Imre Kertész’s autobiographical novel, Fateless, was published in Hungary in 1975 and Kertész himself has written the screenplay for the film Fateless (2005), which tells of the writer’s experiences when, as a 14 year old middle class Jewish boy, who had lived a relatively comfortable life with his family in Budapest throughout the early years of the war, he was transported by train, first to Auschwitz, where he spent three days, and then to a labour camp at Buchenwald.
Buchenwald was close to the ‘culturally celebrated city of Weimar’ and somewhere within the camp, marked with a commemorative plaque and protected from the prisoners by a fence, was ‘a nobly spreading tree that Goethe had planted with his own hands.’ The camp at Buchenwald contained ‘only one crematorium.’ In the film everything is seen as through the eyes of the young boy so that we are often as uninformed about what is happening as the prisoners themselves must have been. Much of what Kertész learned during his struggle to survive was taught to him by a kindly older Hungarian prisoner, whose concern for the young boy gives some relief from the horrors of the film. As a result of his labours Kertész suffered a badly infected knee and was treated in the prison hospital, where he was given comparatively clean bedding and left to rest as he could. I have read the suggestion that this might have been in preparation for some kind of medical experimentation to be undertaken on prisoners.
When the war ended and the German army capitulated, the camp was liberated and Kertész returned with a Russian escort to his homeland, by then under Communist control. The boy was not welcomed with open arms by those who had remained at home, and he felt a nostalgia for the friendships he had formed in the hell of the prison camp. ‘In a certain sense, life there had been clearer and simpler.’ When asked by a journalist what he felt on being home again, Kertész replied, ‘Hatred’ and, ‘for everyone.’ It is perhaps unsurprising that it was some thirty years before Fateless was written and could be published. It takes time before such damaging experiences are fully acknowledged by both perpetrator and victim. Kertész , who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, chose to remain in the land of his birth, but for many Jews such a choice was neither possible nor desirable and in 1948 the State of Israel was created.
In the 5th of his 2006 Reith Lectures, broadcast by the BBC this May, Daniel Barenboim addressed the subject of the present Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I would urge anyone who has not heard these talks to get a transcript from the BBC and read what this great musician has to say, in particular about the difference between strength and power, both in music and in life.
In this final lecture, addressed to a mainly Jewish audience in Jerusalem, Barenboim points out that it is essential to understand that difference. ‘Power has only one kind of strength, which is that of control.’ And we are reminded that in music, ‘even the most powerful chord has to allow the inner voices to be heard, otherwise it has no tension, only brutal aggressive power.’ In music tempo the Italian word rubato means ‘stolen time’ and when playing music, if you take time within a phrase, then you must find the right place to give it back. ‘What is difficult in real life is something that is essential in music, that is to be able to start from scratch each time we play something, because what we did this morning is gone, and we must start over as if for the first time but with the knowledge of the last time.’ Barenboim points out that those who play in an orchestra must be constantly aware of everybody else, and this, he believes, is a model for society. It would be easy to dismiss his view as hopelessly idealistic, but when such an aim is linked to the work Barenboim has done with his West Eastern Divan Orchestra, where youngArab and Israeli musicians work, play and above all, listen to each other, then we must be grateful to him for finding a means by which in a ‘practical utopia young people can express freely and hear each other,’ and where the universal metaphorical language of music can become ‘the link that provides a means of understanding how the world could, and should, function.’ Fateless, novel by Imre Kertész, is newly released in paperback by Vintage at £6.99.The film of the novel, Fateless, directed by Lajos Koltai (2005), will be available on DVD from amazon.co.uk on 21st August 2006.
Daniel Barenboim’s Reith Lectures can be downloaded from the BBC website: bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2006/lectures.shtml