And the Sea Is Never Full
Read And the Sea Is Never Full Online
Authors: Elie Wiesel
ALSO BY ELIE WIESEL
Night
Dawn
The Accident
The Town Beyond the Wall
The Gates of the Forest
The Jews of Silence
Legends of Our Time
A Beggar in Jerusalem
One Generation After
Souls on Fire
The Oath
Ani Maamin
(cantata)
Zalmen, or The Madness of God
(play)
Messengers of God
A Jew Today Four Hasidic Masters The Trial of God
(play)
The Testament
Five Biblical Portraits
Somewhere a Master
The Golem
(illustrated by Mark Podwal)
The Fifth Son
Against Silence
(edited by Irving Abrahamson)
Twilight
The Six Days of Destruction
(with Albert Friedlander)
A Journey into Faith
(conversations with John Cardinal O’Connor)
From the Kingdom of Memory
Sages and Dreamers
The Forgotten
A Passover Haggadah
(illustrated by Mark Podwal)
All Rivers Run to the Sea
Memory in Two Voices
(with François Mitterrand)
King Solomon and His Magic Ring
(illustrated by Mark Podwal)
For Inge and Ira
W
hat profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All rivers run to the sea; and the sea is never full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
ECCLESIASTES
François Mitterrand and Jewish Memory
A
CHRONICLE
has it that the celebrated Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady was locked up in a St. Petersburg prison after being denounced by a foe of the Hasidic movement as an agitator against the Czar.
One day the warden came to see him in his solitary cell, and this is what he said:
“I am told you are a rabbi, a Master. So explain to me a passage I fail to understand in the Bible. It says in the Book of Genesis that, after having bitten into the forbidden fruit, Adam fled, so that the Lord had to ask him:
‘Ayekha
, where are you?’ Is it possible, even conceivable, that the Creator of the world did not know where Adam was hiding?”
Whereupon the rabbi smiled and answered: “The Lord, blessed-be-His-name, knew; it was Adam who didn’t know.”
And Rabbi Shneur Zalman went on: “Do you believe the Bible to be a sacred book?”
“Yes.”
“And that it speaks to all mankind, of all times, therefore also to ours?”
“Yes, I believe that.”
“In that case, I shall explain to you the real meaning of the question God asked of Adam.
Ayekha
signifies: Where do you stand in this world? What is your place in history? What have you done with your life, Adam? These are fundamental questions that every human being must confront sooner or later.
“For every one of us, the book of life goes back to Adam. It is he who embodies the mystery of the beginning. But it is to each of us that God speaks when He says
Ayekha.”
• • •
… To write, to write about oneself, one’s past, one’s burden of memory, is somewhat like that: to keep alive this first question in the Bible.
As I reread my notebooks, I question their subject as he is propelled from page to page, event to event. At which crossroads is he now? What perils lie in store for him, what voices is he following? Where is he going: toward solitude or his need to escape from it?
Before me, always, is the photograph of the house in which I was born. The door that leads to the yard. The kitchen. I want to go inside, but I am afraid. I want to look at the house, if only from afar. With all that has happened to me, it is essential for me to remember that place.
In the first volume of my memoirs,
*
I tried to describe the secret, almost reclusive life of a young Talmudist-turned-writer when he returned from the death camps. My peaceful childhood, my turbulent adolescence, the uncertainties of my formative years. Full stops and shaky beginnings. Wanderings, wrong turns, changes of direction. Years marked by messianic dreams and challenges, ecstasy and mourning, separations and reunions. A little girl with golden hair, a wise and loving mother. An ailing and defenseless father. Moshe the Madman, Kalman the Kabbalist. Shushani and his mysteries. Saul Lieberman. The Lubavitcher Rebbe. Sighet, Auschwitz, Paris, New York: each place a world unto itself. My journal ended on April 2, 1969, in Jerusalem when my life took another turn, this time toward hope. Toward Marion. I got married.
T
HESE DAYS
I dream a lot, more than ever before. It all comes back to me with unexpected clarity rendered sharp and painful by the fear of awakening. An immense garden is in bloom. It is spring. I look at the blue and red sky. A window opens and my grandfather appears. I hear his voice ordering the sun to set, for mankind is waiting. He knows how to make others obey, my grandfather. Night falls and suddenly the garden is transformed into a house of prayer. A huge, motionless crowd waits silently for services to begin
.
I am afraid I have forgotten the first verse of the first prayer. I
look for a familiar face. All the faces are veiled, lifeless. I am panic-stricken. I step backward, toward the exit, but a voice inside me tells me I mustn’t. Mustn’t what? I don’t know. Perhaps what I mustn’t do is wake up
.
The days move slowly, the years take flight. I work on two or three projects at once. Writing becomes an obstacle course. Have I become more self-critical? I used to rewrite some texts three times; now I sometimes agonize over the same page for hours before tearing it up in a moment of clear-sighted rage.
These are feverish, convulsive years, woven from aborted attempts and exalted renewals. My life now unfolds under the dual sign of change on a practical level and loyalty on the level of memory. Inside me happiness and distress seem to spark a fire that is both somber and luminous. Could it be that I fear happiness?
Notwithstanding my doubts about language, and perhaps because of them, I plunge deeper and deeper into the whirlwind of the words I try to capture and tame. I cling to the notion that in the beginning there was the word; and that the word is the story of man; and that man is the story of God. If praying is an act of faith in God, then writing is a token of trust in man.
I write more than ever. I pause at every page: That which I have just written, have I not said it elsewhere? And I go on writing because I cannot do otherwise.
I have a wife I love, and yet I write not about love but about solitude. I have a home filled with warmth, and yet I write about the misery of the condemned. Around us, our circle of friends becomes larger. I no longer boycott social events with the old determination. With novelists we discuss politics, with politicians we speak of art. Miraculously, I don’t suffer from writer’s block, the familiar complaint of those around us. Nor is a lack of topics one of my problems.