tO AAS RAE SSSA 0723 sa0qso727e4069, A A A HARVARD LIBRARY Borrower: HLS Lending String: HLS Patron: Aguirre-Oteiza, Daniel Journal Title: On Robert Antelme's the human. race :essays and commentary /edited by Daniel Dobbels; translated from the French by Jeffrey Haight Volume: Issue: ‘Month/Year: 2003 Pages: 31-377 Article Author: Robert Antelme [Article Title: Poetry and the Testimony of the camps Imprint: Via Scan and Deliver Service Special Instructions: Scan & Deliver TLL Number: 4375778 (MOU A 2 & 5 B i 5 = = é z = 3 a Printed: 9/4/2014 2:28 PM OCLC In Process Date _ Call #: WID WIDLC D805.G3 A7513 2003 Location: HLS ODYSSEY ENABLED Charge Maxcost: Billing Category: Exempt Borrowing Library: Harvard University - Widener Library Email: Notes: Transaction Date:9/4/2014 2:26:27 PM $ & D Processing Notes: Notas cited Duplicate Multiple articles Exceeds 10% of work: Not on shelf On Reserve Too fragile Checked out/on hold Exceeds 100 pages ooo0o000o000 Inttials___Poetry and the Testimony of the Camps, Followed by Two Poems by Maurice Honel Upon returning, each of us tried to say what the time spent in the camps in Germany was like, and the cover of silence over those years has been somewhat pushed back by books. Books, conversations, re- unions. Everything everyone has said. All that is not simply the ery of life victorious, not simply the biological need to experience freedom, not simply the desire, from this ordeal, to make others aware of things that can be helpful in organizing human affairs. ‘The veritable hemorrhaging of expression—experienced by every- one, whether or not he was a writer—expresses one truth that encom- passesall the others: namely, that each of us wants to put his entire effort into recognizing himself in that time now past and that each wants to make it understood that the man speaking now and the man who was overthere are one and the same. Described this way, the effort might seem superfluous. Clearly ies the same man, the one who's speaking and the one who was over there. ‘Weknow that, you say, and that’s why we are speaking of deportees. But the Pharisaism of forgetting and of silence is precisely this, because you can easily recognize that it's the same man, yet you prefer not to recognize that this man might speak like a deportee. You don't talkabout both going over there and returning; you tall about the bag- sage that accompanies returning. And you implore us: “That wasn’t real 3H(ON ROBERT ANTELME'S THE HUMAN RACE life! Forget it! You've got a false idea of things now. That was a false time. Forget it. And don’t forget only the horror and the evil, don't throw away only the memories, throw away what you think are truths, too. It was a parenthetical time.” Then, after recognizing that it really ‘was the same man, soon you're saying, “But you couldn't have been the same man. You're erazy, you're dangerous. If you think that you've een that the causes of the evil you experienced are what you say they are, and that we must lessen these causes; if you say that by talking like this you're simply someone whose eyes are open—when in fact you're hal- lucinating—then you're a threat to mankind, you're not human, and we ‘won't recognize you as human any longer.” And so we come full circle. But since there aren't many of us, we can talk, and we're left alone. To the SS, the Jew or the antifascist who ‘was in cach of us had corrupted the man in each of us, and so the man hhad to be rejected. Should the deportee “corrupt” that man in turn— should he, that is, most decidedly wish to realize truths that have become clear to him through the mechanics of history and through the penal servitude over which so many precious words have been utered— then here also the man would be rejected. But there aren’t many of us, and we're left alone. To the extent that his testimony might become an alibi for those who do not in the least wish to understand or to learn, perhaps each of us should address this criticism to himself—this eriticism of what is most obvious in his daily life. But it could hardly be otherwise, of course. We would first of all have to describe things, then (or, preferably, at the same time) try to explain and comment on them. But by the mere fact of describing them we're condemned to putting them in parenthe- ses for others, and to putting the man of that time in them, too. Itseems clear now that we let ourselves be carried away by the ili sion that society could not easly assimilate and then digest the phenom ‘enon, But the phenomena to which some people want to assimilate the camps—to things like hail, or natural cataclysms—are really what socie~ ty digests most easily. This is even the function of forgetting—which may be acrimonious or tearful, angry or vindictive, depending on the case. The sign of al this is all too visible now. Testimony is not even sup- posed to serve as an alibi anymore. It is spit upon, rejected. The digest- ing has taken place. 32POBTRY AND THE TESTIMONY OF THE CAMPS In fct, the men who returned wanted to demonstrate what they had seen, in complete confidence. They did not think that because they sad done so, someone would say to them, “It was fate,” or “It was a nat- ural monstrosity.” Sil less did they think that they would be told, more or ess authoritatively, that they too had to think of the camps as just a satural monstrosity and that, if they didn’t want to be considered bad citizens, they mustn’t draw any conclusions from this. ‘Their testimony has been seized upon, mystified, then buried. Phen- ‘omena may be swallowed but consciousness doesn’t go down so easi- I. However obscure, i can always be reawakened; however mystified, it cannot be made to say that it hasn’t understood what it has understood, thac the savagery inflicted upon it by a particular system wasn’t inflict- cd upon it by that system but by something else—by some sort of mlediction. ‘And this is why these men go on talking, but with greater and greater force and awareness. ‘At this point we would like to mention the collection of poems by Maurie Hionel, Prophétie des accouchements (Prophecy of Births). Poetry id no, surely, run so great a risk of creating that naked, “objective” tes- timony, that kind of abstract accusation, that photograph that only frightens us withoue explicitly teaching anything. It could, on the con- tray risk fleeing the reality ofthe camps, letting that reality be glimpsed only through a melodie counterpoint, through themes of nostalgia that surround but never penetrate this reality of fog and words—the sun, laughter, color, and so on. Honel’s poems, on the other hand, seem to provide a rare example of the power of poetry as the evocation of one’s situation in the camps and asan expression of their meaning. Almost never i the poet released from, nor does he let go of, the object or the fact, and both impose themselves in an almost mythological reality; and yet neither object nor fact ever springs up outside time, never is it a pure phenomenon. In “The Soup,” for example, the mess cup is all-powerful, asis “thickness.” ‘The man is almost completely bewitched by hunger, but the protest agains that hunger is also there, as is that consciousness that does not bend beneath oppression. This double movement is almost always found in these poems: the suggestion of fact as something that takes bold over everything, and also the contrary, insistent reflex in the 33(ON ROBERT ANTELME'S TIE HUMAN RAGE demand of the oppressed man who does not flee the fact, who acepit but strives ceaselessly to overcome it. Hence we almost always ind the movement that endows the evoked moment with all its sure: possibilities and the opposite movement that integrate this momestia consciousness of life in the camps and in ongoing time, Its the essence of poctry to express experience, to express reds it is constantly lived, contested, and assumed. This description summa. sizes and defines what is called the “experience” of the camps quite wil. Just to use this expression suggests that consciousness was probably net put to such a test, nor were received ideas ever so thoroughly called in ‘question, to be reaffirmed subsequently as certainties or cast aside ais Honel’s poetry represents in a concrete sense a complete form oft growth of consciousness among the men in the camps. It achieves tis especially through the jerky rhythm found in almost every poe, rhythm as hard as a kick. This rhythm contributes to sustaining sifed hhumor that sometimes crops up suddenly, an irrepressible humor tht apprehended not as a kind of “everything is contemptible,” but raket as the most advanced leap of consciousness, the final point inthe effet ‘to maintain one’s resistance within the heart of the horror. ‘The poems that have been published about the camps need tobe studied more profoundly. All of them express the prisoners determin tion to present clearly the most oppressive reality, or at least to uphold the tireless life of consciousness within the camps, often while trying © flee that reality. Whether testimony or prophecy, the poetry of tht camps has the greatest chance of being the poetry of truth. DANCE IN THE HOLTZMAN KOMMANDO In September fog, The thick fog of evening, In the cement dust The tired eyes of men With useless faces. In the projector's fixed eye ‘The fifty kilos carried on Indispensable backs aPOETRY AND THE TESTIMONY OF THE CAMPS Dry cold, teeth-chattering, Stomach-yawning hunger, Remembering those Suil walking, carrying “The reserve tank Certainty of honest Confusion shovels for ‘The bottomless pits ‘The dredging erane ‘The ore cars always moving ‘The Kapo smoking Our bread for four Coal freed from the mine Staying in the camp's Electrified depths ‘The world of so many Per hundred we are ‘Twenty per thousand Sill alive But worth less Worthless Cracked. Dancing Inthe September fo, Ineuernal coal Inthe cious Of the crematoria. THE sour Four steps to go But no no luele Tothe kettle Four steps but four Before me the one Before me the lucky one ‘The one for the bottom of the kettle 35(ON ROBERT ANTELME'S THE HUMAN RACE 36 ‘The ladle balances Fate Is taken first off the top Is all clear Tes all water In unstirred soup thickness Isat the bottom thickness hanging Four steps to go But no no luck the Kapo Doesn’e stretch it’s Too far to go So he starts ‘Anew kettle and The world doesn’t end.