Gideon Telpaz
AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM STYRON
On April
17, 1983,
after seeing the film "Sophie's Choice,"
Elie Wiesel published an article in the Sunday Arts and Leisure section of
The
New York Times,
entitled ''Does the Holocaust Lie Beyond the Reach of
Art?" in which he challenged William Styron's capability of "imagining the
unimaginable. " A survivor of the concentration camps, Wiesel maintained:
"Between the dead and the rest of us there exists an abyss that no talent can com–
prehend. "Asserting that "the Holocaust has turned out to be the latest attraction;
it is 'in' as far as show business is concerned,
"
Wiesel denounced any tendency to
portray the "executioners" as "humans, " or "to make us understand them.
"
My
conversation with William Styron, in which the author of the novel
Sophie's
Choice
responded to accusations made in Wiesel's article, took place several
weeks later in New York City.
GT:
What was your initial reaction to Wiesel's article?
WS:
I
read it with some irritation, and
I
had an urge to respond, but
I
took my own counsel about that and said, "No, I'm not going to
do that." I did have it, though, in the back of my mind. I did feel it
was saying things which muddied rather than clarified.
GT:
Did you take it as a personal affront?
WS:
Only at one point, where he used the word "honesty," or "total
honesty," implying the lack of it on my part.
GT:
Wiesel argues , "Only survivors of Auschwitz know what it
meant to be in Auschwitz."
WS:
It
is simpIy not true . We've got to get rid of this idea that there
is something sacrosanct about the Holocaust. Somehow, Wiesel
has given the impression, and it's the wrong impression, that it's
something so out of the bounds of mortal comprehension that we
mustn't deal with it. He said in that piece something about his
silence, and of course that's what George Steiner said . Well, I
don't believe that.
GT:
The point Wiesel is trying to make is that no words can convey
the horrors of Auschwitz. He says, "Auschwitz defies imagination
and perception; it submits only to memory .
It
can be com–
municated by testimony, not by fiction." He also says, "What we
really wish to say, what we feel we must say, cannot be said."
