PARTISAN REVIEW
attempt to understand the behavior of concentration camp inmates
and SS men psychologically, when the very thing that must be realized
is
that the psyche (or character)
can
be destroyed even without the
destruction of the physical man; that, indeed, as Rousset convincingly
shows, psyche, character, or individuality seem under certain circum–
stances to express themselves only through the rapidity or slowness
with which they disintegrate. The end result in any case is inanimate
men, i.e., men who can no longer be psychologically understood,
whose return to the psychologically or otherwise intelligibly human
world closely resembles the resurrection of Lazarus-as Rousset indi–
cates in the title of his book. All statements of common sense, whether
of a psychological or sociological nature, serve only to encourage
those who think it "superficial" to "dwell on horrors" (Georges Ba–
taille, in
Critique,
January 1948).
If
it is true that the concentration camps are the most conse–
quential institution of totalitarian rule, "dwelling on horrors" would
seem to be indispensable for the understanding of totalitarianism. But
recollection can no more do this than can the uncommunicative eye–
witness report. In both these genres there is an inherent tendency
to run away from the experience; instinctively or rationally, both
types of writer are so much aware of the terrible abyss that separates
the world of the living from that of the living dead, that they cannot
supply anything more than a series of remembered occurrences that
must seem just as incredible to those who relate them as to their
audience. Only the fearful imagination of those who have been
aroused by such reports but have not actually been smitten in their
own flesh, of those who are consequently free from the bestial, des–
perate terror which, when confronted by real, present horror, inex–
orably paralyzes everything that is not mere reaction, can afford to
keep thinking about horrors. Such thoughts are useful only for the
perception of political contexts and the mobilization of political pas–
sions. A change of personality of any sort whatever can no more be
induced by thinking about horrors than by the real experience of
horror. The reduction of a man to a bundle of reactions separates
him as radically as mental disease from everything within him that
is
personality or character. When, like Lazarus, he rises from the dead,
he finds his personality or character unchanged, just as he had left it.
Nor can horror or thinking about horrors become a basis for a
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