THE PARNAS: A SCENE FROM THE HOLOCAUST

Novel by Silvano Arieti, 1979

In The Parnas: A Scene from the Holocaust, Silvano Arieti combined his "psychiatrist's insight and the storyteller's skill," as Elie Wiesel expressed it on the book jacket, to produce one of the most penetrating novels written in response to the Holocaust. Indeed, Primo Levi , again quoted on the book jacket, described it as "a book to read again and again with the same piety with which it has been written." Based on the life of Giuseppe Pardo Roques—the parnas, or chief elder, of the Jewish community in Arieti's native town of Pisa—the novel explores how the spiritual sickness of an age can manifest itself in the soul of one of its victims. Arieti wrote The Parnas not only as a tribute to the courage and spirituality of Roques but also as an exploration of the bestial evil that characterized the Holocaust. "I feel as if I had written this book not only with ink but also with blood," Arieti said in his introduction. One powerful point he makes in the novel is that mental illness "may hide and express the spirituality of man," both individually and collectively. Pardo, as Roques is known in the novel, suffers from a phobia of animals, particularly dogs. Like any phobia, his appears to be completely irrational until the end of the tale, when the Nazis come to rob and murder the parnas.

As the Germans try to torture the parnas into praising Hitler, Pardo persists in his adoration of God. And as they proceed to beat him to death, Pardo sees the Nazis transformed into creatures that bark and howl, "with a snout, fur, four claws, and a tail." In other words he sees them transformed into what they have already become. At that point he realizes what he had truly feared all his life. It was the fear that haunts all humanity in the wake of the Holocaust, not a fear of animals but a fear of the human being who has allowed himself to be transformed into an animal. Who is worse off than the Jew murdered at the hands of the Nazi? When a German soldier puts this question to Pardo, he answers, "You." The Nazi who sets out to dehumanize the Jew loses his own human image in the process.

In the process of coming to this conclusion in the novel—and in keeping with his theories on the relation between mental illness and spirituality—Arieti examines the most profound spiritual questions that arise from the Holocaust. Pardo's friend Ernesto, in fact, believes that the mental illness is part of the Shechinah, of God's indwelling presence, that has descended upon the parnas. "What is ill in you," says Ernesto, "is intertwined with what is strong and holy and springs from the same source." Pardo replies by affirming his conviction that his illness has meaning; it is a warning against the illness of Nazism.

Because he sees meaning in his illness, the parnas does not believe that God has abandoned the world or the Jews. He hears his friend Angelo cry out, "What about the silence of God? Why is He mute? Why does He permit these things to happen?" The parnas answers, "God is not mute! Each crime bespeaks His lament, 'How far you are from Me!' … But we must choose to hear Him." In The Parnas , Arieti uses his skills as a psychiatrist and storyteller to enable his reader to hear the lament of the One whom Pardo affirms with his dying breath: " Shemah Israel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad —Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." What echoes in these words is the cry "How far you are from Me!"

—David Patterson