Creating Wasserman: The quest for a new Holocaust story in David Grossman's See Under: Love.

Creating Wasserman: The quest for a new Holocaust story in David Grossman's See Under: Love. SEE UNDER: LOVE IS THE STORY OF SHLOMO (MOMIK) Neuman, a child ofHolocaust survivors There are many famous Holocaust survivors who survived the Nazi genocides in Europe and went on to achievements of great fame and notability. Those listed here were, at the very least, residents of the parts of Europe occupied by the Axis powers during World War II who survived . Growing up in Jerusalem of the 1950s, he issurrounded by the silence and the madness of the survivors and becomesobsessed with the mysteries of the world they are trying to conceal. Asan adult, Shlomo becomes an author who is trying to write the story ofhis grandfather, Anshel Wasserman, who himself was once an author ofchildren's adventure stories, but whom Shlomo knew only as aderanged de��range?tr.v. de��ranged, de��rang��ing, de��rang��es1. To disturb the order or arrangement of.2. To upset the normal condition or functioning of.3. To disturb mentally; make insane. and wholly inarticulate inarticulate/in��ar��tic��u��late/ (in?ahr-tik��u-lat)1. not having joints; disjointed.2. uttered so as to be unintelligible; incapable of articulate speech. survivor of the Nazi death camps. "It's about him," says Shlomo about the protagonistof the story he is trying to write, "but it's also about me.It's about my family and what the Beast did to us. [It's]about fear. And about Grandfather, whom I can't seem to bring backto life, not even in the story. And about being unable to understand mylife until I learn about my unlived un��live?tr.v. un��lived, un��liv��ing, un��livesTo undo the effects of; annul. life Over There." (1) Our culture's most compelling means of providing access to theunlived lives we need to experience in order to better live the life wehave, is literature, primarily narrative fiction. Stories and novels arethe best means we have in order to enter into lives that are not ourown. Yet this is precisely the area where, with regards to theHolocaust, Israeli culture fell short. For more than forty years therewere virtually no literary works that sought to actualize the humanexperiences of the Holocaust by transmuting them into a fictional formthat would make them emotionally and intellectually accessible to thosewho, mercifully, were not part of these experiences, but were largelyformed by them. What distinguishes See Under: Love from almost all Holocaust novelsthat preceded it is its willingness to pursue its project to the veryheart of Holocaust darkness. In a taboo-shattering move, Grossman'snovel locates key portions of its narrative inside the Nazi death camps.In doing so, it begins the important work of filling a gaping literaryvoid. The scope of this paper does not allow for a full discussion ofthe reasons for the existence of this void. So let me just say that Ibelieve that it can be attributed to the confluence of two powerfulcultural discourses that marked the aftermath of the Holocaust and theearly stages of Israeli statehood state��hood?n.The status of being a state, especially of the United States, rather than being a territory or dependency. . On the one hand there was the entrenched discourse of ideologicalZionism, which acknowledged the agony and the horror of the events ofthe Holocaust, but denied the relevance of these events to the Israeliexperience and to the formation of Israeli identity. And since Israeliliterature was intensely preoccupied with matters of Israeli experienceand Israeli identity, the Holocaust was largely excluded from itsdomain. It remained a dark and silent backdrop against which a brilliantnew reality was being etched. The first two generations of Israeliwriters implicitly denied their affinity with the murdered Jews ofEurope by insisting on an almost absolute difference from them. TheJewish victims of the Holocaust became objectified "others"who helped the Israelis to consolidate their identities as "NewJews." Consequently, these victims were routinely characterized asa faceless herd of nameless entities who, lacking the heroic resolve oftheir Israeli counterparts, allowed themselves to be led like sheep tothe slaughter. The exclusion of the Holocaust experience from Israel'sevolving national culture was reinforced by the emergence of an equallypowerful discourse of Holocaust sanctity that was cultivated by theHolocaust survivors themselves, and was quickly embraced by the Israelicommunity as a whole. According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. the code of Holocaust sanctity, thelives of the Holocaust victims While victims of the Holocaust were primarily Jews, the Nazis also persecuted and often killed millions of members of other groups they considered inferior, undesirable or dangerous. are sanctified sanc��ti��fy?tr.v. sanc��ti��fied, sanc��ti��fy��ing, sanc��ti��fies1. To set apart for sacred use; consecrate.2. To make holy; purify.3. and their experiences inthe ghettos and the camps are deemed inaccessible and incomprehensibleto those who did not actually live through them. Consequently, anyattempt by a non-survivor to describe or explain these experiencesbecomes an intolerable violation of a sacred taboo. As those of you whohave heard me address this particular matter before know, my centralthesis here is that the discourses of Zionist ideology and of Holocaustsanctity reinforced each other and quickly merged into a dominantnational meta-narrative that precluded the possibility of an imaginativeengagement with the experiences of the Holocaust and was a major causeof the long literary silence on the subject. See Under: Love is one of the first works to break this silence byactually entering into the forbidden world of the camps. And one of thenovel's most striking features is its use of the fantastic mode asthe means of effecting this imaginary entry. More than any otherliterary mode, the fantastic is characterized by a subversiveorientation towards expressing the subconscious and towards shatteringcultural taboos. In defiance of the discourses of Zionist ideology andHolocaust sanctity, Grossman uses the fantastic mode to textualize thehorrific experiences of the Holocaust so as to make them tangible to theimagination and available to emotion and to thought. (2) The first part of the novel ("Momik") presentsShlomo's childhood struggles to make sense of his identity as achild of parents whose past life and the horrors they survived have beenrendered totally unspeakable. He tries to recover the story that hisparents refuse to tell and his demented grandfather is incapable ofarticulating. But he is frustrated by the silence of the other survivorsand by the preconceptions instilled in him by his Israeli upbringing.The "Momik" section follows the repeated frustrations ofShlomo's efforts to confront and comprehend the Holocaustexperience. At one point he concludes that the agonies of his parentsare caused by a monster called the Nazi Beast that is hiding in theirbasement. He sets out to confront the monster and rescue his parentsfrom its clutches. In the final movement of the first section, Shlomorecruits a group of old survivors to help him lure the Nazi Beast out ofits hiding place. When this effort also fails, the boy gives up, breaksdown, and finally yi elds to the cultural imperatives that promote acontemptuous dissociation dissociation,in chemistry, separation of a substance into atoms or ions. Thermal dissociation occurs at high temperatures. For example, hydrogen molecules (H2 from the world of Holocaust victims andsurvivors. As the old Jews surround him and his grandfather begins tomumble his incomprehensible story once again, Shlomo is overcome withrevulsion towards those he now calls "stinking stinkinghaving an intrinsic fetid smell.stinking eldersambucuspubens.stinking helleborehelleborusfoetidus.stinking irisirisfoetidissima. Jews": In some of the books he saw that the goyim called them Yids. He hadalways thought that this was just an insult, but now he suddenly felthow perfectly this fit them, and he whispered, Yids, and he felt apleasant warmth spreading through his belly, and his entire body fillingout with muscles, and he said it again, loudly, Yids, and, surprisingly,this gave him strength, and he marched across the room and stood overthat Wasserman grandfather and sneered at him saying that it was enoughalready, shut up already, we're sick and tired of your story. (75,84-85) But Wasserman's story continues to haunt him, and theremaining three sections of the novel involve the adult Shlomo'scontinuing efforts to engage the Holocaust experience by rearticulatingthe story of his grandfather's experiences in the Nazi death camp. In order to reconstruct his grandfather's story, Shlomo mustrestore to Wasserman the identity and the voice that were denied to himby the culture that sought to destroy him. But his efforts to do so areconsistently hampered by the constraints of the culture that purportedto redeem the survivors of the Holocaust and mold their descendants intoNew Jews. Try as he may, Shlomo cannot hear Wasserman's voice orfind a way to tell his story authentically. In a final effort toovercome his narrative impasse, Shlomo turns to the work of anotherwriter whose poetic solutions to similar problems provide him withdirection, inspiration, and hope. This is Bruno Schulz Bruno Schulz (July 12, 1892 – November 19, 1942) was a Polish writer, literary critic and graphic artist, widely considered to be one of the greatest Polish prose stylists of the 20th century. (1892-1942), theenigmatic Polish Jewish writer who was murdered in the street by aGestapo officer in order to settle a score with a fellow officer. At the time of his death Schulz had published two volumes ofphantasmagoric phan��tas��ma��go��ri��a? also phan��tas��ma��go��ryn. pl. phan��tas��ma��go��ri��as also phan��tas��ma��go��ries1. a. A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery, as seen in dreams or fever.b. stories (3) and was working on a novel titled, TheMessiah. The manuscript of this novel was lost and has never been found.For Shlomo, Schulz is a champion of individuality and a powerfulliterary precursor. His work embodies the desire to separate theauthentic, singular voice from all other voices. It reflects an abilityto elude the constraints of conventional discourse through theuninhibited uninhibited/un��in��hib��it��ed/ (un?in-hib��i-ted) free from usual constraints; not subject to normal inhibitory mechanisms. creation of fantastic fiction. Shlomo draws deeply on themethods and materials of Bruno Schulz's work. He also makes Brunothe central character in the novel's second section. "Youknow," Shlomo tells his wife Ruthie, the most horrible thing for me about the Holocaust is that theyobliterated human individuality over there. There was absolutely novalue to your uniqueness as a person, to your thoughts, yourpersonality, your biography.... Over there everyone was reduced to thesame lowest level of existence. Only the flesh and the blood. This iswhat drives me crazy. This is why I wrote Bruno. (142, 152) When Shlomo introduces Bruno into his story he imagines him asbeing overcome by a profound sense of failure, similar to his own. Onwhat was to be the last day of his life, Bruno feels that he had notbeen vigilant enough and had allowed his work to be influenced by theconventions of a culture he despises. The thought that he had become anaccomplice in a culture that has obliterated individuality, causedglobal war, and culminated in a genocidal Holocaust, is so unbearablethat Bruno decides to escape from his life. And Shlomo allows him to doso. In a move taken directly from Schulz's own narrative world, (4)Shlomo provides Bruno with a fantastic escape and an alternative life.Instead of being murdered in the street, he eludes his pursuers, plungesinto the sea and joins a school of salmon. Subsequently, the sea alsoacquires a fantastic dimension. It becomes a boisterous female character(Sea) who shares Shiomo's adoration of Bruno Schulz, as well as hispassion for telling Bruno's story. The full story of Bruno's life with the salmon is createdthrough an increasingly collaborative dialogue between Shlomo and Sea.Their interacting narratives alternate, interpenetrate in��ter��pen��e��trate?v. in��ter��pen��e��trat��ed, in��ter��pen��e��trat��ing, in��ter��pen��e��tratesv.intr.To become mixed or united by penetration: planes that interpenetrate in a painting. , and finallycoalesce in the culminating moment of the Messiah episode. This is thepoint at which Bruno completes his liberation from the constraints ofconvention, finds his authentic voice and is finally able to write hisdefinitive work. As Shlomo tells Sea: "Only at the end of hisjourney, only when he was inside you, only then did he dare to pierceand to slash and to write within you in an uninhibited goatish dance,his last and lost story, 'The Messiah'" (129-30, 138-9). An important objective of Shlomo's invention of Bruno'salternative life is to trace the process of liberation to the pointwhen, no longer conforming, or evading, or afraid, Bruno can create hispurest and most authentic work. This is the level of honesty, freedom,and courage Shlomo feels he needs in order to overcome his own fear ofseeing and speaking truths that his own world may not yet be prepared tohear. A measure of the liberation Shlomo finally attains through theprocess of creating Bruno's story can be gained from the audaciousnarrative leap he takes in recreating the lost "Messiah"episode. In a move that embraces Schulz's bold disregard for theconstraints of time, the permanence of place, and the conventions ofverisimilitude, Shlomo projects himself into Bruno's world andbecomes a character in the fantastic story he is telling. The "Messiah" episode in See Under: Love begins withBruno Schulz as a child standing at his window, looking over TrinitySquare in his hometown, Drohobycz, just as Schult's own character,a boy called Joseph, did in a story called "The Age ofGenius." Standing at the window Joseph sees Shloma, the son ofTobias, who had just been released from prison, and calls out to him:"There is no one at home, come up for a moment and I'll showyou my drawings." (5) At this point, Shlomo breaks the barrierbetween the two stories and, with a sense of great liberation, crossesover to the parallel world of Bruno Schulz. "And I was Shloma sonof Tobias," he says. "I was him again. (6) For one moment Iwas released from prison" (157, 170). Up in the window he seesBruno, who recognizes him and calls out, "Come, come up a minute,and I will show you my drawings. There is no one home, Momik!"(158, 170). This fantastic transposition transposition/trans��po��si��tion/ (trans?po-zish��un)1. displacement of a viscus to the opposite side.2. of time and space enablesShlomo to witness the transformative events of "The Messiah"direc tly and to engage his protagonist in an unmediated Adj. 1. unmediated - having no intervening persons, agents, conditions; "in direct sunlight"; "in direct contact with the voters"; "direct exposure to the disease"; "a direct link"; "the direct cause of the accident"; "direct vote"direct dialogue: "What is this?" Shlomo asks Bruno as the square begins tofill with the townspeople of Drohobycz. "What are they allcelebrating?" "The Messiah," Bruno answers, making a magical sign atthe window (158, 171). The events of the "Messiah" story reflect Bruno'svision of the defining value and liberating power of the exclusivelysingular voice. In this story, the coming of the Messiah results in thedemise of the world of conventions. Each individual begins to speak withthe authentic voice of his inner self and is transformed into the trueartist of his own life (164, 178). This messianic mes��si��an��icalso Mes��si��an��ic ?adj.1. Of or relating to a messiah: messianic hopes.2. Of or characterized by messianism: messianic nationalism. transformation causes the disintegration of allcommunal structures. It creates refreshing connections between strangerswho heretofore had no sense of each other's true selves and nowdiscover deep affinities. But it also results in the destruction ofthose who are perceived as having no authentic self because they areentirely constructs of the prevailing discourse. One of these is AuntRetitia who was a fervent champion of the old conventions and is nowreduced to "a pile of strange debris, like gray sawdust sawdustused as litter for chickens and bedding for horses. Sawdust made from treated timber may cause pentachlorophenol and other wood preservative poisoning. Fungi growing in sawdust litter in poultry houses may cause poisoning in the birds. ,[which]was, no doubt the tangible residue of all the adjectives andverbs and tenses for which the aunt served as a juncture. A coolindifferent heap" (163-4, 177). Shlomo is appalled by the cruelfate of Aunt Retitia, whom he had always liked, and by Bruno'sdismissive justification of her expendability: "People like AuntRetitia," explains Bruno, "are the secondhand souls I spokeof; those whose being is once removed from true existence."Moreover, he adds soothingly, "She isn't actu ally deadbecause she was never really alive." Shlomo perceives that, as appealing as it may be to those itaffirms, Bruno's vision of radical individualism may ultimately bejust as heartless heart��less?adj.1. Devoid of compassion or feeling; pitiless.2. Archaic Devoid of courage or enthusiasm; spiritless.heart , discriminatory, and virulent as the totalizingdiscourse that he is resisting. Up to this point Shlomo had concurredwith Bruno's affirmation of individual singularity and applaudedhis decision to abandon a world "in which everything is said in theplural and people are weighed on tin scales." Following Bruno, hehad concluded that, "Even the dual is too plural, and the trulycrucial things are apparently said only in first person, singular."But, having followed this conviction to its logical narrativeconclusion, Shlomo realizes that Bruno's exclusionary individualismis not the true solution. He concludes that the first person, singularmay not be the appropriate voice after all. This conclusion has profound implications for Shlomo'snarrative project. Because the rejection of the subjective, monologic,mode at the end of the "Bruno" section is a consequence of analternative narrative mode that begins to evolve in this section andultimately enables the creation of the story, Shlomo has been strugglingto tell. A central key to understanding the Bruno story, as well as thenovel as a whole, is the fact that the creation of this story is not theproduct of Shlomo's singular imagination, which has repeatedlyfailed him, but of his ongoing dialogue with the fantastic character ofSea. As such, it negates the monologic credo postulated by Bruno andintroduces a dialogic di��a��log��ic? also di��a��log��i��caladj.Of, relating to, or written in dialogue.dia��log alternative which becomes the principal mode ofnarration and the driving ethical force in the subsequent sections ofthe novel. It is the confluence of the capabilities of the fantasticmode with the possibilities of dialogic narration that finally enablesthe successful telling of the Wasserman story. The combination of fantastic action and dialogic narration isparticularly productive in the kind of story Shlomo wants to createbecause it has the capacity to dissolve the barrier between two parallelworlds of discourse that were previously unable to communicate with eachother. In doing so it also becomes an effective means of rearticulatingsuppressed perspectives and recuperating abolished truths. Thepossibilities of this narrative strategy are further explored in the"Wasserman" section. They come to full structural and thematicfruition in "The Complete Encyclopedia of Kazik's Life,"that concludes the novel. The fusion of the fantastic imagination with dialogic narration,which marks the culmination of the "Bruno" section,constitutes the poetic point of departure for the next section of SeeUnder: Love, "Wasserman." Just as he ended "Bruno"by fantastically transporting himself as a participatory character intothe parallel world of Bruno Schulz, Shlomo begins "Wasserman"by transporting himself into the parallel universe of the Nazi deathcamps. This is the novel's transformative move. It manifests thefictional author's realization that he will not be able tomeaningfully rearticulate the Holocaust experience without engagingvoices that embody these experiences. It enables him to act on hisunderstanding that, in order to reclaim these voices, his conceptions ofthe Holocaust must be extricated ex��tri��cate?tr.v. ex��tri��cat��ed, ex��tri��cat��ing, ex��tri��cates1. To release from an entanglement or difficulty; disengage.2. Archaic To distinguish from something related. from distancing formulations of theconventional Israeli narrative and empathically pursued to their utmostextremes of helplessness and horror. This requires breaking the primarycultural taboo of Holocaust sanctity by imaginatively entering into theworld of the camps. And this is precisely what the "Wasserman"section proceeds to do. "Wasserman" opens directly onto the concentrationaryscene and locates both the character of Anshel Wasserman and the figureof Shlomo Neuman, the author who is creating Wasserman, inside the camp.This fantastic move, which dissolves the boundaries of time and space,enables the contemporary protagonist to enter into the heretoforeforbidden world of the camps. It provides the narrative conditions forpursuing Shlomo's desire for empathic em��path��ic?adj.Of, relating to, or characterized by empathy.Adj. 1. empathic - showing empathy or ready comprehension of others' states; "a sensitive and empathetic school counselor"empathetic identification and dialogicinteraction with his grandfather's concentrationary experiences.Like Bruno, Wasserman is a character with a distinctive fantasticdimension: he is a man who cannot be killed. Wasserman is introducedinto the camp scene after having miraculously survived the horror of agas chamber killing in which all others perished. He is now beinghastened to the office of the camp commandant, Neigel, who will try toaccomplish with his pistol what his subordinates failed to achieve withthe gas. Wasserman encounters Shlomo on the commandant's doorstep andimmediately recognizes him. But he actually begins communing with hisgrandson only after Shlomo empathically shares in the experience ofbeing a victim of a summary execution. Neigel steps forward and presseshis pistol to Wasserman's temple. "And suddenly I hear myselfscreaming," Shlomo says. "Together with Grandpa Anshel Iscream in terror and in humiliation, and the shot explodes in the room."Wasserman discovers, once again, that he cannot be killed. But healso discovers that he can now transmit his experiences to Shlomo, andit is at this point that he acknowledges his recognition and announceshis decision to participate in the telling of his own story:"Sholem aleichem Sholem Aleichem:see Aleichem, Sholem. Sholem Aleichemorig. Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz(born Feb. 18, 1859, Pereyaslav, Russia—died May 13, 1916, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Russian writer. , Shleimeleh," he says, "I recognize youeven though your appearance is greatly changed. Do not say a thing tome. Time is short and there is much to do. We have a story totell." Wasserman's situation places him in the very midst of thegenocidal juggernaut Juggernaut,India: see Puri. Juggernaut(Jagannath) huge idol of Krishna drawn through streets annually, occasionally rolling over devotees. [Hindu Rel.: EB, V: 499]See : Destruction . He witnesses the horror of the gas chamber, thebloody randomness of the executions, and the massive scale ofdehumanization de��hu��man��ize?tr.v. de��hu��man��ized, de��hu��man��iz��ing, de��hu��man��iz��es1. To deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility: and extermination exterminationmass killing of animals or other pests. Implies complete destruction of the species or other group. . He is there and his anguish isimmense. By giving equal voice to the perspective of this death campinmate, the narrative opens to dialogic figurations that progressivelygive voice to perspectives that have traditionally been suppressed. The ultimate purpose of Shlomo's project is to communicate analternative vision of the world of the Holocaust victims to the world oftheir Israeli descendants. In order to accomplish this communication, itis necessary to break the discursive barriers that separate these twoworlds. Most formidable among these barriers is the inability of Zionistdiscourse to understand, accept. and condone the passivity of the Jewishvictims in the face of the Nazi onslaught. The question of why the Jewsof Europe offered no resistance to their destroyers constitutes thedefining divide between the generation of the Holocaust and the newIsraelis for whom the image of the Jews passively submitting to theirdeath "like sheep to the slaughter" quickly became theprevailing idiom for describing Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Thisidiom embodies the disdain of the Israelis who use it and the shame ofthe Holocaust victims who are its subject. It also designates theirworlds as being mutually exclusive Adj. 1. mutually exclusive - unable to be both true at the same timecontradictoryincompatible - not compatible; "incompatible personalities"; "incompatible colors" . This is a designation that must beundone if true recuperation recuperation/re��cu��per��a��tion/ (-koo?per-a��shun) recovery of health and strength. recuperation,n the process of recovering health, strength, and mental and emotional vigor. of the Holocaust experience is to begin. The novel's encyclopedic en��cy��clo��pe��dic?adj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of an encyclopedia.2. Embracing many subjects; comprehensive: "an ignorance almost as encyclopedic as his erudition"final section devotes one of itsentries to the matter of "Slaughter, Like Sheep To The." HereWasserman attempts to formulate an explanation for the victims'passivity, in which he shared. Wasserman acknowledges that when hisgroup was being led to the gas chamber, accompanied by a singleUkrainian guard and knowing full well where they were going, there wereno thoughts of resistance, or even of protest. Wasserman struggles toexplain this acquiescence and to provide it with a measure of dignifyingmeaning. Recalling the moment of being herded down the corridor towardsthe gas, he says: The same song, I believe, was playing inside all of us, a dazedlullaby of sorrow and despair. And the great metronome metronome(mĕ`trənōm'), in music, originally pyramid-shaped clockwork mechanism to indicate the exact tempo in which a work is to be performed. It has a double pendulum whose pace can be altered by sliding the upper weight up or down. of GrandfatherDeath cranked out a dry, hypnotic rhythm; the rhythm of the giganticjaws that were constructed here just for us and are sucking and grindingus in. Tick tock, tick tock, we become part of this machinery of death.Al, yes. Because these are not human beings that are being marched totheir death here. No, only that which remains of a person after beingtotally humiliated hu��mil��i��ate?tr.v. hu��mil��i��at��ed, hu��mil��i��at��ing, hu��mil��i��atesTo lower the pride, dignity, or self-respect of. See Synonyms at degrade. , after being robbed of self and left only with themetal scaffolds of human form, mechanical joints that have no soul andare common to all.... This was all we could offer, in wretched andironic defiance, to those who were killing us. And this, indeed, is thecruel reflection of their own image. Because it is not Jews that arebeing marched to their death here, but living mirrors, showing in a sadand endless procession the reflection of the world that is doing this tothem.... Thus they pass sentence upon it in their death. Al, our massdeath, our meaningless death, will be reflected from now to all eternityin the arid desolation of your lives. (320, 357-58) But Shlomo, who serves as the editor of the"Encyclopedia," remains skeptical. "Wasserman'swords have been recorded here in full," he says. "But still,for the sake of balance, let this also be said: Not even a curse?Really? Not even a slap in the Ukrainian's face? Like that? Likesheep to the slaughter?" (320, 358). Shlomo is still disturbed and repelled by the victims' utterlack of resistance. But the dynamics of his fantastic engagement withthe world of the camps have created an opening for the articulation of acontrary, and heretofore suppressed, perspective that emerges fromwithin this world. The incursion in��cur��sion?n.1. An aggressive entrance into foreign territory; a raid or invasion.2. The act of entering another's territory or domain.3. of the imagination into theconcentrationary world gives a voice to the inhabitants of this world.It also creates the empathy that is necessary in order for this voice tobe heard by someone from the outside. While Shlomo may not agree withall that this new voice is saying, he no longer refuses to listen to it.This is a significant breach in the barrier between the two worlds aridit opens the possibility for dialogue between them. As is evidenced bythe works that followed in its wake, See Under. Love, constitutes animportant step towards subverting the exclusionary conceptions ofIsrael's conventional view of the Holocaust and ] it to a dialoguewith important voices that have long been suppressed from w ithin. NOTES (1.) Ayen erekh: 'ahava'[See Under: Love] (Jerusalem:Keter, 1986), pp. 100-101. Parenthetical page references in the textwill be to this book followed by an italicized reference to its Englishtranslation: David Grossman This page is about the Israeli author. For the television director, see David Grossman (director). David Grossman (Hebrew: דויד גרוסמן, See Under: Love, translated by BetsyRosenberg Betsy Rosenberg was the host of EcoTalk on Air America Radio. The program was broadcast every weeknight from 9-10 PM EST. Its last show broadcast on May 19, 2007. The show was dropped during the network's "Air America 2.0" re-launch. (New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989), p. 109. Although thisbook is more successfully translated than most Hebrew novels, I oftenfound it necessary to provide my own translations in order to preservethe authenticity of the original text. Consequently, the italicized pagereferences indicate the places in which a different version of thequoted text may be found in the English translation. (2.) For representative critiques of Israeli writers who are seento have violated a "moral code" and crossed ethical "redlines" by engaging in imaginary representations of Holocausthorrors, see: Avner Holtzman, "The Holocaust Theme in IsraeliFiction: A New Wave" [Hebrew], Dappim Lemehkar Besifrut 10 (1996):147-154. (3.) The Street of Crocodiles (1934) and Sanatorium Under the Signof the Hourglass Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is the English title of Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą, a novel by the Polish writer and painter Bruno Schulz, published in 1937. (1937), collected in: The Complete Fiction of BrunoSchulz translated from the Polish by Celina Wieniewska (New York: Walkerand Company, 1989). (4.) The concluding story of Schulz's Sanatorium Under theSign of the Hourglass is titled "Father's Last Escape."In it, the narrator's father finally accomplishes his escape from alife he detests by transforming himself into a lobster. (5.) Schulz, pp. 137-139. (6.) It is a measure of the dense patterning in this novel thatShlomo actually is Shloma son of Tobias: Shlomo is Hebrew for Shloma.Shlomo's father's rarely mentioned name is Tuvia (pp. 28, 29),which is Hebrew for Tobias. GILEAD MORAHG is a Professor of Hebrew Literature Hebrew literature,literary works, from ancient to modern, written in the Hebrew language.Early LiteratureThe great monuments of the earliest period of Hebrew literature are the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison “University of Wisconsin” redirects here. For other uses, see University of Wisconsin (disambiguation).A public, land-grant institution, UW-Madison offers a wide spectrum of liberal arts studies, professional programs, and student activities. . He is the author of over fifty studies and essayson Israeli literature.