Elie Wiesel’s Writings
Elie Wiesel’s writings and their reception are so extensive that reference can be made here to only a few, and starting with his witness account La Nuit (1958, Engl. Night, 1960), only selected aspects of other texts can be addressed in greater detail. Wiesel’s writings include journalistic works, autobiographical texts, novels, plays, academic papers on topics drawn from Jewish tradition, and numerous essays. The experience of the Holocaust is the basis for his work. The question of the meaning of this experience for the particular time at which he is writing finds expression in many of his novels and essays, culminating in a discussion of its significance for the generation of the children of Holocaust survivors in the novels Le cinquième fils (1983, Engl. The Fifth Son, 1985) and L'oublié (1989, Engl. The Forgotten, 1992). From the 1960s into the 1980s, Wiesel also concentrated on the situation of the Soviet Jews, as in Les Juifs du silence (1966, Engl. The Jews of Silence, 1966) and the play Zalmen ou la folie de Dieu (1968, Engl. Zalmen, or the Madness of God, 1974).
Many of his texts reflect a continuous engagement with the religious traditions and teachings of Hasidism, in which he grew up and by which he was deeply affected. In the first part of his autobiography, Tous les fleuves vont à la mer (1994, Engl. All Rivers Run to the Sea, 1995), Elie Wiesel identifies himself, even for the postwar period, as a Vishnitz Hasid.
In the original French edition of Night—with the exception of his first book, Wiesel has written all his books in French—this is labeled témoignage (testimony), and the subtitle of the German-language edition is Erinnerung und Zeugnis, “memoir and testimony.” Nevertheless, scholars and reviewers repeatedly have asked whether this book, the most widely read survivor’s account in the United States, should to some extent be approached as a novel. Wiesel has always voiced clear opposition to that,[1] although Night also was published as part of a trilogy, in combination with two novels. His narrative texts, which also can be interpreted as “thought-images” (Denkbilder), are neither historical writing restricted to the exactitude of documentation nor scholarly argument; instead, they offer readers a different kind of opportunity, inducing open-minded thinking, to reflect on historical events, in this case the Holocaust, and on the questions these events raise regarding human life and relationships. Such a concept of narration can be seen in the transmission of Jewish religious tradition, and thus it is no surprise that in several places in his work Wiesel uses a “Hasidic tale” to field the question of what is true or historically accurate in his stories.
Elie Wiesel’s central text, Night, can be read as a literary styling of his witness account or also in the context of a trilogy including two novels: Night, Dawn, and Day. Night thus appears as part of Elie Wiesel’s examination, in the medium of narrative writing, of his existence as a Holocaust survivor in the late 1950s and of the existential questions posed thereby. But one can also compare Night with the way Wiesel’s autobiography deals with his time in the camp. It becomes clear that the writer Elie Wiesel gives his memory of the time in Auschwitz a different styling and new focal points of presentation, new avenues of approach to his memory, depending on the particular place and age at which he writes.
(MN; transl. KL)