Encrypting the Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust novel of the first generation

Description

Encrypting the Past puts forward the interpretative category of the first-generation German-Jewish Holocaust novel and examines its representational strategies. With reference to works by H.G. Adler, Jenny Aloni, Elisabeth Augustin, Erich Fried, and Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and a concluding section on W.G. Sebald, it shows how Holocaust literature was being written decades before postwar authors such as Sebald were credited with having found new ways of reflecting the unspeakable. It demonstrates that, before the theoretical debate over the fundamental representability of the Holocaust was even fully under way, first-generation authors were already translating un-narratable trauma into a literary strategy of un-narrating: a strategy of encrypting the Holocaust into the form and structure of their texts. The implications of treating these writers as a set, and their body of work as a hitherto unacknowledged category of Holocaust fiction, go well beyond drawing attention to a number of important but critically neglected authors. This study frames the analysis of first-generation narrative strategies in the broader debate on the ethics and aesthetics of Holocaust writing. In revealing how certain kinds of testimony have been privileged above others in international Holocaust studies, it raises questions of a more general nature concerning canon formation and our theoretical responses to the Holocaust. In considering foremost among these responses the theory of deconstruction and trauma theory, it finally invites a re-examination of the relationship between the (post-)modern and trauma. Cover Encrypting the Past: The German-Jewish Holocaust Novel of the First Generation Copyright Dedication Acknowledgements Contents Introduction: Mapping a Blind Spot: The German-Jewish Holocaust Novel of the First Generation 1: An Absence in Context: Holocaust Representation in Testimony, Scholarship, and Literature SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE: HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR TESTIMONY SPEAKING OF SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE: THE STUDY OF HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION IMAGINING THE UNSPEAKABLE: HOLOCAUST FICTION THE PAST AS TRACE: POSTMODERNISM THE PAST AS SYMPTOM: TRAUMA THEORY THE PAST AS LEGACY: ‘POST-MEMORY’ ‘A REAL FICTITIOUS DISCOURSE’ : THE HOLOCAUST NOVEL IN THE FIRST GENERATION 2: Writing of Broken Time(s): H. G. Adler, Eine Reise, Die unsichtbare Wand A TWOFOLD TESTIMONIAL PROJECT THE RETURN OF APEIRON DIS(AD)VANTAGING THE READER TERRA INCOGNITA 3: The Unhoused Past: Elisabeth Augustin, Auswege; Jenny Aloni, Der Wartesaal THE UNCANNY LEGACY LOSING THE PLOT: ELISABETH AUGUSTIN’S AUSWEGE TEXTUAL LABYRINTHS: JENNY ALONI’S DER WARTESAAL 4: The Past Encrypted: Erich Fried, Ein Soldat und ein Mädchen ‘TO OMIT A WORD ALWAYS . . . ’ ‘ . . . TO RESORT TO OBVIOUS PERIPHRASES . . . ’ ‘THAT IS THE TORTUOUS METHODPREFERRED . . . ’ ‘ . . . IN EACH OF THE MEANDERINGS . . . ’ ‘ . . . OF HIS INDEFATIGABLE NOVEL . . . ’ 5: Design from Debris: Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Tynset, Masante ‘JENES GROßE ERINNERUNGSPOETOLOGISCHE PROJEKT’ ? ‘DER SCHRECKEN [IST] EIGENTLICH DAS HAUPTTHEMA’ ‘SPECULATIONS ON WAYS TO TELL THAT STORY’ Conclusion: What Comes ‘After’: The ‘Postmemory’ Holocaust Novel Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES OTHER WORKS CRITICAL STUDIES NEWSPAPER ARTICLES Index