Language:
German
Year of publication:
2000
Titel der Quelle:
Poetica; Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft
Angaben zur Quelle:
32,1-2 (2000) 203-225
Keywords:
Dante Alighieri,
;
Levi, Primo,
;
Kertész, Imre,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
Abstract:
Contrasts Imre Kertész's refusal to accept the metaphor of Dante's Inferno for the concentration camps with Levi's persistent use of it, direct or implied. Recourse to Dante helped Levi to assert his personal and national identity, to establish distance from the naked experience of the camp, and to attempt to give it meaning. But points out that this meaning is illusory: Dante's Inferno was part of a just divine order; the concentration camp was not. However, literature also has another function: to sustain the connection between two extremes. In the concentration camps the choice was between being a functionary and manipulator or a Muselmann; only the barter system and the developing camp jargon constituted a grey zone which enabled prisoners to survive, but not really to live. Life for Levi means the ability to think, and that was lost in the camps.
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