Spiegelman Discusses Holocaust, Humor

Blending Holocaust and humor, cartoonist Art Spiegelman spoke to a packed crowd at the Yenching Library last night about his bestselling books Maus and Maus II.

The books are cartoon narratives of his father's experience as a concentration camp prisoner during World War II; they depict Jews as mice and Germans as cats.

"People ask me why I did Maus as a comic, as if I had a choice, as if I could have done a ballet," said Spiegelman in a lecture that was interrupted frequently by audience laughter. "It's a medium of language that I learned as a kid that stayed with me."

Spiegelman's talk was sponsored by Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel, the department of English and American Literature and the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts. Earlier in the day, Spiegelman spoke to a creative writing section taught by senior Lecturer Michael C. Blumenthal.

Spiegelman's involvement with cartoons began as a child, when his father Vladek brought him horror comics. As a new American immigrant, said Spiegelman, Vladek was "not acculturated enough to know that these were the comics that created juvenile delinquency."

Showing slides from Maus and his other works, Spiegelman traced his attempt to "reinhabit his father."

As the child of Holocaust survivors, he said, "You sort of know something happened--you hear it a few times but you still block it out because it's too painful."

Cartoons provided a medium for dealing with the unimaginable, said Spiegelman. "Comics have a kind of intimacy that even prose doesn't have."

Spiegelman wove together his story from 30 tapes of conversations with his father.

Using direct transcripts of the conversations proved impossible. "I'd have to have had like these 14-foot balloons with two-inch mice carrying them around," said Spiegelman. "The drawings are stripped down--the text had to be stripped down too."

He chose animal figures because of "the imageof a cat playing with mice," and because of Naziimagery depicting Jews as vermin, he said.

Spiegelman's father died in 1982 and nevercompletely understood his son's work, saidSpiegelman.

"His main comment was `from this, you make aliving?' For him, comics were a meaninglessmedium--they didn't have comics in Poland in1915," Spiegelman said.

But working together to capture Vladek'sexperiences did bring him closer to his father,said Spiegelman. Vladek "liked the fact that hisson could sit in the same room withoutarguing...[The book] made it happen."

At the end of the lecture, Spiegelman playedone of the tapes he made of his father. In astrong Eastern European accent, Vladek recalledthe words he said to his wife during the war.

"To die, it is easy," Vladek Spiegel man said."But you have to struggle for life. Until the lastmoment we must struggle together.

He chose animal figures because of "the imageof a cat playing with mice," and because of Naziimagery depicting Jews as vermin, he said.

Spiegelman's father died in 1982 and nevercompletely understood his son's work, saidSpiegelman.

"His main comment was `from this, you make aliving?' For him, comics were a meaninglessmedium--they didn't have comics in Poland in1915," Spiegelman said.

But working together to capture Vladek'sexperiences did bring him closer to his father,said Spiegelman. Vladek "liked the fact that hisson could sit in the same room withoutarguing...[The book] made it happen."

At the end of the lecture, Spiegelman playedone of the tapes he made of his father. In astrong Eastern European accent, Vladek recalledthe words he said to his wife during the war.

"To die, it is easy," Vladek Spiegel man said."But you have to struggle for life. Until the lastmoment we must struggle together.