Hello
Gentle Reader
Now until his death at the age of
eighty-six Imre Kertész grappled with the existential question of his own life
and survival: how does one go on living after Auschwitz. How does one life
continue, when one life was taken, and the next one, is filled with guilt,
grief, and a painful attempt at understanding their place in the cosmos. Imre
Kertész was a survivor of both World War II, and two of the most infamous Nazi
concentration camps of the time: Auschwitz and Buchenwald; two names which are
cemented in the conscious human history, as one of the greatest examples of
mankind’s efficiently cruel heartlessness, at attempting to exterminate and
extinguish another ‘group(s),’ of people from the world. Despite surviving both
the war, and the two camps, Kertész’s fate or luck influenced by chance, was
equally not as successful after the war, and liberation of the camps. The
author returned to his home country of Hungary, and the city of Budapest, and
soon found himself, in another ideological absurd nightmare: the Iron Curtain,
and the communist state of Hungary. Despite this though, Imre Kertész completed
his education (an equivalent to a high school diploma), as his education was interrupted
by the war, and he was soon wrapped up into the collective human horror of the
time, by the age of fourteen (14). After completing his education, Imre Kertész
began his journalist career, for a journal called: “Világosság (Clarity),” and
for a brief stint was a factory labourer, before moving on to a civil servant
job within the Ministry of Heavy Industries press department. Afterwards, Imre
Kertész was a freelance journalist and a translator of German works into
Hungarian, including such intellectuals, philosophers and writers such as:
Elias Canetti (Nobel Laureate nineteen-eighty one), Friedrich Nietzsche,
Sigmund Freud, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It was through this freelance
journalism and translations in which Imre Kertész made a modest living. For the
writer though, publishing his own work was a different and often difficult
reality. The censorship restrictions and ideological formats which where the
guiding principles of publishing, in Communist Hungary, saw Imre Kertész work
often seen as not suitable for publication by the state censors. The largest problem
Kertész faced with his work was that his work dealt with Jewish identity and
its consequences; often mirrored or expressed through the human terror of the
concentration camps. Even after publication his own work, Imre Kertész was not
a well-known or recognized literary figure, in Hungary. It was not until after
translation of his novels into German that the writer found recognition.
The greatest success though for the writer to receive would come in two-thousand and two with the announcement that he was the year’s
Nobel Laureate in Literature. The Swedish Academy praised Imre Kertész’s with
its citation: “for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the
individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.” The Swedish Academy’s
Nobel Committee went further to praise the writers “ultimate truth,” when
discussing the mass human cruelty which was the holocaust.
For most of his later life, Imre Kertész
had lived in Berlin for many years, but had returned to his birth city of
Budapest, a few years ago. It is theorized he returned for treatment for Parkinson’s
disease.
Imre Kertész wrote in direct and yet
fragile prose, in which he discussed the fate of the individual, wrapped up in
the arbitrary terrors of history. Be the individual live or die, was no concern
for history, or the fate in which was passed onto them. This existential mode
discussing the absurdity of existence, against the larger backdrops of
politics, ideologies, history – the collective verses the individual, would
often be at play in his novels. Yet Imre Kertész as the individual and the
survivor refrains from judgement and black and white depictions of human
cruelty, and the often unfortunate fates of the individual. Rather then, the world
being black and white, balanced on the Libra scales of morality and immorality
continually fluctuating between one dominant force and another subservient force,
with no balance maintained or achievable; Imre Kertész wrote of an amoral and
often distant focus of history and the collective perception of history. The
world for Kertész was simply grey and varying shades of grey at that. Often the
collective would consume all individuals, and force them to follow orders so terrifying
it would be incorrect for anyone to state that they had any moral obligation or right to refrain from following or directly refuse the order. The writer
was mature enough to see the paradoxical duality of history, and the individual
when engulfed by the collective waves of history, ideology, and nationalism,
and reserves and refrains from judgement. Though his depiction of suffering is admirable
and outstanding it is by no means wrapped in the desire for pity. Quite the
contrary, it were to seem Imre Kertész has simply exercise memories and
documented experiences into an often tragic narrative, which each individual
should take stock of.
Though Imre Kertész is Hungary’s first
Nobel Laureate in Literature, at this point in time; the writer and the nation
often had a rather complicated relationship between each other. Yet today
political figures, country men, the cultured and the laymen each have a pit of
sadness in their heart. There is no denying that Imre Kertész was a survivor,
and a chronicler of the absurdity of human condition which is often unbearable,
but survivable. Furthermore there is no denying Imre Kertész is a great and
often challenging writer, who discusses the tragic nature of the human
condition.
Rest in Peace Imre Kertész
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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