On The Bookshelf
`And The Sea Is Never Full'
In his second memoir, Elie Wiesel depicts his public self.
SANDEE BRAWARS KY
and TOM TUGEND
Special to the Jewish News
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hose who've been fortunate
to hear Elie Wiesel speak
have come to know the
Nobel Prize laureate as a
master teacher. Facing his audience, he
spins webs of stories about biblical,
talmudic and Chasidic figures,
enchanting his listeners. The soft voice
can be deceptive: His words have fire.
Reading his memoirs can have a
similar impact. Here, in the second
volume, And the Sea is Never Full
(Alfred A. Knopf; $30), he again tells
stories in his engaging manner, braid-
ing philosophy and memory and
silence into the stories of his life.
While the first volume, All Rivers
Run to the Sea, was mostly introspec-
rive, covering the years from his child-
hood until his marriage in 1969, And
the Sea Is Never Full focuses more on
the outside world. "I try to give voice
to the public person I've become," he
. says.
He took the title for both books
from lines that appear in Ecclesiastes.
"To me, the sea stands for memory,
which is constantly replenished but is
never filled up," he explains.
As Wiesel notes in the first pages of
And the Sea Is Never Full, translated
from the French by his wife and fel-
low survivor Marion Wiesel, the
phrase is an answer to the biblical
question that God asks Adam,
"Ayekha?" ("Where are you?").
For the 71-year-old survivor of
Auschwitz and Buchenwald, that is
"the question." He writes, "Where do
you stand in this world? What is your
place in history? It is to each of us
that God speaks when He says,
"Ayekha?"
"It's a question that I ask every day.
I remain a yeshiva bucher," the author
of more than 40 books explains in an
interview in his home on Manhattan's
Upper East Side.
Behind his desk is a photograph of
his family's home in Sighet, Romania,
from.which they were deported in
Sandee Brawarsky is a freelance book
critic in New York. Tom Tugend writes
for Jewish Telegraphic Agency
1944. None of his honorary degrees,
awards or medals — in addition to
the Nobel Prize, he is the recipient of
the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the United States Congressional Gold
Medal, the French Legion of Honor
and others — are in sight. But books
are everywhere, packed tightly into
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and
stacked on almost every horizontal
surface.
In conversation as in writing, he
chooses his words carefully, linking
together graceful turns of phrase. His
eyes seem sad, and also full of light.
He's admittedly not a man without
contradiction. He writes eloquently of
silence, yet his words fill up the blank
spaces. He's a private person very
much in the public arena. He may be
the only individual ever who has
thrown out the first ball in a World
Series baseball game and danced at the
burial place of Rebbe Nahman of
"I , for me, the rst volume is a kind of formative work, the second evolves under
t e sign of con zct," writes Elie Wiesel. ""So do not expect a discreet and passive
stance from me. The introvert will yield to the extrovert."