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Kaddish for a Child Not Born | Introduction

Kaddish for a Child Not Born by Imre Kertész is the third book in a series of four novels which examine the life of a man who survives the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Kaddish focuses on this man in his middle age as he reflects upon his childhood, his failed marriage, and his survival thus far. His wife leaves him because he refuses to father a child. She realizes that he does not want to live but she very much does. The narrator uses his writing to keep himself going. The story is in the form of a monologue by this man, and the novel has no chapter divisions or other breaks.

Kaddish was published in Hungary in 1990, twenty-five years after the first novel of the four appeared. It was first translated into English in 1997 by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson. A new translation by Tim Wilkinson (retitled Kaddish for an Unborn Child) was released in 2004. Although Kertész's first novel Fateless (1975; English translation, 1992 and 2004) was initially coldly received in Hungary, his literary talent was gradually acknowledged. He was relatively unknown, even in Hungary, when he was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born Summary

Kaddish for a Child Not Born opens with an emphatic "No!" The narrator is responding to an as-yet unknown question while on a walk with a philosopher. He thinks about how "life itself demands explanations from us," and we end up "explaining ourselves to death." He would rather not talk, but he finds the urge irresistible. The narrator and philosopher are staying at a resort near the Central Mountains in Hungary. The narrator explains, "if I didn't work I would have to exist, and if I existed, I don't know what I would be forced to do then." But he does not want to socialize with his fellow intellectuals at the resort. His meeting in the woods with Dr. Oblath, a professor of philosophy, is by chance.

In thinking about the question, the narrator claims "with this 'no' I destroyed everything, demolished everything, above all, my ill-fated, short-lived marriage." Dr. Oblath has asked the narrator if he has a child. Although the answer is a simple "no," the underlying decision is complex and at the heart of the story to be told. Dr. Oblath expresses that he and his wife do not have a child, and it has only recently occurred to him to regret their lack of offspring. For the rest of their walk the narrator and Dr. Oblath talk about the state of the world and other large topics, to which the narrator privately assigns little value. He finally admits to himself that he stays to walk and talk with Dr. Oblath to avoid his own emptiness.

This emptiness catches up with him at night, when he is alone in his room. There is a thunder-storm and his mind, mirroring the explosive weather, goes back over the question of children: "'Were you to be a dark-eyed girl? With pale spots of scattered freckles around your little nose? Or a stubborn boy? With cheerful, hard eyes like blue-grey pebbles?'" Many years pass before he is able to capture his thoughts about his unborn children and what they mean on paper, "[his] life in the context of the potentiality of [their] existence."

The narrator thinks of his career as a literary translator and writer, which draws him to thoughts about his ex-wife. She questioned him about his motives: "'if you don't want to be successful, then why do you bother to write at all?'" He acknowledges that his ex-wife is more insightful than he originally acknowledged. Now when they meet each other she seems to feel guilty and nostalgic. He bears her no ill will because all she wants is to live fully, which she could not do while married to him.

The narrator slips back to thinking about his writing, pondering how he used it to engage in a dialogue with God, but now God is dead so the dialogue needs be with other people and with oneself.

He recalls how as a child he was sent one summer to visit relatives in the country. He thinks of these relatives as "real Jews," those who observe rituals and rites of their religion, Judaism. While there, the narrator opens a bedroom door and sees his aunt as "a bald woman in a red gown in front of a mirror." The narrator, as a child, is disgusted and mortified; this image comes to signify real Jewishness for him.

When the war engulfs Hungary, the narrator finds himself, a secular Jew, being grouped with people like his relatives, and he suddenly sees himself as "a bald woman in a red gown in front of a mirror." The narrator then explains how he has come to terms with his Jewishness. One time while waiting for his future wife at a café he overhears two beautiful young women talk about men. One tells the other that she could not have sex with a Jew, which enrages the narrator.

His future wife then arrives. She has read his work and wants to talk to him about it. He remembers their love when it was young and is pained. He finally settles on wanting to remember because "memory is knowledge." His thoughts about memory and knowledge trail into ones about the war, the Holocaust, and being a survivor. He makes no fuss over being a survivor, although he finds himself writing compulsively, inexplicably. He makes a living from his writing although he does not feel he has to because he could have chosen some other profession. Ultimately he feels there is a very serious connection between his writing and survival. His writing does not offer solutions, just occupation and possible escape. He considers his writing to be a form of grave digging, a grave begun at the concentration camps: "the pen is my spade." He sees his fate is not so much about choosing childlessness as about just never having children. Earlier in life, when thinking about his unborn children, the narrator saw his "life in the context of the potentiality of [their] existence." Now he sees their "nonexistence in the context of the necessary and fundamental liquidation of [his own] existence."

He remembers again the party at which he met his wife. Someone got the idea to name where they were during the war. When someone says "Auschwitz" (just ahead of the narrator), the host declares that that response is "unbeatable," as if this were a contest grimly won. The partygoers then begin to discuss a popular book which contained this sentence: "Auschwitz cannot be explained." The narrator is appalled at how easily the intelligent people at this party accept the value of this sentence. He voices his opinion and at this point his future wife notices him and comes to speak to him afterward.

He says that now he rarely voices his opinions, although they have not changed. He does not go to the resort to exchange opinions with intellectuals. When he is not at the resort, he is in his apartment in Józsefváros, a district near the heart of Budapest. It is the same place where he lived as a... » Complete Kaddish for a Child Not Born Summary