NOSTALGIA FOR WHAT NEVER WAS: SILENCE, ABSENCE AND HISTORICAL ERASURE IN RAYMOND FEDERMAN’S THE TWOFOLD VIBRATION

Abstract

Raymond Federman was a French-American Jewish writer whose works embodied postmodern literary tendencies of the time. His tragic experience with the Holocaust greatly influenced his worldview, leading to the creation of a unique literary theory and style of writing. His works show a defiant stance against the imposed literary norms of the previous decades with central themes being those of absence, loss, historical manipulation and erasure, cancellation and ultimately, silence. His novel The Twofold Vibration, however, adds an additional element to his literary opera – that of nostalgia. It being Federman, that nostalgia does not necessarily refer to actual times past, but to a hypothetical past, a what-could’ve-been. In this novel, Federman displaces this particular feeling of sorrow for something that was not allowed to happen. In this novel, Federman explores the concepts of silence, absence, historical erasure and nostalgia in the aftermath of historical atrocities. One could say that it was in this novel where Federman masterfully manages to make his readers feel nostalgic for a vision of the past. This paper aims to recognize the intricate and subtle application of different language devices Federman used to establish these themes and will also deal with specific instances of the appearance of these themes in the novel. Finally, the author hopes to demonstrate how skillfully Federman managed to convey the strength of an everlasting emotional burden behind these themes.