[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
"I can only say one thing for certain: there is
no degree of experience, no perfect resignation, so such power of recognition,
it would seem, that can lead us to deny ourselves a final chance at
good fortune - provided, of course, the occasion arises. So when, along
with those for whom work here was obviously rather hopeless, they returned
me to sender, so to speak, to Buchenwald, I mustered all my remaining
ability, naturally, to share in the joy of the others, because the good
old days spent there and especially the morning soup immediately stirred
my memory. What I didn't consider, however, and I admit it, was that
first I'd have to travel there on the train under the usual circumstances
of such trips. In any case, I can say there was a lot that I had never
before understood and would probably not have believed anyway. Such
a common expression, for example, as earthly remains until then only
suggested a corpse. Yet as far as my living was concerned, I doubtless
existed , even if I was only sputtering along with the flame turned
entirely down. But still something within me burned - the flame of life,
as they used to say - in other words, my body was still there. I was
thoroughly familiar with it, only somehow I myself no longer lived inside
it.
Without any difficulty I sensed that my body lay there surrounded on
the sides and above with other objects. On the cold floor of the rattling
railroad car the straw was wet from a variety of suspicious fluids.
I sensed that my paper bandages had long since torn apart and disappeared,
that my shirt and convict's pants, which they had put on me for the
journey, were sticking to my wounds. But all this no longer moved me,
no longer interested me, no longer held any sway over me. Indeed, I
have to say that a lot of time had passed since I had experienced this
easy, peaceful, and (to call a spade a spade) comfortable quiet. After
all, I had finally become rid of the pain of irritability: the bodies
pressing against mine no longer disturbed me. Somehow I was even glad
that they were there with me, that their bodies and mine were so connected
and so similar, and now for the first time I felt a strange, unusual,
somewhat shy, almost clumsy feeling toward them. Perhaps it was love,
I think. And I experienced the same from them as well, although they
no longer encouraged me with hope as at the beginning."
(from Fateless tr. by Ch. C. Wilson and K. M. Wilson)
"Kertész's purposeful distancing between himself,
the hero, and us is masterful and thoroughly effective. After all, we
are transported hereinto the dark subworld of devastation, numbness,
nothingness, and namelessness, where freedom and moral sensibility exist
only in memory but cannot be exercised in practice. The only goal is
to survive, 'to fulfill a given destiny.'"
(Clara Györgyey, World Literature Today, vol.67)
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