ABSTRACT
"Bertha" by Aharon Appelfeld is one of the few literary works in which the Muselmann-psychotic mode is both described and enacted. This is the story of Max, a man in his prime, who lives with an ageless woman who suffers from an undefined syndrome that seems, but is not overtly declared, to be a blend of retardation and autism. Max's and Bertha's identities are interwoven. While he is in charge of the vivid and developing part — she holds the eternal, frozen time of the traumatic wound on his behalf. Bertha is Max's traumatic lacuna. In the terminology of the old world, the question of purpose is meaningful, entailing crucial practical conclusions. The conversation serves as a type of negative possession: instead of letting new thoughts in, it turns speech into a repetitive, compulsive ritual, based on the profound refusal of any type of change, which is experienced as catastrophic.
