French Literature Reviews - 2026

Writing After Auschwitz?
Other Literary Studies

Pierre Mertens, Écrire après Auschwitz ? Semprun, Levi, Cayrol, Kertész, éd. La Renaissance du livre, « Paroles daube », 6.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Writing after Auschwitz? How can one even think of writing, of naming the unnamable? Pierre Mertens invites us to read those authors who, having returned from the death camps, chose to speak out. He examines both how they found their voice and how they articulated the abject. While the philosopher Adorno declared that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" (or that art and poetry became unthinkable after Auschwitz), these authors took the opposite stance: Paul Celan, Primo Levi, Robert Antelme, Jean Cayrol, Jorge Semprun, Micheline Maurel, Soazig Aaron, and finally Imre Kertész, recently honored by the Nobel Prize committee. Each of these writers addressed the camps in their own unique language, and paradoxically, through fiction, some of these passages capture an even deeper truth than direct testimony.

The question of how to represent the Holocaust in literature has remained a central preoccupation for twentieth-century thinkers. Theodor Adorno’s assertion regarding the barbarism of poetry after Auschwitz serves as a foundational tension in this field, highlighting the ethical dilemma of aestheticizing extreme trauma. Pierre Mertens’s Écrire après Auschwitz? Semprun, Levi, Cayrol, Kertész examines authors who returned from the death camps and chose to speak out, exploring how they found their voice and articulated the abject.

The works discussed in the volume demonstrate how fiction can serve as a vehicle for conveying the realities of the camps. By focusing on writers such as Paul Celan, Primo Levi, Robert Antelme, Jean Cayrol, Jorge Semprun, Micheline Maurel, Soazig Aaron, and Imre Kertész, the text addresses how these authors navigated the difficulty of naming the unnamable. Readers interested in the intersection of trauma, ethics, and the evolution of post-war narrative forms may find these reflections on the act of writing particularly relevant.