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51317952.Pdf (810.8Kb) The Recovery of Reason Reification and Literary Praxis in Jorge Semprún’s Holocaust Novels Francisco García Chicote Master’s Thesis in allmenn litteraturvitenskap Institut for lingvistiske, litterære og estetiske studier Universitetet i Bergen Fall 2008 Table of Contents Abstract in Spanish.............................................................................................3 Foreword..............................................................................................................4 Chapter One: Introduction.................................................................................5 General Question...........................................................................................................................5 Particular Question and Corpus Delimitation...............................................................................6 Definition of Categories and Theoretical Frame...........................................................................9 A Short Review of Previous Criticism........................................................................................17 Method of Analysis and Concept of Criticism............................................................................19 Hypothesis and Brief Description of the Thesis’s Total Structure..............................................20 Chapter Two: Deactivation..............................................................................23 Introductory Remarks..................................................................................................................23 The Deactivated Subject..............................................................................................................25 The Dualism within the Self........................................................................................................38 Chapter Three: The Open Self.........................................................................52 Introductory Remarks..................................................................................................................52 Polyphonic Imagination..............................................................................................................54 Circus..........................................................................................................................................68 Chapter Four: Praxis........................................................................................76 Introductory Remarks..................................................................................................................76 Conciliation.................................................................................................................................80 Consolation..................................................................................................................................95 Chapter Five: Conclusion...............................................................................101 Emma Zunz...............................................................................................................................102 Jorge Semprún...........................................................................................................................103 Criticism – End..........................................................................................................................107 Bibliographical References.............................................................................109 2 Abstract in Spanish La tesis de maestría The Recovery of Reason. Reification and Literary Praxis in Jorge Semprún’s Holocaust Novels (La recuperación de la razón. Reificación y praxis literaria en las novelas del Holocausto de Jorge Semprún ) analiza tres novelas autobiográficas del autor mencionado: Le grand voyage (1963), Quel bon dimanche! (1980) y L’écriture ou la vie (1994). El propósito general de la tesis es indagar las posibilidades de la literatura como esfera autónoma de la actividad humana para dar cuenta de un segmento altamente alienado de la historia del siglo XX: el Holocausto. El propósito particular es dar cuenta de esta problemática en las tres novelas nombradas. Para eso, la tesis parte de dos supuestos. En primer lugar, la renuencia de la experiencia del Holocausto a ser absorbida por el discurso testimonial. En segunda instancia, la posibilidad de una articulación de este segmento histórico dentro de la literatura, dadas su autonomía y libertad. El primer supuesto se apoya en una teoría sociológica marxista hegeliana. El segundo, en una teoría marxista, en especial lukacsiana, del arte en general. El análisis textual concluye lo siguiente: si bien las dos primeras novelas dan cuenta de los problemas fundamentales en la relación sujeto-objeto de la sociedad capitalista y del universo concentracionario alemán, solo la tercera novela, L’écriture ou la vie, lleva a cabo una simulación de la emergencia auténtica de la experiencia. 3 Foreword This work was written between November 2007 and November 2008 as a Master’s thesis in Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen, Norway. The spirit of this work is political. I subscribe the general idea that man either rejects or accepts his objects whenever he approaches them. The intellectual approach should not be different. Sartre said in Situations that the true intellectual says no , while the false one places himself in a comfortable I know, but...1 I agree with him. I also think that only by having a clear and concrete political stance towards reality will we be able to reconsider, recognize, and correct our mistakes. The work is a result of my studies at the Universities of Buenos Aires and Bergen. Because of this twofold origin, I have not been consistent in the language of my quotations. Some writers are quoted in their original language, some others in English. I invoke the reader’s patience in this respect. I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Gisle Selnes, Laura Ascoaga, and Misha Bowles for criticizing my ideas, proofreading the text, and correcting my English grammar. Bertrand Huwig and Paul Holden have helped me with diagrams and vocabulary. I thank them too. This work could have not been written without the support and care of my friends and family, dispersed on both sides of the Atlantic. There are two people among them whose names I will say: Miguel García and Héctor Enrique Chicote. They are responsible for whatever good value the following pages have and I carry over my shoulders the happiest of all debts to them. Francisco Garcia Chicote, November 2008 1 Situations philosophiques, 245. (1990) 4 Chapter One: Introduction …all ideas are deriv’d from impressions, and are nothing but copies and representations of them... Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature Reality is not, it becomes. For that, the participation of thought is required. Lukács, History and Class Consciousness I. General Question For those who have long since understood that forms of art do not dwell in ethereal realms it is a given that art needs that which it is not as a condition of being. As long as this paradoxical relation between pure art and grimy toil holds, it follows that artistic forms conceal a great amount of uneasiness in their substratum, and yet this uneasiness, and its concealment, is what gives them their genuine honour. It is probably this honour, this primacy over determinations of space and time – genuine art disregards nationalities and its value shows itself immune to the rational development of technique – that has caught the twofold attention of scholars. On the one hand, art has been expected to expand its dominion over other spheres of life governed by blood, cynicism, and senseless forms. The Romantic cult of art constitutes the most relevant case of such a direction of thought. Romantic Idealism turned the critical reflection of art into metaphysics, hence endowing artworks with an authority they do not possess. It neglected the essence of those spheres that stand opposed to art not only because its idealism failed to see violence as a necessary condition for the existence of art forms, but also because its revolutionary ethics would never compromise the quest for a rounded and meaningful life. Conversely, this attempt to break through the limits of art stands opposed to a meticulous voiding of art’s real social contents. This second perspective, which has survived Romanticism and is growing more powerful as these lines are being written, operates with remarkable precision and detail and won’t rest until it has managed to sever art’s domain from its social substratum. Its supporters point to art’s autonomy contending that it rests on ahistorical categories such as “ interesselösigkeit”, “aesthetic features”, and “taste”. Unlike Jena Romanticism, which developed a hypertrophied theory of art grounded on the ethical integrity of its supporters, the analytical approach exhibits an impoverished and atrophied concept of aesthetics. 5 The alternatives described above constitute antithetical temptations because each possesses an undeniable core of truth which its counterpart neglects. Both of them are as false as they are true, and hence they come to enlarge the number of false oppositions that dwell within the intellectual interpretation of art: commitment versus l’art pour l´art , intrinsic versus extrinsic criticism, etc. However, the problem triggered by this particular opposition is crucial to the present work. I shall present it two-fold.
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