Language:
German
Year of publication:
1999
Titel der Quelle:
Merkur; deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken
Angaben zur Quelle:
53,6 (1999) 559-564
Keywords:
Kertész, Imre,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
Abstract:
Discusses Kertész's novel "Roman eines Schicksallosen" (in Hungarian, "Sorstalanság"), in which the 15-year-old narrator is presented as a "functional human being" who is able to adjust to every situation and to perceive the positive aspects of each one. In 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz, sent from there to Buchenwald, taken for forced labor in Zeitz, and returned to Buchenwald nearer to death than life. For Kertész, who never defined himself as a Jew, the most appropriate feeling seems to be that of a homeless person, to such an extent that his hero, when returning to Budapest at the end of the novel, suddenly feels a kind of homesickness for Buchenwald. States, moreover, that according to Kertész, there is no absurdity which cannot be naturally experienced; even near the crematoria, in intervals between tortures, something like happiness could be perceived. Argues that Kertész saw in the functional human being the final product of a process of estrangement which began with the technical-industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.
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