The Working Problems of the Writer in Exile

II

I will not dwell too long on the bitter theme of the many purely external difficulties with which the writer in exile must contend. I hope that those who have not experienced these difficulties will be spared them. [ . . . ]

The sufferings of banishment have only rare heroic moments; they generally consist of little, silly annoyances that often have a tinge of the ludicrous. But at best it costs much time and money to overcome these little external difficulties. In various countries, for example, I was expected to produce papers which I, as a refugee, could not possibly have. I was expected to prove by means of documents from my home that I am I, that I had been born, that I am an author. It is no exaggeration to state that the efforts to produce such evidence cost me as much time as the writing of a novel. [ . . . ]

IV

Gradually, willy-nilly, we ourselves change in the new environment, and with us changes all that we create. The only road to the inner vision is through the outer. The new land in which we live affects the theme of our subjects and also affects the form. The landscape which surrounds the writer changes the landscape within him.

[ . . . ] But everything that I might say on the subject of the writer in exile has been much better expressed in my novel Paris Gazette. This novel, incidentally, in its original form is by no means entitled Paris Gazette. This title is a concession to foreign readers. In the original the title is simply, truthfully, and boldly—or if you prefer—imprudently, Exile.

Incorporated in this novel Exile is a chapter which deals with the effects of banishment, written during one of the gloomiest interludes of my exile, a pause between internment in two different French concentration camps. Today I am glad that, even in those sad days, I placed the emphasis not upon the sufferings of the exiled artist but upon the fact that the true writer, the one deserving of this name, grows in strength in exile.

For although banishment is destructive and makes the victim small and miserable, it also hardens him and adds to his stature. A vast abundance of new material and new ideas pours in upon him, he is confronted with a variety of impressions he would never have known at home.

If we make an effort to take a historical view of our life in exile, it becomes evident even now that almost everything that seemed to hamper our work finally contributed to its welfare. In this connection I must not conceal the fact that, for example, even the constant, enforced contact with a foreign language, which I loudly deplored a few paragraphs earlier, finally results in an enrichment. The author who lives in a foreign speech environment almost automatically and constantly checks his own against the foreign word. He frequently finds that the foreign language has a more striking word for that which he wishes to express. He is therefore not satisfied with that which his own tongue has to offer, but sharpens, files and polishes the existent expression until it has become something new, until he has wrested the new, the more striking word from his own language. Everyone of us has adapted fortunate turns of phrase from the foreign language to his own.

V

It can be said that suffering makes the weak weaker, but the strong stronger. Banishment has constricted some of us, but to the stronger, the more able, it gave breadth and elasticity, it opened their eyes more fully to the great and essential things, and taught them not to cling to nonessentials.

says Goethe. Banishment is a hard school that sternly teaches the meaning of the behest: Die to win thy being. A number of exiled writers have become inwardly more mature, have been renewed and rejuvenated. They have not only become more bitter, but also more wise and more just toward their new old world, grateful and more conscious of their own mission. “Die to win thy being” has become their experience and their possession.