Appelfeld, Aharon | James Hatley (essay date 1991)
James Hatley (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: “Impossible Mourning: Two Attempts to Remember Annihilation,” in Centennial Review, Vol. 35, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 445–59.
[In the following essay, Hatley addresses the role of memory and mourning in the novella, Badenheim 1939.]
I. BADENHEIM 1939: ANNIHILATED BODIES
Where are these dead? In a memorable scene from Badenheim 1939, a novel by Aharon Appelfeld, several fictive Jews gather at the home of two fictive ladies of the evening, long-time and beloved residents of a fictional European resort. The characters improvise a small party on the last night in Badenheim before their forced departure to Nazi-occupied Poland. Poised on the brink of their extermination in one of the death-camps and yet surreptitiously conspiring to remain ignorant of their fate, these fictional characters spend an evening celebrating this small bit of life they must leave behind:
...[The entire page is 6676 words long]
Navigate
