Elie Wiesel’s office at Boston University is actually at the School of Theology, where they train pastors, rather than the Religion Department, where he teaches. I happened to be assigned the locker directly next to his office, and twice over my time there I had the pleasure, while bending for a book, of him opening his door smack into my head. You can tell a lot about a person by raw apologies. I wonder what you can tell about a person by their heart-wrenching writing about terror and despair. Wiesel’s personal grace and caring spirit does not really flow into Legends of Our Time. Nor does his pain and anger make it far off the page. In this brilliant, disturbing collection, Wiesel bares something that the world cannot very well handle and certainly not understand. Yet that he writes about the Holocaust so beautifully is—not quite a redemptive act, for how can one redeem God’s abandonment—but it is an artistic achievement that draws us toward the impossible task of making some sense of the senseless. One can expect him to attack God, for questions of theodicy, but his critique of Holocaust reflection is deeper. These stories rupture the notion that there is any coherent meaning to life. Perhaps some people find solace in building significance through religion or kindness or identity, but Wiesel urges, “Let us, therefore, not make an effort to understand, but rather to lower our eyes and not understand.” (234) He finds emptiness on a trip to his home town, something near to shallowness with his visit to young Russian Jews, deaf ears toward prophetic voice. Even his own prayer is “proof of my impotence.” (12) This is not a hopeful collection, though it retains something graceful, sublime. Partly as a character, partly because of the beauty of the language, we root for Wiesel to conquer grief, and we even get hints that he knows the path: “Where, after the long night, should the first ray of light come from, if not from us?” (83) But essentially this is art so passionate we must wonder how the artist can live anything like a normal life, much less a sanctified one.
What do You think about Legends Of Our Time (2004)?
