The past and its silence: the narrative voice as a memorial transmission thread in the work of Iván Jablonka and Santiago Amigorena

Abstract

The following work is based on the analysis of two literary works that saw their appearance in the XXI Century: History of the grandparents I did not have, by Ivan Jablonka, and The inner ghetto, by Santiago Amigorena, two novels that take as a thematic axis and backbone of the narratives the search and investigation of the recent past through two life stories that keep a deep connection with the events that occurred during the Holocaust. The objective is to address and analyze the construction of the narrative voice in each of the proposed works based on its articulation with the figure of silence. In Jablonka's work, it is observed, there is an identification between the narrator and his paternal grandparents, a mechanism that unfolds by annulling any inconsistency or memorial void; the silence left by Mates and Idesa is the silence of their grandson. For its part, in the story of Amigorena, the voice of the narrator distances itself from the events by adopting an external point of view; while fictionalizing the story of his grandfather Vicente and enveloping it with an absolute and impotent silence, he suggests that this desolate silence that runs through his family history can be resignified from the present.