The Rhyme of an Ancient Mariner

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And The Sea Is Never Full

By Elie Wiesel

When Elie Wiesel was 15, he, his family and his Jewish community were taken from their homes in the small Transylvanian town of Sighet and transported by train to Birkenau, the reception center for Auschwitz. During the days and months that followed, Wiesel lost his parents, his sister, his innocence and his peace. Witness, activist, writer and sage, Wiesel has since devoted his life to the fight for human rights and for remembrance.

And The Sea Is Never Full

By Elie Wiesel

The second volume of Wiesel's memoirs, And the Sea is Never Full, is at once a book of history, philosophy, frustration and conscience. Exploring the political and professional relationships and encounters he has experienced since 1969, Wiesel weaves a compelling personal rejection of hate, intolerance and compromised principles.

And the Sea is Never Full is steeped in memory--the memories of one person, of course, but also the memories of all Holocaust survivors, of the Jewish people and of the world. Wiesel asks again and again how we, as individuals, as cultures and as a global community, can and should approach the task of remembrance. To forget the Holocaust would be unconscionable, but to communicate it is impossible. Wiesel searches for a balance between the silence required to show respect for the dead and the silence that will cause the dead to die again through forgetfulness.

Wiesel finds this balance, to the extent it is possible, when communicating his own experiences. In And the Sea is Never Full, Wiesel speaks of others more than he speaks of himself. His words are elegant but simple, punctuated by evocative phrases, more beautiful for their rarity. His expressions of disagreement are measured and his expressions of bitterness are restrained. And yet Wiesel's opinion is always clear and his message is always powerful.

"I am saddened." "I am disappointed." Wiesel describes his emotions in terms that are distant, spare. Often he describes his actions and reactions as if from the outside, as a biographer might. The "I's" could be changed to "he's." When explaining his opinions, he often quotes himself. But beneath these simple phrases lies an ocean of emotion. In each description of an encounter, Wiesel embeds a new clue and connection to his own motivation and intensity.

Alone, the words in And the Sea is Never Full might be too dry--alone they might be spare enough to be uncommunicative. But these words are part of a larger message. Wiesel has described his formative years in the first volume of his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea. He has given his testimony in Night, recalling the loss of his family and his childhood to the Nazi concentration camps at Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald. Memory requires honesty--Wiesel needed to describe his experiences in the camps. But he has given his description, and as he points out, speaking too frequently without restraint can lead to sensationalism and distortion of the truth.

Still, Wiesel argues that no history can replace the living memories of the Holocaust survivors; it can only provide a poor approximation. Yet, And the Sea is Never Full reads more like a history than like a set of thoughts. It relies on analysis, the ordering of events, cause and effect. Wiesel worries about saying too much, and though he is powerful and compelling, he is a distant writer. His books are not emotionally intimate. This is not a fault. But we need the intimate accounts too--the people who will go further and tell us more, who will provide us with the tools to imagine the survivors as our neighbors, even after they are gone. I do not think Wiesel would disagree.

History dominates Wiesel's memoirs. When he speaks of the present or the future, the Tragedy is his spoken or unspoken backdrop. When he describes his travels and meetings on behalf of victims, of Jews and of memory, the backdrop and players are the events and names of tomorrow's history books. The list of Wiesel's acquaintances is impressive--United States presidents and Israeli prime ministers, other Nobel laureates, Francois Mitterrand, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and many others. Wiesel does not attempt to recount the history of the past 30 years, but he calls on it. He provides his reactions to the Bitburg Affair and to events in the former Yugoslavia. He assumes knowledge of current history that we should all share. I doubt we all do. He implicitly challenges us to be informed--to contribute to the maintenance of social memory.

For his part, Wiesel weaves his personal and social memory together seamlessly. His memories flash by or linger, their movement evoking the river and sea of his titles. The beginning of the book is restless, hopping from name to name and from event to event. He pulls us, splashing, along the surface of the years. But he soon slows and we sink deeper--into his thoughts about living in the Diaspora, a tension that will return again and again. He delves into long discussions of Reagan's actions in the Bitburg Affair and of French president Francois Mitterrand. His thoughts are fascinating. I have said that Wiesel's reflections are not emotionally intimate. This does not make them less emotionally powerful. His words are personal, intellectual. Indirectly yet still consciously, they call upon a deep reservoir of personal and Jewish experience.

Wiesel has worked on behalf of Holocaust survivors and on the behalf of victims of human rights abuses around the world. He has defended Israel and the Jewish people. He has denounced fanaticism and intolerance. He has not always succeeded in changing the views of others, but he has always tried. Wiesel's thoughts reflect the sadness of a life spent fighting an adversary that by all logic should never have existed and yet continues to roam the earth undefeated. His words are moving and inspiring, hopeful and sad.

Wiesel asks and implores, "Why is there so much violence, so much hate? How is it conceived, transmitted, fertilized, nurtured? As we face the disquieting, implacable rise of intolerance and fanaticism on more than one continent, it is our duty to expose the danger. By naming it. By confronting it." One can only hope that the world can find the courage to do as he suggests.