Language:
German
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Merkur; deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken
Angaben zur Quelle:
65,2 (2011) 129-146
Keywords:
Littell, Jonathan,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Good and evil Religious aspects
;
Judaism
;
Good and evil in literature
Abstract:
Argues that Jonathan Littell's disputed novel "Les Bienveillantes" (2006), which recounts the Holocaust in Eastern Europe as seen through the eyes of a ruthless Nazi officer, Maximilian Aue, is not a realistic historical novel, but a literary text which stylizes evil. Littell is informed by George Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, and uses Aeschylus, Baudelaire, and Céline as references. Notes that Aue, the narrator in the book, is only a fictitious tool for imaginative understanding; his references are not the same as the author's. The evil depicted in the novel does not represent an act of identification, but provokes the imagination to an endless chain of associations. Evil is not beautified, but instrumentalized in an imaginative way, which intensifies our power to fantasize.
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