NORMAN MANEA
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themselves human beings and whom others take to be human beings. It
is a horrifying, absurd, fantastic, and also deeply human metamorphosis.
As shocking as the disaster is, it changes everything. The people
around him quickly become inhuman, while the protagonist becomes
even more human. The metamorphosis proves to be a grisly, alienated
reality, an already existing possibility-dubious, audacious, guilt-laden,
and perverse. It is a premise for any individual, whether isolated or
assimilated, that also underlies the nightmare of liberation, indeed of
liberty: a human anthropomorphic separation. The fear is nourished not
just by the malevolent forces of our environment, but also by our own
divided being. We are, each of us, just another hypothesis-who knows
how stable and irreversible-of the other.
The humanistic rhetoric to which we always appeal does not seem to
protect us from this abyss. Unfortunately, in our time, the question "For
what are you prepared to die?" seems all too often to be replaced with
the question "for what are you prepared to kill?"
EK: Another of your persistent themes is survival. As precarious, as
fragile as the victim is, it nevertheless manages to survive. It's like a
timid light deep inside us that would, even after a cataclysmic hurricane,
still flicker.
I
discern a faint glimmer of hope in your writing, an over–
coming of the catastrophe through narrative.
NM: In America, this land of pragmatism and productive energy, I often
hear the Holocaust survivor referred to as a "hero of competition," a
symbol of hardiness in times of disaster, but also of social success "after–
wards." This implies that whoever has withstood the Holocaust should
have the strength to win the social struggle in normal circumstances. We
can see survivors of the concentration camps, for instance, at the top of
the business world. But the work of the novelist demands a totally dif–
ferent energy. To recreate the trauma of the Holocaust as literature, par–
ticularly for the survivor, is an added burden and challenge. No wonder
some authors dealing with this topic have ultimately committed suicide.
Does writing offer recompense? legitimization of a fate? a glimmer of
hope? I'm not inclined to entertain too many illusions about this diffi–
cult and who-knows-how-useful craft.
EK: The story "Weddings" seems to me a masterpiece. A boy who has
survived a concentration camp is made to present the suffering he expe–
rienced in speeches in front of mass rallies organized by the Communist
Party. Ironically, it becomes the main attraction at weddings. His speech
begins with rhe words "We, who haven't known the meaning of
