“Die Grenzen des Sagbaren”: H. G. Adler (on) Writing Literature after the Holocaust

Traci S O’Brien

doi:10.3390/h10020063

Abstract

Taking the next step in our understanding of the testimony of Holocaust literature involves taking a step back to recuperate a theoretical approach that does not cede all human attempts at knowledge to skepticism. At odds with Theodor Adorno about the possibility of writing poetry after Auschwitz, Adler, a survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, transformed his experiences into fiction. In his novel, Eine Reise, published in 1962, and in his 1965 essay on “Die Grenzen des Sagbaren,” or the limits of the sayable, Adler addresses these dilemmas. While Adorno collapses traditions of value into barbarity, Adler struggles to maintain, describe and explain the possibility of human resistance to evil. I examine Adler’s nuanced use of language in these two works and show that the rage and epistemological uncertainty that dominate the post-Holocaust world do not necessarily lead to the destruction of all traditional forms of meaning.

Highlights

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Journey in 2008, and in his 1965 essay on “Die Grenzen des Sagbaren,” or the limits of the sayable, Adler compels the reader to think about how literature can work, what language can do, and how meaning is made
Adler posits that the range of human experience continuously calls us, his readers, to get better at expressing ourselves in language and understanding our shared communications

Summary

Introduction

In the second of these, Eine Reise, published in 1962, and in English translation as The. Journey in 2008, and in his 1965 essay on “Die Grenzen des Sagbaren,” or the limits of the sayable, Adler compels the reader to think about how literature can work, what language can do, and how meaning is made. Adler posits that the range of human experience continuously calls us, his readers, to get better at expressing ourselves in language and understanding our shared communications. Adler’s attempt, first, to represent the horror of the Holocaust so that, second, the reader can, in some small way, begin to comprehend the experience, is vital to an analysis of Eine Reise While his fiction is commemorative in this way, Adler’s attempts at the “restoration of memory” When Adler calls upon his reader to participate in “Something” rather than “Nothing,” this is what he means

Eine Reise

Closing Thoughts