The Furnace

Homer sends men to die at Troy. Virgil carries the survivors to a new shore. Tolstoy fills a thousand pages with Napoleon and makes peace the harder subject. Remarque writes the trenches. Hemingway walks away wounded. Koestler shows what the revolution devours. Frank hides and writes. Milosz sings on what he knows is the last day. Celan writes what should be impossible to write. Levi and Frankl testify from inside the worst of it. Heller and Vonnegut laugh because the alternative is silence. Pasternak and Akhmatova survive the Soviet furnace and bear witness. Kertesz records what it means to lose the ability to feel.