‘The wound which does not heal’: Trauma in Robert Neumann’s Autobiographical Writing

Abstract

In 1934, the Jewish writer Robert Neumann left his native Vienna for London, where he lived in exile until resettling in Switzerland many years after the war. Although Neumann eventually did forge strong ties with his new home in England, the exile years left him with deep psychological scars, most notably from his three-and-a-half month internment as an enemy alien in 1940 and the unexpected death from sepsis of his 22-year-old son in 1944. The diaries Neumann kept during both these difficult times chronicle deeply traumatic events and draw vivid images of suffering and despair, yet also illustrate the therapeutic impetus of the writing process. It is striking, however, that the details the diaries recount appear to be largely absent from Neumann’s later autobiographical writing. My analysis reveals the ways in which these past traumas remain present in the form of rewritings, echoes, and elisions. I explore how the loss of his son becomes intermingled with the experience of internment and its aftermath, and how his son’s death, indeed even his voice, remain present in Neumann’s writing despite the fact that he resists narrating both traumatic events.