Elie Wiesel: A Retrospective, Week #5
Our text this week is Wiesel’s 1964 The Gates of the Forest, first published in French and translated to the English in 1966. This novel, set at the beginning of World War II, follows the struggle of a seventeen-year-old Hungarian Jew, Gregor, who is hiding from both Nazi and Hungarian forces in a cave in the forest. Gregor meets a mysterious stranger, Gavriel, who saves his life. He eventually leaves the cave and hides in the village below, posing as a deaf-mute; and, later, seeks refuge among the Jewish resistance fighters. Although woven together as a single narrative, the work is episodic, with each symbolic encounter or scene revealing the identity crisis that Gregor (and by extension, the Jew, in particular the surviving Jew) is now faced with. The passages we will share this week reflect the lessons that that Gregor learns: from the ghosts of his past, from Gavriel, and from his own survival.
Passage #1:
Wiesel prefaced his novel with this famous Hasidic tale to which he added a coda:
When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov
Saw misfortune threatening the Jews
It was his custom
To go into a certain part of the forest to meditate.
There he would light a fire,
Say a special prayer,
And the miracle would be accomplished
And the misfortune averted.
Later when his disciple,
The celebrated Magid of Mezritch,
Has occasion, for the same reason,
To intercede with heaven,
He would go to the same place in the forest
And say: “Master of the Universe, listen!
I do not know how to light the fire,
But I am still able to say the prayer.”
And again the miracle would be accomplished.
Still later,
Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov,
In order to save his people once more,
Would go into the forest and say:
“I do not know how to light the fire,
I do not know the prayer,
But I know the place
And this must be sufficient.”
It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.
Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn
To overcome misfortune.
Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands,
He spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire
And I do not know the prayer;
I cannot even find the place in the forest.
All I can do is to tell the story,
And this must be sufficient.”
And it was sufficient.
God made man because he loves stories.
Passage #2:
Suddenly he fell silent; winner or loser, Gregor didn’t know. He could still see his grandfather’s lips moving as they said, “Don’t be afraid, my child. Madmen are just wandering messengers, and without them the world couldn’t endure. Without them there would be no surprise; they surprise even the Creator because they escape from Him and regard Him with pity. Their mission on earth? To persuade us that we don’t know how to count, that numbers deceive or trap us. Are you listening?” And heavy-heartedly Gregor answered, “Yes, Grandfather, I’m listening. I think I’ve lived only for this encounter and for this night.” He could hardly hear him whispering, “That, my child, is true of all encounters, of every night.” (14)
Passage #3:
Gavriel’s feverish voice was silent. He panted like a man choking to death, then managed to catch his breath and go on: “You mustn’t forget laughter either. Do you know what laughter is? I’ll tell you. It’s God’s mistake. When God made man in order to bend him to his wishes he carelessly gave him the gift of laughter. Little did he know that later that earthworm would use it as a weapon of vengeance. When he found out, there was nothing he could do; it was too late to take back the gift. And yet he tried his best. He drove man out of paradise, invented an infinite variety of sins and punishments, and made him conscious of his own nothingness, all in order to prevent him from laughing. But, as I say, it was too late. God made a mistake before man made his. What they have in common is that they are both irreparable.” (21)
Passage #4:
Spring continued; the war too: they complemented each other perfectly, the one accentuating the other, each prolonging the other’s life. Cold weather isn’t suitable to murder; it slows it down. As a conscientious artisan the killer prefers to work in the sun: brave and free, knowing no fear, loving hard work and good health, relaxed in his movements and guiltless in the eyes of his fellow men, the killer knows that he is following the right way. “We’re doing it for the good of mankind,” said the philosophers of murder, waiting for the rest of the world to congratulate them. (61)
Passage #5:
“Just the same you must admit it’s strange,” said Lieb. “It took a war to make our paths cross again.” His eyes blazed in the dark, and Gregor was once more a schoolboy.
“That’s the purpose of war.” said Gregor, concealing his emotion. “It intensifies and underlines everything strange. War broke out in order that our paths might cross. War has fun; it overturns law and order, shakes the trees, and says to men: Get yourselves out of this mess. Suddenly children are older than their parents, and war says to them both: Go on, look each other in the face, and we’ll see what happens. But nothing happens. Fathers and children are content to look each other in the face, and they die without having understood the game they have been playing. Then war laughs. Why not? It has every right to. It plants you in front of a stranger and says, Love him, kill him, humiliate him, and you obey without asking yourself whether it is right. An hour later you will be loved or killed or humiliated in your turn. At bottom we know all this, but we play the game as if it were for fun. That’s what’s strange.” (121-122)
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