In the wake of the spatial and affective turns in Literary Studies in general, and the study of Jewish literatures in particular, this volume shifts focus from the extensity of exile and return to the intensities of sense of place and belonging across a moving landscape of 20th and 20st century literatures, Jewish and other. It brings together contemporary writers and literary scholars who collectively map these intensities onto a bodily word world in transit and textures of habitable, readable space as passage. Works by Hélène Cixous, Cécile Wajsbrot, Alex Epstein, Almog Behar, and Svetlana Boym explore sites made up of layers of passages, taking configurations of sayability and readability as forms, poetic and political, of inhabiting the material world. The contributions by literary scholars explore the theoretical potential of a mapping of such sites in studies of modalities of belonging and unbelonging in modern and contemporary works of literature. The volume collects a collaborative investigation of the exigencies and potentialities of sense of place and belonging through literature, Jewish and other. It offers a literary perspective on current debates in a variety of fields, including literary criticism, human geography, architectural theory, and translation studies.
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Suis-moi. Hack die Leber. Encore! Cet allemand qui remonte! Hache le foie! Compris?
JENNY
Ja
SELMA
Stop! Attends que ce soit froid
JENNY
Mais c’est froid! J’ai attendu
SELMA
Alors hache! Je vais te dire une chose: Osnabrück, c’est fini! On ne m’aura plus
JENNY
Je ne sais pas pourquoi nous y sommes allées après cinquante ans c’est idiot
SELMA
N’écrase pas avec la fourchette. On aurait pu refuser
JENNY
J’écrase avec la machine. C’est toi qui as accepté. A notre âge on peut tout refuser
SELMA
Mettre tout sur le compte de mes quatre-vingt-neuf ans ça me déplaît. Moi je suis toujours au volant. N’écrase pas trop!
Hélène Cixous
Oy!
– You Mustn’t Say That – Translated by Eric Prenowitz
Characters: Selma Meyer, 89: the elder sister
Jenny Meyer, 86: the younger sister
On their return from Osnabrück, Hanover.
In the kitchen, Paris.
SELMA (to Jenny)
Listen to me. Hack die Leber. Again! That German again! Chop the liver! Understand?
JENNY
Ja
SELMA
Stop! Wait for it to cool
JENNY
But it is cool! I did wait
SELMA
So get chopping! Let me tell you something: Osnabrück, that’s it! They won’t get me again
JENNY
I don’t know why we went back after fifty years it’s idiotic
SELMA
Don’t mash it with the fork. We could have refused
JENNY
I’m mashing it with the machine. You’re the one who accepted. At our age we can refuse anything
SELMA
Blaming everything on my eighty-nine years, I don’t like that. I’m still driving. Don’t mash it too much!
JENNY
Laisse-moi faire. J’en ai fait du Leberhäckele depuis soixante-dix ans j’en ai fait!
SELMA
On m’a fait le coup plusieurs fois: « à presque quatre-vingt-dix ans vous ne pouvez pas refuser. Vous deux, nos dernières juives. Vous devez éduquer nos jeunes. »
JENNY
C’est drôle plus tu es vieille plus tu dois.
SELMA
Les deux soeurs Meyer qui les connaît à Osnabrück? Notre époque a totalement disparu.
Je n’aime pas ça, aller survivre. Je ne dois rien à l’Allemagne
JENNY
Je mets de l’ail?
SELMA
De l’ail! Du bist ja ganz verrückt! On n’est pas des paysans de la campagne ici! Laisse ça, je vais finir. La dernière main. Je vais te dire une chose que je ne voulais pas te dire: tout le monde est raciste, il y a au moins douze racismes, des racistes tu en trouves partout.
JENNY
Moi je ne l’avais pas remarqué
SELMA
Sur les bancs du parc dans le train, surtout chez les bouchers, tous des racistes, tu peux rien faire sans qu’il en tombe à poignées comme des cheveux dans la soupe.
JENNY
Tu me reproches de perdre mes cheveux!
SELMA
Je te reproche de ne pas porter une perruque, surtout dans la cuisine. Regarde ça, des cheveux dans le pâté.
JENNY
Let me do it. I’ve made some Leberhäckele in seventy years I’ve made my share!
SELMA
They’ve tried it on me more than once: “At nearly ninety years old you can’t refuse. The two of you, our last Jews. You must educate our youth.”
JENNY
Funny, the older you get the more you owe.
SELMA
The two Meyer sisters who knows them in Osnabrück? Our era has totally disappeared.
I don’t like that sort of thing, to go survive for them. I owe nothing to Germany
JENNY
Should I add some garlic?
SELMA
Garlic! Du bist ja ganz verrückt! We’re not peasants from the countryside! Leave it, I’ll finish. The last touch. I’m going to tell you something I didn’t want to tell you: everyone is racist, there are at least a dozen kinds of racism, there are racists everywhere.
JENNY
I hadn’t noticed that
SELMA
On park benches in the train, especially at the butcher’s, racists, every last one of them, you can’t lift a finger without handfuls of them dropping like a hair into your soup.
JENNY
Don’t blame me for losing my hair!
SELMA
I blame you for not wearing a wig, especially in the kitchen. Look: a hair in the liver.
JENNY
Au moins c’est les miens. A Osnabrück il y avait aussi cette dame chauve dans le café, tu te rappelles son nom on s’est souri.
SELMA
Frau Knoll la pharmacienne. Son mari était directeur à Theresienstadt.
JENNY
On a mangé des crêpes l’une en face de l’autre on s’est regardées et elle m’a souri. Entre chauves dames.
SELMA
On sentait qu’elle avait des difficultés à joindre les deux bouts de son budget. Mais moi j’aurais évité de lui sourire.
JENNY
C’est elle qui a commencé. Après on dit: la Juive, elle se croit fière, elle ne veut pas sourire.
SELMA
C’est pour ça. On finit quand même par sourire aux nazis et ça n’a plus de fin. Si j’avais su, je ne serais pas retournée à Osnabrück. Je n’étais pas retournée, pendant quarante ans ça ne m’a pas gênée, je pensais toujours on ne devrait jamais retourner en arrière
JENNY
On n’a pas pu faire autrement. On nous a invitées. On nous a obligées.
SELMA
Toi tu m’as obligée, comme d’habitude, dès qu’il y a une invitation, Jenny doit accepter.
JENNY
Mais c’est toi qui m’as écrit si je veux venir aussi.
SELMA
Je n’avais pas envie de retourner seule.
JENNY
At least it’s mine. In Osnabrück there was also that bald lady in the café, do you remember her name we smiled at each other.
SELMA
Frau Knoll the pharmacist. Her husband was the director of Theresienstadt.
JENNY
We were eating crepes across from each other our eyes met and she smiled at me. One bald lady to another.
SELMA
You could see she was having trouble making ends meet. But if it had been me, I’d have avoided smiling at her.
JENNY
She started it. Afterwards they say: the Jew she thinks she’s proud, she doesn’t want to smile.
SELMA
That’s why. You end up smiling at Nazis and there’s no end to it. Had I known, I wouldn’t have returned to Osnabrück. I hadn’t been back, for forty years it didn’t bother me, I always thought one should never return to the past
JENNY
We couldn’t have done otherwise. We were invited. We were obliged.
SELMA
It’s you who obliged me to go, as usual, as soon as there’s an invitation, Jenny has to accept.
JENNY
But you’re the one who wrote me if I want to come along.
SELMA
I didn’t feel like going back alone.
JENNY
Et toi tu as trouvé le programme de la Mairie très intéressant. On a été au théâtre d’Osnabrück et on jouait Die Dreigroschenoper. Et l’hôtel tu m’as dit c’est le meilleur celui qui était sur la place de la Cathédrale. Il y a un grand buffet pour le petit déjeuner
SELMA
Moi je ne suis pas allée pour l’hôtel, ça je l’ai dit pour toi. J’ai un peu hésité. Après je me suis dit il n’y a pas de raison de ne pas tendre la main. Je ne pensais plus au passé. De toutes les façons ces gens-là ne sont plus. Ma génération a disparu.
JENNY
Il y avait le maire aussi, la femme qui était le maire c’était pas une femme qui avait fait des études, elle était très gentille, c’est pour elle qu’on n’a pas pu dire non.
SELMA
Mais ça on ne l’a pas su avant. On n’a rien su avant. Et maintenant si j’avais su j’aurais préféré ne pas ajouter encore une nouvelle complication à toute cette histoire qui était déjà si compliquée à cause des nazis et maintenant par-dessus le marché il y a les nouveaux juifs aussi.
JENNY
C’est fait c’est fait.
SELMA
Les problèmes ont tellement changé. Alors maintenant je ne vais quand même pas me faire du souci pour les juifs d’Osnabrück d’aujourd’hui je m’en serais bien passée de ceux-là.
JENNY
La solution c’est d’oublier, un, deux, trois.
SELMA
Oublier, oublier, oublier. J’aurais dû y penser avant. Laisse cette prune, il n’y en a qu’une. C’est pour Hélène. Pour toi c’est un yaourt.
JENNY
Mais j’ai déjà mangé un yaourt ce matin
JENNY
And you thought the City Hall’s program looked interesting. We went to the Osnabrück theatre and they were doing Die Dreigroschenoper. And the hotel you told me it was the best in town the one across from the Cathedral. There’s a big buffet for breakfast
SELMA
I didn’t go because of the hotel, I only said that for you. I hesitated a little. Afterwards I told myself there’s no reason not to extend a hand. I didn’t think any more about the past. Besides those people are gone. My generation has disappeared.
JENNY
The mayor was there too, the woman who was the mayor, she wasn’t someone who’d had a higher education, she was very nice, it was for her sake we couldn’t say no.
SELMA
But we didn’t know that ahead of time. We didn’t know anything ahead of time. And now had I known I’d rather not have added a new complication to this whole story that was already so complicated because of the Nazis and now into the bargain there are the new Jews as well.
JENNY
What’s done is done.
SELMA
The problems have changed so much. And now I’m not going to start worrying about today’s Osnabrück Jews I could have done without them.
JENNY
The solution is to forget, one, two, three.
SELMA
Forget, forget, forget. I should have thought of that before. Leave that plum, there’s only one. It’s for Hélène. For you there’s a yoghurt.
JENNY
But I already had a yoghurt this morning
SELMA
Mais j’ai gardé cette prune pour Hélène. Un yaourt nature.
