Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

184813

Semprun and Lukács

for a Marxist reading of le grand voyage

Antoine Bargel

pp. 235-250

Abstract

Since its publication in 1963, Le grand voyage has primarily been read as a compelling personal account of the experience of deportation to the Buchenwald concentration camp, characterized by "strategies of narrative breakdown and traumatic memory" (Ferrán, ""Cuanto más escribo'" 290). The author's 20 years of involvement with the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), as both a leading activist and an intellectual figure, have not generally been considered relevant to his literary aesthetics. Indeed, some of the most notorious commentators of his work explicitly rejected any direct connection between Semprun's political activity and his literary writing: Barbara Foley, in 1982, characterized Le grand voyage as an "irrealistic Holocaust novel," in direct opposition to "the realistic social novel" (348), and Ofelia Ferrán, in 2001, has made the case that "Le grand voyage is not a social realist novel at all" (""Cuanto más escribo'" 290).

Publication details

Published in:

Ferrán Ofelia, Herrmann Gina (2014) A critical companion to Jorge Semprún: Buchenwald, before and after. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 235-250

DOI: 10.1057/9781137439710_14

Full citation:

Bargel Antoine (2014) „Semprun and Lukács: for a Marxist reading of le grand voyage“, In: O. Ferrán & G. Herrmann (eds.), A critical companion to Jorge Semprún, Dordrecht, Springer, 235–250.