BURNED CHILD SEEKS THE FIRE: MEMOIR (Bränt barn söker sig till elden)

Memoir by Cordelia Edvardson, 1984

Cordelia Edvardson's Memoir, as it is subtitled, is more than what is normally meant by that word. It originally appeared in Swedish in 1984, in German two years later, and in English in 1997. It is, to be sure, an account of the noteworthy experiences of its author, but it is also a deep and penetrating self-appraisal by the author of her character and psyche within the framework of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Although Edvardson does so in a sober and almost understated way, she reveals in an economical but eloquent fashion all that is pertinent to her own particular experience and her own problematic development. She spells out the essential elements of her memoir in the short first chapter: an outsider—different, singled out, with a deep guilt complex—is clearly of Christian heritage but has a Jewish father; her mother is a writer whose works are suffused with myth. The myth of Proserpina, or Persephone, who was abducted by Pluto, taken to the underworld, and able to return to the world only periodically—thus giving rise to the seasons—is alluded to throughout the memoir. The relevance of this myth to the fate of Cordelia Edvardson is obvious.

Edvardson's situation is, however, even more complicated than it seems at the outset of the book. Her biography, reflected to be sure in her memoir, is essential for an understanding of the work. Her mother was Elisabeth Langgässer (1899-1950), a prominent poet and novelist loosely connected with the German school of magic realism. Langgässer, the illegitimate child of a Rhenish, Roman Catholic mother and a married Jewish father, grew up as a practicing Roman Catholic. When she was 29 years old, Langgässer in turn gave birth to an illegitimate child, Cordelia. The father was likewise Jewish, and Cordelia was likewise raised as a Catholic. Like many others, Cordelia was soon forced to come to terms with her status first as a "mixed breed" then later as a Volljüdin ("full Jew"), as the Gestapo decreed. Her experiences as a child in Berlin, in the German school she was soon forced to leave, in the Jewish school she then attended, in forced labor, and in the camps (including Theresienstadt and Auschwitz) are all described in this book. They are, however, not described in lurid detail, but soberly, and always with an explanation of the effects on the child's human growth, on her scorched psyche. Although, in essence, not truly Jewish, Edvardson was obliged through her ordeal to become Jewish; hence, the title transforms the German proverb, "a burned child avoids the fire" into the "burned child seeks the fire." Given the ovens of the Holocaust, the title is, of course, all too apt.

Edvardson was a precocious child, and her mother fed her a rich diet of serious literature, including her own novels and poems, together with fairy tales and myths. Her use of language, and of literary and mythic references, reflects this upbringing. Like Jiri Weil and Marga Minco , Edvardson became a journalist. It was, in part, her journalist experiences that helped to establish a new, truly Jewish identity that became complete and permanent at the time of the Six-Day War, which she covered for a Swedish newspaper. Her writings were all in Swedish, not her native German. One might readily understand that coming to terms with her native land is at least as fraught with difficulty as was her acceptance of her Jewish identity. The book's dedication is eloquent in its brevity: "To my mothers/Elisabeth Langgässer, Berlin/Stefi Pedersen, Stockholm/Sylvia Krown, Jerusalem." She has, in short, had to come to terms with three identities: German and Catholic, an adopted Swedish persona, and an Israeli Jewish self. Burned Child Seeks the Fire ranks very high as a Holocaust memoir, along with such works as Ruth Klüger's Weiter leben (Still Alive ).

—David Scrase