Literature as Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Describing Extermination (from Primo Levi to Varlam Shalamov)

Abstract

The article under studies proves that the literature of extermination necessitates a radical re-evaluation of the entire literary tradition. Its very existence poses a silent yet eloquent challenge to the narcissism and complacency of mass-media-influenced literary circles. Moreover, it effectively deconstructs the foundations of modern literary heritage, beginning with the Renaissance. In this context, the author ceases to be a romantic visionary who, obeying a higher calling, cultivates his inner self and commits himself to serving the art. Testimonies of mass political violence break the imaginary alliance between Evil and Beauty, embedded in traditional aesthetic discourse. These literary texts restore dignity to victims and resist literature that strives for venality, reduced to the rhetorical pathos, a favorite tool of executioners. Thus, the ethical responsibility of the artist comes to the forefront – as resistance against violence and as an act of restoring the truth. The function of testimony, which comprises both the recording of facts and the honoring of memory, demands stylistic restraint, devoid of decorative aestheticism. In the creative process, aesthetic intuitions cannot be divorced from practical rationality – they must operate within the bounds of ethics, not in opposition to them. This necessitates a re-evaluation of the opposition between ethics and aesthetics introduced by Nietzsche: in reality, aesthetics can interact with politics only indirectly – through the ethical dimension. However, political upheavals became merely a starting point for a profound rethinking of the artistic universe, giving impetus to the formation of new aesthetic “worlds”. The ethics of resistance, which emerged as a response to violence, gave rise to a number of unprecedented aesthetic solutions – diverse in form, but united by a common tonality and depth of moral concern. In this respect, the issue of lying is particularly acute, as no act of mass political violence occurs without lies – both as a tool of disguise and as a mechanism of systemic oppression. Realizing that the already set forms of writing and familiar means of literary language proved incapable of conveying the truth about the catastrophe, authors like Levi and Shalamov concluded that literary testimony must not only record the past but also pave the way for a new literature – a literature of the future, rooted in ethics and aimed at counteracting the devaluation of human experience.