Kertész versus Semprún: On the Aesthetic Mediability of Violence

This article analyses the question of mediability of violence by the novels of two writers who survived the concentration camp of Buchenwald but had very different experiences of the camp: Imre Kertesz, deported from Hungary as a Jewish adolescent, and Jorge Semprun, deported after being made prisoner by the Gestapo as a member of the Maquis. Both authors have an opposite conception of the traditional value in relation to the aesthetic mediability of violence. This contribution analyses the different approaches to tradition in the works of two authors, specifically in relation to the relationship between Weimar and Buchenwald. Weimar acts as a chronotoph and a paradigmatic example of the stranded tradition. For Kertesz, the atonality he claims for his aesthetics is analysed in Der Spurensucher. Erzahlung (“The Searcher for Traces”), for Semprun, the debate on tradition is analysed in Aquel domingo (“What a Beautiful Sunday”) and Vivire con su nombre, morira con el mio (“I Will Live with his Name, He Will Die with Mine”).