Žmogų išbandantis blogis Grigorijaus Kanovičiaus romane „Šėtono apžavai“

Abstract

The article discusses the novel Sėtono apžavai (Satan’s Spell) (published in Lithuanian in 2002 and in Russian in 2002 and 2007) by Grigorijus Kanovicius, the laureate of the Lithuanian National Prize, depicting the life of the Jews in a fictitious Lithuanian town of Miskiniai during the Soviet and Nazi occupations in 1939-1941. The novel is important because of the depiction of the Holocaust specific to Lithuania. It reveals the little-known biblical subculture of Jewish culture in Lithuania. The problem of the Holocaust is discussed not only in the context of concrete historical time but also of the universal human experience, raising the sensitive issue of the relationship between evil and God and discussing the nature of evil and the possibilities of resisting it from different national, religious, and ideological perspectives. In the article, Kanovicius’s novel is analyzed by linking it with the spiritual tradition of the Jews and Christians (Norman Solomon and Mindaugas Pikūnas), the idea of God who sows evil found in the Books of Esther, Job, Zechariah and Amos, its interpretation in works by Emmanuel Levin and Antanas Maceina. It also examines some more general political and moral aspects of the Holocaust (Hannah Arendt and Robert van Voren), as well as Litvak lifestyle and religious customs. The world of the Jews depicted in the novel is doomed to vanish. The “death” of God, often associated with the Holocaust (“where was God in Auschwitz?”), is based on the totality of evil and people’s indifference to evil, spiritual inertia, and inability to feel amity with others. The analysis of the novel offers a rather unexpected conclusion that the expectations formed by ethical philosophy (Levin’s idea of human being’s transgression while in a state of suffering) can only be a starting point in trying to explain the distinctiveness of the Kanovicius’s world. The author created not a story of resisting evil, but a requiem for the dead. Keywords: Grigorijus Kanovicius, Lithuanian Jews, Holocaust, the Old Testament, ethical philosophy. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/zz.2017.11