«Auschwitz, I said to my wife, manifests itself to me in the image of a father»: Queer Approaches to Interpreting “Kaddish for an Unborn Child” by Imre Kertész

Keywords: Holocaust, Hungarian literature, Imre Kertész, Narrative Theory, Queer Studies

Abstract

In line with literary critical interpretations of Imre Kertész’s works as a series of interconnected texts, this study aims to enter into dialogue with Kertész’s novel Kaddish for an Unborn Child and analyze it as a continuation of his novel Fatelessness, where the decision of the protagonist «to continue my uncontinuable life» is elaborated on, and an alternative life path is conceived. Particular attention is paid to textual references to gender roles and identities by drawing on gender research and queer theory, in particular the concepts of queer negativity and queer time. Finally, the study makes a contribution to discussions on the intertextuality of Kaddish by drawing parallels between the novel and the play The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách with regard to the question of fatherhood.

Author Biography

Edit Zsadányi, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Edit Zsadányi (<zsadanyi.edit@btk.elte.hu>) is Associate Professor at the Cultural Studies Department of Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest. From 2009 till 2014 she was senior lecturer at the Finno-Ugric Department of the University of Groningen. Her research focuses on the works of women writers in the 20th century and on modern and postmodern Hungarian and American literature, with emphasis on Cultural Theory and Gender Studies. She published five books (one in English and four in Hungarian), among them “Bazsali, rezeda meg kisasszonycipő”: Kulturális másság feminista kritikai megközelítésben [“Basil, Reseda and Touch-Me-Not Flower”: The Cultural Other in the Perspective of Feminist Criticism], Budapest: Balassi, 2017; Gendered Narrative Subjectivity: Some Hungarian and American Women Writers, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Academic Publisher, 2015; A másik nő: A női szubjektivitás narratív alakzatai [The Other Woman: Narrative Figures of Female Subjectivity], Budapest: Ráció, 2006.

Published
2021-11-04
How to Cite
ZsadányiE. (2021). «Auschwitz, I said to my wife, manifests itself to me in the image of a father»: Queer Approaches to Interpreting “Kaddish for an Unborn Child” by Imre Kertész. Studi Finno-Ugrici, N.S., 1, 1-34. https://doi.org/10.6093/1826-753X/8748