by the typicalresponses it produces:repression, over-compensation,shame, fear,or isolation. On ahistorical-political level,trauma separates sufferers from others categorically and labels (like“victim”) that fix them in certain modes of being. Such distinctions can be reinforced throughverbal reiterations of the suffering and well-meaning recognitionofvictimhood,inadvertently reducing people to their traumatic experience and related identity markers. Collaborativetrans- lation can be transformative, then, in that it brings people together verbally, throughthe processofretrieving memoryfragments and rendering them into words and narrative with someone else. Translationbrings people together 60 Bettina Stumm dialogically throughreciprocal address and response, challenging assumptions of unilateral responsibilityfor sufferers and opening partners to mutual responsibility for each other and for the narrativetold. Finally, translation brings people together relationally in kinship,opening spaces and possibilities for interconnection in the present, developmentofmutual personhood through each other’s responses and responsibilities, and orientation towards the future beyond the strictures and confines of the traumatic event.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogical Imagination:Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist.Austin:Uof Texas P, 1981. Print. Bonanno,George.“Repression, Accessibility, and the Translation of Private Experience.” Psychoanalytic Psychology 7.4 (1990): 453–473. Print. Bonanno,George and Stacey Kaltman. “TheAssumed NecessityofWorkingthrough Memories of Traumatic Experience.” Psychodynamic Perspectives on Sickness and Health:EmpiricalStudies of Psychoanalytic Theories. Eds.PaulDuberstein and Joseph Masling. Washington:AmericanPsychological Association, 2000.165–200. Print. Buber, Martin. Iand Thou. Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith. NewYork: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958. Print. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience:Trauma, Narrative, History. Baltimore:John Hopkins UP,1996. Print. Cohen, Hermann. Ethik des Reinen Willens. Berlin:B.Cassirer,1921. Print. Derrida, Jacques. On Forgiveness andCosmopolitanism. Trans. MarcDooley and Michael Hughes. London:Routledge, 2001. Print. ---. The Gift of Death. Trans. DavidWills. Chicago:Uof Chicago P, 1995.Print. ---.“To Forgive: The Unforgiveable and the Imprescriptible.” Questioning God. Trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg. Ed. John Caputo et al. Indianapolis:Indiana UP,2001. 21–51. Print. Douglass, Ana, and Thomas Vogler,eds. Introduction. Witnessand Memory:The Dis- course of Trauma. NewYork:Routledge, 2003. Print. Ettinger,Bracha. The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis:Minnesota UP,2006. Print. Felman, Shoshana,and DoriLaub. Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psycho- analysis, andHistory. NewYork:Routledge, 1992. Print. Friedlander,Saul, ed. Probing the Limits of Representation:Nazism andthe “FinalSol- ution.” Cambridge:Harvard UP,1992. Print. Gabrieli, John. “CognitiveNeuroscience of Human Memory.” Annual Review of Psychol- ogy 49 (1998): 87–115. Print. Gibbs,Robert. “Philosophyand Law: Questioning Justice.” The Ethical. Ed. Edith Wy- schogrod and Gerald McKenny. Oxford:Blackwell, 2003. 101–116. Print. Hartman, Geoffrey. The Longest Shadow:Inthe Aftermath of the Holocaust. Indianapolis: Indiana UP,1996. Print. Collaborative Translation 61

LaCapra, Dominick. WritingHistory,WritingTrauma. Baltimore:John Hopkins Uni- versityPress,2001. Print. Laird, Holly.Preface.“On Collaborations, Part II.” TULSA:Studies on Women’s Literature 14.1 (Spring 1995): 11–18. Print. Lang,Berel. Holocaust Representation:Art within the Limits of History andEthics. Balti- more:John Hopkins UP,2000. Print. Langer,Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies:The Ruins of Memory. NewHaven:Yale UP, 1993. Print. Lanzmann, Claude. “Hier ist kein Warum.” ClaudeLanzmann’s Shoah:Key Essays. Ed. StuartLeibman.Oxford:Oxford UP,2007. 51–52. Print. ---. “The ObscenityofUnderstanding:AnEvening with Claude Lanzmann.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Ed. CathyCaruth. Baltimore:John Hopkins UP,1995. 200–220. Print. LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain. NewYork:Simon and Schuster,1996. Print. LeDoux, Joseph, and Jeff Muller.“Emotional Memoryand Psychopathology.” Philosoph- ical Transactionofthe RoyalSociety of London –Series B: Biological Sciences 352 (1997): 1719–1726. Print. Levi,Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. Trans.Raymond Rosenthal. NewYork:Vintage Books, 1989.Print. Oliver,Kelly. Witnessing:Beyond Recognition. Minnesota:Minneapolis UP,2001. Print. Peperzak,Adriaan. “Giving.” The Enigma of the Gift andSacrifice. Ed. Edith Wyschogrod et al. NewYork:FordhamUP, 2002. 161–175. Print. Pollock, Griselda. Introduction. The Matrixial Borderspace. By Bracha Ettinger.Minne- apolis:Minnesota UP,2006. 1–38. Print. Ricoeur.Paul. Oneself and Another. Trans. KathleenBlamey.Chicago:Uof ChicagoP,1992. Print. Shandler,Rhodea.Personal Interviews. June-August 2005. Stumm, Bettina. “Witnessing Others in NarrativeCollaboration:EthicalResponsibility beyond Recognition.” Biography 37.3 (Summer 2014): 762–783. “Trans.” OxfordDictionary of English Etymology.1996. Print. “Translate.” CanadianOxfordEnglish Dictionary.1998. Print. van der Kolk, Bessel. “The Body Keeps Score:Memoryand the Evolving Psychobiologyof Posttraumatic Stress.” HarvardReview of Psychiatry 1.5 (1994): 253–265. Print.

Gatan PØgny interviews FranÅois Rastier1

Witnessingand Translating:UlyssesatAuschwitz

William Winder (UniversityofBritish Columbia)

In Ulysses at Auschwitz (2005 Auschwitz Foundation award), FranÅoisRastier reinterprets Primo Levi’s entire corpus in lightofthe latter’s work as atranslator and apoet, an aspect of Levi’s work thatistoo often neglected by critics who have taken all too seriouslyLevi’s assertion thathis poetry was the irrational part of his work. FranÅoisRastier counters thatcritical omission by showing just how im- portantpoetry was for Levi, who produced the most poetry when he was laying the foundations for If This Is aMan (published in 1947) and as well just beforehis last work, The Drowned and the Saved (1986). By reminding us of the poetic tradition they grew outofand opposed, Levi’s poems offer apoetics thatcan capturethe experience of survivors and their crisis, and testifyfor the witness, whose voice is echoed by those voices thatpoetry makes audible.

This interview was bornout of the desire to pursue the avenues openedbythis double reflection on translation and the poetry of Primo Levi.

GP:You beginyour book by presenting your approach to translation and re- translation of Primo Levi’s poems as the culmination of acritical reading.Isthis in factthe verydefinition of the task of reading?Assome translators have said, the translator is the most attentive reader.You have been unable to publish your translations because of copyrightissues. Could youclarifythe issues surrounding that restriction and explain what, from your perspective,isprob- lematic aboutthe existing authorized translations?

FR:I’ll beginofcourse at the end:Iwanted to inspire people to read Levi’s poems and thereforeto(re-)translatethem. Of course, Igaveintothis temptation myself because translating makes reading tangible. Atranslation is aliterarywork –aparallel work –which follows in the footsteps of the original, pays homage to it without competing,and becomes its

1Director of Research, ERTIM-INaLCO,Paris. 64 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier disciple. The model that no doubt inspiresLeviisDante, whomakes his own adaptation of Virgil, just as the narrator of The Divine Comedy takes him as his guida. Moreover,atranslation is also acritical work, akind of beautifully concise commentary. It is an appropriation, of course, but is able to remain at are- spectful distance. Given its exclusive rights to all French translations, Gallimard did not allow me to beginmybookwith my re-translation of the ten poems Irefer to most often.2 It is not my wish at all to enter into adebate with the translator,Louis Bonalumi, especiallysince his work does not seem to me to have anyserious flaws. However,myopinion differs from his on several importantpoints that I have posted here and there:for example, to turn tedeschi [Germans] into Schleus [sic] strikesmeasboth an error and bad taste;nothing is more foreigntoLevi’s perspective than acolonialist nicknametaken fromthe chauvinistic slang of the “poilus.” For lack of space, Icannot develop here the problems that intertexts create for translation:for example, in the poem Shemà Louis Bonalumi translates Vi co- mando queste parole by No,donot forget,erasing the paraphrase of Deuteron- omy,which is in factcrucial in poems thatare woven out of biblical allusions and openly summarized in the title by the first word of the prayer Listen, Israel. I would liketosee abilingual edition that has the necessary critical apparatus.

GP:You showinyour book howimportantPrimo Levi’s work as atranslator was for him. In his collection of poems, we seeheadapts Rilke, Heine or other authors. This seems importanttome, insofar as on the one handpoetryhas been put forward as the emblematic example of the untranslatable and the concentration camp as the emblematic example of the unspeakable, and on the other hand the question of passage,ofcommunication is absolutely central. Yo ushow in particular thatinhis poems Primo Levi gave avoice to thingsthat cannot speak, to acarbon atom for example, giving new life to astylistic figurelittle used in contemporaryliterature. His poetic project is indeed characterized as public speaking on behalf of athird party throughprosopopoeia, except when the executioners themselves speak, because those whoare accused by their own justificationsare still alive. It is with the veryfigure of Ulysses that Levi in- stantiates the themeofstriving and then overreaching;wefind Dante’s Ulysses in Hell for having led his companions beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which marked the boundaries of the world.Leviused this figureonseveral occasions as arepresentation of the Jews:“Auschwitz seems to be the punishmentbybar- barians, by barbaric Germany,bybarbaric Nazism, against Jewish civilization,

2 Ad oraincerta,Turin, Garzanti, 1984;new expanded edition, 1991 (trans. Àune heureincertaine,Paris, Gallimard, 1997). Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 65 thatistosay,the punishment for boldness, in the same waythatUlysses’ ship- wreck is the punishmentbyabarbarian god for man’s audacity.//Iwas thinking of this vein of Germanantisemitism which is directed mainlytowards the intellectual audacity of Jews such as Freud, Marx and all the innovators in every area. Thatwas whatdisturbed acertain kind of German philistinism, much more than the fact of blood or race.”3 Yo upointout thatthe ethics of translation corresponded to Primo Levi’s character,tohis demand for precision, his attention to others and to his mod- esty, but might there not be agreater need, underlying his activityastranslator? The work of PaulCelan,with whom Primo Levi’s work contrasts emphatically, but whose work is also infused with the need to accountfor the extermination, the issue of translation plays acrucial role as well (see in particular the chapter “The Translator” that J. Bollack devoted to this subjectinPoetry against Poetry): it serves as averitable re-semantisation or re-translation of German within German. Even thoughthis projectisforeign to Levi’s program,couldwenev- ertheless see in the experience of the translator,who faces the strangeness of another language and the challenges of re-semantisation, an activitythat shares common features with the work of transmitting an unprecedented experience to the “outside world”? If,asyou pointed out in your recentwork in linguistics, translation is never wordfor word but from text to text and corpus to corpus, is it not then the role of the corpus of classical textstoprovide acommon reference that is sharedbythe survivorand the outside world, whose rewriting by the witness would makeitsuitablefor transmission? Is the work of translation to be understood thereforeasaparticular kind of work that is active in anylanguageand that is challenged by the extermination?I am referring to what Georges Perecsaysabout the work of Robert Antelme in a seminal article he had originally considered titling “RobertAntelmeorthe birth of literature”, and which was first published in issue 8ofPartisans (January- February, 1963), where he made The Human Race aparadigmofliterature4.

3Interview with DanielleAmsallem cited by Myriam AnisimovinPrimo Levi, ou la tragØdie d’un optimiste,Paris, JC Lattes,1996, 265, reprinted in Ulysses at Auschwitz,39. 4“Writing todayseems to takeincreasingly the position thatits real purpose is to conceal, not reveal. It invites us always and everywhere to experience mystery, the inexplicable. The inexpressible is value. The indescribable is adogma. […] It is moreimmediateand reassuring in today’s world to have something thatcannot be controlled. Butthis world exists. And that trendyworld that we see as Kafkaesque, where we trytofind all tooquickly asuperbfores- hadowing of our major modern“disasters”,doesn’t explain it:weinfer an eternal curse, a metaphysical anguish, aprohibition weighing down on the human “condition”. Butthatisnot what it is about. […] At the heartofhumankind,the will to speak and to be heard,the desire to exploreand experience, leads to unlimited confidence in the languageand writing that founds all literature, evenif, by its verynature, and because of the fatethatour culturereserves for so- called “testimonies”, humankind fails to connecttoitcompletely.Because the expressionof the inexpressible, which is its veryreinvention, is language, abridge between the world and us, 66 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier

FR:You are righttomention Perec’s article, which is capital for anyreflection on literarytestimony: he rejects inadequate categories, such as the opposition between “fiction”and “non-fiction” or the separation between ethicsand aesthetics, and the various prejudices that have long prevented recognizing Levi as a real writer. Primo Levi’s prose translations (a text by LØvi-Strauss and The Castle by Kafka) were in his eyes commissionedworks5.Instead, Iwill consider the question of translation throughhis poetry. The first edition of his only collection of poems, Ad oraincerta, waspublished in 1984, three years beforehis death;itwas only preceded in 1975 by aslim volume of intimate poetry,L’osteria di Brema. The 1984 edition included asection of translations, of which Levi says in anote that they are “to his mind, more philological and musical entertainmentthan professional works.” Ihavenoidea whythose translations were dropped from the second edition, published after his death. Levi’s intention to include them in his poetic works was no doubt misunderstood, along with their value as apublic homage. These undated translations could be taken at first blush as copies of masters, included as a tribute. Butweshould consider their relationship to his larger work:ofthe ten translations, two are from English (Spens and Kipling) and eight from Heine –a Jewofthe Enlightenment, as was Levi.Moreover,seven come from the same section of the Buch der Lieder:Die Heimkehr [The Return].Ican’t help seeing the shadowofUlysses there, especiallysince the poem Approdo literally translates in its first verse (Felice l’uomo che ha raggiunto il porto,[Blessed is the man whoreturns to port]) the incipit of apoembyHeine Die Nordsee (II, 9 Glücklich der Mann, der den Hafen erreicht hat […]),which in turnisobviously adapted from Du Bellay’s well known sonnet. Heine’s presence is all the more importantgiven thatthe title of Levi’s first book, L’osteria di Brema,comes straight from the same poem, Im Hafen [In the port]: “Im guten RatskellerzuBremen” (v.4). To my knowledge, this comparison has not been made:however,onthe threshold of his first poems, Levi refers obliquely to Heine as his master in the artofpoetry.6 Given that we knowthat

thatestablishes the fundamental relationship betweenthe individualand history, where our freedom is born.[…] Literature begins therefore when thattransformation begins, through language, in language, atransformation thatisnot at all obvious and not immediate, and that allows an individual to become aware by expressing the world, by addressing others. By its movement, by its method, by its contentultimately,humankinddefines the truth of literature and the truthofthe world.” (Perec, 1992, 111–115). 5However,Levibelievesthatthe trialisfull of “omens”, not only because Kafka’s sisters died in Auschwitz, but because the final murder of Joseph K. remainsaglobal threat: “Wewill die, each of us will die, moreorless likethis” (1998, 194). 6Icannotdevelopthese points here, but for example, his translationofapoem by Heine Lyrisches Intermezzo,which dates from 1976, is probably the source of akey poem, Unavalle, Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 67

Heine’s books were burned by the Nazis, not only because he was Jewish, but because even his aesthetic stance, by its humor, delicacy, and rejection of “lie- vitazione retorica” and of stylistic pomp,wentagainst their program of gran- diloquentpathos.7 And Heine, prophet in spite of himself, said in 1817 that wherever books are being burned, there are preparations underwaytoburn men. For Levi,aman of the Enlightenmentpost Auschwitz, the easy themes of the untranslatable and the indescribable certainly do not have the sacred overtones they have for the French intelligentsia haunted by Blanchot and Bataille. Instead, his projectincommunication and education is designed to confront the sayable and therefore, also,the translatable. Levi also closely followed the translations of his works,including the translation of If This Is aMan into German. The inabilitytocommunicate is death:whoever does not understand an order in time is killed on the spot. In the stage adaptation of If This Is aMan,Levi insisted that everyone should speak their ownlanguage, as in the camp,sothat the viewer is confronted with what he called “the tempestuoussea of non- understanding” wherethe drowning sank. In The Drowned and the Saved,his last essay, acrucial chapteristitled “Communicate.” Levi believes he owed his survivaltohis previous professional knowledge of German, the languageofchemistry.Inthe camp,helearned Yiddish fromapious Jewhecalls “guida”, just as Dante’s narrator refers to Virgil. ButLeviishimself a teacher.Inthe famous chapter of If This Is aMan entitled “Song of Ulysses” the narrator’s lesson in Dantean Italian is recognized by everyone as the enigmatic and revealing center of the work. With the notion thatcommunication is necessarily paramount, we can better understand his posthumous disputewith Celan:Levisees Celan’s difficulty as hermetic, an inabilitytocommunicate that he equates with the death rattle of a dying man. He feels perhaps obscurely threatened by Celan’s suicide, as later by that of Amery. However he includes apoembyCelan in his personal anthology The Search for Roots,which hasonly thirty authors;Celan definitely mattered, and he wrote aboutthe poem Todesfuge: “I carry it in me likeatransplant.”8 Thirty texts, six Italian authors, four German, thatis, excluding Celan, Thomas Mann, Ludwig Gattermann, and Hermann Langbein, plus one in Yid- dish. The others are English (11), French (4), Russian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

dated November24, 1984;sotoo the theme of the double “O mio doppio,pallido mio compare” (1984, 87), which Levi developed with the duality between witness and survivor, made its first appearance in his work with the translationofapoem in Die Heimkehr. 7Levitakes as an exampleHeine and Ariosto,recalling thatthe author whodoesnot know laughter,including laughing at himself, eventually becomes an objectofridicule (cf. 1985, 152). 82002b,205. 68 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier

With no tinge of Blut und Boden,these roots are cosmopolitan. The ancients and foreigners are friends. Among the German authors is Ludwig Gattermann, the author of a Practical Handbook of Organic Chemistry. Levi considers him his scientific initiator and even called the section dedicated to him The Wordsofthe Father. This father teaches prudence and responsibility ;selected pages are tips to avoid accidents, including fires. There is no better waytorecognize asymbolic debt than by saying “the words of the father,which waken youfrom childhood and declare youanadult sub conditione”(2002, 81).

GP:But if the projecttopit the German languageand tradition against itself – Paul Celan’s project–is foreign to Levi,nevertheless we cannot saythatthe German language and German people are for Levi likeany other languageor people. In “Silence of the missing,dialogue of works,”9 youfind that the preface to the German edition of If This Is aMan is not intended for readers whohavethe book in their hands, but seems to be an excerptfromaletter to the translator and concludes with the hope thatthis translationwill have an echo that allows him to understand the Germans, but without Levi ever evoking the desire to be understood by them. Can we saythat there was for him acorruptionofthe German language and culture, and is there in his eyes aparticular critique still to be done? Even though Levi refuses to hate the Germans10,itisclear thatthey representa significantchallenge to his universalism and to his rejection of generalizations. In If This Is aMan he presents an example of “German schooling”11,which camp prisoners endured to the veryend, when an SS officer ordersthat separate lists be drawn up for the Jewish and non Jewish sick. “Noone will be surprised to see that the Germans were able to maintain their national lovefor classifications…”12. The exquisite observer of human nature that was Levi13 couldonly reactwith incomprehension when faced with the madness of the concentration camp

9InPrimo Leviàl’œuvre,edited by Philippe Mesnard and Ya nnis Thanassekos, 2008. 10 Cf. the appendix of Si c’est un homme (Julliard 1987, p. 190) :“(…) hate is personal and turned towards an individual, aface;but as we can see in the pages of this verybook, our persecutors had no name, no face and they were far away,invisible, inaccessible.” p. 193ff. He quotes Eugen Kogon (“Buchenwald prisoner and professor of PoliticalScience at the Uni- versity of Munich.”) to illustrate the degree to which the Germans were awareofthe extermination. 11 “(…) the Blockältesteare all Germans or those trained in the German style:they likeorder, method, and bureaucracy; also,though they are vulgar,aggressive, and brutal, they are nevertheless full of achildish lovefor flashymulti-coloredobjects.” (§ 16, “The Last One”,p. 158). 12 Ch. 17, “The Storyof10Days”, p. 168. 13 See Ch. 15, “Three people from the Laboratory”, p. 149, at the momentwhen he had just obtained aspecial status in the laboratory: “Noone can boast to have understoodthe Germans.” Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 69 world, German stubbornness, and the methodical pursuit of their program of extermination, which continued even as the Russian army approached:“Butthe Germans are deaf and blind, enclosed in ashell of deliberatestubbornness and ignorance. They once again set adate for starting the production of synthetic rubber:itwill be February1,1945. They makeshelters, dig trenches, repair the damage, build, fight,condemn, organize and massacre.Whatelse could they do? They are Germans:their wayofbeing is neither conscious nor intentional, it has its source in their natureand in the destinythat they have chosen for themselves. They cannot stopthemselves:ifadying man’s body is damaged, the wound will nevertheless begintoheal, even if the whole body must inevitably die the next day14.” And after the hanging of arebelliousprisoner,Leviclearly speaks to the “Germans”: “Itisdifficult to destroyaman, almost as difficult as creating one:it was neithereasy nor quick, but youmanaged it, Germans. Here we nowstand docile before you; youhavenothing to be afraid of from us:noactsofrevolt, no words of defiance, not even alookthat judges you15.” If he tries to avoid es- sentializing and never completely rejects German culture(as when he points out the beauty of the word “Heimweh”16), it is still not acoincidence that he chooses Heine as amaster of poetry,thoughinthe German language, but whohas a singular place in German culture–especially, though not exclusively,because he is Jewish.

FR:Weare here veryfar from Celan’s battle-lines,orevenAmery’s, which are within the bounds of the German language and are directed against the ex- hilaration and violence that its literarytradition, distorted by the Nazis, might contain. If his languageiswhat we might call astumbling block for Levi,itisbecause his language belongs to acultural tradition that is not equipped to express unprecedented atrocities;his projecttotestifyisnot about undermining his language, but rather about preventing it from undermining his testimony. Beyond the issues of language, the issue of the massivecomplicityofGermans remains open for Levi and torments him untilthe end. The last chapterofhis last book is entitled “Letters from Germans.” He reflects on the mail he received following the publication of the German translation of If This Is aMan. This chapter is dominated by the figureofHety, acorrespondentwith whom he maintained along friendshipbymail, and the only German of whom he said he

14 Ibid.,p.150–151. 15 Ibid.,p.160. 16 “The word in Germanis‘Heimweh’; it is an elegantexpression, which literally means ‘ho- mesickness.’” (§ 4, “K.B.”, p. 58). 70 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier was certain thather “paperswere in order.” According to Ian Thomson, the Hety’s death probably had its share in his suicide.17

GP:Atthe same time, Iamnot suggesting aquest for the single rightword, althoughIthink that there are clear choices to refuse, likethe term Holocaust,a termthat refers to asacrifice and thus paradoxically sanctifies the crime18.The debate surrounding the proper term(for my part,Iwill continue to followRaul Hilberg) has the merit of raising the questionofthe language that is needed to approach the destruction of European Jews. Passage throughaJewish language, Hebrew or Yiddish, is it necessary, and how? And howtoavoid the pitfalls of the executioners’ language(“Endlösung”, “final solution”)? If Primo Levi’s relationship to the German languagecannot be that of Celan or Amery, is there not some language that has amore legitimate claim to naming that destruction?For Primo Levi,itseems thatitshould be the mother tongue, in both senses, first as the languagemost fluently spoken, but also as the language the mother spoke, which is associated with the other world beyond the camp – we knowthe return of Ulysses is also areturntothe figureofthe beloved and loving wife. Yo uanalyze this relationship between femininityand mother tongue

17 Cf. “The GoodGerman”, The Guardian,April 7, 2007. 18 On this subject see “Pour en finir avec le mot Holocauste” by Jacques Sebag, Le Monde January 27, 2005, joined by Claude Lanzmann on the 25th of February. The term“Shoah” is also criticized for its implicit religiousovertones.Ruth Klüger,inanoverall positivereview that came shortly after the first editorials, did not however raise this issue, even thoughshe characterizes negatively what she calls C. Lanzmann’sbeliefinplaces –Ruth K. Angress / Klüger,“Lanzmann’s Shoah and ItsAudience”, in: SimonWiesenthal Center Annual,Volume 3: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395045, accessed 23/03/ 2012. Jacques Sebagdefends in this wayboth the use of the term “Shoah”, whose Hebrew origin can identify the victim, and the term used for the Nazi genocide because it singles out the aggressor and designatesthe culprit. Putting to the side the tone adopted by the pro- tagonists, which was at best unsuitable to the subject, we would liketorecall afew arguments from adebate between HenriMeschonnic and Claude Lanzmann, whonotes thathedoesnot saythatthere is aperfectword for every reality,let alonefor the reality of the destruction of European Jews:hence the choice of what Lanzmann calls “a signifier without asignified, a brief outburst,anopaque, impenetrable word,asunbreakable as an atomic nucleus” (quoted in “Lemot Shoah”, Le Monde,February25, 2005). It was in response to the need for atitle and to the need to makeitimpossible to be named (“IfIcouldhaveleftmyfilm unnamed, Iwould have doneso” ibid.). Butitisprecisely for its obscurity that it is often criticized, sometimes throughignorance of the Hebrewmeaning, “Shoah” designating anatural disaster in the Bible. Suchwas the criticism made by HenriMeschonnic in “Isral :pour en finir avec le mot ‘Shoah’” (Le Monde,February24, 2005), whodefends the choice of the Hebrew term“hurban [destruction, ruin]”, following Mans Sperber,Elias Canettiand Daniel Lindenberg.Yet it is the term“Shoah” thatallowed what Lanzmann and Anne-Lise Sternhavecalled the insertion of aHebrew signifier into the French language. If we follow, as Ido, J. Bollack’s interpretation, we are lead to the necessarystep of circumcising the German language, which is Celan’s intention. Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 71 repeatedly,especiallyonp.43when youcome back to the scene where “Primo” (the nameLevigives to the character of the story) translates into German for a young Hungarian whohad miraculously received aletter from his mother.I quote note 5: “The two lessons, Italian for the Alsatian, German for the Hun- garian, inspired by the attachment to the mother tongue and probably the mother,both testifytoanother world (Dante’s Inferno and the miraculous news from the mother) and both conclude with areward of food,turnip or black radish.”

FR:Atheist, and conscious of both the executioners’ and our ownhistorical responsibilities, Levi does not use terms with religious connotations such as Holocaust or Shoah. He distances himself from political theology, as fromsu- perstitious interpretation:the executioners are not demons, but, much worse, fairly ordinary officials. Levi’s attitude is verydifferentfromLanzmann:hesees himself as a spokesman for those whowere engulfed and whom he will eventually join again, and not as aherald for acause, not even his own. The genocide of the Jews was partofthe general business of extermination, which began with the MØtis of the Ruhr,the mentally ill, etc. Levi develops apost- disaster humanism, ahumanism of preservation, to save both humanityand nature. Thus he remainsastranger to anycommunitarianism. He was not aZionist, sawJabotinsky,the principal instigator of the Irgun, as afascist, and sometimes stood against Israeli policy. Forexample, he called for the resignation of Ariel Sharoninthe early 80s, at the time of the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

GP:“We write for those whodied because of us. /Wecannot reach them. We seek to translate them.”: p. 81 of your book, youquote FranÅois Vaucluse trying to imagine the poems Primo Levi had not yet written.Why do youneed athird writer and poet?Doyou agreewith Primo Levi that poetry expresses the irrational partofourselves, and that literature begins where science stops?Orthat science begins where literaturestops?Iask this knowing that youare also a writer and publish literaryworks under apen name, which to my knowledge is not the case for your critical essays, nor your translations–which, Itakeit, do not fall within the categoryofliterature. Is it because the translator and the lyricist are not the same person, or because translations are more impersonal and thereforemore “scientific”?

FR:Iquote the text youare referring to,which is from the specialissueofthe journal Scriptures entitled “Palimpsestes” (No. 12, 2000).The editors asked various authors to define themselves in relation to a“master”, throughparody, 72 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier emulation,orappropriation. FranÅois Vaucluse published there three poems inspired by Levi:one non-literal translation and two texts which were derived, in turn, fromthis translation;and then he commented on this appropriation. Throughthis study,Idiscovered the poetry of Levi.That’s why, in my chapter on poetry that Levi was unable to write, Iessentially followed Vaucluse, just as he had followed in the footsteps of Levi.19 This chapter brings up the poems on the mountain. Levi hiked throughthe mountains of Valle d’Aosta including the Grand Paradiso with his friend Sandro, without mentioning thatthe latter will be the Piedmont’s first partisan commander.The “brown and white” mountains he describes are reminiscentof those the narrator sees in “The Song of Ulysses,”20 patternedafter the brown mountain of Purgatory. In The Periodic Table,hesaid he had soughtthe masters’ teachings in the mountains, and had found them in the partisans.21 He would be captured with his band at the Col de Joux, in the Vald’Ayas. Butthe mountain also carries in its shadowatheoryofwriting:inLa valle,Levirevisits the theme of the unknown valley,perhaps verlorenes Tal in the MonteRosa massif. This uncharted valley,a place of initiations, is engraved with signs:“Ci sono segni lastre su di roccia / Alcuni belli, tuttimisteriosi /Certo qualcuno non di mano humana” (v.14–16 [There are signs on the face of rock /Some beautiful, all mysterious /One of them is not made by human hand]). At the pass, beyond wherethe vegetation stops, an evergreen tree –likethe isolated Arolla pines we see –isperhaps the one mentioned in Genesis;atleast its resin makes us forget. It is true thatLeviminimized so thoroughlythe role of poetry in his work that critics have almost unanimouslyignored it;but the first duty of literarycriticism is certainly not to believe writers …. If Levi seems to reuse the classroom topos that links poetry and irrationality,let’s not stopthere. He is sensitivetowhat we might call the poetry of science, as evidenced by his fine work The Periodic System,but also by his science fiction shortstories,first published under the pseudonym Damiano Malabaila (Storie naturali,1967). In addition, scientific themes are presentinhis poetry:the poem Nelprincipio (In the Beginning) refers to the first word of Scriptures (Bereshid)but also to the June 1970 issueof Scientific American! Similarly, Le stelle nere referstothe 1974 December issue…. Butthe “black holes” also evoke buco nero (black hole) of Auschwitz:one of the last articles by Levi,inLa Stampa on 22/01/87, is entitled Buco nero di Auschwitz. He criticizes there Nolte’s and Hillgruber’s revisionist histories.

19 Incidentally,Vaucluse is himself translator and published acollection of aphorisms entitled L’Art de traduire (2008). 20 “O Pikolo,donot let me think of my mountains thatappear brown in the eveningwhen I came back by train, from Milan to Turin!” (1987a, p. 122). 21 1987b,141 here. Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 73

To better understand Levi’s relationship to poetry,and the values of commemoration, tributeand resurrection he attributed to it, Ithink we should consider how, in his ownpoems, he translated other poets and was inspiredby them. The poem L’ultimaepifania is toomodestly presented as atranslation ofa passage fromWerner Bergengruen’s Dies Irae,acollection published in 1945. Levi chooses apassage where the narrator takes successively the appearance of a “pale Jewish fugitive”, of an old woman “whose mouth is filled with asilentcry”, of an orphan, and of aprisoner,each one mercilessly rejected one by one and whofinally returnasjudges and ask “Do yourecognize me?” By including this translation among his poems, Levi actually transforms it into atestimony, because the narrator,presumably Christ in the German work, becomes the sur- vivorofextermination in Levi’s book. While in manyofhis poems Levi speaks for athird party,giving avoice to all kinds of animals, plants, and objects, this translation is the only poem thattakes on an autobiographicaltone, as if the disclosure was only possible throughthe translation. Levi’s poetry multiplies prosopopoeia;itspeaks on behalf of the deceased and inanimate. In his translations or adaptations of foreign poems, this strategyis reversed:third parties speak obliquely,inhis name, and for him. It is thus throughthe translated work itself and the reasons for its selection that Levi speaks about himself. L’ultima epifania finally introduced the theme of obsession,because herethe epiphanyisaghost:those whosurvivedare prey to phantoms and are themselves phantoms whodemand justice. In aless directway,the poem Da R. M. Rilke,dated January29, 1946, certainly incorporates elements of Herbsttag (1902) from Buch der Bilder,but again Levi recontextualizes it implicitly to makeapoem about goingback to the camps:the “long letters” are testimonies, the final anxietyisthatofthe survivors. Levi’s relationship to the German language is in this wayoutlined in his poetry.Hedoesnot go against it;bytranslating,hebegins to listen to it;by accepting,asanauthor,its translationsoradaptations, he must also saywhat it leftunsaid and speak in the name of the survivors and those lost. Rewriting Heine and Rilkeare in the same spirit;wefind that approach to writing clearly developed in the Bergengruen translation, where the “I” of his narrator –representing multiple victims –isassumed implicitly by Levi. After 1964, Levi no longer uses this device in his poetry;weonly find allusions or occasional references that are unrelated to the German tradition. In the early sixties, after the success of The Truce,with the English, French (partial) and German translationsofIf This is aMan,Levibecomes more assured and begins to consider himself awriter. The works he translated, likemilestones in his journey,nodoubt helped him strengthen and tolerate his ownpoetry–anecessarystep towards recognizing 74 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier himself as awriter.Thus, throughtranslation, readers can strike out and ultimately join the ranks of authors.22 Translation’s role as an initiator or rite of passage is not really understood,because it falls outside the information ideologythat sees it as amereinstrument. If German authors obviously attractour attention, also recall Levi’s relation to Coleridge:the title of the book Ad ora incerta is the literal translation of the end of verse 582 of The Rime of the AncientMariner,again the storyofawitness who is the only one to survive.Similarly,aswehaveseen, the title L’osteria di Brema, translates the end of the 4th verse of Heine’s Im Hafen: thus, the monograph from 1975 and the 1984 collection, Levi’s only poetic works,borrowtheir title from foreign verses. Borrowings are at once homage and rupture. Let’s takeasmall example:the poem Il tramonto di Fossoli (Leviwas transferredtoAuschwitz from Fossoli) ends with these lines:“Possono isoli cadere etornare: /Anoi, quando la breve luce spenta /Una notte infinita dadormire”(v. 6–8) [Suns can sink and return: /For us, when the brief light is exhausted, /Weare leftwith sleep in an endless night]. The plural soli,suns,isanallusionthat reveals the source, confirmed in anote, in three verses by Catullus:“Soles occidere et redire possunt; /Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux/Noxest perpetua una dormienda”(Liber,V, 4, v. 3–6) [Suns maycome and go:/Forus, when the brief light is exhausted, /We are leftwith sleep in an endless night].Ifthis plural is found in Levi’s poem, it has adifferentpoeticvalue. The Latin poem begins with “Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus”[Letuslive, my Lesbia, and let us love] but the narrator of Levi’s poem addresses adeceased person, someonewhose name he does not reveal and whowas probably acollege friend, someone whojoinedthe same group of partisans, was transported in the same sealed car and gassed on arrival. The poetic plural, which for Catullus had the value of passionate intensification (see “Give me athousand kisses, and then another hundred” [Da mi basia mille, deinde centum]), marks the length of mourning here. However,why do the ancientpoet’s words “rend the flesh” (v.5), thoughatthe same time the poem describes in abantering waysomeone whogives up on counting kisses and evokes aperpetual night which simply reinforces the topos “enjoythe moment”? Kisses, which Levi does not mention, nevertheless enclose

22 Iwould liketoextend to translators this reflection by Hamann:“Children become men, virgins marry,and readers become writers. That’s whymost books are afaithful reproduction of the competence and appetite with which they wereread and can be read.” [Aus Kindernwerden Leute, werden ausJungfernBräute, und ausLesernentstehen Schriftsteller. Meisten Die Bücher sind ein daher treuer Abdruck und der Fähigkeiten Neigungen, mit denen man gelesenhat und lesen kann] Leser und Kunstrichter nach perspectivischem Un- ebenmaasse,inMajetschak S.,ed, VomMagus im Norden und der VerwegenheitofGeistes. Ein Hamann-Brevier,DTV Klassik, Munich, 1988, 155]. Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 75 the quote, which continues to emanate adifferenttone, the toneofthe source text. We transition from kisses explicitly requested in life to kisses implicitly givenindeath. Forthe narrator of the poems is himself dead. In If this is aMan, Levi wrote about his friend, at the momentofhis arrivalinAuschwitz:“We said then, at the decisivemoment, things that are not said amongthe living”. Such, at least, is my translation …. All this takes place in apoemofeight verses,which only alludes to an ancient poet (Catullus is not named). Ican nowreturntothe questionatthe end of your first remark aboutthe theoryofpassages, which Ihaveworked on in recentyears. Atext is not made up of words, or at anyrateits words should be considered as minimalpassages. Within the hermeneutic tradition, apassage can nowberedefined in acorpus of linguistics that includes interpretation. Now atext is written by rewriting its ownearlier passages, as well as passages fromother texts, whatever the language. Imean that textual genetics, translation and hermeneutics involvethe same types of transformations between passages, or at least can be described in a unified theoretical and methodological framework. Technically,this idea may have applications in information retrieval –inthe context of aEuropean project, we developed along these lines an automatic filteringsystem for racist sites in French, German and English. Whatcounts here is the relation between translation and extermination: translation can avoid xenophobic madness;itiscosmopolitan or nothing at all. During kitchen duty in Auschwitz, translating Dante for ayoung Alsatian becomes an actofresistanceagainst barbarism. Unyielding,translators testify;they are often spokespersons. Salman Rushdie is still alive, but two of his translators have already been stabbed. As ajargon, the newspeak LTI, the LinguaTertiiImperii of the ThirdReich as described by the philologist Victor Klemperer,certainly had afairly elaborate “poetics”, but thatmonolingual language expurgated even Latin roots (a purism found in Heidegger,who even regretted that Greek philosophyhad been translated into Latin): thatlexical Gleichschaltung began with proper names, notably those of Jews. With no other purpose than to impose ritualizedformulas, the LTItookthe oppositetack fromalanguageofculture, thatistosay,froma language that can only be truly understood in the corpus of other languages or other cultures. In manyways, translating abookisthe opposite of burning it. As we well know, Heidegger evokes the purifying fire during the “symbolic book burning” (symbolischer Verbrennungsakt vonSchmutz- und Schundliteratur)of24June 1933, where he gave his Feuerspruch (GA 16, p. 131), which begins:“Flame! Announce for us […] and illuminate for us the path from where there is no turning back”(Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger.–The introduction of Nazism into 76 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier philosophy,Paris, 2005, p. 91). The obscurantist “Aufklärung”orrather “Er- leuchtung”incendiaryisworth pondering todayinthe light of Levi’s words, “the path of submissionand acquiescence […] is apathofno return”23 (1981, p. 215, emphasis added). Everyone knows that Troy would never have been found if Homer had not described its misfortune. To fight against oblivion,toavertthe returnofrenewed horrors, literarywitnessing goes beyond testimonyand takes on an educational mission. By the mission of education that it undertakes, literarytestimonyhas the goal of becoming aclassic, which puts it beyond the biographical circumstances or even the time and place of its birth. Finally, it seeks to be heard in avoice that goes beyond the languageinwhich it was written. In abelated postscript to If This is aMan,Primo Levi develops the expectations of his educational mission:“It is youwho are the judges”.24 Maintaining its confidence in the rationality of the universal jurycomposed of readers, witnessing is an extension of the Enlightenmentideal, which in factgaveusthe notion of human rights. In its modernform, witnessing is born with the idea of universal human rights and especially of universal, but not divine, justice. In its ownway,atranslationcan also fight against oblivion and nationalist prejudices. Yo ko Tawada, awriter living in Hamburg and notably the Japanese translator of Celan, believes that apoemisincomplete untilithas been translated into all languages. With that remark as my guide, Iwould suggest that the same idea applies to witnessing,since it addressesall humankind and thus contributes to all humankind’s ethical and aesthetic constitution. Yo ur question about the classicsleads me to distinguish the question of classicism and the shared corpus, the intertext reference. Levi’s ownclassical style is characterized by its controlled expression, its calculated and nevertheless unpredictable nature, and finallythe reserved, discreet presence of the figure of the author.The “I” disappears:free fromall pathos, emotion is presenteverywhere. This style is thought-provoking for everyone and increases the range of readers. For the prisoner,the world of literatureisananticipation of liberation: maintaining its presence becomes an actofresistanceand recreates acivilized societyinthe camp.Itwill then allowthe survivortoassemble the corpus where the testimonial work will takeits meaning –Levi’s book The Search for Roots is infused with this corpus. The classical texts to which he refers, often implicitly, seem to have two complementaryvocations, which concern both the author of the testimonyand the literaryspace it attains. The witness sawwhat no oneshould see;and the survivorhaunted by this

23 1981, 215. Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 77 barbaric world,feels the threatthat hangs over our world,where he never returns altogether.Within the inner duality between witness and survivor, the classics, and especiallypoetry, playamediating role. In the camp Odysseus’ chantfrom Dante’s Inferno allowed the witness to fight against barbarism, to establish the link of transmission with ayoung companion. Through his writing the survivor addresses the reader as if he were this same camp companion, with the same revelatoryerrors in memory: in the last verse of Dante quoted in the closing chapter, Il canto d’Ulisse: “infin che ’l marfusovra noi rinchiuso”[untilthe sea was closed over us].Inatelling lapsus, Primo the narrator substitutes rinchiuso (enclosed) for Ulysses’ last word in Dante’s text, richiuso (closed): thus the waves suggest allusively an ending and the drowned companions representthe prisoners of the Lager. Even if Dante’s Inferno becomes here akind of allegoryof Auschwitz, it is not however Hell that helps us understand Auschwitz, but Auschwitz that deprives Hell itself of anymeaning. The corpus of classical textsisnot at all aconservatory, apantheon or agallery of great men. Classical works disdain classicism;bytheir boldness, complexity, richness, and even their lack of completion, they refute the frozen image mod- erns have giventhem. Orlando Furioso is one of these;inaserious article against Holocaust denial, Levi cites ironically these verses of Ariosto,which are themselves aparodyofDante:“And if youdonot wantthe truth to be concealed from you, /Turnhistoryintoits opposite: /The Greeks were defeated and Troy victorious /And Penelope was amadam”24. Aclassic reuses and quotes other classics fromvarious languages;ituses them to innovate, as ahomage;itmaintains akind of internal otherness that indicates howtorecontextualize indefinitely its ownreading.Byopening amulticultural and multilingual space, it creates humanityfromthe humanities.Itshouldbe noted the compositional parallelism between Kant’s universal citizenship (Weltbürgerlichkeit, literally global citizenship)and Weltliteratur by Wieland – whodid not hesitate to translate manofthe world by Weltmann –and then taken up by Goethe;itculminates in the most positiveglobalization, the inter- nationalism of the Manifesto of Marx and Engels:“National die Einseitigkeit und mehr und mehr wird Beschränktheit unmöglich, und ausden vielen nationalen und lokalen Literaturen bildet sich eine Weltliteratur.”25 In contrast to the eth-

24 “E, se tu vuoi che ’l ver nontisia ascoso,/Tutta al contrario l’istoria converti:/Che iGreci rotti, eche Troia vittrice, /Eche Penelopea fu meretrice” (the source is not cited –itisfrom Orlandofurioso,XXXV,27, 4–8;cf. Levi,2002, 101.) 25 “The intellectual creations of individual nationsbecome the common property of everyone. The narrowness and nationalexclusiveness become moreand moreimpossible daybyday and fromthe multiplicity of national and local literatures arises aworld literature.” (I, 1). At once is raised obliquely the problemoftranslation:“The only work accomplished by Ge- rman intellectuals was to harmonizethe new French ideas and their ancientphilosophical 78 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier nocentric barbarism that refuses to translateand theorizes the untranslatable, this space becomes culture’s space, made up of specific, but universally share- able values, values thatare shared initially throughtranslations. Todaythis aesthetic dimension is doubled by an ethical dimension because the witness, demanding justice, is addressing all humankind. If This is aMan, The Human Race,these titles evoke this troubling question. If there is no “witness of the witness”,the living requirementfor testimony extends internationally:RithyPahn, survivorand author of the masterful movie S21, the Death Machine of the Khmer Rouge says:“‘Understanding completely is tantamount to forgiving’ said Primo Levi,who guided me throughoutthis time. Butwecannot understand everything.Byseeking to achievethis, Iwas able to beginthe process of mourning.”26. Though arole model for all those whowanttotell the truth aboutgenocide and practice the artoftestimony, Primo Levi is nevertheless criticized today because of his ethical stature(and aesthetic stature, Iwould add), his lack of compromise, and his willingness to clarify, to distinguish victims fromexecu- tioners, which directly opposes the theoryofreversibility,whereeveryone, victims included, are potential executioners and only the chance events of their personal historydetermines their fate. This thesis, which is both deterministic and relativistic, has many supporters today. In 2013, on the anniversary of the Liberation, the historian Sergio Luzzatto published athick book (Partigia, una storia dellaResistenza,Milan, Mondadori) where he tries to showthatthe resistance group to which Levi belonged had executed two of its ownmembers whowere guilty of extorting money from farmers and putting the group in danger.Infact, the group was the objectofa dragnet few days after the execution. This revelation caused astir. On April17the Times correspondentinRome published an article entitled “Levi’s ‘ugly wartime secret’ uncovered”. Luzzatto was following the conventions of asuccessful journalistic genre in the United States thatcounts on its readers’ Schadenfreude to titillate them with posthumous defamation. The stakes are high: if even Levi tacitly approvesofsum- maryexecutions, the distance between the perpetrators and the victims is very small27. ButLevihas neither hidden nor legitimized these executions. In two of his

conscience, or rathertoappropriatethe French ideas starting from their philosophical point of view./They were appropriated in the same wayasaforeignlanguage is appropriated by a translation.” (III, 1c). 26 http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/actions-france_830/documentaire_1045. 27 For parallels fraught with insinuations, see Giulio Milani Mario Rigoni Stern, Hermann Heidegger.Ritornosul fronte,Massa, Transeuropa;or Alain Minc’s book L’homme aux deux visages:JeanMoulin, RenØ Bousquet :itinØraires croisØs,Paris, Grasset, 2013. Witnessing and Translating:Ulysses at Auschwitz 79 books, The Periodic Table (1975) and The Drowned and the Saved (1987), Levi clearly evokedthis episode and its moral consequences. In addition, for avery long time, likesomanyother so-called secrets, it figured prominently in his poems. In 1952, he wrote Epigrafe,which givesavoice to one of them, fromhis grave, in the style of ancientfuneral poems:the partisan whowas executed by his comradesasks passerbys to listen to him, names his murderers and acknowl- edges his transgression(“Spento dai miei compagniper mia non lieve colpa” v. 8 [Killed by my comrades, for no slight mistake]). Without asking for forgiveness or prayers, his speech ends with avow for peace, to be the last: “Senza che nuovo sangue, filtrato attraverso le zolle, /Penetri fino amecol calore funesto /De- stando anuovadoglia quest’ossa oramai fatte pietra” (v.13–15) [Without anew blood seeping into the ground /Penetratedowntomeits deadly heat /Awak- ening new pain in my bones, stones already]. For Levi,after Hiroshima, political violence was associated with violence against the environment(see in particular the poem La bambina Pompei,1978): they both belong to the same insane excess. In the mountains, on the same pass where the executed partisan addresses passer-bys, Levi has this to sayabout former partisans whohavereturned there after aquarter century:“They broke the blockade of the Germans, /Wherenow rises the chairlift”28.But the executed partisan began:“Oyou wholeave tracks, on the trail of this pass /Along with so manyothers, in this snownolonger alone […]”29.Since then, three chairlifts have been built that leave from this pass over which Itoo have hiked.

NB:Now revised and expanded for the English translation, this interview was first published in 2012:“TØmoigner et traduire. –Sur Ulysse àAuschwitz, en- tretien rØalisØ par Gatan PØgny”, LittØrature,166, pp.105–118.

Works Cited

Levi,Primo (1984) Ad oraincerta,Turin,Garzanti ;nouvelle ØditionaugmentØe, 1991 (trad. Àune heureincertaine,Paris, Gallimard, 1997). –(1985) L’altrui mestiere,Turin, Einaudi. –(1987a) Si c’est un homme,Paris, Julliard. [Se questo unuomo,Turin, Einaudi,1958].

28 V. 5–6. Nowthe chairliftisfor him an infernal machine:Inaninterview Levi gave to Rivista della montagna,the verysame yearthat Ad oraincerta was published, he humorously evokes his pre-war years:“We never wenttoSestriere,because therewere cable cars there,and cable cars, they are worse than the devil.” Thus, in its ownway,asinhis poems, likeanything that does violence to nature, the chairliftwas afigure of evil. 29 “Otuche segni,passagero del colle, /Uno fraimolti, questa non pi solitaria neve[…].” 80 Gaëtan Pégny /François Rastier

–(1987b) Le Systme pØriodique,Paris, Albin Michel [Il sistema periodico,Turin, Ei- naudi, 1975]. –(1987c) Isommersi eisalvati,Turin, Einaudi. –(1998) Conversationsetentretiens,Paris, UGE. –(2002a) L’assimetria elavita,Turin, Einaudi. –(2002b) Àlarecherche des racines,Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2002, p. 215) [La ricerca delleradici,Turin, Einaudi, 1981]. Papuzzi, Alberto (1984)“Incontrocon Primo Levi.L’alpinismo?E’la libertà di sbagliare”, Rivista della montagna,XV, 61, p. 106–109. Perec, Georges(1992) “RobertAntelme ou la vØritØ de la littØrature”, dans L. G. Une aventure des annØes 60,Paris, ØditionsduSeuil, pp.111–115. Rastier,FranÅois (2001) Arts et sciences du texte,Paris, PUF. –(2004)“L’aprs-culture. ÀpartirdeGeorgeSteiner”, Po& sie 108, p. 101–119. –(2005) Ulysse àAuschwitz. Primo Levi, le survivant,Paris, Éditions du Cerf. –(2006a) “Traduction et gense du sens”, in Marianne Lederer,Ød. Le sens en traduction, Paris, Minard, pp.37–49. –(2006b) “SØmiotique des sites racistes”, Mots,80, pp.73–85. –(2007) “Passages”, Corpus,6,pp. 125–152. –(2008a) “Silence des disparus et dialogue des œuvres”; in Mesnard, P. et Thanassekos, Y. Øds, Primo Leviàl’œuvre,Paris, KimØ, pp.443–466. –(2008b) “Croc de boucher et rose mystique –Lepathos sur l’extermination”, in Michael Rinn, Ød., Émotionsetdiscours –L’usage des passions dans la langue,Presses uni- versitaires de Rennes, pp.249–273. –(2009) “EumØnides et pompiØrisme”, TØmoigner,103, p. 171–190. –(2010a) “TØmoignages inadmissibles”, LittØrature,117, pp.108–129. –(2010b) “LittØraturemondiale et tØmoignage”, in Samia Kassab, Ød., AltØritØ et mu- tation dans la langue –Pour une stylistiquedes littØratures francophones,Louvain, Academia Bruyland, pp.251–272. –(2011) La mesure et le grain. –SØmantiquedecorpus,Paris, Champion, coll. Lettres NumØriques. Vaucluse, FranÅois (2008) L’artdetraduire,Châlons-en-Champagne, Hapax. Rita Horvµth

“The Magical Properties of CreativeSameness:The Role of Translation in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces”

Translation, its theoryand practice, is amajor concern for anyscholarlyor artistic endeavorrelating to the Holocaust. One of the most obvious reasons for this is that texts have been produced during and about the Holocaust in a plethora of languages. Moreover, issues of translation as well as understanding or not understanding certain utterances and languagesoften constitute crucial parts of survivornarratives.Matters relating to languages and the abilityof translation typically formed apartofthe individuals’ survivalstrategyorpre- sented major hardships. In additiontobeing able to understand, being able to speak acertain language was ameans to establish communitywith certain groups or vice versa, it was the basis for exclusion. Therefore, stories of translation,languages and language-communities are integral parts of the historyof the Holocaust itself. In addition to these factors of whytranslation plays acrucial role in Holocaust scholarship there is another reasonthat is connected to our overwhelming anxietyconcerning witness accounts in general:whether it is possible to convert traumaticor, in fact, anyexperience into words. The “Translating Holocaust Literature (15–16 June 2013, Dublin)”conference’s call for papers, for example, formulated this anxiety as the following question:“If translation as representation cannot do justice to the original experience howcan the translation of aHolocaust text into another language ever do justice to its original?,” which emphasizes the existenceofintimate connections between translation, representation, experience, and witness accounts. Deconstructionistthinkers phrased this crucial question concerning our sense of history and reality from the perspective of language. They asked whether language is able to refer to anything outside of itself, in other words, whether it could refer to experience at all. The phrasingofthe call for papers’ question is informative. By calling the process throughwhich witnesses of the Holocaust convey their experiences “translation” and not “transformation,” the question expresses ourhistorical, moral, and legal need to representtraumatichistorical experiences as exactly as possible, since the major objective of translation is to create sameness, viz. to 82 Rita Horváth repeat atext in another language, in the midst of another culture, within different contexts. My 2-year-old daughter,Esther,forcefully reminded me thatwethink of translation as repetition in the deepest sense of the word. She is asimultaneous bilingualspeakerofHungarian and Hebrew.Suddenly and quite unexpectedly I needed to saythe word “owl”inHebrew,but it escaped me. Iknew thatitwas an importantword for my daughter owing to one of her favorite toys, so Iasked her in Hungarian whether she could tell me howtosay “owl”inHebrew.(Ihave never asked her to translateanything before.) She looked at me very seriously, carefully considered my request and then she said that “bagoly” (owl in Hun- garian) is once again “janshuf” (owl in Hebrew). So “translation”for her was clearly arepetition:repeating something that has already been said. Obviously,translators cannot achieve their goal of identical repetition, because they need to repeatatext in another language as well as within different cultures and contexts. The text will be transformed in numerous ways inevitably, but transformation, even if it usually means in ourWesternculture develop- ment/improvement, is not the goal;itisthe enemy. In other words, while the process of transformation can posit all sorts of positivegoals and transformation can be agoal in and of itself, the goal of translation is to preserve the existing text as intactaspossible. Therefore, translation is aspecial formoftransformation. It is aresisting form: it is transformation thatdoesnot wanttohappen. Our investmentinthe impossible aim of repetition automatically turns the task of translation into a paradox. The eminent20th-centuryHungarian poet, Dezso˝ Kosztolµnyifamously captured the paradoxical natureoftranslation by comparing translationto dancing when youare bound hand and foot. Kosztolµnyi’s simile expresses the heroism and artatthe core of translation. Change, however,usually has positiveconnotationsasdevelopmentorim- provementinour culturewhile repetition has the slightly embarrassing overtones of slavishness about it. Consequently,while we commit ourselvestorepeat when translating,wealso takepride in ourcreativewaysofbothachieving and failing to achieve sameness. Translation thus arouses strong,contradictory feelings and desires. Moreover,the goal of creative sameness stresses the importance of apre- existing entity.Inorder to be able to translate, one needs to have aprevious text that the translator treats and values as the original. From the translator’s or the translated text’s pointofview therefore, there exists an original, which word is enveloped and imbued in our culturewith astrong mystical, theological, viz. logocentricaura to use Derrida’s term. Stressing the notionofthe original in the concept of translation, one anchors it in the realm of logocentric possibilities without the need of actually believinginalogocentric world order.Therefore, if The Magical Properties of Creative Sameness 83 one, likethe abovequoted question of the conference call, draws upon the extended view of translation including not only translated textsrepresenting original texts, but also translated texts representing original experiences, he/she can confirm the possibilityofwitnessing or,put it in another way, the refer- entialityoflanguage in amagical way. Paul de Man argues in his “AutobiographyasDe-Facement” thatthe difference between fictionaland autobiographicalworks lies not in autobiography’s closer mimetic relationship to reality than fiction, but rather in that, in its literaryform, autobiographymost strongly asserts the illusionofreferentiality and the existence of an author.1 Similarly to PauldeMan’s claim, we can saythat translation is that formofcreative writing that most strongly asserts the illusion of referentialityand the existence of an original. Anne Michaels in her poetic novel about the Holocaust, FugitivePieces, employs the complex concept of translation imbuedwith strong emotions and desires to alleviatethe anxietyconcerning historyand the languageofwit- nessing.Bydrawing upon the crucial role of originals as an intrinsicpartofthe concept of translation, Michaels is able to makethe reader feel their un- questioned and mythical existence to be apartofher novel. She, thus, relies on multilayered notions of translationtomagically insertthe possibilityofrefer- entialityintoher text.Translation’sstrong assertion of the illusionofrefer- entialityand the existence of an original is sufficientfor Michaels to imbue witness accounts appearing in her fiction and even outside of it with historical truth without requiring onetobelieve in atruly logocentricworld view.In addition to witness accounts, the author of FugitivePieces also reaffirms the value of creative writinginahistorical context by deconstructing the binary opposition between translation and creativewriting and defining all forms of creativewriting as some formoftranslation. FugitivePieces has adouble plot. At first, the novel relates the storyofaPolish Jewish child, JakobBeer,who has witnessed the murder of his parents and the dragging away of his sister.He, himself, after hiding in the forests and fields for days, was rescued by aGreek archaeologist/geologist, Athos Roussos, working on the excavations of the famous iron-age settlementofBiskupin. Jakob’s rescuer,tellingly named Athos,2 smuggles the seven-year-old boytoGreece and they survive World WarIItogether on the island of Zakynthos. After the war, they movetoCanada where Athos teaches at the UniversityofTorontoand Jakob growsuptobeanartist. We follow Jakob’s life untilhis fatal accidentinAthens at

1PauldeMan, “AutobiographyasDe-Facement” 68–81. 2Susan Gubar calls attention to the factthat Athos’s name is atelling name, meaning an atheist as it is “derived from the Greek a (without) and theos (gods).” (Gubar 253.) This is important in the context of the novel’s views on the importance of atheist morality. 84 Rita Horváth the age of 60. The second part of the novel contains the storyofBen, whois Jakob’s biographer.Ben’s status as asecond-generation survivorisencoded even in his name. As it is stressed in the novel, the namemerely means soninHebrew.3 We closely followBen’s developmentasheresearches Jakob’s oeuvre. The protagonist of the novel’s first and central partthusisachild Holocaust survivor, JakobBeer,who became apoetand atranslator.Towards the end of the novel, it becomes clear,that the first partofthe novel is the memoirofits protagonist thathad been recovered and published posthumously by Ben, the second-generation survivorprotagonist of the second partofMichaels’s novel. The small, obituary-liketext that introduces the entire novel is obsessed with lost or otherwise unavailable Holocaust texts. It mentions all sorts of texts that had once been written, spoken, or not even conveyed in anyconscious way, but merely “concealed in memory”:

During the Second World War, countless manuscripts –diaries, memoirs,eyewitness accounts –were lost or destroyed. Some of these narratives were deliberately hidden – buried in back gardens, tucked into walls and under floors –bythose whodid not live to retrieve them. Other stories are concealed in memory, neither written nor spoken. Still others are recovered, by circumstance alone. (Michaels 1) Then, in the context of lost texts, the obituarypresents the protagonist as the “poet JakobBeer,who was also atranslator of posthumous writing from the war.” “[He] was struck and killed by acar in Athens in the spring of 1993, at age sixty,”the obituarycontinues (Michaels 1), and Jakob’s ownmemoirisrecov- ered several times and ways in Michaels’ novel. Jakob, thus, is introduced as apoetand atranslator,eventhoughmost of the novel shows him as awriter and ascholar.Therefore, already in the obituary-like little introduction, i.e. at the verybeginning of the novel, the majorityofJakob’s writings that we encounter are conceptualizedmore as translations than in any other way. Jakob’s role as awriter is shown in the novel as thatofaverysuccessful translator whohas managed to translateHolocaust memories into existence.4

3This is explained in the novel:“My parents prayed that the birth of their child would go unnoticed. They hoped thatifthey did not name me, the angel of deathmight pass by.Ben,not from Benjamin, but merely ‘Ben’ –the Hebrew word for son.” (Michaels 253.) 4For seeing Michaels’sand Jacob’s achievementthis way, one needs to concentrate on trans- latingexperience into texts. Alan Rosen, in his seminal work on multilingualism and the Holocaust, because he focuses on languages themselves and the phenomenonofmulti- lingualism,disapproves of the implications of Michaels’s strategy of making her survivor protagonist to translate experience directly into English. (Rosen 180–184) This impliesthat his basic problem with translationisthatithas adirection and it is not reversible. Therefore, translation effaces its original (text, language, experience and memory, which concepts are emphatically interrelated according to Rosen’s approach)asmuch as it preserves it. Paul de The Magical Properties of Creative Sameness 85

Among, and with the help of other Holocaust texts, he eventually succeeded to translatehis ownrecollections together with his memories of surviving survival into actual writing.Inother words, he was able to rescue texts–his ownand those of other survivors –from “concealment” and obscurity. By choosing achild survivorfor aprotagonist and listening to his testimonies, Michaelsneeds to deal with the most problematicwitness accounts froma historiographicalpointofview.Historians traditionally consider testimonies and all sorts of life writings to be sources of highly questionablevalue, merely “anecdotal evidence,” mainly because they are hopelessly subjective and warped by problems pertaining to the workings of memoryand individual psychology. Trauma narratives, such as Holocaust testimonies,that test the boundaries of representation as well as those of memoryare viewed with even more profound skepticism than other kinds of testimonies. From the pointofview of traditional historical research, the value of children’s testimonies is still more questionable as children’s perspectivesaswell as their real-time understanding of events are expected to be considerably narrower and more limited than those of adults. Ye t Michaels’s novel is able to demonstratethat children’s testimonies contraryto the expectationsofhistorians are valuable even from historical perspectives. Michaelsdemonstrates thatthey even have the potential to record and interpret crucial pieces of the experiences of adults.5 The novel identifies as Jakob’s most amazingachievementthathis oeuvre made it possible the surfacing of Ben’s father’s Holocaust memories that are routinely termed in the novel as unspeakable. Ben’s father’s traumatic memories had been transformed frombeing aconstanttraumatic and traumatizing presence into forming acrucial partofthe novel even if they emerge as repetitive traumaticfragments. Jakobhas achieved this most amazing translation through inspiring Beninverycomplex ways. The memories of Ben’s father surface very early in the first partofthe novel, well before the reader learns about the existence of the Polish Jewish survivorof the second part.Manydetails, such as Naomi’s (Ben’s wife) favorite plate from

man demonstratedthis phenomenoninconnection to autobiography:reading Wordsworth’s Essays upon Epitaphs,asanallegoryofthe workings of languageinanautobiographical text, De Manwentontoexpose the central aporia of autobiographical writing;itundermines its basic promise, the restoration of the self:“death is adisplaced name foralinguistic predi- cament” and “the prosopopeia of the voice and the name […] deprives and disfigures to the precise extentthatitrestores.” (De Man 81). Autobiography, forDeMan, is the locus of a struggle towards theimpossible goal of assigning aface or voicetoatext. In aparallel way, translation is the locus of astruggletowards the impossible goal of creating sameness, and thus it effaces the original as much as it preserves it regardless whether the original is text or experience. 5See acharacteristic example in (Zana and Horvµth 241–254) and (Cohen and Horvµth, 112–118.). 86 Rita Horváth her childhood,emerge in Jakob’s memoirwhich will gain personal significance only in Ben’s story. The memories of Ben’s father appear in the novel for the first time as horrible examples of Holocaust experience which Jakobenumerates in order to emphasize the marginal nature of his ownstoryofsurvival, viz. to justifyhis overwhelming feelings of survivors’ guilt:“Ididn’t knowthat while I listened to the stories of explorers in the clean places of the world (snow-covered, salt-stung) and slept in aclean place, men were untangling limbs, the flesh of friends and neighbors, wivesand daughters, coming offintheir hands.” (Mi- chaels 46)6 Anne Michaels was able to validate creative writing in the context of the Holocaust by constructing Jakob’s memoir,which Benhas researched and published in the course of the novel, as an artistic memoircontaining not only straightforward recollections but also pieces of Jakob’s novellas, lines of poetry, and, sometimes, entire shortstories. For example, first we read Jakob’s experience of being rescued by Athos and then we read a“translation”ofthat experience in the formofashortstoryinwhich the gender of both rescuer and rescued has been altered. In this respect,Jacob’s memoir–which is Michael’s fiction –isverysimilar to numerous works by aHungarian child survivor-writer, the Nobellaureate Imre KertØsz, such as Gµlyanapló [Galleydiary], K. dossziØ [File K.],and MentØs MµskØnt:FeljegyzØsek 2001–2003 [“Rescue [as the opposite of Liquidation R.H.] in aDifferentway 2001–2003”]). In other words, by constructing Jakob’s memoirasacomplex, artistic, rescued Holocaust text, Mi- chaels collapsed the sharpdistinction between life writing and creative writing, which issue is acentral one in Imre KertØsz’s entire oeuvre. Numerous artists and theoreticians, such as PauldeMan and Imre KertØsz, have worked on breaking down the traditionalbinaryopposition between creative and life writing,but the inclusion of translation as acrucial concept is a novelty of FugitivePieces. By emphaticallydeconstructing the binaryopposition between translation and creative writingthroughrevitalizing the conceptoflife writing,Michaels not only mythically inserted the unquestionable importance of originals into her owntext –which movecan be best understoodinthe theoretical framework of deconstruction –, but also made this achievementas partofastring of deconstructing basicbinaries of our WesternCivilization. FugitivePieces is an extremely ambitious work in manyways. Even thoughit observesthe conventions of agreat number of literarygenres, such as that of the historical novel, the memoir, the Bildungsroman (the novel of formation), etc., the bookalso boldly classifies itself as an epic. Alreadythe first sentence:“Time is ablind guide,” which is repeated throughoutthe book, calls to our minds the

6Ben’s father’s memories of digging up the dead surfaces again in Jakob’s memoir.(Michaels 52.) The Magical Properties of Creative Sameness 87 greatepic poets:Homer,Virgil and Milton. And as aheroic narrative, Fugitive Pieces sets out to heal the paralyzing trauma of Westerncivilization:the Holo- caust, by forginganew basisfor that civilization. The new basis contains the major existingbuilding blocks of ourWestern civilization –the Greek and Hebrew cultures and poetic-scientific thinking –but in an altered way. Michaels endeavors to demonstratethat asecular,scientific, and human valuesystem can still exist even in the aftermathofthe Holocaust, if we drawuponthe combination of the appropriatetraditions and undo enough binaryoppositions thathad been perceivedasfundamental ones for our Western civilization. Therefore, the deconstruction of such binaries as those of Hebrew and Greek cultures, literaryand scientific thinking, religious and secular morality, as well as the binarybetween translation and creative writing and life writing and creativewriting constitute acrucialpartofMichaels’s agenda. The concept of translation as repetition with inevitable but unintentional differences has anotherverypotentsignificance for trauma narratives, since trauma narratives are repetitiveintheir ownway.The healing or re-traumatizing powersoftrauma narratives such as witness accounts depend on the qualityof repetition and on the nature of the subtle differences, which translation automatically introduces. This is one of the reasons whytranslating and/or listening to translated memories can have unexpected dramatic results. The Hungarian translation of FugitivePieces by poet Inez Kemenes is absolutely stunningly wonderful!This feat of atranslation of atext thematizing, theorizing and celebrating translation is also amagically appropriate wayto confirm Anne Michaels’s mythical views of the artoftranslation.

Works Cited

Cohen, Boaz and Rita Horvµth, “Young Witnesses in the DP camps:Children’s Holocaust testimonyincontext.” Journal of ModernJewish Studies Vol. 11:1,2012:103–125. Gubar, Susan. “Empathic Identification in Anne Michaels’s FugitivePieces: Masculinity and Poetry after Auschwitz.” Signs:Journal of Women in Cultureand Society 2002, vol. 28, no.1:249–276. Man, Paulde. “AutobiographyAsDe-Facement.” The Rhetoric of Romanticism. NewYork: Columbia UP,1984. 67–81. Michaels, Anne. FugitivePieces. London:Bloomsbury, 2009. Rosen, Alan. Sounds of Defiance:The Holocaust, Multilingualism, andthe Problem of English. Lincoln:Univ. of Nebraska Press,2005. Zana, Katalin and Rita Horvµth, “TraumaØsszelf-narratíva: Gyerek holokauszt-tﬄlØlo˝k tanﬄvallomµsainakinterdiszciplinµris elemzØse.” [Trauma and Self-Narrative: An In- terdisciplinary Study of Child-Survivors’ Holocaust Testimonies] LØlekelmzØs Vol. 2013/2:230–256.

Stephanie Faye Munyard

Berman and Beyond: The Trial of the Foreign and the Translation of Holocaust Literature

Translation and the Possibility of Narrating the Holocaust

And from the verybeginning,itseemed impossible that we would be able to bridge the emerging gap between the language that was available to us and this experience that,for the most part, we were still living-out.1 –Antelme

The impossibility of expressioninthe aftermath of the Holocaust has become axiomatic in studies of its post-war representations. The inadequacyoflanguage to engage fully with the trauma of the Shoah has becomeacentral preoccupation of Holocaust discourse.2 George Steiner has written that the world of Auschwitz “lies outside speech as it lies outside reason”3 ;substantivessuch as:‘hunger’, ‘thirst’, ‘fear’, and ‘cold’ are described as insufficientdescriptors of camp realities.4

What we wouldhavetosay started to seem unimaginable to us… It was clear from that pointonwards, that it was only by choice, and, to reiterate, by imagination,that we would be able to sayanything.5 –Antelme

An examination of howthe genocide has been conceptualised throughthe lens of translation –translation considered both as aprocess of linguistic transfer,and as aformoftransportation, and of displacement: “the [imaginary] shifting of

1“Et ds les premiers jours cependant, il nous paraissait impossible de combler la distance que nous dØcouvrionsentre le langage dontnous disposions et cette expØrience que, pour la plupart, nous Øtions encoreentrain de poursuivre dans notre corps” Antelme, 9. 2Lawson, Tom. “Shaping the Holocaust:The Influence of Christian Discourse on Perceptions of the European Jewish Tragedy.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2007) 21 (3) 404. 3George Steiner, Language and silence: essays1958–1966 (London: Faber,1967) 146. 4Elie Wiesel, Night. Trans. MarionWiesel (London:Penguin,2008) ix. 5“Ce que nousavions àdirecommenÅait alors àparaître inimaginable […]Il Øtait clair dØs- ormaisque c’Øtait seulementpar le choix, c’est-à-direencorepar l’imagination que nous pouvions essayer d’en dire quelque chose” 90 Stephanie Faye Munyard experience from onetime to another.”6 -challenges the rhetoric that the Holo- caust defies language. Experiences are translated from aworld that is “conceptually and referentially ‘other’ to the world of normativereferentiality.”7 Translation, thus, becomes avehicle throughwhich the ineffable can be narrated. This essayexamines howthe ‘imagined’ is translated into anetworkofalle- gorical and mythical images and howitisexpressed, and relived, stylistically, throughalliteration, assonance, repetition, and throughabrevityand silence that concealsaninfinityofmeanings. Given that ‘equivalent’ translationsdonot exist,8 it will also consider howtranslators of Holocaust literaturepursue the representation of meaningacross two linguistically,temporally and conceptually disparate systems of signification.Referencing examples, predominantly,from the German and English translations of La nuit (1958) by Elie Wiesel, but also from translations of Le sel et le soufre (1960)byAnna Langfus, and Woule souvenir d’enfance by Georges Perec (1975), this article contemplates the largely unconscious, destructiveforces thatcause translation to deviate from its essential aim, defined by Antoine Berman as:opening up the work in its “utter foreignness”.9 Using amodel outlined in his essay“Translation and the Trials of the Foreign” (1985), and moving beyond it, this study formulates anegative analyticoftranslation, and explores the system of textual deformation that disturbs the ‘otherness’ and alterityofHolocaust literature. This essay, subsequently,demonstrates howtranslation and critical frameworks within Translation Studies can bear on our understanding of the reception of Holocaust testimony, on memoryand on legacy.

Part I: Berman’s Model

Expansion

Elie Wiesel’s La nuit is characterised by apoetics of brevity. Brevity, Berman remarks, can contain“an infinityofmeanings” which, somehow, renders short- clauses “long”.10 Wiesel’s broken syntax, marked by ascarcity of coordinating

6Lina Insana, Arduous Tasks:Primo Levi,Translation, and the TransmissionofHolocaust Testimony(Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 2009) 37. 7 Ibid. 8EugeneNida, “Principles of Correspondence,” The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti.(London:Routledge, 2004) 154. 9Berman, “Translationand the Trials of the Foreign.” The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. (New Yo rk, London: Routledge, 2004) 276. 10 Berman, “Translationand the Trials of the Foreign.” The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. (New Yo rk;London: Routledge, 2004) 282. Berman and Beyond 91 conjunctions exposes the fragmentarynature of Holocaust writings as outlined by Horowitz,11and conveys something, also,ofthe mechanical compulsionof events unfoldingbeforethe reader’seyes. Arefrain likerepetition of shortsentences is[…] frequently used when authorsare describing an experience that especially affected them.12 –Reiter

Table 1: Examples of expansion in translation

La nuit, 1958 Die Nacht, 1958

Angoisse. Les soldats allemands –avec Wirhatten Angst vor den deutschen leurscasques d’acier et leur emblme, un Soldaten mit ihren Stahlhelmen und crane de mort.(41) ihrem Abzeichen, dem Totenkopf. (17)

La nuit, 1958 Night, 2008

La porte s’ouvrit enfin et il apparut, pâle. At last, the door was opened andhe (47) appeared. His face was drained of colour (13) Unenouvelle terrible, annonÅa-t-il enfin. “The news is terrible,” he said at last. Destransports. (47) Andthen one word: “Transports”. (13) Nuit noire.(155) The night was pitch black. (85) Routesans fin. (158) The road was endless. (87)

The reader of La nuit pauses upon termination of each non-sentence, aphrase which, likethe night that Wiesel is forced to encounter,never finds complete resolution. These succinct non-sentencesare lodged between successions of representable moments portending the unspeakable of the Shoah. Wiesel’s lack of words illustrate acrisis of representation:the dilemma associated with remembering and retelling,but, also,his concern of saying “toomuch”: Naturally the anguish comes:whether Ihavenot said toomuch –it’s nevertoo little but toomuch.13 –Wiesel Expansion within translations of La nuit,the desire to conclude sentencesorto amplifythem throughthe additionofarticles and “explicativeand decorative signifiers”14 increase the text’s length without augmenting its wayofsignifying,15

11 Sara Horowitz, Voicing the Void:Muteness andMemory in HolocaustFiction. (Albany:State UniversityofNew Yo rk Press, 1997) 44. 12 Andrea Reiter, Narrating the Holocaust. Trans. Patrick Camiller.(London:The European Jewish Society,2005) 164. 13 HarryJ.Cargas, In Conversation with Elie Wiesel (New Yo rk:Paulist Press. 1976) 91. 14 A. Berman, “Translationand the Trials of the Foreign.” The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti.(NewYork;London:Routledge, 2004) 282. 15 Ibid. 92 Stephanie Faye Munyard and infer,moreover,that the memorythat the narrative seeks to portray can, somehow, be perfected and fulfilled.

Qualitative impoverishment

Stylistic interventions such as allegory, metaphor,alliteration, repetition and assonance, are aprevalentfeatureofHolocaust writing;these provide alternative modes of expressionfor an otherwise inexpressible world.These devices,form partofthe ‘subtext’ of the narrative, which as Landers writes:“can be subtle enough to escape conscious detection or obvious enough to demand the translator’s active participation in the actofre-creation.”16 Lexical repetitions within the narrativerequire the reader of Wiesel’s La nuit to engage, with him, in aprocess of re-experiencing.Inorder to overcome the sentence, the reader must, first, endureits tedium. Throughwords, the readers are effectively re-enacting Wiesel’s suffering.The compulsiontorepeat, moreover,may reflectone of the central difficulties of narrating the Holocaust:alack of adequate vocabulary.

Table 2: Examples of lexicalrepetition in translation

La nuit,1958 Night, 1981

Il neigeait, il neigeait, il neigeait… It never ceased snowing…

Le sel et le soufre,1960 Salz und Schwefel,1964

On lutte contre le malheur, la maladie, Wo man gegen Unglück, Krankheit,die les maux habituels. (239) gewöhnlichen Übel ankämpfen kann. (258)

La nuit is, also,abundantiniconic phrases, phrases which create an image, “enabling aperception of resemblance.”17 Frequently,meteorologicalevents, within the narrative, are linked to images of destruction. To compare“un vent calme et rassurantsoufflait danstoutes les demeures”18at the beginning of Wiesel’s journey with “UnventglacØ soufflait avec violence”19 and “LemÞme soleil d’enfer”20 is to understand the increasingly torturous and barbaric nature of the world of Wiesel’s experience. As naturally as the weather completes its

16 Landers, CliffordE.Literary Translation (Clevedon;Buffalo:Multilingual Matters, 2001)127. 17 A. Berman, “Translationand the Trials of the Foreign.” The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti.(NewYork;London:Routledge, 2004) 283. 18 Elie Wiesel, La Nuit. 1958. (Paris :E´ditions de Minuit, 2007) 35. 19 Ibid. 155. 20 Ibid. 55. Berman and Beyond 93 cycles, “les coupscontinuaientàpleuvoir”21 and, time and time again, Wiesel falls victim to the elements outside of his control.

Table 3: Examples of iconically rich images in translation

La nuit, 1958 Die Nacht, 1958

Le mÞme soleil d’enfer (55) Wieder brannte die Sonne (27) The same hellish sun The sun was burning again Un ventglacØ soufflait avec violence Ein eisigerWind wehte (89) (155) An icywind blew An icywind was blowing violently

La nuit, 1958 Night,2008

Au boutdedeux jours de voyage, la soif After two days of travel, thirst became commenîaànoustorturer. Puis la intolerable,asdid the heat. (23) chaleur devintinsupportable. (62) After two days of travel, thirststarted to torture us. Then the heatbecame intolerable. No use protesting; the blows multiplied Rien ne servaitdes’y oppose: les coups and, in the end, one stillhad to hand pleuvaient et, àlafin du compte, on them over.(38) perdaitquand mÞme ses chaussures. (84) No pointinopposing this:the blows rained down and, at the end of the day, From time to time, asmile would linger you’d still lose your shoes. in his gray-blue eyes. (47) Un sourirebrillaitdetemps en temps dans sesyeux bleu cendrØ. (98) Agleaming smile, from time to time, in her ash blue eyes.

Le sel et le soufre,1960 Salz und Schwefel, 1964

Le champagne danse dansles verres (23) Der Champagner perlt in den Gläser (21) The champagne dances in the glasses The champagne fizzed in the glasses

Similarly,Anna Langfus assigns human qualities to non-living objects. This juxtapositioning of the animateand the inanimate, the attribution of qualities to objects which do not fit their condition, emphasises the allegorical nature of Holocaust writing and the blurring of the lines between the imagined and the facts, between fiction and realityand “the surrealities as well as the realities of history.”22

21 Ibid. 80. 22 Jones, Kathryn N. Journeys of Remembrance: Memories of the Second WorldWar in French and GermanLiterature:1960–1980. London. MHRA, 2007. Print.p.74. 94 Stephanie Faye Munyard

And whenthis practice of replacement, which is most often unconscious, is applied to an entire work, to the whole of its iconic surface, it decisively effaces agoodportion of its signifying processand mode of expression–what makes awork speaktous.23 – Berman

Destruction of Underlying Networks of Signification

Holocaust narratives contain networks of word-obsessions. After long, and sometimes, shortintervals,readers witness the recurrence of certain words and certain kinds of substantives, which throughtheir similarities or goals constitute aparticular network.24 Describing the ideological and political conceptions used to representgenocide, LeoKuper writes:“The animal world has been aparticularly fertile source of metaphors of dehumanization.”25 Wiesel’s work contains arecurrence of animal and animal-related signifiers which purpose to illustrate howsuch identifications pervaded the everyday lives of the Jewish people. They,and other victims within the concentration camps, were treated likeanimals: “confined, contained, deprived and destined for slaughter”.26 His employmentofthese substantivesecho the genocidalpropaganda and practices of the Nazi Regime, and alludes not only the brutish natureofthe Nazi perpetrators, but also to howthe Holocaust imposed upon its victims Darwinan “survivalofthe fittest conditions” forcing them “into the role of animals competing to survive.”27 According to Yo ung, it is this vocabularyoffantasy thatfacilitates the perception and description of the impossible and unspeakable realityofthe Holo- caust.28

23 A. Berman, “Translationand the Trials of the Foreign.” The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti.(NewYork;London:Routledge, 2004) 293. 24 Ibid. 284. 25 LeoKuper, Genocide:It’s Political Useinthe Twentieth Century (London:Yale University Press, 1982) 88. 26 Deborah LeePrescott, Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoires:ACritical Study (Jef- ferson McFarland & Co Inc, 2010) 56. 27 Deborah S. Scott, “Of Stomachs and Gold Teeth:The Limits of Dehumanization in Elie Wiesel’s Night.” Substance, Judgementand Evaluation:Seeking the Worth of aLiberal Arts, CoreText Education. Ed. Patrick T. Flynn, Jean-Marie Kauth, John KevinDoyle and J. Scott Lee. (Maryland: University Press of America, 2010) 61–68;especially 64. 28 Lawson, Tom. “Shaping the Holocaust:The Influence of Christian Discourse on Perceptions of the European Jewish Tragedy.” Holocaust and GenocideStudies (2007) 21 (3): 404–420; 405. Berman and Beyond 95

Table 4: Examples of underlying networks of signification, ‘orphelin’, in translation

La nuit, 1958 Night, 1981

timiditØ d’orphelin (31) Waifliketimidity (13) Le regardd’un orphelin. (162)Abereaved stare(102) …orphelins Naked dead (111)

The non-transferral of animal signifiers in translation results in the destruction of anetwork of meanings:the animal world. Correspondingly,the narrative repetition of the substantive “orphelin” in La nuit carries with it themes of alienation, abuse and journey.Orphelin represents achild, Wiesel, whoatthe beginning of the narrative, is dedicated to his studies, and the ensuing role- reversal with his father wholater carries “le regard d’un orphelin”,29 thereby marking the death of Wiesel’s childhood. Recognizable sub-texts exist also within Le sel et le soufre. Aleit-motif of “les yeux”, the visual actofwhat the narrator and characters ‘see’, emphatically structure Langfus’ work. In the Westernimaginary, from the Renaissance on- ward, the visual has been bound up with truth and authenticity.30

Table 5: Examples of underlying network of signification,‘les yeux’, in translation

Le sel et le soufre, 1960 The Whole Land Brimstone,1962

Sa sœur le couve des yeux (39) Hersister gazed dotingly at him (33) Et Jacques le soulveaussi hautqu’il AndJan lifted him as high as he could, peut, et ses yeux retrouventleur sourire, and his eyes regained their smile, looking ses yeux maintenantpareils àcequ’ils as they had looked before the war. (43) Øtaientavant la guerre (51) Je baisse les yeux (75) I looked down(64) Je garde les yeux fixØs (133) Iwentonstaring (112) On s’arrÞte, on me suit des yeux (139)Peoplestopped and stared after me (117)

Le sel et le soufre, 1960 Salz und Schwefel, 1964

Alorsilmeregardera de ses yeux Dannwirdermich mit seinem fernen lointains (168) Blick ansehen (180) […] sans nous quitter des yeux (168) […] ohne uns den Augen zu lassen (180) Je fais des yeux le tour de la cellule Ich schaue überall in der Zelle herum (252) (273) Henriette travaille sans lever les yeux Henriette arbeitet, ohne aufzublicken. (283) (308) Je garde les yeux fixØs sur les deux Ich starre die beiden Deutschen an (347) (319)

29 Elie Wiesel, La Nuit. 1958 (Paris:E´ditions de Minuit,2007) 162. 30 E. van Alphen, “Caught by Images:Onthe role of visual imprints in Holocaust Testimonies.” Journal of Visual Culture,1(2) (2002): 205–222. 96 Stephanie Faye Munyard

(Continued) Je force mes yeux àpasser par-dessus Ichzwinge mich, über den Strohsack,wo la paillasse ou l’Allemand dort (352) der Deutsche schläft, hinwegzuschauen. (383) Mais àprØsent, les deux femmes existent Aber jetzt sind die beiden Frauen vor mir vraimentdevant mes yeux. (365) wirklich lebendig. (397)

Repetition within Holocaust narratives,Dominick La Capra writes, is sympto- matic of the traumatic experience: In traumaticmemory the eventsomehowregisters and mayactually be relived in the present, at times in acompulsively repetitivemanner. It maynot be subjecttocon- trolled, conscious recall. Butitreturns in nightmares, flashbacks, anxietyattacks, and other forms of intrusively repetitivebehaviourcharacteristic of an all-compelling frame.31 –LaCapra Langfus’ narrative is also markedbythe recurrence of the term‘ombre’. This termwhose translations offer:“shadow” (“ombre”), “to be put behind bars” (“mettre àl’ombre”), and “to be in somebody’s shadow” (“rester dans l’ombre de qn”) imply concepts central to Holocaust narrativeaccounts:the unknown and void, being captured, being an outcast in societyand also,ofbeing avoice for the “shadows”.

Table 6: Underlying networkofsignification, ‘ombre’, in translation

Le sel et le soufre, 1960 The WholeLandBrimstone, 1962

D’un mouvementdubras il m’Øcarte et He pushed me away with his arm, and a une ombre de mØpris passe dans ses hint of contempt showed in his eyes. (16) yeux.(17) Je connais ce parfum, mais je ne Iknew the scentbut could not think what parviens pas àretrouver son nom. On it was called. Itsname mighthavebeen pourraitl’appeler “L’Approche”,ou L’Approche or Ombre or Presage or bien “Ombre”, ou “PrØsage”, ou possibly Dernier Parfum. (28) peut-Þtre “Dernier Parfum”.(18) Au milieu,unimmensemarronnier verse In the middle ahuge chestnut-tree shed son ombre apaisante. (33) its soothing shade. (31) Al’ange du sud il manque un petit The angel facing south had asmallbit of morceaud’aile. Presque rien. D’Þtre wing missing:nothingtospeak of,yet the ainsi un peu ØbrØchØ,cela suffit pour lui fact of being slightlychipped in this way donner une ombred’humanitØ (37) was sufficienttogive it atouch of humanity Marc se lve pournous servirle Marc got up to pourussome champagne champagne et sa partenaire sortde and his companion moved outofthe l’ombre. (47) shadows (41)

31 Dominick LaCapra, Writing History,Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) 89. Berman and Beyond 97

(Continued) Le sel et le soufre, 1960 Salz und Schwefel, 1964

[…] un traineausedØtache de l’ombre […] und ein Schlitten löst sich aus dem (23) Schatten. (24) D’Þtre ainsi un peu ØbrØchØ, cela suffit Derart ein wenig angeschlagenzusein, pourlui donner une ombre d’humanitØ genügt,umihm eine Spur (37) Menschlichkeitzugeben (36) La chambre s’effondre sans bruit dans Lautlos versinktdas Zimmer in Dunkel l’ombre. (81) (87)

La lune adØsertØ les vitres et c’est à Der Mond hatdie Scheiben peine si je devine les fenÞtres aune alleingelassen, und wenn ich die Fenster certaine faiblesse de l’ombre. (279) errate, dann nur, weil dort die Finsternis ein wenig schwächer (303)

Avoiding repetition of words or phrases is partofaset of translationnorms which have been found to operate consciously or subconsciously on the translator.32 In their non-attendance to the lexical texture of the work, however, throughthe employmentofmultiple signifiers, in place of one terminthe original, translations erase an importantallusion to acontinuing topos within Holocaust literature. Readers of Le sel et le soufre are drawn to the narrative interplaybetween “les yeux” and “ombre”, substantiveswhich emergeinop- position of one another:shadows imply darkness, aspace empty of light and clarity, while les yeux representtransparency and truth. Repetition within Holocaust narratives can,thus, be read as symbolic of the dilemma of truthfully recounting and bearing witness.

The destruction of expressions and idioms

The practice of translating idiomsusing its ‘equivalent’ within Holocaust literature results in instances where the students of Wiesel’s English narrativeof persecution become “buried” in their books, and the PerecofDavid Bellos’ translation states:“Ithink Iwas senttoCoventryand no one spoketomefor several days.” Other analyses highlight atendency to ‘neutralise’terms:“LesBoches” and “Les Yo upins”, originally derogatoryterms of address, become“Die Deutschen” and “The Germans” lackingthe pejorativeforce of the original.

32 Toury 1977, 1996;Ben-Ari 1988. 98 Stephanie Faye Munyard

Table 7: Examples of expressions and idioms in translation

Le sel et le soufre, 1960 The Whole Land Brimstone, 1962

Les boches Nazis La nuit, 1958 Night,2008

Les Boches The Germans(20)

La nuit, 1958 Die Nacht, 1958

Les Boches Die Deutschen (28)

La nuit, 1958 Night,1981

Les enfantsvivaientaumilieu de leurs The students liveburied in their books livres (16) Les Boches The Boche (31) W. ou le souvenir d’enfance, 1975 W. or the MemoryofChildhood, 2011

Je crois que je fus mis en quarantaine et Ithink Iwas senttoCoventryand no one que pendantplusieurs jours personnene spoke to me for several days me parla.

Berman considers the replacementofanidiomatic expressionbyits parallel image or expressiontobeanethnocentrism.33 The domestication of expressions and idioms within translations of Holocaust literature result in aphenomenon wherebycharacters of French Holocaust narratives, absurdly,begin to express themselves in anetwork of,inappropriateand feeble, English or German images, far removing them and their reader from the oppressiveculture, time and place of their lived experiences.

Part II:Beyond Berman’s Model

Re-transcription of Proper Names

Further examples of domestication within translation, of an appropriation of history, are evidentinthe re-transcription of names within Holocaust narratives:

33 A. Berman, “Translationand the Trials of the Foreign.” The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti.(NewYork;London:Routledge, 2004) 293. Berman and Beyond 99

Table 8: Examples of names in translation

Le sel et le soufre, 1960 The Whole Land Salz und Schwefel,1964 Brimstone, 1962

M.Luka Mr.Luka Luka Maria Maria Maria Jacques JanJakob Henri HenryHeinrich NusbaumNusbaum Nußbaum Clotilde Clotilde Klothilde

Nothing belongs to us anymore;they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair;ifwespeak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even takeawayour name;and if we wanttokeep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so,tomanage somehowsothat behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains.–Levi Levi’s statementpetitions are-evaluation thatnames are to be considered as purely referential. Namesinthe camps were asymbolofidentity,aremaining prized possession involuntarily removed. By writing,Holocaust survivors attempt to counteractthis operation of ‘erasure’, of disappearance.34 Writinghas becomeameans by which to “sauver les noms,” atermcoined by Raczymow;35 a wayofre-instating identity,and of not being avictimtothe abstraction of six million Jews.

Table 9: Examples of names in translation

La nuit, 1958 Die Nacht, 1958

Eliezer Elieser Alphonse Alfons Eliahou Eliahu

La nuit, 1958 Night, 1981

Chlomo Shloma MoschØ MochØ

Holocaust narratives invite readers to view the ‘name’ inscribed onto an epitaph –the book.36 Throughdistortion or reformulation, Translation hasbecome a collaborator in the twice-erasure of the victim’s name.

34 A. SchulteNordholt,ed., TØmoignages de l’apre`s-AuschwitzdanslalittØrature juive-franc¸aise d’aujourd’hui :enfants de survivants et survivants-enfants. (Amsterdam:Rodopi,2008). 35 A. Schulte Nordholt, TØmoignages de l’apre`s-Auschwitz danslalittØraturejuive-franc¸aise d’aujourd’hui:enfantsdesurvivantsetsurvivants-enfants (Amsterdam :Rodopi, 2008) 254. 36 Ibid. 100 Stephanie Faye Munyard

Technicalisation

Throughout La nuit,Wiesel makes reference to the fate of the Jews whofound themselves senttothe crematoria. NeverdoesWiesel refer to aprocess of ‘gassing’, perhaps because, as Atkins states:“Execution took place, but gas chambers were not used at Buchenwald.”37In speaking of the crematoria, and only the crematoria, Wiesel recalls history, as he remembers it. Readers of the German translation of La nuit are, however,frequently introduced to ‘gas chambers’.

Table 10:Examples of technicalisation

La nuit, 1958 Die Nacht, 1958

crØmatoire(57) das Vernichtungslage(39) Crematorium Death camp les fours crØmatoires die Gaskammern (40) Crematoryovens Gas chambers CrØmatoires die Gaskammern (42) AlacheminØe In die Gaskammer (45) To the chimney To the gas chamber CrØmatoiredie Gaskammer(45) avaientØtØs exterminØs vergast worden waren(57) had been exterminated had been gassed Les fours crØmatoires den Gaskammern(68) six crematories sechs Gaskammern(71) six crematoria six gas chambers CrØmatoiredie Gaskammer(74) jetØsaucrØmatoire in die Gaskammer spedieren(86) thrown into the crematorium Transported to the gas chambers four crØmatoire der Gaskammer (106)

Bruno Bettelheim has argued that “[u]sing technical or specially created terms instead of words fromour common vocabularyisone of the best known and widely used distancing devices separating the intellectual from the emotional experience.”38 The employmentof‘gas chambers’ in place of crematoria, of artificial, technical terms couldbeviewed as an attempt to separate the human from the technical,forcing the narrative to become one describing acatastrophe issuing frommodernityrather than man.

37 Stephen E. Atkins, Holocaust DenialasanInternational Movement. (Westport, Praeger, 2009) 85. 38 Bruno Bettelheim, ”The Holocaust.” First-Year Writing:Writing in the Disciplines (Boston: PearsonCustom, 2008) 363–65. Berman and Beyond 101

Christianisation

Frequently,the murder of Europe’s Jews hasbeen described in Christian terms and imagery: Asomewhat loosely defined Christian vocabularyand imagerycan be traced backwards and has been used consistently since 1945 to interpret and ascribemeaning to the murders of Europe’s Jews.39 –Lawson To illustrate, Lawson refers to numerous examples of this discursivetreatmentof the Holocaust:throughthe employmentofChristian motifs in popular films such as Schindler’s List to novels such as The Hiding Place.40 Studies of such representationshavefacilitated the emergence of adiscourse concerning the Christianisation of the Holocaust within American society, adiscourse which can, now, be supported and enhanced transnationally throughthe study of translations.

Table 11:Examples of Jewish traditions within Holocaust narratives, in translation

La nuitDie Nacht(1962)

Les huit jours de pâques (42) Dann kam die Osterwoche (18)

Night(1960)

Les huit jours de pâques (42) The week of the Passover Les huit jours de fÞte The seven days of thefeast Les jours de Sabbath On Sundays

Le sel et le soufre The Whole Land Brimstone

[…]cet homme dontjeconnais juste le […] this man,whom Iknew onlybyhis prØnom :Marian. Christian name:Marian. (88) J’ai deux ans de moins, un nouveaunom, Iwas two years younger and had anew un nouveauprØnom :Maria surnameand anew Christian name: Maria. (108)

39 TomLawson, “Shaping the Holocaust:The Influence of ChristianDiscourse on Perceptions of the European Jewish Tragedy.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2007) 21 (3): 404–420; 404. 40 TomLawson, “Shaping the Holocaust:The Influence of ChristianDiscourse on Perceptions of the European Jewish Tragedy.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2007) 21 (3): 404–420; 404. 102 Stephanie Faye Munyard

Paratextual Deformation

In his book, Paratexts:Thresholds of Interpretation,GØrard Genette recognises the importance of paratextuality within translation, describing its relevance as “undeniable.”41 Genettestates that throughhis omission of “translation” his inventoryofparatextual elementsremains incomplete.42 Paratext refers predominantly to textual elements:titles, prefaces, interviews, but it can alsoin- clude other types of manifestation, for example, illustrations.43 Indeed, the paratextuality of Holocaust literaturecarries with it uniquecharacteristics, and could be extended to include:empty spaces, photographs, translator’s notes, footnotes and the nameofthe translator (which has abearing on the visibilityof the translator). If as Lejeune describes, paratext is “a fringe of the printed text which in reality controls one’swhole reading of the text,”44 paratext oughtnot only to be an importantconsideration of the translation process, but acentral one.

We are invited to understand howweunwittingly are manipulated by its [the book’s] paratextual elements.45 –Lejeune

The significance of the cover designofaHolocaust narrative cannot be denied:a work’s packaging dictates whether areader will pick up abookand consider it, or not. In keeping with the original French re-publication, both English trans- lationsofLa nuit featurethe iconic image of the barbed concentration camp wire.Two German translations of La nuit have been considered in this study:the first hasanentirely blank cover,the second features an abstractimage of afour- pointed yellowstar.Other paratextualelements within Holocaust representations of particular importance mayinclude dedications and inscriptions, a practice “which offers the work as atoken of esteem to aperson […].”46 Wiesel’s La nuit readily accommodates his dedicatees onto asingle page;apage devoted, entirely to the memoryofhis family. Die Nacht,conversely,cushions this ded- ication into afew lines on apage before the commencement of the narrative. Holocaust narratives speak to us not only throughchosen words, but through the structural model of the text which, often, carries with it strong visual representations of ‘the void.’ The work of the post-war generation Holocaust survivors, in particular,embraces amemorylacuna, an unspeakable silence;a

41 GØrardGenette, Paratexts:thresholds of interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. xviii. 44 Ibid. xxi. 45 Ibid. xxi. 46 Ibid. 117. Berman and Beyond 103 necessarycondition of the Holocaust (c.f. Patrick Modiano,Dora Bruder). In Perec’s W, paragraphs are occasionally divided by asterisks and blank pages divide chapters and sections. The asterisks mayhighlight Perec’s subconscious desire to fill in the gaps, and to mask an unbearable silence,while the blank pages embrace it. Perec’s work visually recreates the central problem of testifying: contrasting notions of languageasrepresented by the written word:being able to speak, and what can be said versus asilence made concrete throughthe use of empty space:the unknown,and what cannot be said. There is atendency, within translations of Holocaust literature, to resolvethis void with each new chapter following on from another in alogical and measured manner.Alternatively,as can be seen in Patrick Modiano’s DoraBruder (1997) there are blank spaces throughout;Modiano accepts inherited silence as acondition of the children of survivors. However,inits translation into English (TheSearch Warrant, 2000), asterisks are used to remedy the void.

Conclusion

Aconclusion to this study would not be complete without mention of its many limitations. It considers translation, primarily,asa‘product’which has abearing on the transmission and reception of Holocaust testimonyand, therefore, neglects the cultural context in which translationsare produced. It does this on the premise, as JamesYoung has observed, that: We cannot separate what we knowofthe Holocaust from the manner in which it has been communicated to us.47 In order to extend and strengthen this analytic, it would be necessarytoconsider the translation of further texts, and translations, from and into more languages, particularly minoritylanguages. The analysis of further texts mayallowfor the identification of other tendencies outlined by Berman not mentioned in this text. Ideally,astudy such as this would be preceded by communication, wherever possible, with the authors of Holocaust narratives, in order to gauge the significance of individual stylistic choices, rather than basing them on generic standards outlined by other authors. The negativeanalyticofthis study should also,asBerman states, be extended by apositivecounterpartwhich explores not least, the restorativefunction of translation, crucially,inanera where survivors are passing away.This study has shown that translationshavethe potential to be

47 “Shaping the Holocaust:The Influence of Christian Discourse on Perceptions of the Euro- pean Jewish Tragedy.” Holocaust andGenocide Studies (2007) 21 (3): 404–420. 104 Stephanie Faye Munyard apowerfulsite of historical remembrance, but in order for this to happen it is necessaryfor translators and editors of Holocaust literatureto 1) Engage in aprocess of literaryanalysis before commencing their work 2) Leaveintactthe alterityofHolocaust literature by embracing the “foreignness” of the work, and 3) Submit their work to analysisinorder to neutralisethe unconscious tendencies at force. “The translator […] makes his response responsible, only when he endeavours to restorethe balance of forces, of integral presence, which his appropriativecomprehensionhas disrupted.”48

This essayhas illustrated that deforming tendencies within translations of Holocaust literaturehavegeneral implications for our understanding of the complexityofHolocaust memories. Translations of Holocaust literaturetradi- tionally assumeforms which appropriateJewish history,indicating thatthe primaryaim of translation is not one which seeks to retain legacies and memories, but onewhich allows the Holocaust to be understoodbyits target audience, whocome from predominantly Christian cultures. For as long as this continues the Holocaust will be consigned to the realm of myth. Translations of translations of the literatureofthe Shoah can shed critical light on the assumptions of incommunicabilityand untranslatabilityinHolocaust Studies. Translation opens up and enhances critical discourses linked to Holocaust Studies and demonstrateswhy it is necessary that the study of translation becomes acentral consideration of Holocaust memorialization. Questions of representation have,now,tobereplaced with the questions of re-presentation that translation demands.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

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48 George Steiner in Venuti (2004) 197. Berman and Beyond 105

–Wou le souvenir d’enfance. 1975. Paris, Gallimard, 1993. Print. Langfus, Anna. Le sel et le soufre. 1960. Paris:Gallimard, 1983. Print. –Salz und Schwefel. Trans. Martha JohannaHofman. :Lucas CranachVerlag, 1964. Print. – The Whole Land Brimstone. Trans.Peter Wiles. London:Collins, 1962. Print. Wiesel, Elie. La Nuit. 1958.Paris :E´ditions de Minuit,2007. Print. – Night. Trans. Stella Rodway. Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1981.Print. – Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. London:Penguin, 2008. Print. – Die Nacht. Trans. Curt-MeyerClason. Leipzig:StBenno,1958. Print. –Nacht: Erinnerung und Zeugnis.

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Reiter,Andrea. Narrating the Holocaust. Trans. Patrick Camiller.London:The European Jewish Society, 2005. Print. Schulte Nordholt, A. (Ed.) TØmoignages de l’apre`s-Auschwitz dans la littØrature juive- franc¸aise d’aujourd’hui :enfants de survivants et survivants-enfants. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. Print. Scott, Deborah S. “Of Stomachs and Gold Teeth:The Limits of Dehumanization in Elie Wiesel’s Night.” Substance,Judgement and Evaluation:Seekingthe Worth of aLiberal Arts,CoreText Education. Ed. Patrick T. Flynn, Jean-Marie Kauth, John KevinDoyle and J. Scott Lee. Maryland: University Press of America, 2010. pp.61–68 p. 64. Steiner,George. Language andsilence:essays1958–1966. London:Faber,1967. Print. Toury, G. “The Nature and Role of NormsinTranslation.” The Translation Studies Reader.2nd Ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. NewYork;London :Routledge, 2004.198–212. VanAlphen, Ernst. 2002. “Caught by Images:Onthe roleofvisual imprints in Holocaust Testimonies.” Journal of Visual Culture,1(2): 205–222. Anna Nunan

Translating Monika Maron’s PawelsBriefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text

MonikaMaron’s Pawels Briefe is afragmentarypost-Wende literarytext often read in the context of self-reflective autobiographical accounts by women1. Pa- wels Briefe is undoubtedly aformofintrospective life writing with apost- modernist, feminist dimension2 but it can be seen to exceed the boundaries of texts associated with personal identity in its insistentfocus on the life and death of the narrator’s grandfather,Holocaust victim, Pawel Iglarz. Correspondence from Pawel ceased abruptly in 1942 but his daughter cannot remember reading letters received immediately prior to his disappearance, nor can she provide details on the circumstances of his death. Pawel’s granddaughter,Maron,attempts to retrace his final months, travelling to Poland in search of traces of his birth and death3 and questions her mother in an attempt to uncover the details of

1FriederikeEigler compares Pawels Briefe to Martin Walser’s autobiographical work Ein Springender Brunnen in “Engendering Cultural MemoryinSelected Post-Wende Literary Texts of the 1990s” and claims “Theaccountofawoman writer assuming avoice in aparticular historical and politicalsituationinPawels Briefe contrasts sharply with the emphasis on Johann’s inner developmentasawriter in Ein Springender Brunnen”399. Owen Evans, in Mapping the Contours of Oppression: Subjectivity,Truth and Fiction in RecentGermanAu- tobiographical Treatments of Totalitarianism, sees Pawels Briefe as an autobiographyinwhich the author deploys autobiographyasatherapyofsorts and acoping strategy,common in the context of “women autobiographers bearing witness to oppression” 291 and as ameans of asserting subjectivity in atotalitarian system thatdoesnot credit women with individual identity.Gisela Shawin“Four Women Writers’ Responses to the Demise of the GDR”, also clearly situates Pawels Briefe as apolitically influenced autobiographybyaprominent woman writer.Alison Lewisrefers to feminist discourse in Pawels Briefe. 2LaurenRusk describes ‘life writing’ as opposed to traditional autobiographyas“writing that is from as well as about the subject’s life” 3. She claims such writingparticipates in adialectical process of complex social as well as aesthetic engagements with its readers. Rusk discusses these ‘hybrid texts’ in terms of the challenge they presenttoreaders “to work through puzzles in ways thatmirrorthe writers’ ownstruggles to wrest sense fromthe contradictionsthey’ve faced.Thusthe books strivetotransform howtheir readers perceive one another,and ultimately howthey act” 1. 3Maron’s visit to Poland in 1996 is strongly reminiscentofthe trip made by the narrator of Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster to her birthplace, Landsberg an der Warthe (nowGorzów 108 Anna Nunan

Pawel’s life. Pawels Briefe can be considered an accountthat bears secondary witness to the Holocaust, but Maronproblematizes the issue of ‘first generation’ testimonybyincluding‘authentic’ letters written by her grandfather from the Belchatowghetto in her secondarywitness accountofthe Holocaust. Initially Maron embarksonasearch for detailsabout her grandfather’s birth and un- timely death, but is utterly frustrated by the multiple levels of repression, propaganda and cultural and national representation of the Holocaust that hinder her attempt to uncover dates and locations for Pawel’s birth and death. In relation to the unfamiliar nature of Pawel’s Polish birthplace, Maronmentions the translation of Pawel’s documents, his words and letters and the testimonyof Polish relativesand eyewitnesseswhich results in the author questioning her German rendition of her grandfather’s experiences. The translation of this text into athird language, such as English, necessitates aparticularly skilful approach. In 1994 Hella Maron stumbled upon letters written by Pawel Iglarz in the Belchatowghetto while sorting throughboxes of letters and photographs at the request of Dutch television reporters looking for photographs of wartime Berlin. This chance find and Hella’s (lack of)memoryofthis correspondence prompted the narrator of Pawels Briefe to inquire about the ‘inner life’ of her grandparents whoperished in Poland in 1942. Eyewitness testimonyisunreliable, historical records are unavailable and all trace of Jewish historyseems to have been ex- punged from Pawel’s Polish homeland, but Maron’s evocation of ‘life’ under National Socialism fromthe pointofview of the persecuted and pockets of the workingpopulation of Neukölln in Berlin is multifaceted and compellingand excerpts from Pawel’s letters are moving in this sketchyHolocaust account. The author’s sensitiveexamination of the contingentnatureofpersonal, national and political (post) memoryand the impact of the loss of her grandfather on her understanding of personal identity contribute to the notion of reading this text as aliterarywork that exceeds the boundaries of ‘memory’ textsand enters the domain of German literarydepictions of the Holocaust. Secondarywitness accounts differ significantly from ‘first generation’ testi- monials in terms of the question of the authenticityofthe author,the degreeof inherited trauma and toleration and absorption of loss4,but Maron sensitively

Wielkopolski) in Poland, but Maron traces aJewish victim of National Socialist racist policies in 1942 and Wolf retraces her family’s reluctantflight from Poland as Hitler supporters in 1945.Maron seems intentonadding to the tapestryof‘family stories’ in German literature of this time period, strongly emphasising similarities and differences. 4Erin McGlothlin writes about the literaryresponsesofageneration of writers powerfully shaped by the Holocaust but without direct experience of it in Second-Generation Holocaust Literature:Legacies of Survivaland Perpetration. McGlothlin avoids the pitfalls of parallel- izing the inherited trauma of children of survivors with the ‘burden of guilt’ that plagues Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 109 interweaves primary, secondary, tertiaryand even quaternarygenerational perspectivesonthe Holocaust5 in this diversified testimony. This unusual approach meets with success because Pawel Iglarz’s eyewitness testimonyis fragmentary(accessible only throughasmall number of letters) and Hella Maron’s reports of her Jewish experience during WWII are mostly inadequate. Maron’s varied, postmodernist approach towards the difficulties of memoryof the Holocaust and Holocaust interpretation across generations and across borders is particularly relevanttothe wider debate on howthe Holocaust should be represented across time and culture6. Testimonial and autobiographicalwriting on the Holocaust has frequently been discussed in terms of the authenticityofthe witness and the impossibilityof rendering the experience of the Holocaust into language, but untilrecently the issue of the translation of textsabout the Holocaust hasnot attracted significant critical attention7.The translation of Pawels Briefe into English can be seen as an instance of aprocess of translation that affectsthe reading and reception of Holocaust writing.Brigitte Goldstein’s translation of Pawels Briefe8 focuses on the text as abenigncross-generational family history and neglects to register the urgencyofthe loss of acherished person to the Holocaust or the questioning of

childrenofperpetrators with its denials, discomfortand webs of silence and locates the common theme for these writers in the tropeofthe “mark”. She maintains that children of survivors and perpetrators articulate afeeling of being stigmatized by apast thatisboth overpowering and inaccessible by virtue of its traumatic destructiveness. McGlothlinpoints out thatboth slaves and criminals were branded with astigma in ancienttimes. “The trauma of the second generationisnot the trauma of the original event, but rather the cumulative effects of the vicariousexperience of ongoing suffering caused by the event” 54. Children of survivors find themselves tasked with ‘postmemory’ –they struggletofind literaryre- presentationsfor adehumanization that defies imagination and ameans of memorializing the dead whose murder was supposed to leave no trace of their existence.Their texts reveal some of the hidden structures of trauma. McGlothlin finds that texts written by the second gen- erationfunction as markers of individual lives and deaths, described by Katharina vonKel- lenbach as ‘fictional gravestones’that permit mourning,aprocess withoutwhich the living cannot rebuildlives in which they are capable of tolerating and absorbing the loss. 5The four generationalperspectives emanatefromPawel, Hella, Monika and Jonas(Maron’s son, aphotographer,who contributes photographic material to Pawels Briefe and Quer über die Gleise). 6Both the vicissitudes of the secondarywitness accountand the photographsand letters in this book lend themselves to adifferentiated approach to the representation of the Holocaust in German literature.This is significantbecause as Howard Jacobsonwrites “the danger, as time goes by,isthat we will tire of hearing about the Holocaust, not only wearybut disbelieving and thatout of fatigue and ignorancemorethan cynicism, we will belittle and, by stages, finally denythe horrorofthe extermination camps and the witness”. 7Peter Davies and Andrea Hammel of the ‘Holocaust Writing and TranslationResearch Project’ at the University of Edinburgh, write about the lack of focus on issues of translationaffecting Holocaust texts. 8Brigitte Goldstein’s 2002 translationofPawels Briefe. 110 Anna Nunan the shiftinthe meaning of the categories of ‘Holocaust’ and ‘victim’ in the postwar GDR9.AlthoughEnglish is asignificantlanguage for readers of Holo- caust literatureand writing about the Holocaust is almost always read in translation, this text is little known to the readership of Holocaust literatureand is unlikely to receivecritical attention by wayofthis English translation. As apost-Wende literarytext, Pawels Briefe has not been primarily associated with literatureofthe Holocaust but has been read as afocus on the unreliability of privateand public memoryand the construction of personalidentity in the complicated post war and post-Wende German context. Many critics claim that memoryisthe central theme of Pawels Briefe,and that the text is “a sustained reflection on the workings of memory… The author underscores the importance of memory… Structuring her text around the rediscovered photographs, she attempts to counter familial forgetting”10.Ifmemoryisacentral tenet of Maron’s text, Iargue that it is not ‘familial forgetting’ but memoryofthe Holocaust and of her grandparents’ experience of the Holocaust that is of central interest in Maron’s work. In an interview with Till Krause, Maron claims:“ein Selbstver- ständigungstextist Pawels Briefe nicht. Es ging mir nichtummeine, sondernum die Geschichte meiner Grobelternund ihrer Kinder…”11.Maron initially describes her close association with her grandparentsinvarious ways:

Die Geschichte kenne ich, seit ich denken kann. Es ist die Geschichte meiner Gro- beltern, und ich hatte sie zu keiner Zeit vergessen.12 (I have known the storyfor as long as Ican remember.Itisthe storyofmygrandparents and Ihavenever forgotten it.)13 This ‘memory’ of her grandparents is not an actual memory, but a post-mem- ory14,amemoryderived from stories, photographs and letters:

9CarolineSchaumann in Memory Matters:GenerationalResponses to Germany’s Nazi Past in RecentWomen’s Literature writes “Maron’s work poses questionsastohow and by whom the Holocaust is being appropriated and represented. Since her work also elucidates howthe meaning of these categories shifted in the postwar GDR,itadds adistinct post-unification perspectiveand differentiationtothe discussionof(auto)biographical writing of the post- Holocaust generations” 254. 10 DeirdreByrnessees Pawels Briefe as astudyofmemoryinRereading Monika Maron: Text, Counter-text and Context and claims that in post-Wende Germany, “forgetting is syn- onymous with repression and lies” 117. Byrnes stresses the repressionofthe GDR,however it could be argued that Pawels Briefe focuses on the repressionofthe Holocaust. 11 Tilman Krause interviews Maronin‘Wirwaren ja immer ganz eng:Ein Gespräch mit Monika Maron überihre Familie, das Erinnernund das Verschwinden der DDR’ Die Welt,27Februar 1999. 12 Pawels Briefe 7, hereafter PB. 13 Pavel’s Letters,trans. Brigitte Goldstein, p. 1, hereafter PL. 14 Marianne Hirschdescribes ‘post-memory’ as memorythat results fromthe powerful appeal of recognizable iconsofthe Holocaust, such as the diaries of Anne Frank, photographs of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz. These images and stories of the past are so compelling for non- Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 111

Erinnernist fürdas, was ich mit meinen Grobeltern vorhatte, eigentlich das falsche Wort,denn in meinem Innerngab es kein versunkenes Wissen übersie, das ich hätte zutage fördern können… Das Wesen meiner Grobelternbestand fürmich in ihrer Abwesenheit… Es gab Fotos und ein paar Briefe. (PB 8) (Remembering is actually the wrongword for what Ihad in mind with regardtomy grandparents, for in me was no submerged knowledge about them Ineeded to bring to light… Forme, the essence of my grandparents was their absence… We had photographs and afew letters. (PL 2)) The significance of the narrator’s grandparents lies essentially in their distance from Nazi perpetrators of war crimes:

Vorallem aber gab es ihren Tod, der sie immermehr sein lieb als meine Grobeltern.Sie waren der gute, der geheiligte Teil der furchtbaren Geschichte. Der konvertierte Jude und die konvertierte Katholikin, polnische Einwanderer in Berlin, deren Lebensonst vielleichtnur als mühsam und liebenswert überliefertworden wäre,lebten in mir als der kleine, vorstellbareAusschnitt der unvorstellbar grausamen Geschichte. Undsie vererbten mir mit ihrem Toddie Geborgenheit der Unschuld. Die Angst, vonMördern und Folterknechten abzustammen,blieb mir fürmeine Kinderjahre erspart. (PB 8) (But most of all, there was their death, which always madethem more than just my grandparents. They were the good,the sacred partofaterrible chapter in history.The converted Jewand the converted Catholic woman, Polish immigrants in Berlin, whose lives, under differentcircumstances mayhavebeen merely describedasbeing filled with hard work and love, lived in me as aminute, imaginable detail of this un- imaginably cruel history.And throughtheir death, they bequeathed to me the assur- anceofinnocence. Iwas spared the childhood fear of being the progenyofmurderers and torturers. (PL 2)) This is an interesting,ifself-interested perspective on the Holocaust victims Josefa and Pawel Iglarz. Maronseems to include her childhood self in the general German population’s amnesia –the attempt to distance itself from the horror and dehumanisation of the Holocaust, aformofdenial or ‘Unfähigkeit zu Trauern’15,acommonlycited widespread inabilityto‘mourn’ by large sectors of the German post war population. AlthoughPawel Iglarz can truly be considered avictimofNazi German racist policies, the narrator has other grandparents and afather whowas asoldier in WWII (Maron relates verylittle about her father or his wartime activities, except thatheaimedshots in the air16). Maron was spared

witnesses “as to constitute memories in their ownright”8–9. 15 Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich used psychoanalytical thoughttoexplain the causes behind Nazi Germany and its aftermathinGermansociety. The Inability to Mourn, Die Unfähigkeit zu Trauern (1967) addressed the reasons for Holocaust war crimes and the reasons for the inadequate treatment of the lack of guiltonthe offender’s partinpost-war German society. 16 Maron writes of her memoryofher father’s irritation with her as achild when she dropped a toffee apple at afair:“Ein Flugzeug flog dröhnend überunsereKöpfe, und mein Vatersagte, 112 Anna Nunan the fear of implication in the horror of the Holocaust as achild because of her Polish/Jewish grandparents, but she reveals that she often wished that she had had differentparents: Ichweib nicht, ob alle oder wenigstens viele Kinder sich zuweilen wünschen, Nach- kommenanderer Eltern zu sein, als sie nun einmalsind und nur um den Preis der eigenen Nicht-Existenz nichtsein mübten. Ichjedenfalls war vonsolcher Un- dankbarkeit in manchenkindlichen Krisenzeiten erfüllt. Ichwollte anders sein, als meine Abstammung mir zugestand. Undweil die Fotografie meiner Grobmutter,die schmal gerahmtinmeinem Zimmer hing, sie allzu deutlich als die Mutter meiner Mutter auswies, fiel meine Wahl als einzigenAhnen, vondem abzustammen ich bereit war,auf meinen Grobvater.Daber seiner Herkunft,nichtseinem Glauben nach, Jude war,spielte fürmeine Entscheidung keine Rolle. Ichglaube, ich wubte damals nicht mehr überJuden, als dab die Nazis sie ermordet hatten. Aber dab mein Grobvater als Jude umgekommen war,daber dem Lebenetwas schuldig bleiben mubte,weil man ihn gehinderthatte, es zu Ende zu leben, und dab darum ich ihm etwas schuldete, mag für meine Wahl, wenn auch nichtsobewubt,den Ausschlag gegebenhaben. Vielleichtwar es auch nur mein erster Versuch,dem eigenen Lebeneinen Sinn und ein Geheimnis zu erfinden.(PB 9) (I don’t knowifall, or at least many, children secretly wish they came fromdifferent parents and exist only at the price of not existing at all. I, for my part, was brimming with such ingratitude during the numerous crises of my childhood.Iwanted to be differentfrom what my heredity mademe. And since the photograph of my grandmother,which hung on asmall frame on thewall of my room, showed her to be all too obviously the mother of my mother,mychoice of the only forebear from whomIwas willing to be descendedfell on my grandfather.That he was by origin, if not by religion, aJew,playednorole in my decision.Idon’t think Iknew back then anymore about Jews than that the Nazis had murdered them. Butthat my grandfather perished as aJew,that he owed something to life because he had been prevented from living it to its end and that I, therefore,owed him something maywell have been decisiveinmychoice,even if onlyunconsciously.Maybe it was also my first attempt at inventing meaning and mysteryinmyown life. (PL 2/3)) Maron owed adebt to her Jewish grandfather because he had been prevented from living his life to its natural end. As she had minimalcontactwith her biological father,aself-professed traumatic relationship with her stepfather,Karl Maron17 and adifficult relationship with her mother,Pawel is an obvious focal

er könne das Geräusch nichtmehr ertragen. Er hätte immer nurindie Luft geschossen, das solle ich ihm glauben. Ichkann mich erinnernandiesem oder einem späteren Tagdarüber nachgedachtzuhaben, ob jemand, der nichts treffen will, sein Ziel ebenso verfehlen kannwie einer,der es aufeines anderen Herz anlegt” (PB 83) (“An aeroplane dronedoverhead and my fathersaid he couldn’t bear the noise anylonger.Hesaid Ishould believe him when he said that he always shot into the air,Irememberpondering this then, or maybelater, whether somebodywho doesn’t wanttohit anything couldn’t miss just as well as somebody aiming at someone else’s heart” (PL 54)). 17 Maron mentionsabreakdown following Karl Maron’s death: “Nichtder Schmerz, sondern, Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 113 pointfor affinityfor Maron, representing the antithesis of Maron’s personal father figures. Importantly the narrator also has the impression that she is the only person concerned aboutthe life and death of Pawel Iglarz. Hella speaks fondly of her father and mayhavesuffered his loss in psychoanalytical terms18, but Hella’s propensitytoabsorb Pawel’s fate into the fate of the many‘victims’of National Socialism19,Jewish and non-Jewish, and all those whosuffered during the wartime years in amyriad of differentways, is aview thatisunderstandably unacceptable:

Hellas Bereitschaftzuverstehen und vergeben, könnte christlich genanntwerden und mag ihren Ursprung in ihrer christlichen Erziehung haben… Vielleichtist Hellas Nachsichtauch ein Teil ihres umwerfenden Lebenspragmatismus, ihrer trainierten

dab ich keinen Schmerz empfinden konnte, dab ich diesen Todwirklichals Befreiung erlebte, hat mein verwirrtes Hirn dem ihm untergegebenen Körperoffenbar so viele falsche oder einander widersprechende Befehle erteilen lassen, bis er kollabierte. Als ich ausdem Krankenhaus entlassen wurde, wog ich siebenundneunzig Pfund, kaufte mir vonKarls Erbe… ein Auto… lernteAutofahren, kündigtemeine Stelle als Reporterin beider »Wo- chenpost«und begann eines Morgens nach dem Frühstück, ein Buch zu schreiben” (PB 193) (“I was pained because Icouldn’t feel anypain, because his deathfelt likealiberation. My confused brain apparently senttothe body underits command so manywrong and con- tradictorysignals thatitcollapsed. When Iwas discharged from the hospital, Iweighed ninety-seven pounds. From Karl’s inheritance… Iboughtmyself aDacia car… Ilearned to drive, quit my job as reporter for the Wochenpost,and onemorning after breakfast, Istarted to writeabook” (PL 133)). FriederikeEigler also claims “Pawel comes to representthe antithesis to Maron’s ‘real’ father figure, the authoritarian party functionaryembodying the life and the political system with which Maron broke.Pawel’s concern for his youngest grandchild Monika(Maron) expressed in his letters from the ghetto (PB 112, 113, 114) contrasts starkly with Maron’s relationship to her stepfather seeminglydevoid of genuine affection”398. 18 Hella makes an unsuccessful trip to her employer’s hotel in TirolinAugust 1942 (around the time of Pawel’s disappearance). She blames her ‘depression’onafear of the mountains but admits to strange nightmares of her father:“Das Lebengab genügend Gründe her füreine Depression,aberHellaschob lieberden Bergen zu;die Berge lieben sich fortan meiden. Während der Tage in Tirolträumte sie dreimal, wieihr Vatervon einem sehr hohen spitzen Berg mit einem endlosen Schrei ins Nichts stürzte” (PB 145) (“Life offered enough reasons for depression,but Hella preferred to attribute it to the mountains:the mountains would be avoidedfromthen on. She had three dreams when she was in Tyrolofher fatherfalling from a veryhigh, pointed mountain into the void with an endless scream” (PL 98)). 19 The debate about the ‘victims’ of National Socialism that ensued in the 1990s centred on the comparisonbetween the interpretation of the expulsion of ethnicGermans fromPoland and Czechoslovakia and the destruction of European JewryasdiscussedbyDaniel Levy and Natan Sznaider in “Memories of Universal Victimhood”. The subject of Hans-Georg Stav- ginski’s Das Holocaust-Denkmal which treated the issue of public acts of remembrance and the blurryquestion of whoremembers whom and what, and howisalso relevant. The topic of the appropriation of the Nazi era and the victims of collectively perpetrated crimes for the formationofnationalidentity is adebatewhich develops along with issues such as the artistic representability of the Shoah and the strugglefor recognition of other victimgroups persecuted during the Nazi era. 114 Anna Nunan

Fähigkeit, »dem Lebenseine freundlichen Seitenabzugewinnen«, wiesie es in ihren Erinnerungen an die Kriegszeit nennt.ImLeben müssen Probleme gelöst werden, Hindernisse überwunden und schwere Zeiten überstanden werden… Mit dem Leben mub man fertigwerden, Das hat jedes Neuköllner Proletarierkind, christlich oder nichtchristlich gelernt.(PB 126) (Hella’s readiness to understandand forgivecouldbedescribed as Christian and may have its origin in her Christian upbringing… MaybeHella’s leniencywas also apartof her pragmatism, her inculcated ability“to glean the friendly aspects from life”, as she calls it in her notesabout the war.Problems mustbesolved, obstacles surmounted and hardships overcome… It is imperative to come to grips with life. Everyproletarian child of Neukölln, whether Christian or not, learned that lesson. (PL 85))

Hella seems to remember few details of Pawel’s life, althoughshe hasacopy of his birth certificate (in Russian and in German). She seems not to remember that her father’s birth namewas Schljama (or Schloma in German) and she seems not to dwell on the difficulty he experienced with his Jewish birth:“ihr Vater war Jude, ob er nun Schloma oder Pawel hieb…” (PB 17) (“her father was aJew,whether his name was Shloma or Pavel” (PL 8)). Hella claimed to have vivid memories of her childhood and the war years prior to finding the boxofletters in 1994:

Hätte Hella nichtein ungewöhnlich gutes Gedächtnis, so gut, dab sie in meinen Augen manchmal den Verdachtgerät, nachtragend zu sein, lieben sich ihre Erinner- ungslücken durch die überlagernde Zeit und Hellas Alter erklären. So aber stehen sie als ein erklärungverlangendesWarum überdie Jahren nach1939. Denn Hella be- hauptete bis dahin genauerinnern zu können. 1937 ist ihr Bruder Bruno zweiund- dreibigjährig an den Folgen einer Gallenoperation gestorben. 1937 lerntesie Walter kennen… Undanalles, sagtHella,könne sie sich genauerinnern.Aberglaubte sie nicht auch, sich an das Jahr ’39 genauzuerinnern, bis sie die Briefe fand?(PB 17) (IfHella didn’t have an unusually good memory, so good that Isometimes suspecther of vindictiveness,Imight attribute the gaps in her memorytothe layers of time and age. As it is, however,these gaps loom as unanswered questions over the years after 1939. In 1937,her brother Bruno died, following agall-bladder operation. In 1937, she met Walter… All this, says Hella, she remembers clearly.But wasn’tshe sure she remembered the year1939 just as clearly untilshe foundthe letters?(PL 8))

Hella remembers everydaydetails, treating the extraordinaryasordinary(a common featureoftraumatic testimony20), but the hardship of her father’s last months has been repressed or has entered the fabric of her memoryinsuch away that it no longer stands out.Pawel makes oblique references to the despair he

20 Michael Rothberg writes about representation of the Holocaust in terms of trauma involving both the encounter with death and the ongoing experience of having survivedit. The extreme is implicated in the everydayasa“nonintegrated presence” 137. The extreme is not always a partofthe everydayand the everydayisnot only aplace of trauma, because as CathyCaruth writes:“trauma is not an event, but the structure of its experience” 4. Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 115 endures in his letters from the ghetto.Healso requests more depth in his children’s letters:

Hellas Briefelesen sich wieein einziger,umFrohsinn bemühter,die Bedrängnisse und Gefahren eher aussparender Begleittext zum Lebender Iglarzschen Geschwister in Berlin. Keine groben Themen, dafürimmer wieder das Wetter,der Besuchvon gestern, das Essen vonheute, eine Nachfrage, das letzte Paketbetreffend… Einmal schreibt Hella:“Papa, Du schreist immer noch nach inhaltsvollen Briefen, obwohl wirDir schon sehr oft klargemachthaben, dab wirnichtanderes zu schreiben wissen.” (PB 120) (Hella’s letters, acommentaryonthe life of Iglarz children in Berlin, are straining to be cheerful, eliminating all sorrows and dangers. No greatthemes, always the weather, yesterday’s visitors,today’s meals, the last package… At one point, Hella writes:“Papa, youare still asking for letters with contentthoughwe’ve explainedmanytimesthat we have nothing else to write about.” (PL 81))

Despite his call for substanceinthe letters he receives, he rarely provides detail in the letters he sends. He writes from the Belchatowghetto that he can receive and send post:

Ichkann alles geschickt bekommen und bekomme alles mit der Post zugestelltgenau wiejeder andere, denn ich bin ja frei. Mit dem Essen ist es so,ich bin mit der jüdischen Familie in ein und demselben Zimmer und was die kochen, esse ich mit…. Die Nichte, die zu mir kommt, kann ich selbstverständlich sehen und sprechen… Also mich sehen kann man schon und zwar zu jeder Zeit, aber ich bitte euch, sollte euch tatsächlichdie Reise gelingen, nehmt Mama und fahrtwieder zurück. Ichkann und will auch nicht, dab ihr zu mir kommen sollt. (PB 133) (I am allowed to receive anything,and everything is delivered to mebythe postal service just as to anybodyelse, for,after all, Iamfree. It’s the same with the meals. Iam sharing oneroom with aJewish family,and whatever they cook, Ieat with them… Ican, of course, see the niecewho visits me and speak with her… So it’s not that Ican’t have visitors and really at anytime, but shoulditbepossible for youtovisit, Ibeg youtotake Mama and go back immediately.Ican’t and don’t wantyou to visit me. (PL 89/90))

His letters from Belchatowlack detail because he does not wanttoburden his family with desperatethoughts. The few words used to describethe pain of separation from his family and isolation from Germanyare potentially very difficult to translatebecause Pawel was known to have broken German and family letters had been translated from Polish on occasion. His ‘Vermächtnis- brief’(‘testament’) which makes explicit reference to his grandchild(Monika) and his wish that his letter be read by Monikaalso refers to the ‘literal’ translation of his wife’s letter which was to be typed and safeguarded untilMonikacame of age:

Mein lieber Paul, ich schickedir hier einen Brief mit, den Mama einen Tagvor ihrem Tode an michdiktierthat. Der Brief zerrib mir das Herz… fahrtmal an einemSonntag zu Lades und labteuch den Brief wortgetreu übersetzen und Hella soll den selben mit 116 Anna Nunan

der Maschine abschreiben und Original und Abschriftgut aufbewahren. Schliebtihn in ein Fachein, dab er nichtverloren geht, und wenn Monikagrob ist, zeigtihr den Brief und erzählt ihr,wie tief unglücklich ihre Grobelterngerade in den alten Tagen geworden sind, vielleichtweintsie dann auch eine Träne. (PB 112/3) (Mydear Paul, Iamenclosing here aletter which Mama dictated one daybefore her death. The letter brokemyheart… takearide out to Lades on Sundayand have the lettertranslated word for word and have Hella copy it on the typewriter and put both the original and the copy in asafe place. Lock it in some boxsoitwon’t get lost and when Monika is big enough showher the letter and tell her of the greatunhappiness that befell her grandparents in theirold age, perhaps she will then shed atear.(PL 75/76))

Pawel’s children appear to have had the letter translated and preserved according to his wishes but subsequently ‘forgot’ it. Monikalearns about the existence of the letter when she is fifty-six and is incensed at the omission on the partofPaul, Marta and Hella. Hella had not only forgotten about her father’s letters but appeared to takethe view that both the victims and perpetrators of Nazi war crimes needed to burytheir grief and moveforward regardless of victim or perpetrator status:“Mubten nichtnur die Täter,sondern auch die Opfer ihreTrauer verdrängen um weiterzuleben?Jeder hatte seine Toten, Söhne, Väter,Männer,Freunde… Das Lebenmubweitergehen;das machtdie Toten nichtwieder lebendig?” (PB 113) (“Did not only the perpetrators but the victims have to repress their mourning in order to go on living?Everybodyinthe post- war world had their dead:sons, fathers, husbands,friends… life must go on; nothing brings back the dead?” (PL 76)). Maron suggests this attitude towards burying grief is alsodiscernible in the postwar will to rename newspapers, streets, etc.:“Neues Leben”, “Neuer Weg”, “Neue Zeit” and “Neues Deutsch- land”. The past was to be forgotten, there was aneed to look forward and in this flurryofforgetting,Pawel Iglarz’s fate was to be subsumed.Maron is critical of this approach to the past and refuses to accept this tendency.She is keen to halt this trajectoryand revisit this view of the Holocaust even if it causes an inevitable rift with her mother,former neighbours, Polish relativesand the reading public. Maron’s claim that“das Alltägliche wird bedeutender,jegefährdeter es ist…” (PB 116) (“routine gains in importance as the situation becomes more dangerous…” (PL 78)) is an attempt to explain the lack of references to wider historical perspectivesinher mother’s accounts. Maron tries to get asense of a Jewish experience in wartime Berlin but Hella seems to remember birthday parties, holidays, liqueur,butter,sirens, bombs and bomb shelters and appears to have retreated to the everyday and the local in an attempt to negate the devastating outside world. Maron points out that she was born in 1941 and the first fiveyears of her life (commonly considered the most critical) were couched in terms of sirens and bomb shelters. Words such as ‘Kriegskind’, ‘Angriff’, ‘Luftschutzkeller’ are difficult to translatebecause they do not carry the same Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 117 resonance in another language duetothe specificityofthis experience of wartime Berlin. Similarly Pawel’s words from the Belchatowghetto and his reference to keyHolocaust terminology(‘Stern’, ‘Papiere’, ‘Abzeichen’) is difficult to translate. As only afew letters exist, the projectoftranslating them is akin to desecrating them. The translation of apostmemorial Holocaust text like Pawels Briefe is problematicdue to these languagedifficulties and numerous other difficulties associated with translations of Holocaust texts, such as loss of authenticity, violation of context and connotation and the difficulty of creating experience throughlanguage. Brigitte Goldstein’s translation re-invokes this controversy in its loss of the precision and toneofMaron’s text to the extentthat this rendition of the accounthindersthe interpretation of the text as centrally situated in the context of German literarytexts on the Holocaust. The opening lines of the English translation seem awkward and unreflectiveof the German rhythmic, repetitive, terse opening lines: Ever since Idecided to write this book, Ihaveasked myself whynow,why only now, why still now. (PL 1) (Seitich beschlossen habe, dieses Buch zu schreiben, frage ich mich, warum jetzt, warum erst jetzt, warum jetzt noch. (PB 7)) Maron’s style is economical and essentially postmodern21.Words are carefully chosen and translation is difficult: Whyshould Ifeel that Ihad to justifymywriting this story, about which littleiscertain, even nowwhen the fate of this vanished generation, and that of theirchildren,has been assigned to history, where it has been entombed. When nothing new can be added to the life stories such as those of Pavel and Josefa Iglarz, and certainlynot by someone whoisfollowing theirtraces from asafe distance. (PL 1) (Warum habeich überhaupt das Gefühl, rechtfertigen zu müssen, dab ich diese Ge- schichte, an der wenig sicher ist, schreiben will, jetzt noch, nachdem die Schicksale dieser gerade versunkenen Generation der Historie zugeordnet und in ihr vermauert wurden,selbstdie ihrer Kinder.Nachdem überLebensläufe wiedie vonPawel und Josefa Iglarz wenigNeueszusagen ist, schon gar nichtvon jemanden, der ihnen aus sicherer Entfernung nachspürt.(PB 7)) The ‘versunkene’ generation is not well rendered into ‘this vanished generation’ and the significance of ‘vermauert’, (reminiscentof‘Mauer’) is not successfully translated by ‘entombed’.

21 By postmodernIrefer to astyle characterized by irony,playfulness, intertextuality, metafiction,temporal distortion, self-consciousness about languageand literaryform and other characteristics of fiction outlined by Patricia WaughinMetafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-consciousFiction 49. 118 Anna Nunan

The translation of Pawel’s letters alsosuffers from omissions and awkward formulations:

“Dear Marta, youwrite, howIam youcan imagine.” Pawelawaited his owndeath. “I knowitwon’t be long and Ishall go the same way,”…He reported little about life in the ghetto as the letters were censored… Neither the approaching deathnor the miseryof ghetto life was what robbed him of his mind. It was that the life lived was in the end devalued, that his moralityhad been taken from him, the loveofhis wife that had been taken away.“Andnow…Iask of you, don’t hold it against me that Mama was made so unhappybecause of me, for ultimately Iamthe cause of all her misfortune. Butinthe end, and Imust add this, Mama married me for love, for that was all Ihad… Thirty- eight years we lived together and in the last three yearsshe shared with me the bitter pain of being separated from her loved ones, and it wasn’t granted to me either to be with her during her last hours nor to lead her to her grave. (PL 92–94) (»LiebeMarta, du schreibst, wieesmir geht, könntihr euchdenken. Meine liebeMarta, das könntihr euch nichtdenken.« Pawel erwartete den eigenen Tod; »ich weib es wird nichtmehr lange dauernund ich werdeauch den gleichenWeg gehen… VomLeben im Ghetto berichtet er wenig,die Briefe wurden kontrolliert… Nichtder nahe Todund nichtdas Elend des Ghettolebens bringen ihn fast um den Verstand, sonderndas nachträglich entwertete gelebte Leben, die geraubte Sittlichkeit, die enteignete Liebezu seiner Frau. »Und nun…tragtesmir nichtnach, dab Mama durch michsounglücklich geworden ist, denn schlieblich bin ich die Ursache vonall ihremUnglück. Aber letzten Endes, und das mub ich Dir noch sagen, hatMama mich ausLiebegeheiratet, denn ich hattesonst nichts… Achtunddreibig Jahre haben wirzusammengelebt und sie hat in den letzten 3Jahren mit mir das bittere Leid, vonihren Lieben getrenntzusein, geteilt, und es war mir nichtvergönnt, ihren letzten Stunden beizuwohnen, noch sie zu Grabe zu geleiten…(PB 136–8))

The omission of atranslation for the chilling “das könntihr euch nichtdenken” is worrisome. “Censored” does not correlate well with “kontrolliert”, “robbed him of his mind” with “bringen ihn fast um den Verstand” and “lead her to her grave” is an unusual collocation. The task of the translator hasbeen described as not that of ‘assembling’ what is to be conveyed since the writer has alreadydone that, but to find the intended effectuponthe language into which he is trans- lating22.HereGoldstein loses the intendedeffectuponthe languageintowhich she is translating and the echo of the original which has anumbing effectonthe reader. The translation of the section of the book referring to Maron’s 1996 tripto Ostrow(94 km northeast of Warsaw) also contains several unsuccessful trans-

22 Walter Benjamin writes that the task of the translatoristo“find the intention towardthe language into which the work is to be translated, on the basis of which an echo of the original can be awakened in it” 159. Afundamental errormade by the translator is to “hold fast to the state in which his ownlanguage happens to be ratherthan allowing it to be put powerfully in movementbythe foreignlanguage” 163. Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 119 lations. This is aserious shortcoming because the transmission of asense of the site of Pawel’s death has importantrepercussions and implications for Maron’s writing.

As we walked around the decaying white house, for which the dead Jews had to make way, to discernthe reason of its existence, aman leaningonthe garden fence, watched us, seemingly waiting for us to ask questions… The librarian showed us the death register for the years 1847/48… When we foundtwo entries for the name Iglarz, we werejubilant. As if this confirmed our search in Ostrowtoberight…After the bleak light of the previous dayand the sight of the hypocritical meadowwith the white house, this testimony,the word that had not been wiped out, the nameIglarz that had not been erased, was likearedemption… We tried the gymnasium;agymnasium should also be responsible for the historyofthe town,Ireasoned… The priest lived rightonthe next block, said aman. The priest’s housekeeper reminded me of Canetti’s Therese, who oozed hostility likeholy water oozes its scent… The woman Kunicka was again not home. (PL 67–71) (Als wirdas halbverfallene weißeHaus, dessen Fundamenten die begrabenen Juden hatten weichen müssen, umstrichen und den Sinn seiner Existenz zu ergründen suchten, beobachtete uns ein Mann,der beide Arme aufseinen Gartenzaum gelehnt, darauf zu warten schien, daß wirihn was fragten… Die Biobliothekarin brachte uns einenBand des jüdischen Sterberegisters fürdie Jahre 1847/48…Als wirdarin zweimal den Namen Iglarz fanden, triumphierten wir, als hätte es dieser Bestätigung bedurft, um zu glauben, daß wirzuRechtinOstrowsuchten… Aberim tristen Lichtdes Vortags und nach dem Anblick der scheinheiligen Wiese mit dem weißen Haus darauf war dieses Zeugnis, das nichtgetilgte Wort,der nichtgelöschte Name Iglarz, wieeine Erlösung füruns… Wirversuchten es im Gymnasium;ein Gymnasium ist auch fürdie Geschichte der eigenen Stadt zuständig, dachte ich… Der Priesterwohnte gleich im Block nebenan,sagte ein Mann. Die Haushälterin des Priesters erinnerte mich an Canettis Therese, sie verströmte Feindseligkeit wieWeihwasser seinen Duft… Die Kunicka war wieder nichtzuHause. (PL 101–107))

Here the translation is awkward, careless and casual:“confirmed our search to be right”, “the hypocritical meadow”, “gymnasium” (the German word ‘Gym- nasium’ does not correlate with its cognate in English), “right on the next block”, “holy water oozes its scent” and “was again not home” do not appear to be successful English translations. The notation in the text that the interpreter was not translating fast enough to capture everything the genealogist, principal or register related about wartime Poland on this trip increases the sense of insecurityabout that which is being ‘lost in translation’. The factthat Hella spoke only Polish prior to going to school and Pawel spokeRussian, German and Hebrew as well as Polish and Yiddish also provokereflection on the medium of communication in the Iglarz family.The insecurityabout the need for knowledge of Polish in order to understand this storyadds to the author’s and reader’s concern about the German text. If Pawel spokePolish regularly,itisdifficult to 120 Anna Nunan capture his experience in atext that is written only in German. An English text lacking in fluencyand reliability, accentuates the doubt about the possibilityof rendering Pawel’s experience of the Holocaust into language. The translation of Maron’s triptoPoland is critical because it is an important factorinthe interpretation of Pawels Briefe as apostmemorial Holocaust text. Marianne Hirsch has suggested that images and stories of the Holocaust can have apowerful appeal for non-witnesses and can constitute memories in their ownright.She suggests that ‘post-memory’ of the Holocaust is not an identity position, but “a space of remembrance, more broadly available throughcultural and public, and not merely individual and personal, acts of remembrance, identification, and projection”23.This mix of cultural, public, personal, remembrance, identification and projection characterizes Maron’s text well. Pa- wels Briefe has been interpreted as writingthat is driven by the “dynamic between local and cosmopolitan models of representation and memorialization of the Holocaust”24.Joanna Stimmel claims that the characterization of Pawels Briefe as eine Familiengeschichte points to the centralityoffamilial memoryand history, but Maron“never loses sight of the larger context of German public memoryand historical consciousness”25.Maron tackles the German debates on victimhood and perpetratorship in WWII and its aftermathand struggles to understand the reasons for drastic gaps in familialand national memory. Questioning the ‘documentarystatus’ of eyewitness testimonybut lacking direct knowledge of the described events, Maronuses archival material such as photographs, letters and statistical data that are partofthe cosmopolitan memoryof the Holocaust and German cultural memoryinPawels Briefe. The photographs help link the narrator with the ‘other’ and help project the narrator into the role of witness or participant. ForRoland Barthes, photographs provide agatewayto the never-had-memoryofdepicted persons, places and events26 and can restore the realityofwhat is gone which is the kind of experience sought by Maron in her attempt to understand her grandfather. Maron recognises the limits of representation inherentinthe photographic medium. She tries to imagine her grandparentsincolour,but the black-and- white images prove stronger.She does not assumethat photographs constitute natural representations of reality, she points out the constructedness of the photographs in her reference to the choreographyofthe photographer:“obwohl ich weib,dabdie choreographische Geschlossenheit der kleinen Gruppe dem

23 Marianne Hirsch in “‘Projected Memory’ Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy” 8–9. 24 Joanna Stimmel in “Holocaust Memorybetween Cosmopolitanism and Nation-Specificity: Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe and JaroslawRymkiewicz’s Umschlagplatz”152. 25 Ibid. 26 Roland Barthes in CameraLucida 9. Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 121

Fotografenzuverdanken ist, wirken sie aufmich einander so verbunden, einer so gesichertdurch den anderen, dab mich beiihrem Anblick dasschon erwähnte irrationale Heimweh überkommt” (PB 47) (“althoughIknowthatthe choreographyofthe little group was arranged by the photographer,they seem so closely connected to each other that the sight overwhelms me with the irrational sense of nostalgia” (PL 29)). Joanna Stimmel claims that the photographs in Pawels Briefe have become emblems of ‘pastness and history’ and “even the intensely personal images from Maron’s privatecollection have in away escaped her individual domain and becomepartofthe cosmopolitan memoryofthe Holocaust”27.This transition from the personal to the cultural realm relates to the modifications within the substance of the photographic medium itself. Stimmel claims that “For the second generation looking at the photographs of those whoperished in the “Final Solution,”… the veryuncanniness of the future reality –the imminent death of the depicted would-be victims –iswhat the spectator,immersed in the cosmopolitanized Holocaust memory, knows and expects from the given image”28.Maron is aware that the void leftbyher grandparents’ death can be filled with cultural icons, and their storyreplaced by well-known narratives long partofthe cultural memoryofthe Holocaust:“Um mir das alltägliche Leben meiner Grobeltern vorstellen zu können, muss ich vergessen, wiesie gestorben sind” (PB 23) (“In order to imaginemygrandparents daily life, Imust forget how they died” (PL 12)). She is conscious that their death shapes their memoryand her image of them and that there is ahighrisk as time passes that only the cosmopolitanized Holocaust memory will survive and the personal domain will be lost. The Polish national representation of the Holocaust is also relevanttoMar- on’s approach to Holocaust representation in Pawels Briefe. On her trip to Os- trow Maronexpects Poles to be unfriendly and unhelpful which is clear in her comment: “Am nächsten Morgen gingen wirzuerst in die Stadtbibliothek, wo eine blonde Frau vonMitte Dreibig sich als unerwartet hilfreich und freundlich erwies”(PB 103) (“Thenext morning we wentfirst to the municipal library where ablonde woman in her mid-thirties turned out to be unexpectedly friendly and helpful” (PL 69)). Apeasantisdirty and disgusting:“Nein, er kenne keine Juden. Die Deutschen hatten damals viele erschossen, die anderen ver- trieben, das hätte er erlebt, sagte er.Seine Kleider starrten vor Dreck. Er stank, noch am Abend hatte ich seinen Gestank in der Nase” (PB 102) (Nohedidn’t knowany Jews. The Germans shot alot of people back then, others were driven

27 Joanna Stimmel in “Holocaust Memorybetween Cosmopolitanism and Nation-Specificity: Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe and JaroslawRymkiewicz’s Umschlagplatz”155. 28 Ibid, 156. 122 Anna Nunan out. He lived throughthat, he said. His clothes were stiff with dirt. He had abad smell about him, the stench lingered in my nose untilthe evening” (PL 68)). The Poles are intentonnoting that Germans shot Poles whohid Jews. For these individuals Poles are victims not Jews. The school principal discusses German war crimes against Russian POWs and does not mention the Holocaust. Maron does not denythe victim status of Poles but is irritated by the attitude towards the Polish Jewish population in Ostrow. Stimmel claims thatmuch of Maron’s description draws from national bias and misrepresentation and that although her critique of the Holocaust repressioninPoland maybejustified, Maron chooses “not to distinguish between the propaganda inherentinpostwar historiography, the general public’sview and individual recollections”29.Iargue that Maron has sympathyfor the Polish frustration with German occupation and recognises that the recollections of those she speaks to are individual accounts, but she refusestoaccept the lack of atrace of Jewish settlers in Ostrowin1996. She does not thematize Polish anti-Semitism, but is concerned with acts of remembrance, identification, and projection for Holocaust victims. She makes reference to the ongoing sufferingcaused by the Holocaust (in her loss of her grandfather) and is searching for ameans of memorializing the dead whose murder was supposed to leave no traceoftheir existence. Herwriting functions as amarkerofanindividual life and death, in McGlothlin’s terms, a‘fictional gravestone’ that permits mourning.This is aprocess in which she can rebuild a life in which she is capable of tolerating and absorbing the loss of her grandfather. Pawels Briefe is apostmemorial Holocaust text that centres on asophisticated, differentiated toneand approach to the subjectofJewish victims of National Socialism and cross-cultural representation of theShoah. It is crucialthat any translation of the text makes this diversified view of the Holocaust transparent. The existing English translation of Pawels Briefe disregards the sensitivityofthe text and Maron’s oblique,reflective,compelling approach to Pawel’saccountand tempers the literarytexture of the text. The accessibilityofMaron’s text to the general readership of Holocaust literatureisimpaired with this translation, therebyinhibiting readers’ access to the wider diversity of the remaining first and second generationpostmemorial texts on the Holocaust.

29 Ibid. Translating Monika Maron’s Pawels Briefe as aPostmemorial Holocaust Text 123

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Poetry of Memory and Traumaand their Translation

This paper deals with literarytestimonies of memoryand trauma and their translation. Particular focus will be placed on the ethical positioning of the translator who, when transferring atext to adifferentlanguage and culture, acquires acommitmenttothe author and the readers, but also has to assume responsibilities concerning the cultures involved. Translationisnot merely an information transfer but the construction of anew elementinthe practice of discourse of the social target community(Spivak 179). To this effect, con- cordantly with authors such as Vidal, Venuti or Spivak, translation mayreveal, favour or subvertinstances of cultural conflict. Nevertheless, the linguistic and social communitytakes decisions of social acceptance or rejection according to explicit and implicit norms. In other words, we cannot ignore the community’s importance in the process of decision taking. According to AndrØ Lefevere it is the patronage,understood as institutions, editors, the media or individual persons, whoexternally control and monitor literature. Without anydoubt, both the creation and translation of literaturehave to be capable of searchingfor possibilities of drawing parallels of ethical and political issues questioning dominantpower,but, as Vidal claims, without turning their agents into centers of power (Vidal 101). The translator has to be able to recognize relations between knowledge and power as well as to question dominantpower relations. Translation is never harmless:“Maybeone of the most inspiring aspects of translation is that it allows us to see the traces others have leftinus, in their habitus,their symbolic capitals, in howfar realitydoesnot exist as such, but in manyversions or provisional, fragile realities.” (Vidal101)1 Translation of Holocaust literatureoffers possible meanings- or rather questions certain meanings, but can also performsocio-political action. It can regain amodel of memory, which, according to Todorovshouldbeable to establish continuitybetween the past and the presentand should offer amodel

1Translationmine. From nowonthe translationofthe texts quoted have been proposed by the author of this chapter. 126 Rosa Marta Gómez Pato for understanding new situations. Therefore, the past is the origin of action in the presentand translation of this past could have an ethical and political dimension. It is revealing to see thatprecisely the memoryofthe Holocaust brought about research and cultural creations related to the Spanish CivilWar and to re- pressions during Franco’s regime. Historical research and cultural production concerning the Holocaust was popularised in Spain in the 1980s and 1990s. Literarytranslation of Holocaust literatureintoSpanish and other official languages of Spainhas alreadyoffered importantcontributions. At the same time, the cultural system into which the language is translated had been prepared to receivesuch translations at this moment. It was able to incorporate discourses related to the Spanish historical memory, in particular to the Civil Warand to the dictatorship of Franco. Thirty years after the death of Franco,atthe beginning of the twenty-first century, the Spanish governmentbegan to takethe first decisions about howto deal with the victims,about howtorepairand restore in moral ways.2 It is not surprising to see that the topic of the Holocaust couldnot emergesignificantly before in Spain, sincesilence and omissions in the historical past of the country have been presentever since the Civil War. The first editor and writer to in- troduce Holocaust literatureinSpain was MarioMuchnik, whointhe late 1970s and 1980s promoted authors such as Leon Poliakov,Elias Canetti,Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi in differenteditions. Muchnik propagated anew kind of literatureof imported texts. Later,this literature became accepted,and readers began to claim their ownproductions. This fact, along with the appearance of cine- matographic productions such as StevenSpielberg’s Schindler’s list (1993) created anew Spanish audience that asked for and consumed this kind of literature. In the middleofthe 1990s, Spanish authors such as Antonio MuÇoz Molina, Adolfo García Ortega, Juana SalabertorMaria Àngels Anglada, the last publishing in Catalan, also dealt with the Holocaust. The texts of these authors comprise amap of multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009) in which memorytranscends exclusiveschemata and existing parameters or nationally determined geographic locations. The topic of the Holocaust slides into Spanish history, creating atransnational and transcultural memory. By offering aplatformfor other crimes against humanityand geno-

2For more informationabout the recoveryofhistorical memoryinSpain and the Holocaust see SergioGµlvez Biseca. Web. 30 March 2014. http://memoriarecuperada.ua.es/wp-content/ uploads/2012/10/Galvez_El-proceso_de_la_recuperacion_memoria.pdf and Xoµn Garrido VilariÇo “Recepción das traducións galegas da Literatura do Holocausto dirixidas ao pﬄblico infantil” in Alonso,Ana Luna and SilviaMontero Küpper (eds.). Tradución epolítica editorial de Literaturainfantilexuvenil. Vigo:Servicio de Publicacións da Universidade de Vigo.2006. 287–305. Poetry of Memory and Trauma and their Translation 127 cides, the memoryofthe Shoah constructs apolitical cultureofmemorywith a universal character. German literaturedealing with the Holocaust appeared in translation in Spain in the 1970s in translated versions by Nelly Sachs or Paul Celan. Butitisnot until the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first centurywhen libraries and bookshops displayed an ample number of translated texts fromGerman into Spanish about this topic. This significantincrease has to be related to the re- cuperation of Spanish historicmemoryand also to the augmentation of publications in German in the 1980s. Aneed for responding to the omissions and misrepresentations of national institutions emerged in thatdecade. This is reflected by the visualization and the mass propagation related to the Second World Warand the Nazi regime. From the 1990s we find textsconcerning these historical periods in Spain by authors such as GudrunPausewang,Mirjam Pressler,Hans Peter Richter,Uwe Timm, Günter Grass, Victor Klemperer,Jean AmØry, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno,W.G. Sebald, Ruth Klüger,Peter Weiss and Jörg Friedrich and other previously named authors. Concerning German Holocaust poetry3 we nowfind translationsalso of texts by Hilde Domin, Ger- trudKolmar and Ilse Aichinger into Spanish.4 From Rosa Ausländer’s work there is only one published translation into Catalan, her book Ichzähl die Sterne meiner Worte,published in Catalan in 1997 and entitled Compto els estels dels meus mots. The appearance of these publications in the Spanish literarysystem is mainly duetothe factthat they are publications by significantauthors;some of them are included in the canon of universal literatureand have been translated into various languages. Whatfollows are some examples of the analysis of the poetic languageofthis kind of literatureand of the difficulties of translating the texts into other languages. Istartbytranslating the lyricwork Verschenkter Rat5 by the Austrian author Ilse Aichinger6 into Spanish. The choice of this work is deliberate for

3This concept is used to refer to the atrocities committed in the historical periodofNational Socialism in the ThirdReich, texts thatintend to reconstructthe memoryofmillionsmur- deredatthe same time. Cf.,for example, Ruth Klüger, Still Allive: AHolocaust Girlhood Remembered (New Yo rk:The Feminist Press at The CityUniversityofNew Yo rk, 2001); Weiter leben. Eine Jugend (Göttingen:Wallstein Verlag, 1992). 4Even thoughthere is no translationofRosa Ausländer’s work into Spanish, Ihavediscovered translations published in Argentina. See, for example: Madretierra Palabra: Poemas selectos de Rose Ausländer. [Rose Ausländer;Traducción al castellano de Erika Blumgrund] Buenos Aires:Milµ, 2005. 5 Verschenkter Rat was published in 1978 and its translationintoSpanishin2011 (Consejo gratuito. Frontispiece by Antonio Gamoneda. TranslatedbyRosa Marta Gómez Pato.Ou- rense:Linteo). In this work, Ilse Aichinger’s poems written between 1958 and 1978 are collected for the first time. 6Ilse Aichinger (1921, Vienna) is considered oneofthe most famous authors of Austrian literature.She is awriter of calm subversion and was oneoffirst to deal with the devastation 128 Rosa Marta Gómez Pato various reasons:itisawork of the highest aesthetic qualityand her work was practically unknown in the Spanish cultural system. Furthermore, as translator I have always felt the need of trying to makewomen’s literatureaccessible to a wide readership and give voice to their lost worlds. In contrast to poems by authors likePaulCelan, Nelly Sachs or Rose Aus- länder,Aichinger’s work does not explicitly deal with the Holocaust, but many characteristics concerning Holocaust literaturethat can be observedindifferent poetic texts are also detected in her poetic production. In Aichinger’s work a subtle notion of the Holocaust can be perceived, although she does not mention it as such. We do not find adescriptionofahistoric disaster,but the use of very intimateimagerydescribing memories and experiences which are sometimes difficult to decipher.Asinother literarytexts concerning the Holocaust, concepts and traditional representations are to be questioned. Most of the textsdo not have an explicativediscourse. Thoughts, feelings and memories are expressed in alanguage that is not overtly explicit, but that lets the reader perceive something intimate fromthe past. The author’s ownworld and her individual experience are represented in away that makes her seem universal:the textsare exemplarymemories which convert the past into aprinciple of critical and committed position taking. Aichinger is convinced that literature is able to defyestablished relationships of power and order and to give voice to those whohavebeen traditionally excluded and silenced. Anotherdetermining aspectofAichinger’s work is the search for anew kind of languageinorder to constructanew identity.Origi- nating in the experiences they hadduring National Socialism, manyauthors have been brought to distrust and rejectany kind of existing power.They question language, since it had becomemanipulated and ruined by the National Socialists. These authors deal with the incapacityofencountering words to representsufferingand put those experiences into asuitable narrative –adifficult task in Aichinger’s work, as much as in other poems aboutthe Holocaust. Identity will also have to be re-constructed from memories. For Ilse Aichinger, the Holocaust is apossibilitytorelearn language supported by acritical approach:

Wervon euch ist kein Fremder?Juden, Deutsche, Amerikaner,fremd sind wiralle hier. Wirkönnen sagen ‘Guten Morgen’ oder ‘Es wird hell’, ‘Wie gehtesIhnen?’, ‘Ein Gewitter kommt’, und das ist alles, waswir sagen können, fast alles. Nurgebrochen

provoked by National Socialism using anovel kind of language.She and her family were persecuted by the Nazis from 1933 onwards.In1942, her grandmother was taken to aconcentration camp and was murdered, together with other family members and friends. After the war Aichinger began to study medicine, but abandoned her studies in order to dedicate herself completely to writing.Memoryand absences are constitutiveelements of her life and literary work. Poetry of Memory and Trauma and their Translation 129

sprechen wirunsere Sprache. Undihr wollt das Deutsche verlernen?Ich helfe euch nichtdazu. Aber ich helfe euch,esneu zu erlernen, wieein Fremder eine Sprache lernt, vorsichtig, behutsam,wie man ein Lichtanzündet in einem dunklen Haus und wieder weitergeht(Aichinger, Die größere Hoffnung,90). The search for adifferentornew languageleads to the continuityofavant- gardism. Passed on forms and traditional motives are converted. Themes of German and Jewish literatureare conveyed in amodernlanguage that is pro- cessed in averyprecise way. What we find is unconventional and (partly) problematiclyrical imagery. Themes are saturated with experience and among them are Biblical motifs and topics from the Jewish tradition. The translation of her work is difficult, as it is that of manyother Holocaust texts in which identity conflictsare often dealt with and in which we find agreat number of images related to Jewish culture. Their translationstoother cultural contexts often call for the use of parallel explicativetexts. These texts –which are often in- troductions to the historical context, the work itself and the author’s poetry – showawayofunderstanding the lyricpoetryofdifferentcultural contexts. Furthermore, the translation of the poetic work of this author is not easy,particularly because poetic assumptions are based on the traditions of Sprachskepsis (language scepticism)and Sprachkritik (language criticism) which also determined the work of manyAustrian post-war writers. One of its poetic principles is the utopian vision of alanguage free fromany communicative obliga- tion. The language employed has to include silence, fromwhich words that enable adifferentvision of realityemerge. Silence represents the “other” place of language, from which it is possible to view the system and the discourse of power “differently” and to overcome them. The author expresses this in abrief essay she wroteabout Joseph Conrad with the following words:

Um wieder notwendig zu werden, müssen sie [die Wörter] die Lautlosigkeit zu- rückgewinnen, ausder sie notwendig entstanden. Wassie bezeichnen zerfällt,wenn sie es nichtlautlos bezeichnen, was sie mitteilen, wird zur Lüge, wenn ihre Lautlosigkeit es nichtdeckt. Fragen nach dem gegenseitigen Befindenund die jeweiligen Antworten darauf –wenn ein Dialogkeine Farce werden soll, muß die Lautlosigkeit mit im Spiel sein.Sie entspringtwieder dem NurZusehen, das identisch ist mit dem NurZuhören, d.h. der genauestenvon allen Arten des Beobachtens […]Das heißt, im Spielmit den Wörternseine eigene Lautlosigkeit in die ihre einbringen. Das heißtindiesem Zeitalter, in dem alles erzählt und nichts angehört wird,alles aufden Kopf stellen (Aichinger, Kleist, Moos, Fasane,91). One of the main difficulties encountered when translating the poems was the author’s choice of language which is characterized by lexical and syntactic ambiguity, compound word formation, oxymorons, irony and paradoxes. Concerning syntax, we often find anominal style arising from her conciseness, as well as ellipsis and ambiguoussyntacticstructures, sometimes even gram- 130 Rosa Marta Gómez Pato matically incorrect, which Imaintained in my translation in order to keep the author’s style. Herpoems makeuse of astrange language;wefind new metaphors associated with averypersonal world which makes appropriateinter- pretation more difficult. Also,there are numerous phonosymbolic elements such as alliterations, onomatopoeia, sound combinations etc. which replace lines or rigidstanzas giving the poem internal cohesion and acoustic expression. These images evokecertain feelings accounting for an importantfactorofthe perception of meaning.Whenever possible, Itried to evokethe same effects in the translation. In order to briefly illustrate this Ihavechosen some of the author’s poems which makeuse of significantsilences, the experience of emp- tiness of the Holocaust.

Winterantwort Die Welt ist ausdem Stoff, der Betrachtung verlangt: keine Augen mehr, um die weißen Wiesen zu sehen, keine Ohren,umimGeäst das Schwirren der Vögel zu hören. Großmutter,wosind deine Lippen hin, um die Gräser zu schmecken, und wer riechtuns den Himmel zu Ende, wessen Wangenreibensich heute noch wund an den MauernimDorf? Ist es nichtein finsterer Wald, in den wirgerieten? Nein, Großmutter,erist nichtfinster, ich weiß es, ich wohnte lang beiden KindernamRande, und es ist auch kein Wald. Respuesta invernal El mundo es de la materia que exige contemplación: ya no quedan ojos para ver los prados blancos ni oídos para oír en la enramada el revolotear de los pµjaros. Abuela,¿adóndesehan ido tus labios para saborear las hierbas? y¿quiØn terminadeolernos el cielo hasta el final? ¿De quiØn son las mejillasque aﬄn hoy se hierenalrozarse en los muros del pueblo? ¿Noesunbosquesombrío, Øste en el que caímos? Poetry of Memory and Trauma and their Translation 131

No,abuela, no es sombrío, lo sØ, viví mucho tiempo con los niÇosenellinde ytampoco es un bosque. There are two voices that “speak” in this poem:agrandmother,who seems to be dead, and achild, for whom life and death are not yet differentand whoanswers the grandmother’s questions. The form, not the content, of the questions asked by the grandmother recalls the fairytale “Little RedRiding Hood”(with dif- ferentpossibilities of interpretation). The poem does not recall voices fromthe past, but goes back to this past showing aspace of transition full of sounds and feelings. In order to achieve this, the author makes use of phonostylistic re- sources (phonetic elements of style) intending to commemoratecertain images associated with the traumata experienced during the Nazi regime. Among these stylistic devices the alliterations of the alveolar fricative un- voiced and voiced /s/ in the fourth verse and of the labiodental fricative /v/ in the verses four,ten and eleven,such as internal accords (as for example in the sixth verse “Vögel zu hören”) are outstanding.Also,repetitions of words such as “Großmutter” or “Wald” or syntacticstructures such as “um…zu” (Verse 4–6) give the poem flexibilityand rhythm. The author exploits language to its maximum, while the poetic “I” complains about the loss of capacityfor perceiving reality. By making use of all these stylistic devices the author favours the perception of this realityvia sounds, reflecting at the same time the suggestive capacitylanguage can have. In the translated version these elements are sustained to alesser extent, taking into consideration the intention to preserve a balance between the translation of the words and the meaning the author has intended to give the poem by using these words and not others. Ihavetried to maintain the suggestivefunction of the languagevia internal assonances, for example in the lines four and five -“prados blancos” and “oídos oír”-, or by means of alliterations such as repetition of the liquid rhotic /r/ in the lines five and six in order to evoke the noise of birds flappingorthe repetition of the syllable /s/ in the lines seven and eight in order to evoke awhispering sound of the fragile poetic I. Iwas able to maintain the syntacticstructures of the repetitions in lines four and five. In the child’s answers to the grandmother in Winterantwort the author takes us to apossible future:Whatwill happen when there are no sensoryorgans any more, no eyes, no ears, and no lips?Wewill look at life. Whatwill happen after this life?Autopia that shows that the world cannot be what it used to be,but what it might come to be.The negation of the world or acritique on civilization claims for ade- and reconstruction of afuture world. 132 Rosa Marta Gómez Pato

Kurzes Schlaflied Rouen sollbei dirsein, derApfelzucker, die bessereSonne ohne Gewalttat, es soll beidir sein Rouen, Rouen. First Version:

Breve canción de cuna Ro,ro, estarµ junto ati el azﬄcar de la manzana, un sol mejor sin violencia estarµ junto ati, ro,ro, ro. Second Version:

Breve canción de cuna Ruµn estarµ junto ati, el azﬄcar de la manzana, un sol mejor sin violencia, estarµ junto ati Ruµn, Ruµn. In spite of the shortness and simple syntacticand semantic structures, the translation of Short nurseryrhyme hasbeen difficult duetoanumber of reasons. The poem recovers the past memoryinorder to constructafuture viaanursery rhymewhose primaryaudience is children. Memory appears as autopia. This nurseryrhyme is characterized by asimple syntacticstructure by means of a specular symmetry 1/2 and 6/7. This does not change in the translation. Also,the repetition of “Rouen” at the beginning and at the end of the poem, which provides internal semanticcohe- sion, has been maintained. Nevertheless, this was the word that was most difficult to translate. “Rouen” could refer to the proper name of the French city Rouen. Similarly,this termcan be acoustically associated with the German word “ruhen” (to rest). Bearing this aspectinmind, “Rouen” would lose its significance by simply evoking asound associated with asilentand peaceful atmosphere in this nurseryrhyme. In order to create this atmosphere, the sound “ro, ro”isused in the first versionofthe translation. This sound can be easily Poetry of Memory and Trauma and their Translation 133 found in nurseryrhymes and also is associated with whispers and quietness. The translation has been maintained in this wayinversionone. However,wethink that the author did not simply choose the word “Rouen” in order to create an atmosphere of calmness, but also because of its historic connotations. Rouen was the place of suffering of Jeanne d’Arc, atopic that had importance again in the Second WorldWar when, in 1944, aircraft bombs destroyedthe famous bell of Jeanne d’Arc. If we translated “Rouen” to the onomatopoeic sound “ro,ro”, this meaningwould be completely lost. In the final translation, which is the second version, the vibrant/r/ is used in the repetitionofthe word “Ruµn” and could be associated with the whispered “ro,ro” of the nurseryrhyme. Finally,one should not forget that even though the lines do not have anylyric metre the text’s rhythm contributes to the creation of aspecialatmosphere. In this case, the melodic character of the song is conveyed by the use of accents, the divisionoflines into an even number and the repetition of certain words such as “Rouen” –“Ruµn” or the phrase “soll beidir sein” –“estarµ junto ati”.

Meiner Großmutter Die Doppeltüren in den Modenapark, die Frage nachdem Ursprung, nachden Religionen, die Salesianergasse, die FrauMajor Schultz, die Excellenz Zwitkowitsch, das Erschrecken, die Demut, die Abhängigkeit, das Fräulein Belmont, die Zuflucht, der fremde Flur, das Tor, das aufspringt, der tolle Hund, erschrick nicht, er ist weiß, noch klein und läuftvorbei. Amiabuela Losportalones del parque Módena, la pregunta sobreelorigen, sobrelas religiones, 134 Rosa Marta Gómez Pato

la calle Salesianergasse, la seÇora del comandanteSchultz, su excelencia Zwitkowitsch, el terror, la humildad, la dependencia, la seÇorita Belmont, el refugio, el pasillo extraÇo, el portal que se abre de repente, el perro loco, no te asustes, es blanco, pequeÇo aﬄn, ypasa de largo. The next poem is dedicatedtothe author’s grandmother with whom she used to liveand whowas murdered, along with other members of the family and friends, by the Nazis in aconcentration camp.InMeiner Großmutter Aichinger uses a concise, nearly nominal language to describeaseries of memories about the intimateworld of her childhood.Iwas able to preserve the great number of anaphors in the target text, being the major challenge to translatepersonal and place names together with formal ways of addressing people like“FrauMajor”, “Excellenz”, etc. The translation intends to maintain anaphors and shortlines which lend rhythm and melody to the poem. Here, as in other poems by the author,little details and the impressions that are described seem to refer to veryspecific moments and places. Widmung Ichschreibe euch keine Briefe, aber es wäre mir leicht, mit euch zu sterben. Wirließen uns sachtdie Monde hinunter und läge die erste Rast noch beiden wollenen Herzen, die zweite fände uns schon mit Wölfen und Himbeergrün und dem nichts lindernden Feuer,die dritte, da wäre ich durch das fallende dünne Gewölk mit seinen spärlichen Moosen Poetry of Memory and Trauma and their Translation 135

und das arme Gewimmel der Sterne, das wirsoleicht überschritten in eurem Himmel beieuch. Dedicatoria No os escriboninguna carta, Pero me sería fµcil morir con vosotros. Nosdeslizaríamos suavemente por las lunas ysielprimer descanso reposase aﬄn en los corazones de lana, el segundo nos encontraría ya con los lobos yelverde de las frambuesas ycon el fuego que nada calma, en el tercero, ahí estaría yo, entrelas nubes delgadasque descienden con sus musgos ralos ylapobremuchedumbre de las estrellas que nosotros tan fµcilmente atravesamos, ahí estaría yo,envuestro cielo,con vosotros. The most noticeable aspectofthis poem is the power which the author givesto those whonolonger exist:byusing apronoun in first person plural she gives them avoice and involves them in adialogue. Again, as in Winterantwort,the world of the living and the world of the dead are not distinguished;the author creates akind of fairy-tale-likelocation. In these dangerous forests wolves are necessarytostayalive. The greatest difficulty of translating the text was to transfer these new metaphors that do not correspond to the Spanish cultural system into Spanish. The author uses unusualcombinations of nouns and ad- jectivessuch as “das arme Gewimmel der Sterne”, “linderndes Feuer” or “wollene Herzen”. Also,visual images are importantand thereforethe contentof the respectivelines should not varytoo much. Little details and impressions that are described in the poems by the author refer to precise moments and spaces. They mayseem enigmatic to the reader but they are no longer privatewhen the poetic Iisrelated to collective memory. The poem becomes areadable landscape, awritten life not only by apoeticIbut also by the lost and the forgotten. The remembrance of the past and the commitmenttothe presentjoin in homage to those whoare no longer here. 136 Rosa Marta Gómez Pato

Conclusions

My intention was to showhow the traumatic and devastating experience of persecution, repressionand genocide in National Socialism gravitate in apoetic work that does not directly deal with the topic of the Holocaust. Ilse Aichinger’s texts transfer memoryintothe presenttime and establish acalm dialogue with absentpeople. At the same time they are asubversive and provocativeresponse to the presentand to conformismwith established norms. Herliterature dis- covers the violentstructures of power that are still operating after Hitler:“So aggressiv, so die auch nach Hitler fortwirkenden Strukturen vonGewalt freile- gend, kann Dichtung sein,deren gesellschaftskritische Dimensionen erst seit dem Ende der siebziger Jahrewahrgenommen werden” (Reichensperger 5–6). Some of the formal and thematic characteristics of these texts can also be found in the work of authors such as Nelly Sachs, Rose Ausländer or Paul Celan.Their metaphoric languageirritates, shocks and surprises;itbrings us images that showthe scars “welche die Hufschläge der apokalyptischen Reiter in der Sprache hinterlassen haben.”7 My intention was also to showthe difficulties in the process of translation.Iintended to highlight and indicate personal reflections concerning the process of poetic translation in which phonosymbolic instru- ments playanimportantrole in poetic composition. Ialso showed howformand contentare intrinsically tied and howphonostylistic elements have been used to recreate the same effects that the poem provokes in the language of origin. The translator hastobalance conceptual and formal aspectsoflanguage. My objective was both to recreate the beauty of these poems as well as to showthe ethical commitmentand responsibilityofthe translator. Making memoryaccessible to the presenttime viapoetryshould be an ethicalobligationtosocietyand to thehuman world. Ihope that as atranslator Iwas able to contribute to this enterprise. Ilse Aichinger’s poems show possibilities of memory, commitmentand subversion–threemain principles for the Austrian writer.Identityisreconstructed by thedescription of landscapes thatrecuperate thememory andthe peoplethathave been murdered and/or forgotten.Language, historyand reality arereflectedinacomplex literary interrelationship.

7See epilogue by Heinz Politzer in Ilse Aichinger’s novel Die größere Hoffnung (Frankfurt: Fischer.1983), 311. Poetry of Memory and Trauma and their Translation 137

Works Cited

Aichinger,Ilse. Consejo gratuito. FrontispiecebyAntonio Gamoneda. Translated by Rosa Marta Gómez Pato.Ourense:Linteo. 2011. – Die größereHoffnung. Frankfurt: Fischer.1991. – Kleist, Moos, Fasane. Frankfurt: Fischer.1991. – Verschenkter Rat. Frankfurt: Fischer.1991. Carbonel, Ovidi, et al.. Ética ypolítica de la traducción literaria. Mµlaga:MiguelGómez Ediciones. 2004. Davies, Peter.Testimony and Translation.InTranslation and Literature. Volume 23, Issue 2, 2014, 170–184. Hristova,Marije. “Memoria prestada. El Holocausto en la novela espaÇola contemporµnea.” TesinadeMaestría. 2011.Web.30March 2014. . Lefevere,AndrØ. Traducción, reescritura ylamanipulación del canonliterario. Salamanca: Ediciones Colegio de EspaÇa. 1997. Reichensperger,Richard. Die Bergung der Opfer in der Sprache. Über Ilse Aichinger.Leben und Werk. Frankfurt: Fischer.1991. Rothberg,Michael. Multidirectional Memory. Stanford, California:Stanford University Press. 2009. Spivak,Gayatri. Outside in the Teaching Machine. NewYork;London: Routledge.1993. Todorov, Tzvetan. Los abusos de la memoria. Barcelona:Paidós IbØrica. 2008. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility.AHistory of Translation. NewYork;Lon- don:Routledge. 1995. Vidal Claramonte, María Carmen frica. Traducción yasimetría. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.2010.

Bastian Reinert

Translating Memory.Acts of Testimony in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan

How can one translate memoryintolanguage, either aspoken or written one? How can one translate someone else’s memoryintoanother languageoreven medium without merely replicating it?And finally,how can one find alanguage that is considerate and appropriatetoboth original and translation? These were the questions AlainResnais, already an established film director, must have asked himself when he shot his nowworld-renowned documentary film Nightand Fog (Nuit et brouillard)onthe atrocities of the concentration camps in 1955.1 These must have also been the questions Jean Cayrol, whohad already turned his time in the French RØsistance, his arrest and deportation to the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen-Gusen into abookofpoetry (Pomes de la nuit et du brouillard), must have asked himself when he wrote the voice-over commentaryfor Resnais’ film.2 And finally,these must have also been the questions Paul Celan, aGermanspeaking Jewish poet and survivorofa concentration camp himself, must have asked himself when he not only translated Cayrol’s commentaryintohis mother tongue for the German dubbed versionayear later but also –atthe same time –worked on his widely appraised poetry volume Speechgrilles (Sprachgitter)inwhich his famous poem Stretto (Engführung)appeared.3 Stretto,written mainly in the spring of 1958, is Celan’s

1The film owes its title to Hitler’s so called ‘nightand fog’ decreefromDecember 7, 1941, due to which political prisoners (mostly partisans) could be deported without giving reasons or information for their relatives about their whereabouts.This was to stir up fear of deportation on the one hand and to nip anyresistanceinthe bud on the other. 2Interestingly enoughfor afilm thattoday has such apivotal roleinour commemorative culture, Cayrol, whowas himself persecuted for politicalrather than racist reasons, in his rather universalist approach failed to explicitly address the persecution and extermination of the Jews as the central issue of the Holocaust in his commentary. For the serious debate that caused in Israel, see Lebovic 2008. 3Cayrol himselfinsisted on Celan, whom he knew and whohad alreadytranslatedhis novel L’espaced’une nuit (The SpaceofaNight)intoGeman in early 1955 (Cayrol, 1954), as he felt no oneelse would be up to par for this job.Celan datedhis final version manually on October 21, 1956. See his estateatthe Deutsches LiteraturarchivinMarbacha.N.,D90.1.378. 140 Bastian Reinert longest published poem. It is the final poem in the volume Speechgrilles,which itself is positioned in his oeuvre between the speeches he delivered when accepting the literaryprize of the cityofBremen in 1958 and the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize in 1960, both equally importantfor Celan’s poetology. Both speeches later elucidated not only that working on the translation of Cayrol’s commentarydeeply influenced Celan’s poetry at that time but also,conversely, that his ownwriting and poetological reflections tremendously influenced the outcome of this very translation.4 The motivic and rhetorical analogies between Resnais’ documentaryfilm, Cayrol’s commentary, and Celan’s translation as well as his poem Stretto are not simply aesthetic adoptions from one another other but are –above all –reason for areflection on ‘traditional’ motifs and metaphors. In order to properly convey the specifics of Celan’s (German) translation of the original (French) commentarytoanEnglish speaking audience,Ineeded to provide readers with my English translation of Celan’s translation rather than quoting the English subtitles from the English versionofthe documentaryfilm. These subtitles not only verymuch differ from the French original, but even more so fromCelan’s German versionofthe commentary. This, in fact, com- plicates matters to acertain degree: my (English) translation is based on a (German) translation of aFrench text, which itself is an intermedial translation of images into written language.5 Whatconnects Nightand Fog and Stretto on areflexivelevel is their mutual acknowledgmentofmemoryasanaesthetic medium that requires engineering in the same waythat engineered memoryhas to rely on the reconstruction of events. What history leavesbehind are the facts rather than the narrativeinto which everyattempt to gather and seize reality retroactively and inevitablyhas to transform. There is no historical truth, no truth beyond the narration, because it is only the narration thatconstitutes reality–at the significantprice of an arbitraryaccumulation of individual narratives thatcan never adduptowhat actually happened, even if endlessly strung together.Narration is thereforeal- ways atranslation of images thatare themselves translations of experienced events. The translation processthat is at work in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan is the narrative process as an appropriation of historical memoryand individual memory. Artand the narrative arts in particular have always found themselves in the situation of having to inventstrategies of representing realitythat at the same time do not trytoconceal those strategies of aesthetic value. The past cannot be

4Cf. Seng 1998. 5Shira Wolosky quite convincingly challenges our notion of ‘translation’ itself arguing that simply readingand understanding atext (an Celan’s poetryinparticular) “requires acts of reference,collation, and reconstruction”thatare also characteristics of anytranslation process. (Wolosky 147). Translating Memory.Acts of Testimony in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan 141 recovered in an artwork. At best, it can be made retrospectively accessible where the artworks are not an –inevitably futile –attempt to constructreality, but rather aim for areconstruction of historical memory within their social content. The genre of documentaryfilm proves to be atwofold retroactivemedium since it aprs coup reports with visual means what is specified and explicatedbythe commentary. Aware of the various layers of its staging (image, commentary, music), Nightand Fog first instituted in the middle of the 1950s the memorythat we liveontoday when dealing with it. The reconstruction of this memoryisthe springboard for Resnais’ search for traces that did not conductasimple in- ventoryofhistorical events but rather addressedthe actofremembering itself. It had to deal less with the findings but rather with the process of finding,the unearthing of traces with the camera, that Celan’s Stretto also embarkson:

* Broughtintothe terrain with the unmistakable trace:6 * Verbrachtins Gelände mit der untrüglichen Spur: In the first printofStretto, the asterisk rightatthe middle of the page constitutes the beginning of the poem. Like all the other asterisks within the text,itismuch more than just ambiguously charged dØcor,semiotically picking up on the word ‘star’ and thus one of the poem’s central metaphors. They are not mereortho- graphic symbols, but topographic structures within the ‘area’ of the poem and – in their function as typographic markings –indicators for the employmentofa variation of voices distinguishing the individual segments (from here on pro- visionally called ‘sections’)7.Since the title is already stated on the previous page, this arrangementcreates an empty white field, structurallytied in with Voices [Stimmen], the opening poem of the volume which itself ended at the middle of the page and was marked as acycle by asterisks as well. The graphic presentation is already supposedtocreate the impressionthat something happened that the

6All translations of Celan’s Stretto (Engführung)are my own, althoughthey are deeply indebted to those by Joachim Neugroschel, John Felstiner,Michael Hamburger,and Robert Kelly. 7The counting of the sections(ItoIX) is used for better orientation even if that, strictly speaking, runs contrarytothe intended simultaneity of the poem. No onealluded to the problem of dissecting Stretto into sections moreurgently than Jacques Derrida:Having to do so might comply with pragmatic principlesbut “these cuts inflict ameasureless violence, since they wound not only the body of the songbut, aboveall, the rhythm of its owncaesuras, cutting into the cuts, the wounds and the scars, and the verysutures this poem speaks of […].” (Derrida 2005, 46f.) 142 Bastian Reinert reader can trace only belatedly (maybeeven toolate), thoughatleast its imprints still reveal themselves. It is this exactpositionofperception Nightand Fog demands from its viewer,asthe camera embarks on the search for atrace whose reenactmentturns into areading of an area as well.8 The conventional ideasofthe lyrical Iare undermined already in the first line. Used in its participle form, “brought”refuses anyinformation about its subject and is –especially in the German original as “Verbracht” –reminiscentof German bureaucracyterminologysuch as ‘Deportation’, which is also mirrored in French translations of the poem as “deportØ” or “dØ-placØ.” Thus in the entire first verse, all indications of the subjectare withheld, turning it into asecret. Who was displaced:the reader,the ‘you’ that is addressed later or the lyrical self? Butthe participle not only raises the question of the subject’s status but also of the place where it was brought to.And again, this questions is only insufficiently answered by the following lines:“into the /terrain /with the unmistakable trace.” UnlikeinNightand Fog,wherethe commentator associates himself right away with those whoenter the area (“Nofootstep is heard but ourown”[“Kein Schritt mehr,nur der unsre”, Celan, 77]), there is at first no (lyrical) IinStretto. The film’s commentarygoesontouse the impersonal “one” in order to speak in the name of the deported and thus give avoice to the dead. The poem on the other hand opposes already with the first word the insistence on the lyrical Iasa categoryofunderstanding and identification that reveals itself to be the manifestation of an outdated understanding of poetry,useless in the face of modern poetry.The lyrical Ithat –according to Adorno –resulted in an “illusionofself- evidence of poetic subjectivity” (Ästhetische Theorie, 249) over the centuries has experienced arevision of its constitutioninthe light of Auschwitz. The place of the subjectdeliberately remains open, replaced by an ambiguitythatprovokes questions. And the resulting uncertainty is even increased by the paradoxical usage of the definite article:“into the /terrain /with the unmistakable trace.” The poem’s exposition thus has its specific purpose in the collision of anaïve ‘readerly anticipation’ with the aporia of the subjectafter Auschwitz. An aporia, admittedly,that alreadyled Peter Szondi in his extensivestudy on Stretto to the assumption that the reader himself was brought “into the /terrain /with the unmistakable trace,” making it thus impossible to distinguish between who is reading and what is read (Szondi 1972, 346). If the “trace” on the “terrain” is said to be “unmistakable,” this is at first

8See Bedorf 2011 on the broad intellectual historyof‘trace’ (‘Spur’) as ametaphor for the absentand therefore for the process of remembering itself. ‘Traces’ of an Other in the poem as well as in Celan’s oeuvre in generalshould also be read as areference to his intertextualitythat echoes andkeeps alivevoicesofthe past. Translating Memory.Acts of Testimony in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan 143 glance arecourse to the paradox of the definite article, since “unmistakable” refers to something that is apparently known.But this impression is deceiving, especially since it is once again not said what this “unmistakable trace” is but only that it is, that it merely exists. And yetthis “trace” is indeed an ambiguous symbol thatisnot only taken up again verbatim in the last section but also dominates the poem in differentvariations. The “trace” is here to be understood as an ambivalentexpressionofaprovisionally vague finding:itindicates the existence of the subjects in aplace where they leftpresenttracesand at the same time their absence, since the trace is testifying that these subjects have by now fled, been abducted, or by all means gone. Whatexactly leftits “trace” in Stretto can –just likeinNightand Fog –only be understoodinagradual reenactment; by reading in one case, watching in the other,but in both cases only beyond the grass:

Grass, written asunder. The stones, white, with the shadows of blades: Gras, auseinandergeschrieben. Die Steine, weiß, mit den Schatten der Halme:

In his reading of Stretto,Otto Lorenz takes up the overlap between Celan’s poetologyand the philosophyofJacques Derrida that Szondi had already brought to attention in his essayonCelan’s translation of Shakespeare’s So- nett no.105 (Szondi 1978, 329 + 338). Lorenz relates the trail to Derrida’s semiological terminologywhere he describes the discrepancybetween the signifiers thatcause “a permanentdeferral of presence, alack of immediacy” (208)9, hence adeferring of certainty that goes on beyond the colon. One could ask if the “grass, written asunder” itself is the “terrain /with the unmistakable trace” or if it rather is that what is “[b]rought” there. The extensiveconnotations of the grass-motifmostly serve to invoke idioms whose semantics are closely linked to the terms of life and death as well as forgetting and suppressing.Inreference to the German expression“to let grass grow over things” (letting the dust settle), the image of the overgrown has long entered the fundus of verbal imageryofour cultural memoryasasymbol for the suppressed. Butwhile the (German) phrase todayexposes and illustrates the clichØ, an aesthetic avant-gardism in Nightand Fog (and subsequently in Stretto as well) in 1955 stood for atranscendence of the repressionofNazi crimes by a(at thattime) rather innovative film language. It is thus more than an accidental similarity that both Celan’s poem and Resnais’ film beginand end with the grass-motif. Notonly does the poem imitate the alter- nately black and white and colored documentarywhen it comes to the modu-

9For aderridean readingofthe ‘trace’ [‘Spur’] in Celan also refer to BernhardPaha:Die ‘Spur’ im Werk Paul Celans. Eine ‘wiederholte’ Lesung Jacques Derridas, Gießen:Kletsmeier 1997. 144 Bastian Reinert lation of the gaze, up to the coloration,but it alsoadopts the cinematic motifs in these sites of exposure. At the beginning of the film, Celan translates Cayrol’s text as:“Acurious green covers the weary-trodden path” [“Ein eigentümlichesGrün bedeckt die müdegetretene Erde.”, Celan 2000, 77)10.This “curious green” – Celan’s de-specifying translation of “une drôle d’herbe” –isthe “grass”, re- sumed again both at the end of the commentaryand at the end of Stretto: “on the parade grounds and around the blocks, grass has settled again” [“Auf den Ap- pellplätzen und rings um die Blocks hat sich wieder das Gras angesiedelt”, Celan 2000, 97]11.So–likeinthe German idiom –grass has once again grownover everything.Just like Nightand Fog, Stretto ends with the grass being truly written apart(“asunder”), so atrace has resulted from the repressed:“grass / grass /written asunder.” Just likeEwout van der Knaap shows, Cayrol is guided by ancientrhetoric, while Resnais’ cinematographyresumes –throughthe “mental scanning of reference points” (2008)–the classic mnemonics, partially followed by Celan as well (and certainly inspiredbyhis translation work). In contrast to Stretto,inNight and Fog,place and action are named. In both, however,the grass stands in for forgetting,pointing therebytothe insufficiency of memory, which is only adequately put to use when the grass is “written asunder” [“auseinander geschrieben”] to disclose the layers of the repressed that lie beneath. Thus, the “stones, white” [“Steine, weiß”] can only be perceived throughthe grass thatis“written asunder”. The grass and stones pointtothat which was once there. They further remind us of those whowere once there –the dead –perhaps evoking their gravestones (especially so if one considers that ‘Gras’ read backwards results in ‘Sarg’ (coffin) clearly hinting at graves). These “stones, white” create spaces of remembrance as restitution for the missing graves of Auschwitz. The total destruction is captured again in the aesthetic form, in the factthatgrass is no longer perceived as itself, rather only as the “shadows of blades” [“Schatten der Halme”].The substitution of “shadows” [“Schatten”] for “grass” [“Gras”] refers, once more, to that which has been lost. Analogoustothe medium of film, this three-dimensional grass forfeitsits spatial dimension in its two-dimensional projection, and is reduced to amere surface in the same waythat the terrain of the poem’s text is necessarily foreshortened. The transition fromcolor (the green “grass” [“Gras”]) to black and white (the white “stones” [“Steine”] and the black “shadows” [“Schatten”]) is aformal allusiontoNightand Fog and borrows, to some extent, fromthe latter’s specific montage of color contrast. The color passages, which, for Resnais, stand for the presentand were filmed in Auschwitz and Majdanek in 1955, are contrasted with

10 “Une drôle d’herbe apoussØetrecouvert la terre usØe par le piØtinementdes concen- trationnaires”, Cayrol 2000,77. 11 “L’herbefidle est venue ànouveausur les appels-platz autour des blocks”, Cayrol 2000, 96. Translating Memory.Acts of Testimony in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan 145 the black and white images that refer to the historyofthe Third Reich.12 It is precisely this montage of color contrast that repetitively highlightsthe break between past and present–adifferentiation that is further marked in Stretto throughthe alternating uses of the presentand the preterite tenses. In keeping with Resnais’s visual language, Cayrol similarly switches between the imparfait and the prØsent tenses, while Celan’s translation sticks predominantly to the presenttense. The color sequences of Resnais’s film are characterized by the steady,searchingmovementofthe camera:forward travelling shots, i.e. predominantly on the lateral axis of the camera. In similar fashion, the first verses of the poem illustratethe difficulty of apositioning that calls into doubt all un- ambiguous knowledge, while foregrounding the search for answers. This further corresponds to the sequence of injunctions:

Read no more–look! Look no more –go! Lies nichtmehr –schau! Schaunichtmehr –geh!

These imperatives, which, together,representthe first, implicit address to a “you,” aim at transforming habitual reception into,what Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe calls, a“possible seeing beyond words” (127), therebycontinuing what the first three verses alreadycall for.The double reduction of distance proceeds throughrevocations of each respective preceding injunction. In this way, simple reading is abandoned in favor of the visual (looking),and pure“textuality” is overcome. The verse thatfollows contradicts itself ipso facto,and replaces the gaze with movement.13 The primacyofthe visual, which is also the domain of film, is explicitly suspended in Stretto in favor of aspatial, haptic experience. The successive new orientation of experience (reading-watching-going) demands with each renewed “go” [“Geh”] arecognition and navigation of the text’s au- tonomylikethe camera in Nightand Fog,which tactilely navigates the terrain in order to carry the spectator along on asearch for traces. So when Stretto demands the ‘striding-through-the-text’ already in the first section, this means nothing less than an emphaticproclamation of sheer ex-

12 In contrast to the color images, the black and white footage come fromwartime Germanand allied archival material, excerpts from Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film The Triumphofthe Will (1935) and Wanda Jakubowska’s The Last Stage (1947), as well as footage from the documentaryfilm Tragedie de la dØportation,which was acentral source for an exhibition, eponymous book, and the film. More on this subject in:TragØdie de la dØportation 1940–1945. TØmoignages de survivantsdes camps de concentrationallemands, hrsg. v. Henri Michel und Olga Wormser,Paris:Hachette 1954. See moreonthe sources of Nightand Fog in: van der Knaap 2008. 13 Cf. Kligerman 2008. 146 Bastian Reinert istence. Just likeany formoftestimonyisinitially nothing but aproof of existence, in this case trying to brace itself against a“blackened field” [“schwär- zliche[s] Feld”, Celan 1996, 89] as amenacing nothing:

Go,your hour has no sisters, youare – are at home. Awheel, slowly, rolls by itself, the spokes climb, climp up ablackened field, the night needs no stars, no asking for youanywhere. Geh, deine Stunde hat keine Schwestern,dubist – bist zuhause. Ein Rad, langsam, rollt aussich selber,die Speichen klettern, kletternauf schwärzlichem Feld,die Nacht brauchtkeine Sterne, nirgends fragtesnach dir.(Celan1996, 89)

This “blackened field” –referring alsotothe night –ismoreover areference to the medium of film and at this pointmore obvious than anywhereelse in the poem adirect allusiontoResnais’ editing technique. This “schwärzliche[] Feld” refers to the technical term‘Schwarzfeld’,a‘black frame’ for dissolves in film which Renais constantly makes use of as means of cross cutting when fading out of one scene before fading into another.Hethususes this ‘nothing’ purposefully as acinematic effectofstaging memorywherethe faded out scene indicates the place and time from where it shouldberemembered what the following fade-in makes aware of. The poem and film thereforeboth equally emphasize the me- dialityofmemoryasmemoryisunderstood as remembering images. And an image, on the other hand, is only possible in the interplayoflight and shadow, which is explicitly brought up in the poem and reflected as its precondition also in the film:film as the physical process to preserve thatmemory(of images). “Noasking /for youanywhere” –these lines, marked by an extreme brevity, give testimonytothe experience of immense loss, which can scarcely be captured by the senses, much less by language. The testimony, hence, finds itself confronted with afundamental aporia,alreadyexpressed at the beginning of the second partinadouble correctio:

The place where theylay,ithas aname –ithas none. They did not lie there. Translating Memory.Acts of Testimony in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan 147

Der Ort, wo sie lagen, er hat einenNamen –erhat keinen. Sie lagen nichtdort. (Celan 1996,89)

In this paradox, duplicated in itself, proposition and counter-proposition co- exist without separation:the place has anameand it does not have one;they lay there and they did not lie there. The ambivalence, already announced in the hyphen and fulfilled in the correctio,testifies –bears witness to –the difficulty of adefinitivenaming,anunambiguously and complete rendering in the name. These “lieux de mØmoire,” former crime scenes, which have becomesites of memorytasked with preserving authenticmemoryinour modernculture of commemoration, have names. In fact, Nightand Fog names Struthof, Ora- nienburg,Auschwitz, Neuengamme,Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, and Dachau, yet they are not names that couldexpress what took place at these sites, or even whythey are specific to amoderncultureofcommemoration. “They” only laythere if the word “lie” refers to the “there-to-have-died”. They did not lie there if one refers to the historical factofthe ashes of the murdered and the burned, which were scattered in the winds. These sites also have pragmatic names, likeAuschwitz, but they do not have names in the emphaticsense, that is, no name that would offer anykind of opportunityfor identification. For historiography, however,the events, as well as the places with which they are associated, must necessarily be named in order that they even be described. While the poem does not denythis throughits double correctio,itprovides a poetic alternative, which searches for forms of adequate representation without being able to deliver the answer itself (or wanting to). The factthat the site has “a name” [einen Namen] and “no name” [keinen Namen] shouldbeunderstoodtomeanthat it must be experienced under changed conditions of perception –atransformation, whose place of rupture is the dash itself. It stands not only for “troubled silence” (Adorno,Satzzeichen, 109), rather it represents asilence that functions as apointofsymmetry –apoint followed by the exactopposite of that which came before. In anycase, this paradox is not arbitrary, as the name of the non-designated site would be,and cannot, therefore, be taken for an arbitrarygesture (Geste). Rather,itisindebted to Celan’s poetology,which allows for the utterance of the non-differentiated “yes and no.” Position and negation stand in starkcontrast to each other,they hold each other in balance, and even, to acertain extent, condition one another. And yet the non-specificityofthe site is tied to aquite concrete scene of action:

At owl’s flight,near the petrified leprosy, near our fled hands, in 148 Bastian Reinert

the latest rejection, abovethe bullet trap on the buried wall In der Eulenflucht, beim versteinerten Aussatz, bei unserngeflohenen Händen, in der jüngsten Verwerfung, überm Kugelfang an der verschütteten Mauer In no other place in the poem is the arbitrariness of the location –inthe concrete place of the concentration or death camp –more clearly conveyed than here. In a much more concisely-worded pre-formulation of this in the stanza, the lines read: At owl’s flight,before awall with abullet trap In der Eulenflucht, vor einerMauer mit Kugelfang.(Celan 1996, 101) Here, Stretto is referring to the commentaryofNightand Fog. Celan’s translation corresponds almost literally to the film:“Der den Blicken verborgene, fürEr- schießungen eingerichtete Hofvon Block elf; die Mauer mit Kugelfang.”(Celan 2000, 87 –myemphasis). The eighthsection describes what happened “above the /bullet trap on /the buried wall,” calling to mind associations of the Wailing Wall;byexplicitly describing it as “buried” [“verschüttet”],hefurther evokes the repressionofthe past in the postwar years, the overcomingofwhich was Resnais’s impetus. One can see howstrongly indebted these images in Stretto remain to Resnais throughacomparisonofthe last stanza in the eighthsection of the poem both with the voice-over narration in Nightand Fog and with apre- liminarystage, which was then completely omitted in the final version of the poem. While Renais’s color camera scans the ruins of ablown-up crematorium, the voice-over runs: While Ispeak to you, the water percolates the deathchambers;itisthe water of the swamps and ruins, it is cold and murky –just likeour guilty conscience. Translating Memory.Acts of Testimony in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan 149

Während ich zu euch spreche, dringtdas Wasser in die Totenkammern;esist das Wasser der Sümpfe und Ruinen, es ist kaltund trübe –wie unser schlechtes Gewissen. (Celan 2000, 97)14 Only shortly thereafter,atthe end of the voice-over,which Celan arranges in verses as if deliberately establishing another connection between his translation work and his poetry,15 he warns against the naïvehopefor anew beginning that would paynoheed to history:

as if we really believed that all this belonged to one time and only to one country us wholookpast the things next to us and do not hear that the cryisnever breakingoff. als glaubten wirwirklich, daß all das nur einer Zeit und nur einem Lande angehört, uns, die wirvorbeisehen an den Dingen neben uns und nichthören, daß der Schrei nichtverstummt. (Celan 2000, 99)16 The stanzas that were later omitted in the final version of Stretto formananalogy to this ending of the commentary:

Inseln, gedankenberührt, Gespräche, geheim, […] Stimmen, enggeführt, bis der Schrei sich belebte (Celan 1996, 100) The “islands,” which are said to be “touched by thoughts” [gedankenberührt], can serve the subjectasthat refuge, which promises first to make afuture possible. As in the last lines of the commentary, so herethe stress of these stanzas lies on the “scream” [Schrei],which, glossed in the commentaryas“not muted” [nichtverstummt]and here as “enlivened” (“sich belebt”), had to develop itself out of muteness, and bring itself into articulation. Unlikeinthe final version, this preliminarystage takes up the title of the poem, and brings it into direct connection with the polyphonyofStretto: “Stimmen,/enggeführt, bis/derSchrei sich belebte.”

14 “Aumomentojevousparle, l’eaufroide des marais et des ruines remplit le creux des charniers, une eaufroide et opaque commenotre mauvaisemØmoire.” (Cayrol 2000, 96). 15 Cf. DavidN.Coury,who stressesthatCelan used all the characteristics of his ownpoetry (enjambments, dashes,colons, ellipsisetc.) not by chance but as an explicit poetic approach that giveseach word moreweightthatCayrol’s prose text. (Coury61) By using the exampleof Celan’s translations of Robert Frost, ThereseKaiser has shown thatfor Celan therewas no actual difference between translating (übersetzen) and writing poetry (dichten). (Kaiser 2010). 16 “nousqui feignons de croireque tout cela est d’un seul temps et d’un seul pays, et qui ne pensonspas àregarderautour de nous et qui n’entendons pas qu’oncriesans fin.” (Cayrol 2000, 98). 150 Bastian Reinert

Since memorycan only beginonce the “grass” [“Gras”] is indeed being “written asunder” [“auseinandergeschrieben”] and the layers underneathare being exposed, Stretto creates this premise itself by duplicating the “grass” within the last three lines of the poem and ‘writing it asunder’ in two different lines. That grass even can be written asunder hasretrospectively to be seen as the genuine achievementofthe poem, hence constituting its ending.Fromthe en- jambmentofthe antepenultimate to the second to last line –inthe inevitably emerging pause between “grass” and “grass” –arises amomentthatcould becomethe future of recollection and consequently the future of memory. While Nightand Fog ends with the implicit warning of repeating what the film wanted to reveal and keep present, the end of Stretto alreadyrepresents this repetition. A repetition of course that speaks from the threatmentioned at the end of Cayrol’s commentary, givenapersonal touch by Celan in his translation (as the comparison to the French original shows)17:

Whoofusiskeeping watch and warning is whenthe new executionersarrive?Do they really have adifferentfacethan us?/Somewhere, there still are Kapos whowere lucky, prominent figures who found anew purpose for themselves, denunciators whore- mained unknown;thereare still all those who never wanted to believe –oronly from time to time. Wervon uns wacht hier und warnt uns, wenn die neuen Henker kommen?Haben sie wirklich ein anderes Gesichtals wir? /Irgendwo gibt es noch Kapos, die Glück hatten, Prominente, fürdie sich wieder Verwendung fand, Denunzianten, die unbekannt blieben;gibt es noch all jene, die nie daran glaubenwollten –oder nur vonZeit zu Zeit. (Celan 2000, 97)

Nightand Fog therebyundermines –noless todaythan in the 1950s –the position of false securitythat is assuminganalreadysafe enough distance to the events of the past. Adorno was warning early thatthe past would only be ac- counted for if the causes of the past were eradicated –apostulationfrom which he soon derived his famous “new categorical imperative” which has been imposed upon“unfreemankind”: “to arrange their thoughtsand actions so that Auschwitz will not repeatitself, so that nothing similar will happen.” (Adorno 2003, 365) That the ‘idyll Auschwitz’ with its lush green and devout silence thatis provocatively shown at the beginning of Night and Fog provestobefallacious, is due to Resnais’ early conviction thatthe past can and will never be brought to a conclusion. Even thoughthe past and the presentare kept apartinNightand Fog visually,the film’s importance lies in making clear that the past still and

17 “Qui de nous veille de cet Øtrange observatoire pournous avertirdelavenue des nouveaux bourreaux. Ont-ils vraimentunautre visage que le nôtre?/Quelque part, parmi nous, il reste des kapos chanceux, des chefs rØcupØrØs,des dØnonciateurs inconnus.” (Cayrol 2000, 96). Translating Memory.Acts of Testimony in Resnais, Cayrol, and Celan 151 always extends into the present, in the same wayasthe impending repetition is omnipresentinStretto.

Works Cited

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kungsgeschichte. Miteinem Beitragvon NitzanLebovic. Göttingen:Wallstein,2008. 141–161. Seng,Joachim. Aufden Kreis-Wege der Dichtung. Zyklische Komposition bei Paul Celan am Beispielder Gedichtbände bis “Sprachgitter”. Heidelberg:Winter,1998. Szondi, Peter.“Durch die Enge geführt. Versuch überdie Verständlichkeit des modernen Gedichts.” Celan-Studien. Ed. Jean Bollack, with Henriette Beese, Wolfgang Fietkau, Hans-Hagen Hildebrandt, GertMattenklott, Senta Metz and Helen Stierlin. Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp,1972.47–111. –“Poetry of Constancy –Poetikder Beständigkeit. Celans Übertragung vonShake- speares Sonett 105.” SchriftenII. Ed. Jean Bollack, with Henriette Beese, Wolfgang Fietkau, Hans-Hagen Hildebrandt, GertMattenklott, Senta Metz and Helen Stierlin. FrankfurtamMain:Suhrkamp, 1978. 321–344. Wolosky,Shira. “On (Mis-)Translating PaulCelan.” Poetik der Transformation. Paul Celan – Übersetzer und übersetzt. Ed. Alfred Bodenheimer and Shimon Sandbank. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer,1999. 145–153. Index

absence 28, 128, 143 Celan, Paul12, 65, 67–70, 76, 127f.,136, adaptation 8f., 33f.,37, 41, 64, 67, 73 139–150 Adorno,Theodor (W.) 11, 23, 127, 142, – Speechgrilles (Sprachgitter)139f. 147, 150 – Stretto (Engführung) 12, 139–145, aesthetics 66 148–151 Aichinger,Ilse 11, 127–129, 134, 136 child survivor10, 85f. Alvarez, A. 8 christianisation 11, 101 AmØry, Jean 127 cinematography144 Anglada, Maria Àngels 126 Co-translation 24 anti-poetry 23 collaborativetranslation 9, 45, 47, 49–51, appropriation 12, 64, 72, 98, 113, 140 53, 58f. archive 8, 13, 18f.,25, 30, 46 collage 15, 18–20 Arendt,Hannah 127 collecting 13 Auschwitz 7–11, 14, 23, 33, 35, 45, 63–67, commentary12, 17, 41, 64, 115, 139–142, 72, 74f.,77, 79, 89, 99, 110, 142, 144, 147, 144, 148–150 150 concentration camps 7, 35, 94, 139 Ausländer,Rosa 127f.,136 contemporaryartwork 13 Crow:fromthe Life and Songs of the Crow Bakhtin, Mikhail 36, 51 (by TedHughes) 28 Barthes, Roland 120 Csokits, Jµnos 24–28, 30 Benjamin, Walter 84, 118 Berman, Antoine 10, 89–92, 94, 98, 103 Bettelheim,Bruno 100 Dante Alighieri64, 67, 71, 75, 77, Bonanno,George47f., 51 de Man,Paul66, 83, 85 Budapest 23 deportation 139, 142 Derrida, Jacques 58, 141, 143 Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) dialogue(and/or dialogic relationship) 9, 33, 37, 39 33, 35, 47–49, 51–53, 57, 68, 135f. Canetti, Elias 70, 119, 126 documentaryfilm 12, 139–141, 145 Caruth, Cathy46, 114 Domin,Hilde 127 Cayrol, Jean 12, 139f.,144f.,149f. Dresden 8, 13–17, 19–21 – Pomesdelanuitetdubrouillard 139 Dublin 8, 81 154 Index editing 146 Jakubowska,Wanda 145 Emory University25 – The Last Stage 145 ethics45, 47, 49, 65f. Ettinger,Bracha 47, 50 Kemenes, Inez (translator) 87 evidence 8, 13–15, 20, 37, 85, 142 KertØsz, Imre 86 expansion 11, 90f. Klemperer, Victor 15f.,75, 127 Klüger,Ruth 70, 127 Faas,Ekbert28, Kolmar, Gertrud 127 foreignness26, 90, 104 Kosztolµnyi,Dezso˝ 82 Franco,Francisco 126 Frank, Anne110 LaCapra, Dominick 46, 52, 54, 96 Friedlander,Saul7,38, 46 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe145 Friedrich, Jörg 127 Lang,Berel 38, 46 Langfus, Anna 10, 90, 93, 95f. gaze 144f. Lanzmann,Claude 46, 70f. Genette, GØrard 40, 102 Laub,Dori9,45–48, 51, 53 Gilman, Sander 37 Levi,Primo 7–10, 33–41, 45f.,63–79,90, Gömöri,George 25 99, 126f.,74, 115 Grass,Günter 127 – Se questo unuomo (If this is aman) 8f., 37, 41, 63, 67, 69, 73, 75f.,78 Hamburger,Michael 24, 141 – The Black Hole of Auschwitz 8, 33 Harbach, Germany23 – The Drowned and the Saved 9, 38, 45, Heaney,Seamus 24 63, 67, 79 Heine, Heinrich 64, 66f.,69, 73f. life writing 85–87, 107 Hirsch, Marianne21, 110, 120 literal translation 8, 26, historical memoryinSpain 126 literarytranslation 92, 126 Holocaust 7–11,18f., 25, 28, 34,36, 38, Lowell, Robert 24 45f.,50, 53–56, 70f.,77, 81, 83–87, lyrical imagery129 89–104, 107–114, 116f.,120–122, 126–130, 136, 139 Maron, Monika11, 107, 110, 120f. Holocaust Education Center, – Pawels Briefe 11, 107–110, 117, Vancouver 45 120–122 Holocaust literature 10, 36, 81, 89f.,97f., memory10–12, 46, 48, 59, 77, 84f.,90–92, 102–104, 108, 110, 122, 125f.,128 96, 98, 102, 107–111, 114, 120f., Holocaust trauma 9, 45f.,48, 50, 59 125–128, 132, 135f.,139–141, 143f., Homer 76, 87 146f.,150 Hughes, Ted8,24–30 Michael, Anne 10, 38, 83–87, 114 – FugitivePieces 10, 81, 83, 86f. idioms97f., 143 Milton, John 87 imagery16, 19, 94, 101, 128,143 Mitscherlich, Alexander and Margarete impoverishment92 111 innocence 14, 20, 111 ModernPoetry in Translation 24 intermedial translation 140 Modiano,Patrick 103 intersubjectivity50 Molina, Antonio MuÇoz 126 irony 117, 129 Muchnik, Mario 126 Index 155 myth 83, 86, 87, 90, 104 responsibility36, 47, 49–55, 57–60, 68, 136 narration 9, 38–40, 47f.,140, 148 Richter,Hans Peter 127 narrativecollaboration 48, 50f.,53, Ricoeur,Paul51 55, 57 Riefenstahl, Leni 145 – The Triumph of theWill 145 Oliver,Kelly 9, 35f.,47, 49, 52 Rosen, Alan 84 Ortega, Adolfo García 126 Róz˙ewicz, Tadeusz 26 paratext 102 Sagar,Keith 28 Pausewang,Gudrun 127 Salabert, Juana 126 Perec, Georges 10, 65f.,90, 97, 103 Schindler’s List 101 – Woulesouvenir d’enfance 90 Sebald, W.G. 8, 21, 127 personhood49–51, 59f. – Austerlitz 8, 21 Pilinszky,Jµnos 8, 23–30 second generation Holocaust literature poetology140, 143, 147 108 poetry afterAuschwitz 11, self-foreignization 29 poetry in translation 24, signification11, 90, 94–96 poetry of survival23 Spanish Civil War126 poor poetics 8 Spivak, Gayatri125 post-memory110, 120 Steiner,George 89, 104 postcards8,13, 15–18, 21 subjectivity (and/or selfhood)8,33–38, Pressler,Mirjam 127 41, 49f.,52–55, 58, 107, 142 propaganda 15f.,94, 108, 122, 145 survivor8–10, 23, 34, 36, 45f.,48–55, prosopopeia 85 57f.,63, 65, 67, 73, 76–78, 81, 84f.,99, psychoanalysis 46–48, 53 102f.,108f.,139 psychoanalyticfeminism 47 survivor-poets 8 Szondi, Peter 142f. Ravensbrück 8, 23, 25, 27, 29, 147 reciprocity51, 53, 57f. technicalisation 11, 100 reenactment142f. testimony7,9–12, 26, 34, 46, 66, 69, 73, Reidt, Heinz (German translator of 76, 78, 90, 103, 108f.,114, 119f.,139, Levi)37 146 relationality (and/or relationalkinship) Theresienstadt14 49, 53 Timm, Uwe 127 remediation 34, 38f.,41 Todorov, Tzvetan 125 repetition 11, 55, 82, 87, 90–92, 95–97, trauma 11, 46f.,54, 85, 87, 96, 125 131–133, 150f. Resnais,Alain 12, 139–141, 143–146, 148, Ulysses 63–67, 70, 72, 77 150 – Nightand Fog (Nuit et brouillard) 12, VanGogh, Vincent17 139–145, 147f.,150 Venuti, Lawrence 90–92,94, 98, 104, 125 response 9, 19, 33–38, 41, 45, 47, 49–52, Virgil 64, 67, 87 54–60, 70, 104, 107f.,110, 136 visual translation 20 156 Index

Whalley,George9,33, 37, 39 Woolf, Stuart(English translator of Levi’s Weiss, Peter 21, 127 If this is aman)7,35, 37–40 Weissbort, Daniel29 Word-for-word translation65, 116 White, Hayden 38 Wiesel, Elie 10,89–95, 97, 100, 102, 126 Ye ats, W. B. 24 – La nuit (Night)10, 90–93, 95,98–102 wit(h)nessing9,35, 37, 45–47, 49–51, 53, 55, 57–59, 63, 76, 83