The Novelist As Teacher
WIESEL, ELIE
Writers & Writing THE NOVELIST AS TEACHER BY ELIE WIESEL Should I admit it? Teaching used to frighten me. For a number of reasons. The first is very simple: Not having taken my degree, I was...
...The other reasons are somewhat more complicated...
...we are not trying to win victories in our discussions...
...They are always reassuring, reinvigorating...
...Possibly my students—children of survivors of the concentration camps for the most part—are not like others...
...At the end of the semester or of the year, I note the change that has taken place in certain students...
...I know: It all sounds too good to be true...
...We are not adversaries...
...You can disguise yourself in a book...
...To be sure, a similar fate can befall the written word...
...Repetition, yes...
...Here we understand neither event nor person...
...The Talmud is right: You must learn from them...
...And our heads swim...
...Still, at the end of the semester we must hurry...
...Or else, to put it simply, I am very lucky...
...This Hassidic kingdom, full of warmth and mystery, is beautiful and moving...
...or my cruelest punishment...
...Sometimes it returns unrecognizable, distorted...
...adventures of men seeking warmth, simplicity...
...One cannot really know it unless one belongs...
...otherwise we should part without knowing the end of the story...
...Not in class...
...who don't fool around...
...Exposed to the scrutiny of everyone...
...Writing, you are always more or less secretive: Surrounded by different walls, you hide yourself as best you can...
...Our relations have been devoid of tension or suspicion...
...We plunge into the vibrant universe of the Midrash...
...A protest against indifference and loneliness...
...students who aren't in revolt...
...How was it possible for them to desire to live and create in a universe destroyed by its own curse...
...But that is not the same thing...
...I didn't say that...
...you reveal yourself when you speak...
...Even if it is misunderstood, the written word remains faithful to you—if you remain faithful to it...
...A class without problems...
...And that of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov...
...The first is very simple: Not having taken my degree, I was afraid I would not know how to go about it...
...How could they possibly avoid going mad...
...That ought to mean something...
...Judged...
...In general I mistrust the spoken word...
...His essay, written in French, was translated by Norman Jacobs...
...Silence doesn't contribute in the slightest to knowledge...
...We become acquainted with their disciples...
...More precisely, no sooner has it left your lips than it is no longer yours...
...That's not all...
...In a book, what you don't say is important—or rather, it is as important as what you do say...
...Speaking, you must take off your mask: At once you feel naked disarmed defenseless...
...A movement based on friendship...
...I prefer to listen...
...it is possessed by too many people...
...Yes, my students often move me...
...We enter, too, the enchanting and fervent world of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, the forerunner of Kafka...
...This is my greatest reward...
...Everything depends on the students...
...One approaches it by its legends—legends that are naive and like fairy tales...
...Our reading is a kind of exploration: a six-page tale by Rabbi Nachman takes an entire semester...
...requently students use the occasion of our shared experiences to ask me personal questions: Do I believe in God...
...I am incapable of speaking of myself or of my books...
...For example: I don't like to speak to more than one person at a time...
...Then, another thing: Between speaking and writing, there is an essential difference...
...and they with me...
...Listening to visitors tell of their griefs, certain Masters sink into melancholy and depression...
...The writer is, all things considered, more to be envied than the university professor...
...reading, we better understand the extent to which these distant personages are among us...
...then to overcome it...
...The writer does not see the effect—or, what is worse, the absence of any effect?of his words on the young adolescent faces that perhaps wish only to maintain their illusions and their rights to a future...
...Joseph: the first Kissinger in Jewish history...
...Is it true, asks a daughter of survivors, is it true that after the War, the survivors had the will—amid a devastated world—to bring forth life...
...Job: our eternal companion...
...Do I pray...
...Sometimes after a long silence, a boy or a girl will question themselves while questioning me: Is it true that they celebrated marriages in the ghettos, that married couples had children and sang lullabies to them...
...Discreet, modest, they know just how far they can go...
...Thanks to them, the exchange becomes true and whole...
...I am frank with them...
...We penetrate into ghettos mute with fear, into suffocating underground bunkers, into the concentration camps...
...But not the Hassidim...
...So much so, that I have reached a point where I enjoy my courses...
...I do not respond...
...We have our problems, even our revolts...
...After all, what is Hassidism...
...Their anguish is reflected in ours...
...we meet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob: our contemporaries...
...First you learn to conceal your timidity...
...who don't wish to affirm their identities...
...And yet, you finally get used to it...
...But not in a book...
...But they don't come between us...
...My students are understanding of my feelings, friendly, almost charitable...
...They know it so they don't take advantage...
...And inevitably, my original fear reappears: Am I right to prefer the written word to the spoken...
...Here again, we read together works—wills, testimony—written by the dead or their survivors...
...What...
...at other times I feel sorry for him...
...As we progress in our Elie Wiesel, whose books include Souls on Fire, A Beggar in Jerusalem and One Generation After, is also Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at the City College of the City University of New York...
...Sometimes I admire the novelist who feels the need to explain or comment upon his novel...
...we read out loud, as if praying, bare austere documents in which every word, every number is a Kaddish for an entire people, and we find ourselves ashamed to look at each other...
...Isaac: also a survivor...
...their destiny affects ours...
...We're not trying to satisfy our curiosity or our learning in order to please our egos—or to go on ego-trips—but to undertake and pursue a common quest...
...The real problem arises when we approach the themes that touch us most closely, themes deriving from the most recent Jewish catastrophe...
...The Rabbis who are most burdened are the ones who expect and demand joy...
...We recite the poems written by children in the shadow of the ovens...
...We share them...
...We read together texts, poems, legends of other times and worlds...
...Reading those Hassidic tales, you can't help loving those Masters, those wise men who know how to listen and how to share—just as you can't help loving their disciples who come with their eyes and hands open to grasp a bit of faith, a bit of peace...
Vol. 58 • December 1975 • No. 24
