Hello
Gentle Reader
Before
the New Year the literary world lost yet another writer of significant
importance, Edgar Hilsenrath, a German-Jewish writer and survivor of the
holocaust, died at the age of 92 on Sunday, December 30 2018. Edgar Hilsenrath
belonged to the Ol’ Guard of Jewish literature. Much like Nobel Laureates:
Nelly Sachs, Imre Kertész, and Elie Wiesel— Edgar Hilsenrath documented, recounted,
and preserved the Holocaust as both reminder and forewarning shadow. A testament
and plea begging the human race to vow and resolve itself to never repeat the
industrial slaughter and dehumanization, it had during the Second World War—an event
so apocalyptic in its discover and revelatory horror it was given the name and title:
The Holocaust. The name, the title, the term is now culturally and linguistically
synonymous with cataclysmic events, caused by the carelessness or the outright
determination and will to wreak horror and terror of mankind. Shmuel Yosef
Agnon, Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman are often considered representatives
of the New Guard in some fashion or another. Shmuel Yosef Agnon wrote with scholarly
precision of the cultural significance of Jewish culture and the Hebrew
language, as well as the golden shining future of the newly created Israel.
Nelly Sachs (with whom he shared the Nobel Prize for Literature with) analyzed
the dichotomy of their perspective and the award: one writer praised a future
away from the crematoriums; the other an elegiac songbird of a poet, wrote the
sorrows, the memories, dreams, and suffering of the Jews during the horrors of
the holocaust, and refused to let its hell fires incinerate their memory. The
late Amos Oz, and A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, were less inclined to praise
the golden dream and future of Agnon, instead they documented the battles, the crises,
and the struggle of the Israeli state, and its complicated political situation.
Edgar Hilsenrath stood alongside Nelly Sachs and Elie Wiesel, but took the
perspective and humour of Imre Kertész for working through the complicated and
troubling memory of the Holocaust. Edgar Hilsenrath was frighteningly honest
while also being brutally satirical. How he wrote and depicted the Holocaust was
often seen as violating rules that were not codified, but were accepted when
detailing, depicting, and discussing the tragedy. Where other authors offered sober and somber reflection,
Hilsenraths’ novels were often rejected by German publishers and often received
lukewarm and mixed reviews when they were published. Edgar Hilsenrath stated in
his later years that his sole goal as a writer was to balance the scales of the
holocausts depiction. Hilsenrath viewed the grand and objective orations of
historians as overlooking the unheard whispers, memories, and stories of those
who suffered during the Holocaust. In this regard Edgar Hilsenrath infused his
narratives both historical notations—both autobiographical and scholarly in
origin—as well as presenting the insistent sparrow like chit and chatter of the
people who have since fallen silent in the catacombs of history. The very real
depictions of the Jewish people in the ghettos was often were the writer found
his critics fixating their dissent against him. They found his depictions of
other Jewish people as unflattering even borderline rude—if he was not Jewish
himself, the term anti-Semite would have been levied against him. Edgar
Hilsenrath refuted the analysis, stating his depiction is not of the Jewish people
but of people in general. Hilsenrath further elucidated on the reasoning
critics felt the way they did was due to Germany seeking to reconcile and atone
for its atrocities during the war, and being the engineer of the holocaust. In
this regard, Edgar Hilsenrath had felt the German government, academia, and
literary establishment had often overtly idealized the Jewish people to the point
they no longer had faults or they were too be ignored. Edgar Hilsenrath did not
receive a breakthrough or acceptance as a writer of any importance until the
nineteen-seventies, when his most famous novel “The Nazi and the Barber,” was
published. Nobel Laureate Heinrich Böll, one of Germany’s greatest Post-War
writers, praised the viciously satirical novel, and suddenly the icy gates
between Edgar Hilsenrath and his Germany critics had finally thawed, and his
work began to be appreciated in a new light. Once finding both acceptances, appreciation,
and recognition Edgar Hilsenrath became a unique orator with regards to the
Holocaust, with his frank, objective, human, satirical, brutal and unflinching depiction
and discussion of its complexities, Hilsenrath rejected idealization in favour
of honesty, and his satire was therapeutic as much as it was comedic.
Rest
in Peace Edgar Hilsenrath, heavens know its deserved.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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