Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of MemoryCambridge University Press, 2006 M10 19 This is a meditation on memory and on the ways in which memory has operated in the work of writers for whom the Holocaust was a defining event. It is also an exploration of the ways in which fiction and drama have attempted to approach a subject so resistant to the imagination. Beginning with W. G. Sebald, for whom memory and the Holocaust were the roots of a special fascination, Bigsby moves on to consider those writers Sebald himself valued, including Arthur Miller, Anne Frank, Primo Levi and Peter Weiss, and those whose lives crossed in the bleak world of the camps, in fact or fiction. The book offers a chain of memories. It sets witness against fiction, truth against wilful deceit. It asks the question who owns the Holocaust - those who died, those who survived to bear witness, those who appropriated its victims to shape their own necessities. |
Contents
Section 22 | 235 |
Section 23 | 237 |
Section 24 | 241 |
Section 25 | 243 |
Section 26 | 248 |
Section 27 | 258 |
Section 28 | 280 |
Section 29 | 285 |
Section 9 | 38 |
Section 10 | 75 |
Section 11 | 82 |
Section 12 | 88 |
Section 13 | 115 |
Section 14 | 120 |
Section 15 | 135 |
Section 16 | 149 |
Section 17 | 163 |
Section 18 | 174 |
Section 19 | 176 |
Section 20 | 215 |
Section 21 | 219 |
Section 30 | 287 |
Section 31 | 291 |
Section 32 | 294 |
Section 33 | 302 |
Section 34 | 308 |
Section 35 | 315 |
Section 36 | 316 |
Section 37 | 318 |
Section 38 | 341 |
Section 39 | 348 |
Section 40 | 357 |
Section 41 | 368 |
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Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory Christopher Bigsby No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
accused acknowledged aesthetic Alma Rosé Améry Anne Frank Arthur Miller asked Auschwitz Austerlitz became become Binjamin Wilkomirski Birkenau called claim concentration camp confessed confronted crime dead death deny diary died documentary Elie Wiesel everything evidence existence experience explained fact Fania Fania Fénelon fate father feel felt Fénelon fiction film forget gas chambers genocide German Gerstein gesture ghetto girl guilt Hochhuth Holocaust human identity images imagination Incident at Vichy insisted irony Jean Améry Jewish Jews Kindertransport language later Levi’s lives memory moral murder narrator Nazis necessity never Nonetheless novel offered orchestra Otto Frank past perhaps Peter Weiss photographs play Pope precisely present Primo Levi prisoners recalls remarked remember resistance Rosé seemed seemingly sense silence simply speak story suffering suggests suicide survived survivors tell things thought trial truth victims W. G. Sebald Wilkomirski witness woman words write wrote young
Popular passages
Page 2 - The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Page 3 - This re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had been an English retelling of Russian memories in the first place...
Page 2 - He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.