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4.41 AVERAGE
4.41 AVERAGE
Améry writes with brutal clarity of the realities of living through and after the Holocaust. I'm in no position to judge or pass critique, but I will offer a response anyway: I don't think the Holocaust lays any more claim to fundamental truths of human existence than pre- or post-Holocaust society. I think Améry is more sick of the intellectual speculation and rationalization than he is seriously arguing that evil is absolute, but I think that something being terrible does not make it more immutably a part of us than, say, humanity's demonstrated capacity for goodness. But I'm just some modern intellectual playing communication games. I think there is no meaningful disagreement to be made with Améry.
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Police brutality
Moderate: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Antisemitism, Deportation
A comprehensive exploration of aspects of the holocaust, by a survivor. Améry goes in-depth on what the horrific experience of the camps and of being singled out as jewish, really means. See my review in my general account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4305215516.
How naive was I to think that with Primo Levi's [b:If This Is a Man|275630|If This Is a Man|Primo Levi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327539197l/275630._SY75_.jpg|851110] the definitive holocaust book was written? That the most essential testimony of that horrible and unique experience was presented? This book by Jean Améry has thoroughly destroyed that intuitive feeling. And I don't mean that the author has more aptly described the horrors of Auschwitz and other hellish places. No, Améry only talks to a limited extent about his camp experiences. His unique contribution, is his lucid self-analysis about what that experience has done to him, and still does after 20 years, how it lives on in him, and has come to define his identity. I was particularly touched by the authentic way he put his feelings into words, very much aware of their ‘unreasonableness’ (his enduring resentment towards Germans, for example), but still sticking to them, even claiming the right to stick to them. Moreover, Améry is lucid enough to see that the Holocaust experience "will be buried under the formula 'a barbaric age'" along with so many other misdeeds of modern humanity, and that is indeed what happened. I know it sounds strange, as if there is a hierarchy in Holocaust testimonials, but with this book Améry has greatly outshone other fellow sufferers such as Elie Wiesel and Victor Frankl.
Det är inte de specifika individer som utförde den tortyr Jean Améry utsattes för, eller lägervakterna, eller den nazistiska ideologin och dess hantlangare i stort som förhindrar honom att förlika sig med sitt öde. Det är samhället - alla vi som gick vidare - som håller honom fast i hans ressentiment. Den fortsatta tortyr det innebär för honom att se världen borsta av sig nazismens förbrytelser som damm från rockärmarna och fortsätta med vad det nu var man höll på med innan, samtidigt som man avkräver honom och alla andra vars liv slagits i spillror att de också ska gå vidare.
Det är ett perspektiv jag haft svårt att sätta mig in i tidigare. Jag läste Fanons [b:Jordens fördömda|15079790|Jordens fördömda|Frantz Fanon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1339002318l/15079790._SY75_.jpg|865773] utan att förstå den, just av denna anledning. De delar perspektiv. Améry beträffande nazismens brott mot judarna, Fanon beträffande Frankrikes koloniala förtryck av Algeriet. Men där Fanon bara framstod som oresonlig och vevande mot alla och envar, förstår jag Amérys vevande på ett nytt sätt - och därmed kan jag även omvärdera Fanons dito.
Om vi åtminstone lärt oss något av nazismens mordiska antisemitism, reflekterar Améry. Men nej. "[A]ntisemitismen är fortfarande verklighet, det skulle bara en fullständig blindhet för sociala och historiska förhållanden kunna förneka. Den är det i sina kärnländer Österrike och Tyskland, där de nazistiska krigsförbrytarna inte alls döms eller bara döms till skrattretande korta fängelsestraff, vilka de vanligtvis bara sitter av till en tredjedel. Den är verklighet i England och i USA där man tolererar judarna, men inte skulle sörja om man slapp dem. Den är, i form av nationell antisemitism, verklighet i arabländerna. Den är verklighet med ödesdigra följder i katolska kyrkans andliga värld..." (s. 157)
Han har uppenbara poänger i det han säger - både i citatet ovan och i sina essäer som helhet. Men klarar vi av att bära det ansvar han avkräver oss? Vi verkar inte förmå det som samhälle eller världssamfund. Och som individer?
Den frågan lämnar jag öppen.
Det är ett perspektiv jag haft svårt att sätta mig in i tidigare. Jag läste Fanons [b:Jordens fördömda|15079790|Jordens fördömda|Frantz Fanon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1339002318l/15079790._SY75_.jpg|865773] utan att förstå den, just av denna anledning. De delar perspektiv. Améry beträffande nazismens brott mot judarna, Fanon beträffande Frankrikes koloniala förtryck av Algeriet. Men där Fanon bara framstod som oresonlig och vevande mot alla och envar, förstår jag Amérys vevande på ett nytt sätt - och därmed kan jag även omvärdera Fanons dito.
Om vi åtminstone lärt oss något av nazismens mordiska antisemitism, reflekterar Améry. Men nej. "[A]ntisemitismen är fortfarande verklighet, det skulle bara en fullständig blindhet för sociala och historiska förhållanden kunna förneka. Den är det i sina kärnländer Österrike och Tyskland, där de nazistiska krigsförbrytarna inte alls döms eller bara döms till skrattretande korta fängelsestraff, vilka de vanligtvis bara sitter av till en tredjedel. Den är verklighet i England och i USA där man tolererar judarna, men inte skulle sörja om man slapp dem. Den är, i form av nationell antisemitism, verklighet i arabländerna. Den är verklighet med ödesdigra följder i katolska kyrkans andliga värld..." (s. 157)
Han har uppenbara poänger i det han säger - både i citatet ovan och i sina essäer som helhet. Men klarar vi av att bära det ansvar han avkräver oss? Vi verkar inte förmå det som samhälle eller världssamfund. Och som individer?
Den frågan lämnar jag öppen.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Gelesen, weil Klaus Kastberger es bei den TDDL in einer Jurydiskussion erwähnte. Auf Englisch, weil es die deutsche Ausgabe nirgends digital auszuleihen gab. Die ersten beiden Texte waren ungewöhnlich interessant; danach kommen noch drei ganz normal interessante.
When Contradiction Reigns
As Jean Améry says in the discussion of his own torture by the SS, it is not possible to communicate one’s pain accurately without becoming an inflictor of pain. Only by becoming the torturer’s victim can one comprehend the pain of another victim. Thus he establishes both the inadequacy of language and the essential isolation of that which we call the mind, which can be penetrated by words but not by the real experience of others. There is a truth to Cartesian solipsism that is confirmed only by the human body in extreme distress.
But words can penetrate to the mind, which is constituted by words. Or perhaps more accurately, the mind demands one’s experiences have some kind of explanation. It is this demand that exceeds the mind’s limits so that Améry doesn’t hope to achieve it. Even in his preface to the second edition (in 1976, 30 years after the events described), he admits to being unable to make sense of his experiences:
Others, Améry recounts, did have an explanation. Christians could cite the apocalypse and subsequent redemption. Communists might revel in the destructive evidence of late stage capitalism. Fervent Jews saw the hand of a protecting God even in their abject misery. But there was no explanatory comfort available in Plato, Kant, or Hegel, much less the Nazi-intellectual Heidegger. Even the cultural heritage of Goethe, Beethoven, and Nietzsche had been usurped by the torturers. For the person of intellect not centred around a religious or political belief there was nothing. “In the camp the intellect in its totality declared itself to be incompetent.”
And yet Améry finds a reason for the lack of explanation, which is in a sense an explanation. The fundamental, mind-numbing contradiction of not just the camp but of all of National Socialism was expressible: “… the state did not order him to die, but to survive. The final duty of the prisoner, however, was death.” The prisoner was committed to dying, for as long and as painfully as economically feasible. The misery of dying destroyed all thought, metaphysics most particularly, and with that the thought of death itself was obliterated. The prisoner feared not death but the possibility of dying in an even more wretched way. “Dying was omnipresent, death vanished from sight.”
The camps, therefore, were a microcosm of National Socialist society. This was a society intent on destroying itself as its only objective. This society tortured itself because it was not just led by but also composed of torturers. “Torture was not an accidental quality of this Third Reich, but its essence.” Its only legacy is the victim:
I find it impossible not to compare this nihilism with the politics of the Right demonstrated today in many places throughout the world, especially in America. It is clear that as I write Republicans have adopted a strategy of national destruction. Anything that inhibits or threatens their power - lost elections, black people, immigration, vaccination, intellectual argument, law itself - are deemed fraudulent, immoral, anti-American, and are resisted with violence as required. But it is also clear that achievement of power will destroy their own destructive achievement. They have no other objective and they take pride in that. Améry provides the only sort of explanation that makes sense to me.
As Jean Améry says in the discussion of his own torture by the SS, it is not possible to communicate one’s pain accurately without becoming an inflictor of pain. Only by becoming the torturer’s victim can one comprehend the pain of another victim. Thus he establishes both the inadequacy of language and the essential isolation of that which we call the mind, which can be penetrated by words but not by the real experience of others. There is a truth to Cartesian solipsism that is confirmed only by the human body in extreme distress.
But words can penetrate to the mind, which is constituted by words. Or perhaps more accurately, the mind demands one’s experiences have some kind of explanation. It is this demand that exceeds the mind’s limits so that Améry doesn’t hope to achieve it. Even in his preface to the second edition (in 1976, 30 years after the events described), he admits to being unable to make sense of his experiences:
“I did not strive for an explicative account at that time, thirteen years ago, and in the same way now too, I can do no more than give testimony… I had no clarity when I was writing this little book, I do not have it today, and I hope that I never will. Clarification would also amount to disposal, settlement of the case, which can then be placed in the files of history. My book is meant to aid in preventing precisely this. For nothing is resolved, no conflict is settled, no remembering has become a mere memory. What happened, happened. But that it happened cannot be so easily accepted.”
Others, Améry recounts, did have an explanation. Christians could cite the apocalypse and subsequent redemption. Communists might revel in the destructive evidence of late stage capitalism. Fervent Jews saw the hand of a protecting God even in their abject misery. But there was no explanatory comfort available in Plato, Kant, or Hegel, much less the Nazi-intellectual Heidegger. Even the cultural heritage of Goethe, Beethoven, and Nietzsche had been usurped by the torturers. For the person of intellect not centred around a religious or political belief there was nothing. “In the camp the intellect in its totality declared itself to be incompetent.”
And yet Améry finds a reason for the lack of explanation, which is in a sense an explanation. The fundamental, mind-numbing contradiction of not just the camp but of all of National Socialism was expressible: “… the state did not order him to die, but to survive. The final duty of the prisoner, however, was death.” The prisoner was committed to dying, for as long and as painfully as economically feasible. The misery of dying destroyed all thought, metaphysics most particularly, and with that the thought of death itself was obliterated. The prisoner feared not death but the possibility of dying in an even more wretched way. “Dying was omnipresent, death vanished from sight.”
The camps, therefore, were a microcosm of National Socialist society. This was a society intent on destroying itself as its only objective. This society tortured itself because it was not just led by but also composed of torturers. “Torture was not an accidental quality of this Third Reich, but its essence.” Its only legacy is the victim:
“Whoever was tortured, stays tortured. Torture is ineradicably burned into him, even when no clinically objective traces can be detected… Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world.”
I find it impossible not to compare this nihilism with the politics of the Right demonstrated today in many places throughout the world, especially in America. It is clear that as I write Republicans have adopted a strategy of national destruction. Anything that inhibits or threatens their power - lost elections, black people, immigration, vaccination, intellectual argument, law itself - are deemed fraudulent, immoral, anti-American, and are resisted with violence as required. But it is also clear that achievement of power will destroy their own destructive achievement. They have no other objective and they take pride in that. Améry provides the only sort of explanation that makes sense to me.
C'è poco da dire su "Intellettuale a Auschwitz". La testimonianza e la riflessione di Améry, al di là dell'ambiguità e vaghezza, venata di presunzione, della definizione di intellettuale, certo vale la pena di essere letta. Ho trovato soprattutto illuminante la problematizzazione della Heimat, concetto che le giovani generazioni della globalizzazione faticano forse a visualizzare. Ma questo libro è prezioso in tutte le sue parti.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced