Following the trail of ancient Greek tragedy in Imre Kertész’s The Pathseeker Exploring the intertextual use of Greek tragedy in Holocaust fiction, and its contribution to the discussions on the (in)adequacies of language and literary fiction in representing the Holocaust.

MA Thesis Name: Rowie van Hagen ANR: 210785 / Student number: U1252294

MA track: Art, Media and Society Department of Culture Studies School of Humanities

Date: November 2017 Thesis supervisor: Dr. P.A. Bax Second reader: Dr. I.G.M. van de Ven

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What do I call a fate? Certainly the possibility of tragedy.

- Imre Kertész, in Galley Boat-Log (entry May 1st, 1965)

They are dead – and those alive bear the responsibility for those who’ve died.

- A Messenger, in Sophocles’ Antigone (line 1173)

O my soul, be still! Beginn'st thou now to tremble and to doubt? lonely shelter on the firm-set earth Must thou abandon? and, embark'd once more, At random drift upon tumultuous waves, A stranger to thyself and to the world?

- Iphigenia, in Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris (Act 4, Scene III)

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Abstract

This study focusses on the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in literary fiction about the Holocaust, and its contribution to ongoing discussions within Holocaust historiography regarding the inadequacies of language and fiction in representing the Holocaust. The late Hungarian Holocaust survivor and author Imre Kertész established a connection between ancient Greek tragedy and literature about the Holocaust, based on their shared linkages to art and morality. He expressed his hope that Holocaust literature inspired by Greek tragedy may in due time give rise to redemption; the spirit, catharsis. The question remains how this cathartic process would come about in the context of traumatized Holocaust survivors and whether the author in his literature believed a catharsis or redemption to be possible in the first place. The main research question of this thesis therefore initially focusses on positioning Imre Kertész in the two discussions within Holocaust historiography regarding the use of language and fiction in Holocaust representation, based on his intertextual references to ancient Greek tragic plays in his novella The Pathseeker (1977). However, additional research was done into the concept of catharsis in the context of Holocaust survivors, related to the role of the survivor-witness and the possibility of trauma treatment in Kertész’s novella The Pathseeker. Previous studies on the connection between fictional Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy have barely been conducted, as most of the existing literature focussed either on the combination of combat trauma among veterans and the cathartic process of ancient Greek tragedy, or on Euripidean tragedy in recent instances of literary fiction dealing with political themes that indicated rival subjectivities and the issue of narrative control. In both cases, the existing research failed to address the Holocaust and its survivors in particular, and in several cases the characteristic elements of Greek tragedy (in form and plot) were undertheorized or neglected altogether. This study therefore seeks to combine developments in Holocaust historiography with a more in-depth look at the characteristics and goal of ancient Greek tragedy, to determine commonalities between the two that may affect discussions on the (in)adequacies of language and fiction in Holocaust representation. This is done through a literary analysis of Imre Kertész’s novella The Pathseeker, from which specific passages with explicit references to Greek tragic plays are extracted for a close-reading and subsequent analysis and interpretation. This study demonstrates how Greek tragedy, as a source of archetypical stories on the human condition and the world of morality, offers a universal language that helps counter the perceived inadequacies of language and fiction in Holocaust representation when used in literary fiction about the Holocaust. In addition, the close-readings and literary analyses performed on specific passages from Kertész’s The Pathseeker show how the author used intertextuality in his novella to make harsh claims about the role of the Holocaust survivor-witness. Kertész employed references to Greek tragedies such as Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians to address a Holocaust survivor’s desperate search for catharsis; an unattainable and illusory redemption seen as a last resort in resolving the traumas that remained after the war.

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Acknowledgements

Looking back on the period of time during which I first started working on my MA thesis, I remember the enthusiasm with which I managed to combine two topics that were of great personal interest to me into one solid research focus: the presence of ancient Greek tragedy in Holocaust literature. I also vividly remember the continuous struggle of feeling the weight of a deep-rooted sense of responsibility that made me want to do justice to the delicate subject matter and to the late Hungarian author in whose literature I had fully immersed myself at that time. Back then, I would never have imagined that I would be this proud of the research I have done over the past several months, which has now resulted in a MA thesis that lives up to all my expectations. Of course, there are several people whose advice, inspiring words and continued support undoubtedly contributed to this personal achievement, and I would like to take a moment here to express my gratitude. First and foremost, I would like to thank the members of the Exam Committee, dr. P.A. (Sander) Bax and dr. I.G.M. (Inge) van de Ven, for agreeing to take up the functions of thesis supervisor and second reader respectively. Without your support – and especially your patience – over the past several months, I would never have been able to finish this research project on my own terms and according to my own personal standards. You have given me the time and space I needed to put all my energy and creativity into this research, which has resulted in something that I am truly proud of. I would like to thank Sander Bax in particular for all the time and effort he invested in helping me through the process of writing my thesis. Your pieces of great advice, your feedback, your generous compliments on my written work and your continued faith in my ability to do well on this research project have proven to be an invaluable source of inspiration and motivation to me. Secondly, I would like to thank prof. dr. A.J.A. (Arnoud-Jan) Bijsterveld and dr. D.J.M.S. (David) Janssens for their inspiring lectures on the subjects of the Holocaust and Homeric epic / ancient Greek tragedy respectively. I have had the pleasure of attending your courses during my Liberal Arts and Sciences BA program at Tilburg University a few years ago, and it may well be said that your lectures laid the foundation of knowledge on which the research for my MA thesis was built. Your lectures have inspired me to pursue my topics of personal interest in academic research, and I look back on them with fond memories. Furthermore, I would like to thank three of my closest friends for the countless times they asked me how my thesis was going over the course of the past couple of months. To Elisa Oh, Romy Dimitrovski and Suzanne Glaudemans: thank you for pulling me away from my desk and laptop every now and then to go out and do something fun – these distractions have been more than welcome! Additionally, I wish to thank my godparents, Ton and Beate Vermaak, for their continued moral support and their genuine interest in how my studies and MA thesis were progressing. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents, Eduard and Mariëtte van Hagen, and my younger brother, Jerom van Hagen, for their unwavering love and support. I wish to express my gratitude towards my parents in general for providing me with the opportunity of attending university, which I know meant a great deal to them too. Throughout four-and-a-half years of higher education you have always been there to cheer me on, to motivate me to keep going and never give up, and to support me in all the decisions I made. I would therefore wish to dedicate this MA thesis to you.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 5

Acknowledgements ...... 7

Table of Contents ...... 8

1. Introduction ...... 11 1.1 On the connection between Holocaust fiction and ancient Greek tragedy ...... 11 1.2 On the inadequacies of language and fiction in representing the Holocaust ...... 13 1.3 The main research focus: Greek tragedy in Holocaust fiction ...... 15

2. A short biography of Imre Kertész ...... 21 2.1 Imre Kertész: Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Prize laureate ...... 21 2.2 The literary works of Imre Kertész: a brief overview ...... 22

3. Theoretical and contextual framework ...... 24 3.1 Holocaust historiography: on the development of Holocaust literature ...... 24 3.1.1 On a misinterpreted ‘culture of silence’ after the Second World War...... 24 3.1.2 Changing public opinion on Holocaust survivors: the Eichmann Trial (1961-1962) ...... 27 3.1.3 Entering the historiographical discussion: on the value of literary fiction about the Holocaust ...... 28 3.2 On the origins, the characteristics and the effects of ancient Greek tragedy ...... 32 3.2.1 On the origins and historical background of ancient Greek tragedy ...... 32 3.2.2 Sophocles and Antigone ...... 33 3.2.3 Euripides and Iphigenia among the Taurians ...... 35 3.2.4 Characteristic elements of ancient Greek tragedy: form, content and effect on the audience ...... 37 3.3 On intertextuality and multivocality in literary fiction ...... 44 3.3.1 On the concepts of intertextuality and multivocality, and their uses in literary fiction ...... 44 3.3.2 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the author ...... 45 3.3.3 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the text ...... 47 3.3.4 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the context ...... 48 3.3.5 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the reader ...... 49

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4. The Pathseeker: introduction and literary analysis ...... 51 4.1 Introducing Imre Kertész’s The Pathseeker (1977) ...... 51 4.2 Authority and authenticity of The Pathseeker: the Galley Boat-Log entries ...... 52 4.3 A literary analysis of The Pathseeker: important elements and main theme ...... 56 4.3.1 The first element: the reluctance of witnesses to speak about the Holocaust ...... 56 4.3.2 The second element: the thoughts of different focalizors on the role of the moral witness . 59

5. Following the trail of Greek tragedy in The Pathseeker: a close-reading ..... 67 5.1 Ancient Greek intertext in The Pathseeker: Sophocles’ Antigone ...... 67 5.1.1 The commissioner meets ‘Antigone’ ...... 67 5.1.2 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: recognition ...... 69 5.1.3 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: the injustice of survival ...... 71 5.1.4 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: catharsis and redemption ... 74 5.1.5 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: unmasking and reckoning ... 77 5.1.6 ‘Antigone’ as antithesis to the commissioner: suicide as alternative to striving for catharsis ...... 79 5.2 Ancient Greek intertext in The Pathseeker: Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians ..... 82 5.2.1 Edith Hall on Euripidean tragedy in recent fiction: rival subjectivities and narrative control 82 5.2.2 The commissioner’s alternative version of Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris ...... 85 5.3 The daydream: Greek tragedy, the Bible and traumatic memories ...... 90

6. Conclusion ...... 98 6.1 Positioning Imre Kertész in discussions within Holocaust historiography ...... 98 6.2 On the commonalities between Holocaust literature and Greek tragic plays...... 101 6.3 The path to catharsis in The Pathseeker: the unattainability of redemption ...... 103 6.4 Final conclusion ...... 107

References ...... 114

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1. Introduction 1.1 On the connection between Holocaust fiction and ancient Greek tragedy In 1992, the late Hungarian author and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertész (1929-2016) briefly reflected upon a possible connection between fictional Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy by means of their shared linkage to art and morality. In The Holocaust as Culture (1992), which includes a conversation with Imre Kertész and one of his talks (written down in essay format) at a symposium in Vienna, Thomas Cooper wrote an introduction in which he stated that Kertész had always been grappling with problems of remembrance and forgetting, and with the inadequacies and risks of representing the Holocaust. According to Kertész, considering that the Holocaust had become an ever-present part of Europe’s cultural memory, the crucial functions of literature and art should be regarded as the vessels of this memory. This is why he spoke of the Holocaust as a subculture, which he defined as a spiritual and emotional community bound by a certain cult-like mentality (Kertész, 1992, p. 60). In the case of the Holocaust as a subculture, the mentality of its community would be a passionate resistance to forgetting: “if the living memory of the events survives then it will survive not because of the official orations but, rather, through the lives of those who bore evidence” (Kertész, 1992, p. 59). With this particular quote, Kertész appears to place a greater importance on the stories of Holocaust survivors in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, rather than on official historiographical and factual documentation. However, the way in which these stories of Holocaust survivors could (and should) be conveyed gave rise to an extensive debate that is still going on to this day. While the personal stories of Holocaust survivors were often recorded and archived as testimony in order to support the facts and figures that were uncovered through extensive research, there have also been many instances of survivors writing down their experiences in autobiographical or novelistic constructions. On the one hand, these stories of survivor-witnesses were inclined to be regarded as non-fictional, ‘true’ records of the events that took place. On the other hand, even autobiographical accounts of survivor-witness’ testimony were structured so much through writing techniques and conventions in literature that those written works developed into literary works of fiction. In this master thesis I will demonstrate how the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in written works about the Holocaust by Imre Kertész position the author in two major discussions within Holocaust historiography. One pertaining to the issue of factual documentation versus literary works based on personal experiences of survivors. The other concerning the debate that focusses on the adequacies and inadequacies of literary fiction in Holocaust representation. It is on witness testimony in a novelistic form that Kertész places emphasis in his connection to ancient Greek tragedy: novels, or literary fiction, stand closer to Greek tragedy than historiographical orations and texts, because of the artistic process through which they come into existence. The art of stylistic writing is what connects fictional Holocaust literature to Greek tragedy. Apart from art, morality provided another link between Holocaust fiction and Greek tragedy according to Kertész. One of the issues that the author struggled with was the way in which the Holocaust could give rise to morality and values. Kertész argued that: “the Holocaust is a value, because through immeasurable sufferings it has led to immeasurable knowledge, and thereby [the

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Holocaust] contains immeasurable moral reserves” (Kertész, 1992, p. 77). The picture Kertész paints here of the Holocaust containing moral reserves is based on the similar narrative structure of ancient Greek tragedy in general: the protagonist and/or antagonist of the story needs to suffer first before (s)he is able to gain knowledge from it. The experience of suffering brings forth new insights into human nature, from which important lessons should be drawn that form the morale of the tragedy. In his work, Kertész seems to tell the story of the Holocaust and the suffering of its victims – and that of its survivors in particular – by using the narrative structure of Greek tragedy, which would imply that Kertész’s story contains a morale as well. The survivors have a crucial role here because they are capable of bearing witness to the suffering they have seen and experienced themselves. If traces of a morale can indeed be found in the works of Imre Kertész, this will attest to a uniqueness often ascribed to the Holocaust: it was not just another historical event, but it was much bigger than that as it cast an entirely different light on all our ideas about ethics and morality. The events of the Holocaust became a turning point in European history against which would be measured all that happened before and after it. However, the metaphysical status of the Holocaust that defined its events as ineffable and uninterpretable, simultaneously created a sense of unease among scholars in their efforts to connect the Holocaust to any form of morality or invest it with meaning. By deliberately forging a link between the Holocaust and ancient Greek tragedy, Imre Kertész controversially attempted to deny the uninterpretability of the Holocaust by investing it with meaning through the morality that reveals itself throughout his literary fiction on the subject matter. What I find most interesting about this line of thought, is that Kertész used the idea of the Holocaust containing a moral reserve to establish a direct link between fictional Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy by referring to the concept of catharsis in relation to redemption. He stated that, if preserved,

“(…) the tragic insight into the world of the morality that survived the Holocaust may yet enrich European consciousness (…), much as the Greek genius (…) created the antique tragedies that serve as an eternal model. If the Holocaust today has created a culture, as it undeniably has and continues to do, its literature may draw inspiration from the two sources of European culture, the Bible and Greek tragedy, so that irredeemable reality may give rise to redemption: the spirit, catharsis.” (Kertész, 1992, pp. 77-78)

In this particular quote, we see that Kertész not only equates the moral reserves resulting from both the Holocaust and the ‘Greek genius’ that created the antique tragedies in that they may both have the capability of ‘enriching European consciousness’. He also suggests that Holocaust literature, Holocaust fiction in particular as we established earlier, may benefit from drawing inspiration from what he considers to be the two main sources of European culture: the Bible and ancient Greek tragedy. With fictional Holocaust literature influenced by the style and plot of Greek tragedy, and capable of shaping our ideas of ethics and morality as ancient Greek tragedy has done in the past, Kertész expresses the hope that (through literary fiction) the irrevocable reality of the Holocaust may ‘give rise to redemption’; that it might bring purification or emotional cleansing. Whether Kertész believes this

12 catharsis should be experienced specifically by the author or the reader of fictional Holocaust literature (by Holocaust survivors or people from generations to come) remains unclear. If it can indeed be said that the Holocaust is capable of bringing forth insight into the post-war ‘world of morality’, if it indeed contains moral reserves like ancient Greek tragedy does, it might be interesting to dive deeper into the way fictional Holocaust literature remediates ancient Greek tragic plays. It would be worth exploring the ways in which authors of Holocaust fiction have intertwined their narratives with Greek tragedy, so as to strengthen or deepen the message they want to convey to the reader through their novels. All this, not just the see whether there are indeed concrete moral lessons to be learned from novels about the Holocaust, but to determine to what extent they can provide new insights and opportunities in dealing with the inadequacies and risks of literary fiction in representing the Holocaust. The intertextual use of Greek tragedy may contribute in particular to a way of dealing with the inadequacy of language in providing a suitable framework for representing the Holocaust, by means of its inherent sense of universality. If the main issue with language has always been that it could not adequately describe and represent what it was like for victims to have lived the events of the Holocaust (as we will see further on through statements made by Holocaust survivors such as Imre Kertész and Elie Wiesel, and by historians such as Samuel Dresden), than what could be the benefit of countering this effect by making use of Greek tragedy that has inherent qualities to universalize the human experience and bring it down to a moral reserve? Not only the inadequacy of language in representing the Holocaust will be dealt with when looking at traces of Greek tragedy in Holocaust literature. The (in)adequacies of fiction in representing the Holocaust will be addressed as well, as we will see that a reader’s interpretation of the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in literary fiction clashes on various fronts with the conventions of literary Holocaust representation as determined by years of ongoing historiographical discussions.

1.2 On the inadequacies of language and fiction in representing the Holocaust It was Elie Wiesel, Romanian Holocaust survivor, writer and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, who wrote in 1970 that “by its uniqueness, the Holocaust defies literature” (Brown, 1983, p. 24). This statement is illustrative of a general semiotic problem that sprouted from the events of the Holocaust and confronted not so much the historians of the Holocaust or all its artists and writers, but the survivors in particular (van Alphen, 1997). Those who survived the Holocaust often shared a basic incapacity to express or narrate their past experiences, as they felt language no longer provided an adequate framework to represent the Holocaust. According to Ernst van Alphen, professor in literary studies at Leiden University, in his book Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory, this semiotic problem “underlies the widespread conviction that the Holocaust, in all its uniqueness and extremity, is unrepresentable” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 41). In terms of Saussurean semiotics: the signifier (the word we employ to refer to an object) and the signified (the object itself) no longer seemed to match. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is unnatural in the sense that it is human-made and thus subjected to convention, and, after the Holocaust, the signifier could no longer accurately provide a description of the signified. Words to

13 describe the events failed to capture their true experiences and those words lost their initially unambiguous meaning. If the murder of one man was labelled a horrible crime before the war, than how can the term ‘horrible’ be used to describe the extreme conditions under which the events of the Holocaust took place? Considering that the Holocaust is often regarded as an atrocity standing on its own (incomparable to other instances of genocide), regularly used terms to describe a genocide no longer seemed suitable to attribute to the Holocaust. This would mean that the semiotic problem stems from the extremity of the events that make up the Holocaust, rather than from some intrinsic restriction or limitation of language itself. Dutch literary scholar Samuel Dresden reflected on this semiotic problem of Holocaust representation as well in his book Vervolging, Vernietiging, Literatuur back in 1992 and came to a similar conclusion: the cause of the unrepresentability of the Holocaust is examined not on the level of representation, but on the level of history; that is on the level of the object of representation itself (van Alphen, 1997, p. 43). According to Van Alphen, a side effect of this view is that the Holocaust assumes metaphysical dimensions: it becomes the absolute symbol of Evil. Van Alphen deems this metaphysical status undesirable because “it ultimately makes it impossible to see the Holocaust as a moment, albeit apocalyptic, in human history” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 43). This metaphysical status makes it difficult to raise questions concerning the causes of, and responsibility for, the events of the Holocaust – which in turn limits discourse about it. In addition to this, Van Alphen develops the complex argument that the unrepresentability of the Holocaust arose during the Holocaust itself and not afterward when survivors tried to provide testimonies of it (van Alphen, 1997, p. 44). The reason for this is the distance between experiencing an event and finding an expression for it. Experiencing an event implies a certain distance from the event: it is not the event itself we talk about, but a direct interpretation of it by an individual who undergoes it. Therefore, Van Alphen maintains that the problem Holocaust survivors encounter is that “the lived events could not be experienced because language did not provide the terms with which to experience them. This unrepresentability defines those events as traumatic” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 44). The Holocaust thus has had a traumatic impact on those who lived it, because it could not be experienced due to the fact that a distance from it in language or representation was not possible. Taking all this together, we reaffirm the previous statement that the semiotic problem surrounding Holocaust representation stems from the extremity of the events that make up the Holocaust for which language could not provide an adequate framework of representation. This tendency of Holocaust survivors to refer to their experiences of the Holocaust as indescribable or beyond words becomes even more problematic when this discussion reaches the domain of literary forms of Holocaust representation by survivor-witnesses. As Dresden once stated: it has grown upon people to refer to the Holocaust as ineffable, which is paradoxical to the descriptive nature of literature (Dresden, 1991, p. 73). With representation being a historically and culturally specific phenomenon, and with language itself being changeable and transformable, Van Alphen believes our focus should shift from the limits of language in representing the Holocaust to the forms of representation available to Holocaust survivors to articulate their stories (Van Alphen, 1997, p. 44). Considering the fundamentally semiotic nature of the problem of Holocaust

14 representation as discussed before, he maintains that an historical approach to the Holocaust appears to be the least inadequate form of literary Holocaust representation:

“Historical discourse is then seen as more basic, as more closely reflecting experiences that cannot be reached or expressed. From this perspective, the imaginative discourses of art and literature are seen as secondary.” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 42)

This would imply that fiction would not be a suitable form of literary Holocaust representation available to survivor-witnesses in an attempt to deal with their traumatic experiences due to the existing semiotic problems of representation. Instead, Van Alphen turns to factual and objective historical discourse as an approach to writing history based on its efficiency and practicality in the face of issues of representation. Of course, a suspicion of imaginative artistic and literary representations of the Holocaust had already been present before, yet based on moral grounds. This brings to mind the famous statement by philosopher and literary critic Theodor Adorno that it was barbaric to continue writing poetry after Auschwitz (van Alphen, 1997, p. 17). Based on the moral necessity of the survivor-witnesses to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, the general opinion was that the pleasure and aesthetics associated with art (and thus with fictional literature as well) would detract attention from the cruelty and devastation of the events of the Holocaust. As Van Alphen described: writing about the Holocaust had to be bare and realistic. “Fictionalizing is taboo, while ego-documents, personal testimonies modelled on journalistic or documentary accounts, are considered to be the most appropriate genre for representing the Holocaust” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 18). This general opinion on the preference of historical discourse over artistic or literary representations of the Holocaust in the field of Holocaust historiography is deeply embedded in the historical and political context of the development of Holocaust literature after the Second World War. I will expand on this later on in the theoretical and contextual framework of this thesis.

1.3 The main research focus: Greek tragedy in Holocaust fiction Considering that very little research has been done into the intertextual relations between ancient Greek tragedy and post-modern (fictional) Holocaust literature, this will prove to be an original and interesting topic to pursue in a master’s thesis. Thus far, Edith Hall (scholar of classics with a specialization in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and Professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London) has been among the first to write about the heavily under-researched relationship between Greek tragedy and an instance of recent literary fiction that dealt with the Holocaust (Hall, 2009, p. 40). In an article for the Classical Receptions Journal titled ‘Greek tragedy and the politics of subjectivity in recent fiction’ (2009), Hall mainly focussed on demonstrating how recent works of politically engaged fiction use Euripidean tragedies in order to draw attention to the epistemological issue of narrative control (Hall, 2009, p. 23). One of the four case studies she turns to in her article is that of Imre Kertész’s The Pathseeker (1977), which was chosen based on the fact that it dated from the late 1970s and was a politically engaged novel (Hall,

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2009, p. 23). Therefore, the fact that the novel was about the Holocaust in particular seems to be more of a coincidence than intent. While Hall manages to provide an accurate account of how Goethe’s reworked Euripidean tragedy about Iphigenia in Kertész’s novella interacts with the issue of rival subjectivities of Holocaust survivors fighting for narrative control in Holocaust historiography, her brief exploration of the topic remains rather overshadowed by the other three case studies she addresses in her article. Apart from that, her brief analysis seems to focus insufficiently on the inherent qualities and characteristics of ancient Greek tragedy and what they may be able to contribute to discourse about the Holocaust specifically – which appears to be dealing with themes comparable to those of the Euripidean tragedies discussed as I am determined to demonstrate later. Up till now, we have seen the connection that Hungarian author Imre Kertész established between ancient Greek tragedy and fictional Holocaust literature. He based this connection on the idea of their shared linkages to art and morality. He also expressed his hopes that fictional Holocaust literature may draw inspiration from Greek tragedy, so that the irredeemable reality of the former may give rise to redemption; to a form of emotional purification that Aristotle also ascribed to Greek tragedy as catharsis. In addition, we have taken a look at some of the biggest issues in Holocaust representation: one of which was defined as the semiotic problem of the inadequacy of language in representing the Holocaust, while the other focussed on the inadequacies of literary fiction in Holocaust representation. With this unconventional comparison between ancient Greek tragedy and fictional Holocaust literature there are bound to be clashes between aspects of Greek tragedy and current conventions within the field of Holocaust historiography. When comparing ancient Greek tragedy to Holocaust fiction there are certain similarities that may be discovered. In general, Greek tragic plays serve as source of archetypical stories on themes related to the universal human condition, but according to Imre Kertész Holocaust literature has the potential of functioning as a source of knowledge on, and insights into, the human condition for generations to come as well (Kertész, 1992, p. 77). Those specific themes related to the human condition that Holocaust literature and Greek tragedy have in common are those of death, loss, sacrifice, fate, the divine (religion) and (moral) responsibility. Similarly, different roles such as those of the victim, perpetrator, survivor, witness and (tragic) hero are all embedded in both Holocaust literature and Greek tragedy as well. In addition, both Greek tragedy and Holocaust fiction may relate to universal causes of human despair – such as uncertainty about the future, fear of injury, deprivation, suffering and death – but they also deal with the most remarkable strengths of humanity, among which we may find empathy, compassion and the ability to endure even in the face of physical suffering and deprivation. Such contrasting human experiences are to be found at the core of both Greek tragedy and Holocaust fiction; in the case of the latter especially in stories shared by those who survived deportation and the concentration camps. As Laura Swift, senior lecturer and researcher in the field of archaic and classical Greek poetry, drama and tragedy at the Open University, remarked in her book Greek Tragedy: Themes and Contexts (2016): tragedy should not be seen as a set of moralizing lessons with neat answers, but instead it reflects on the fact that life is messy, complicated and often unfair (Swift, 2016, p. 12). Once again, in the context of the Holocaust the same thing can be said.

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Holocaust literature does not bring forth stories with clear-cut answers on what was right or wrong, or who were the victims and who were perpetrators at the time of the Second World War. Next to that, the unfairness of life reminds of the ‘barbaric arbitrariness of history’ with which the Holocaust was referred to in the press release statement that marked Imre Kertész as Nobel Prize winner in 2002 (“The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002 to Imre Kertész – Press Release”, 2002). Nevertheless, some of the perceived similarities between Holocaust fiction and Greek tragedy can also be regarded as sources of friction due to the metaphysical status of the Holocaust in human history and the prevalent conventions regarding Holocaust representation in the field of historiography. For instance, looking at the term ‘tragedy’, we would nowadays describe it as a catastrophic event; an event so extraordinary and unexpected that it is elevated above normality. In this sense, the Holocaust can be called a tragedy as well: through systematized mass murder of the European Jewry and the magnitude with which this genocide took place, the Holocaust transcended normality and the existing frameworks of reference as well. Hence the metaphysical status ascribed to the Holocaust as explained before. Central to tragedy in the sense of the ancient Greek plays is human suffering: characters experience hardships and the audience is encouraged to reflect on the suffering of the characters so that they may gain a deeper understanding of it and empathize with the victims – without actually being a victim to this kind of suffering themselves. This is a form of catharsis, a term that Aristotle defined as a purification or purgation of emotions (especially pity and fear) through art (Swift, 2016, p. 11). This process of catharsis was used by Imre Kertész to denote emotional cleansing with regard to Holocaust literature as well: “[I]f the Holocaust today has created a culture (…), its literature may draw inspiration from the two sources of European culture, the Bible and Greek tragedy, so that irredeemable reality may give rise to redemption: the spirit, catharsis.” (Kertész, 1992, p. 78). While the term ‘tragedy’ – and the experience of human suffering that is central to it – may be applicable to both Greek tragedy and Holocaust literature, it would be too simplistic to equate the process of reaching the effects of catharsis as Aristotle described it in the case of Greek tragedy with the process that Kertész referred to in the case of Holocaust literature. After all, where in Greek tragedy catharsis is reached by an audience experiencing a performed tragedy, in the case of Kertész it does not even become clear whether it is the author (Holocaust survivor-witnesses) or the readers (quite possibly members of generations to come) who may experience this mystical type of emotional cleansing. If those who are to experience catharsis are not clearly identified, then neither is the process through which this experience is derived and nor is the motivation for wanting to experience this emotional purification in the first place. Another example where an apparent similarity between Greek tragedy and Holocaust literature causes friction can be found in the concept of ‘sacrifice’. The causes of human despair dealt with in tragedy, in particular death and loss, are a vital part of Holocaust fiction as well. However, where the often accompanying themes of the divine (religion) and sacrifice are relatively straightforward within tragedy, we may encounter these themes (different in nature) situated in different contexts in Holocaust fiction too. While Judaism is easily recognized as the common denominator among most victims persecuted and deported, the much more complicated concept of sacrifice has been present ever since the adoption of the term ‘Holocaust’. This is another apparent

17 similarity between Holocaust discourse and Greek tragedy, which upon taking a closer look actually brings to light a representational issue in Holocaust historiography. The very name ‘Holocaust’ bears traces of sacrifice: it originates from the Greek term holókautos, referring to an animal sacrifice offered to a god in which the whole (hólos) animal was completely burnt (kautós) (Whitney, 1904, p. 2859). With regard to the victims of the Holocaust, the context of this term brings to mind the gas chambers and in particular the crematoria in which the bodies were burned. However, there has been much criticism, especially on behalf of the Jewish community, on the very idea of Jewish people having been ‘sacrificed’ by the Nazis. As American historian Walter Laqueur wrote: “[i]t was not the intention of the Nazis to make a sacrifice of this kind and the position of the Jews was not that of a ritual victim” (Evans, 1989, p. 142). This would render the term ‘Holocaust’ theologically and historically unacceptable. Instead, the Hebrew word Shoah (meaning ‘calamity’ or ‘catastrophe’) became the preferred term for the Jewish community to refer to the mass destruction of the Jewish population during WWII. So, even though the term ‘sacrifice’ is present both in Greek tragedy and in Holocaust discourse, and it may appear to be something that both have in common, it is actually a concept problematized by the different contexts it is used in. Trying to understand the concept of ‘sacrifice’ in Holocaust discourse by looking at how it was used in Greek tragedy is not just a semiotic problem; it is also going against the grain of the metaphysical status of the Holocaust in human history. It remains troublesome to compare something out of the universalizing context of ancient Greek tragedy to an aspect of a historical event as renounced for its uniqueness as is the Holocaust. However, the possibility remains that the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in Holocaust fiction may also be able to provide new insights and opportunities in dealing with the inadequacies and risks of language and literary fiction in representing the Holocaust. The general topic of my thesis will be the connection between fictional Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy. Inspired by Imre Kertész’s essay ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ (1992), in which he makes a comparison between Greek tragedy and Holocaust literature and advocates for the latter to be inspired by the former, I have decided upon making this the focus of my research. It will become clear that there are similarities to be found between Kertész’s novels about the Holocaust and certain Greek tragedies that deal with comparable aspects of human nature and the human experience. In the literary analysis that will be part of my research, I will identify and interpret these apparent similarities in the light of the ongoing historiographical discussions concerning the inadequacies of language and literary fiction in representing the Holocaust. More specifically, I will focus on Imre Kertész’s novella The Pathseeker (1977), and together with the ancient Greek tragedies that Kertész intertwined with this story this novella will form the main research object of my thesis. My literary analysis of the novella will deal with the mean themes and three of the most important elements of the work, related to narratological structures and the author’s intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy. The Pathseeker contains explicit references to both the Sophoclean tragedy Antigone (c. 442 BC), as well as the Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians (c. 412 BC) – or more specifically, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s adaptation to the play titled Iphigenie auf Tauris (1779). Considering that the tragic play of Iphigenia among the Taurians builds on Iphigenia’s sacrifice described in Euripides’ Iphigenia at

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Aulis (c. 406 BC) and in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon as the first of three parts of the Oresteia (458 BC), I will likely refer to (and explore parts of) these Greek tragedies as well. The claim that I would like to make in my thesis is that Kertész’s intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in Holocaust fiction was an attempt to address the existing discussions regarding the (in)adequacies of language and fiction in representing the Holocaust. Therefore, my thesis will ultimately define the ways in which new interpretations of The Pathseeker – interpretations that take a connection between Holocaust literature and Greek tragedy into account – challenge some of the existing conventions prevalent in Holocaust. In light of the above, the main research question that I intend to answer with my research is:

How does the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in fictional Holocaust literature by Imre Kertész position the author in ongoing discussions in the field of Holocaust historiography related to the (in)adequacies of language and fiction in Holocaust representation?

To address this research question in a clear and fluent manner, I have chosen to adopt a structure in my work that is guided by multiple sub-questions. After the introduction, I will continue with a short biography on Imre Kertész (chapter 1) in order to gain insight into how his Holocaust experiences have affected his personal life, his professional career as an author and his written works. After this brief introduction into the author and his literature, my ensuing theoretical and contextual framework (chapter 2) will deal with three important aspects of the general topic of my thesis. The first part will provide a brief overview of some of the main political and historical events that influenced the field of Holocaust historiography through literature. It will be guided by the sub-question: How are the discussions concerning the (in)adequacies of language and fiction in Holocaust representation embedded in the larger historical context of the development of Holocaust literature since the end of the Second World War up until now? I will place a specific focus on literary critics and historians who have adopted a favourable opinion towards literary fiction in Holocaust representation. The second part of the theoretical framework will dig deeper into the historical background of ancient Greek tragedy. It will attempt to clarify the general structure and characteristics of Greek tragic plays. The question that I wish to address here is: What is the history of ancient Greek tragedy, what are its characteristic elements and themes, and what were their general effects on the audience? Special attention will be paid to the Sophoclean tragedy Antigone and the Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians. The third part of the theoretical framework will focus on the concept of intertextuality and its uses in literary fiction. I will attempt to answer questions such as: What are intertextuality and multivocality, and why do authors generally refer to classical texts in particular in their literary works? In what ways has Kertész’s work in general been influenced by other discourses and by historical, societal and/or political events? The external influences on the literary works of Kertész will be divided up into the four components that guide the reader’s interpretation of a written work: influences on the author, the text, the context and the reader.

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After the theoretical and contextual framework I will move on to the third chapter of this thesis in which I will provide an in-depth analysis of Imre Kertész’s novella The Pathseeker (1977). I will start this chapter by introducing the story and strengthening its assumed authority and authenticity by linking it to an entry in Kertész’s published diary Galley Boat-Log (1992) in which the author spoke of an episode in his life that likely inspired The Pathseeker: his return to the concentration camps where he had been imprisoned between 1944-1945. I will present a literary analysis of the main theme and two of the most important elements of the novella before I will move on to the author’s use of ancient Greek tragedy in The Pathseeker. I will study two particular passages from the novella in which these tragedies are referred to by adopting the method of close reading. This will help me perform descriptive and interpretive analyses on Kertész’s use of ancient Greek tragedy in the context of the Holocaust within his novella, which I will then link to some of the discussed conventions within Holocaust historiography. Therefore, this chapter will be guided by two sub-questions: How, and for what purpose, has Imre Kertész made explicit intertextual references to Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedy in his novella? And: How are some of the apparent similarities between ancient Greek tragedy and Holocaust literature problematized by Imre Kertész in his novella? In the conclusion of my thesis I will present an overview of the main arguments brought forth in this thesis and I will provide an answer to the main research question as stated before. It will reflect the two levels on which my research has operated: on the level of my main case study (Kertész’s novella The Pathseeker) and on the level of representational issues within Holocaust historiography in general. After all, with clear insight in how the intertextual use of Greek tragedy functions within fictional Holocaust literature, I will be able to position Imre Kertész in two of the most prominent ongoing historiographical discussions on the (in)adequacies of language and literary fiction in Holocaust representation. Finally, I will provide suggestions on further research into the connection between Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy. Not only inside of Imre Kertész’s literary works (such as his debut novel Fatelessness), but even outside of Kertész’s oeuvre and into the realm of artistic Holocaust representations in general.

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2. A short biography of Imre Kertész 2.1 Imre Kertész: Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Prize laureate Imre Kertész (1929-2016) was born of Jewish descent in Budapest, Hungary. In 1944, when he was 14 years old, he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and subsequently to Buchenwald concentration camp. He was soon transferred to a sub-camp in Zeitz, from where he was forced to work at the nearby BRABAG (Braunkohle-Benzin AG) factory in Tröglitz. After having been taken up in a hospital barrack, there was no chance of him soon being able to continue work, which is why he was transported back to Buchenwald again from which he was liberated in 1945. After his liberation, Kertész moved back to Hungary. Up until 1955, Kertész completed his high school education in Budapest, after which he started working for the communist newspaper Világosság. He attempted to join the communist party (from which he was soon rejected as a class-alien), and he continued working as a labourer until he was called up for two years of military service (Kőbánvai, n.d.). Afterwards, he began supporting himself financially as an independent writer and translator of German-language authors and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Roth, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Camus and Elias Canetti – all of whom, amongst others, had a significant influence on Kertész’s own writing. He worked himself up as press secretary of a government ministry and in the meanwhile he started writing light dramas and operetta libretti (Kőbánvai, n.d.). The year 1955 served as a changing point in Kertész’s life, as that was when he decided to choose a solitary path for himself to start writing his first novel. He later stated that he felt it to be a mystical call to break with his deceptive communist-accommodating life (Kertész, 1988). It coincided with the start of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, which lasted from October 1955 to November 1956. This was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, that resulted in large numbers of casualties both on the side of the Hungarians and the Soviet troops. Additionally, it caused a great number of Hungarians to flee the country as refugees, but Kertész decided not to leave because he needed to work on his novel which he felt was something that needed to be done in Hungary (Kertész, 1988). After the uprising resided, mass arrests and denunciations continued and Soviet control was re-established. By 1957, the Soviet- installed government suppressed all public opposition and János Kádár was appointed as the communist leader presiding over Hungary until his retirement in 1988. For 35 years Kertész lived with his first wife Albina Vas in a 28-square-meter apartment, in which he shut himself off from the country’s social, intellectual and political affairs – financially relying only on his wife’s work as a waitress (Kőbánvai, n.d.). Perhaps this self-exiled existence lies behind the dramatic strength and spiritual independence that can be felt in his debut novel Fatelessness (1975). That the author’s writing process for Fatelessness had been such a large undertaking is not only shown by the fact that Kertész spent 30 years of his life planning, writing and rewriting it. By the time he started planning out his novel, many historical and fictional works about the Holocaust had already appeared in and outside of Hungary. Imre Kertész purposely wanted to come up with a new and different way of telling his story. The novel was initially published as Fateless in 1975, after it had been rejected by the Hungarian publishing industry earlier. After 10 more years of rewriting the novel it

21 was published in 1985 again as Fatelessness (Kőbánvai, n.d.). The extensive process of writing this particular novel also becomes clear through the fact that Kertész kept a diary of this ‘spiritual journey’, which was published much later as Gályanapló (1992), of which only a few excerpts were translated into English by Tim Wilkinson as Galley Boat-Log in Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, pp. 97-110). Moreover, Kertész revisited his writing process and gave deeper insight into it in his novel Fiasco (1988) as well. After so many years spent at creating and perfecting the novel, it must have come as a disappointment to the author that the novel received almost no attention in Hungary at both times of its publication. The Communist regime in Hungary prevented the opening up of the discussion on the Holocaust at the time. It was not until the novel found its way to post-unification Germany – where works of fiction were sought for that would allow confrontational discourse on the Holocaust to begin – that Imre Kertész started receiving any real recognition for Fatelessness and some of his other works. Well after the publication of Fatelessness, Kertész lived in Germany for several years, where he got to engage in dialogue over his written works resulting in outstanding essays and speeches throughout the years. A large collection of them were translated into Dutch and published in 2005 in a bundle called De Verbannen Taal (in English: The Exiled Tongue). German publishers and writers’ organizations were eventually the ones who recommended Imre Kertész for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 for his literary processing of the Holocaust. He was the first Hungarian author to win the prize and it was awarded to him “for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history” (“The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002 to Imre Kertész – Press Release”, 2002). After Kertész won the Nobel Prize, his books were translated more frequently and his written work spread out over Western Europe where the author gained more recognition. In recent years Kertész had been living in Berlin, but he returned to Hungary in 2012 for health concerns. He died in March 2016 at his home in Budapest, leaving behind his second wife Magda Ambrus, whom he had married in 1996 after the death of his first wife.

2.2 The literary works of Imre Kertész: a brief overview Two years after Fatelessness, which is a book about the deportation and concentration camp experiences of the 15 year old Hungarian boy Gyuri Köves, Kertész published two accompanying stories called Detective Story and The Pathseeker in a single volume (1977). These books both contain fictional narratives of witnesses reflecting on the destructive power of totalitarian regimes, of which the former is set in an unnamed country in Latin-America whereas the latter is set in an unnamed central European country. Shortly after the re-publication of Fatelessness, Kertész brought out Fiasco (1988), which deals with a character named ‘the Old Boy’ reflecting on writing his first novel on the Holocaust experiences of a boy called Gyuri Köves (the same name as the main character from Fatelessness). This enabled the reader to indirectly gain deeper insight in Kertész’s process of writing his debut novel and the rejections that followed. In 1990 Kertész published Kaddish for an Unborn Child, in which the unnamed narrator explains his decision not to bring a child into the world with his wife. It is also a reflection on the narrator’s Jewish identity, his failed marriage and his unsuccessful literary career. A year later, Union Jack (1991) came out, in which the narrator explains why he

22 refused to take part in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Several years later Liquidation (2003) sees the light of day – the last novel of Kertész translated into English by Tim Wilkinson – in which an unnamed Auschwitz survivor and author referred to as B. commits suicide, leaving his editor Kingsbitter to search for a missing manuscript of a novel about the Holocaust. Considering that this book is the only novel in Kertész’s oeuvre that actually finds a character commit suicide, it was probably influenced by Kertész’s own recurring depression after he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease around the time he wrote the novel (Faber, 2006). In the year 2006, Imre Kertész wrote and published his own memoir called Dossier K., set up as an interview in which he acted as both the interviewer and the interviewee. Though most written works by Imre Kertész appear to be fictionalized accounts of events that took place in the author’s life, they still bear traces of authenticity with them. As I will explain in the upcoming theoretical and contextual framework, a sense of ‘authenticity’ is not necessarily based on the truthfulness and accuracy with which events are described when dealing with the value of fiction in representing the Holocaust. Instead, the narratives of Kertész do have the capacity of providing historical truths and a deeper understanding of the Holocaust, by means of the emotional reality that they convey.

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3. Theoretical and contextual framework 3.1 Holocaust historiography: on the development of Holocaust literature Before starting my analysis of those passages from The Pathseeker that contain traces of Greek tragedy, there are some concepts and historical contexts central to this thesis that will benefit from clarification. For instance, considering the long history of Holocaust literature since the end of the Second World War up till now, it will be useful to gain a brief overview of the major developments and turning points in the process of moving the focus from objective to subjective accounts of the Holocaust in witness testimony, which intensified in the 1970s. In particular, the previously introduced issues of language and literary fiction in Holocaust representation are deeply embedded in the historical context of this development in Holocaust literature within the field of Holocaust historiography. The sub-question that this first part of the theoretical framework will answer is: How are the discussions concerning the (in)adequacies of language and fiction in Holocaust representation embedded in the larger historical context of the development of Holocaust literature since the end of the Second World War up until now?

3.1.1 On a misinterpreted ‘culture of silence’ after the Second World War According to genocide studies scholar Zoë Vania Waxman, the development of Holocaust literature has one of the longest histories compared to most other forms of Holocaust representation, as written testimonies of personal experiences already emerged during the Holocaust. Witnesses were already writing from the ghettos and from inside the concentration camps, while émigré survivors were committed to remembering the people they had lost (Waxman, 2006, p. 1). However, it was not common that these written-down experiences of the Holocaust made their way into the public sphere directly after the war. As explained in a review of the book After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence (2012, edited by David Cesarani and Eric J. Sundquist) written by David Herman for the New Statesman, the general consensus among scholars has been for a long time that, when the war ended, there appeared to have been a brief period of attention followed by a general tendency to keep silent about what had happened (Herman, 2012). Perpetrators, bystanders and survivors of the Holocaust alike often chose to keep silent about their (traumatic) experiences (both verbally as well as in written form) as a post-war coping strategy. Perpetrators likely did not want to attract attention to themselves for fear of punishment or revenge. Bystanders may have been reluctant to admit that they had remained ignorant or purposely turned the other cheek to signs of the genocide that had taken place in their midst. Even for survivors of the Holocaust there were various reasons for not wanting (or not being able) to talk or write about the Holocaust for some time after the war. Very often, these reasons were related to the fact that it was very difficult for survivors to deal with their traumatic experiences. The post-war situation required a different mind-set: survivors of the Holocaust pushed their traumatic experiences and memories away, so that they would be able to start rebuilding their lives (Waxman, 2006, p. 111). After the war, the lives of those who had been victimized had often fallen apart completely: family members may have had died, houses (including personal possessions) were either claimed by new inhabitants or were destroyed in bombardments altogether. In order to create some form of stability after the war, Holocaust survivors had to focus on returning home and

24 rebuilding their lives, and in this process there was little to no room for dealing with traumatic experiences. It was easier, and on the short-term more useful, to try and push those traumas away out of self-preservation so that survivors could have a chance at becoming functional and productive members of post-war society again, which would give them a chance to move on with their lives (Waxman, 2006, p. 111). While these reasons more often than not have to do with Holocaust survivors not wanting to open up about their experiences, there was also a reason as to why they felt they could not express their personal experiences. I addressed this particular issue already in the introduction as the semiotic problem of language being an inadequate framework for representing the Holocaust. Language was no longer felt to be suitable in describing the traumatic experiences of survivors, which made it difficult for survivors to fully express the impact that the Holocaust had had on them. “What kind of narrative can make sense of the catastrophe of the Jewish genocide, bearing in mind that this was before the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Shoah’ had been coined?” (Herman, 2012). As explained before, the only type of language that came closest to portraying the events of the Holocaust ended up being a historical approach that was objective, factual, realistic and bare (van Alphen, 1997, p. 42). With cold, hard facts and evidence of the Holocaust being the preferred way of describing it, this was reflected in the field of Holocaust historiography where archives were set up with objective and historically accurate accounts of the Holocaust rather than stories built on imaginative discourses or art and literature (van Alphen, 1997, 42). Historical discourse was adopted as an approach to writing history based on its efficiency and practicality in the face of representational issues. However, this does not mean that outside of Holocaust historiography there were no subjective accounts of personal experiences of the Holocaust already being written and published shortly after the war. According to Herman, not only survivors remained silent on experiences of the war and the Holocaust, but those around them also did not show any interest in learning about the survivors’ stories about their traumatic experiences:

“Survivors were reluctant to speak out. Others were reluctant to listen. Publishers and film producers weren’t interested. This lasted for most of the 1950s and only in the late 1950s and early 1960s did this silence come to an end.” (Herman, 2012)

While this quote may reflect what has been the general consensus of scholars over the years, Cesarani and Sundquist (2012) did research into an extensive body of scholarship on post-war literary works on the Holocaust by Jewish survivors and concluded that this supposed ‘culture of silence’ contradictorily coincided with a flood of memoirs, history books, oral histories and even films (Herman, 2012). The work by Cesarani and Sundquist shows that Jewish survivors had not always and everywhere remained silent at all, and that this ‘culture of silence’ after the war has actually been misinterpreted for a very long time. The editors provide a large overview of written works on the Holocaust by Yiddish historians and memoirists that pulled together “the first historiography of the Holocaust” as “archives and testimonies were gathered and published” that were rich with “individual stories” (Herman, 2012).

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According to Herman, Cesarani and Sundquist partly hold “the wrong language” responsible for this strange gap between the outpouring of written material on the Holocaust on the one hand, and the supposed silence on the matter perceived after the war on the other hand (Herman, 2012). He recapitulates how many early works on the Holocaust were published in Yiddish and Polish, but that they were not yet in the process of being translated into English until the late 1950s. In addition, Cesarani and Sundquist believe that the establishment of the Iron Curtain between Eastern and Western Europe also contributed to Western Europe being cut off from many early sources of Holocaust historiography since 1945 (Herman, 2012). Similarly, the collapse of communism brought forth a new wave of memoirs in Eastern Europe between 1960-1970, and with the end of communist rule (1989-1991) even more people finally dared to speak up about their personal experiences of the Holocaust, and this new flow of testimony based on personal experiences found its way to Western Europe again (Waxman, 2006, p. 116). Nevertheless, also in Western Europe were personal stories on the Holocaust and WWII already written down for publication relatively shortly after the war. The problem was that it remained difficult to get such written works published due to a lack of public interest. Dutch author and Holocaust survivor Marga Minco, who had been in hiding during the war while members of her family had been arrested and deported, was among the first in the Netherlands to write down her testimony in literary form. However, as she explained in an interview with Ischa Meijer in 2003, it was not so easily done to get it published. Both her own confidence in public interest and the apprehension on the part of her publisher got in the way:

“Anyway: the theme was cast out by the outside world. No one wrote about the war, no one talked about it. Those who returned from the camps were stabbed in the back in this country [the Netherlands]. It was simply ‘not done’ to open your mouth about that period of time. I knew that. When I finished Het Bittere Kruid [1957], I thought to myself: there isn’t a single person who wants to read this, it does not belong in a bookstore; it is merely meant for some people around me. The publisher left it in the drawer of his desk for a year – he recognized its potential, but was nevertheless afraid he would make no money on it. Moreover, it had to be supplemented with drawings – pretty drawings, by the way – otherwise it would not have sold at all.” (Meijer, 2003)

According to this particular quote from Minco, she clearly felt it was ‘not done’ to speak or write about the Holocaust after the war, which emphasizes her perception of the ‘culture of silence’ that she felt was present in the Netherlands shortly after the war. Yet she refused to participate in this silence and she decided to write down her experiences in a short novella instead. The novella, Het Bittere Kruid (1957), was one of the earlier literary works about the Holocaust that got published in the Netherlands. Minco gives us insight in the reasons behind her fear for rejection as well: she was convinced that no one would want about her Holocaust and war experiences, she felt that her book did not belong in a bookstore and she recounts how even the publisher recognized its potential as a literary work but was still afraid that it simply would not sell. Even if Holocaust survivors chose to speak up about their

26 experiences, there were not many people who wanted to listen to them. There was very little public interest in stories about the Holocaust and the war in post-war Western Europe.

3.1.2 Changing public opinion on Holocaust survivors: the Eichmann Trial (1961-1962) Zoë Vania Waxman reflected on how the post-war introduction reflected on the public attitude towards the testimonies of survivors after the war by stating that “[p]ublic attitudes of suspicion and unease at accounts of survival kept many survivors from writing their testimonies” (Waxman, 2006, p. 119). Survivors kept silent out of fear for being rejected or shunned by those around them, or as a result of the severe trauma with which they returned home. Sensations of feeling guilty about one’s own survival, as so many others were not given that chance, also prevented some from speaking up about their experiences. The survival of one individual was seen and judged as if it was achieved at the cost of another. Interestingly enough, Waxman first describes this survivor’s guilt as a reason for survivors not to talk or write about their Holocaust experiences, whereas on another occasion she claims that this survivor’s guilt may actually have created the sense of ‘a moral duty to testify’ among Holocaust survivors (Waxman, 2006, p. 88). According to Waxman, Holocaust survivors had to confront the fact that, whereas they survived, millions of others did not. This affected their testimony in the sense that it provided a need to account for one’s own survival (Waxman 2006, p. 88). The newly-found moral duty meant that the role of the Holocaust survivor slowly changed throughout time: victims of the Holocaust already went from ‘liberated prisoners’, to ‘displaced persons’, to ‘survivors’ – and even then their role further expanded to that of ‘survivor-witness’ (Waxman, 2006, pp. 5-6). The moral duty to testify for survivor-witnesses was not limited to merely informing readers about the Holocaust. Instead, they were expected to provide universal lessons regarding morality and the human condition (Waxman, 2006, p. 6). This seems contradictory to other statements by Waxman about conventions in Holocaust historiography that went against the tendency to universalize the Holocaust. In other parts of her book she claimed how it was up to historians, philosophers and theologians to decide how different types of Holocaust testimonies had to be comprehended and represented: either as testaments to the strength of the human spirit, or as attempts to historically describe the ineffable (Waxman, 2006, p. 1). She emphasized the importance of resisting the tendency to universalize or collectivize the Holocaust in historiography shortly after the war, but instead to “revive the particular by uncovering multiple layers within the testimony” (Waxman, 2006, p. 1). However, this convention within the field of Holocaust historiography appears to have altered coincidentally with a change in the role of the Holocaust survivors. An explanation for the latter may among others be found in a historical event that took place in the 1970s: the Eichmann Trial held in Jerusalem. According to Waxman, with the Eichmann Trial of 1961-1962 came a turning point in the development of Holocaust testimony in the field of historiography: the focus was no longer merely on objective and factual accounts of the events of the Holocaust, but subjective and personal experiences were sought for documentation purposes as well (Waxman, 2006, p. 113). The suffering of the victims was acknowledged and their individual testimonies and personal accounts and experiences of the Holocaust were needed and heard in court (Waxman, 2006, p. 113). This broke the silence on the

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Holocaust in the sense that the historical event now entered into the public sphere of debate. Many books, articles and (news) reports were written about this trial, as it was one of the most important public trials since Germany capitulated and the war had ended. It was held in Israel, of all places, before three Israeli judges and it received media coverage from all over the world as journalists from various nations travelled to Israel to the attend the trial, document it and report on it back home. Moreover, with the airing of the ‘Holocaust’ docu-drama miniseries in 1978 on American television, there was another boost that made the experiences of survivors become public interest. Due to the Eichmann Trial public opinion on the victims/survivors may have turned around in the sense that their traumas were acknowledged and their role changed to that of the survivor-witness, the attitude of survivors towards paying respect to those who had not survived changed as well. Where silence was initially the best way to honour those who had died, the newly-found moral duty to testify surfaced to keep the ‘true’ victims from being neglected and forgotten. With the writing down of personal experiences and individual stories, an effort was made to restore the targeted obliteration of individual identity of the victims by the Nazis. The acceptance of the role of the survivor-witness over the role of victim or survivor alone was also characterized by a desire to educate future generations about the Holocaust. It was a way for some to work through their traumas and incorporate them in a productive way into their daily lives (Waxman, 2006, p. 157).

3.1.3 Entering the historiographical discussion: on the value of literary fiction about the Holocaust For some survivor-witnesses, such as Elie Wiesel, an increasing sense of dislocation after the war characterized their transition from writing their testimony as historical memoirs to writing it down in novelistic forms instead (Waxman, 2006, p. 110). They resorted to this particular literary genre in order to try to find new ways of mirroring the other-worldly nature of their experiences (Waxman, 2006, p. 110). Even though witness testimony based on personal experience (ego-documents such as memoirs and autobiographies for example) still required certain narratological structures that helped shape the work into something that made sense to the reader, the development of Holocaust literature towards fictional representations of the Holocaust ensured an even more fiery debate that centred around the often misinterpreted concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’ in literary fiction. I already elaborated in my introduction on the general belief concerning the inadequacies of fiction in representing the Holocaust. Writing down subjective experiences in a novel to be published means that certain technicalities will be present in the writing process. Events will likely be chronologically ordered in a written work for the benefit of the reader, and other strategies of narrativization will be adopted: choices are made on what events will be included or excluded from the book, a particular perspective is defined in the narrative, character descriptions are written down, a climax is created in the story to maintain the attention of the reader, and the story will likely be situated in time and place or in the larger context of the Holocaust as became known only after the war. In short, the process of writing down one’s memories and past experiences requires interpretation on the part of the writer, and interpretation was said to diminish the authenticity of the story. Fictional literature in particular was long regarded as a genre that deteriorated the truth of Holocaust experiences, as it implied that events may have been made up and were therefore untrue.

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Making up stories concerning the Holocaust was felt to be inappropriate, as it would draw away attention from the terrible things that had really happened and additionally those stories would become ‘alternative facts’ that would mistakenly enter our collective memory of the Holocaust. However, there were also historians and literary critics who were able to bring favourable arguments to the discussion on the use of fiction in Holocaust representation. In an article written for Rethinking History as a response to historian Dominick LaCapra’s Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001), Ernst van Alphen recognizes that historical discourse has always been the most privileged genre in the field of Holocaust representation, but he also remarks on the fact that uncovering factual truth about an event is not the same as understanding the event (van Alphen, 2004, p. 561).1 Van Alphen reflects on historian Saul Friedlander’s statement that systematic historical research not only provides little understanding of the Holocaust, but that it also protects us from it. According to Friedlander, the language of the historian is responsible for this, as this kind of language encourages a distance between the reader and the object he reads about through the required reading attitude (van Alphen, 2004, p. 561). This is the kind of ‘objectification’ that LaCapra analyses as well, rendering it a distancing and numbing protective shield for the historian that repeats an aspect of traumatization (van Alphen, 2004, p. 561). Since attempting to understand the Holocaust is what LaCapra seeks above all else, Van Alphen reflects on how LaCapra has always been a theorist of the plea for a self-reflective history (van Alphen, 2004, p. 559). With regard to LaCapra’s ‘self-reflective history’ as effective in the effort to gain an understanding of the Holocaust (instead of merely gathering historical facts), Van Alphen remarks that in this particular context the term ‘self’ in does not so much refer to the discipline one considers one’s own, but to the position of the historian in relation to his object: the past (van Alphen, 2004, p. 559). This means that there is a double time frame that has to be taken into account: that of the past about which a traumatized witness speaks, and that of the present in which the witness lives as (s)he speaks about the past. According to Van Alphen, “a routine argument against self-reflection in historical work is the need for some kind of objectivity” (van Alphen, 2004, p. 560). However, in his work LaCapra tries to counter this argument by complicating the notion of objectivity through a reconceptualization of the term in relation to self-reflection. Objectivity is redefined as a never-ending process of working through what LaCapra calls “necessary ‘transferential’ involvements in the objects of study” (van Alphen, 2004, p. 560). LaCapra thus explains and analyses “the phenomenon in which scholars compulsively repeat dimensions of the object, arguably through a strong identification with it” (van Alphen, 2004, p. 560). This is what Van Alphen himself referred to as ‘Holocaust effects’: evoking the Holocaust by reminding one of it (not necessarily through direct referencing) by means of a re-enactment of principles that in a sense define the Holocaust (van Alphen, 1997, p. 99). The Holocaust is not addressed head-on, but the memory of it is produced in works (texts or art) that do not deal with the event directly. This is how Van Alphen makes a case as to why artistic representations of the Holocaust (such as fictional literature) could in a sense be beneficial to our understanding of the historical event.

1 Dominick LaCapra is a historian known for his work in European intellectual history and trauma studies, with a specific focus on the Holocaust. 29

Different frameworks for understanding the Holocaust can “produce meaning in the service of memory” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 63) and to look at a work of literary fiction or art purely in a historical or aesthetic manner alone is to misinterpret the work. Even though predominant conventions of Holocaust historiography established expectations concerning the presence of historical and factual accuracy in survivor-witness testimony – whether mediated by fictional literature or art – this is not always something that should primarily be focussed on. Instead, these narratives and artistic representations may contribute to a deeper understanding of the Holocaust on a completely different level. Let me clarify this statement by turning to a practical example of a piece of witness testimony as discussed by LaCapra as well. In Writing History, Writing Trauma, LaCapra dedicates a passage to the survivor-witness testimony of a woman about an event that occurred in a concentration camp she had been in. In her testimony the woman recalled a moment in Auschwitz where four chimneys of crematoria had blown up, which contradicted the historically accurate fact gathered through research before the interview that only one chimney had actually blown up that day. LaCapra refers to observations made by psychoanalyst Dori Laub during the interview with the survivor-witness, and repeats his claim that the woman was not necessarily testifying to the exact number of chimneys that had blown up (LaCapra, 2001, p. 88). Instead, she was testifying to something more radical, more crucial: “the reality of an unimaginable occurrence. She testified to the breakage of a framework. That was historical truth” (LaCapra, 2001, p. 88). LaCapra reflects on this excerpt from Laub’s interview with the survivor-witness by stating that the testimony of that woman was never open to criticism as evidence of her experiences as she recalled and relive it at the particular moment in time of the interview. However, it is a different question altogether the extent to which her testimony related to an accurate empirical reconstruction of the events she lived through. Aware of the pitfalls of witness testimony within the domain of historiography, LaCapra relates how reliving the past at a present time may involve “distortion, disguise and other permutations relating to processes of imaginative transformation and narrative shaping, as well as perhaps repression, denial, dissociation and foreclosure” (LaCapra, 2001, p. 89). However, he also rightly remarks that these issues may have affected certain parts of her account of the events she witnessed, but could never invalidate it in its entirety. The reason behind this is that the woman does not only testify to her personal experiences, but to “something larger having social significance”: the breaking of what Laub termed an ‘all compelling frame’ (LaCapra, 2001, p. 89). The ability to break this ‘all compelling frame’, if only retrospectively, is an indication that the survivor-witness is not simply reliving or compulsively acting out the past, but that she is to some extent working it over and quite possibly working it through (LaCapra, 2001, p. 89). LaCapra frequently discusses these processes of ‘acting out’ and ‘working through’ trauma in the case of witnesses who provide testimony of their experiences pertaining events of the Holocaust. In an interview with Amos Goldberg (senior lecturer at the department of Jewish history at the university of Jerusalem) he explains how ‘acting out’ refers to a tendency to repeat trauma compulsively. Holocaust survivors who have been traumatized frequently relive the past in occurrences such as flashbacks or nightmares (Goldberg, 1998, p. 2). These occurrences are unpleasant and invade their present existence and

30 reality, but according to LaCapra it is something that nearly all traumatized individuals have to go through. The more productive process of ‘working-through’ means that the traumatized individual attempts to gain critical distance on the trauma; to be able to separate past from present and recognize that he or she is thinking about a distressing episode from the past, but that the present is different from that episode (Goldberg, 1998, p. 3). The narratives underlying the process of ‘working through’ trauma by survivor-witnesses in itself may provide us with historical truths and a deeper understanding of the Holocaust, regardless of whether or not the story coincide with the gathered facts or not. This means that the testimony of survivor-witnesses does not necessarily need to be historically accurate for it to contribute to our understanding of the Holocaust. According to philosopher and literary theorist Judith Butler, narrative may well be a way of communicating historical truths, including what literary critic Hayden White has termed their ‘emotional reality’ (Butler, 2016, p. 373). She would even go as far as to state that it might be that “narrative and poetic forms alike are the only way to communicate certain dimensions of historical experience, including its historical effects on language itself” (Butler, 2016, p. 373). Samuel Dresden agreed with the idea that a ‘fact’ from a novel may be untrue, but that this does not make it unreal (Dresden, 1991, p. 46). A fictional story about experiences from inside the concentration camps serves a purpose of having the reader of the story experience a sense of empathy for the main character (Dresden, 1991, p. 65). While a novelistic ‘fact’ may be false, it is taken out of its temporal and/or spatial context and put in another context where it has not been altered at its core even though it is historically inaccurate (Dresden, 1991, p. 46). In writing Holocaust fiction, the author will draw from events and experiences of the Holocaust that are known to have been true, and while those events and experiences may be altered in the sense that they are portrayed in a different manner and in a different context, they still manage to convey the original feeling (or sensation; or experience) to the reader that elicits a response of empathy. Dresden referred to this as the power of the writer (Dresden, 1991, p. 46). He concluded that, to a certain extent, imagination is able to take the place of historical truth, but he also acknowledged that both types of written works present testimonies in their own specific ways. There are different ways of describing or suggesting an unattainable and ineffable reality, and one way is not per definition better than another (Dresden, 1991, p. 76-77). This opens up a pathway for survivor-witnesses like Imre Kertész who decided to write about their personal experiences of the Holocaust through the genre of literary fiction. While fiction is often regarded as suspicious when it comes to Holocaust representation and historiography (it implies a sense of falsehood and untruthfulness), this does not necessarily need to be the case anymore. Instead of predominantly focussing on the (lack of) historical accuracy in such narratives, we should place a focus on the historical truths in such stories and their emotional reality instead. This emphasizes the authenticity and thus the value of such narratives, regardless of whether the author chose to mediate his/her personal experiences of the Holocaust through genres of historical discourse, ego-documents or literary fiction.

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3.2 On the origins, the characteristics and the effects of ancient Greek tragedy Considering that ancient Greek tragedy is one of the two core elements of this thesis, I should do it justice by providing some context about its origins and use in ancient Greece. After a brief overview of the historical context in which ancient Greek tragedy thrived, I will provide brief summaries of both the Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedies that are relevant in my analyses of the written work by Imre Kertész. Returning to Greek tragic plays in general once more, I will dig a little deeper into their general structure, characteristic elements and themes before delving into the effects they had on their audience. The sub-question that will be answered in this second part of the theoretical framework is: What is the history of ancient Greek tragedy, what are its characteristic elements and themes, and what were their general effects on the audience?

3.2.1 On the origins and historical background of ancient Greek tragedy As mentioned before, Greek tragedy more often than not draws inspiration from Greek mythology (as part of Greek polytheistic religion) and from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, composed probably in the late eight or early seventh century BC. These two Homeric epics, both some 2,700 years old, are regarded as the first literary works of Western civilization to come into existence. Next to the Bible, they stood at the cusp of European culture, because of the tragic and hopeful insights they provided into the world of morality of which they would become an eternal model. The Iliad and the Odyssey contain a lot of intertextuality themselves as well, for they are patchworks of many different oral traditions (Van Dijk et al., 2013, p. 15). Parts of the works know many different echoes and resonances, among others in ancient Greek tragedy, where one will find various references to Homeric epic without the tragedies being adaptations of the Homeric stories. Dramatists did not seek to change the outcomes of the traditional myths, because these stories were regarded as a type of history. Instead, the tragedians reworked the old narratives by devising new and exciting plots to bring to light philosophical ideas and moral dilemmas for citizens to ponder over. According to Mary Lefkowitz (scholar of Classics) and James Romm (professor of Classics, with a specialization in ancient Greek and Roman culture and civilization), the great plays of ancient Greece are amongst the more enduring and important legacies of the Western world: the insights contained in Greek tragedy have shaped our perceptions of the nature of human life (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016). Poets, philosophers and politicians have long borrowed and adapted the ideas and language of Greek drama to help them make sense of their own times. For the authors, literary allusions and explicit references to classical texts are ways of connecting characters and their experiences to the past, and to universal stories in particular: stories that have timeless and general themes in which individuals can recognize their own particular stories. Classical narratives serve as scenarios that are repeated in modern works of literature (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016). Even though themes from tragic plays appear timeless and universal, they are still embedded in a historical context; namely the city of Athens around the 5th century BC. According to Mark Cartwright (scholar of ancient Greek philosophy), while the exact origins of tragedy remain contested, it is generally believed to be linked to the lyrical performance of epic poetry as an earlier art form. Additionally, there are strong ties between tragedy and the rituals that were

32 performed in the worship of Dionysus, such as the sacrifice of goats, a song ritual called trag-ōdia, drinking rites and the wearing of masks (Cartwright, 2013). Dionysus indeed became known as the god of theatre and wine, and dramatic performances became connected to an annual festival held in the great City of Dionysa in Athens. Festivals were sacred to the god Dionysus; they were filled with processions and feasts, but its main event was the drama competition for prizes held in the grand open-air Theatre of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis. The dramas were staged and the actors and choruses were trained at considerable public expense, along with private contributions from the wealthiest citizens (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016, p. xvii). These annual festivals were held at the beginning of the sailing season; the time of year when Athenian ships would set out their journeys to bring Athens their wealth and enforce her military power. Athenian citizens probably considered the annual performances in honour of Dionysus as essential to the welfare of the city and all its inhabitants, which made the festivals so immensely popular. According to Laura Swift, senior lecturer in Classical studies, tragedy became a cultural event at a large celebration that aimed to unite the population of Athens and invited reflection on what it meant to be Athenian (Swift, 2016, p. 3). Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 456 BC), Sophocles (c. 496-406 BC) and Euripides (c. 484-407 BC) were the three greatest and best known tragedian poets of ancient Greece. They each brought their own innovations to the theatre and they all had their own style when it comes to writing plays. Since Sophocles’ Antigone (c. 442 BC) and Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians (c. 412 BC) are the two tragedies most relevant for my thesis, I will explore those playwrights and their relevant works a little more in-depth.

3.2.2 Sophocles and Antigone According to his ancient biographers, Sophocles did not only make a living as a playwright, but he served as a public official in Athens as well. He learned about tragedy from Aeschylus, but chose to adopt a different style himself. Compared to Aeschylus, the works of Sophocles are more compressed and less metaphorical, with unusual word choice and complex structures that render his writings thought-provoking (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016, p. 219). Most of his surviving dramas seem to feature characters who are remarkable for their inflexibility and their determination to do what they think is right, yet this is what isolates them from the other characters in the play. Sophocles acknowledged the importance of the role played by the gods in human life, yet he preferred to focus on actions of human beings; especially on their consistent inability to recognize the limitations of their knowledge (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016, p. 219). In general, Sophoclean tragedies sought to provoke and disturb the audience by challenging their conventions on what was ‘normal’ and what was not, forcing them through the play’s characters to make difficult or even impossible choices (Cartwright, 2013). The Sophoclean play referenced by Imre Kertész in The Pathseeker happens to be one of the most famous works of the playwright, Antigone (c. 442 BC), in which the leading character, a young woman named Antigone, is torn between the law of man and the law of nature: the political right installed by the king of having a traitor denied burial rites, as opposed to the moral right of a sister seeking to lay to rest her dead brother. In discussing the plot of the tragedy, I will make use of an English translation of the play written by Ian Johnston (2005).

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According to the ancient Greeks, all people were entitled to funeral rites and a burial, and it was an obligation of the living (women more often than men) to bury the dead. These rituals had deep moral and religious significance, as they created tension between political decree and natural law; or individual against state. In the tragic play of Antigone, the Thebans had just defended their city from an attack by an army of Argives. The Argives were led by Oedipus’s son Polynices, who sought to regain the throne that king Creon claimed as his own, and the army of Thebans was led by Polynices’ brother Eteocles. The two brothers killed each other in battle, and while Eteocles received his mourning rites and a burial, king Creon decreed that Polynices’ burial was to be banned. After all, Polynices tried to attack the Thebans and conquer the throne. Anyone who was to attempt to perform burial rites on Polynices was to be stoned to death. Antigone, sister of Eteocles and Polynices wanted to see her brother buried: it was a Greek custom and set in place through divine laws. She tried to convince her sister Ismene to help her, but her sister refused and even tried to stop her. When Creon’s guards catch Antigone in the act of trying to bury her brother, she is brought before king Creon to explain herself. Creon has no royal lineage, no natural authority to rule, and therefore he fears opposition from the people. These insecurities cause him to be relentless when Antigone, a woman after all, defies his authority. Creon, wanting to maintain order through fear instead of loyalty, condemns both Antigone and Ismene to death (even though Ismene was innocent) – much to the dismay of his own son Haemon, who is engaged to marry Antigone. Haemon tries to persuade his father to let the women go, but Creon refuses. When the chorus in the play tries to persuade Creon to at least let Ismene go free, king Creon gives in. Ismene’s life is spared and Antigone will no longer be stoned to death; instead, she will be buried alive in a cave where she is to starve to death. This way, the city will not be directly guilty of her death; which can be interpreted as paying minimal respect to the gods. Brought to the cave, Antigone draws strength from the idea that, when she dies, she will be joined by her family in the Underworld. Tiresias, the blind prophet, enters the stage and warns Creon that the gods are displeased. Prayers and sacrifices from the Thebans have been refused, and thus Polynices’ body should be buried in order to win the favour of the gods again. When Creon ignores his advice, Tiresias predicts that the people will despise a king who refuses to listen, and that Creon will lose a son of his own should Antigone be buried alive. Even the chorus, first more or less on Creon’s side, now want Creon to heed the seer’s advice. Just as Creon makes the decision to bury Polynices (a change of mind; a reversal of fortune), a messenger tells the king that Antigone has committed suicide in the cave. When Haemon discovered her body, he attempted yet failed to kill his father and eventually he decides upon taking his own life instead. This is a moment of epiphany for Creon, who begins to understand that his actions have led to this outcome. When another messenger enters to tell the king that his wife Eurydice has stabbed and killed herself as well, Creon once again blames himself. Eurydice, who heard of her son’s death, cursed her husband with her last breath and thereupon took her own life. Creon is left reflecting on the fact that, even though he tried to maintain order, he acted against the wishes of the gods – which caused him to lose his child and wife as a result. Creon condemns himself for his actions, and the Sophoclean play ends with the wise words of the chorus that, although the gods punish the proud, punishment does bring wisdom (Johnston, 2005).

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3.2.3 Euripides and Iphigenia among the Taurians The last of the three classic tragedy poets was Euripides, whose work was mostly known for its clever dialogues, its fine choral lyrics and a certain realism in his text and stage presentation (Cartwright, 2013). As the poet most attuned to philosophical questions, Euripides sought to unsettle his audience with his thought-provoking treatment of common themes. His tragedies are full of the jargon of contemporary thought, and his characters often put forward philosophical views to win arguments (Swift, 2016, p. 68). While Euripides may not have been so successful in drama competitions as the other two tragedians, he was definitely popular among the Athenians. As Cartwright comments: “[t]he fact that the celebrated comedy playwright Aristophanes constantly made references to Euripides (and therefore expected his audience to be familiar with his work) illustrates his fame when he was alive” (Cartwright, 2015). Euripidean tragedy portrays mortals much more realistic than the other two dramatic poets did. Lefkowitz and Romm state in their collection on Greek tragic plays that Aristotle once quoted Sophocles in his Poetics as having said: “I wrote about men as they ought to be, but Euripides wrote about them as they are” (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016, p. 437). This shows an important difference in the way both playwrights portrayed the characters in their tragic plays. The two Euripidean works that are relevant in an analysis of the works of Imre Kertész are not per definition the most well-known works of the playwright. The tragic plays Iphigenia among the Taurians (c. 412 BC) and Iphigenia at Aulis (c. 406 BC, so produced posthumously) both deal with the responsibility of human action and decision-making, as opposed to the notion of fate or divine intervention. While Kertész actually referred to Goethe’s adaptation of Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians in The Pathseeker, it would do well to explain a little about Iphigenia’s story before that. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (English translation by Morshead, 2015) we learn about Iphigenia’s father, king Agamemnon, who is readying his fleet with Menelaus in order to sail to Troy to take part in what is now known as the Trojan War. When Agamemnon kills a sacred deer in one of the groves of Artemis and boasts about it, the goddess of wild animals and the protector of young women punishes him by calming the winds so as to keep Agamemnon’s fleet from commencing their journey to Troy. Through Calchas, the well-known seer, Artemis reveals that Agamemnon needs to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia in order to soften her spirit and be able to set sail. Even though it breaks Agamemnon’s heart to think about killing his own daughter, Menelaus convinces him of the necessity of the sacrifice for the sake of the Trojan War. Agamemnon and Menelaus trick Iphigenia and her mother (Agamemnon’s wife) Clytemnestra into believing that Iphigenia will be married to Achilles at Aulis, after which Iphigenia is brought to the altar alone where Agamemnon kills her to fulfil his sacrifice to Artemis. It is in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis (English translation by Coleridge, 2014) that this story receives a different ending. According to the play by Euripides, while the sacrifice by Agamemnon is still required and Iphigenia is still tricked into coming to Aulis in order to marry Achilles, she and her mother meet Achilles before the supposed wedding. This is when they find out that they have been misled by Agamemnon and Menelaus, and Achilles confronts Agamemnon with it. As Agamemnon and all the Greeks present still think the sacrifice is necessary, and as Achilles appears on the brink of physically defending Iphigenia, the young woman realizes there is no hope of escaping her death. She decides

35 upon taking matters into her own hands and she willingly consents to her sacrifice, declaring that she would rather die heroically and become renowned as the saviour of Greece, than to be dragged unwillingly to the altar. At the very moment Agamemnon’s sword is to touch her skin, the goddess Artemis whisks Iphigenia from the altar and replaces her with a deer. Without anyone’s knowledge, Iphigenia remains alive and is brought to Tauris where she is to spend the rest of her life serving king Thoas and fulfilling her duty as priestess of Artemis’s local temple. At this point, the story is picked up in Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians (English translation by Potter, 2014). At the temple of Artemis in Tauris, Iphigenia ponders her lost relatives whom she has not seen in ages and of whom she does not know whether they are dead or alive. She has not heard of her parents in a long while and she is under the assumption that her younger brother Orestes has died fighting in Troy. When two Greek strangers come ashore in Tauris, it is her duty appointed by king Thoas to sacrifice them to Artemis by shedding their blood in the temple. As the temple is readied by her maids, Iphigenia enters in conversation with the strangers and asks them about their homeland and families. One of the strangers admits to originate from the same place as where Iphigenia was born, which issues her to ask him about her own father and mother. The stranger reluctantly tells Iphigenia that both her parents are dead: Agamemnon was killed by his wife Clytemnestra (who conspired against him with her lover Aegisthus at the time), and in turn the stranger says he killed Clytemnestra to avenge Agamemnon. When the stranger then states that he knows that Orestes is still alive and well, Iphigenia promises to let him go if the stranger travels back to Greece to deliver a letter to Orestes. The stranger convinces Iphigenia that he should not be the one to be released, but that his loyal friend and fellow captive Pylades should gain the honour. Pylades swears to Iphigenia that he will not rest until her letter reaches Orestes, at which he hands it to the stranger – revealing his friend to be Iphigenia’s lost brother Orestes. The three of them come up with a plan to escape from the temple and from Tauris to return to Greece, in which Iphigenia plays an important part in deceiving king Thoas and letting the strangers out of everyone’s sight. Even though the plan does not fully work out, and a messenger brings to the king’s attention that the trio is attempting to flee by boat, the king does not set his soldiers after them. After a divine intervention by goddess Minerva, the king concedes and calls back his men to let Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades peacefully return to their homeland. It is this ending that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in turn changed in his adaption of Euripides’ play called Iphigenie auf Tauris (English translation by Swanwick, 2005). Goethe reworked Iphigenia among the Taurians into a celebration of how one pure woman could heal the insanity and evils of the past, symbolized by the curse laid onto Orestes and the gruesome rituals of king Thoas at the temple of Artemis in Tauris. Orestes is subjected to a curse that was laid onto Tantalus, which is passed on throughout generations. Once upon a time, Tantalus stole food from the gods at mount Olympus and tried to trick them afterwards into eating a meal made up of human flesh. Thereupon the gods cursed him and his male posterity to kill members of their family throughout the ages. Agamemnon, who is a great-grandson of Tantalus, fulfils this unfortunate destiny by sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia; and his only son Orestes in his turn kills his mother (Clytemnestra) to avenge the death of his father. Orestes is then chased to madness by the Furies, and begging the gods to lift Tantalus’s curse, he is ordered by Apollo go to Tauris with his friend

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Pylades and bring back ‘his sister’ to Greece. Orestes, believing his own sister Iphigenia to be dead, interprets it as Apollo’s twin sister Artemis, whose wooden statue he needs to steal from her temple in Tauris and bring back to Greece. This is how Orestes and Iphigenia ended up in the same place at the same time in Tauris. Goethe highlights the madness of Orestes over killing his mother, and portrays Iphigenia as a noble-minded and sane woman that manages to calm him down. Iphigenia is also the one who stands up to the rituals of murder and bloodshed that king Thoas installed at Artemis’s temple in Tauris. Considering that she was rescued from sacrifice as well, Iphigenia appeals to Thoas’ humanity in giving up on that ritual. As the king thinks very highly of Iphigenia, and is about to ask her hand in marriage, he is inclined to concede to her wishes. By the time Iphigenia and Orestes recognize each other and decide to flee Tauris to return to Greece, she is the one who in the end calls off the planned deception of the king and tells him the truth. Goethe’s adaptation to the play ends with Iphigenia persuading the king to release herself, her brother and his friend, and she appeals to his kindness – resulting in the three of them safely returning to Greece with Thoas’ blessing.

3.2.4 Characteristic elements of ancient Greek tragedy: form, content and effect on the audience Circling back to ancient Greek tragedy in general, we have so far covered its origins and historical background. In addition, a brief overview was provided of the two tragedies on Antigone and Iphigenia that will be of particular relevance to the case study of Imre Kertész. I would now like to move on to some of the characteristic elements of Greek tragic plays, and the ways in which performances of tragic plays affected their ancient audiences. These characteristic elements of Greek tragedy are divided into three categories: form, content (with plot elements and themes as sub-categories) and effects on the spectator. In his Poetics (c. 335 BC), the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory, Aristotle offers an account of tragedy as an instance of what he refers to as ‘poetry’. In a translation of this work, called Aristotle’s On Poetics by Seth Benardete and Michael Davis, we can read how Aristotle defined tragedy as an imitation of a completed action by means of sweetened speech, that accomplishes through pity and fear the cleansing of these experiences (Benardete & Davis, 2002, p. 17 [1449b]). Sweetened speech, as the first characteristic element of Greek tragedy in the category related to its form, is a type of speech that has rhythm, harmony and song or meter. (Benardete & Davis, 2002, p. 18 [1449b]). According to scholar Edward J. Hoffmann, in an Honours Bachelor of Arts thesis at Xavier University in Cincinnati titled ‘Combat Trauma and Tragic Catharsis: An Aristotelian Account of Tragedy and Trauma’ (2016), poetry can make the ugly sublime (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 18). However, this does not mean that the seriousness and awfulness of the events is diminished. As Hoffmann adds: painful events in tragedy remain painful (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 68). The second formal element of a tragic play is its imitative nature. According to the Aristotelian interpretation of poetry, tragedy is an imitative kind of art (an imitation, or mimesis): it does not capture things as they are, but it is a ‘re-presentation’ or an object presented again (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 30). Aristotle even moves beyond this by claiming that an imitation is a making that not just re-presents, but even improves upon events in nature (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 32). The natural thing can be presented to us more clearly than it appears in nature, because an imitation can re-present the formal structure of a

37 thing so that it will become an object of knowledge (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 32). Therefore, poetry can speak in more general terms than history; it speaks in universal statements, which is a third characteristic of Greek tragedy related to its form. This is accomplished through the fourth and final characteristic element of tragedy, namely the plot (muthos) of the imitation: it needs to have a clear beginning, middle and end to shape the re-presented act. The act of making (mimetic poiesis) takes an event, shears the non-essentials from it and presents it to the mind in a clarified form (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 36). To Aristotle, this is a clear improvement upon nature, in which we cannot always see the formal structure of events as they happen to us (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 33). In addition to characteristics related to the form of ancient Greek tragedy, there are also commonalities to be discerned with regard to the content of tragic plays, such as specific themes and topics they deal with. In the introduction I already spoke about recurring themes of death, loss, sacrifice, fate, the divine and (moral) responsibility in Greek tragic plays. Moreover, Greek tragedy more often than not relates to universal causes of human despair, such as uncertainty about the future, fear of injury and deprivation. However, they also tend reflect on the most remarkable strengths of humanity, among which we may find empathy, compassion and the ability to endure even in the face of great suffering. Especially this presence of human suffering in the stories portrayed is something that connects all ancient Greek tragedies. In tragic plays, characters experience hardship and the audience is encouraged to reflect on their suffering and empathize with it. Tragic suffering is designed to elicit a strong response from the audience, so that they may go through a process that Aristotle referred to as catharsis: a process of emotional cleansing, or purification / purgation of morally harmful emotions such as pity and fear (Swift, 2016, p. 11). Apart from commonalities in themes, the content of ancient Greek tragedy is further characterized by three recurring elements that determine the plot (muthos) of a tragedy. Two of those plot elements, peripateia and anagnorisis, are shaped by the third element of hamartia. The first of these elements, peripateia, can be clarified as a change of fortunes that the main character undergoes. The second element, anagnorisis, would then be the recognition of this change and thus a change from ignorance to knowledge: coming to a knowledge that one did not before possess (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 37). Most ancient Greek plays seem to involve a reversal of fortune for one (or more) of the characters, but not necessarily for the protagonist. Iphigenia (as the protagonist) experiences this reversal of fortunes in Iphigenia among the Taurians when she is reunited with her brother Orestes, and when she is liberated from being held prison as priestess by king Thoas and resumes her way back home to Greece with Orestes and Pylades. However in Antigone it is not necessarily Antigone herself who has a change of fortune; instead it is king Creon who sacrificed his family ties for the sake of political power, causing him to lose his son and wife as he decided upon letting Antigone starve in a cave. These are two different plot twists: in Iphigenia’s case there is a shift from misery to happiness, whereas for Creon it is a shift from prosperity to disaster. More often than not, good fortune in dramatic plays tends to be the result of divine intervention, whereas changes for the worse are caused by human action in which the characters themselves bear responsibility. Moral characters believe that they are in control over their destinies, but they soon begin to suspect that their prosperity will be replaced by suffering – which makes them

38 change their mind or behaviour. In the case of king Creon it is clear that his own choice to condemn Antigone to death for burying her brother against his orders led to the suicides of Haemon (his son) and Eurydice (his wife). It is an error of judgment on the part of the individual, which Aristotle used to refer to as hamartia, that causes disaster to strike (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016, p. xx). Creon makes the apparent mistake of putting the rule of law above the rule of the gods, which leads to him being punished. For Iphigenia this is a much more complex issue, as the reason behind her shift from misery to happiness depends on what version of the tragedy you read. Going along with the version of Euripides, Iphigenia is freed by her brother and Pylades, and through divine intervention from the goddess Athena king Thoas is persuaded to let her and her rescuers go unharmed. However, in the adaptation by Goethe it is not a divine intervention at all that persuades king Thoas to let Iphigenia and her rescuers go, but it is the voice of reason and empathy on the part of Iphigenia herself that softens the king’s temper. In this case, it is human action that brings forth good fortune instead of disaster. As briefly mentioned above, hamartia is often interpreted as an error of judgment on the part of the protagonist or antagonist of the tragedy. At other times, it is referred to as a character flaw inherent in the tragedy’s main character. However, according to Hoffmann, neither of these definitions do complete justice to the true meaning of the Greek term. He states that Greek tragedy does not reflect on how minor character flaws ruin good man, but instead it shows how the idiosyncrasies of generally good moral characters can lead to tragedy in imperfect circumstances (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 43). This means that hamartia is not so much present in the character of the protagonist or antagonist, but that it is situated in the relation between their broken characters and the brokenness of the world in which they live. Therefore, Greek tragedy has the ability to demonstrate how good men can retain their nobility even in the midst of great suffering: the hero of the drama finds himself in error not by some fault in his own character or in his judgment, but in the myriad imperfections by which he is surrounded (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 43). This would once again fall into the category of characteristic themes of Greek tragic plays (rather than plot elements) when closely examining the content of ancient Greek tragedies. As I stated before, the tragic suffering by the hero of the Greek tragedy has as its ultimate goal (telos) to elicit what Aristotle referred to as a cleansing of excessive emotions such as pity and fear that may exist in the spirited part of the soul (thumos) of spectators (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 46). After witnessing a tragic performance, the audience experiences tragic pleasure: thumetic emotions such as pity and fear are experienced in a pleasurable way and the spectator is able to behold pitiable and fearful events in order to understand why they happened and how they ended (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 45). This would be one of two main effects of Greek tragedy on its spectators. As explained before, the fact that spectators are able to discern the formal structures of the re-presented event contributes to their understanding of it and thus it provides pleasure in comprehending the event. The second and most important effect of Greek tragic plays on their audience is a type of emotional cleansing. The cleansing of emotions of pity and fear in the spectators of Greek tragedy was briefly referred to by Aristotle in his Poetics as catharsis: the spectators would become purified or purged of morally harmful emotions until they were cleansed (katharoi). However, this complex

39 concept of catharsis remains rather underdeveloped by Aristotle. For example, it remains unclear how this process of emotional cleansing takes place and for whom exactly this would be beneficial. Addressing these questions in particular, Edward Hoffmann has provided a clear and transposable theory in which he dismisses the ‘normalness’ of the audience that has been taken for granted in determining the meaning of catharsis. Instead, he argues for a particular need for emotional purification, with regard to excesses or deficiencies in pity and fear, of citizens in ancient Greece who suffered from combat trauma. In his Honours Bachelor of Arts thesis ‘Combat Trauma and Tragic Catharsis: An Aristotelian Account of Tragedy and Trauma’ (2016), Hoffmann states that a total purgation of pity and fear would be undesirable according to ancient Greek logic, because excesses or deficiencies were never virtuous (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 67). Instead, citizens needed to maintain an emotional balance that allowed such emotions to be felt in the right places at the right time. This would mean that the process of catharsis would provide people with a way of gaining a (renewed) measure of rational control over these emotions. Hoffmann agrees with Jonathan Lear (John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago) that Aristotle’s concept of catharsis is most beneficial for those who have already learned the basic appropriate ways to exercise pity and fear (Lear, 1992, p. 320; Hoffmann, 2016, p. 70). He uses this theory to develop the argument that ancient Greek tragedy was intended for those who needed to learn virtuous responses to tragic events, after they either unlearned them through trauma or stood at the risk of doing so. This prompted Hoffmann to look beyond the ‘normalness’ of the audience of tragic performance that had long been taken for granted, and it helped him focus on the connection between tragic catharsis and Athenian soldiers suffering from combat trauma (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 71). Pity and fear are key here, because a tragic audience must be able to fear the same types of evil from which the tragic hero suffers in order for them to be able to relate to the character and identify with him. In addition, for the audience to pity the tragic hero, he must not deserve the harshness of the punishment he receives and the punishment itself must be something the spectators might expect to suffer themselves (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 72). Both the emotions of pity and fear are present in combat trauma, where soldiers (or veterans, or even soldiers-to-be) would see the same types of evil in tragedies dealing with war that they have seen in real life themselves (or which they would soon come to know): from fearing physical pain or death, to pitying others for losing their comrades or family members. As Peter Meineck (Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University) argues in his paper ‘Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage: “Restoration” by Cultural Catharsis’ (2012), the effects of combat trauma are well represented in ancient Greek tragedy: from the madness of Herakles, the rage of Achilles and the suicide of Ajax to the isolation of Philoctetes and the trials of Odysseus (Meineck, 2012, p. 7). Especially in ancient Greece, where nearly all men would have to serve the military at some point in their lives, combat trauma was representative of the human condition at large. Tragic plays were preoccupied with the consequences of violence and war, because in ancient Greece warfare was an ever-present threat. According to Meineck, this explains why the development of tragedy was closely linked to social changes in political and military culture (Meineck, 2012, p. 7). Military service was universal for Athenian citizens, and thus a large portion of

40 the audience beholding a tragic performance was made up of active duty soldiers, veterans, those who would become soldiers when they were older and those who closely knew soldiers in their close family circle (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 25). This universality of the ordeal made the topic all the more suitable for tragic performance. After determining that the audience of Greek tragedy was quite possibly largely made up of Athenian citizens closely familiar with combat trauma, the question still remains how the process of catharsis can help them in dealing with this trauma through the emotional cleansing that catharsis may provide. We have already established that the tragic audience had to be traumatized for catharsis to take place and have any effect. Sources of excesses or deficiencies in pity and fear can be found in soldiers scarred by war, and tragic plays would have the ability of healing emotional wounds through the process of catharsis. Catharsis would then serve as the process of healing injuries to the spirited portion of the soul (thumos), as thumetic emotions are restored to the mean of virtue – thus rehabilitating the soul (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 4). Similarly, Meineck states in his paper that tragedy offered a collective catharsis, or a ‘cultural therapy’ in his own words, by providing a place where the traumatic experiences faced by spectators would be reflected in tragic performances (Meineck, 2012, p. 7). He places a specific focus on the notion of ‘home-coming’ as it was perceived by combat veterans, their families and the society to which they had returned. According to Meineck, if ancient Athenian drama did indeed attempt to address the psychological concerns of an audience that included a significant number of combat veterans, then valuable insights into the reception of the dramatic plays might be gained by observing them in a performance to an audience of combat veterans today (Meineck, 2012, p. 7). That is why his paper was written based on the results yielded by the Aquila Theatre’s and the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives public program, which uses stage readings from epic and tragedy to enable public discourse on the issues surrounding the homecoming of the warrior (Meineck, 2012, p. 7). Reflecting on such practical projects is a way of applying trauma studies to classical literature and ancient Greek culture, which is a topic that Meineck further pursued in a book he co-authored with David Konstan, titled Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks (2014). Meineck’s references to current public projects bringing readings of ancient Greek tragedy to a modern stage in front of an audience mainly consisting of war veterans suffering from combat trauma is similar to the projects Hoffmann based his research on. In his thesis, Hoffmann worked with an understanding of trauma as given by doctor and clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who has been practicing a method of therapy based on the concept of catharsis in his work with Vietnam veterans in the United States. Shay, known for his research on complex post-traumatic stress disorder and Homeric literature, linked the combat histories of patients at the US Department of Veteran Affairs with the experience of war described in Homer’s Iliad and wrote about his findings in two works: Achilles in Vietnam (1994) and Odysseus in America (2002). The account of trauma he provides in the first of the two works is the following:

“Severe trauma explodes the cohesion of consciousness. When a survivor creates fully realized narrative that brings together the shattered knowledge of what happened, the emotions that were aroused by the meanings of the events, and the bodily sensations that the

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physical events created, the survivor pieces back together the fragmentation of consciousness that trauma has caused.” (Shay, 1994, p. 188)

From this quote we can derive that, for trauma survivors, it helps to regain perspective on traumatic experiences by re-establishing order to seemingly episodic events. When shattered experiences and events need to be pieced back together, it helps to re-present them through narrative because it forces the narrator to impose a clear structure upon the imitation. This does not merely remind us of tragedy as discussed before, but this can be accomplished through (fictional) literature as well. Hoffmann agrees with Shay that trauma survivors benefit from being able to look at the events they witnessed from an outside perspective (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 76). He adds to that that a narrative re- presentation of such traumatic events becomes even more effective when it is communalized. Shay explains how narrative has the power to heal personality changes (such as excesses or deficiencies of emotions such as pity and fear in traumatized people) only if the (traumatized) survivor finds or creates a trustworthy community of listeners for it (Shay, 1994, p. 188). Shay lists three requirements for such a community of listeners. First of all, they need to be strong enough to listen to such tragic stories without becoming traumatized themselves. Secondly, they need to be able to listen to tragic stories without blaming the victim with moral guilt. In other words, they need to be able to hear out the survivor without morally judging his actions and decisions. Lastly, the audience needs to be ready to experience some of the emotions that the traumatized victim experienced as well (Shay, 1994, p. 189). This once again reminds us of the tragic audience pitying the tragic hero and sympathizing with his suffering. That ancient Greek tragedy can help people suffering from combat trauma deal with their traumatic experience through the process of catharsis is not something that worked for soldiers in ancient Greece alone. Despite the fact that a claim could be made that ancient soldiers may not have experienced combat trauma in the same way as modern soldiers do, do to culture differences between our society and theirs, there are still examples to be found of projects involving ancient Greek tales of tragic suffering through combat trauma that can be beneficial to traumatized soldiers and veterans of our time. Brian Doerries, Brooklyn-based writer, director, translator and current artistic director of Theatre of War Productions, has devoted part of his life to discovering the relevance of classical literature to our lives today and uses age-old approaches to help individuals and communities heal from trauma and loss. Theatre of War Productions presents various projects targeted at different audiences dealing with a range of community-based issues (Theatre of War Productions, 2017). The company’s hallmark project, ‘Theatre of War’, presents readings of the Sophoclean tragedies of Ajax and Philoctetes to service members and their communities to help initiate conversations about the visible and invisible wounds of war. The goal of the project is to “destigmatize psychological injury, increase awareness of post-deployment psychological health issues, disseminate information on available resources, and foster greater family, community and troop resilience” (Theatre of War Productions, 2017). ‘Theatre of War’ has been presented to military and civilian audiences throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. To this day over 80.000 service members, veterans, and their

42 families have participated in these performances, openly discussing their experiences on deployments and at home (Theatre of War Productions, 2017). Doerries describes the project in more detail in his book Theatre of War (2015), where he explains how readings of for instance Sophocles’ Ajax were presented to veterans. Sophocles, who had been a general (strategos) in the Athenian army himself, would have been very familiar with the psychological phenomenon of combat trauma and he would therefore have been more than capable of conveying this through his tragic plays. The readings of the Theatre of War project were followed up with group discussions in which the veterans were encouraged to express sentiments that they otherwise would likely never have said aloud, let alone in public (Hoffmann, 2016, p, 78). The tragic stories, that sublimated the ugliness of suffering, allowed veterans to see their own failures and successes in a new light and the group discussions brought these shared insights out into the open. Tragedies depict how tragic heroes are not simply ‘base criminals’, but they commit certain actions out of excessive thumetic emotions. According to Hoffmann, only the tragic response allows us to accept both the evil of the action committed and the nobility of the man (the tragic hero) who committed it (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 22). Nearly all Greek tragedies preserve the same theme of noble men falling into misfortune, not by their own evil but because of hamartia: the disjunction between certain aspects of character in protagonists and the circumstances in which the find themselves. When those suffering from combat trauma see tragic heroes like the strong warrior Ajax suffer after his experiences with war and loss, while being able to separate the goodness of the man and the evil of his actions brought forth through hamartia, it restores the dignity of the man in their eyes which causes their own trauma to start to heal. Like tragic heroes, soldiers are shocked out the ability to ‘live lightly’: they are faced with decisions that do not allow for simple surface-level thought according to conventional moral categories (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 24). Soldiers, whether traumatized or not, have to choose between living lightly and suffering – and they choose to suffer. Therefore, tragedy has the unique ability to allow the soldiers and veterans in the tragic audience to salvage their own nobility and proclaim themselves katharoi: cleansed of the guilt of their actions, no matter how horrible they were, because of the disjunction between their character and the situation in which their actions unfolded (hamartia). Excesses of fear and pity were moderated: restored to normal, which implies a purification rather than a complete purgation of emotions (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 3). Veterans, through the process of catharsis, were allowed release from their excesses of pity, fear and other similar emotions like anger, spite and indignation. The disorders in their thumos would be (partially) resolved, as both Hoffmann and Doerries note that it was unlikely that all veterans, at all times, experienced a complete healing of combat trauma through Doerries’ production (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 78). Nevertheless, the success of this particular project demonstrates how tragedy has the power to take individual tales of suffering and unite them into one collective story. Hoffmann remarks that, since each sufferer views the tragedy as reflecting his/her own sufferings, the individual nature of the narrative is not lost (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 80). Shay rightly adds to this that the communalization of individual sufferings into a larger story eliminates the danger of what refers to as ‘pissing contests’: people comparing individual sufferings to see which are worse (Shay, 1994, p. 192).

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The enduring power of Greek tragedy has always been to move us and to help us explore the deepest levels of human experience – all through an encounter “with a mythic world millennia old, yet compellingly alive” (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016, p. xiii). Most dramas deal with the most common doubts and fears of human existence, such as uncertainty about the future, fear of injury, deprivation, suffering and death. In ancient Greece, war and untimely death were part of everyday life and tragedies could help people find a way to face and survive these challenges – and to this day readers may learn from them. Tragedies do not only relate to causes of human despair, but they offer consoling words that might be a partial remedy. Alongside the greatest weaknesses of humanity, tragic plays also allow their audiences to see its most remarkable strengths: empathy, compassion and the ability to endure even in the face of physical suffering and deprivation (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016, p. xviii). It is precisely this contrast between two extremes – between both ends of the spectre of human experience – that I believe is portrayed through Holocaust literature as well, which makes the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in novels about Holocaust experiences all the more interesting and relevant to explore.

3.3 On intertextuality and multivocality in literary fiction In order to properly analyse one or more literary works by a particular author, it is important to be aware of all the different ways in which a written work has been influenced during the process of writing and its publication. This can happen in various ways: for instance, the author may have been influenced or inspired by personal experiences, or by other artistic or literary works (s)he has seen. The text itself may therefore contain implicit or explicit references to other written works or other forms of media. In addition, the interpretation of a text may be guided by the socio-political context in which the text was published and even readers themselves may have been influenced by personal events or the socio-political context in which they live while reading a text. After all, when different people read one and the same text, it is very likely that their interpretations of that same text may be different as well. Therefore, the concepts of intertextuality and multivocality will prove to be highly relevant for my research. The two sub-questions that guided this part of the theoretical framework were: What are intertextuality and multivocality, and why do authors generally refer to classical texts in particular in their literary works? And: In what ways has Kertész’s work in general been influenced by other discourses and by historical, societal and/or political events?

3.3.1 On the concepts of intertextuality and multivocality, and their uses in literary fiction In their book Draden in het donker. Intertekstualiteit in theorie en praktijk, Yra van Dijk, Maarten de Pourcq and Carl de Strycker refer to intertextuality as the way in which a text stands in relation to other texts (Van Dijk et al., 2013, p. 8). It opened up new perspectives on how texts function and how people relate to reality, to language, to themselves and to tradition (Van Dijk et al., 2013, p. 23). Intertextuality is a critical-hermeneutical method of dealing with texts, that came forth from a need to re-evaluate the way in which researchers had looked at texts over the years. It used to be a commonality for the reader to merely stick to what the author presented him in his text. However, the term ‘intertextuality’ appeared at a time when literary scholars and theorists started questioning the

44 prevailing conventions of their branch. A literary text was no longer regarded as a finished process in which meaning was stored, but it remained an ‘ongoing activity’ as readers over the years will continue to add new interpretations to it. With readers changing over time, the text becomes a source with an infinite number of interpretations. This in turn challenges the definitive nature of interpretation, which problematizes authority and tradition. Intertextuality can have various functions that depend on what the use of one text in another does to the message of the written work (intended by the author or not) and how it comes across to the reader. By manipulating a particular source text in a novel for example, the author can create certain effects in the meaning of that particular passage or his novel in general. However, the intentions of the author are of no primary concern in modern intertextual research. Instead, a focus is placed on what the reader can see in the text and intertexts. In a Gadamerean sense, it creates interaction between the text and the reader – which is more of an effect than an intended function by the author. This challenges the convention in the interpretation of Holocaust literature that primarily places a focus on the authority of the author, rather than on the interpretations of the reader. The authority of the author who relates his authentic personal experiences through literature is highly valued in Holocaust literature, hence the initial hesitation and discussions surrounding the use of fiction in Holocaust representation as opposed to factual and objective historical discourse. Moreover, intertextuality is not only about references in a text, but about recognizing the multivocality of literature; knowing that there are various discourses present in it. Once again, this problematizes the supposed authenticity of the personal experiences of the author when it comes to Holocaust literature: it implies that it is not merely the authentic voice of the author that can be found in his text, but that other (quite possibly less authoritative or authentic) voices are present in the literary work as well. The multivocality of literature is something that is clearly recognizable in Imre Kertész’s The Pathseeker. For example: in the novella, the author makes an explicit reference to Goethe’s adaptation of the Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians. With ancient Greek tragedy often drawing inspiration from Homeric epic, we can already see that there are many different texts that stand between Kertész’s novella and the references to the character of Iphigenia: Homeric epic served as the source text for Euripides’ tragedy, the Euripidean tragedy served as a source text for Goethe who wrote his own adaptation of the story, and finally Goethe’s adaptation serves as the source text for Kertész’s The Pathseeker.

3.3.2 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the author When analysing the literary process of Kertész’s novels such as Fatelessness and The Pathseeker, there are four distinct components that deserve special attention: the author, the text, the context and the reader. Paying attention to how each of these components may have been influenced by historical, societal and/or political events, or by other texts and discourses, provides us with useful insights into the works of the author. In the case of Imre Kertész this could contribute to a better understanding of his approaches towards the discussions surrounding Holocaust representation and historiographical conventions in Holocaust literature.

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Each author has his or her own particular style of writing, which is something that can often be seen through their work. For Imre Kertész, I would characterize his writing style as detached and grim; which is mainly due to the Holocaust as the recurring topic throughout his literature that brings a certain darkness to Kertész’s writings and requires a certain narratological approach on the part of the author that helps him cope with his experiences through writing. Yet his works can also be considered strangely hopeful, given that, despite the gravity of the context in which his stories are set, Kertész still manages to present his readers with a surprisingly positive insight into a difficult situation. Whether he concludes Fatelessness with the afterthought that main character Gyuri Köves had experienced a sensation comparable to happiness during his days as prisoner in various concentration camps, or whether he manages to convey how a Holocaust survivor returning to the camps makes the best out of a disappointing situation that provides him with positive self-reflective insights in The Pathseeker. Considering the graveness of the topics that are centred in most of Kertész’s work – experiences of the Holocaust, the ways in which survivors come to terms with their survival and the aftermath of trauma, and the pitfalls of power in totalitarian regimes – it is not strange that his way of writing about them can at times be dark and unsettling to the reader. However, in nearly all his works hope and optimism seem to triumph over despair. This is interesting to keep in mind when looking at the author’s intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in his works, because it will not simply come down to a comparison between the plot and theme of the tragedy and the plot and theme of Kertész’s Holocaust novel. Instead, it will allow for a deeper narratological analysis in which the structure of the novel and any possible moral insights into the human condition will be taken into account. In any case, the writing style of Imre Kertész is therefore clearly influenced by events from his personal life, but other texts and authors have also served as influential factors in his writing. I mentioned in the introduction to this thesis that Kertész financially supported himself by translating works from German writers into Hungarian after the war. Traces of distinct writing styles of some of these authors can also be recognized in Kertész’s work. From Albert Camus’ The Stranger that can be felt throughout Fatelessness, to the Kafkaesque suspicion and elliptical writing that we discern in The Pathseeker where both the main character and the spatial setting of the narrative remain shrouded in mystery. Other authors that greatly influenced Kertész’s work include Celan, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Canetti and Goethe, some of whom have shown affinity with ancient Greek tragedy as well in their own works. Whether myth and tragedy can be discerned in the poetry of Celan (Akwanya, 2015), or whether Nietzsche resorted to classical Greek tragedy as a form of art that transcended the pessimism and nihilism of a fundamentally meaningless world in his work on dramatic theory titled The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872) (Porter, 2000). I already explained how Goethe’s adaptation of the Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians will feature greatly in Kertész’s The Pathseeker, so we can conclude that the authors with which Kertész acquainted himself during his career as a translator before he started writing his own novels, have influenced his own writing and may have contributed to his knowledge on the subjects of Greek mythology and Greek tragedy which he later on incorporated into some of his literary works.

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3.3.3 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the text Apart from the author, there is of course his written work; the texts themselves that can be thoroughly analysed. While I will leave an in-depth analysis of The Pathseeker for the next chapter of this thesis, it might be interesting to dig a little deeper into the genre of Imre Kertész’s works. With authors who are Holocaust survivors, and who also take events of the Holocaust as their topics of writing, it has been normalized to categorize their work as ‘Holocaust literature’. This makes it seem as if books written about the Holocaust have something about them that makes them unfit to be placed in other standardized genres of fiction, autobiography, thriller or non-fiction alone. Kertész does not feel much for the term ‘Holocaust’ in the first place and in his memoir, called Dossier K. (2006), he reflects on the fact that he would never refer to his works as ‘Holocaust novels’: “I never called Fatelessness a Holocaust novel like others do, because what they call ‘the Holocaust’ cannot be put into a novel” (Kertész, 2006, p. 68). Here the author references once again the discussions pertaining the inadequacy of language in representing the Holocaust, which he feels are just. However, instead of giving up on language as a framework for his experiences, Kertész made an effort to alter the use of language in his novels in order to find a way to cope with its inadequacies in a constructive manner. This has to do with two literary strategies that he employed in his writing, which helped him distance himself from the narrative and its subject matter. With Holocaust survivors writing about experiences in the camps, readers tend to take these writings as autobiographical. In turn, the autobiographical genre creates certain expectations among the readers, who are inclined to believe that everything described in the autobiography is real, authentic and truthful. Imre Kertész made the decision not to go along with these expectations of the reader, and thus not to follow the existing representational conventions within Holocaust historiography. The first literary strategy Kertész employed in his writing can immediately be seen throughout his debut novel Fatelessness. In ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ (1992) symposium talk in Vienna, Kertész explains how writing from the perspective of a young boy helped him estrange himself from the narrative, which provided him with a perspective of observation (Kertész, 1992, p. 29-30). By creating the fictional character Gyuri Köves as the protagonist of Fatelessness, Kertész attempted to distance himself from his own subjective experience (as far as that is even possible) by focussing primarily on his position as the observer of what happened to Gyuri Köves in the novel (which indirectly means that he attempted to look from an outsiders’ perspective at what had happened to himself when he was deported and imprisoned in his youth). This ‘observatory perspective’ was constructed by Kertész several years after his own experiences with deportation and the camps, which has left room for structuring, reflection and interpretation during that time. The same strategy Kertész employed in some of his other written works as well, as most stories feature unnamed protagonists who find themselves in fictional representations of situations familiar to the author himself. In his memoir the author reflects on this blurring of reality with fiction theory by cutting himself out of his novels: “[i]t’s just that my proper place is not in the story but at the writing desk” (Kertész, 2006, p. 18). The second strategy Kertész employed to counter the subjective connotation to his written works about the Holocaust is by turning an autobiographical story into fiction: Fatelessness is defined

47 by him as a novel. Even though Fatelessness relies for a great part on his personal experiences of the Holocaust, Kertész has always denied it as an autobiography. In his memoir, Kertész explained how he did not consider Fatelessness to be an autobiography, since he did not “try as scrupulously as possible to stick to [his] recollections” (Kertész, 2006, p. 7). Where in an autobiography it would be most important to write everything down exactly as it happened, without varnishing the facts or purposely leaving things out, in a novel he found that the facts were not what mattered most – but precisely that what one added to these facts. That his novel is absolutely authentic, that every aspect of the story is based on documented facts, is not something the author finds inconsistent with fiction (Kertész, 2006, p. 8).

3.3.4 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the context Setting the author and the text aside, there is also something to say about the influence of the context in which a text is published. Not only the genre in which the novel is categorized steers the actions of the writer and the reader, but also the historical, political or cultural context in which a novel is written, distributed and read. I explained before how Imre Kertész felt he experienced a turning point in his life in 1955, coinciding with the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, that prompted him to start writing a novel and becoming a writer. This meant that he spent 20 years of planning and writing his debut novel Fatelessness before it was published in 1975 (and re-published in 1985), along with The Pathseeker that was published two years later in 1977. In these 20 years, the author remained in totalitarian Hungary that was still under Soviet-control and where revolts and uprisings made the political environment unstable. Even though Kertész claimed that, upon liberation from Buchenwald, moving from one totalitarian regime to another has helped him cope with his traumatic experiences, it has also become a theme for some of his other novels. In his memoir, Kertész writes that “it was under the Kádár regime that I clearly understood my Auschwitz ordeals, and I would never have come to understand them if I had grown up in a democracy” (Kertész, 2006, pp. 68-69). As for totalitarianist regimes and dictatorships becoming central themes to his writings: both The Union Jack (1991) and Detective Story (1977) deal with totalitarian regimes as well; of which the former is actually set in Hungary at the time of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 (as the protagonist explains why he did not wish to take part in this revolution), whereas the latter is set in an unnamed Latin-American country. Kertész even made an assertion in an interview in 2003 on how he wrote Fatelessness about the Kádár regime of Hungary at the time, which provoked a huge debate in which offended people declared he had betrayed the Holocaust (Kertész, 2006, p. 67). Kertész responded to this recollection by stating that he believed that “the debate was just as uninformed and half-baked as the unscrupulous employment of the word ‘Holocaust’” (Kertész, 2006, p. 67). The fact that the communist regime in Hungary prevented survivors from speaking up about their Holocaust experiences can also be seen in the fact that discourse on the topic was often stifled. As was the case for Kertész as well, since Fatelessness was rejected by some of the major publishing houses in Hungary before 1975 – and even after its publication it still did not attract that much attention. This publication date more or

48 less fits the claim that with the collapse of communism between 1960-1970 a wave of memoirs and personal accounts of the Holocaust came about in Eastern Europe. With the first two English translations of Kertész’s work by Christopher and Katharina Wilson, Fateless (1992) and Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1997), we see that it coincided with the end of communist rule after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989-1991) that allowed for Eastern European works to be introduced in Western Europe. However, Kertész did not make name for himself in Western Europe until he had moved to Germany where he could promote his work. When he was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002, Tim Wilkinson started translating the author’s works into English beginning with Fatelessness and Kaddish for an Unborn Child in 2004.

3.3.5 Analysing the work of Imre Kertész: influences on the reader After briefly having dealt with the author, the text and the context, we are down to the fourth and final component of the literary process: the reader. It is not just up to authors to invest their written works with meaning, but the reader has his or her part in this as well. In the case of The Pathseeker for instance, the elliptical speech of Kertész requires that the reader actively engages with the novella to fill in the blanks that are intentionally left open by the author. Where names, past experiences and locations are shrouded in mystery in the novel, small clues are given by the author that the reader needs to pursue to find out what the narrative is actually about. Therefore, The Pathseeker is wat Roland Barthes would refer to as a ‘writable text’ as opposed to a ‘readable text’: the reader has to fill in the gaps, discover cohesion in the narrative and actively participate in the ‘re-writing’ of the text to endow it with meaning (Van Dijk et al., 2013, p. 50). As explained before, the fact that the reader is expected by the author to fill in the gaps in his story and actively participate in endowing the text with meaning, is contesting the prevalent conventions within Holocaust historiography that rely on the authority and authenticity of the author himself. Based on the personal background of the reader, (s)he can pick up on particular topics, trends and intertextuality in a text that may lead to (new) interpretations of that text. On some occasions the intertextual references are made explicit in a novel, but in other instances it may be up to the reader to bring forward possible implicit intertextual references. The following chapter of my thesis will deal with analyses based on both examples. In the chapter on The Pathseeker, a focus will be placed on the novella (the text) and Imre Kertész (the author), together with explicit references that were made in the novella to ancient Greek tragedies about Antigone and Iphigenia. Even if the author did not intend for direct comparisons between Antigone or Iphigenia and survivors of the Holocaust, such implicit comparisons by the reader could still potentially lead to interesting and relevant interpretations of the novel that would have to be well-argued for and treated with care. After all, especially with a topic as sensitive as a Holocaust survivor’s experiences of the concentration camps and their aftermath it is easy to offend people or be criticized for following one’s own interpretations of the text instead of relying solely on what the author explicitly wanted to share with his readers. However, intertextuality remains a critical-hermeneutic strategy of reading: it encourages the reader to think about intertextual relationships, either because

49 the author made the references explicit or because the reader personally believes them to be relevant in his or her understanding of the text (Van Dijk et al., 2013, p. 21). Now that we have reached the end of the theoretical and conceptual framework, it would do well to briefly recapitulate what has been said so far before we move on to the literary analysis of Kertész’s novella The Pathseeker in the next chapter. In the introduction I explored the connection that Imre Kertész established between Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy based on their shared linkages to art and morality. I expressed my determination to position Kertész in two major ongoing discussions within Holocaust historiography based on the author’s intertextual use of Greek tragic plays in his literary fiction about the Holocaust. The first discussion centres around the inadequacy of language as a suitable framework through which the events of the Holocaust could be represented, because of the metaphysical status of the Holocaust; its uniqueness and its presumed ineffability. The second discussion focusses on the (in)adequacy of literary fiction in Holocaust representation (often associated with untruthfulness and inauthenticity), as opposed to historical discourse and factual documentation on the matter. After the introduction a brief chapter ensued in which I presented a short biography of Imre Kertész that reflected the large role the Holocaust (and its aftermath) played in his personal life, in his profession as an author and throughout his written works. I continued by building up a theoretical and conceptual framework that consisted of three separate parts. The first part located the two aforementioned discussions in Holocaust historiography, as they are embedded in the historical, political and cultural context of the development of Holocaust literature in Eastern and Western Europe since the Second World War. The second part of the theoretical framework addressed the origins, characteristic elements and main themes of ancient Greek tragic plays, along with the effects they had on their audiences. We determined some of the most characteristic elements of Greek tragedy divided into the categories of form, content (plot elements and themes) and effects on the spectator. With Aristotle defining tragedy as an imitation of a completed action by means of sweetened speech, it accomplishes through pity and fear the cleansing of these experiences (catharsis). As we have seen, this particular type of emotional purification might be beneficial for people who have, through a traumatic experience, lost their way of properly managing these emotions. The process of catharsis could provide them with a renewed measure of rational control. Finally, in the third part of the theoretical framework, we dove deeper into the concept of intertextuality and its uses in literary fiction, which prompted us to take a look at the various ways in which four components of Kertész’s literary work have been influenced over the course of his life as this adds to the multivocality of Kertész’s novels. Now that the context has been shaped in which Kertész’s The Pathseeker will be read, with special attention paid to Holocaust literature and Greek tragedy, the focus will shift to the novella itself.

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4. The Pathseeker: introduction and literary analysis 4.1 Introducing Imre Kertész’s The Pathseeker (1977) In Hungary, The Pathseeker was not published on its own. It was the second half of a bundle that also included Kertész’s novel Detective Story (1977), both stories of which were translated into English by Tim Wilkinson yet published separately in Europe in 2008. Whereas Detective Story was published as a novel by Vintage Books (a division of Random House, Inc.), The Pathseeker made its way into the ‘The Contemporary Art of the Novella’ companion series by Melville House Publishing. Considering that Imre Kertész carefully planned out his written works, it is no coincidence that the two narratives of The Pathseeker and Detective Story were published together in a single volume. While both stories deal with different characters in different situations and at different locations, they still can be read as companion pieces with similar themes approached from two different angles as we will see later on. The novella of The Pathseeker (1977) – too long for a short story, yet too short to be called a novel – deals in an enigmatic manner with what must be a moment of great impact for Holocaust survivors: their return to the location of the concentration camp(s) where they had been imprisoned during the war. Published a mere two years after his debut novel Fatelessness (1975), this second book by Kertész can be read as a commentary on, or companion piece to, Fatelessness. On the one hand, Fatelessness covers the experiences of a Hungarian Jew during the Holocaust; from his forced labour, his arrest and deportation to his days in various camps, his liberation and his journey home. The Pathseeker on the other hand deals with the aftermath of the Holocaust; with the experiences of a survivor travelling back to two former concentration camp sites in an unnamed central-European country in an effort to try and find traces of his past, and indirectly traces of his identity and his existence. As explained before, Imre Kertész refused to label his written works as autobiographical even though the narratives were based on his own personal experiences (Kertész, 2006, p. 8). In the case of Fatelessness we already saw how Kertész purposely distanced himself from the events described in the novel by writing from the perspective of the fictional character Gyuri Köves. Köves was deported to exactly the same concentration camps (Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Zeitz) as the author himself had been deported to in the period of 1944-1945, and both were deported at the age of 14. In The Pathseeker, Kertész seems to have adopted a similar strategy by creating an unnamed fictional character only referred to as ‘the guest’, ‘the commissioner’ or ‘the stranger’, who travelled to Germany with his wife and decided upon paying Buchenwald and Zeitz a visit. The commissioner from The Pathseeker is not Kertész the self-examining writer reflecting on his survival, any more than Köves from Fatelessness is Kertész the 14-year-old taken to Auschwitz. “To elide those gaps is to deny the novel’s freedom and form; subjects that fascinate all novelists to a certain extent, but Kertész more profoundly than most” (Scurr, 2015). In that way, Imre Kertész completely and purposely fictionalized personal experiences of his own in order to set them out in his novels. The truth of the statement that The Pathseeker portrays a personal experience for Imre Kertész is supported by a selection of passages from his diary Galley Boat-Log (1992) translated by Tim Wilkinson in Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, pp. 97-110). The fact that a similar event actually took place in the life of the author and that he may have written

51 about it in The Pathseeker presents the fictional narrative with an additional sense of authority as well as authenticity. Though fictionalized, the events on which the novella is based are true and they really happened, which emphasizes the relevance of the novella in the attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the author and his work.

4.2 Authority and authenticity of The Pathseeker: the Galley Boat-Log entries The diary that Imre Kertész kept of significant events in his daily life and of the process of writing his debut novel was published as Gályanapló in 1992 (after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe), of which a few excerpts were translated into English by Tim Wilkinson as Galley Boat-Log (sometimes also known as A Galley Slave’s Diary) in 2005. The diary captures many personal thoughts and musings of the author on the writing process for his debut novel Fatelessness, and it spans from 1961 to about 1991. Additionally, the logbook covers a wide range of great thinkers, philosophers predominantly, of whom Kertész borrowed and discussed insights in an attempt to clarify his own emotional and spiritual concerns, as well as particular events he witnessed in his daily life both at the time of writing and in the past. In the few translated excerpts by Wilkinson, there are two entries that are particularly interesting in the light of The Pathseeker (1977), as they relate to some of the incidents described in the novella. In the entries, Imre Kertész reflects on the two weeks he spent in Germany in July 1964, during which he visited the former house of Goethe in Weimar, as well as the former Buchenwald concentration camp and the factory at Zeitz where he was held prisoner and forced to work during the war. The initial entry in Kertész’s diary was in July 1964, which is likely to have been around the time that the visit must have taken place. In a few lines, Kertész explains that he visited Buchenwald and the factory at Zeitz. He remarks on the fact that he recognized a sandy path and that “a young lad in overalls” was cycling along it to whom Kertész must have struck as foreign (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, p. 97). He also recalled a specific moment when nearing the factory at Zeitz that the big cooling towers of the factory wheezed, which he interpreted as some kind of greeting. The sound seemed to invoke in him a stream of memories at the time, but he does not specify them in this diary entry. He is also almost certain that he found the spot where the sub-camp near Zeitz (in Tröglitz) must have been, but the camp was gone and a state farm with a huge cattle barn were now standing in its place. The short passage ends with Kertész citing Proust (whom he refers to as the master of time): “’The reality that I had known no longer existed’. And: ‘… houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years’” (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, p. 97). This short passage highlights a few particular moments in Kertész’s visit to the sites of the former camps and leaves the reader with an overall feeling of melancholy or almost a longing for a certain period of time that has gone by. The way Kertész invokes Proust provides a sentiment of regret that the landmarks present during Kertész’s time in Buchenwald and Zeitz are now no longer visible or recognizable to someone who is purposely searching for them. This sense of nostalgia, or the desire to see traces of one’s past, is a recurrent motif that runs through The Pathseeker. Directly after this descriptive passage on his visit to Buchenwald and Zeitz, Kertész writes a short piece on his perception of the term conformity:

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“Conformity. When a person does not seek concordance with reality but with the facts. What is reality? In a word, ourselves. What are the facts? In a word, absurdities. The link between the two, put briefly: a moral life, fate. Alternatively, there is no link, which means an acceptance of facts, a series of chance events and adjustment to those events. Thus the conformist himself becomes a fact, an absurdity. He loses his freedom (…). The person turns into his opposite: a machine, a schizophrenic, a monster. He becomes executioner and victim.” (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, pp. 97-98)

This passage is illustrative of the author’s thoughts on the concepts of identity and fate, which are also two very relevant concepts in our understanding of Kertész’s work and of The Pathseeker and Fatelessness in particular. Where Kertész cited Proust earlier in saying “The reality that I had known no longer existed”, we now have another layer added to Kertész’s meaning of the word ‘reality’. He is not necessarily speaking about the environment he was in, at a certain time and place in the past, while he was imprisoned in the concentration camps – but instead he is referring to ‘himself’ (“What is reality? In a word, ourselves.”) in the broadest sense of the word. This suggests that Kertész struggled with what appears to be a kind of existential crisis at the time of his return to the former camps in Germany, as the lack of recognizable physical traces at the locations of Buchenwald and Zeitz did not only mean that his temporally and spatially determined past reality no longer seemed to exist, but more importantly also that, in a way, he himself (as he was, which remains part of who he is now) no longer existed. In that sense Kertész strongly evaluates his own identity and his existence through the presence or absence of detailed traces of the locations that shaped him between 1944-1945. Such thoughts run throughout The Pathseeker as well, which I will come back to later on. Kertész’s perception of the concept of ‘fate’ provides us with an important theme that is of course central to the novel Fatelessness. Considering that ‘fate’, or a ‘moral life’, is regarded as the link between reality (‘ourselves’) and the facts (‘absurdities’), we can say that ‘fate’ is what would have linked people (victims in particular) to the absurdities of the Holocaust. However, this is the crux of the novel Fatelessness, where the alternative to fate is employed as a way of ‘explaining’ the events of the Holocaust. The alternative to ‘fate’, in the words of Kertész, is that there is no link between reality and the facts at all, but that there is merely an acceptance of facts (of the ‘absurdities’ of the Holocaust); “a series of chance events and adjustments to those events” (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, p. 97). By accepting and adjusting to the ‘absurdities’ of the Holocaust, the victim actively takes part in them, which Kertész perceives as a person who loses his freedom and who becomes one of the ‘absurdities’ himself. According to the author, this is what turns a person into his opposite, into a ‘machine’, a ‘schizophrenic’ or a ‘monster’: a person victimized by the Holocaust complicates his own role by additionally becoming his own executioner as well.

After the brief diary entry of July 1964 in Galley Boat-Log, Imre Kertész returned to the same subject about sixteen years later. Throughout May and June 1980, Kertész was on a scholarship to East- Germany, where he visited various places such as Dresden, Berlin (the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charley), Weimar (Goethe’s house), Eisenach and Naumberg. In November 1980,

53 back in Szigliget (Hungary), Kertész wrote that he was reading through what he had completed so far on his novel (perhaps he was referring to Fiasco (1988) here, or the revised edition of Fatelessness (1985) since his debut novel had already been published by then), but that it did not stir anything in him at all. He then recalls his visit to Buchenwald a few months ago: “I did not so much as mention it in the diary that I kept there. The mediocrity and shamefulness of it all” (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, p. 109). Where the passage of 1964 focussed on his visit to the factory near Zeitz, the passage of 1980 centres more around his visit with Inez (his interpreter and informer) to the former Buchenwald concentration camp during his scholarship to East-Germany. Kertész writes about how the bus stop was located in a different place from the last time he was there, and that the roads and the landscapes were even less familiar than back then. When he went through the gate of the former concentration camp with Inez, they walked right behind a large group of youngsters who were also visiting the camp, guided by what Kertész awkwardly refers to as “a death-camp tourist guide” (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, p. 109). The absurdity of the situation stretches even further when the group of tourists, together with the guide and Inez and Kertész had to seek shelter from the rain in what Kertész recognizes as the camp’s former crematorium. There the author reflects on how the tour guide would explain all sorts of horrific details about the place and the ways in which people had been murdered there, while the youngsters appeared unmoved and disinterested. However, this was not the thing that upset Kertész the most:

“Yet I was not in the least “offended”. If anything upset me, it was solely the fact that my “history” obliges me to adopt a certain comportment with which I could not identify in the slightest at that moment. At that moment the only thing I could think about was how even the fact that Buchenwald meant nothing meant nothing… That I had already written a novel about Buchenwald, and then this peculiar and melancholy fact that Buchenwald meant nothing… And how I wished so much not to be me, and they not to be who they are, that nothing had happened, that there was no history, and that all of us who happened to be gathered there were fateless like the Gods, as Rilke has it...” (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, p. 109)

We see that this particular visit to Buchenwald must have taken place after the writing and initial publication of Fatelessness (even though Kertész already wrote in 1964 about having travelled to Buchenwald and Zeitz before), because Kertész reflects on the disappointment he faced over the poor reception of his debut novel about his imprisonment in (among other camps) Buchenwald. Though not necessarily offended by the attitude of the youngsters towards something that was part of his own traumatic past, Kertész was upset over the fact that in that particular moment ‘his history’ obliged him to adopt a caring and sympathetic composure towards the stories of the tour guide, which he did not identify with at the time. Instead, he strongly felt that Buchenwald and the accompanying stories of those who were imprisoned and harmed there did not matter anymore. He even stated that this thought of ‘Buchenwald no longer meaning anything’ did not mean anything to him anymore, yet this does not render him unemotional. In fact, it angers, frustrates or saddens him to the extent that he

54 wished he could erase the Holocaust from his identity and from history altogether. Not only is this passage another insight in Kertész’s personal thoughts about his own identity as a Holocaust survivor, but it also reflects on the societal and political context in which his first books were written and published. When discussing the term ‘intertextuality’ in the theoretical framework, I also commented on how the context in which books are written and published can be seen through the work itself. The fact that Kertész experienced his visit to the factory at Zeitz and Buchenwald in a particular way may have affected the way in which (parts of) these experiences are recurrent in The Pathseeker. With regard to his visit to Buchenwald and Zeitz in 1964: where in his diary he remarked on how he longed to see traces of his past in the landscape and the buildings even though he did not experience great moments of recall, this longing seems to be translated in the sense of homesickness or his reflection on ‘moments of happiness’ in the camps throughout Fatelessness:

“For even there, next to the chimneys, in the intervals between the torments, there was something that resembled happiness. Everyone asks only about the hardships and the “atrocities,” whereas for me perhaps it is that experience which will remain the most memorable. Yes, the next time I am asked, I ought to speak about that, the happiness of the concentration camps. If indeed I am asked. And provided I myself don’t forget.” (Kertész, 1975, p. 262)

Similarly, the existentialist questions his visits evoked and the disappointment felt at the location of Buchenwald in particular that had been altered throughout the years since his imprisonment are likely to be reflected in The Pathseeker. Moreover, as I also briefly addressed in the theoretical framework, during the process of writing his first novels, Kertész resided in totalitarian Hungary that was still under Soviet control. The communist regime prevented people from freely speaking up about the Holocaust, which was the reason why discourse on the topic was often stifled. Kertész speaks about this is his memoir Dossier K. (2006) when reflecting on the writing process for his debut novel Fatelessness during the 1960s. He states how he was interested in the historical background of a scene he was writing about for Fatelessness, but that he struggled to find the proper historical documentation:

“The trouble was that under the Kádár regime it was extraordinarily difficult to get hold of any documentation – particularly during the Sixties, when I was writing Fatelessness. It was as though they were in cahoots with the Nazi past, the way that all documentation was hidden away: one had to pull out the mostly deficient material from the very back shelves of libraries, and publishing at the time drew a total veil over the past.” (Kertész, 2006, p. 5)

We already noticed this in the initial rejections Kertész encountered when he tried to publish his debut novel, but the second diary passage (about the youngsters he met during his visit to Buchenwald) addresses the public’s disinterest in the novel about Buchenwald as well. We will see that this

55 reluctance to talk openly about the Holocaust is a driving force throughout The Pathseeker, as it is a pattern that the main character of the story is trying to break through by commencing his investigation into the two locations of Buchenwald and Zeitz by interrogating locals and searching for physical traces of his past in landscapes and on the sites of the camps. The Pathseeker refracts this reluctance to discuss the Holocaust in fictional form, as the characters in the book have shared experiences that cannot be spoken of even though the commissioner insists on searching for clues (Scurr, 2008). This attests to the statement that, through the use of social discourse, prose takes up an important place in the network of intertextual relations: the novel mirrors what is going on in society at the time it is written and published (Van Dijk et al., 2013, p. 64).

4.3 A literary analysis of The Pathseeker: important elements and main theme As explained before, The Pathseeker (1977) provides an account of the personal mission of an unknown man to search for traces of his past in a central European country. When reading the novella it gradually becomes clear that the unnamed main character, referred to only as ‘the guest’ or ‘the commissioner’, is likely to be a Holocaust survivor returning to the Buchenwald concentration camp and a factory near Zeitz where he had been imprisoned and was forced to work during the Second World War. When going through the novella, there are two important elements that are recurrent throughout the story and that reflect on the main theme of the book, which can be described as the complexity of the role of the (moral) witness within Holocaust discourse. Throughout this literary analysis I hope to provide a clear account of the plot of the book, in which I will focus on the effects of the two different elements on the role of the moral witness portrayed by Kertész as the main theme of the written work. The elements are related to the writing style of the author, to the narrative space (the fictional setting in which the plot unfolds) and to focalisation (the different perspectives from which we gain insight in the fictional world the characters inhabit).The main theme and accompanying novelistic elements will be highly relevant when discussing the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in this novella further on in this chapter.

4.3.1 The first element: the reluctance of witnesses to speak about the Holocaust The first thing that stands out in the novella is the fact that Kertész purposely avoided the use of names of both people and places. As I mentioned before, the main character is introduced to the reader as the guest in the house of the only character in the novella that actually has a name: “The host – a man with a complicated family name, Hermann by Christian name” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 13). Hermann and his guest have sat down somewhere to discuss a topic that is to both of their interests, yet the reader is given no explicit knowledge on the subject matter of the topic. In another room of the house, the guest’s wife together with Hermann’s wife are trying on shoes and playing with Hermann’s young son. Apart from the names of the characters, Kertész also avoided naming locations. The book cover tells us that the narrative is situated in a middle-European country, but throughout the story only a few other clues to a more detailed location are given. The guest wants to know a couple of things from Hermann, which allows for an interrogatory dialogue to develop between the two: “he [Hermann] would soon have to learn that the strings never could be cut and that, like all witnesses, sooner or later

56 he, too, would have to confess. (…) it was not going to be easy to break him, that was for sure” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 14). In order to get the information from Hermann that he wanted, the guest decided to reveal his identity to Hermann: “He then informed him in a single terse sentence who he was and the object of his mission and the investigation that he was to pursue” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 14). This seems to shock Hermann, who had been under the impression that his guest – whom he regarded as a colleague of some sorts – had merely come to the small town on account of a specialist conference that had just ended. Realizing that his guest may be after some specific information that he holds, Hermann responds to the guest’s remark by asking: “Am I under any obligation at all to answer your questions?” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 15). When the guest responds that this is not at all the case, Hermann seems content to “give evidence, voluntarily and freely, as his guest could see” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 15). These kinds of conversations, especially between the guest and Hermann, are characteristic to The Pathseeker. It is the elliptical writing style of the author that seeps through the narrative, purposely trying not to give away too many details about the plot of the novella or its subject matter. Nevertheless, taking into account the background of the author himself and connecting the given dots in the dialogues between the characters, it becomes gradually clear that the Holocaust is the subject matter of their conversations. Hermann starts talking about how he had heard of ‘the case’, and that it was still painful even to talk about it. At the time, he had not been able to devote much attention to it because, even though it was no excuse, he was still a child back then. Regardless, he had heard that things had happened – “it had been impossible for a person not to become aware of certain things, albeit involuntarily. Anyone who said any different was lying” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 16). However, the details and the scale of the case had only been uncovered later on. Hermann continues to discuss how he had felt driven to do more research into it. While others had chosen to just ignore the matter, he had been seized by a sense of duty, “the agonizing duty of knowledge”, that caused him to engage in “feverish research” in order to “see his way clearly in the matter” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 17). In any case, Hermann is eager to – voluntarily and independently – undertake any service should his guest so desire. The guest explains how he would like to ask his host about pieces of information that might be relevant in two site inspections he has planned for the next couple of days. He wants to know whether “everything was still on hand, intact and untouched”, which is something Hermann confirms (Kertész, 1977a, p. 22). Additionally, the guest is interested in precisely where the scene was located. “But you must know that”, is Hermann’s response, to which the guest replies: “I shall most certainly know once I’m there. It’s just the route from here to there that I’m not clear about” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 23). When Hermann starts giving directions, we learn that the specific locations the guest is looking for are located in the vicinity of the neighbouring town. Hermann even offers to drive the guest and his wife there, which is an offer that the guest only reluctantly accepts: “’Oh, all right, then!’ he went on. ‘I’ll do you that small favour: you can take me” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 29). Upon returning to the hotel, the guest tells his wife that they have an unexpected excursion planned for tomorrow. At this point it becomes clear that these site inspections were part of the plan of the guest all along, but that he misled his wife into thinking they would merely be travelling here for a conference and a short

57 holiday trip to the seaside – “that’s all been just a pretext for you to go there”, as his wife justly remarks (Kertész, 1977a, p. 31). What is strange, is that this elliptical writing style creates tension with the main theme that the book is trying to convey to the reader: the complexity of the role of the (moral) witness. As a witness, it would be a duty to report fully and truthfully on events that you have witnessed. Next to accuracy and truthfulness, it would be important that the story of a witness is complete; no details should be omitted lest they be relevant in the case under study. It reminds us of the statement by Samuel Dresden that people usually refer to the Holocaust as something that cannot be put in words, which is paradoxical to the descriptive nature of literature (Dresden, 1991, p. 73). The fact that so many details of the narrative of The Pathseeker are purposely omitted, with the reader being left only with a handful of clues in the right direction, is an explicit way of the author in playing with the theme of his book. Or rather, it is not explicit at all – for there is no information openly given. The reader is left to figure out the details of the story all on his/her own, challenged to adopt the role of the detective and search the novella for clues. Returning to the novella: the next day, the guest (from now on suddenly referred to as the commissioner) and his wife are picked up by Hermann for a drive to the neighbouring town. Hermann drops them off at a busy square – the lively heart of the artistic district – in the middle of the town, from which he parts ways with the commissioner and his wife. At first, the commissioner explains to his wife how he needs to attend to his investigation alone and that he does not want her to come along. However, she manages to persuade him into taking her with him, so the two take a bus to the first location that they decided to visit that day. The still unnamed site for inspection appears to be located on top of a hill. When the commissioner and his wife get out at the right bus stop, they have to ask for directions to the exact location. When a passer-by tells the commissioner that the location now included a cinema, a museum, historical ruins, modern works of art and an instructive program with expert lecturers and guides, the commissioner is astounded. His displeasure at this piece of new information is increased when the passer-by explains how he has been there more than once himself: “I’m on my own, so what am I supposed to do with my Sundays?” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 58). It comes as a heavy blow to the commissioner that the place had been altered so much and that it has now become a type of tourist attraction, where visitors were crowding the place “like ants, diligently carrying off the significance of things, crumb by crumb, wearing away a bit of the unspoken importance investing them with every word they spoke and every single snapshot they took” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 59). Arriving at the gates to the location, small and with wrought-iron decoration on the two pierced wings, the commissioner’s wife tries to spell out the words inscribed in them: “Jedem das Seine. To each his due” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 61). This is perhaps the clearest clue given in the novella, as this short sentence is a clear indication that the commissioner and his wife are standing in front of the gates of the former Buchenwald concentration camp, located on the hilltop of the Ettersberg near the city of Weimar. This clue helps solve the rest of the puzzle, as the second location that the commissioner will be visiting the next day is referred to merely as ‘the factory at Z.’. Drawing from the personal history of the author

58 through his biography and his entries in Galley Boat-Log, and the geographical location of Buchenwald, it is highly plausible that Z. refers to Zeitz. Moreover, when the commissioner and his wife spend time between the two visits to Buchenwald and Zeitz in the town where Hermann dropped them off by car, they take up Hermann’s advice on having lunch at “the famous hotel that had gained its name from the rhinoceros or hippopotamus – at any rate, a pachyderm of some sort” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 47-48). An attentive reader doing a quick search into a hotel in the vicinity of Buchenwald and Zeitz with a name corresponding to the description above will soon interpret this location to be the famous Hotel Elephant situated in the town of Weimar (where incidentally Goethe had once lived). These are all instances through which the elliptical writing style of Imre Kertész is affirmed. From the avoidance of names of characters, buildings and towns, to the lack of explicit references to the Holocaust or the fact that the commissioner is a Holocaust survivor on a personal mission to seek traces of his past by returning to the former camps: it all shows the reluctance of people to speak up about their shared past. It is a fictional attempt at mirroring this reluctance to speak up about the Holocaust in communist Eastern-Europe at the time Kertész wrote and published his novella. However, what is relevant for the main theme of the novella is that the setting in which the story is placed is that of a political situation after a totalitarian regime has been overthrown. Regardless of what new regime is set in place, the fact that the novella allows for reflection on the life of characters in the days of a totalitarian regime also highlights the importance and need for the role of the witness.

4.3.2 The second element: the thoughts of different focalizors on the role of the moral witness The different perspectives from which we hear witness accounts of the events described in The Pathseeker will be the second and final element of the novella, explored through the concept of focalisation. According to two members of the faculty of Modern Dutch Literature at the University of Groningen, Erica van Boven and Gillis Dorleijn, narrators not only tell the story in the narration, but they can also observe and express their personal views on the subject matter; this is what a focalizor does. The views expressed by the focalizors, or the way in which a narrator tells a story, can manipulate the way in which a reader experiences the text (s)he is reading (Van Boven & Dorleijn, 1999, p. 229). The reader sees the events that unfold in the narrative through the eyes of focalizors and narrators, and is therefore imbued with their prejudices and opinions. Apart from focussing on the focalizors in the story, attention should also be paid to the focalized objects in order to get a more thorough analysis of the literary text at hand. Employing these reading strategies to The Pathseeker, we can determine that there is an external narrator in place who talks about both Hermann, the commissioner and his wife in the third person. This leaves us with various characters, portrayed by the author in various roles, who have the ability of speaking up in the story and of being a focalizor. The first character presented to the reader in the book is Hermann, of whom we have learned by now that he was still a child at the time of the Holocaust. This puts him in the position of the innocent bystander, as he was not old enough yet to willingly contribute to the atrocities of the Holocaust and there are no signs that he came from a Jewish family (in fact, the first thing we learn is that his ‘Christian name’ is Hermann). While Hermann knew that there was something going on at the location of Buchenwald during the war, he was in a way aware of the atrocities being committed. Yet,

59 because of a lack of information, (detail and scale of the event) and due to his young age, he never did anything to prevent the atrocities from happening. The fact that Hermann, through indirect speech on behalf of the all-knowing narrator and through direct speech in his dialogues with the commissioner, comments on the topic of Buchenwald and the Holocaust makes him a focalizor and the Holocaust the focalized object. Hermann considers himself aware of what had happened at Buchenwald, yet not guilty in any of the events that took place. And even though he seems reluctant to tell all he knows about the topic to the commissioner, he still presents himself as eager to be of any help (independently and voluntarily willing to provide evidence). He wants to present the knowledge about Buchenwald that he gathered through research and offers to accompany the commissioner and his wife to the site, yet it soon becomes clear that he has actually never been to Buchenwald himself before because “he had been obliged to turn his attention to life’s other demands” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 19). Also, when push comes to shove, he last-minutely has to cancel his trip with the commissioner and his wife to Buchenwald and instead he drops them off at the square of a neighbouring town, because overnight his son had fallen ill. The commissioner responds to this by saying: “As ever, your alibi is perfect, Hermann” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 38). Hermann’s personal attitude towards Buchenwald and the Holocaust is therefore slightly paradoxical; it feels to the reader as if there is a spark within him that wants to open up about all he knows on the subject matter, but at the same time a deep-rooted reluctance or barrier is preventing him from really speaking up. Furthermore, Buchenwald and the Holocaust are not the only focalized objects from Hermann’s perspective. He also remarks on his personal views regarding his role of being a moral witness. As I mentioned before, Hermann refers to his curiosity and the drive to do extensive research into the subject matter of Buchenwald as a “duty, the agonizing duty of knowledge” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 17). The fact that he experienced this as a duty once again contrasts with the way he actually acts on this duty. A duty implies that it would be like a moral obligation to find out what had happened at Buchenwald and to testify about these events. However, we have seen that Hermann does not feel comfortable with the idea that he is under any obligation to answer the commissioner’s questions. He also often stresses that he was “ready to give evidence, voluntarily and freely, as his guest could see” (Kertész, 1977a, p.15). Hermann appears to be a character full of paradoxes: what he feels and says often appear to be different from what he actually does. Apart from Hermann, we should regard the commissioner himself as a focalizor as well. However, his perspective is a little more complex because throughout the novella different roles attributable to the character are brought to the forefront that influence the way he views the Holocaust and the role of the moral witness. At the very beginning of the novella, the commissioner is presented to the reader as a detective-type character. He is portrayed as “puffing on his pipe” while quietly studying the face of Hermann who sits across from him (Kertész, 1977a, p. 13). At this very instance the character is given a kind of Sherlock Holmes vibe, which adds to the role attributed to him here. He is a man on a personal mission: he is undertaking an investigation into the former Buchenwald concentration camp and its direct surroundings, in order to try and find traces of recognition that prove to him it is still the same place as where he had been before as a prisoner during the Holocaust. The commissioner spends his time looking around the town of Weimar, the Buchenwald concentration

60 camp site and the factory (and former sub-camp) near Zeitz and he follows a personal desire to find clues that attest to his very existence. Apart from looking around, he also interrogates the locals in a rather direct and insensitive way. This is not only illustrated by the fact that he adopts a rather hostile attitude towards Hermann in their initial conversations: “He took the pipe from his mouth and cut him [Hermann] short with calm, premeditated hostility” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 14). It is also exemplified through various instances where the commissioner appears to passing be judgment on Hermann’s own involvement in the events that had taken place at Buchenwald during the war. For example, when Hermann explains in one of their earlier conversations that he finds the Holocaust intimidating because of the simple fact that there is now proof that something like it can actually happen, the commissioner quickly retorts: “Thought- provoking and, moreover, probably true, because on what else would our constant anguish feed if we did not all feel we had a small part in universal evil?” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 18). This feels like a thinly veiled attempt to draw Hermann out of his protective comfort-zone by suggesting that everyone (Hermann too) might feel subconsciously or indirectly that they had a small part to play in the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. On another occasion, Hermann reaffirms a statement he made before about his innocence in the case of Buchenwald. As Hermann reiterates that he was interested in Buchwald’s history out of an interpreted sense of duty, “because in fact nothing tied him directly to the case”, the commissioner is quick to interject a comment that clearly shows his lack of sensitivity and politeness towards Hermann and demonstrates his hostile attitude and his suspicion towards Hermann as one of the locals:

“’Thank you, said the guest, ‘that was most interesting. In truth, your personal case is not part of the investigation’s brief, and you no doubt recall that I merely went along with this, I didn’t ask you to submit your defence; but then you no doubt felt it necessary, and why should I deny you that small favour.” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 19-20)

This time Hermann actually picks up on this thinly veiled utterance of suspicion and he reacts with astonishment that he hopes his guest does not doubt his word, to which the commissioner merely replies: “You are above suspicion, Hermann” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 20). In this detective-like role, the commissioner displays instances of suspicion and hostility towards the locals whom he interrogates about Buchenwald. This also influences the way he views the role that the locals bear as moral witnesses who can (but are not always willing to) give (truthful) evidence of what they have seen and what they know about the events that took place during the Holocaust. As I mentioned before, the commissioner believes that it is impossible for the locals to cut the strings with their local past and with Hermann in mind he states that “like all witnesses, sooner or later he, too, would have to confess” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 14). From this detective-perspective, witnesses do not provide testimony of their knowledge and experiences out of a sense of (moral) duty. Instead, giving evidence is portrayed as confessing; which is characterized here as an inevitability and as something that should be done by force (“it was not going to be easy to break him, that was fore sure”) (Kertész, 1977a, p. 14). A confession also implies that one is guilty of something and truthfully speaks

61 up about it. In this sense, according to the commissioner whose main role at this time seems to be that of a detective, the role of the witness is ascribed to the locals who can either be considered passive bystanders at the least, or at the very most active perpetrators of the Holocaust. While in the first three out of seven chapters of the novella the detective-role seems to be prevalent in the character of the commissioner, I believe this changes by the time he actually enters the town of Weimar and comes closer to the sites he wishes to inspect. To continue where I left off before, the commissioner and his wife were driven to the town of Weimar from which they would take the bus to the site of Buchenwald. During this car ride, the commissioner feels as if Hermann is purposely speeding so that he does not get a chance to try and absorb the landscape and the surroundings of the town:

“If he wished to see his failure, Hermann had indubitably made a good choice of terrain; here it was in his hands, he laid down the terms. He was driving as fast as the town traffic would permit, leaving no time, no anchorage for eyes that were searching for clues.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 42)

This discourages him, as he is afraid that he won’t be able to recognize anything that would serve as a reminder of his past. This discouragement is extended throughout the journey by car as the commissioner remarks on what he sees as they drive through the town:

“The commissioner’s gaze swept searchingly over everything that came before it on the road surface, the pavements, the houses, the people. Yes, the same orderliness, the same perfection, the same impenetrable solidity of neatly ordered matter as just before, on the highway – it was going to be just as hard to gather evidence here.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 41)

The commissioner feels that even the landscape and the town’s landmarks are reluctant in ‘speaking up’ about their past. They provide a false image of perfection, which increasingly delays his expected evidence: “Everything was revealed, and nevertheless everything resisted, everything was there that ought to be there, and yet everything was nevertheless false, different from how it ought to be” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 42). However, at the very moment that the commissioner gives up on trying to look for clues from Hermann’s car, he closes his eyes for a few seconds and opens them with nothing in mind, only to experience that “[a]ll of a sudden, the town had begun to speak” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 43). Suddenly, inanimate objects such as the landmarks of a town are given human-like abilities. Through this personification in the passage, the houses of the town are ascribed the ability to speak up and thus indirectly the ability to provide evidence, to testify and fulfil the role of the witness. The commissioner comes to the realization that his previous method of stubbornness got in the way of him perceiving the details hidden in the guise of timelessness: “But see there! Everything was irrefutable, proven, and achingly certain” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 45). It is interesting how, by giving up hope, his mind had wandered aimlessly and had stumbled on a point of recognition in the yellow colour of the houses they were driving past. “What luck had played into his hands was precisely what he had striven to

62 overcome by methodological work: chance – the factor that no investigation ever took into account, yet was indispensable” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 45). In any case, the previous passages while on the road prove that the commissioner’s role was already slightly changing as the previously emphasized role of the detective was already diminishing when the commissioner abandoned his stubborn method of scanning every inch of his surroundings for clues. As we enter the fourth and fifth chapters of the novella, the role of the commissioner seems to go from detective towards victim – or even more so: survivor – by the time he reaches the gates to the former Buchenwald concentration camp. Considering that at the very last minute his wife decides she does not want to go past the gates, the commissioner decides to set forth the first part of his investigation on his own. When the gates turn out to be locked, we see that the role of the survivor, or even conqueror, prevails in the commissioner: “He was to sneak in furtively, by some back entrance, into a place that he should be entering with his head held high, like a conqueror?” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 65). At this point, the commissioner feels that another approach is needed for him to find the traces he was looking for:

“Here it was not the case of getting the place to speak, but quite the reverse: he would be the touchstone for the place, it was he himself who had to speak. To become an instrument, so that his sounding should be the signal. Yes, this time it was not a matter of him having to expose the sight, but of him having to expose himself to the sight; not of collecting evidence but of becoming the proof, a contrite yet implacable witness to the victory that would pulse up as proof.” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 66-67)

This passage marks the definite shift in the role that the commissioner had hitherto assumed. He was no longer the detective searching for clues, but instead he himself had to become a piece of evidence left behind. He had to assume the role of the witness and it was now his turn to speak up about his past, instead of forcing others (the locals or the landscape and architecture) to do it. That this turns out to be easier said than done can be seen through the disappointment that the commissioner faces when walking along the barbed-wire fences of the former concentration camp. He notices how much the place has changed since he had last been there, which arouses in him a sense of defeat:

“What should he cling on to for proof? What was he to fight with, if they were depriving him of every object of struggle? Against what was he to try and resist, if nothing was resisting? He had prepared for a fight and had come upon a deserted battleground. It was not an enemy, but the lack of an enemy, that was forcing him to lay down arms…” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 86)

As he fails to recognize the place for what it had been to him before, he starts to feel displaced. He felt as if he had blundered into the wrong place; if nothing that was supposed to be at this site was actually present, than perhaps his each and every assumption had been mistaken and all pieces of evidence he encountered had been false. This seems to develop into the kind of existentialist crisis I talked about before, as the commissioner equates his identity with the presence of the Buchenwald

63 camp as he remembered it from his past. If Buchenwald was not what it had once been, then it had all been “just his own stubborn obsession. Then he himself was not who he was, either, and his mission was an error. Space, time, the ground beneath his feet – nothing was true” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 70). The fact that the commissioner could look around the place and recognize nothing, was something he regarded as failure; his mission had been unsuccessful. Up until now, the mission of the commissioner has been relatively unknown. Even though the reader has learned by now that the man is searching for traces of his past, we still do not know why he undertook this endeavour in the first place. This becomes clearer when the commissioner leaves the site of Buchenwald, only to enter a nearby hostelry where he sees a group of strangers sitting at a table. In a way he recognizes these strangers: “They were the ones, yes, unknown acquaintances who were just as much haunted by a compulsion to revisit in the way that we always yearn to see tormenting dreams again, perhaps in the secret hope that a time will even come when we understand them…” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 73). The commissioner appears to have recognized a group of strangers at a bar as fellow Holocaust survivors who may also be haunted by the desire to revisit the camps where they had been imprisoned. This particular passage also seems to shine a light on what the commissioner himself secretly hoped to gain from his investigation into the former concentration camps: that a time will come when he might understand what has happened to him. The commissioner has travelled back to Buchenwald and the factory at Zeitz in order to see if it would bring back memories that could help him understand the Holocaust, which would hopefully in the end contribute to his healing process; or at least it would help him learn to cope with his traumatic past. Nevertheless, even though the commissioner seemed to recognize the men at the table as fellow Holocaust survivors, he does not find the courage to go over there and talk to them: “Try to share with them something that could not be shared? Persuade himself that he was not alone? No, that solution was kept for the more fortunate” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 74). Instead, he returns to the bus station where he meets up with his wife to go back to the town of Weimar. The disappointing experience of revisiting Buchenwald evoked in the commissioner a sense that “he had to protect his secret, the responsibility – this consuming emptiness – was his alone to carry” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 76). He felt as if no one should find out about the fact that his mission had not been successful; as if no one should be witness to the man’s failure. It is not until the commissioner enters in a brief conversation with a mysterious stranger in a hotel lobby that he reclaims the importance of the role of the witness again. When the mysterious woman gives away that she has lost her brother, father and fiancée (likely victims of the Holocaust as well), it feels to the commissioner as if she is negatively judging him because he happened to have survived. When the commissioner tries to make clear that his survival was only due to chance, the stranger answers that “[t]here is no such thing as chance. Only injustice (Kertész, 1977a, p. 80). In an effort to provide a counter-argument to this statement, the commissioner comes to the sudden realization that the reason he is here is that he is trying to redress the injustice that the woman speaks of. He attempts to right the wrongs that have been done by bearing witness to everything he has seen (Kertész, 1977a, p. 80).

64

The next day, when the commissioner gets up early to leave his wife still sleeping in the hotel, he decides to set off for ‘the factory near the town of Z.’ on his own (Kertész, 1977a, p. 101). The factory is referred to by the commissioner as BRABAG – which makes the reader recall the Braunkohle-Benzin AG factory in Tröglitz near Zeitz, where Imre Kertész had been stationed to perform forced labour between 1944 and 1945. This time, he encounters the factory in all its glory: still exactly the same in its looks, its smells and its sounds – and it appeared to be still operative as well. Even though the commissioner had finally been able to find traces of his past at the location of the factory, he still feels unable to immerse himself in the details of the scene and the memories they were supposed to evoke. “Despite all this indisputable material evidence, he was getting nowhere with these objects. But why was that? (…) the objects would provide no account of anything” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 108-109). Even though the commissioner knew beforehand that there was a danger present that, “once a person is beyond a certain age and certain experiences, one recognizes every commonplace ad nauseam”, he had not merely gone on this trip to Weimar in order to overcome this “shallow and intolerable truth” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 109). This makes him ponder over the question as to why he had set out on this trip in the first place, which he suddenly grasps as a way of trying to convince himself of his own existence:

“Was that what he had been looking for? Had he wanted definite evidence of his questionable existence? (…) to make a splash with his presence, advertise his superiority, celebrate the triumph of his existence in front of these mute and powerless things. His groundless disappointment was fed merely by the fact that this festive invitation had received no response” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 109).

At this point the commissioner experiences an epiphany in the sense that he realizes what the true purpose behind his trip to Weimar, and his visits to Buchenwald and Zeitz, had really been: he wanted to convince himself of the fact that he had survived; that he was still alive and capable of bearing witness to the events that he had encountered during the Holocaust. The earlier personifications we saw – the town, the yellow houses and the specific sites of the camp and the factory were portrayed as if they were capable of speaking to the commissioner; testifying to their shared past – were now resolved. The commissioner has reached an understanding about how these personifications of inanimate buildings and locations were responsible for the disappointment he experienced during his visits to Buchenwald and Zeitz. These locations were not to be understood as witnesses that could verify his existence, but the man himself, as a victim and a survivor, had to speak up about the Holocaust and attest to his survival instead. Having seen the two elements that were recurrent throughout The Pathseeker, we gained deeper insight in the main theme of the work. It turns out that the tensions in the historiographical discussions concerning personal experience in Holocaust representation are reflected by Kertész in the narrative structure of his novella. The first element, the reluctance of witnesses to speak about the Holocaust, is first of all characterized by the elliptical writing style of the author. It reflects the tension

65 that was created between the way the author shaped the narrative by providing incomplete accounts of the story, and the main theme of the narrative concerning the role of the (moral) witness. The fact that this particular novella (as well as most other written works by Kertész) was set in the political narrative space of a post-totalitarian regime, accounted for the importance placed on the role of the witness in being able to reflect back on those days of the totalitarian regime. The second element, related to the concept of focalisation, addressed the two different main characters of the novella and their individual views on the Holocaust and in particular the role of the (moral) witness. It turns out that, throughout the novella, people (and buildings or locations) in various roles have been attributed the role of witness: from a bystander (or at most a suspected perpetrator), to a victim (or survivor) and also the town of Weimar itself and its houses and squares, or the Buchenwald concentration camp and the factory at Zeitz. All these elements contribute to the general theme of The Pathseeker, which I would express as the complexity of the role of the (moral) witness in Holocaust discourse. While this novella is predominantly written from the point of view of a victim or survivor (with an additional perspective of an innocent bystander), the author has attempted to deepen his analysis of the role of the (moral) witness. However, throughout The Pathseeker it feels as if the author still considers the role of the witness to be problematic in various aspects. While the act of providing evidence of the events that took place and speaking up about a shared past can be complicated, we have also seen how the commissioner gained insight in how he himself had to pass on his testimony. We briefly looked into his motivation for taking up the role of the moral witness, which was born out of a survivor’s guilt towards those victims of the Holocaust who did not survive. It is this element of survivor’s guilt in traumatized victims (survivors) of the Holocaust that I believe is key in an attempt to develop and explain the connection that Imre Kertész established between Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy in his essay ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ (1992).

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5. Following the trail of Greek tragedy in The Pathseeker: a close-reading 5.1 Ancient Greek intertext in The Pathseeker: Sophocles’ Antigone Now that the main theme of The Pathseeker has been identified as the complexity of the role of the (moral) witness – aided by two important elements of the plot that pertain to the recurrent reluctance of people to speak up about the Holocaust and the different stances on the changing role of the witness by different focalizors in the narrative – we need to take a closer look at how the author used intertextual references to ancient Greek tragic plays in order to strengthen the main theme of the novella. More specifically, this chapter will attempt to dig deeper into the intertextual use of ancient Greek tragedy in The Pathseeker, to demonstrate the ways in which it contributes to the general theme of the novella and allows for a better understanding of the meaning of the text in relation to the representational conventions in Holocaust historiography that Imre Kertész sought to challenge through his literature.

5.1.1 The commissioner meets ‘Antigone’ Immersing ourselves in The Pathseeker once more, we ought to return to the commissioner’s arrival at the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp together with his wife. After the chat between the commissioner and Hermann, this is the first site inspection that the commissioner undertakes with his wife. When they are close enough to the gate to read the inscription ‘Jedem das Seine’, the commissioner’s wife falls behind to indicate to her husband that she does not want to enter the camp. Therefore, the commissioner approaches the gates on his own, after telling his wife he will be back in time for them to catch the bus back to the village. Upon reaching the gates, it angers the commissioner to see that they are locked. He decides to walk a short distance along the barbed-wire fence, pondering over the “ever-renewed resistance on the part of things” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 65). It is at this moment in time that he realizes that it is no longer up to places and objects to speak up about the past, but that he himself has to become the “implacable witness to the victory that would pulse up as proof” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 67). This passage denotes the definite change in the role ascribed to the commissioner, as he switches from the role of the victim / detective (searching for evidence) to the role of the survivor / witness (becoming the proof himself). Reaching a point along the fence where he could gaze upon the barracks and alleys on the inside of the camp, he is shocked to find out that that sight had made room for a beautiful grass- covered stretched-out field with a wreath at the end. Seeing that the sight of the camp had changed so much from the memories he had kept of it raises a feeling of defeat in the commissioner: “[w]hat was he to fight with, if they were depriving him of every object of struggle? (…) He had prepared for a fight and had come upon a deserted battleground. It was not an enemy, but the lack of an enemy, that was forcing him to lay down arms…” (Kertész, 1997a, p. 68). It is at this point in time that the commissioner hears footsteps indicating that two unknown figures are approaching him. One was a woman with a “prematurely aged face” and a grey uniform with a faded necktie; quite possibly a representative of the

67 supervisory authority as the commissioner remarks (Kertész, 1977a, p. 68). She is accompanied by another woman, mysteriously described as:

“And who was that immobile other person behind her, a mute shadow towering on a more distant bluff, in that almost ankle-length black dress, a wind-buffeted mourning veil over her face, a bleak spectre in the light’s azure and gold – an antique incubus, Antigone, with merely a smoke-smudged, cold, hard, bleak, and sober tracery in the distance, behind her back instead of the noble columns of Thebes?” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 68-69)

This is the first explicit use of intertextual reference to ancient Greek tragedy by Kertész in his novella. A mysterious woman appearing to a Holocaust survivor at the very moment that he has returned to the Buchenwald concentration camp only to find that nothing is the same anymore as it had once been. Disoriented by the idea that after all his efforts he is still not able to show himself to the site as the witness to his own survival (for the camp is no longer ‘the enemy’ as it had been during his imprisonment), the commissioner experiences a strong sensation of defeat on the very moment that a woman similar to Antigone walks in on him. The woman is presented as an immobile “mute shadow towering on a more distant bluff”, which brings to mind a romanticised image of a dark and distant lighthouse standing on top of a rock at twilight, looking out over the ocean. This description may serve as a forebode that the character will have a guiding function in the story, much as a lighthouse is built on a rock formation near the sea to guide ships through the darkness when near a shore. The darkness of her silhouette is emphasized when the commissioner describes the “ankle-length black dress” and the “wind-buffeted mourning veil over her face” starkly contrasting with the bright blue and gold colours of the sunlit sky behind her. The fact that the woman, compared to the ancient Greek figure of Antigone, is presented at the site of a former concentration camp while wearing a mourning veil allows for the interpretation that the woman has lost relatives during the Holocaust (perhaps even at Buchenwald specifically). After all, according to the Sophoclean tragedy, Antigone has lost two of her brothers (Eteocles and Polynices) in war and she will lose her fiancé Haemon as well (even though he committed suicide only after discovering Antigone’s body). The fact that the ‘Antigone-figure’ is referred to as an “ancient incubus” may initially seem a little contradictory to the earlier statement that she might provide guidance in the story, as the phrase refers to the archaic term for nightmare; or at the very least a cause of difficulty or anxiety (English Oxford Living Dictionary, n. d.). However, we will find out later that both ascriptions may not necessarily exclude one another. The final part of the description of the Antigone-figure, “with merely a smoke-smudged, cold, hard, bleak, and sober tracery in the distance, behind her back instead of the noble columns of Thebes”, evokes an extinguished impression of the woman. As if she, not unlike the commissioner, has faced defeat herself as well; as if something caused her to lose the pride and vitality (symbolized by the ‘noble columns of Thebes’ that once stood behind her back) with which she used to live her life, which has now been replaced by a rather sombre vibe.

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The mysterious Antigone-figure does not speak or do anything in this particular passage from the novella. Instead, the woman in uniform starts talking to the commissioner in a language he finds difficult to understand. The commissioner feels as if she is betraying him, as if she is trying to get in his way and impose a fresh obstacle on his work (Kertész, 1977a, p. 69). He responds in anger by revealing his identity to the woman (which is not specified to the reader):

“He hurled in her face his identity and the full force of his quivering anger. How the woman had shut up! How she had scooted out of sight! He must have looked awesome in her eyes to have had that effect.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 69)

It is likely that in this instance the commissioner explained to the woman in uniform that he was a Holocaust survivor and former inmate of Buchenwald. However this remains unspecified throughout the novel. What is rather strange, is that in this continuation of the scene there is no more mention of the Antigone-figure. It was the uniformed woman who spoke to him, it was to her that he revealed his identity, and it was only she who “scooted out of sight”. With both women apparently out of his way, the commissioner retraces his footsteps and encounters a group of tourists that he follows inside the camp. He reflects on how he felt he may have blundered into the wrong place, considering that nothing is as it once was. This makes him question his own identity as well as his purpose for coming here: “[t]hen he himself was not who he was, either, and his mission was an error” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 70). Together with the tourists he reaches an exhibition hall where all sorts of random objects from the days of the camp were to be found. To the commissioner, this makes the failure of his mission complete: he sees the objects, but recognizes nothing of it. He dashes out of the place and runs into a local hostelry where he sees the group of ‘familiar strangers’ as I explained earlier; strangers whom he probably recognizes as fellow Holocaust survivors tormented by the same obsession to revisit the camps. Instead of talking to them, the commissioner decides to join his wife at the bus stop and travel back to the village.

5.1.2 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: recognition When back in what is likely to be the city of Weimar, the commissioner and his wife go out for lunch at a place that Hermann had recommended: “the famous hotel that had gained its name from the rhinoceros or hippopotamus – at any rate, a pachyderm of some sort” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 47-48). The hotel with the restaurant appears to be a very luxurious establishment with a proud façade, weathered revolving doors and a doorman who greets them upon entry. As explained before, from Hermann’s recommendation we can derive that the place is likely to be Hotel Elephant in Weimar. To add to the style of the ancient Greek intertext present in the novella, the commissioner describes his entrance to the building as follows:

“They cut across a dingy anteroom, their feet sinking into thick carpets, all around the spell of sparklingly lacquered little tables and soft draperies, like the song of mute sirens calling on

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those who know how to die happy to run aground in these luxurious shallows.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 77).

To those familiar with Greek mythology, the Sirens were mythological creatures in possession of an infinite source of knowledge, who were renowned for their seductive looks and their entrancing song that prompted many men to lose their minds – which in many cases resulted in their deaths. However, in the context of this brief passage the reference to the Sirens is only used to emphasize the portrayed luxury and comfortability of the establishment that the commissioner does not seem to appreciate as much as he could have. The song of the Sirens has been muted, which means no knowledge can be gained from their song and the sound of it no longer has the power to reach its audience (the commissioner in this case). In other words: he sees the rich carpets and draperies, with the lacquered little tables and the proud façade of the building, but it does not affect him; he is not taken in by all of this as other people (‘those who know how to die happy’), perhaps without the weight of his mission on their shoulders, would have been in his place. Even though it is merely a small detail from the novella, it is interesting to reflect on considering that in the Galley Boat-Log entries Kertész wrote one single sentence about his visit to Hotel Elephant with his interpreter Inez: “[t]hen down the hill by bus, and at lunch we were already back into the mundane swing of things (we were not allowed to sit where we pleased; they would not let us onto the terrace in the Hotel “Elephant,” etc.), and I thought no more about Buchenwald” (Vasvári & de Zepetnek, 2005, p. 110). The fact that he included this particular recollection in the off- hand manner the way he did, suggests that even though he tries to be laconic about it, it may have bothered him a little more than he lets on. The fact that the author had preferred to have lunch out on the terrace in the open air at the hotel, but was perhaps only allowed to sit in the restaurant’s overly decorated dining room – a luxury he may have felt was not really what he was looking for at the time of his visit to Buchenwald – may account for the brief comparison to the Sirens in the novella. In any case, this luxurious restaurant provides the narrative space for perhaps the most important passage concerning the Antigone-figure in the novella: her direct confrontation with the commissioner. After lunch, when the commissioner’s wife went to the restroom to freshen up, the commissioner sits himself down in an invitingly deep armchair in the previously described ‘dingy anteroom’ of Hotel Elephant and reflects on his frustration about the comfortable environment he is in while he should be focussing on his mission instead. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the Antigone- figure is heading in his direction:

“[T]hat female figure in the dark dress who was gliding noiselessly toward him, from somewhere on the soft carpet, until she was standing before him, probably mustering him with her enigmatically burning gaze from behind that mourning veil.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 78)

Recognizing her by her black dress and mourning veil, the commissioner recalls her presence during his visit to Buchenwald earlier that day. Unsure whether she had followed him to the hotel from the location of the camp, he addresses her in a semi-interrogative, semi-distancing manner. Her curt

70 response reveals “a deep-sounding female voice, and the veil seemed to flutter as though from suppressed laughter” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 78). When asking the woman whether he could do anything for her, a brief conversation between the two ensues. I wish to demonstrate that this particular conversation is one of the most important passages from the novella, in which the role of the moral witness is addressed and in which Kertész provides deeper insights in the link he sees between Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy as he described it in The Holocaust as Culture. Therefore I have decided upon taking out this conversation to break it up in four parts for a close- reading. The conversation takes off as follows:

“Can I do anything for you?” the commissioner asked. “What can anyone do for me?” the woman responded. “I saw you up on top,” she added. “On top?” the commissioner asked uncertainly. “You chased off that woman inspector. You spoke about your assignment. What did you accomplish?” The commissioner flinched at the implacability of her voice. “On what ground are you asking me?” he asked, more sharply than he had intended. “On what ground would you keep it to yourself?” the woman riposted, no less rudely. (Kertész, 1977a, p. 79)

What we see here, is the woman’s recognition of the commissioner as the man she saw at the Buchenwald concentration camp earlier that day. Whereas in the original passage set at Buchenwald we only learned that the commissioner told the woman in uniform about his identity, we learn from the Antigone-figure that he also must have explained his mission; his investigation that included the site inspections of Buchenwald and Zeitz. When the woman asks him what he has accomplished, we see the reluctance on the part of the commissioner to share his results thus far. It could stem from a reluctance to talk about his own survival and his return to the camp (a reluctance to speak about the Holocaust in general, as we saw in the literary analysis). Or perhaps it is rather a reluctance to talk about his unspecified mission, which he felt he had failed due to the fact that he struggled with the observation that the location of Buchenwald was no longer the same as it had once been. Without recognizing the place, the memories would not come back and could not be properly addressed by the man trying to make sense of his survival. After all, that was what the commissioner gave as a reason to revisit the sites of the camps when he watched the fellow Holocaust survivors at the hostelry before: “(…) a compulsion to revisit in the way that we always yearn to see tormenting dreams again, perhaps in the secret hope that a time will even come when we understand them…” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 73).

5.1.3 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: the injustice of survival Continuing the conversation:

“I don’t know who you are, madam,” the commissioner said disconcertedly.

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“Nor do I any longer,” came the answer. The veiled face moved, turning slightly sideways from him. “My father,” she said slowly, leaving a pause between each and every word. “My younger brother. My fiancé.” “I’m terribly sorry,” said the commissioner. “I can’t be of any help.” The veil turned again to face him. “My father, my younger brother, and my fiancé,” the woman repeated, as if she had heard nothing. “I have done everything that I can do,” said the commissioner. “You can’t accuse me of anything.” “You misunderstand me,” the woman answered. “How could I accuse you? There is no charge that you could not refute. After all, you are here.” “By chance,” said the commissioner. “There is no such thing as chance,” he heard dully and tremulously from behind the veil. “Only injustice.” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 79-80)

In this particular fragment we learn that the commissioner is not the only one reflecting on, and questioning, his identity – as we saw earlier in the passages at Buchenwald. The Antigone-figure also expresses that she has lost her identity as she states she no longer knows who she is. Immediately after that, she continues by summing up people close to her: her father, her younger brother and her fiancé. Extending the earlier interpretation that the woman was wearing the mourning veil at the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp because she likely had lost relatives there (or in other camps), we might interpret these three men to be the loved ones she has lost in the camps during the Holocaust. Note that Sophocles’ Antigone too had lost her fiancé, her brothers and, long before that, her father (Oedipus) as well.2 The interpretation that the Antigone-figure from the novella may have lost relatives in concentration camps during the Holocaust allows for another repetition of an aspect of Sophocles’ Antigone, besides the fact that both women lost similar loved ones. It also hints at how both situations involved a lack of proper burial rites. While this is central to the Sophoclean tragedy about Antigone, who attempts to perform burial rites on her brother Polynices even after Creon had prohibited this, it is also visible in the fact that the grieving Antigone and Ismene were never told the exact location of the grave of their father Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. Similarly, when victims of the Holocaust died in the concentration- and extermination camps, they were likely to be cremated or buried in hidden mass graves without proper (religious) burial rites as well. This to the great sorrow of the bereaved, who were often left without a proper place to mourn their dead.

2 In Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone herself would lose her brothers Eteocles and Polynices in war, and her fiancé Haemon due to suicide (he killed himself after discovering Antigone’s body). Antigone had also lost her father Oedipus prior to this story, but that was part of another Sophoclean tragedy. Antigone is the third Sophoclean tragedy from the three Theban plays. The first of the three Theban plays, Oedipus Rex, of course tells the famous tale of Oedipus’ self-fulfilling prophecy of him killing his father, marrying his mother and eventually gouging his own eyes out when learning about all this. The second play, Oedipus at Colonus, deals with Oedipus’ death, resulting in his exact burial place being a secret known only to Theseus, king of Athens (much to the dismay of his grieving daughters Ismene and Antigone).

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The second half of the previously cited passage digs deeper into the background and thoughts of the commissioner, rather than those of the Antigone-figure. When the Antigone-figure recalls the relatives she has lost, the commissioner feels the need to respond with ‘I can’t be of any help’ and ‘I have done everything that I can do’. When the Antigone-figure replies by mentioning her loved ones again, this suggests that the responses of the commissioner have to do with those other victims of the Holocaust. When the commissioner brings to the conversation that the woman cannot ‘accuse’ him of anything – related to the deaths of her relatives – a sense of responsibility, of being guilty or of being an accomplice is evoked. As if the commissioner would have been an accessory to the murder of the woman’s father, brother and fiancé. That the Antigone-figure does not mean to say that the commissioner is a direct perpetrator or accomplice in the death of her relatives becomes clear when she states that he must have misunderstood her. Instead, she addresses the fact that the commissioner is still alive: the fact that he survived the Holocaust (as opposed to her relatives) means that he still has a voice to use in denying any accusations made against him – a luxury that the victims who died in the camps do not have. It appears that the woman holds a grudge against the commissioner because of the fact that he survived while her father, brother and fiancé did not. The commissioner senses this grudge on her part as well, which is why he feels the need to clarify – and thereby justify – his survival, by stating that he believes it to be purely based on luck: he survived the Holocaust by chance. This would indeed refute any accusations against him, for attempting to place his fate (his future; his life and survival) in the hands of chance means that he attempts to deny his agency; the commissioner denies responsibility in his survival, which indirectly is a denial of responsibility in the deaths of other Holocaust victims (the woman’s father, brother and fiancé included). This reminds me of what Ernst van Alphen (1997) wrote about victims of the Holocaust who were imprisoned in concentration camps, who had to ignore all human values and norms in order to survive: they had to kill their own subjectivity in the very moment they opted for life (van Alphen, 1997, p. 49). Van Alphen states that, in Western culture, the individual subject is held responsible for his or her own acts (and, hence, his or her destiny) to a certain degree. It is this individual responsibility that allows one to form one’s own subjectivity by means of consciously chosen behaviour (van Alphen, 1997, p. 48). Prisoners in concentration camps had to endure situations that would normally in Western societies require that one takes action. Seeing someone being mistreated or killed would call for interference on the part of a bystander for example. It is this failure to interfere that Van Alphen explains as a corrosion of one’s subjectivity. Van Alphen cites Lawrence Langer, American scholar and Holocaust analyst, in stating that the Western mind is dominated by the idea of the individual as an agent of his fate, which means that the principle of blameless inaction by former victims of the Holocaust is in within the Western culture sometimes confused with cowardice or indifference (van Alphen, 1997, p. 48; Langer, 1991, p. 85). According to Van Alphen, some of the horrible situations in which concentration camp inmates found themselves were presented in the 1950s and 1960s as “involving unavoidable existential choices that exemplify life, the human condition, in general” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 49). However, as Langer’s studies on Holocaust testimony by survivor-witnesses made clear, this is merely a highly romanticized

73 view as there were in fact no choices to be made: “[t]he situation was defined by the lack of choice. One had no option but to follow the humiliating impulses that killed one’s own subjectivity but safeguarded one’s life” (van Alphen, 1997, p. 49). Langer refers to this denial of one’s own subjectivity as “a kind of annihilation, a totally paradoxical killing of the self by the self, in order to keep the self alive” (Langer, 1991, p. 131). In the novella, the commissioner attributing his survival (his fate) to chance and therewith attempting to deny responsibility in it (or in the injustice present in the deaths of victims who did not survive the camps) is comparable to the ‘killing of the self’ in the sense that survival too is occasionally confused with inaction or indifference on behalf of the survivor towards the other prisoners in the camps. In addition, they are both based on the principle of blameless inaction, which means that the responsibility a Holocaust survivor had in his own survival (and therefore in the arbitrariness of survival in general) is indeed greatly diminished. However, what becomes clear through the theories by Van Alphen and Langer is that ‘chance’ does not necessarily equal a dismissal of agency as I was inclined to state before. Instead of a lack of agency (an action producing a certain effect), there was simply a lack of choice: there were no other options to choose from than following the impulses that killed one’s own subjectivity, yet saved one’s life – even if this meant that survival became arbitrary and thus an injustice in the eyes of the Antigone-figure.

5.1.4 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: catharsis and redemption The Antigone-figure in the novella rejects the commissioner’s assertion that his survival was merely by chance. Instead, she makes the claim that there is no such thing as chance – only injustice. This suggests that she dismisses the commissioner’s attempt to alleviate the suspicion on his survival, and she rebuts by claiming that there is no chance in play here; there is only injustice, the unfairness and perhaps the arbitrariness of the situation. This prompts the commissioner to remind himself of his mission:

There was a pause, there being no answer to that assertion. What did he have to prove the opposite? And was a credible witness to be found who would be able to prove it? “The reason I am here is to try to redress that injustice,” he said after all, softly, almost like someone apologizing. “Redress…? How? With what?” The commissioner all at once found the words he wanted, as if he could see them written down: “So that I should bear witness to everything I have seen.” Then he added, slightly plaintively, as if he were only thinking aloud, “I would not have credited that my work here would be made so much more difficult.” “Perhaps it’s you who’s making it more difficult: you surround yourself with too many reliefs,” was the rejoinder to that. “What are you thinking of?” the commissioner asked. “What’s your wife doing here?”

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Though it was as if he had already counted on that question, the commissioner was nevertheless overcome by weakness, as if he had suddenly become defenceless. “You’re silent. I’ll credit you with that, at any rate,” the woman concluded. (Kertész, 1977a, p. 80)

While the commissioner cannot argue with the injustice of survival and the arbitrariness with which the victims of the Holocaust had been appointed, he struggles to come up with a counter argument to the claim that there is no such thing as chance involved in the situation. His response is that the reason as to why he is in Weimar, visiting Buchenwald and Zeitz, is to attempt to redress the injustice the woman spoke of. This implies that there might still be a part of him that is not completely convinced of his own innocence, or at the very least that there is a part of him that cannot explain or prove that his own survival was based on chance or luck. The fact that he made this particular statement in a ‘soft’ and almost ‘apologetic’ manner is something that might allude to what is better known as survivor’s guilt among those who survived the Holocaust. Simply because the one person survives a traumatic event while others did not, (s)he may feel that (s)he has done something wrong. This would explain why the commissioner would feel responsible for attempting to redress an injustice that he is not actually responsible for (as no clear accusations against him can be made): his mission seems based on the desire to ease his consciousness about his own survival and to honour and do right by those who were less fortunate. The mere idea of the possibility for this injustice to be redressed appears absurd to the Antigone- figure. However, to the commissioner it seems to feel as if some pieces to the puzzle of his mission are suddenly falling into place: if the aim of his mission is to redress the supposed injustice of his survival, then he believes the way to do this is by taking up the role of the moral (survivor-)witness. He claims that the key to redressing his survivor’s guilt (and indirectly the injustice of the deaths of other Holocaust victims) is bearing witness to everything he has seen; to give evidence and testify to the events that he has witnessed, because he still has a voice to do so. We have seen this before, as Zoë Vania Waxman claimed that survivor’s guilt in Holocaust survivors may have created ‘a moral duty to testify’ that prompted survivors to adopt the role of the (moral) witness (Waxman, 2005, p. 88). According to Waxman, Holocaust survivors had to confront the fact that, whereas they survived, millions of others did not. This affected their testimony in the sense that their newly-found moral duty to testify provided a need to account for one’s own survival in addition to the desire to honour those who had died by making sure they would never be forgotten (Waxman 2006, p. 88). This is where the intertextual use of the Sophoclean tragedy has the biggest impact on this particular novella about the Holocaust. Not only because the commissioner, not unlike Antigone herself yet in a slightly different way, feels that to a certain extent those alive bear responsibility for the dead. The novella also portrays a Holocaust survivor suffering from survivor’s guilt who is seeking to redress the supposed injustice of his survival by adopting the role of the moral witness. It can be argued that this survivor’s guilt originates from a deep-rooted sense of pity towards the victims of the Holocaust who died while the commissioner himself was fortunate enough to live. David Konstan, Professor of Classics at New York University, stated in his book Pity Transformed (2001) that Aristotle

75 in his Rhetoric defined pity as “a kind of pain in the case of an apparent destructive or painful harm of one not deserving to encounter it, which one might expect oneself, or one of one’s own, to suffer” (Konstan, 2001, p. 181). This description fits perfectly in the context of the Holocaust, where death is the ultimate form of ‘destructive harm’ that could befall victims who did not in any way deserve to be victimized during the events of the Holocaust. Apart from that, death was not exceptional in the concentration- and extermination camps, which means that all those imprisoned lived in constant fear of dying or seeing others around them die. This excessive emotion of pity towards other victims of the Holocaust – in particular those who did not survive – remains present in the survivor’s thumos (the spirited part of the soul) and continues to affect his or her life as it develops into a sensation of guilt over one’s own existence. That the commissioner, in his conversation with the Antigone-figure, states that he desires to redress the injustice of his survival means that he is trying to find a way to alleviate the guilt he feels over his own survival. This in turn can be understood as a way of attempting to deal with the excessive thumetic emotion of pity the commissioner feels towards the victims of the Holocaust that died, which leads us into the direction of catharsis; the emotional cleansing brought about by performances of Greek tragedy that is supposed to have the power to purify thumetic emotions of pity and fear in spectators (Swift, 2016, p. 11). As I started out with in my introduction, Imre Kertész used the concept of catharsis in the context of the Holocaust to denote a kind of redemption; being saved from sin, error, evil or suffering (Cambridge Dictionary, n. d.; Vocabulary.com, n. d.). Kertész stated in his essay ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ that, “if the Holocaust today has created a culture (…), its literature may draw inspiration from (…) Greek tragedy, so that irredeemable reality may give rise to redemption: the spirit, catharsis” (Kertész, 1992, p. 78). Where in Aristotle’s definition of catharsis the spectator of the tragic play is targeted to undergo this process, I already demonstrated that the targeted individuals for catharsis in Kertész’s sense of the word (in the context of the Holocaust) remained unclear. The intertextual use of the Sophoclean tragedy in this passage of the novella appears to provide an answer to that question: those targeted to experience catharsis in the context of the Holocaust are the traumatized survivors, and perhaps those suffering from survivor’s guilt in particular. The question remains whether the process of catharsis is still brought about by viewing a tragic performance in the context of the Holocaust, or whether the commissioner in the novella will find another way of bringing about this type of emotional purification. All this brings to mind the earlier performance projects we discussed that involved modernized readings of ancient Greek tragedies to audiences consisting of war veterans suffering from combat trauma. With Jonathan Lear stating that Aristotle’s concept of catharsis was most beneficial to those who already learned the basic ways of exercising fear and pity – but who had unlearned them due to traumatic experiences – we already deduced at the hand of theories by Hoffmann and Meineck that this process of emotional cleansing would be useful to soldiers and veterans suffering from combat trauma. Meineck’s current example of the Aquila Theatre’s and the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives public program, Jonathan Shay’s therapy sessions based on catharsis in his work with Vietnam veterans in the USA and Brian Doerries’ Theatre of War Productions are all modern-day examples of projects involving ancient Greek tragedy and the concept

76 of catharsis to initiate a kind of ‘cultural therapy’ (in the words of Meineck) that has the potential of helping traumatized individuals working through their trauma. Both the emotions of pity and fear central to catharsis are present in combat trauma, but they can be found in the traumas of Holocaust survivors as well. We already saw how survivor’s guilt could be derived from excesses of pity, but excesses of fear are present in Holocaust survivors as well as we will see later on in the second part of this chapter. Continuing where we left off in the middle of the conversation between the Antigone-figure and the commissioner from the novella: after the commissioner is able to put into words what the motivation behind his mission is and how he wishes to accomplish it, he adds that he felt his work was made much more difficult than he had expected. To this the Antigone-figure retorts that the commissioner himself is to blame for that, as he surrounds himself with too many reliefs. The presence of his wife on his mission is mentioned as an example. This is something that the commissioner already experienced when he and his wife were sitting on the bus on their way from Weimar to Buchenwald: “her presence [that of his wife] was placing limits on everything, constraining everything into a channel of intolerable moderation – thus the product of his mistake, the fruit of his rashness, for the sweetness of which he was already having to pay.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 54). Additionally, we have already seen the commissioner’s objection against the luxury on his trip offered by Hotel Elephant as well, in the quote where he compared its restaurant to the shallows of the Sirens in combination with the author’s Galley Boat-Log entry.

5.1.5 The conversation between the commissioner and ‘Antigone’: unmasking and reckoning The fourth and final part of the conversation between the commissioner and the Antigone-figure cited below portrays how the woman finally takes off her veil and reveals herself to the commissioner, who is appalled by her unnatural looks:

She raised her hand to the veil and pulled it aside with an easy movement, so the commissioner was confronted with a face – except it was no longer a face but a yellow, desiccated, petrified simulacrum of a face. Only the reflection of some consuming inner incandescence gave life to that mask, a wordless and insatiable calling to account now became fixed on it; an all-engulfing demand, like a monument to implacability. The commissioner turned away in repulsion. “No,” he said. “I have done everything. Everything. You can’t ask more of me than I am capable of. What more do you want? There are limits to what I can do… the scale of my powers… I too have rights!” he almost shouted. “Well then, exercise them!” he heard the organ peal of the voice, and by the time he had turned round and set off after her – to detain her? Appease her? – he found himself face to face only with the smile of his wife as she was coming back. “What happened?” the wife asked.

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“Nothing,” he replied. “Although,” he added, “we’re going to have to modify the program.” And he was left an unwilling spectator as an animated face was extinguished and a smile was wiped out. (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 80-81).

With the appearance of the Antigone-figure resembling a yellow, dried-out, petrified mask of a woman’s face, the character is portrayed as dead on the inside: her trauma has completely consumed her. The only energy giving life to her face comes from the ‘reflection of some consuming inner incandescence’. This might refer to the all-consuming grief and anger of a woman who lost her loved ones due to the arbitrariness of history, who has to live without a clearly identified killer to receive punishment for murdering her relatives and who is likely without a proper place to mourn the people she lost. As the commissioner describes: the woman exudes a ‘wordless and insatiable calling to account’ – she demands reckoning for the deaths of her father, brother and fiancé, but her inability to achieve this (demonstrated by her implacability; the impossibility to appease her) is something that she cannot cope with. The implacability of the veiled woman is something that seems to frighten the commissioner, who responds to the Antigone-figure taking off her veil in an almost pleading tone that ‘he has done everything’ and that the woman ‘cannot ask more of him than he is capable of’, because ‘there are limits to what he can do’. At first sight it seems a little difficult to determine what the commissioner is talking about here, but especially the ‘I too have rights!’ remark rings a bell when the reader is familiar with other works by Kertész. Specifically the novel that was published alongside The Pathseeker in 1977 called Detective Story (1977), which has a similar theme and similar characteristic elements as the novella I discussed in this thesis. The fact that these two stories were bundled together for publication leads the reader to believe that the stories fit together in a certain way and could potentially help clarify one another. In Detective Story, Kertész deepened his analysis of the role of the (moral) witness and his insights into the logic of a totalitarian regime by employing the same elliptical writing style he used in The Pathseeker. Only this time it is not written from the perspective of a victim, but from the point of view of a perpetrator working for a corrupt and violent regime instead. In Detective Story we listen to the testimony of former secret agent Antonio Rojas Martens, as he has written it down on paper to present in court. Martens had criminal proceedings initiated against him: he is charged with complicity in the double murder on Federigo Salinas and his son Enrique. At the time of his writing, he is in prison awaiting trial after the collapse of a mysterious, oppressive regime he served far from “distant Europe”, while reflecting on his involvement in the ‘Salinas case’ and on how he just now ‘grasped the logic’ behind his past actions again (Kertész, 1977b, p. 7). At the very beginning of the novel, when the counsel for Martens’ defence recalls the day his client requested authorization to write in his cell, he engages in a brief conversation with Martens about what he wishes to write about and why. When Martens replies that he had just now grasped the logic of his actions during his time as a secret agent, the defence counsel is surprised that his client suddenly feels the desire to make sense of his past actions and choices:

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“All that surprised me was that I had not supposed that, with his being a lowly cog in a big machine and so having relinquished all powers of discernment and appraisal of a sovereign human person, that person might stir again in Martens and demand his rights. That is to say, that he would wish to speak out and make sense of his fate. In my experience, that is the rarest case of all. And in my view, everyone has the right to do so, and to do it in his own way. Even Martens.” (Kertész, 1977b, p. 4-5)

It is in this quote from Detective Story, concerning a man awaiting trial in his prison cell who has decided upon taking up the role of the witness by writing down his personal story and accounting for his past behaviour, that we find the meaning behind the phrase ‘I too have rights’ in the context of the commissioner in his conversation with the Antigone-figure as well. Apart from the initial roles of the protagonists (perpetrator versus victim) and the particular situations they find themselves in (prison cell versus revisiting the concentration camps), both characters have the desire to speak up about their past and ‘make sense of their fate’. For Martens it is important that he leaves behind his testimony on why he committed the crimes he had done so as to make sense of the fate that awaited him (likely to be execution by fusillade), whereas for the commissioner it was important to bear witness to all he had seen in order to make sense of his own survival.

5.1.6 ‘Antigone’ as antithesis to the commissioner: suicide as alternative to striving for catharsis Returning to the final part of the conversation between the commissioner and the veiled woman in The Pathseeker, we now know that when the commissioner said that ‘he too had rights’, he meant that he too had the right to speak out and make sense of his fate. This makes his other remarks (‘I have done everything’; ‘you can’t ask more of me than I am capable of’; ‘what more do you want?’) sound as if he is talking about a kind of repentance. As if he is to say that he has already tried in vain to find a way to repent for the injustice done to those victims of the Holocaust who did not survive so as to redress the supposed injustice of his own survival. The fact that this effort was not successful is drawn from the statement ‘there are limits to what I can do… the scale of my powers…’. When he then raises his voice to say that he too has rights – that he has the right to make sense of his survival through bearing witness to all he has seen – the Antigone-figure purposely responds by saying ‘well then, exercise them!’ because in a way she realizes in a stalemate-like manner that there is not much more that the commissioner as Holocaust survivor can do. It is indeed the only way for the commissioner to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust who died, because he was fortunate enough to be given a voice after the Holocaust with which he has the power to spread his story. Considering that his own story is similar to that of many other victims of the Holocaust, his moral duty to testify also includes (part of) the stories of those who are longer capable of sharing them themselves. However, even this conclusion is not enough for the Antigone-figure; it does not appease her. In the novella, she is the antithesis to the commissioner: where the veiled woman is doomed to continue her life after the Holocaust living with resentment, grief and anger, the commissioner embarked on his mission (of adopting the role of the moral witness) to try to work on the negative emotions and thoughts that consumed him in a constructive manner – in the hope of ultimately

79 experiencing a type of catharsis; the emotional cleansing of his survivor’s guilt, redemption. In that sense, the reference to the Sophoclean tragedy prophesizes what the alternative to this (quest for) catharsis could be. At the end of the novella, the commissioner reads in a local newspaper how maids had found the body of the Antigone-figure in her hotel room a few days after her conversation with him:

“The door had been forced open; the person who had taken the room – a lonely woman – was seen hanging from the light fitting there as they came in. Around the unfortunate woman’s neck was a ligature contrived from her own mourning veil – the fateful veil that the staff claimed she had worn over her face at all times throughout her stay, never taking it off in front of anyone. Investigations were still in progress, but the circumstances left little doubt that it had been a case of suicide.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 117)

Just like Antigone from Sophocles’ tragedy, the Antigone-figure in the novella has committed suicide; likely out of her inability to cope with her own emotions and traumatic past. That she committed suicide specifically by hanging herself from her own mourning veil emphasizes the interpretation that the insurmountable loss of her loved ones had pushed her over the edge, which links her suicide to the Holocaust. Perhaps is it as Judith Butler stated in her article on the historiographical issue of using fiction in writing about traumatic experiences of the Holocaust:

“This [survivor’s] guilt, of course, is preferable when the alternative is to grasp the utter contingency and arbitrariness of torture, punishment, and extermination. At least with guilt, one continues to have agency, and one can supply a reason for an inexplicable suffering.” (Butler, 2016, p. 377)

This attests to the fact that the Antigone-figure likely could not cope with the idea of the injustice of the Holocaust; the arbitrariness with which victims were appointed and the arbitrariness of the survival of some but not all. In that case Butler would deem the situation of the commissioner preferable over that of the Antigone-figure. For the commissioner, who implicitly admitted to experiencing survivor’s guilt (which is why he is on a mission to redress the injustice of his own survival by taking up the role of the moral witness), the accompanying sense of agency alludes to possible productive coping strategies with traumatic experiences of the Holocaust (becoming a moral witness and striving for a form of catharsis). That suicide can then be seen as an alternative to (striving for) catharsis is not merely present in the Antigone-figure of the novella, but also in the author’s thoughts about his own continued survival. As Imre Kertész made clear in The Holocaust as Culture (1992):

“I have recently been thinking how the Holocaust claimed its victims not only at that time and in the concentration camps but also elsewhere, decades later. As if the liberation of the camps merely deferred the sentences which were later carried out by the condemned themselves.

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Celan, Borowski and Améry all committed suicide, even Primo Levi who, in one of his polemic essays, opposed Améry’s resolute existential radicalism.” (Kertész, 1992, p. 72)

Kertész refers to some names of prominent Holocaust survivors, who actually did attempt to reach for a kind of catharsis by putting their testimonies and their personal experiences into (fictional or artistic) writing. However, the difference between them and Kertész, in his own opinion, is that they had to continue their lives in the democratic freedom of western Europe. I explained before how, in his memoir Dossier K., Kertész believed that the fact that after the Holocaust he had to grow up in the dictatorship of the Kádár regime in Hungary – the prison of a totalitarian state – had helped him understand his ordeals of the deportation and concentration camps (Kertész, 2006, pp. 68-69). He states the same thing in The Holocaust as Culture:

“I was trapped in a society that guaranteed me the continued life of a prisoner (…). This is clearly why I was not engulfed by the high tide of disappointments that overwhelmed those who had similar experiences but who found themselves living in more open societies (…). And as I was not the only prisoner – rather, the nation in which I lived was imprisoned as well – I did not have any problem of identity.” (Kertész, 1992, pp. 72-73)

The fact that Kertész regards his continued survival after the Holocaust, as opposed to the later suicides of other Holocaust survivors, as due to the fact that he lived in a totalitarian state whereas the others lived in (relative) democracies, attests once more to the statement of the commissioner in The Pathseeker that survival is only due to chance. After all, returning to one’s home country after deportation and imprisonment is not to be equated with a conscious decision to continue one’s life in a particular political and governmental system that could have beneficial or detrimental effects to one’s post-war survival. This first paragraph of chapter four, focussing on a close-reading and accompanying literary analysis of Kertész’s intertextual use of the Sophoclean tragedy Antigone in The Pathseeker, contributed to the effort of gaining a better understanding of the role of the Holocaust survivor in the novella. That this is relevant in an understanding of the author’s position on the subject as well becomes clear when the tragic figure of Antigone is employed to remark on the injustice of survival which the protagonist of the novella refers to as mere chance. By having the Antigone-figure morally judge the commissioner’s survival of the concentration camps, the presence of his survivor’s guilt is highlighted. This is used to establish the Antigone figure (who is consumed by her loss) as the antithesis to the commissioner himself (striving for a kind of redemption or a type of catharsis so to say), which serves as an illustration of why the commissioner in this case would be better off: his survivor’s guilt provides him with a goal in his life, something to work towards, while the Antigone- figure commits suicide as she cannot handle the arbitrariness of the deaths of her loved ones and is consumed by her loss. However, the Sophoclean tragedy is not the only ancient Greek tragedy of which traces can be found in The Pathseeker. Instead, Kertész also explicitly refers to Goethe’s reworking of the

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Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians in his novella, of which I will close read some of the more relevant passages in the next paragraph of this chapter. I will demonstrate that the intertextual use of the tragedy on Iphigenia, and the alternative ending to the story as provided by the commissioner in the novella, will place a renewed focus on the role of the Holocaust survivor as seen earlier, to which the role of the witness is now added. As will be made clear, both the commissioner in the novella, as well as the author in his personal memoir, have made some comments to shine a light on the shadow side of the role of the Holocaust survivor-witness, which has previously been marked as preferable and beneficial to a Holocaust survivor’s post-war survival.

5.2 Ancient Greek intertext in The Pathseeker: Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians 5.2.1 Edith Hall on Euripidean tragedy in recent fiction: rival subjectivities and narrative control In her article ‘Greek tragedy and the politics of subjectivity in recent fiction’ (2009), Edith Hall explained how, starting in the 19th century, novelists became more interested in the philosophical aspects of Greek tragedy, such as “the ethical seriousness and metaphysical scope they perceived in the works of the ancient Greek tragedians” (Hall, 2009, p. 24). It is especially this metaphysical scope perceived in tragic plays that makes it suitable to use Greek tragedy as intertext in Holocaust literature. After all, in the theoretical framework I discussed how the inadequacy of language in representing the Holocaust was partially caused by the fact that a metaphysical status was being ascribed to the Holocaust. This prevented people from having open discussions about the Holocaust (and its victims and perpetrators) as a purely historical event. Hall believes that the relationship between Greek tragedy and (post-modern) novels remains heavily under-theorized even though it has been widely acknowledged (Hall, 2009, p. 24). Therefore, she wants to provide an account of the way in which recent novelists incorporated Greek tragic texts into their (1970s, politically engaged) novels in an attempt to explore the issue of narrative control through the question of rival subjectivities: “the radically different ways in which individual subjects can each experience the ‘same’ events” (Hall, 2009, p. 24). This is why Hall referred to novels that used Euripidean tragedy in particular, with Kertész’s The Pathseeker being one of them. She describes it as a pivotal moment in literary history when allusions to Euripides’ work began to signify that narrative authority was being contested (Hall, 2009, p. 26). The problem of rival subjectivities is brought to attention through engagement with Goethe’s adaptation to the Euripidean tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians; of which the discussion of the play and its myth extends beyond the particular German adaptation. According to Hall, “[b]y setting the discussion in Weimar, the cultural centre where Goethe’s play was first written and performed, the reader’s mind becomes focussed on what German romantic classicism had done with the much older tragedy” (Hall, 2009, p. 27). The tragedy of Iphigenia’s life as a priestess among the Taurians, and her subsequent escape with her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades, has seen quite some changes throughout different versions of the story. As the commissioner in The Pathseeker rewrites Goethe’s adaptation of Iphigenia among the Taurians, the narrative authority of both Goethe, Euripides and Aeschylus is contested. Those were

82 the versions “they wanted us to believe”, but the commissioner’s alternative version was what had ‘really’ happened (Kertész, 1977a, p.86). This would mean that there are four rival subjectivities that all contest for narrative authority. The first version by Aeschylus simply ended with Iphigenia’s sacrifice: she is killed by her father and his fleet sets sail for Troy. The second version was by Euripides, who incorporated a divine intervention by the goddess Artemis in order to save Iphigenia from her sacrifice and bring her to Tauris. Once living among the Taurians as a priestess at the local temple of Artemis, she meets her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades, who are determined to rescue her from the peninsula and bring her back home. Orestes comes up with a plan in which Iphigenia will deceive the king so they can flee, but in the end the plan fails and the king finds out about Iphigenia trying to escape. However, another divine intervention takes place here, as Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, persuades the king to let the trio go in peace. The third version of the story, written by Goethe, follows the story by Euripides up until Iphigenia’s planned deception of the king. At the very last moment, Iphigenia starts feeling guilty about deceiving king Thoas and running away, which makes her decide upon telling him the truth about her desire to leave with Orestes and Pylades. With her reason she appeals to the kindness of the king, and he therefore lets the three of them go with his blessing. Finally, the fourth version is the one by the commissioner that we already discussed: whether Iphigenia still intended to deceive the king or not is unclear, but in any case the troops of the king manage to disarm and shackle Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades. Iphigenia is abused and has to watch the murder on her brother and his friend, after which she is killed too. Edith Hall believes that this use of Euripidean tragedy in Kertész’s novel should be regarded as symbolizing the different rival subjectivities that exist about the narrative of the Holocaust as well. She claims that in this transparent substitution, “the history of Nazi atrocities is told through the commissioner’s rewriting of the German neoclassical rewriting of the original Euripidean whitewashing” of a far more atrocious history (Hall, 2009, p. 27). Hall maintains that the massacre described by the commissioner is metaphorical for the unspeakable atrocity of the Holocaust in which the commissioner himself had been involved quite some time ago. Human sacrifice in Tauris, as dramatized by Euripides and Goethe, “is for Kertész a mythical analogue to the Holocaust” and his references to tragic texts are signals that he is concerned with the contested truth underlying the events of the Holocaust (Hall, 2009, p. 28). This is something that Hall believes to be linked to the personal experiences of the author himself and the reception of his literature (Hall, 2009, p. 31). Most of the novels of Kertész seems to rest on the premise that history was contested and that “fiction can uncover the power relations that determined the process by which history was made” (Hall, 2009, p. 34). It is Kertész’s intertextual use of Greek tragedy in his novella about the Holocaust that “provides one solution to the widespread post-war anxiety about the legitimacy of addressing certain kinds of historical experiences in fiction” (Hall, 2009, p. 28). While I understand and appreciate Hall’s analysis of the Euripidean tragedy in The Pathseeker as an exploration of narrative control through the issue of rival subjectivities, I feel that her analysis is too brief and limited. For a start, Edith Hall claimed that the Sophoclean drama was merely evoked in the novella for the “broader brush strokes of structural mythic parallel” (Hall, 2009, p. 30). As a matter

83 of fact, as we have seen in the previous close-reading of the conversation between the Antigone- figure and the commissioner, the intertextual use of the Sophoclean tragedy by the author contributes greatly to our understanding of how the commissioner deals with the role of the survivor embedded in Holocaust historiography. Therefore, Sophocles’ Antigone provides insight in a deeper connection between Greek tragedy and Holocaust literature through the concept of catharsis as a way to redemption in the context of the Holocaust. Hall also makes use of general statements that seek to directly transpose qualities of the rewritten tragic play onto Holocaust discourse without taking the time to further delve into historical, political and cultural context of the Holocaust – or into the characteristic elements of ancient Greek tragedy for that matter – to strengthen her argument. For instance, the fact that Goethe’s version of Iphigenie auf Tauris is an adaptation of one of the Euripidean plays about Iphigenia about her life after her sacrifice, which is in turn based on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in which Iphigenia’s sacrifice was first portrayed, is something that is clear without the need to really focus on the content of the different versions to Iphigenia’s story. The plot, themes and characteristic elements of the Euripidean tragedy about Iphigenia are not really taken into account as much as the rewritten forms through which Iphigenia’s story has evolved over time. Even without focussing on the content of the Euripidean tragedy for now, Hall’s argument could be strengthened by adding some context about the historical, political and cultural background of the Holocaust in which Kertész’s ‘concerns with the contested truth underlying the events of the Holocaust’ is embedded (Hall, 2009, p. 28). Because even though this particular statement is correct, it could do with a little more theoretical explanation. As we have already seen in the theoretical framework, Zoë Vania Waxman explained how the post-war introduction of the term ‘Holocaust’ acted as an organizer of collective historical memory. This collective historical memory determined how testimony was shaped, and what events or elements were to be included or excluded in testimony. She claims that the merging of individual experiences of suffering into a collective historical memory both concealed the diversity of experiences it sought to represent and that it mediated the writing of testimony (Waxman, 2006, p. 152). Especially written- down testimonies required a way of organizing personal experiences in order for the reader to be able to make sense of them. In addition to this, the identity, concerns or experiences of a survivor may not always align with the concerns of the collective memory (Waxman, 2006, p. 158). Waxman claims that the accepted concept of the Holocaust and the role of the collective memory placed two demands on the survivors. On the one hand it required a homogenization of their experiences, and on the other hand the adoption of the role of the witness meant that survivors adopted a universal identity. With the collective memory consisting of accepted Holocaust narratives, other individual stories that did not comply with these narratives were often rejected and marginalized. I believe this is what Edith Hall refers to when she discusses Euripidean tragedy in The Pathseeker in connection to narrative control. Not every account of personal experiences was given equal credit and authority, because this treatment was mainly reserved for stories that accommodated with the existing tendency within the collective memory of the Holocaust and its literature. It was also the consequent homogeneity of Holocaust narratives that prompted survivors to focus on the morality of their behaviour out of fear for being judged. For instance, after the war Jewish victims were perceived as

84 passive for their lack of resistance against the anti-Semitic measures in place during WWII. This moved survivors to include in their testimonies clear accounts of either physical or spiritual resistance to the Nazis. Also, even the tiniest suggestion of impropriety in order to survive could already detract attention from the real perpetrators. The search for moral insights was therefore more universal and thus more easily accepted in survivor-witness testimonies. Now that Edith Hall’s brief analysis of the references to Euripidean tragedy in Kertész’s novella has been grounded in the historical, political and cultural context of the Holocaust, we have a better grasp of how the Euripidean tragedies about Iphigenia can be used in Holocaust literature to explore narrative control through the issue of rival subjectivities. However, as mentioned before, in order to get to this conclusion it seems barely necessary to really look further into the content of the tragic plays about Iphigenia. Her analysis also neglects the characteristic elements and plot elements of ancient Greek tragedy in general that could be relevant in the context of the Holocaust. After all, if the stories (the original version and its adaptations) about Iphigenia had not been Greek tragedies but other literary works, the outcome would likely still be the same. Therefore I will perform another close- reading on the particular passage in The Pathseeker where the Goethe’s adaptation to the original Euripidean tragedy is referred to, in order to analyse it in the light of the earlier established theme of the novella that dealt with the complexities of the role of the (moral) witness in Holocaust discourse.

5.2.2 The commissioner’s alternative version of Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris When the commissioner and his wife leave hotel Elephant in Weimar just before rush hour – after the commissioner’s conversation with the Antigone-figure – and stroll through the city centre, they pass by a little bookshop that has boxes filled with books stalled outside. The commissioner’s wife is intrigued by an old copy of Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris that she found in one of the boxes. She recalls how she used to love the story back in the day when she was a student, because of the love story it contained between Iphigenia and king Thoas. The commissioner appears less enthusiastic about the tragedy: “[l]ong-windedness dressed up as classicism, taw-dry romanticism,” he dismisses it, “[c]heating and lies set in blank verse” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 83-84). Nevertheless, he engages with his wife in a conversation about what the story was about and the sacrifice of Iphigenia that came before her days as a priestess at the temple of Artemis in Tauris. They recall that Iphigenia was a priestess, but that in reality she was the prisoner of a barbarian king on the peninsula of Tauris. Her father, the great military leader Agamemnon, had been prepared to sacrifice his favourite daughter to the goddess Artemis for the sake of procuring favourable winds for his fleet on their way to Troy (Kertész, 1977a, p. 84). Just as she was about to be killed, the goddess Artemis whisked her away from the altar and brought her to Tauris instead. The commissioner and his wife agree on the dreadfulness of the tale and the commissioner recalls that an even crueller fate awaited Iphigenia in Tauris: as priestess of the temple of Artemis she was in charge of slitting the throats of all strange men captured by the barbarian inhabitants of Tauris – all in the service of the evil ceremonies of a barbarian king. In turn, his wife remarks that Iphigenia managed to tone down the ceremony by persuading the king that the prisoners should only be murdered symbolically, not in reality (Kertész, 1977a, p. 85).

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What she liked most of all about the story, was its climax: her brother (Orestes) comes to save her from the king and wants to bring her home. It took a while before the brother and sister recognized each other, and Iphigenia did not really want to leave Tauris at first because she felt it would be shameful to leave the king by furtively running away (Kertész, 1977a, p. 85). In addition to the fact that Orestes violated the borders of the Taurian kingdom and wanted to escape with his sister Iphigenia, the commissioner remarks that he also attempted to steal from Artemis’ temple: he wanted to restore a devotional article, a statue of the goddess, to its proper place in Athens. This means that the king would have had a twofold ground for revenge, but as the commissioner’s wife recalls, “the king gradually [yielded] to the force of the priestess’s arguments and he [renounced] not only revenge but love as well” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 85). However, this is the part of the story where the commissioner believes the ‘cheating and lies’ come into play. He believes that there is actually a different ending to Iphigenia’s story, and this version provided by Goethe is merely the romanticized story that “they want us to believe, at any rate” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 86). Any clarification as to who ‘they’ are remains left out of the conversation. Leaving Goethe’s book at the bookstore and going for a drink at a terrace located in the city’s square, the commissioner decides to tell his wife what he considers to be the true story:

“Briefly, the troops in the squad surrounded the men, then they attacked them, disarmed them, and shackled them. Next, before the eyes of the menfolk, the troops violated the priestess, after which, before the eyes of the priestess, the men were hacked to pieces. Then they looked to the king, and he waited until he spotted on the priestess’s face the indifference of misery that cannot be exacerbated any further. He then gave the signal for mercy to be exercised, and his troops finally gave her too the coup de grace… oh, and not to forget! That evening they all went to the theatre to watch the barbarian king exercise clemency on the stage as they, snug in the dress circle, sniggered up their sleeves. They fell silent. “You’re being unfair,” the wife said after a while, in a quiet and seemingly weary voice. “No doubt,” the commissioner replied, as if he were slightly ashamed. “I can’t be fair,” he added, already more abstractedly.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 87)

This particular ending to the tragedy Iphigenia among the Taurians obviously dismisses the possibility of a happy ending to Iphigenia’s story, and it contains rather violent and gruesome scenes compared to the versions of the tragedy we discussed in the theoretical framework by Euripides and Goethe. In the tragic play by Euripides, a divine intervention takes place after Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades deceived king Thoas in order to escape Tauris. It is Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, who appears before the king, calms him down and persuades him not to pursue Iphigenia and her rescuers. Considering that king Thoas would never question the authority of the gods out of fear of repercussions, he complies with her request and he lets Iphigenia leave in peace. In the adaptation of the same play by Goethe, a similar happy ending is accomplished, but not due to divine intervention. Instead it is the purity and kindness of Iphigenia towards king Thoas that

86 ensures her escape. Even though in this version too Pylades and Orestes come up with a plan in which Iphigenia deceives the king so that they may flee the island, Iphigenia feels guilty betraying the king who has been like a father to her. She recalls how king Thoas has always been kind to her and treated her well after Artemis had dropped her off in Tauris as a total stranger to its inhabitants. Her guilt makes her change her mind about deceiving the king, and instead she tells him the truth and appeals to his kindness with her reason. This eventually convinced king Thoas to let Iphigenia and her rescuers travel back to Athens so that Iphigenia may attempt to redress the curse placed on her forefathers (the curse placed on the House of Atreus). The ending that the commissioner portrays testifies to the torture of Iphigenia: she is violated by the troops of the king (while Orestes and Pylades are forced to look on), after which she has to watch how her brother and his friend are being ‘hacked to pieces’. The king then purposely waits for Iphigenia to succumb to her pain and grief to the extent that she becomes indifferent to her own suffering, after which he orders his troops (‘a signal for mercy to be exercised’) to kill Iphigenia as well. This ‘indifference of misery that cannot be exacerbated any further’ on the face of Iphigenia reminds the reader of the victims imprisoned in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Prisoners who had seen so much suffering around them (and experienced it themselves) in the camps, that they had become numb to its effect. After having tortured and murdered Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades, the king and his troops went to the theatre to watch a performance in which a king does exactly the opposite of what the real king had just done: exercise clemency. The audience within the commissioner’s story learns through an artistic performance about the mercifulness of the king, while in reality the king is not merciful at all – hence the king and his troops are ‘sniggering up their sleeves’, because they know the truth. This particular scene reflects on how different stories regarding an event might contest: a version of the story performed on stage shows a different ending to a situation than the story as it unfolded in reality in the commissioner’s version of the Euripidean tragedy. This ties in with the conclusions of Edith Hall regarding the intertextual use of Euripidean tragedy in fiction to demonstrate rival subjectivities fighting over narrative control. It illustrates how the stories presented to the audience are only the stories of those who survived; those who had died no longer had a voice to give an account of their experiences anymore. In this particular scene this leads to a manipulation of the image people got of their king; a one-sided view was presented that was not truthful, but those who had been able to testify to this had been silenced. Not only does the commissioner’s alternative version of Iphigenia among the Taurians demonstrate Edith Hall’s rival subjectivities contesting for narrative control, but it also reveals a lot about how the commissioner regards his own role as Holocaust survivor-witness. The alternative version to the story starts out with Iphigenia and her rescuers (Orestes and Pylades) being attacked by the troops of king Thoas. They are disarmed, so unable to defend themselves and fight back, after which violent scenes ensue. Iphigenia is violated as her brother and his friend are forced to watch on, and in turn Iphigenia is forced to see Orestes and Pylades get ‘hacked to pieces’. The physical violation of the woman and the excessively violent murders on the men are accompanied by mental torture: having to watch someone you care about get hurt or killed is a traumatizing experience as well. The full extent of the trauma can be seen in Iphigenia: the king purposely waited after killing

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Orestes and Pylades until he was able to spot ‘on the priestess’s face the indifference of misery that cannot be exacerbated any further’. I stated before how this could remind the reader of the suffering of Holocaust victims in concentration camps, as they too were subjected to physical and mental violence. Perhaps this portrayal of Iphigenia, who had previously survived her own sacrifice due to a divine intervention by the goddess Diana and can be seen as a survivor-witness of this event, mirrors how the commissioner in The Pathseeker regards his own survival (although he replaces the divine intervention with the notion of chance, which likewise places the responsibility of his survival outside of his own doing). The commissioner may equate the sacrifice of Iphigenia with his experiences of deportation and imprisonment during the Holocaust; of which the term itself bears traces of the concept of sacrifice too. This means that the commissioner’s survival can be seen in the light of how Iphigenia’s initial survival is portrayed as well: in both cases the role of survivor brings them on a path to pain, trauma and suffering. However, this is not where the commissioner believes their stories of survival will end. In his alternative version to the tragedy, after the king spotted the indifference to mental and physical suffering on the face of Iphigenia, he gave ‘the signal for mercy to be exercised’ after which his troops ‘gave her too the coup de grace’. For the commissioner to put the story in these wordings illustrates how Iphigenia’s survival is eventually a mere prolongation of inevitable death. In the commissioner’s story the witness to her own sacrifice experiences severe suffering and trauma before she is put out of her misery: the king was said to have ‘exercised mercy’ as he ordered his troops to give her the ‘coup de grace’. Both these phrases indicate that the king puts an end to the Iphigenia’s suffering, which provides the act with a sense of kindness; it can be seen as a humane thing to do to put a definitive end to extreme and incurable suffering. From this alternative version of a story testifying to the fate of a survivor-witness, thought up by a man who has survived the Holocaust and is on a mission that prompts him to adopt the role of the witness, the reader can derive pessimistic conclusions. It leads to the interpretation that the suffering from trauma after survival is not only unbearable and likely to be incurable, but also that death can be seen as a merciful and perhaps even welcome end to this suffering. The question would be whether this scenario is also in store for the commissioner himself: a Holocaust survivor suffering from traumatic experiences and in particular from survivor’s guilt, who is striving for the emotional purification of catharsis in an attempt to find redemption. This reveals the complexity of the role of the (moral) witness, as The Pathseeker shows that there are two sides to being a survivor-witness. On the one hand it counts as a blessing to still be alive after having witnessed gruesome events and having lived in constant fear of death. Surviving also means having a voice to tell your story to educate others about the ordeals you have lived through in the hope that they will never happen again. Speaking up about the fate of many other victims who did not survive can also be seen as a way of honouring their memory; paying tribute to the victims that died so that they may never be forgotten. However, survival also means having to live with traumas and struggling with the arbitrariness, and the sometimes perceived injustice, of one’s own survival. In Dossier K., Kertész addresses the difficulty accepting the role of being a survivor:

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“That’s right. The survivor is an exception; his existence – really the result of an industrial accident in the machinery of death, as Jean Améry so aptly remarked. Maybe that is one of the reasons it is so hard to accept, to come to terms with the exceptional and anomalous existence that survival stands for.” (Kertész, 2006, p. 70)

Adopting the role of the survivor-witness also brings with it great responsibility that can feel as a heavy load on one’s shoulders. It is a role that Holocaust survivors are often forced into, even if it is not a role they feel comfortable in. This is something that Imre Kertész himself has expressed in his memoir as well:

“The only people who were not besmirched by the shame of the Holocaust were the dead. It is painful to carry the brand of surviving for some unaccountable reason. You remained here so you could spread the Auschwitz myth; you remained here as a sort of freak. You are invited to attend anniversaries; your irresolute face is video-recorded, your faltering voice, you hardly notice that you’ve become a kitsch supporting character in a fraudulent narrative, and you sell for peanuts your own story, which bit by bit you yourself understand least of all. (…) and you are late in noticing that you have already played your part and there is no longer any need for you here.” (Kertész, 2006, p. 187)

This quote from Kertész in Dossier K. feels particularly emotionally charged when read in the context of the surrounding passages in the memoir. It is invested with frustration regarding the role of the survivor-witness that Kertész feels was involuntarily and inappropriately ascribed to him. This particular quote also mirrors various elements regarding survival that we have thus far seen throughout various works of Kertész. In Galley Boat-Log the author already made statements that connected surviving the Holocaust to feelings of shame, as survivors feel forced to adopt a particular attitude towards stories of other victims that they do not really feel sympathetic too. In The Pathseeker we dug deeper into what it means for a Holocaust survivor, who attributed his survival to chance, to feel the constant need to justify one’s survival or face the negative judgment of others because you survived while others did not. It placed a specific focus on struggle of having to live with one’s own inexplicable survival. Even being able to adopt the role of the witness is not something that Kertész views in a positive light. The quote shows how survivor-witnesses are in complete service to society: attending anniversaries upon invitation; posing for video-recordings with a faltering voice; being used as a pawn in political games (becoming the ‘kitsch supporting characters in a fraudulent narrative’) that use, and sometimes abuse, the memory of the Holocaust for political gains. On a more personal level Kertész writes about selling his personal stories on his Holocaust experiences for little money, while still not being able to gain any kind of understanding on his own survival and the ordeals he has been through. Even the very conclusion to passage attests to the pessimistic idea that there is no need for Holocaust survivors in the post-war society they had to re-enter.

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With all this negativity on the role of the Holocaust survivor-witness seeping through the narrative of The Pathseeker: Greek tragedy has shown to be able to demonstrate the complexity of the role of the (moral) witness by shining light on its shadow side through the alternative version of the tragic plays about Iphigenia. We have seen how it may provide an ultimate goal to strive for, shaped in the form of the emotional cleansing that is denoted by the concept of catharsis. However, it also served as a forebode for what the alternative to redemption could be through Antigone’s suicide. The question remains whether the presence of ancient Greek tragedy in Holocaust fiction can prove for catharsis, and ultimately redemption, to be a viable option.

5.3 The daydream: Greek tragedy, the Bible and traumatic memories In the first part of this chapter, when close-reading the passages of The Pathseeker that involved the Antigone-figure, I already addressed the possibility of the commissioner attempting to redress the injustice of his own survival by adopting the role of the moral (survivor-)witness and striving for something similar to what the ancient Greeks referred to as catharsis. In the understanding that those alive bear responsibility for the dead, the novella portrays the commissioner as a Holocaust survivor suffering from survivor’s guilt that is deeply rooted in an excessive sense of pity towards the victims of the Holocaust who have died (and their living relatives and loved ones). When the commissioner states that he desires to redress the injustice of his survival, he means that that he is trying to find a way to alleviate his survivor’s guilt. This in turn could be understood as a way of attempting to deal with the excessive thumetic emotion of pity the commissioner experiences towards the ‘true’ victims of the Holocaust, which led us into the direction of catharsis; the purification or cleansing of thumetic emotions such as pity and fear brought about by spectating performances of Greek tragedy. Both the emotions of pity and fear central to catharsis are present in combat trauma, but they can be found in the traumas of Holocaust survivors as well. We already saw how survivor’s guilt could be derived from excesses of pity, but excesses of fear are present in Holocaust survivors as well. In order to see this reflected in the case of the commissioner in The Pathseeker, we need to return to the scene where he and his wife were discussing Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris. The commissioner and his wife stop for a drink at the terrace of a confectioner’s shop located at the familiar square in the village of Weimar. They sit down and look out over the square: “A table with two easy chairs was standing unoccupied in the corner, giving a comfortable view, like a theatre box, of the pavement and a monotonously splashing, cone-shaped fountain. They took seats.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 86). With the square being relatively peaceful at the moment, the commissioner and his wife engage in a conversation about Goethe’s reworking of the tragedy about Iphigenia, a conversation that includes the commissioner’s own alternative and gruesome version of the story as analysed earlier. However, after this conversation the mind of the commissioner seems to wander off as he watches the village square filling up with people and vehicles as they near rush hour:

“His attention was at that moment – indeed had been for several minutes now – engaged by something else. (…)What was going on before his eyes? (…) [A]ll he could have accounted for were a sinister, as yet confusedly hazy presentiment of an impending incident and his own

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every-growing excitement. What was he anticipating? What lay in wait? What he would witness, indeed maybe even participate in? (…) The tension was mounting. What before had been merely an inchoate anxiety was now searing his chest with the white heat of anguish. (…) He looked around and could not help seeing how everything was ganging up on him; appraise this perhaps unwitting yet, all the same, cruelly precise intertwining of however many circumstances were turning against him. Impossible it seemed, to stymie anything, to avert a process that was perceptibly unfolding more and more obviously threatening catastrophe, or even, at least, just to sort out its connection with a clear head.” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 87-88)

The chaotic and hasty scenes that ensue appear to be a combination of traffic scenes during rush hour and the imagination of the commissioner himself that runs wild. In the novella it results in a vague and anxiety-inducing passage of several pages long in which the commissioner envisions scenes that appear to depict something similar to a Biblically inspired Judgment Day supplemented with traces that remind the reader of ancient Greek tragic heroes and concentration camps all the same. In the words of Sam Munson, book reviewer for the New York The Sun, the commissioner is constantly deflected from his mission by “a series of unnerving events, culminating in a traffic jam as harrowing as Dante’s vision of hell” (Munson, 2008). The passage from the novella holds between a daydream or a kind of hallucination on the commissioner’s part, and it demonstrates some of the anxiety and tension the man deals with when finding himself in overstimulating situations such as a traffic jam at rush hour. What perhaps started out as excitement and anticipation gradually developed into anguish and fear when a large group of people get out of a bus at a bus stop. In the mind of the commissioner, in the way he describes what he sees going on in front of him at the village square, it is as if occasionally memories or scenes from inside a concentration camp merge with the scenes of the traffic jam:

“In front of their theatre box (…) The people spilling out [of the town’s bus] had to vie with those striving to get on, then, on the ground, they dispersed to swell the heaving surge of the ever-increasingly raging tide of the street. People and vehicles streamed endlessly; each and every outlet of the square seemed to be a bottomless sack, the inexhaustible contents of which are being released at storm force. Yes, the swish of lashing commands and whips would drive them to this square, now – so it seemed – everybody was gathering here from the four corners of the town (or was it maybe the whole world?).” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 88)

The passage cited above shows how elements of the traffic jam, in particular the point at which masses of people are being led from all corners of the square into the centre, appear to have a kind of smothering or intimidating effect on the commissioner. He portrays the scene as if it were like the raging waters of the sea with phrases like ‘to swell the heaving surge of the ever-increasing raging tide of the street’, which brings to the reader’s mind a mental connection to the idea of drowning or going under into the waves of the ocean. It is especially the final sentence of the passage, about the ‘swish

91 of lashing commands and whips’ that drive the people to the square and the idea of the people gathering there perhaps from the corners of the whole world, that establishes a link to scenes of a concentration camp where prisoners are forcibly driven to a central location within a camp – for example in cases of roll calls. That particular memories of the commissioner subconsciously make their way into his daydream or hallucination is once again proven when he suddenly focusses on a specific individual in the crowd of the traffic jam: “[t]he commissioner was seized by an odd sensation (…) he had seen that gesture, that face, that young man, somewhere before, if not in real life then maybe in a film, a photograph, possibly a painting” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 89). A man whom the commissioners describes in great detail and who serves as a peaceful and motionless dot in the chaos around him; a man whom he recognizes as a young Albrecht Dürer (a German Humanist and painter, 1471-1528), who poses in the same manner as he painted himself in the self-portrait for which he became famous. It felt to him as if a painting had come to life before his very eyes, and at one and the same time the artist himself (Kertész, 1977a, p. 90). When trying to follow the gaze of the man, the commissioner too relocates his own gaze into the distance over the square, which presents him with a renewed view of the scene that is once again taking up grim shapes:

“All at once, everything fell into place (…) The square expanded, its centre sinking, its perspectives collapsing, so that the hill crest he had traversed that morning, which just before had merely been hazily visible in the distance, now seemed to be growing directly out of the square’s end. The sky opened up (…) and in the flood of flames and sparks from the pitiless sun – intensified to a fever pitch by a thousand metallic objects, chromium, panes of glass, tiled roofs – it made ready to come crashing down.” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 89-90)

It is one of the clearer references in the daydream that connect the visualization of the traffic jam to memories of the concentration camps as the commissioner explicitly refers to Buchenwald (‘the hill crest he had traversed that morning’), which he sees reflected in the scenes he watches from his seat at the terrace. It is combined with a Biblical reference to Judgment Day as the opened-up sky, the ‘flood of flames and sparks’ ‘intensified to a feverish pitch’, appeared ready to come crashing down. The description of flames and heat bring about the mental image of hell on earth, to which the commissioner immediately adds the sentence: “Was the horn still singing in its seven corners the grief of the cars, or were they the trumpets of the Dies Irae sounding?” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 91). With ‘Dies Irae’ being Latin for ‘Day of Wrath’, the Latin hymn it originates from describes the Day of Judgment where the last trumpets summon souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved are cast into eternal flames (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913). Interesting to note is that this title is best known from its use as a sequence in the Requiem (Mass for the Dead or Funeral Mass), and that its melody is often quoted in the works of various composers. Even Goethe used some of the stanzas of the hymn in his drama Faust (1808), which might explain how Kertész was familiar with it.

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The Biblical references to Judgement Day also change the sensation of the passage in the novella as the atmosphere at the village square becomes increasingly uncomfortable and much darker. The people in the traffic jam are described as:

“[M]ingling, bumping into one another, stumbling, desperately seeking support with flailing arms in the burgeoning cacophony, below a sun that was blazing angrily down on them. (…) The were all bobbing around here (…), branded with the sign of their fate (…). In the frenzy, however, they were all the same. What could differences in their ages, fates, lives, or passions signify here? This shared fate, which had gathered all life here, unified them in the bottleneck of this shared battle (…) it silenced and brushed off from them all stray, fugitive sensation of their personal existence, as though it were the ruthless command of all-powerful dictators (…). Yet every face here spoke, or preached, about one thing, demanded one thing, pleaded for one thing, professed a single doctrine: ‘Get out of here!’” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 91-92)

In this passage we see how the Biblical references of impending doom and the idea of hell with heat and flames slowly evolves into (or merges with) the commissioner’s memories of scenes at concentration camps. As he describes the individuals in the traffic jam as being stripped of the characteristics that set them apart (‘their ages, fates, lives, or passions’) and bound by a shared fate (‘a shared battle’ even), this once again reminds us of Holocaust victims who were also dehumanized and stripped of their personal identities in the camps at the order of an ‘all-powerful dictator’ in the person of Adolf Hitler. The fact that all the people in the square even ‘preached’, ‘demanded’, ‘pleaded’ and ‘professed’ for one thing, to get out of there, empowers the comparison of the traffic jam- scene in the hallucination to the concentration camps of the Holocaust. In the chaos of the traffic jam at the square, at once the commissioner notices another single figure in the crowd that temporarily brings a sense of peace or hope in the messiness in front of him. The figure, a woman, puts an end to all hurry because people part ways for her like a queen and they stop and stare at her: “[f]or a minute, everything comes to a halt and all hurry is forgotten. (…) Looks from all sides are fastened on her; looks hoping for redemption, easement, or at least the fleeting diversion of an unexpected flicker of solace in the consuming scramble” (Kertész, 1977a, p.93). The enchanting woman is portrayed as walking with confidence in her summer dress, raising an ice cream cone adorned with fruit in one hand “in a crazy impetus of alms-giving as it were” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 94). She is stunning, yet as tension builds in a climactic sensation the commissioner notices something lacerated about the woman as well. She smiles at everyone, yet at no one at the same time. There is a desperation of effort in her glamour; a hidden feature about her beauty that verged on the ugly. The commissioner wonders whether the woman is a witch or a corrupting spirit, yet was she indeed corrupting or was she herself corrupted?

“Here she was and yet was not present; she seemed to be offering herself and yet was ineffable (…). Everything about her was fake; her fakery alone was genuine. (…) This minute during which she passed through the reverential crowd, mesmerized by its self-flagellating

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passion, was becoming legendary; this deceptive triumph, a blunder. Myths were being woven about her, and she was falling prey to those myths. She believed herself to be a conqueror, whereas she was but a credulous victim; or a destiny, whereas she was merely a spoil, flirting with freedom yet sleeping with tyranny.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 95)

With all people in the traffic jam – shaped by the commissioner’s daydream – suddenly focussing on the woman passing through the crowd, she exudes a sense of hope: the people, earlier compared to prisoners of concentration camps, look at her for redemption. In the scene distorted to resemble Judgment Day, the woman is presented as if she is giving alms to those who suffer in the heat and flames. People look at the woman for help that may lead to the end of their suffering, yet the commissioner sees through this perfect image and exposes the woman for what she really is: a mirage. If anything, this passage further incorporates ancient Greek tragedy in the sense that it seems to establish the mysterious woman as a representation of Iphigenia, whose tragedy we already encountered earlier in the novella. Iphigenia, whom we know consented to her own sacrifice so that her father’s fleet may sail to Troy, is often discussed in debates concerning the issue of free will versus predestination. Even if she did not willingly consent to her sacrifice, her death would likely still have come about in an involuntarily fashion. The woman’s entrance at the centre of the hallucination of the commissioner is described as a ‘deceptive triumph’, which alludes to the fact that, even though she may be portrayed as bringing salvation, she offers so solace at all. ‘She believed herself to be a conqueror, whereas she was but a credulous victim’ is a key description that reminds the reader of Iphigenia, who thought herself to be a conqueror and a heroine for accepting her death by the sword of her own father in order to be a meaningful factor in the progression and outcome of the impending Trojan war. Instead, it can be argued that Iphigenia’s choice to consent to her sacrifice has not changed anything in her situation at all, which means that she remains a victim of an existing prophesy made by the seer Calchas; a victim of her own destiny. Moreover, the outcome of the story surrounding her sacrifice was already predestined, because the Euripidean tragedy was written with the knowledge of the Iliad, the Homeric epic that deals with the Trojan war and the Spartan victory, already in mind. There was never a situation within the tragedy in which Iphigenia was free to make her decision, because her sacrifice was needed to get the Spartan fleet to Troy to win the Trojan war; the victory which has thus always been a fact. Hence the final description attributed to her: ‘flirting with freedom, yet sleeping with tyranny’. Iphigenia may have been able to disguise her decision to consent to her sacrifice as freedom of choice, while in fact she has never been free to make this decision at all. Her fate was already set in stone because of the Homeric epics combined with the prophesy of the seer Calchas in the Euripidean tragedy. That the heroics of Iphigenia can be thought of as disputable deteriorates her image as a tragic heroine in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis. That the woman in the midst of the commissioner’s hallucination in The Pathseeker is therefore portrayed as a representation of Iphigenia in the setting of a scene resembling Judgment Day or a concentration camp, where she is looked upon as if she is capable of bringing

94 salvation, points in the direction that this hoped-for easement is nothing more than an illusion. There will be no true redemption. When, in an instant, the woman vanishes from the scene like an apparition, the chaos returns in the village square. The pace of the passage quickens, descriptions of other people, objects and events become ever more incoherent and brief. For instance, the commissioner discerns a man in the traffic jam who is running to catch a bus, but his path is blocked because of a change in the traffic light that allows for four distinct cars to rush into the direction of the four-lane road the man needs to cross to reach the bus stop:

“There a man was forcing a way across the road, running to reach the bus. He missed it, his calculations thwarted by a change in the traffic light: four cars were rushing in his direction along the four-lane highway, overlapping each other in a diagonal sprint. Out of one of them – decrepit, its bodywork a shabby wreck, like a skeleton – poked the wizened face of a bearded old man, horror in his unvaryingly dilated pupils, his mouth twisted in an idiotic grin; out of the second, a male head with a Gorgon coiffure, the mercilessness of a speed merchant and the pain of inexorability on his smooth-shaven face; out of the third, merely an upraised forearm from the elbow up, only a sword missing from the threateningly balled fist; from the fourth, another bearded figure, a curious badge on the thrusting nose of his car to reflect the cruel splendour of the brilliant sky: an arrow about to be loosed from the taut string of a bow. The quarry turned back with a done-for movement, left hand raised – in protest? Imploringly? – toward them; then he raced on, back and sideways on to these Furies, until they were all covered up by the monstrous body of a bus spewing out black exhaust fumes…”. (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 95-96)

This very brief description of the people occupying the four cars may be of little to no importance to the meaning or interpretation of the passage of the daydream (or to the novella in its entirety itself), but it does demonstrate how deeply the visualizations of the commissioner are interwoven with even the tiniest traces of ancient Greek tragedy. When reading this passage, the four cars and their respective occupants bring to mind a few other Greek tragic heroes famously featuring in either tragic plays or in Homeric epic. It is as if in each car a tiny glimpse can be caught of a particular Greek hero, without it being made clear why they feature in this particular scene in the novella. While the occupant of the first car (‘the wizened face of a bearded old man, horror in his unvaryingly dilated pupils, his mouth twisted in an idiotic grin’) is described in too general terms to make out his assumed identity, the occupants of the other three cars are perhaps more easily recognized. The occupant of the second car (‘a male head with a Gorgon coiffure, the mercilessness of a speed merchant’) may refer to Achilles, known in Homeric epic to be accompanied by the epithet ‘swift-footed’ which highlights the fact that he can run fast. The occupant of the third car (‘merely an upraised forearm from the elbow up, only a sword missing from the threateningly balled fist’) reminds the reader of Ajax, the tragic hero who committed suicide by plunging himself into his own sword. The fourth car then, ‘a curious badge on its thrusting nose to reflect the cruel splendour of the brilliant sky: an arrow about to be loosed from the

95 taut string of a bow’, may represent Odysseus; another famous warrior who came up with the idea of the Trojan horse that helped sack the city of Troy. He happened to be the only one in Homer’s Odyssey who was able to string Apollo’s renowned bow, which brought about the revelation of his true identity at his homecoming after his journey following the Trojan war. Other than the fact that these possible representations of Greek tragic heroes are in the end referred to as ‘Furies’, whereas the common man (a suffering victim in the hell-like scenes of the commissioner’s daydream) trying to catch his bus is referred to as ‘quarry’ or prey in the same sentence, there is no clear indication of what the meaning of this particular passage in the context of the hallucination may entail. When the cars race out of sight, a final Biblical reference makes its way into the close of the chaotic scene of the traffic jam as people on the streets suddenly look up to the sky “where a vulture- nosed aircraft that was preparing to land seemed almost to alight on them with an earsplitting screech, shrieking ‘Wheeeee!’ And as if the high-pitched squeal down there were being formed into a muffled cry, an answer that intensified into a uniform wail: woe, O woe betide those who dwell on earth…” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 96). This final, unfinished sentence of the hallucination passage originates from a passage in the New Testament (Book of Revelation 8:13), in which an eagle flying overhead calls out in a loud voice: “O woe betide those who dwell on earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!” (BibleHub, n.d.). The passage of the New Testament portrays the seven trumpets, sounded one at a time by seven different angels, to cue apocalyptic events. After the first four trumpets, the eagle (remember the ‘earsplitting screech’ of the ‘vulture-nosed aircraft’ from the cited passage of the novella) calls out a warning about terrible calamities that would follow at the blows of the horns of the other three remaining angels; greater judgments, if the lesser ones (of the previous four angels) had not taken effect. To place these references in the context of the commissioner, who suddenly remembers this particular Biblical reference about impending apocalyptic events while infusing a traffic jam taking place before his eyes with personal memories of concentration camps: it is as if he fears that more catastrophes, perhaps even greater ones than he has experienced himself so far during the Holocaust , are still to follow. This fear that the commissioner experiences during rush hour as he is sitting at a terrace looking over the increased traffic in the village square, is something I believe to be of importance in our understanding of the commissioner’s need for catharsis. From the very start of this peculiar daydream- scene in the novella, it feels to the reader as if the commissioner gets overwhelmed as soon as rush hour starts and the streets and the village square fill up with people and traffic. This increased discomfort in crowded places could very well be due to the commissioner’s previous experiences as a prisoner in various concentration camps. It reflects how traumatic experiences in a person’s past may result in anxiety or panic attacks in their present situation. The daydream that the commissioner has starts out rather peacefully with his thoughts wandering away to the scenes that unfold in the traffic jam, followed by a brief sensation of ever-growing excitement and anticipation as if something special is about to happen. However, tension is mounting and excitement quickly evolves into waves of anxiety and anguish. To the reader it feels as if the commissioner is overwhelmed by a chaotic environment in which everyone seems rather stressed and slightly on edge as they are stuck in traffic.

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These overwhelming and crowded situations that may induce panic attacks or episodes of anxiety that are the result of traumatic experiences in one’s past. That this trauma can clearly be identified as originating from the commissioner’s experiences with concentration camps is not just something that is clarified by the context of the Holocaust novella alone. Some of the traffic jam scenes that the commissioner describes in his hallucination can be thought of as evolving into scenes from inside these concentration camps as we have seen before. The way in which the commissioner described people from all corners of the square being forced (“the swish of lashes and whips would drive them to this square”) in his daydream to move into the centre of the space reminded of prisoners inside the camps being violently rounded up for roll calls for example (Kertész, 1977a, p. 88). The focus on the personal identities of the people stuck in traffic being stripped away in this particular moment, as they are bound together by a shared fate and a shared battle, was also another hint in the passage from the novella that pointed into the direction of Holocaust victims. Moreover, the commissioner himself clearly described how the square in his mind expanded so that the hill crest he visited that morning (the Ettersberg where the former Buchenwald concentration camp is to be found) became visible in the distance. However, additional elements were used to describe specific individuals in the crowd that also contributed to an atmosphere of despair, pain and suffering as we know it from stories of Holocaust survivors. Think of tiny details in the narration, such as the “horror-stricken” faces of the people in the square, “the broken, the hopeful, the all-suspecting, branded with the sign of their fate”, the “mother with the hunted look”, the “prematurely aged boy, who seemed to have grown up all at once under an incomprehensible terror”, those “exhausted and throwing in the towel; cursing; or resignedly, simply accepting it as sheer blind fate” and those “carrying or being carried along, stumbling or riding roughshod over others” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 91-93). Even the commissioner’s description of what he sees in the traffic jam as he is daydreaming demonstrate the invasive nature of trauma present in Holocaust survivors. As I explained in the theoretical framework, this is a clear example of ‘acting out trauma’ according to the definition by Dominic LaCapra in his interview with Amos Goldberg in 1998. ‘Acting out trauma’ is best described as the compulsive yet involuntary tendency to repeat trauma. It boils down to reliving traumatic experiences of the past through unpleasant flashbacks or nightmares – or in this case through a daydream triggered by an overwhelming situation in the present. The passage from The Pathseeker that contains this daydream is a representation of the trauma of a Holocaust survivor: made visible through the visualization of a seemingly everyday event, supplemented with references to ancient Greek tragedy (and perhaps Homeric epic as well), infused with traumatic memories and invested with a fear for further catastrophic events of Biblical proportions. The general feel of the passage is that of an unhealthy kind of anticipation; tension rising through the quick pace with which events are described, yet working towards a climax that is held off. The climax of the hallucination was supposed to be the Iphigenia-figure entering the scene as a saviour, providing relief and salvation for those suffering. However, we have already established that, due to Iphigenia’s illusory role as a tragic heroine, she is not capable of bringing redemption. The question remains: what does this daydream passage in the novella mean for the commissioner’s strive for trauma treatment through a type of catharsis that brings about emotional cleansing?

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6. Conclusion 6.1 Positioning Imre Kertész in discussions within Holocaust historiography In the introduction I explored the connection that Imre Kertész established between Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy in his essay ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ (1992), based on their shared linkages to art and morality. It was in particular Kertész’s statement that Holocaust literature may draw inspiration from the Bible and Greek tragedy, so that “irredeemable reality may give rise to redemption: the spirit, catharsis” (Kertész, 1992, p. 77-78), that inspired me to write this thesis. After all, Kertész regarded the Bible and Greek tragedy as two sources of European culture that continue to enrich European consciousness by serving as eternal models on the world of morality (Kertész, 1992, pp. 77-78), which implies that Kertész believed Holocaust literature to have the potential to do the same. By immersing myself in the written works of Imre Kertész, I have come to the conclusion that there is a deep connection between Kertész’s aforementioned essay and his novella The Pathseeker (1977) in particular. This novella can be seen as the embodiment of Kertész’s statement about Holocaust literature inspired by Greek tragedy and the Bible, because, as we have seen by now, the written work contains various explicit and implicit references to both these literary sources. All of this in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of some of the issues that Holocaust survivors struggled with in their life after the Second World War. In the introduction I also addressed the expectation that, when comparing and analysing Greek tragedy in relation to Holocaust literature, we would find apparent commonalities between both that could still potentially lead to controverse: by remediating Greek tragedy through Holocaust literature, certain conventions in Holocaust historiography would be challenged. These conventions are strongly connected to discussions about the use of language and literary fiction in writing about the Holocaust. In the introduction, I expressed my determination to position Kertész in these two major ongoing discussions within Holocaust historiography based on the author’s intertextual use of Greek tragic plays in his literary fiction about the Holocaust. More specifically, the first discussion centres around the inadequacy of language as a suitable framework through which the events of the Holocaust could be represented, because of the metaphysical status of the Holocaust; its uniqueness and its presumed ineffability. The second discussion focusses on the (in)adequacies of literary fiction in Holocaust representation (often associated with untruthfulness and inauthenticity), as opposed to historical discourse and factual documentation on the subject matter. Positioning the author in these two discussions, based on his intertextual use of Greek tragedy, is easier as both discussions are interrelated. As dealt with in my theoretical framework, Edith Hall explained in her article how novelists in the 18th century were primarily interested in Greek tragedy because of its story patterns, its characterization and its specific emotive scene types (Hall, 2009, pp. 23-24). Traces of this can be found in Kertész’s mediation of ancient Greek tragedy in The Pathseeker as well. As explained before, classical narratives served as scenarios that were to be repeated in modern works of literature: Greek tragic plots bring forth archetypical narratives on topics that appear timeless (Lefkowitz & Romm, 2016). References to classical texts are ways of connecting characters and experiences from the present to the past, and to universal stories in particular: stories that have general themes in which

98 individuals can still recognize their own personal stories. Through his decision to explicitly (and implicitly) refer to the Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedies about Antigone and Iphigenia, Kertész adopted a universal language in order to deal with the inadequacy of language in representing aspects of the experiences of a fictional Holocaust survivor in The Pathseeker. The inadequacy of language was regarded as a semiotic problem – derived from the uniqueness of the Holocaust that made it incomparable to other events – which means that words were not deemed fit to accurately describe the experiences of a Holocaust victim. The uniqueness of the Holocaust got in the way of victims and survivors properly describing the ordeals they had been through, and yet Imre Kertész attempted to counter this uniqueness and ineffability of the Holocaust by adopting the universal language of Greek tragedy in his novella. The recurring general themes in the particular tragedies he referenced, such as death, loss and suicide in Antigone, and survival, suffering (of one’s own ‘sacrifice’) and the role of the witness in Iphigenia among the Taurians, aided in the author’s attempt to describe what conventionally had been deemed indescribable. However, it should be noted here that it was one of the special qualities of Greek tragic plays that it provided spectators with general stories about suffering in which the Athenian audience could still recognize their own individual stories and experiences. Therefore, the particular is not lost in the universal. In addition, the metaphysical status of the Holocaust, which makes it appear an ordeal much larger than a mere historical event, is both countered and confirmed by Kertész’s intertextual references to Greek tragedy. The fact that Greek tragedy can be thought of as containing general themes that align with the experiences of Holocaust victims reduces the ‘specialness’ of Holocaust experiences so to say. However, considering that Greek tragedy (as well as the Bible from which other references were derived in the novella) can also be considered as classical, unique and incomparable to other literary works in the sense of the cultural (and political) importance ascribed to it, one could also argue that imbuing Holocaust literature with Greek tragedy preserves the metaphysical status of the Holocaust in this sense. It demonstrates what Kertész stated in his essay about his hopes that literature about the Holocaust (much like the Bible and Greek tragedy) may eventually enrich European consciousness by becoming an eternal model of the world of morality that survived the Holocaust. When it comes to positioning Imre Kertész in the discussion on the (in)adequacies of literary fiction in representing the Holocaust, we may determine that the author is well aware of the many benefits this particular genre has when it comes to writing down his personal experiences of the Holocaust. I already addressed the fact that Imre Kertész wrote his novels based on his own personal experiences of the Holocaust, but that he purposely fictionalized these accounts in order create a certain distance between his own emotions and the story he was trying to tell in his written works. For instance, that his account of the struggles of a Holocaust survivor in The Pathseeker was based on personal experiences was already made clear when discussing some of the events that likely inspired the novella as Kertész wrote them down in his diary titled Galley Boat-Log (1992). As argued in my theoretical framework, fictionalized accounts of Holocaust experiences (as opposed to historical and factual accounts of the Holocaust) contributed to the attempt of trying to understand the ordeals a Holocaust victims went through.

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According to Ernst van Alphen, Holocaust survivors had not properly been able to experience the events of the Holocaust that had a traumatic impact on them, due to the fact that distance from it in language or representation was not possible (van Alphen, 1997, p. 44). Therefore he proposed a shift in focus from the limits of language to the available forms of representation. The language of the historian may have helped uncovering factual truths about the events of the Holocaust, but this is not the same as understanding them (van Alphen, 2004, p. 561). The language of literary fiction on the other hand encourages a certain distance between the author and the object he writes about, which allowed for Kertész to put his personal experiences into perspective. This shows how the use of a particular type of language on behalf of the author can influence his own relation with the text he wrote. Similarly, the use of a particular language by the author may also influence the reader’s interpretation of the text. In the theoretical framework I already mentioned Van Alphen reflecting on Saul Friendlander’s statement that the language of the historian encourages a distance between the reader and the object he reads about through the required reading attitude (van Alphen, 2004, p. 561). The objectification that stems from the language of the historian creates a distancing and numbing protective shield for both the historian himself and the reader. This would mean that the language of literary fiction, because of its ‘readability’ and its increased focus on emotive scenes (compared to historical language) has the potential to bridge the distance between the reader and the object he reads about, which in turn allows for better understanding on the part of the reader as well. Moreover, we have already seen in the theoretical framework that the presupposed inauthenticity and untruthfulness of literary fiction can be regarded as misguided, as historical truths are not all that matter in narrative about the Holocaust: the emotional reality that stories about the Holocaust convey are important and relevant as well. As Samuel Dresden stated: fictional accounts of events may be untrue, but that does not make them unreal (Dresden, 1991, p. 46). He also added to this that the purpose of fictional stories about the Holocaust was for the readers to experience a sense of empathy with the protagonist of the story, who is often a victim and survivor of the Holocaust (Dresden, 1991, p. 65). In Holocaust fiction, the author draws from events and experiences that he knows to have been true, but willingly chooses to portray them in a different manner and in a different context. Nevertheless, these fictionalized accounts of actual events and experiences still manage to convey the original feeling or sensation that elicits a response of empathy in the reader. Kertész had to use literary fiction in order to be able to incorporate intertextual references to fictional characters of ancient Greek tragedies in his novella, because these characters would have had no place in a historically accurate and factual portrayal of the author’s personal experiences. It is with these references that Kertész strengthened some of the comments he intended to make on the role of the traumatized Holocaust survivor-witness and his struggles of survival in The Pathseeker. The fact that, in literary fiction about the Holocaust, importance is placed on eliciting empathy from the reader with the suffering protagonist of the story is relevant in the connection Kertész made between Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy as well. After all, it was important for spectators of Greek tragic performances to experience empathy with the tragic hero as part of tragedy’s ultimate goal of providing a cathartic process for its audience.

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6.2 On the commonalities between Holocaust literature and Greek tragic plays However, Kertész’s novella goes way beyond the general connection between Holocaust literature and ancient Greek tragedy based on general themes concerning suffering, the human condition and the world of morality alone. It can be argued that the form and content of The Pathseeker also bear striking resemblances to ancient Greek tragic plays. I demonstrated before that Greek tragedy, according to the definition by Aristotle, involved a ‘re-presentation (a mimesis, or imitation) of a completed action by means of sweetened speech that accomplishes through pity and fear the cleansing of these experiences’. When looking at The Pathseeker, we may state that the novella too seeks to imitate a completed action through literature, namely the visits of a Holocaust survivor to the former concentration camps where he had been imprisoned during the war. The novella offers a literary representation of the struggles of a Holocaust survivor trying to understand his past and deal with his trauma. Much like Aristotle stated about the poetic imitation being an improvement upon the event as it unfolded in nature, a literary representation of an experience connected to the Holocaust can also be regarded as an improvement upon the actual event it represents: through imitation it can be presented to us more clearly than it appears in nature, and presenting the formal structure of an event or experience turns it into an object of knowledge. This was already demonstrated earlier, as I reflected upon fiction as a representational form that allows for a much needed distance to be created between the author and the subject matter he writes about. This, in order to help put experiences into perspective. The fact that the novella portrays fictionalized accounts of events that actually took place in the life of the author demonstrates that The Pathseeker, too, can be seen as an imitation of an action ‘by means of sweetened speech’: though without meter and rhyme, literary fiction is an artistic form of writing that is also regarded as a type of ‘sweetened speech’ that has the power to beautify the story it seeks to represent. True for both Holocaust literature and Greek tragedy in this case: poetry may be able to make the ugly sublime, but it never diminishes the seriousness and awfulness of the events described. Also, though I do not want to go much deeper into Aristotle’s attribution of catharsis to his definition of Greek tragedy just yet, it is clear that the cathartic process benefits from responses of empathy elicited in the spectator. Again, this is not much different for Holocaust literature through which readers are encouraged to empathize with the protagonist (often the Holocaust victim or survivor) as well as his suffering is extensively portrayed. Apart from commonalities in form, we can also discern that the general content of Greek tragedy displays characteristic elements that are to a certain extent recognizable in the Holocaust novella of The Pathseeker. I am referring to those elements that determine the muthos or plot of Greek tragic plays: peripateia, anagnorisis and the hamartia that shapes them. In Kertész’s The Pathseeker, the commissioner experienced bitter disappointment on his mission to visit the location of the former Buchenwald concentration camp, because he discovered that the camp and its surroundings were not how he remembered them to be from his traumatic past. It made him question the validity of his mission and even his identity as a Holocaust survivor. He felt that he had failed in his efforts to gain evidence of his traumatic past on his site inspection, which in turn meant that he was still not capable of coping with, and understanding, his own survival. I explained before how it was common for Greek

101 tragedies to involve a reversal of fortune for the main character (either from misery to happiness, or from prosperity to disaster), referred to as peripateia. The commissioner can be said to have experienced a reversal of fortune at this point in The Pathseeker as well. At Buchenwald, the commissioner was in a state comparable to misery as he felt extreme sensations of disappointment and confusion at the sight of the former camp having been altered beyond recognition. After his visit to Buchenwald, the commissioner is approached by mysterious veiled woman (the Antigone-figure) at Hotel Elephant. He engages in a conversation with her that eventually helps him clarify the goal of his mission and the way to accomplish it: he wants to redress the supposed injustice of his own survival of the Holocaust by adopting the role of the moral witness, so that he may bear witness to everything he has seen. He realizes the importance of him having to bear witness to the events of the Holocaust and his survival himself, but this realization does not really get through to him until his visit to the factory near Zeitz. When reaching the factory, the commissioner could determine right away that the place felt as if nothing had changed. The sounds, the smells, the outlook of the factory and the sandy path that led to it all fit with the memories that the commissioner had kept of the place. However, here too he feels a sense of defeat: the building, intact as it is, remains incapable of bearing witness to his survival. This makes him realize once more, more fully this time, that no buildings or witnesses were going to testify to his survival. He had to stop searching for clues and he needed to become the proof of his own continued existence himself. It is this epiphany about the nature and limitations of his mission that commissioner experiences here, that demonstrates that something in the attitude of the commissioner has changed. Between the commissioner’s visits to Buchenwald and Zeitz, the moment during which he engages in a conversation with the Antigone-figure, a reversal of fortune takes place for the protagonist of the novella. He clarifies his mission, which leads him to set out his second site inspection in a slightly different state of mind that appears less limiting in his attempt to fulfil his mission. That this is a reversal from misery to fortune is not just reflected in the fact that, during his second site inspection, he does find the place as he had hoped he would. We also noted that reversals of fortune moving from a negative situation in a more positive one were (more often than not) attributed to a ‘divine intervention’. In the case of the novella, a particular intervention does indeed take place, though not necessarily a divine one. Instead it is the intervention of the classical tragic heroine Antigone that brings about a change in fortune. The epiphany that the commissioner experiences during his visit to the factory at Zeitz, which is a confirmation of the realization he had in his conversation with the Antigone-figure earlier, can thus be seen in the light of anagnorisis: the plot element of ancient Greek tragic plays that denotes a shift from ignorance to knowledge. In tragic plays, the protagonist experiences the hardship and suffering that befalls him because of the third plot element of hamartia: the relation between the broken character of the protagonist and the brokenness of the world in which (s)he lives. It stimulates the audience in reflecting on the protagonist’s suffering and generating empathy with the tragic hero of the play. I maintain that in The Pathseeker the element of hamartia can be recognized in the character of the commissioner as well. The brokenness of the character can be defined in terms of traumatization: the commissioner has experienced traumatic events during the Holocaust and is now still ridden with guilt

102 over his own survival as opposed to the deaths of millions of other victims. This brings forth the thumetic desire (a desire that originates from the spirited part of the soul referred to as thumos) in the commissioner of wanting to redress the supposed injustice of his own survival by adopting the role of the moral witness and wanting to bear witness to everything that he has seen. However, it is the brokenness of the world in which he lives that makes it nearly impossible for him to achieve this goal. Throughout the entire novella the reader is made attentive of the fact that there is an unwavering reluctance among the people the commissioner surrounds himself with to speak up about their shared past. Even the village itself – the streets, the squares, the houses and the locations of the former camps – seem to be working against the commissioner’s desire to find and gather evidence of his traumatic past, which the commissioner addressed as an “ever-renewed resistance on the part of things” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 65). This reluctance of people to speak up about the Holocaust is emphasized by the author himself through the elliptical writing style he adopted in his novella: he managed to avoid addressing the Holocaust as the general topic of the novella throughout the entire written work. It is this element of hamartia that is crucial in shaping the reversal of fortune (peripateia) and the shift from ignorance to knowledge (anagnorisis) as explained before: without the trauma of the commissioner generating the need to gather evidence in an attempt to redress the injustice of his own survival, and without the unwillingness of his environment to provide him with the evidence he is searching for, there would have been no realization on the part of the commissioner that he needed to adopt the role of the moral witness and testify to his own survival himself. Therefore, in the case of the commissioner in a novella about the Holocaust too (not unlike the cases of tragic heroes in Greek tragedies): the element of hamartia shapes the other plot elements of peripateia and anagnorisis that are present in the narrative. Now that we have discussed commonalities in the general themes, form and content of ancient Greek tragedy on the one hand, and literary fiction about the Holocaust on the other hand, we need to ask ourselves whether this means that the two sources have a final thing in common as well: do they share a common goal in providing a path to catharsis? Through the statement made in his 1992 essay, Kertész makes it sound as if Holocaust literature may indeed be capable of giving rise to a kind of catharsis; or redemption. However, as we have seen throughout the close-readings of the passages from the novella containing references to Greek tragedy, the chances of the commissioner achieving this catharsis that would lead to a purification of his excessive thumetic emotions of pity and fear appeared to be very slim.

6.3 The path to catharsis in The Pathseeker: the unattainability of redemption After close-reading several passages from The Pathseeker and analysing them we can conclude that the novella portrays a Holocaust survivor suffering from the traumatic experiences of his past. When, several years after the war, the commissioner decides upon paying a visit to the former concentration camps where he had been imprisoned, it is clear that he is still struggling with his continued existence; with the survival of his survival. By employing intertextual references to ancient Greek tragedy in his Holocaust novella, Imre Kertész encourages the reader to view the trauma of Holocaust survivors and their role as survivor-witnesses in a different light.

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As I demonstrated in the introduction, Kertész equated redemption with the concept of catharsis – the emotional purification of thumetic emotions such as pity and fear that could traditionally be attained by spectating a tragic performance in ancient Greece – in his essay ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ back in 1992. This allowed for us to view the commissioner’s trauma (as far as it was reflected throughout the novella) in the context of catharsis as well, to see if the novella offered a way for this emotional cleansing to be achieved so that the commissioner’s trauma could (potentially) be resolved. This led to the insight that Holocaust survivors can be said to suffer from excesses in pity and fear much like Greek soldiers suffering from combat trauma did in ancient Greece. In the case of the commissioner, we have seen in the passages that involved a mysterious, veiled woman compared to Antigone that his survivor’s guilt originates from excesses in pity towards the victims of the Holocaust who had died during the war. Similarly, we have seen in the passage containing the commissioner’s daydream at the sight of a traffic jam during rush hour that he still bears traces of excessive fear and anxiety in present situations due to the traumatic experiences of his past. Therefore, the need for a catharsis in the traditional sense is clear: the excessive thumetic emotions of pity and fear that are present in the Holocaust survivor need to be purified so that the commissioner’s trauma may be (at least partially or temporarily) resolved. The question remains how the commissioner in the novella attempts to undergo this cathartic process. In the traditional sense, a catharsis is brought about by watching a tragic play being performed in the theatre. It is arguable that something similar took place in the novella as well. As demonstrated by earlier citations from the novella, the commissioner on no less than two separate occasions casually lets slip that he (and his wife) are sitting on the terrace in the village square during rush hour as if in a theatre box. As the commissioner and his wife are in search for an empty table at the terrace to discuss the commissioner’s alternative ending to Goethe’s reworking of Iphigenie auf Tauris, it is brought to the reader’s attention that “[a] table with two easy chairs was standing unoccupied in the corner, giving a comfortable view, like a theatre box, of the pavement and a monotonously splashing, cone-shaped fountain. They took seats.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 86). That this is also the moment where the daydream or hallucination scenes ensue may indicate that, at that very moment, we should interpret the commissioner to be witnessing some type of tragic play in a non- traditional way. On another occasion during the daydream, the commissioner once again remarks on the fact that “[i]n front of their theatre box – this island that was proving steadfast, for the time being, in the eddying commotion – happed to be a stop on the town’s bus route” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 88). The fact that Kertész chose exactly these wordings in order to bring the spectacle of the distorted scenes of the traffic jam in the village square to the attention of the reader, and the fact that he did this twice, means that it was likely done on purpose to hint at ancient Greek theatre in the novella. Nevertheless, even within this daydream, a female figure very similar in description to the disputed tragic heroine Iphigenia showed up at the supposed climax of the passage to underline that salvation, the end to suffering, was nothing more than in illusion. In addition, we also established another possibility with which the commissioner tried to reach catharsis, or a kind of redemption, when we broke up his conversation with the Antigone-figure earlier. In excerpts from this conversation we learned that the commissioner desired to redress the supposed

104 injustice of his own survival (as opposed to the deaths of so many other victims of the Holocaust), which was a way of saying that he sought for a way to alleviate his survivor’s guilt (resolve the excessive thumetic emotion of pity). He had made it his personal mission to bring about this redress of injustice by adopting the role of the (moral) witness:

“’Redress…? How? With what?’ The commissioner all at once found the words he wanted, as if he could see them written down: ‘So that I should bear witness to everything I have seen.’” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 80)

At this point in the novella the commissioner realizes that he needed to adopt the role of the (moral) witness in order to find redemption and attempt to resolve his survivor’s guilt. Bearing witness to everything he has seen, giving evidence and testifying to what he experienced in the concentration camps was seen as necessary in addressing the deep-rooted sense of excessive pity the commissioner felt toward the victims of the Holocaust who died while he himself had been fortunate enough to live. It was the moral duty to testify that was supposed to help him achieve the catharsis he needed to treat his trauma. Unfortunately, we also saw how this path to catharsis does not seem to work out for him either. Judging by the way he treated the topic of the survivor-witness when discussing with his wife Goethe’s reworking of the Euripidean tragedies on Iphigenia, we can state that even adopting the role of the (survivor-)witness is not something that the commissioner views in a positive light. By revealing the shadow side of the witness-role, this option as a path to catharsis has been made much more complex. However, the commissioner must still acknowledge that, even though adopting the role of the witness is not without struggle, this moral duty to testify does provide a goal in life to strive for. This was demonstrated by the suicide of the Antigone-figure in the novella, which served as a forebode of what the alternative to striving for catharsis could be. Both scenarios, of traditional and less traditional ways to reach catharsis, seem to bring nothing more than dead ends for the commissioner on his quest for catharsis and redemption. The failure of the cathartic processes is visible in the commissioner’s final visit to Zeitz, which he undertook without his wife and on his own accord. At the beginning of the novella, when the commissioner visited the former Buchenwald concentration camp, he was struck by the fact that the place had been completely altered over time. In no way did it resemble the concentration camp of which the commissioner had for so long kept all these traumatic memories. The fact that the former camp had been changed after all these years is something that the commissioner experienced as an obstacle in finding evidence that attests to his past, and therefore indirectly also to his survival and his identity as a Holocaust survivor. However, it was at this point that the commissioner realized that the places and the buildings were not going to speak up about his past. Instead, he himself had to stop trying to collect evidence and instead become the proof; the implacable witness to his own victory (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 66-67). In the case of the commissioner’s visit to Zeitz, where the BRABAG factory and a former sub- camp were located where he had been imprisoned, he does find the factory completely intact.

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Actually, it is still being used, which gives the commissioner the feeling that nothing had changed. The place finally offers the material evidence of his past that the commissioner was looking for. Yet, finding the place exactly as he remembered it still does not help him explain his survival and his identity as a Holocaust survivor-witness: “Had he wanted definite evidence of his questionable existence? (…) His groundless disappoint was fed merely by the fact that this festive invitation had received no response” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 109). This leads to the disappointing realization on the part of the commissioner that the objects, the places and the uncommunicative strangers in the village and its surroundings (remember the reluctance of the people in the village to speak up about the Holocaust) were not going to verify his existence. “Let him find it in chance of seek it within himself, accept it or reject it (…), it was useless to wait for an answer from them: they were not denying him, but they were not letting him in either; they were simply different” (Kertész,1977a, p. 110). This is the rather disappointing truth that the commissioner discovers while visiting the BRABAG factory, which means that he is from now on aware of the fact that his mission will likely not be successful. By adopting the role of the moral witness, the commissioner hoped that he would be able to understand his own survival of the Holocaust – which in turn could have helped him redress the supposed injustice of his survival towards himself and others, and resolve the excessive thumetic emotions that are part of his trauma. He seems to take the news of this impossibility relatively lightly, as if he reconciles himself to the idea that he may never understand his survival, but he still decides upon travelling further to the cattle barn that is now located on the location of the former sub-camp near Zeitz. It is on the commissioner’s brief trip to and from this former sub-camp near Zeitz (in Trögitz) that the reader is presented with the final examples that demonstrate the failure of the cathartic process and thus the unattainability of redemption and complete trauma treatment for the commissioner. When walking along the sandy path that would lead to the exact location of the former sub-camp, the commissioner encounters two local men who come up to him to ask whether they can do anything for him. From these men the commissioner learns that the sub-camp has been replaced by a cattle barn; the men (employees of the cattle barn) do not even seem to know that there used to be a sub-camp at the site that used to hold prisoners during the war. During this conversation with the men, the commissioner’s thoughts briefly wander off again. He notices that he standing in an empty yard, alone with two strangers who may find his odd behaviour of snooping around incriminating. This prompts the commissioner to think of undesirable things that might happen to him here in this deserted place:

“Who was to say what might happen to him here; they might throw him out, or hold him here – tie him up among the cattle while they sent for the police. Tie him up and then forget about him. He might be left here, his feet growing into the muddy ground and putting out roots, penetrating deeper down, ever deeper, until they hit skeletons in the depths of the ground, around which they would be able to entwine fraternally, until the repose of petrification settled on his face (…).” (Kertész, 1977a, pp. 112-113)

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That this is one of the first things that comes to mind to the commissioner in his encounter with two stranger on a deserted piece of land is something that demonstrates that the commissioner is still afraid of bad things happening to him. He does not trust strangers yet, and his anxiety takes the upper hand in cooking up different scenarios of how the situation he is in may turn bad. He specifically connects these doom scenarios to the Holocaust, as he realizes that, if he were to die at this very spot, his remains would ‘fraternally entwine’ with the remains of the victims of the Holocaust who had died in the former sub-camp during the war. This passage demonstrates that the commissioner’s trauma, in particular the excess of fear he still carries in his thumos, has not been resolved through any kind of cathartic process. Similarly, we will find that the commissioner’s thumetic emotion of pity – expressed through his survivor’s guilt – has not been resolved either. When the commissioner is waiting at the platform of a train station for the train to bring him back from Zeitz to Weimar, he is absentmindedly reading through a local newspaper. When he notices a well-hidden news item on one of the pages, he learns of the reported suicide of the veiled woman whom he had met the previous day. The Antigone-figure with whom he had conversed about his mission appears to have hung herself from the ceiling of her hotel room in Weimar by a ligature contrived of her own mourning veil. The first thought that enters the mind of the commissioner, on the very last page of the novella is:

“He stole a glance down the length of the platform, then snapped confusedly to his senses – but how? Surely he couldn’t be looking for his accusers?” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 118)

This single thought immediately gives away that the commissioner’s survivor’s guilt (and thus his excess of pity) has not been resolved through a catharsis either. The fact that he is thinking about who could accuse him of being involved in the death of the veiled woman attests to the continued presence of his survivor’s guilt: once again he survived while another person connected to the Holocaust had died. However, the way in which he expresses his concern – ‘surely he couldn’t be looking for his accusers?’ – demonstrates that the commissioner’s thought-patterns regarding his survivor’s guilt and trauma may not have been fully resolved, but at least he is visibly aware of the fact that his mind races to such absurd conclusions. This awareness of the presence of his survivor’s guilt, and the fact that the commissioner realizes that it does not make sense to accuse himself of another person’s suicide, at the very least open up a path in learning how to deal with his trauma. The trauma could not be treated through catharsis and it will likely never be completely resolved, but acknowledging it, accepting its presence and being able to deal with it in a constructive manner does provide the hope that its invasiveness and destructive power will lessen over time.

6.4 Final conclusion When going through the memoir called Dossier K. that Imre Kertész wrote himself and published in 2006, there was one particular quote that jumped out to me in the light of the results yielded by my

107 research. In an interview with himself, Kertész addresses the unattainability of catharsis in the context of the Holocaust:

“’Look, one might add the remark that although an Auschwitz was indeed possible, the only response to that unique crime, a catharsis, has not been possible. That has been made impossible by reality, our mundane reality, the way in which we live our lives – or in other words, which made Auschwitz possible in the first place.”

“A pretty stringent comment, I would say… what, in your view, needs to happen in order that…”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s me you should be asking.’” (Kertész, 2006, p. 186)

The quote shows how Kertész viewed a catharsis as ‘the only response to the unique crime’ that was the Holocaust. This stresses the desirability of a cathartic process that could purify or cleanse our consciousness from all memories and feelings of guilt or shame that the Holocaust left behind. However, Kertész also immediately states how this catharsis has not been possible thus far because of our ‘mundane reality, the way in which we live our lives, which made Auschwitz possible in the first place’. He seems to suggest that nothing has changed in our culture, which was the culture that allowed for something like the events of the Holocaust to take place. Therefore, it is not unthinkable that at some point history may be repeated; albeit in a different form. It is difficult to clearly explain what Kertész means with this particular statement about the impossibility of a catharsis in response to Auschwitz, as there is no clear reason given as to why exactly this catharsis could not be reached in his opinion. Then again, stating ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I don’t think it’s me you should be asking’ in response to a question about what can be done to open up a path for a potential cathartic process, demonstrates that Kertész never intended to answer the question of how a catharsis can be achieved. The latter is reflected by The Pathseeker as well: the commissioner may have come to the conclusion that catharsis – or redemption in his case – is unattainable, but he does not provide a solution or offer insights that would help bring this emotional purification about at some other point in time. However, what the novella does appear to demonstrate is a clearer reason as to why this catharsis could not be reached in the case of the commissioner. This reason is twofold. First of all, in a non-traditional sense we have already compared the bringing about of a cathartic process that could help resolve combat trauma when we looked at projects of Greek tragedy readings with veterans, such as the Theatre of War project by Brian Doerries. In that sense, the novella has made clear that a catharsis could not be set in motion, because one important element that would have contributed to it was missing: there was no communalization of trauma narrative in the novella. As stated in the theoretical framework, Shay’s method of treatment for (combat) trauma in veterans consisted of two parts. First, a narrative about the trauma must be created, and secondly the narrative had to be shared inside a meaningful and non-judgmental community. As Hoffmann clarified:

108 the creation of narrative allowed for the traumatized veteran to be able to put his experiences into perspective, which helped him view his suffering as an intelligible action that could then be understood and fit into the tapestry of his life (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 77). In addition, it was the sharing of this narrative that turned an individual burden into a communal bond (Hoffmann, 2016, p. 77). In The Pathseeker we have already seen on various occasions that there was a strong reluctance among people to speak up about the Holocaust. Literally everyone with whom the commissioner comes into contact in the novella fails to productively contribute to the communalization of the trauma narrative that was born from his personal experiences. Hermann does not openly speak about the research he has done in the past of the former Buchenwald concentration camp and, though he presents himself as willing to help, he continuously makes up excuses so that he does not have to visit the former concentration camp with the commissioner. The stranger whom the commissioner asks for directions at the Ettersberg does not see the former concentration camp the way that the commissioner does: to the young man it has merely become a place of leisure where free Sundays can be spent. The commissioner also cannot rely upon his wife, as she ditches him right in front of the gates of the former Buchenwald camp which she refuses to enter. The commissioner also literally stated after experiencing a daydream ridden with traumatic memories in the traffic jam at the village square in Weimar that his wife had simply not seen what he had seen:

“He turned to his wife, but she seemed to have noticed nothing; she was sitting calmly in her place amid the doomsday that was pulsing all around her. (…) It now struck the commissioner that he was seeing his wife’s image in the imitation of another image. Never mind, that did not alter the truth of the present in the least; and that truth was perhaps nothing more, though the commissioner, than that his wife did not see what he saw.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 97)

Apart from his wife, the commissioner meets with the woman in uniform at Buchenwald (where he also sees the Antigone-figure in the distance for the first time). However, he sees her as an obstacle in carrying out his mission, which makes him decide upon revealing his identity to her. The woman responds in shock (‘how she had shut up!’) and simply walks away from the scene. Subsequently, when the commissioner leaves Buchenwald and briefly enters a hostelry in which he appears to recognize fellow Holocaust survivors, he explains how he felt he could not even share his personal story with them:

“Try to share with them something that could not be shared? Persuade himself that he was not alone? No, that solution was kept for the more fortunate.” (Kertész, 1977a, p. 74)

Moreover, when the commissioner and his wife pay a visit to Hotel Elephant in Weimar, where the commissioner meets the Antigone-figure and the two of them enter in a conversation, the tone of voice of the veiled woman is all but non-judgmental. She outright accuses him for having survived the Holocaust, while her brother, father and fiancé presumably died during the war. And last but not least: when the commissioner encounters two strangers who work at the local cattle barn that has replaced

109 the former sub-camp at Zeitz, he quickly realizes that the both of them are completely unaware of the fact that their barn had once been a concentration camp that held hundreds of prisoners. This clear reluctance of the people of Weimar to speak up about their shared past demonstrates the lack of a non-judgmental community with which the commissioner could share his trauma narrative. Without the communalization of this narrative, the individual burden of the commissioner could not become a communal bond that would have contributed to setting in motion a process of catharsis that could have helped the commissioner in dealing with his traumas. Perhaps it is this very lack of a communal bond, or the lack of a subculture of the Holocaust as a “spiritual and emotional community” bound by the cult-like mentality of a “passionate resistance to forgetting” as Kertész put it in his essay ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ (1992), that Kertész tried to address in the quote about the unattainability of catharsis taken from his memoir Dossier K. (2006). The other reason to be discerned as to why a catharsis was not achieved in The Pathseeker is derived from the traditional sense in which the concept of catharsis was used. As recapitulated before, Aristotle was among the first to state that ancient Greek tragedy had as its ultimate goal to bring about a catharsis of thumetic emotions such as pity and fear in the spectators of tragic performances. However, as we have seen in the second part of this conclusion, Kertész’s novella of The Pathseeker can be argued to share many characteristic elements with Greek tragic plays when it comes to its general themes, form and structure. This leaves us to conclude that the commissioner in The Pathseeker could never experience a cathartic process himself, because he should not be seen as a spectator of tragic performance. Contrary to what Kertész wants the reader to believe with the daydream passage in the novella in which the commissioner watches a tragic spectacle unfold before him ‘as if from a theatre box’, the commissioner himself could never truly have been a spectator of a tragic performance because he is presented throughout the novella as the equivalent of a tragic hero instead. Tragic heroes that feature in ancient Greek tragic plays do not have the capability of experiencing a process of catharsis themselves, as they are fictional characters doomed to function as examples set in poetic narrative through which they are immortalized. Their suffering is portrayed as they are destined to testify to the universal human condition and the world of morality from which lessons can (and will) hopefully be learned. The commissioner – up till now regarded as a victim, a conqueror, a survivor and a (moral) witness – is thus ascribed another role, namely that of the tragic hero. As the protagonist of The Pathseeker is seen as the modern-day embodiment of the ancient Greek tragic hero, it is made clear that his suffering and the traumas that remained with him after he survived the Holocaust were never meant to be resolved in Kertész’s novella. Instead, the commissioner becomes immortalized as a tragic hero whose story will serve as an eternal example of the world of morality that survived the Holocaust. This brings us back to the statements made by Kertész in his essay titled ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ (1992), in which Kertész did not only express the hope that Holocaust literature inspired by Greek tragedy could give rise to redemption; catharsis. He also stated that:

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“If preserved, the tragic insight into the world of the morality that survived the Holocaust may yet enrich European consciousness, now beset with crisis, much as the Greek genius, faced with barbarism and fighting the Persian War, created the antique tragedies that serve as an eternal model.” (Kertész, 1992, pp. 77-78)

With this I must conclude that literary works about the Holocaust genuinely do have the potential, like ancient Greek tragic plays and stories from the Bible, to continue to teach new generations about the universal human condition and the world of morality that survived the Holocaust. After all, as Kertész argued: “The Holocaust is a value, because through immeasurable sufferings it has led to immeasurable knowledge, and thereby contains immeasurable moral reserves” (Kertész, 1992, p. 77). These citations taken from Kertész’s essay and reiterated in the context of the novella demonstrate that there is a very strong connection between Kertész´s ‘The Holocaust as Culture’ (1992) essay and his novella The Pathseeker (1977). The large gap between the dates of both works makes the novella seem quite ahead of its time. This makes it all the more interesting that there are virtually no traces to be found of Kertész discussing (aspects of) this particular novella in translated interviews or in his own written works. Even in his memoir Dossier K., in which he discusses nearly all the literary works he had hitherto written (with exception of Detective Story (1977)), there is not a single word spoken about The Pathseeker. Yet from the excerpts from the Galley Boat-Log entries we learned that the real-life events in the life of the author that inspired the novella (Kertész’s return to the former concentration camps of Buchenwald and Zeitz) were of great significance in his own life. In that sense we could say that The Pathseeker is a literary work that was not only underestimated by scholars, but quite possibly by the author himself as well.

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