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avrilconuve's review against another edition
4.0
Es un librazo, me ha gustado mucho. Si bien parte de la experiencia de Semprún en el campo de concentración de Buchenwald, en la Alemania nazi; es un libro que ahonda mucho en la experiencia de la escritura como salvataje y a la vez memoria destructora. Un libro muy conmovedor y muy redondo. Aunque no le doy 5 estrellas porque no he conseguido conectar totalmente con el narrador. Me sobró un poco la prepotencia intelectual que me ha tirado para atrás a ratos.
marilou's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Une écriture en spirale, une voix unique.
bubblxgumwitch's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Esta es una buenísima historia sobre trauma. También es una historia real.
No voy a hacer reseña porque me parece casi frivolizar con esto.
(Cuatro estrellas porque el escritor me cayó un poco mal, pero es muy bueno, leedlo todos)
No voy a hacer reseña porque me parece casi frivolizar con esto.
(Cuatro estrellas porque el escritor me cayó un poco mal, pero es muy bueno, leedlo todos)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement
Moderate: Antisemitism
assimbya's review against another edition
3.0
Holocaust memoirs naturally invite comparison with one another - they are their own, peculiar genre. Experiences of trauma very often leave their survivors with the need to recount the story of that trauma, and the horrendously immense scale of the Holocaust has left a large population of survivors and consequently a similarly large assortment of courageous memoirs and autobiographical novels, woven out of the tremulous, fire-seared memories of their authors. Never, I think, has the same tragedy, in all its fragmented pieces, been recounted so many times by those who experienced it. The images of the stories have become mythic, archetypal. We begin one of these memoirs and watch them pass by in succession - the incomprehensible terror of the journey; the stinking chimneys of the crematoria; the useless cruelty of the guards; the dangerous reprieve of the sickroom.
However, these comparisons can rarely be literary. The images in the memoirs have acquired an element of the sacred, and we read their tellings somberly, like a holy rite.
Semprún's book, however, invites comparison. The shadow of Primo Levi hangs over the whole thing, object at once of emulation and envy. It seems to be a commonplace of trauma memoirs to insist "What I went through wasn't so bad, not compared to what they experienced!" (this is a central premise of Levi's own The Drowned and the Saved, and the source for the ironic title of Alice Sebold's Lucky). Literature or Life avoids doing that - Semprún makes comparisons, not between his own suffering and that of others, but between his own healing and that of others. With slight disparagement, he recounts his own avoidance of any account of the Holocaust, or any conversation that might involve it. When finally he comes across Levi's books, they are a revelation, but also a window into a kind of confrontation with the past that Semprún, even at the point of writing Literature and Life, does not think himself capable of.
It goes without saying that Semprún is wrong about his own courage. Reading this book, I found myself wanting to go into crisis counselor mode and tell him 'You are brave, you're brave because you survived and because you keep surviving. If avoiding the memories is what you need right now, if it keeps you functioning and sane, then you're perfectly justified in doing so." But the particularities of Semprún's coping mechanisms did make me wonder about the purpose of the book itself. Literature and Life is a book that insists on its own futility even as it reveres the power of Primo Levi's book, and of Alain Renais' "Night and Fog", to move and change. It is a book as much about the question of writing a Holocaust memoir as it is a memoir of the Holocaust.
It also stands as a direct challenge to the thesis statement of Jean Améry's "The Intellectual in Auschwitz", though I'm not sure if that was a conscious stance of Semprún's part. Améry insists that intellectual activity was a hindrance rather than a grace in the concentration camps, while Semprún seems to find it entirely self-evident that it was the only thing keeping him alive. He never even questions this assumption. One of the most moving moments of the book was the discussion among the newly released prisoners about the possibility of communicating the experience of the camps to anyone who was not in them. They come, eventually, to the conclusion that only a work of fiction - a work of art - can hope to do that.
However, these comparisons can rarely be literary. The images in the memoirs have acquired an element of the sacred, and we read their tellings somberly, like a holy rite.
Semprún's book, however, invites comparison. The shadow of Primo Levi hangs over the whole thing, object at once of emulation and envy. It seems to be a commonplace of trauma memoirs to insist "What I went through wasn't so bad, not compared to what they experienced!" (this is a central premise of Levi's own The Drowned and the Saved, and the source for the ironic title of Alice Sebold's Lucky). Literature or Life avoids doing that - Semprún makes comparisons, not between his own suffering and that of others, but between his own healing and that of others. With slight disparagement, he recounts his own avoidance of any account of the Holocaust, or any conversation that might involve it. When finally he comes across Levi's books, they are a revelation, but also a window into a kind of confrontation with the past that Semprún, even at the point of writing Literature and Life, does not think himself capable of.
It goes without saying that Semprún is wrong about his own courage. Reading this book, I found myself wanting to go into crisis counselor mode and tell him 'You are brave, you're brave because you survived and because you keep surviving. If avoiding the memories is what you need right now, if it keeps you functioning and sane, then you're perfectly justified in doing so." But the particularities of Semprún's coping mechanisms did make me wonder about the purpose of the book itself. Literature and Life is a book that insists on its own futility even as it reveres the power of Primo Levi's book, and of Alain Renais' "Night and Fog", to move and change. It is a book as much about the question of writing a Holocaust memoir as it is a memoir of the Holocaust.
It also stands as a direct challenge to the thesis statement of Jean Améry's "The Intellectual in Auschwitz", though I'm not sure if that was a conscious stance of Semprún's part. Améry insists that intellectual activity was a hindrance rather than a grace in the concentration camps, while Semprún seems to find it entirely self-evident that it was the only thing keeping him alive. He never even questions this assumption. One of the most moving moments of the book was the discussion among the newly released prisoners about the possibility of communicating the experience of the camps to anyone who was not in them. They come, eventually, to the conclusion that only a work of fiction - a work of art - can hope to do that.
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