Kaddish for an unborn child
The novel “Kaddish for an Unborn Child” ( Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért ) was written by Imre Kertész in 1990. The German translation by György Buda was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 1992 ( ISBN 3-87134-053-7 ). The novel forms the third part of the author's “Tetralogy of Fatelessness” with the works of the novel of a fateless person , fiasco and liquidation . As part of an event on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism, Kertész read from the novel on January 29, 2007 in front of the German Bundestag .
content
The narrator is a grown man who was brought to Auschwitz as a child and survived the Holocaust . The memories of these events completely determine his life. His marriage broke because he refused to father children. The protagonist describes his childhood as a cruel time. Because he came to Auschwitz afterwards, he would like to spare his child such a fate. His child could become a great football player or a well-known writer, but he could also stand on the roll call square like his father.
The whole book is a monologue by the narrator, who conducts this monologue out of inner compulsion. Cruel memories keep coming back. The compulsion for the narrator to think turns into a devastating addiction, which increases and torments the protagonist. He analyzes his life and remembers Auschwitz. One memory evokes another.
His experiences in Auschwitz led the narrator to believe that human existence is unimportant, and that his life is also irrelevant. The narrator believes that the Holocaust has its roots in European culture and that those roots came about long before World War II . The evil that caused the Holocaust is part of human nature for him. Interpersonal relationships therefore function according to despotic principles, there is always a ruler and a subject. The narrator cites the concentration camp as the basis and concludes from this that life before, during and after the war has the same pattern as life in a concentration camp. Regardless of whether in Auschwitz or after the Second World War, for him the only thing people strive for is survival. However, the goal of life is death, and so ultimately people strive for death. The work helps the narrator to stay alive and thus also to approach death.
The protagonist is convinced that he was supposed to die in Auschwitz and that he only survived by chance. In Auschwitz he began to dig his grave, the end of the war only interrupted him. His existence lasted in Auschwitz, now his existence is only half a life, so to speak. Physically he is there, but his mind and his thoughts have stayed in Auschwitz. The narrator is a slave to his own past. No matter what he thinks about, his thoughts always direct him to the trauma of Auschwitz.
Kaddish for an Unborn Child is different from other books on the Holocaust because it is not directly about the Shoah . The action does not take place in the concentration camp, but many years later. In this book we get to know the Holocaust from its consequences, from the effects on the lives of survivors.
The protagonist cannot and does not want to adapt to social norms . He gets married only to find that he cannot live in a marriage. He lives to confirm his opinion that he cannot live. The traumatic memories affect all spheres of his life. He is unable to live in a family because he is only concerned about his own fate. He compares fatherhood with totalitarian power. The few memories from his childhood suggest that his father was despotic. That is why he sees no difference between the father-son relationship and the perpetrator-victim relationship. The protagonist makes the decision not to have a child in order to save them from suffering. "Kaddish for an unborn child" is a funeral prayer for the child he did not father.
The traces of the Holocaust influence the life of all Jews , including the Holocaust successor generation . They act like poison on the narrator. The memory of Auschwitz leads to its psychological destruction. The Holocaust, alive in his head and in the whole book, prevents the narrator from living normal.
The narrative style of the book is pretty chaotic. Some sentences, paragraphs and words are repeated. The monologue is reminiscent of a confession or a complaint. “Kaddish for an unborn child” is a very serious, often nervous confession in which the reader takes part and at the same time is exposed to the emotional torment of the narrator.
literature
- Eluned Summers-Bremner: Imre Kertész's Kaddish for a Child Not Born. In: Louise O. Vasvári (Ed.): Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature . Purdue University Press, West Lafayette 2005. ISBN 1-557-53396-2 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Imre Kertész (video) German Bundestag. January 29, 2007. Accessed May 31, 2019.