A Mad Desire to Dance A Novel

by Wiesel, Elie; Temerson, Catherine

• ISBN13: 9780805212129
• ISBN10: 0805212124
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-13
• Publisher: Schocken

Summary

Now in paperback, Wieselrs"s newest novel "reminds us, with force, that his writing is alive and strong. The master has once again found a startling freshness."-Le Monde des Livres A European expatriate living in New York, Doriel suffers from a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a member of the Resistance, survived World War II only to die soon after in France in an accident, together with his father. Doriel was a hidden child during the war, and his knowledge of the Holocaust is largely limited to what he finds in movies, newsreels, and books. Dorielrs"s parents and their secrets haunt him, leaving him filled with longing but unable to experience the most basic joys in life. He plunges into an intense study of Judaism, but instead of finding solace, he comes to believe that he is possessed by a dybbuk. Surrounded by ghosts, spurred on by demons, Doriel finally turns to Dr. Theacute;regrave;se Goldschmidt, a psychoanalyst who finds herself particularly intrigued by her patient. The two enter into an uneasy relationship based on exchange: of dreams, histories, and secrets. And despite Dorielrs"s initial resistance, Dr. Goldschmidt helps bring him to a crossroads-and to a shocking denouement. "In its own high-stepping yet paradoxically heart-wracking way, [Wieselrs"s novel] can most assuredly be considered beautiful (almost beyond belief)."-The Philadelphia Inquirer

Author Biography

Elie Wiesel is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including his best-selling memoir Night. He has been awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the rank of Grand Croix in the French Legion of Honor, and an honorary knighthood by the Queen of England. In 1986 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1976, he has been Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University.

Excerpts

She has dark eyes and the smile of a frightened child. I searched for her all my life. Was it she who saved me from the silent death that characterizes resignation to solitude? And from madness in its terminal phase, terminal as we refer to cancer when incurable? Yes, the kind of madness in which one can find refuge, if not salvation?

Madness is what I’ll talk to you about—madness burdened with memories and with eyes like everyone else’s, though in my story the eyes are like those of a smiling child trembling with fear.

You’ll ask: Is a madman who knows he’s mad really mad? Or: In a mad world, isn’t the madman who is aware of his madness the only sane person? But let’s not rush ahead. If you had to describe a madman, how would you portray him? As a marblefaced stranger? Smiling but without joy, his nerves on edge; when he goes into a trance, his limbs move about and all his thoughts collide; time and again, he has electrical discharges, not in his brain but in his soul. Do you like this portrait? Let’s continue. How can we talk about madness except by using the specific language of those who carry it within themselves? What if I told you that within each of us, whether in good health or bad, there is a hidden zone, a secret region that opens out onto madness? One misstep, one unfortunate blow of fate, is enough to make us slip or flounder with no hope of ever rising up again. Careless mistakes, an impaired memory or errors of judgment, can provoke a series of falls. It then becomes impossible to make ourselves understood by those we call—rather foolishly—kindred souls. If you will not grant me this, I will have a serious problem, but you must not feel sorry for me. Tears sometimes leave furrows, but never very deep ones—in any case, not deep enough.

There, this is what you have to know for a start.



That said, since I’m eager to tell you everything, you should know that I’ll be telling you this story without any concern for chronology. You’ll be made to discover many different periods of time and many different places in a haphazard fashion. What can I say? The madman’s time is not always the same as the
so-called normal man’s.

For instance, let’s begin this narrative five years ago, in the office of Thérèse Goldschmidt, a healer of souls, well paid—I’ll tell you how well later—thanks to her vast knowledge. She expects to prod me into knowing the dark, innermost recesses of my ego, in order to help me live with myself without my dybbuk, but that’s an assumption to which I plan to return.

Later on I’ll talk to you about Thérèse; I’ll talk about her at length. Inevitable Thérèse, there is no way around her. She’s the one who made me talk. It’s her profession. She spends her life probing the unconscious—that strongbox and trash bin of knowledge and experience, those subterranean archives that can
and must be deciphered—and asking childish or harebrained questions. And in my case, these questions summoned not answers but stories.

Why do people make fun of madmen? Because they upset people? Didn’t Molière mock the hypochondriac? Doesn’t the man who believes he is ill need treatment?

Am I way off the beam? I don’t think I’m completely irrational. Is being mad being disabled? Can one speak of a gana mad desire to dance grened mind, of thought beaten to death, of a mutilated, damned soul? Can one be mad in happiness as in misfortune? Can someone take vows of madness as one takes religious vows, or devotes one’s life to poetry? Can a person slip breathlessly into madness with a slow, muffled tread, as if to avoid disturbing some secret demon feigning absence or asceticism? At times I’m afraid of shutting my eyes, for I see an unreal world

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Excerpted from A Mad Desire to Dance: A Novel by Elie Wiesel
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