Work
Further information: Auschwitz and AfterWhile little-known by most readers, within the Holocaust-literature community Delbo is widely respected and her work is beginning to be assigned as part of most college-level courses on the subject.
This relative obscurity is partly due to her work only recently having appeared in English translation; also because the Holocaust-literature canon has tended to focus on writers such as Anne Frank, Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel who have been in print for far longer.
But it is her technique that has been the biggest hurdle to overcome. Like Tadeusz Borowski, another non-Jew sent to Auschwitz for resistance activities, she chose a less comfortable way of relating her experience than the more straightforward narratives of Levi and Wiesel.
Her guiding principle was, as she regularly described it, Essayez de regarder. Essayez pour voir, or roughly translated when it occurs as a refrain in her work, "Try to look. Just try and see."
Delbo greatly influenced the work of Cynthia Haft who is originally from Brooklyn, New York, but currently lives in Jerusalem. Haft met Delbo in New York while Haft was in her teens and their friendship, first one of one of mentor and student, grew and lasted throughout Delbo's life. In addition to translating some of Delbo's works, Haft introduced Lamont to Delbo while Haft was writing her Ph.D. dissertation at the City University of New York and Lamont was one of Haft's readers. Delbo's work has been very influential already for a number of other scholars in addition to Haft and Lamot, such as Lawrence L. Langer, Nicole Thatcher, Geoffrey Hartman, Marlene Heinemann, Robert Skloot, Kali Tal, Erin Mae Clark, Joan M. Ringelheim, Debarati Sanyal, and many others. Feminists are showing an increasing interest in her work, though Delbo did not identify herself as a feminist.
Read more about this topic: Charlotte Delbo
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“You say that you do not succeed much. Does it concern you enough that you do not? Do you work hard enough at it? Do you get the benefit of discipline out of it? If so persevere. Is it a more serious thing than to walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours? Do you get any corns by it? Do you ever think of hanging yourself on account of failure?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It’s important as a writer to do my art well and do it in a way that is powerful and beautiful and meaningful, so that my work regenerates the people, certainly Indian people, and the earth and the sun. And in that way we all continue forever.”
—Joy Harjo (b. 1951)
“Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.””
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 1:9-11.
Satan to God.