1981 novella by George Steiner
The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. is a 1981 literary and philosophical novella by George Steiner. The story is about Jewish Nazi hunters who find a fictional Adolf Hitler (A.H.) alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after the end of World War II. The book was controversial, particularly among reviewers and Jewish scholars, because the author allows Hitler to defend himself when he is put on trial in the jungle by his captors. There Hitler maintains that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust and that he is the "benefactor of the Jews".
The novella was first published in a literary magazine, "The Kenyon Review" in 1979. After some minor revisions by Steiner, it was published in the United Kingdom in May 1981 as a paperback original by Faber and Faber, and in the United States in hardcover in April 1982 by Simon &amp; Schuster. Adapted for the theatre by British playwright Christopher Hampton, it was staged in London in 1982 and in Hartford, Connecticut a year later. The productions generated further controversy, resulting in public pickets and condemnation being levelled against Steiner.
A central theme of "The Portage" is the nature of language, and revolves around Steiner's lifelong work on the subject and his fascination in the power and terror of human speech. Other themes include the philosophical and moral analysis of history, justice, guilt and revenge. Steiner makes no attempt to explain Hitler, but rather enters into a dialogue with him.
Reaction to the book was mixed: in a review in "Time" magazine, Otto Friedrich described it as "a philosophic fantasy of remarkable intensity", whereas John Leonard of "The New York Times" called Hitler's speech at the end of the book "obscene", and said Steiner's decision to leave it unchallenged "makes me sick to my stomach." Similarly, many readers and theatre-goers were disturbed by Steiner's fictional Hitler, and the author admitted that his character had got the better of him. Despite the controversy, "The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H." was a 1983 finalist in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Plot.
From his base in Tel Aviv, Holocaust survivor Emmanuel Lieber directs a group of Jewish Nazi hunters in search of Adolf Hitler. Lieber believes that the former Führer is still alive, and following rumours and hearsay, he tracks Hitler's movements through South America. After months of wading through swamps in the Amazon jungle, the search party finds the 90-year-old alive in a clearing. Lieber flies to San Cristóbal where he awaits the group's return with their captive. But getting the old man out of the jungle alive is more difficult than getting in, and their progress is further hampered by heavy thunderstorms.
Meanwhile, broken and incoherent radio messages between Lieber and the search party are intercepted by intelligence agents tracking their progress, and rumours begin to spread across the world of Hitler's capture. Debates flare up over his impending trial, where it will be held and under whose jurisdiction. Orosso is identified as the nearest airfield to the last known location of the search party, and aircraft begin arriving at the hitherto unknown town. But when the search party loses radio contact with Lieber, they must make a decision to either wait out the storms and deliver their captive to Lieber later, or try Hitler in the jungle. They choose the latter, given that they would likely lose control of the situation if they attempted to transport their prisoner. Against Lieber's advice ("You must not let him speak ... his tongue is like no other") they prepare for a trial with a judge, prosecution and defence attorneys selected from the members of the search party. Teku, a local Indian tracker, is asked to observe the trial as an independent witness.
The attention Hitler receives renews his strength, and when the trial begins, he brushes aside his "defence attorney" and begins a long speech in four parts in his own defence:
At the end of his speech, Teku, who "had not understood the words, only their meaning", is the first to react and jumps up shouting "Proven". But he is drowned out by the appearance of a helicopter over the clearing.
Background and publication.
George Steiner, academic, philosopher, writer and literary critic for "The New Yorker" and "The New York Times", had written about the Holocaust in some of his previous books, including "Anno Domini" (1964), "Language and Silence" (1967) and "In Bluebeard's Castle" (1971). Many of the ideas Steiner expresses in "The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H." were drawn from these earlier works. Steiner told "New York Times" editor D. J. R. Bruckner that this book arose out of his lifelong work on language. "Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment ... that you can use human speech both to bless, to love, to build, to forgive and also to torture, to hate, to destroy and to annihilate."
Steiner wrote "The Portage" in 1975 and 1976 in Geneva, Switzerland, and the 120-page work originally appeared in the Spring 1979 issue of the US literary magazine, "The Kenyon Review". An abridged version was published in the Spring 1980 issue of "Granta", the British literary magazine. Its first publication in book form, with minor revisions by Steiner, was in May 1981 by Faber and Faber in the UK and, as requested by Steiner, it was a paperback original. The first US edition was published in hardcover in April 1982 by Simon &amp; Schuster. "The Portage" has been translated into several languages, including French, German, Hebrew, Italian and Swedish.
Commenting on the controversy the book generated, Steiner admitted to literary journalist and critic Ron Rosenbaum (author of "Explaining Hitler") that he too was disturbed by it, adding that his fictional Hitler had got the better of him, "golem- or Frankenstein-like". He said that it felt like the book "wrote me". Steiner also pointed out that the novella is not only about his thoughts on the Holocaust, but also about the horrific events that took place in countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, El Salvador and Burundi: "My feeling is that one has to grapple with the abyss if one can." In his 1997 memoir, "Errata: An Examined Life", Steiner remarked that had he known what the response to "The Portage" and its stage interpretation would be, he would have made the novella "my foremost business".
Stage adaptations.
The only work of fiction by Steiner to have been adapted for the stage, "The Portage" was reworked in 1982 by British playwright Christopher Hampton. It was staged in April 1982 at London's Mermaid Theatre under the direction of John Dexter with Alec McCowen playing the part of Adolf Hitler. McCowen won the 1982 Evening Standard Theatre Award for best actor for this performance. The production generated "a storm of controversy". In "Stage Nazis: The Politics and Aesthetics of Memory", Robert Skloot described the play as "a rarely articulated fantasy about the causes of genocide" that "test[s] the limits of personal tolerance". He wrote that Steiner was "intentionally provocative" in choosing Hitler for the search party to pursue, and Hampton exploited this by giving the former Führer 25 minutes to present his case. Skloot added that while Hitler's speech is "a hodgepodge of misinformation, mendacity and slander", its delivery is captivating.
In 1983 the production moved to the US where it played at the Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, Connecticut, directed by Mark Lamos and starring John Cullum as Hitler. At this premiere, Cullum's 25-minute speech at the end of the play was described by Mel Gussow in "The New York Times" as "a Wagnerian intensity without resorting to histrionics" that "almost succeeds in that most difficult of tasks—humanizing Hitler". In "World Literature Today", Bettina L. Knapp wrote that the play presented theatre-goers with the dilemma: what would you do with Hitler were he to surface today? Skloot noted that while the "facts" in Steiner's work are pure fiction, the play confronts the audience with an event that cannot be resolved with traditional "logic, facticity and morality". Responding to theatre critics who objected to Hitler having the last word, Steiner said he wanted the audience to refute the former dictator's claims themselves.
Controversy.
"The Portage" generated considerable controversy because of its apparent "admiration for Hitler". The controversy grew further when the stage adaptation of the book ("too faithful", according to Steiner) was performed in the UK and the US.
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[T]here shall come a man [who] ... will know the grammar of hell and teach it to others. He will know the sounds of madness and loathing and make them seem music ... His tongue is like no other. It is the tongue of the basilisk, a hundred-forked and quick as flame. He created on the night-side of language a speech for hell.
— Emmanuel Lieber on Hitler, "The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.", page 33
Hitler's speech at the end of the book disturbed many readers and critics. Steiner not only lets Hitler justify his past, he allows him the (almost) last word before the outside world invades. The fact that Steiner was Jewish made this speech in particular even more contentious. One critic, while acknowledging that Steiner always saw Hitler as "the incarnation of unprecedented and unparalleled evil", felt that there was no clear distinction in the book between Steiner's own views and those of his fictional Hitler, even going so far as to accuse Steiner, who rejected Jewish nationalism and was a critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, of anti-Semitism.
In contrast, a "Time" magazine article felt that Steiner's intention for the Hitler speech was to use it to explore his belief "that Hitler wielded language as an almost supernatural force". Steiner articulated this in Lieber's warning in the book that "there shall come a man [who] ... will know the grammar of hell and ... will know the sounds of madness and loathing and make them seem music." Menachem Z. Rosensaft, chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Survivors, said that "Nothing in ["The Portage"] was a trivialization of the Holocaust or a whitewash".
Rosenbaum remarked that as Hitler's trial in the book ended, so Steiner's trial began, with "manifold and stinging" accusations levelled against him, "from the artistic to the personal". The dramatisation of the novel and the subsequent stage performances escalated the criticism, and led to public pickets. By letting Hitler's "long, insidious, subversive, and disturbing speech" go unchallenged, Steiner was accused of "playing with fire". One of Steiner's most prominent critics, British Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby said:
In a world historically receptive to any anti-Semitic argument, however crude, to put in Hitler's mouth a powerful rationale for blaming the Jews, however ironically, was feeding the same fires that sent Jews up the chimneys of the death camps.
One of the biggest criticisms Steiner received was that he himself believed what his fictive Hitler said about the Jews. It was also thought that at the end of the London theatre production, the audience were applauding Hitler and not the play.
Steiner responded to criticism that Hitler's speech in the book is unchallenged by saying that it had been done before: for example Satan's speech in Milton's "Paradise Lost" (1667), and The Grand Inquisitor's speech in Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880). He also reminded the reader that Hitler's speech is balanced out earlier in the book by Lieber's long monologue on the horrors of the Holocaust. Finally, Steiner said that his Hitler (A.H.) is "a fictive figure", and that it is not he who has the last word, but Teku, the Indian tracker, who shouts "Proven". Dominick LaCapra said that Teku's declaration is ambiguous, meaning either Hitler has proved his innocence or his guilt. Steiner explained this ambiguity by adding that Teku is the Hebrew word used to indicate that "there are issues here beyond our wisdom to answer or decide."
Reception.
Reaction to "The Portage" was mixed. Anthony Burgess in "The Observer" called it "astonishing", Christopher Booker of "The Daily Telegraph" described it as a "powerful piece", and English author A. S. Byatt said it was a "masterpiece". In "Explaining Hitler" (1998), Rosenbaum called "The Portage" "A Frankenstein story", referring to Steiner's fictive Hitler having taken on a life of its own. Writing in "Time" magazine, Otto Friedrich described the book as "a philosophic fantasy of remarkable intensity", adding that by not refuting Hitler's speech, Steiner deviates from the horrors of