 Postedd Thursday, October 17,
2002 | ||||
IN REPONSE to that
letter on our website requesting
information on Nobel prize winning
author Imre Kertesz, we have
received the entry on him from the
database "Contemporary Authors Online"
(Gale, 2002): Contemporary Authors
(Contemporary Authors is a
publication compiled mainly from
material supplied by the subjects
themselves. It appears to have been
posted only one day ago, after we
first
raised the question of the
authenticity of his story) Thursday, October 17, 2002 Imre
Kertész 1929- New Entry : October 16, 2002 Ethnicity: Jewish Birth Place: Budapest, Hungary Personal Information: Family: Name is pronounced
"Im-RAY KERtez"; born November 9, 1929, in
Budapest, Hungary; male. Ethnicity: Jewish.
Addresses: Home: Budapest, Hungary. Agent: c/o
Northwestern University Press, 625 Colfax St.,
Evanston, IL 60208-4210; c/o Magvetõ Press,
1055 Budapest, Balassi B. u. 7, Hungary. Career: Deported to Auschwitz,
Poland, 1944 [at age
fourteen?] , and Buchenwald,
Germany, 1945; Világosság, Budapest,
Hungary, journalist, 1948-51; writer and
translator, 1950--. Awards: Brandenburg Literary Prize, 1995;
Leipzig Book Prize, 1997, for Diary of a Slave;
Welt Prize, 2000; Nobel Prize for Literature, 2002,
from the Swedish Academy. Sorstalanság: regény,
Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó
(Budapest, Hungary), 1975, translation by
Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson
published as Fateless, Northwestern University
Press (Evanston, IL), 1992. A nyomkeresoe: két regény (title
means "The Pathfinder"), Szépirodalmi
Könyvkiadó (Budapest, Hungary),
1977. A kudarc: regény (title means "Fiasco"),
Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó
(Budapest, Hungary), 1988. Kaddis a meg nem születetett
gyermekért, Magvetõ (Budapest,
Hungary), 1990, translation by Christopher C.
Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson published as Kaddish
for a Child not Born, Hydra Books (Evanston, IL),
1997. Az angol lobogo (title means "The English
Flag"), [Budapest, Hungary], 1991. Gályanapló (titles means "Galley
Diary"), [Budapest, Hungary], 1992. A holocaust mint kultúra: három
eloeadás (title means "The Holocaust as
Culture"), Századvég (Budapest,
Hungary), 1993. Jegyzokönyv, Magvetõ (Budapest,
Hungary), 1993. Valaki mas: A valtozas kronikaja (title means
"I-Another: Chronicle of a Metamorphosis"),
[Budapest, Hungary], 1997. A gondolatnyi csend, amig a kivegzoeosztag
ujratölt (title means "Moments of Silence
While the Execution Squad Reloads"), [Budapest,
Hungary], 1998. A szamuezoett nyelv (title means "The Exiled
Language"), [Budapest, Hungary], 2001. Author of short stories, essays, and plays.
Translator of literature and philosophy from German
to Hungarian. Works in Progress: A novel set in Hungary
during its transition from Communism. "Sidelights" When Hungarian writer Imre Kertész won
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, the Swedish
Academy praised his works for "writing that upholds
the fragile experience of the individual against
the barbaric arbitrariness of history."
Kertész, a survivor of both the Auschwitz
and Buchenwald death camps erected by the Nazis
during World War II, became the first Hungarian
writer to win the award, even though his works were
not widely known in his native country, much less
the rest of the world, at the time. Kertész attributes this fact as much to
an unwillingness among the Hungarian people to
acknowledge the Holocaust as to his own
unwillingness to conform to literary status quo
during the decades Hungary suffered under Soviet
oppression. "There is no awareness of the Holocaust
in Hungary," Leonard Doyle quoted
Kertész as saying in the London Independent,
"I hope in light of this recognition, they will
face up to it more than until now." His books have
been popular in Germany, and in a press conference
covered by the Hungarian News Agency,
Kertész commented, "Here [in
Germany], my books are fulfilling the kind of
mission a writer dreams of all his life." Through his novels, Kertész explores his
belief that the Holocaust, and the kinds of torture
inflicted in concentration camps, are not an
aberration of history, but a state of normalcy. His
three most well-known works, Sorstalanság
(published in English translation as Fateless), A
kudarc, and Kaddis a meg nem születetett
gyermekért (published in English translation
as Kaddish for a Child Not Born), form a
semi-autobiographical trilogy in which
Kertész examines the horror and degradation
visited upon the individual as a result of human
animosity fueled by political power and religious
intolerance. "As a Jew persecuted by the Nazis, and then a
Hungarian writer living under a communist regime,
Kertész experienced some of the most acute
suffering of the twentieth century," commented a
writer for the Glasgow Herald. Thane
Rosenbaum of the New York Times commented,
"Kertész's books are reflections on the
nature of survival and the impact of the Holocaust
on those who must reconcile themselves to living in
a world of madness and mass death." In acknowledging Kertész's
first-hand experience
with one of the greatest horrors of modern history,
the Swedish Academy concluded that Kertész was still a teenager when he was
liberated from Buchenwald in 1945 and returned to
Hungary. Several years later, he became a
journalist but lost his job when the Communist
party assumed power and turned his newspaper into a
propaganda publication. For many years, he earned a
living as a translator of literary and
philosophical works, introducing works by
Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and
Friedrich Nieztsche to Hungarian readers.
His first novel, Fateless, took ten years to find a
publisher, and though it was initially praised in
literary circles, it was not widely read. It was
never banned by the government, but
Kertész's steadfast refusal to join the
Communist party's official writer's association
ensured that his works would never enjoy literary
prominence in Hungary as long as the regime was in
power. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the
late 1980s, Hungary transitioned away from
Communism peacefully, and by 1989 Kertész's
novels had gained a wider audience. A loyal
following developed, particularly in Sweden and
Germany, where his novels were readily available,
and winning several prestigious literary prizes,
including the Brandenburg Prize and the Leipzig
Book Prize, strengthened his reputation. In Fateless, written in 1965 but not published
until 1975, the fifteen-year-old narrator, Gyorgy
Koves, is taken to Buchenwald and learns to survive
amid the starvation and boredom that fill his
endless days. In the camp, Gyorgy is ostracized by
the other Jews because he knows neither Hebrew nor
Yiddish and becomes an outsider among outsiders. In
order to cope in such an absurd world, Gyorgy
rationalizes everything, and eventually he comes to
believe that Buchenwald is a beautiful place. The concentration camp is not an aberration in
his mind; it is a normal place, and Gyorgy does not
bother to protest his treatment or contemplate the
indignities he suffers. A reviewer for Publishers
Weekly praised "Kertész's spare, understated
prose," noting that the novel's intensity "will
make it difficult to forget." His next novel, A
kudarc, is also narrated by Gyorgy, who is now a
middle-aged novelist detailing his concentration
camp experiences for a book. Upon completing the
novel, Gyorgy prepares himself for rejection, but
to his surprise the novel is published. He receives
no solace, however, when the book is released and
he continues to suffer the sadness and desolation
that have plagued his entire life. Kertész confronts his Jewish heritage in
Kaddish for a Child Not Born. Despite the book's
title, Kertész considers himself a
nonbelieving Jew, even though much of his identity
is tied inextricably to the religion. The book's
title refers to the Jewish prayer for the dead,
which in this case is said for the children the
narrator could not bring himself to father, despite
his wife's wishes for a family. Distrust, fear, and
a Jewish identity are only three of the factors
that torment the novel's narrator, a middle-aged
translator and Holocaust survivor, who is
eventually deserted by a loving wife because he
cannot cast out his demons and live a "normal"
life. The narrator hints at horrors other than the
Holocaust that led to his neurosis. A traumatic
childhood in Budapest, complete with the
humiliating rigors of boarding school, pre-date his
time in Auschwitz. These combined atrocities have
left him pessimistic and faithless, circumstances
under which he is not willing to create life. The
sadness caused by his decision not to have children
in turn leads him to mourn the absence of these
children. In this cyclical despair, the Kaddish
prayer becomes "a cry for death," wrote M. Anna
Falbo in the Library Journal. Kertész's writing has been described as
dense, and Kaddish for a Child Not Born is no
exception. The short novel does not contain
chapters, and one paragraph comprises nearly a
quarter of the text. The story itself, according to
Robert Murray Davis in World Literature
Today, is similarly complex: "Part meditation, part
memoir, part highly abstract and achronic narrative
in the first person, part transcriptions from
drafts of earlier work, part circling around a
series of scenes, images, and issues without
reaching any conclusion except the fact that it
stops with a prayer to cease forever." Likewise, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly
commented that the strength of the novel is the
strength of the narrator, noting that "the reader
is carried along on his desperate, nihilistic
tirade." Despite the somber tone of his writing,
Kertész himself does not wallow in the mire
that often traps his narrators. Alan Riding
of the New York Times quoted literary critic
Hermann Tertsch as describing Kertész
as "a person who has created literature and culture
where others would find only desolation and
neurosis. . . . His smile is a permanent gesture of
conciliation toward a world that at no moment
deceives him. And his amiable nature seems like a
generous revenge for the cruelties and miseries he
has known." Underscoring the Swedish Academy's decision,
fellow Auschwitz survivor and Nobel Peace Prize
winning writer Elie
Wiesel praised Kertész. "He is a
great writer," Wiesel commented in an article for
the Associated Press, continuing, "His style and
his approach are of such high quality that he
deserved to be given the highest prize in
literature." PERIODICALS OTHER Related items | ||||
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