Exile and Trauma in Jorge Semprún

Abstract

Jorge Semprún's obsession with memory is fed by a triple experience of exile: emigration from Spain, imprisonment in Buchenwald and expulsion from the Communist Party. While the notion of exile can be found at the core of his writing, it constitutes a complex construction that changes over time. Through the examination of three very different texts this article traces the meanings that exile acquires in Semprún's writing. Portrayed in partly negative terms in Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez, as the Spanish Communist Party leadership is ignorant of the true political situation within Spain due to its being outside, in Adiós, luz de veranos… it comes to figure as an internalized virtue enabling the writer to pursue his vocation. In La escritura o la vida the focus on the concentration camp underlines the traumatic qualities of exile and the difficulty of creating a listener who can relate to the experience of extreme alienation.

Keywords:

• memory
• trauma
• exile
• Spanish Civil War
• Jorge Semprún

Notes

 1. Liliana Soto-Fernández, La autobiografía ficticia en Miguel de Unamuno, Carmen Martín Gaite y Jorge Semprún. Madrid, Pliegos, 1996, p. 131.

 2. Michael Ugarte, Shifting Ground: Spanish Civil War Exile Literature, Durham and London, Duke UP, 1989, p. 99.

 3. Unfortunately, the scope of this article does not allow us to dwell on the generic problems concerning Semprún's work. In this specific case, it is partly derived from the fact that the autobiography won a prize which is normally reserved for works of fiction.

 4. Jack Sinningen, Narrativa e ideología, Madrid, Nuestra Cultura, 1982, p. 68.

 5. Jorge Semprún, Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez, Barcelona, Planeta, 2002; La escritura o la vida, Barcelona, Tusquets, 2002; and Adiós, luz de veranos…, Barcelona, Tusquets, 1998.

 6. Santiago Carrillo, Memoria de la transición: La vida política española y el PCE, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, Grijalbo, 1983, p. 93.

 7. Semprún, Autobiografía, p. 11.

 8. Semprún, Autobiografía, p. 16.

 9. Semprún, Autobiografía, p. 179.

10. Semprún, Autobiografía, p. 48.

11. Interestingly, Semprún refers back to Malraux's novel in the following aside from Adiós, luz de veranos…: ‘Y, por otra parte, si no hubiera leído La esperanza no habría conservado, en el interior de mi manera violenta de ser comunista — porque nunca me he planteado el comunismo como una especie de juego puramente teórico, sino como un compromiso total, un llamamiento a las armas —, alguna chispa de espíritu crítico’, in Semprún, Adiós, luz de veranos…, p. 113.

12. Semprún, Autobiografía, pp. 76–81.

13. Semprún, Autobiografía, p. 81.

14. Semprún, Autobiografía, p. 91.

15. Semprún, Autobiografía, pp. 69 and 89.

16. Semprún, Autobiografía, p. 218.

17. Ha Jin, The Writer as Migrant, Chicago, Chicago UP, 2008, p. 71.

18. Semprún, Adiós, p. 11; and Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal, Paris, Minuit, 1989, p. 86.

19. Semprún, Adiós, p. 13.

20. Semprún, Adiós, p. 16.

21. Semprún, Adiós, p. 58.

22. Semprún, Adiós, p. 76.

23. This position is described by Julia Kristeva in Strangers to Ourselves, New York and London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992, p. 12.

24. Semprún, Adiós, p. 76.

25. Semprún, Adiós, p. 116.

26. Jin, Writer as Migrant, p. 31.

27. Jorge Semprún, Federico Sánchez se despide de ustedes, Barcelona, Tusquets, 1993, p. 149.

28. Jorge Semprún, ‘…Une tombe au creux des nuages…’, in Jorge Semprún, Une tombe au creux des nuages: Essais sur l'Europe d'hier et d'aujourd'hui, Paris, Flammarion, 2010, pp. 129–46 (p. 135).

29. Claudio Guillén, El sol de los desterrados: literatura y exilio, Barcelona, Quaderns Crema, 1995, pp. 124–25.

30. Semprún, Adiós, p. 89.

31. Ursula Tidd, ‘Exile, Language, and Trauma in Recent Autobiographical Writing by Jorge Semprun’, Modern Language Review, 103 (2008), pp. 697–714.

32. Ricardo Fernández Romero, El relato de infancia y juventud en España: 1891-1942, Granada, Universidad de Granada, 2007, p. 32.

33. Semprún, Autobiografía, pp. 122–23.

34. In Semprún's case this was also true on the material level, since the secret internal structures in place at Buchenwald favoured the survival of Communist comrades.

35. Semprún, Adiós, p. 76.

36. Semprún, El largo viaje, Barcelona, Tusquets, 2004.

37. Semprún, La escritura o la vida, p. 212.

38. Cathy Caruth, ‘Introduction’, in Cathy Caruth (ed.), Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Baltimore and London, John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 151–58, p. 155.

39. Semprún, La escritura, p. 25.

40. Semprún, Autobiografía, pp. 210–12.

41. Semprún, La escritura, pp. 257–58.

42. Semprún, La escritura, p. 26.

43. Semprún, La escritura, p. 29.

44. Ugarte, Shifting Ground, p. 4.

45. Dori Laub, ‘Truth and Testimony: The Process and The Struggle’, in Caruth, Trauma, p. 66.

46. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, New York and London, Routledge, 1992, p. 57.

47. Semprún, La escritura, p. 151.

48. Susan Rubin Suleiman, Crises of Memory and the Second World War, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard UP, 2006, p. 147.

49. Monika Neuhofer, ‘Écrire un seul livre, sans cesse renouvelé’: Jorge Sempruns literarische Auseinandersetzung mit Buchenwald, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 2006, p. 255.

50. Semprún, La escritura, p. 65.

51. Semprún, La escritura, p. 44.

52. Semprún, La escritura, p. 266.

53. Semprún, La escritura, pp. 254–69.

54. Semprún, La escritura, p. 203.

55. Semprún, La escritura, pp. 329–30.

56. Theodor Adorno quoted in George Steiner, Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution, London, Faber and Faber, 1972, p. 15.

57. Steiner, Extraterritorial, p. 21.