The Immortal Bartfuss

This is one of Appelfeld's finest books. Bartfuss is a survivor who for years has not spoken to his wife Rosa. She too is a survivor whose whole life is in raising their two daughters. One daughter marries but the second retarded daughter becomes an object of her parents rivalry. Bartfuss is a difficult closed person who does not have easy relations with anyone, including his friends from the camps. He is harsh and often cruel to his family but not in an overt way. He understands that they hope to get their hands on his money but the treasure is buried and hoarded. The portrait Appelfeld gives of disenchanted neglected survivors is masterful. Bartfuss is involved with a number of women none of whom finds happiness with him. In one agonizingly poignant incident he sees a woman who he had spoken with through one night in the camps about Dostoevsky's work. This conversation had stayed in his mind all the years. When he approaches the woman who he sees on the beach in Tel Aviv she refuses to speak with him, or have anything to do with him. This is a reflection of another central theme of the work, the impossibility for the survivors of dealing in any sensible, reasonable sane way with their horrendous past and its horrendous losses. The one woman Bartfuss has a significant relationship, named Sylvia lives in longing for her parents who she last saw as a child. Bartfuss too has this kind of overwhelming longing which makes the past seem far more significant than the present can ever be. Appelfeld is a master of presenting survivors, who somehow seem half- alive unable to permit themselves to fully live in present and in future. This is a subdued and disturbing work by the writer who perhaps more sucessfully than any other has depicted the tremendously complex and difficult emotional world of 'survivors'.

The titular Bartfuss has lived a largely underground existence since surviving the Holocaust, amassing an ever increasing fortune as a smuggler even as his alienation from those around him--particularly his estranged wife and two daughters--continues apace. As a record of a man's journey from a kind of living death, this book benefits a lot from Appelfeld's terse, simple prose, which keeps the tale rolling at a brisk pace. He's the sort of writer who knows exactly what he can state explicitly and what he can leave unsaid. It may just be me, but I was not altogether convinced by the book, partly due to the somewhat abrupt ending. I will tentatively suggest that the author was only partly successful in dramatizing Bartfuss' internal conflicts... or maybe I'm just missing the point of Appelfeld's minimalist artistry. I will still recommend the book, and suggest that who anyone likes it should also seek out Appelfeld's "Badenheim 1939."

This is a remarkable book written with words hidden and unstated. For Bartfuss, the holocaust should produce "greatness of soul" either from himself or other survivors. He is frustrated by his inability to do so and give freely. Here is a highly complex character living in Jaffa, Israel. And it should be appreciated by many thoughtful readers.

The Immortal Bartfuss is obviously the work of an accomplished and mature novelist. Appelfeld has his goal well in sight and accomplishes it with surgical precision. Bartfuss is Dostoevsky's Underground Man coping with the holocaust and old age. As we watch the Immortal Bartfuss die, and remeber how he spent his life, we sense true desolation. The holocaust has created an expectation within him, and, as he nears his end, he realizes life does not give anything to anyone for free. A very disquieting portrait of a very troubled man.