ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to analyse the features of Semprún’s testimonial writing relating to Buchenwald. It will assess the influences on, and the characteristics of, his testimonial idiolect through which he expands the possibilities of Holocaust representation and reception. The term ‘idiolect’, drawn from linguistics, refers to the form and variety of language which is specific to a given individual. As a polyglot and translator, Semprún’s idiolect is especially rich and it will be argued that through this personally formulated language he offers an original approach to the task of Holocaust representation and remembrance in the broader European context. Originating in his earliest published literary and screenplay writing of the early 1960s, Semprún’s idiolect distinctively combines bilingualism with a rich cultural, philosophical and political intertextuality, a desire to expand the parameters of visual and literary representation and an awareness of the workings of memory and trauma. The challenge for Semprún, as a Francophone Spanish exile and Buchenwald survivor steeped in European literary, philosophical and political culture, will not be uniquely that of representing the experience of Buchenwald per se but of facilitating the reception of that experience: to find those who can listen to a testimony of Buchenwald and imagine the hitherto unimaginable. 1
