Appelfeld was born in the same town as Paul Celan . After a remarkable escape from the Nazis and emigration to Palestine, he became a prolific writer. Literature, if it is true literature, captures the religious tune that has been lost to us. The quotation comes from a Real Player interview divided up into neat, listenable chunks at this Jewish Heritage site. A memoir exists to rid oneself of memories.
Creativity is a permanent memory.
It won't go away. Fritz asks himself. You wouldn't have known her, you'd have seen her everywhere at once, in a hotel, in a street, in a train, in a bar, in a book, in a film, in yourself, your inmost self, when your sex grew erect in the night, seeking somewhere to put itself, somewhere to shed its load of tears. Ever since the time when he lived for almost a year with the thought that he had lost contact with language, every sentence he managed to write, and which in addition left him feeling that it might be possible to go on, had been an event. I began work on the big glass on 27 July 1967, wrote Harsnet.