Legends of Our Time

Time for another book report. In today's post I bring you Elie Wiesel's Legends of Our Time. A collection of short biographical essays, Wiesel gives a eulogic (it should be a word) memoir of his childhood and of the people and places he knew before and during his internment in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

After the first two essays, I didn't much want to finish the book because it felt like Wiesel was stuck wallowing in his grief. Not too belittle his horrific experience, but it wasn't where I wanted to spend my time. However, I kept reading and I am so glad that I did. I especially recommend the chapters "Testament of a Jew from Saragossa," and "The Last Return." I haven't quite finished yet, and I'll be a little sad to turn the last page. However, Wiesel is a prolific writer, so there's plenty more to be had. As part of her book club, Oprah recommended his book Night, which also deals with Wiesel's time in concentration and death camps in WWII.

I get a little annoyed at Oprah: she keeps choosing really fabulous books for her book club, and the lit snob in me wants to keep some of these books secret treasures.

The lit snob in me should be permanently silenced.

Rather than explain why I like this book, here's an excerpt from a chapter called "The Promise." This is one of the most "flowery" passages in the book. He generally is more prosaic.

"Once upon a time there was a poor visionary who set out to rescue the damned from the darkness in which they dwelt. So that they might be compelled to live, he proclaimed himself immortal.

"...When he spoke, his lips barely moved and his voice seemed to come from a long way off. It was the voice of a man who challenges mountains.

"The place I met him was dark, as though some magician had plunged it into eternal night. It was peopled with phantoms. There were countless thousands of them. They had no past and no future. They were outside of time, beyond history. They were building a one-way Jacob's Ladder, gigantic and invisible, which they were all waiting to climb, so that the heavens might be purified by fire. Man was leaving the earth, recalled by God. Everything was to start again. Creation had failed. The age-old vision had degenerated into a curse.

"But my visionary friend refused to believe all that. He claimed that we were in the Holy of Holies, in the presence of the Messiah. What he lacked in humor he made up in imagination.

"He was one of the Righteous; we called him "the Prophet." Affectionately, meaning to tease and provoke him. I do not know who first called him by that name, nor why. Nor do I know whether it pleased or irritated him. All I know is that it suited him. The Prophet talked like a prophet. Making us relive our past, he gave us back our homes and our memories. And yet, as we listened in silence, with lumps in our throats, it was always of the future that he spoke. The truth was that we needed a future."