Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, confronts a tragic dilemma: he must bear witness in order to pay respect to the memory of victims and perhaps help prevent a repetition of history. But are there words that can express the horror of the Holocaust? Would silence not be more appropriate in respect to the victims? / Elie Wiesel is not the first to confront such a dilemma. Throughout Jewish history, tragedies and catastrophes have forced Jewish writers to face the issue. Many literary schools have emerged, particularly in the "modern period" (1850-1945), which have dealt with the question of how to best respond to the tragedy. It is therefore fitting to try and consider Elie Wiesel's works in light of these various literary currents. / However, the Holocaust is not just another tragedy, not even another catastrophe. The event has no precedent; it is unique; it represents the ultimate evil. How to come to terms with it? What is the way between the powerlessness of language and the impossibility of silence? Elie Wiesel must find the delicate art of making silence be heard beyond the noise of words. He will suggest rather than tell the event. He will maintain a distance to protect the secret of the victims in front of the horror. Survivors who share the secret, express themselves with a code, which is not transmissible. Language has been devalued and words have lost their meaning. But to remain silent might also be a form of treason. / From Night, his first book, and throughout all his works, Wiesel assiduously develops his way of bearing witness in the name of the victims. He rejects the silence which would be synonymous with passive acceptance. He identifies with Job and demands account from God for His absence and His silence, while evil was committed. He distrusts language but must find the way to translate the uniqueness of the Holocaust. He finds his inspiration in the tales and legends of the literature of the Bible, the Talmud and the Hassidism. He evokes, suggests and tells while trying to respect the blanks between the words. In language and in silence, Wiesel developed a certain art of suggesting for what cannot be told otherwise.

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Elie Wiesel's work has its roots in the concentrationary universe. Wiesel, the survivor, has committed himself to the role of witness. This thesis attempts to clarify the uncertain position of what could be called the "literature of testimony" considered midway between on the one hand, a formal literature, which tends to be out of touch with its "subject", and on the other hand, the writing of "reportage" and history. The study is divided into three chapters. In the first one we will examine the act of bearing witness and the act of writing. In the second chapter, we will analyse the components of bearing witness in Elie Wiesel's writings regarding to the enunciation and commitment, the pragmatic aspect and the difference between bearing witness and reporting. Finally, the narrative La Nuit will be at the centre of our analysis of Wiesel's work.

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The approach I have chosen for my study is to analyse the narrative techniques in Wiesel's fiction, with particular emphasis on the role of the narrator and listener in the narratives. This will not only highlight aspects of his authorial strategy involving the reader's response to various dimensions of the Holocaust, but will allow an appraisal of the literary merit of Wiesel's novels. The hushed reverence that tends to accompany allusions to Auschwitz and its literature has impeded certain theoretical investigations, with the result that most critical studies undertaken on Wiesel's works have dealt predominantly with themes and content rather than with form. A narrative approach, however, while it accounts for themes, does so within the narrative process of the work. Form and content are examined as interwoven entities in the particular context of an individual work. My decision to adopt this pursuit is based on the conviction that Wiesel's fiction is a significant contribution to the literature of testimony, not only because of its subject matter, but also because of the way in which his narrators unfold their stories with words suspended by silence in the text. The paradox of the mute narrator, the title of my study, is intended to convey the paradoxical quality of Wiesel's fiction and to show how silence, which is manifested in the themes of his work, is concretized by his strategy of entrusting the transmission of the tale to narrators, who, for various reasons have been silenced. A mute by definition cannot emit an articulate sound. A narrator, on the other hand, is a storyteller who is reliant on verbal articulation for communication. This contradiction in terms is dramatized in the novels and is symptomatic of the dilemma of Wiesel's narrators who are compelled to bear testimony through their silence. In my study of Wiesel's fiction, I will follow the chronological sequence in which the novels were written, although I will not be using a developmental approach, except to point out that the trilogy which marks the beginning of his exploration into narrative strategies, and The Testament, the last book I will be dealing with, are a culmination of his previous fictional techniques. While a developmental analysis of his fiction, particularly from a thematic point of view, enables the reader to gain insight into his background, which is important in a comprehensive study of his works, I feel that this avenue of investigation has been competently dealt with by other critics. Ellen Fine's Legacy of Night, one of the first book-length studies of Wiesel, puts forward a convincing argument for examining his fiction in chronological sequence as a kind of serialized journey from being a witness in l'univers concentrationnaire to bearing - witness in a post-Holocaust world. Furthermore, it is possible to trace the direction Wiesel's fiction follows, as in each book the seeds are sown for new ideas which are expanded upon in subsequent books. My discussion, however, will deal with the narrative process of each novel as an individual work in its own particular context. Apart from the trilogy which is examined in one chapter, and The Testament which serves as a conclusion to the study, I have not used cross references to Wiesel's other fiction when analysing specific books. Moreover, I have deliberately avoided including Wiesel's comments on his works and references to them in his essays, interviews and non-fiction writing. The reason for this approach is that I consider each novel to be a separate narrative work which merits an interpretative response that is independent of the comparative criteria that has up to now influenced the assessment of his fiction. (Introduction, p. 12-14)

La présente thèse vise à revisiter la question de l’indicible et à explorer davantage le lien assez problématique entre fiction et témoignage dans la littérature de la Shoah. À travers l’analyse principale des œuvres d’Elie Wiesel, La nuit et Le crépuscule, au loin, et l’analyse des œuvres d’Imre Kertész, Être sans destin et Le chercheur de traces, nous tenterons d’arriver à une définition renouvelée du témoignage littéraire et de l’attestation testimoniale qui comprend le factuel ainsi que le fictionnel. D’ailleurs, notre propos dans cette thèse est de montrer, contrairement à l’idée commune de l’indicible, la manière dont l’expérience de la Shoah se dit à travers la littérature. Ces écrivains ne communiquent pas l’événement de la manière la plus transparente et directe possible, mais se servent de différentes stratégies narratives afin de transmettre l’expérience de la Shoah. Les œuvres de Wiesel et de Kertész font preuve d’un discours hésitant et incertain qui illustre un doute dans la perception du réel de la Shoah décrite par le narrateur. Ce travail a donc pour but d’explorer les modalités de fragilisation du rapport véridictoire du témoignage et d’offrir, à travers l’analyse des œuvres à l’étude, des exemples particuliers de cette distance du témoignage par rapport à la vérité historique. Le doute sera l’exemple le plus avancé de la question de la vérité dans le témoignage qui se déplace de la vérité historique vers une vérité testimoniale. Nous verrons avec l’analyse du doute que les textes à l’étude de Wiesel et de Kertész constituent moins un témoignage de la réalité vécue qu’un témoignage du doute de la réalité perçue. / This thesis revisits the debates concerning the unspeakable and explores the problematic relation between fiction and testimony in Holocaust Literature. The literary analysis of the works written by Elie Wiesel, La nuit and Le crépuscule, au loin, and by Imre Kertész, Être sans destin and Le chercheur de traces, brings to light a renewed definition of literary testimony and of bearing witness which includes factual and fictional elements. Furthermore, the main purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that the horrific experiences of the Holocaust can in fact be effectively transmitted and brought to life through literature, contrary to common notion of the unspeakable. These writers do not speak of the Holocaust in the most transparent and direct way, rather different narrative strategies to represent the Holocaust are put to use. The narrative works of Wiesel and Kertész reveal a hesitation and an uncertainty that illustrates the presence of doubt related to the perceived reality of the Holocaust. The objective of this study is to explore the different ways in which the rapport between testimony and truth are weakened and to provide specific examples to demonstrate the distance of testimony from truth. Doubt is seen as the most prominent example in revealing how the obligation of truth in testimony is fading. This analysis of doubt will illustrate how these narratives are much less testimonies of the lived reality rather testimonies expressing doubt of the perceived reality.