It has often been said that the unique nature of the Holocaust “challenges our imagination with a nearly impossible task” (Lawrence Langer). “There can be no fictional narrative of Auschwitz,” Maurice Blanchot asserted. And Adorno: “After Auschwitz there is no word tinged from on high, not even a theological one, that has any right unless it underwent a transformation.” I believe that these words — these transformed fictional narratives — exist, and that they already existed before Auschwitz. Artaud hallucinating his own death or Bataille his own dismemberment, Simone Weil embracing the abjection of assembly line work or Céline carried away by an insane racist rage — these writers were not acting on their own either. By making the unimaginable their very subject, these artists provided us with that fraction of truth which scholars of the Holocaust are vainly seeking. — Sylvère Lotringer, The Art of Evil in FAT Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1994, 1995 via http://www.thing.net/~fat/vol1no1/sylvere.htm
Sylvère Lotringer is professor of French literature and philosophy at Columbia University and general editor of Semiotext(e). He frequently lectures on art.
See also: the Holocaust in art and fiction
I understand this concept. The Holocaust beggars fiction. And in its aftermath the pursuit of art seems inconceivable. And without doubt there should be no “Life Is Beautiful” movies starring Bernardo Benini or anyone else. And the Holocaust infiltrates itself into anything written about brutality since. So, yes, only art written before the Holocaust is uninfluenced by it. The trouble is, as Borges has taught us, the way we read those works now is not uninfluenced. We might never have noticed the thematic similarities in Bataille, Artaud, and Celine had it not been for the horrors they anticipataed, or bothered to look.
Dave,
Being the autodidact that I am, the main purpose of my site and blog is learning. I am not sure I completely understand your comment. So forgive me for asking: where did Borges remind us of “the way we read those works now is not uninfluenced”. What are those works and where did he say it. Or are you referring to a general Borgesian quality, if so which one.
I was thinking of the Borges of “Kafka and His Precursors” which I found reprinted in “Other Inquisitions 1937-1952.” Borges traces Kafka’s influence backwards to Zeno’s paradox, Han Yu, Kierkegaard, Browning, others, and then makes this remark of about Kafka’s precursors:
“the . . . selections resemble Kafka’s work . . . not all of them resemble each other. Kafka’s idiosyncrasy, in greater or lesser degree, is present in each of these writings, but if Kafka had not written we would not perceive it; that is to say, it would not exist. . . .The fact is that each writer creates his precursors.”
We might have grouped Bataille, Artaud, and Celine for other reasons anyway, but how, now, in the Holocaust’s shadow, will we ever know that for certain?
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