Questioning the Banality of Evil, and the Evil of Banality
“For the first time back then, I thought about everything seriously. The past and the future, both equally unknowable, and also this ongoing situation that the consulates call “transitory” but that we know in everyday language as “the present.” — Anna Seghers, Transit
Anna Seghers began her work Transit during her flight from Europe. It was written in German but was first published in English in 1944. What makes the story enduring is the fact that it was written during Seghers’ exile, not something that was published in hindsight. The story is also unique in chronicling the experience of the Second World War in Europe with its attempt to touch the lives of ordinary people, particularly in the Nazi-occupied territories in France and unoccupied zones under the governance of Marshall Philippe Pétain in Vichy. Seghers fled Nazi Germany after the burning of the Reichstag which happened one month after Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933 when Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was the apparent culprit and the Reichstag Fire Decree was issued which allowed the Nazi-controlled police to arrest Communists in Germany. Seghers’ life was in danger due to the fact of her position as a member of the KPD–the Communist Party of Germany and her Jewish bloodline. Seghers lived in Paris between 1934–1940 and fled to Marseilles when Nazi Germany invaded the French Third Republic.
The majority of the story in Transit takes place in Marseilles, amidst the increasing traffic of refugees with all kinds of backgrounds attempting to leave Europe by way of the port in Marseilles, echoing Seghers’ own experience. The speed of Hitler’s invasion and occupation of France, along with the formation of the Vichy government quickly influenced Seghers’ life when she had to make some fast decisions. She had two young children at that time, was destitute, and her husband was detained in a French concentration camp. Similarly, our unnamed narrator in this story–who assumed the name Seidler–also escapes from a concentration camp in Rouen, after previously swimming across the Rhine to also escape another concentration camp in Germany. When he was on the way to Marseilles, hoping to leave on passage from the country, he met an old friend of his called Paul who asked him to deliver a letter to a certain writer called Weidel in Paris. In Paris, he learned that Weidel has committed suicide while leaving a suitcase full of letters, documents, and an unfinished manuscript of a novel.
Many events in the story seem to be described in the power of coincidence. From the very first scene, the narrator starts his story with a question that invites curiosity at the readers but at the same time also emphasises the banality of what he’s about to say: “Probably you find all of this pretty unimportant? You’re bored?–I am too. May I invite you to join me at my table?” The narrator, or Seidler as he assumes his identity, feels that his story is only one of the many stories that might fill the pages and columns in the newspaper. There’s no uniqueness in his story as everyone has similar experiences and suffers similar conditions during the war. He assumes that the readers will be bored because similar stories might have been told already. It’s akin to saying that the number of casualties during the war only becomes statistics in historical records. But in some ways, it’s also an invitation to the readers to question the wartime experience. Of course, there are people who died during the war or those who fled persecutions to the other part of the globe (such as Seghers herself), while also there are those whose life seems to not change that much. There’s a duality of experience in this regard.
Similar to Seghers’ story, Seidler also went to Marseilles only to discover a town full of refugees trying to leave Europe. He was flabbergasted by the question that people ask him. Here in Marseilles, everyone asks, “Where are you going?”, never, “Where are you from?” The uniformity of experience signifies that everyone is panicked and tries to escape from the same source of evil, something which Seidler did not understand. Using the term of the twenty-first century, Seidler lacks the ‘fear of missing out’ akin to his contemporaries. Everyone wants to leave, whereas he just wants to stay. But the problem happens as the authorities in Marseilles do not allow people who do not want to leave to stay in the town. Everyone has to produce proper documentation such as a passport, visa of the country of destination, transit visa, proof of payment for the passage, and also exit visa granted by the local authorities. The bureaucratic complexities produce similar stories that quickly become banal to Seidler’s ears, such as people who cannot board their ships due to their visa expired by the time they secured a passage and vice versa who has a valid visa but has not purchased a ticket yet. Except for the banality of existence for Seidler suddenly broken with a sheer coincidence when he encountered and fell in love with Marie, the wife of the deceased writer Weidel, who is always on the lookout for Weidel’s spectre.
From then on, Seidler quickly assumes Weidel’s identity using the documents that the deceased had left behind, while secretly playing some role in assisting Marie’s attempt to leave the country. It’s a story of contradiction since Seidler initially wanted to stay, yet his decision is slowly influenced by Marie’s existence in his life, all while hiding the fact that Weidler has died from Marie. The story is interesting because Seidler never makes any final decision in his life. He is not in danger, for someone who is not politically inclined towards any Nazi-rival ideologies, nor he is a Jew who has to run for his life. Seidler is everything that Anna Seghers is not. Yet it’s also a sign that war brings about different experiences in people. There are those who are forced to fight for their countries, those who are detained in concentration camps, those who have to flee for their lives, and also those who simply lead an ordinary life just like how it was prior to the war. Despite the banality of stories chronicling wartime situations, there are multitudes of experiences that remain untold. Transit is an enduring assessment of the lives of ordinary people during the war, and probably of the existential flight of refugees throughout the ages.
Title: Transit
Author: Anna Seghers, Stuart Evers (Introduction), Margot Bettauer Dembo (Translator)
Edition: Paperback, Virago Modern Classics, 288 pages
Publication Date: Published December 2nd 2021 by Virago
ISBN: 9780349014708
