Language:
German
Year of publication:
2003
Titel der Quelle:
Arcadia; internationale Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft
Angaben zur Quelle:
38,1 (2003) 39-54
Keywords:
Edvardson, Cordelia,
;
Langgässer, Elisabeth,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
Abstract:
Discusses Edvardson's autobiographical novel "Bränt barn söker sig till elden" ("Burned Child Seeks the Fire", 1984), which is interwoven with memories of her childhood in Berlin and her imprisonment in Auschwitz as a teenager in 1943-45. Her father, being Jewish, was deported, whereas her mother, who was born of a non-Jewish mother and a baptized Jewish father, was marked as a "Mischling" and was spared deportation. Although the book is a Holocaust novel, it also constitutes an intricate dialogue with Edvardson's mother, the German poet Elisabeth Langgässer, who developed mythopoetic structures and themes to recreate Christian literature in the 20th century and rescue modern existence from secular nihilism. Argues that her mythopoetic fantasies accompanied her eldest daughter, Cordelia, to Auschwitz, but that the daugther, in order to survive, had to find an "Ariadne's thread" to help her make her way back to reality. For Edvardson, the thread was her connection to her Jewish fellow sufferers and her identification with the Jewish people. After the war Edvardson settled in Sweden.
DOI:
10.1515/arca.38.1.39
URL:
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