Friday, October 8, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Inheriting the Pain but not the Experience
The question of the legitimacy of fictional representation of history is a complicated one. Some people argue that fictional representations allow us to enter into the experiences of individuals better than historical texts or memoirs. Others, on the other hand, believe that such representation is problematic, at the very least, and that any text other than the original witnessing is illegitimate. The question we should be asking, however, is not whether or not fictional representation can be “legitimate” or accurate, but whether or not the intent of the text to inform, describe, and move the readers is successful. If the purpose behind a historical statistic or factual-based iteration is to provoke pathos by shocking the readers, then one could say this is only partially successful. Where historical facts, especially those concerned with tragedy and death, inform and educate readers, they do not necessarily invoke emotions as well as fictional stories or poetic descriptions do. The objective in telling and retelling tragic memories, such as the Holocaust for instance, is not only to educate audiences about the facts, but also to educate them about more abstract notions such as human nature or conceptual ideas of love, hate, death, life. The backbone of all this, of course, is memory.
Remembering an event is not the same as living it, so retelling a past event is problematic. Regardless of the genre in which the retelling occurs, there is undeniably something lost in the translation. Let’s consider the Holocaust. Even when we read about survivors' experiences, we can never get the whole story. This is true even in testimony, which is possibly the closest we get to “authentic” literature. This is a result of a number of things. Firstly, let’s consider the fact that many survivors chose to remain silent immediately after their horrific experiences. Many of them repressed their traumatic experiences somewhere in their unconscious, choosing instead to live normal lives. In “After the Holocaust,” Aharon Appelfeld claims that “the wish to forget” was very strong among survivors (89). The gap in the time it takes to tell the story is significant since this further interrupts the ability to tell it precisely. Ignoring for a moment the fact that language itself is merely a representation and cannot express absolute reality, time itself becomes a way in which reality is disrupted. It is also important to consider how the psychological and physical traumas affect the ability to recap actual events since“even the original experiences are mediated by hunger, fear, and physical and psychological abuse beyond our imagination” (Schwarz 11).
Memory, then, is not very reliable. The only means of keeping memory “alive,” so to speak, is to repeat it either orally or in written form. After all, “memory relies upon narrative to shape inchoate form” (Schwarz 11). This becomes even more significant when the producers of these narratives are removed from the actual events by time. In other words, those born after the Holocaust, who did not experience the atrocities first-hand, rely on narration, namely fictional narration, to tell the story. The post-Holocaust generation inherits the pain but not the experience and so they must explore history through the imagination. Ellen S. Fine argues that this generation is “confronted with a difficult task: to imagine an event they have not lived through, and to reconstitute and integrate it into their writing – to create a story out of History” (Fine 41). Unlike survivors who try to keep the memory alive by their retelling of personal experiences, those who did not endure the brutality themselves can only “evoke the absence of memory” and this is precisely what fictional writing allows (Fine 46). “As the historical period of the Shoah recedes, imaginative literature will help keep those events alive;” thus, poetry, art, and fiction created by artists removed from the Holocaust by time must express their own stories through the imagination. This becomes an important medium for understanding.
Peter Balakian explains the importance of this type of writing in his book Black Dog of Fate. Before I discuss his ideas, it is important to note that he is a third-generation Armenian-American and the grandson of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Balakian grew up without any knowledge of the dark history surrounding his family. Much of his understanding came from reading poetry or other “fictional” writings about the Genocide. He suggests that these representations and references help those who are far removed from the past events orient the tragic history within their own lives. He writes, “The journey into history, into the Armenian Genocide, was for me inseparable from poetry. Poetry was part of the journey and the excavation” (146). Here, we see the incredible power of fictional writing in relation to knowledge and understanding. It is in these productions, however mitigated they may be, which allow the readers an opportunity and a medium in which to connect and understand despite the distance in time or difference in culture.
Remembering an event is not the same as living it, so retelling a past event is problematic. Regardless of the genre in which the retelling occurs, there is undeniably something lost in the translation. Let’s consider the Holocaust. Even when we read about survivors' experiences, we can never get the whole story. This is true even in testimony, which is possibly the closest we get to “authentic” literature. This is a result of a number of things. Firstly, let’s consider the fact that many survivors chose to remain silent immediately after their horrific experiences. Many of them repressed their traumatic experiences somewhere in their unconscious, choosing instead to live normal lives. In “After the Holocaust,” Aharon Appelfeld claims that “the wish to forget” was very strong among survivors (89). The gap in the time it takes to tell the story is significant since this further interrupts the ability to tell it precisely. Ignoring for a moment the fact that language itself is merely a representation and cannot express absolute reality, time itself becomes a way in which reality is disrupted. It is also important to consider how the psychological and physical traumas affect the ability to recap actual events since“even the original experiences are mediated by hunger, fear, and physical and psychological abuse beyond our imagination” (Schwarz 11).
Memory, then, is not very reliable. The only means of keeping memory “alive,” so to speak, is to repeat it either orally or in written form. After all, “memory relies upon narrative to shape inchoate form” (Schwarz 11). This becomes even more significant when the producers of these narratives are removed from the actual events by time. In other words, those born after the Holocaust, who did not experience the atrocities first-hand, rely on narration, namely fictional narration, to tell the story. The post-Holocaust generation inherits the pain but not the experience and so they must explore history through the imagination. Ellen S. Fine argues that this generation is “confronted with a difficult task: to imagine an event they have not lived through, and to reconstitute and integrate it into their writing – to create a story out of History” (Fine 41). Unlike survivors who try to keep the memory alive by their retelling of personal experiences, those who did not endure the brutality themselves can only “evoke the absence of memory” and this is precisely what fictional writing allows (Fine 46). “As the historical period of the Shoah recedes, imaginative literature will help keep those events alive;” thus, poetry, art, and fiction created by artists removed from the Holocaust by time must express their own stories through the imagination. This becomes an important medium for understanding.
Peter Balakian explains the importance of this type of writing in his book Black Dog of Fate. Before I discuss his ideas, it is important to note that he is a third-generation Armenian-American and the grandson of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Balakian grew up without any knowledge of the dark history surrounding his family. Much of his understanding came from reading poetry or other “fictional” writings about the Genocide. He suggests that these representations and references help those who are far removed from the past events orient the tragic history within their own lives. He writes, “The journey into history, into the Armenian Genocide, was for me inseparable from poetry. Poetry was part of the journey and the excavation” (146). Here, we see the incredible power of fictional writing in relation to knowledge and understanding. It is in these productions, however mitigated they may be, which allow the readers an opportunity and a medium in which to connect and understand despite the distance in time or difference in culture.
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