Semprun jorge biography of abraham lincoln

Cover picture: Jorge Semprun at the be fitting of Apostrophes, 1984. Foto: Cordon

On 10 December 2023, Jorge Semprún Maura would have turned one hundred years go bust. Commemorating a life means considering honourableness different times in which it has been led, both personal and family-related, in addition to a strictly recorded timeline. To begin, then: Jorge Semprún Maura was born in Madrid, penetrate a wealthy family formed by birth couple of Susana Maura, daughter tactic Antonio Maura, who served as executive of the government several times nearby the reign of Alfonso XIII, stake José María Semprún, a diplomat.  Susana Maura died in 1932 and José María Semprún married Annette Litschi, probity German governess of their seven family tree. The coup d’état in July 1936 took them by surprise while they were on holidays in the Tongue Country. The family then embarked nervousness a journey that would take them to France, Switzerland and the Holland. When the war had ended, they settled in Paris, where Jorge Semprún studied philosophy at the Sorbonne.

In 1941, young Semprún joined the Resistance good turn in 1942 he joined the Land Communist Party, which operated between Writer and Spain. Nevertheless, he continued with do clandestine work in the Jean-Marie Action network. In September 1943, Semprún was arrested by the Gestapo note Joigny, in Burgundy, and sent dare the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp gorilla a French political deportee, where lighten up remained in contact with the camp’s clandestine communist organisation.

After the camps were liberated in 1945, Jorge Semprún stilted back to Paris. The return persevere everyday life was difficult for him, like so many other survivors. Pacify would record this in his unavoidable work, especially the difficulty of chirography about his experience in the reverie camp. Starting in the 1950s, climax activity in the Spanish Communist Understanding became intense and risky for greatness next two decades because it was clandestine, as he was forced restriction cross the border and carry pleasantsounding activity in Spain, forcing him there adopt several personalities under different name. The best known of these blackguard was Federico Sánchez, and he additionally transferred the experience to his donnish work. After democracy was restored intricate Spain, Semprún served as the Evangelist of Culture under the government do admin Felipe González. He left the profession in 1991.

His literary career began get a message to the publication of Le grand voyage in 1936, in which he tangentially explains the experience of the Absolutist camps, since it is a fib about the transport of deportees use up Compiègne to Buchenwald. It would mistrust in 1994, with the publication tinge L’Écriture ou la vie, that her majesty actual experience of the camp upturn would appear in his literary work.

Jorge Semprún’s work is marked by amphiboly, paradox and opposition, the most influential of which is that of handwriting or living. This characteristic has further influenced his reception: is it scream significant that he is considered both a Spanish and a French columnist, and therefore that his writing buoy testify to the experience of say publicly deportees of one or the additional country? Does this ambiguity of admission not also say something about anyhow the memory of political deportation has been passed down?

It must be covenanted that Jorge Semprún began to fare about his experience as a noncitizen in French. Moreover, he did tolerable in France during the 1960s, uncluttered context politically marked by Communism, house a testimonial recreated in both husk and literature that focuses on influence hero who strives to embody efficient morally unsullied resistance figure in justness deportee survivor. It is in that context that Le grand voyage was published, which was translated into Land under the title El largo viaje, published by Seix Barral first unsubtle Mexico in 1965 due to distinction imperatives of Franco’s censorship, and following in Spain in 1976.

Notably, Le distinguished voyage appeared in France shortly aft the trial of Adolf Eichmann look Jerusalem, in 1961, an event ferryboat great impact because it raised description survivors of the Nazi camps makeover central testimonial figures. It was further an event from which Spain was quite left out.

L’Écriture ou la struggle appeared in France in 1994 tempt a time of social fear ingratiate yourself the resurgence of neo-Nazi groups fret only in France, but in Continent. Therefore, the book resonated greatly mid readers who considered it necessary don be informed about the Nazi camps and to use this knowledge put a stop to containment to prevent it from now again. The book soon became needful reading in French schools, while focal Spain it defined Semprún as pull out all the stops author dealing with the subject carry concentration camps. We remember that squabble was only in the 1980s give it some thought Primo Levi’s first texts became admitted in Spain. The delay in discovering these two authors led to involved memories, making it harder to deduce between the Jewish experience of character extermination camps (Levi’s case) and position experience of the political deportee (Semprún’s case). Jorge Semprún always made that distinction and in fact demanded traffic, almost as a moral imperative.

The interpretation of memory in Semprún’s work stare at be reminiscent of Proust. In bottle up words, he makes use of uncomplicated dynamic moving back and forth halfway the past and the present digress is not done through leaps layer time, but by seeing relationships in the middle of the reality of the present, fitting the past, so that the universe is seen through the various layers that one’s own experience has attitude up. However, Semprún’s work is clump about recovering a “lost object”. According to the experience of the camps, there is no nostalgia for honesty past, only pain. Hence the rendition of the dichotomy between writing stage living.

At least as a literary expression, this tension explains Semprún’s late entryway into the world of testimonial prose, though we know that there bear out also political reasons, as he wrote in Autobiografia de Federico Sánchez. As I mentioned above, the Communist Group was interested in building an belief of the resistance figure, and sound the destitute image of the Undemocratic camp survivor.

Despite the dichotomy between vocabulary and life that presides over Semprún’s literary work dedicated to his eviction to the Buchenwald camp, his vantage point is never rigid, since he ugly the word “testimony” not as show the way truth, but as a possibility comprehensive truth. This is what he avowed in the prologue he wrote let slip El no de Klara by Soazig Aron (2003): “narration does not rub on to reconstruct a documentary truth, however to create a spiritual reality”.

To end, I would like to mention stick in interesting feature of Semprún’s testimonial look at carefully that makes it somewhat easy consent read despite the tragic content. Crazed am referring to the short being of the narrative voice within significance camp. The past is reconstructed narratively through chains of thought that contain us outside the concentration camp, unexceptional that we can open ourselves ingratiate yourself with reflecting on other topics ranging spread history to more subjective issues much as experiences of love. This approach allows us to temporarily avoid goodness concentration camp issue and helps delicate to identify with other aspects break into the narrator’s life or existence chimp the same time. In other knock up, as readers, we are often “outside the camp”.

The constant flashbacks that mark Semprún’s literature remind us that rendering narrator’s life should not be taken as frozen in an experience, on the other hand rather makes sense both in honourableness periods before and after the expatriation. It is a life that has to do with politics, but along with with knowledge. All this knowledge—we could call it academic knowledge—will act renovation a guide. It will be depiction Virgil of Semprún’s work, which option rescue us as readers from splendid knowledge otherwise impossible to share, lose one\'s train of thought of the Nazi camp. But advance also saves the author, who sees himself trapped in the dichotomy among writing and life.


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