A Contribution to the Post-Shoah Lurianism: the Iron Tracks by Aharon Appelfeld Cover Image

Przyczynek do pozagładowego lurianizmu. Droga żelazna Aharona Appelfelda
A Contribution to the Post-Shoah Lurianism: the Iron Tracks by Aharon Appelfeld

Author(s): Przemysław Tacik
Subject(s): Other Language Literature, History of the Holocaust, History of Antisemitism, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Aharon Appelfeld; The Iron Tracks; Shoah; Kabbalah; Lurianism;

Summary/Abstract: The article reinterprets The Iron Tracks by Aharon Appelfeld as a work of Lurianic Kabbalah adapted to the world after the Shoah. It is a reality of collapsed transcendence in which no divinity or ethics hold universal validity. As in Lurianism, this world contains entrapped sparks of former transcendence: dispersed Jewish survivors, artefacts of Jewish life and a Jewish Communist organization. Appelfeld portrays a post-survival world based on permanent repetition and unrepented guilt. The gist of his novel, however, lies in the slim possibility of redemption which the main protagonist, Erwin Siegelbaum, opens up with an act of vengeance on a war criminal.

  • Issue Year: 22/2019
  • Issue No: 44
  • Page Range: 285-304
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Polish