Between Lethe and Memory. “The Story of a Life” by Aharon Appelfeld

Abstract

From the opening pages of the autobiographical work “The Story of a Life” by Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018), the body appears as a vessel of memory. These are predominantly fragmentary recollections – images, smells, or sounds – that emerge in fragments throughout the text. The body evokes associations with a suppressed past; it functions as a reservoir of fragmented memories. In the dialogue between culture, language, tradition, author, and reader, the text–space–body plays a central role as a link between Lethe and memory. A. Appelfeld, who was born in Chernivtsi in 1932, survived the Holocaust in the ghetto, then in a camp, and finally alone in the Ukrainian forests. He writes clearly, restrainedly, and uncompromisingly about the war, the Shoah, and its consequences. Having lost his home and his language, filled with fear and distrust, he periodically “listened” to his body. Such fragments, based on ruptured memory, are characteristic of the author’s oeuvre, whose life story revolves around language: his native German, the vanished Yiddish of the despised, and the Hebrew of his future in Israel. This is the story of an adolescent who slipped away from the languages he once possessed and in whose body war and oblivion took up residence. Lethe appears not merely as the negation of memory; it is not only an antagonist, but also a co-player. Appelfeld’s works describe the paradox of memory from which no one can escape and thus contribute to the formation of a multicultural consciousness.