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Kathmandu,Sunday January 02, 2000 Paush 18th, 2056.
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A reading of Hitler and Yehudi
-By Ubaraj Katawal
Born
in 1914, B P Koirala started his literary career with a short story Chandrabadan,
published in 1935. Afterwards he wrote about seven long novels, more than 24 short
stories, poems, dramas and an autobiography. Critics say that besides Freud, D H Lawrence,
Premchand, Anton Chekhov, John Galsworthy and Guy de Manupassant were chief influences
upon him. Most of his works were written while he was in jail.
Hitler and Yehudi (Hitler and the Jews) is
one of his major novels and a product of his jail life. He died of throat cancer in 1982.
Hitler and Yehudi, an incomplete creation like The Trial of Franz Kafka, is a narration of
a traveller who travels from Asia to Europe, metaphorically from ignorance to knowledge.
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow travels from Europe, which may symbolise
knowledge and civilization, to Africa, which may represent ignorance and barbarity. Marlow
finds Africa a place of savages and barbarians where a civilised white man, Kurtz, loses
his life. Here, we find the curses of ignorance. But in Hitler and Yehudi the issue is
different. In this novel, the narrator, who may be the persona of the author himself,
because of the similarities in their personalities, travels from Asia to Europe for the
treatment of a disease. The narrator is not as civilized as the Europeans. So here the
travel is from an uncivilized place to a civilized one. But what he finds in Europe is not
the light of civilization as imagined in Heart of Darkness, but the darkness of
civilisation. The destruction and the massacre that he observes and listens in Europe
makes him dumbfounded. He ponders over the rudeness of the civilised people that he cannot
find in uncivilised ones. The novel gives us a vivid picture of the Second World War and
its effects on Europe. With the idea of ethnic-cleansing, Hitler had killed six million
Jews in gas chambers. What more can be the climax of barbarity!
Hitler and Yehudi starts with the
preparations of the narrator for the travel like the starting of Marlow in heart of
Darkness. The narrator has to go on ship for eleven days to cross the sea. On the way the
narrator is exposed to facets of life. The unconscious part has been represented by Rewa
and the conscious part by Narayanan. Goldberg carries on the role of Envy where his son
the role of Wealth. So the narrator has to go through all of these characters to arrive to
a civilised part of the world. But what he finds in Europe is not what he had expected. So
he asks Laxmi better not to go there. He gives us the picture of the people of Europe
after the War: the spinsters, who were raped by the soldiers in the War, the young
prostitutes whose breast and thighs do not match their age, the poor condition of the
crippled soldiers and soon Marlow in Heart of Darkness is in mess because he is unable to
understand the uncivilised part of the world. The narrator in Hitler and Yehudi is puzzled
because he cannot understand the civilised part of the world. The narrator nearly cries to
see the degradation of human civilisation. In a dream, the narrator travels to Heaven
where he listens the trial of Hitler and a Yehudi. In the trial, the Yehudi is easily
defeated because of his illicit sexual affair with his niece but the trial of Hitler is
more interesting because he very logically explains how his actions were just. He proves
himself to be disciple of Bhagawat Gita because he carried out his actions as directed by
Krishna in Gita. He appears to be an existential hero, who made commitment and fulfilled
the duty of a ruler. He argues that in politics power is the center of achievement. To
gain it he killed the Jews, otherwise he would have been killed by them. So he is just
because he struggled for his people and not for himself. But, at last, he accepts that he
was a tyrant and is condemned. So the trial of the Yehudi and Hitler at the court of God
shows that both Hitler and Yehudi were wrong who lived their lives falsely. They consumed
themselves in “bad faith”.
The narrator in Hitler and Yehudi is full
of existential consciousness of the absurdity and vacuity of the world. He cannot
understand Narayanan’s intellect and Rewa’s passion. But he cannot remain
detached from them. In the absence of Narayanan and of Rewa, he cannot become complete.
The characters are condemned to choose either this or that: Elze chooses to become a young
prostitute and Theodora chooses to remain a tourist guide and a spinster. The narrator
himself chooses to become a passive observer of the devastation by the War. He feels that
the god is really dead in Europe, as Theodora calls “a godless world”. Theodora
and Elze stand for the wretched condition of women and the crippled soldier represents the
disabled males who happen to be unable to make love with women. So due to the lack of able
males, women are compelled to remain infertile. A threat to creation! We cannot blame
Doris for leaving a crippled soldier, like Leonard, who can no more make love with her. We
can imagine the heart-rending scream of a Jews while being peeled off her skin to make
curtains of the room of commander’s wife or the scream of thousands of innocent
Jews-children while being thrown in the fire that made the whole sky red. So though
the novel is said to be incomplete, Hitler and Yehudi gives us a view of human misery
because of human ambition. Barbarity, ambition, cruelty and destruction seem to be at
their best in the novel. So the narrator’s travel is not from the world of ignorance
to knowledge but from innocence to experience. The narrator having fallen in the world of
experience wants to return to the world of innocence, the world of Laxmi. He is physically
healed but mentally deeply hurt and the latter is harder to tolerate. There is a sort of
Keatsian tolerance in the narrator’s character. He has forgotten his own fatal
disease, cancer, of which he wants to be healed. But the disease inflicting the western
people wounds him mentally and happens to be indulged in the sorrow and happiness of
others, forgetting his own. He has remained detached from his own personality. The novel
is written in the form of letters sent by the narrator to his wife, Lexmi, in Nepal. Full
of philosophical insights and historical facts, the novel brings together Eastern and
Western people: Hitler and Narayanan, Laxmi and Theodora. In the case of Eastern and
Western culture and civilisation, the narrator seems to be an Eastern because he does not
find the traditional culture and religion in the West which he looks for. He gives the
holy thing of Pahuspatinath, sent to him by Laxmi, to Theodora. Laxmi and Theodora are two
women of the same age. Laxmi represents the Eastern women, where Theodora the Western.
Laxmi is married and a housewife whereas Theodora is a spinster and a tourist guide. The
narrator asks Theodora to visit the land of Laxmi and Pahuspatinath but he does not want
Laxmi to be with him watching the terrifying scene of the land left by the war. In the
case of Hitler and the Jews, he plays the role of a catalyst. He just presents them as
they are. Hitler is a tyrant and a murderer of millions of Jews whereas the Jews are
immoral and communal. Hitler fights for power where the Jews fight for wealth and
territory for the welfare of their own race.
Koirala has created a good piece of
literature, perhaps his masterpiece. It deserves further study and interpretation.
Although being the work of a great politician, there is no hint of author’s own
political life and thought. It is a well-written piece of literature, perfect images,
visions and reality.
(Essay on Nepali literature appears in
the first week of every month and is coordinated by Literary Association of Nepal)
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