Comedic Distance in Holocaust Literature
Comedic Distance in Holocaust Literature
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大屠杀文学中的喜剧距离
DOI：
10.1111/j.1542-734x.1995.1801_35.x
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发表时间：
1995
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Mark E. Cory
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mark E. Cory
在罗伯特·肖的《玻璃亭里的人》的银幕版中，有一个时刻，由马克西米利安·谢尔出色地扮演的穿制服的军官被揭露不是拉格科曼丹党卫军上校多夫，而是幸存者亚瑟·戈德曼。泄露的是他的幽默，他典型的犹太幽默。在萧伯纳的戏剧中，这并不是一个有趣的时刻，但它作为结局的效果取决于我们逐渐意识到，事实上，这出戏已经融入了大量的幽默，其中大部分是讽刺和黑暗的。在1962年以色列绑架和审判阿道夫·艾希曼的作品中，幽默可能看起来不协调，甚至侮辱了大屠杀的受害者，但肖有效地利用它来建立对他自己的受害者主人公的同情。反思还产生了其他幽默的例子，这是一个在关于大屠杀的大量批评文献中基本上被忽视的特征。这些例子中幽默的不同方面说明了这一现象的复杂性。安妮·弗兰克在日记中忏悔的青春期顽皮与罗尔夫·霍赫胡特在《代理人》第一幕中人物的淫秽笑话几乎没有共同之处，更不用说与他邪恶的医生的嘲笑了。彼得·韦斯关于法兰克福奥斯威辛集中营审判的纪录片《调查》系统地运用幽默来描述道德破产，因为被告之间的笑话是以牺牲幸存的证人为代价的。相比之下，这些目击者谨慎地避免幽默，表明了道德问题的高度严重性。在大屠杀幸存者的作品中，最明显的喜剧元素倾向于黑色幽默。在西蒙·维森塔尔的中篇小说《向日葵》中，叙述者讲述了一次处决，一个村里的小丑给每一具悬挂的尸体披上“犹太肉”的标签。后来在同一部作品中，自传体主人公开玩笑说，他宁愿睡觉，直到上帝回来。保罗·刘易斯（Paul Lewis）在他关于哥特文学中幽默与恐惧的开创性著作中，提出了一种幽默在恐惧环境中发挥作用的分类法：它可以被用来“建立一种暂时的正常感”，作为一种“应对或尽量减少可怕事件”的手段，被邪恶或善良的力量用来“维护和庆祝他们的优越性”，被受害者用来“超越他们的痛苦，“以及作为“疯狂或恶魔附身的标志”（刘易斯112）。大屠杀文学中的许多幽默例子，包括这里引用的一些，都以同样的方式发挥作用。霍赫胡特的医生，松散的基础上臭名昭著的门格勒博士，是通过他的残酷和嘲弄的幽默感，至少是疯狂的，也许拥有化身邪恶。安妮·弗兰克勇敢的幽默感“尽管一切”帮助她，以及我们作为读者，超越了她在秘密附件中生活的剥夺。维森塔尔的角色西蒙通过开玩笑说上帝在度假来应对他失去的信仰。在韦斯的《调查》中，当那些受审的人炫耀他们所认为的优越感时，笑声从被告的队伍中升起，就像一个邪恶的合唱。最初的喜剧外观埃利wiedes的摩西在夜间执事帮助建立一种正常感之前，灼热的侵犯运输和营地介绍我们到l 'univers concentrationnaire。(1)然而，大屠杀文学中的一些幽默例子使我们超越了哥特式小说中漫画的功能，并呼吁扩大分类法，以适应暴行美学（Langer 22）。其中一个功能是界定我们对大屠杀事件的道德反应的界限。(2)这是矛盾的，因为在对负面人物的描写中引入了不恰当的、通常是野蛮的幽默，然后又抑制了那些人物的幽默--无论是受害者还是非受害者--作者希望读者同情他们。我们同情霍赫胡特的《代理人》中的丰塔纳神父，同情犹太受害者，同情神秘的党卫军军官格斯坦;我们对德国军工联合体和天主教会中的许多其他人物的排斥，是因为他们的法西斯笑话品味低下。…
There is a moment in the screen version of Robert Shaw's The Man in the Glass Booth when the uniformed officer, played brilliantly by Maximillian Schell, is revealed not to be Lagerkommandant SS Col. Dorf but the survivor Arthur Goldman. The giveaway is his humor, his characteristically Jewish humor. This is not a funny moment in Shaw's drama, but its effect as denouement depends upon our dawning realization that in fact the play has been laced with a great deal of humor, most of it sardonic and dark. In a work inspired by the Israeli abduction and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1962, humor might seem incongruous or even insulting to victims of the Holocaust, but Shaw uses it effectively to build sympathy for his own victim-protagonist. Reflection yields still other examples of humor, a feature largely ignored in the huge critical literature on the Holocaust. The very different aspects of humor in these examples illustrate the complexity of the phenomenon. The adolescent impishness of Anne Frank's confessions to her diary have little in common with the bawdy jests of Rolf Hochhuth's characters in Act I of The Deputy and still less with the mocking laughter of his sinister Doctor. Peter Weiss's documentary drama on the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, The Investigation, systematically employs humor as a way to characterize moral bankruptcy as in-jokes are traded among the accused at the expense of the surviving witnesses. By contrast, the careful avoidance of humor by these same witnesses signals the high seriousness of the moral issues at stake. In works written by actual Holocaust survivors, the most conspicuous comic elements tend towards gallows humor. In Simon Wiesenthal's novella The Sunflower the narrator reports an execution at which a village wag drapes each hanging corpse with the label "kosher meat." Later in the same work, the autobiographical protagonist jokes that he would rather just sleep until God comes back. In his seminal work on humor and fear in Gothic literature, Paul Lewis suggests a taxonomy for the way humor can function in fearful circumstances: it can be used "to establish a temporary sense of normality," as a means of "coping with or minimizing fearful occurrences," by evil or benevolent forces "to assert and celebrate their superiority," by victims "in rising above their pain," and as a "sign of madness or demonic possession" (Lewis 112). Many examples of humor in Holocaust literature, including some of those cited here, function precisely in these same ways. Hochhuth's Doctor, based loosely on the infamous Dr. Mengele, is shown through his cruel and taunting sense of humor to be at least mad and perhaps possessed of incarnate evil. Anne Frank's spunky good humor "despite everything" helps her, and us as readers, rise above the deprivations of her life in the Secret Annexe. Wiesenthal's character Simon copes with his loss of faith by joking that God is on vacation. Laughter rises from the ranks of the accused in Weiss's The Investigation like an evil chorus as those on trial flaunt their perceived superiority. The initial comic appearance of Elie Wiesel's Moshe the Beadle in Night helps establish a sense of normality before the searing violations of the transports and camps introduce us to l'univers concentrationnaire.(1) Some examples of humor in Holocaust literature take us beyond the functions of the comic in Gothic fiction, however, and call for an expanded taxonomy appropriate to an aesthetics of atrocity (Langer 22). One of these functions is to define the boundaries of our moral response to the events of the Holocaust.(2) This occurs paradoxically by the introduction of inappropriate, often savage humor in the depiction of negative characters, and then by the suppression of humor in those characters--whether victims or non-victims--with whom the author wants the reader to empathize. We empathize with Father Fontana in Hochhuth's The Deputy, with the Jewish victims and with the enigmatic SS officer Gerstein; our rejection of many of the other characters in the German military-industrial complex and the Catholic Church is conditioned by the tastelessness of their fascist jokes. …