De Nacht der Girondijnen by Jacob Presser

There is one domain of literature, however, where that freedom and the idea of willing suspension of disbelief cause trouble, and that is Holocaust fiction. That verdict is hardly ever in favour of the plaintiff, due to the artistic freedom the author is at liberty to invoke. Some such cases are taken to court, more often than not resulting in increased public attention for the book, the author, and the plaintiff’s allegedly unreliable portrayal, regardless of the eventual verdict.

Clearly, in fiction that is recognizably autobiographical in nature, this lifelikeness may also pose a problem if relatives or acquaintances recognize themselves in the book’s characters and are displeased with their negative portrayal. By extension, Coleridge’s goal basically applies to all fiction, not only narratives of the supernatural, and it is perfectly respectable and accepted for writers to endow their fictitious world with a certain verisimilitude and make readers suspend their disbelief.

You knew there were no such creatures as dementors, but they still gave you the creeps. It is an experience that every reader will recognize, if only from the fairy tales of our childhood, or Harry Potter from our teenage years. The nineteenth-century English poet Coleridge once used a phrase to describe the enjoyment of literature that has since become a catchphrase for literary scholars, even though the concept itself is much older, from Aristotle: reading fiction and engaging with it entails “the willing suspension of disbelief.” When writing about supernatural characters or events, such as in his Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge wanted to achieve “a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” 1

De Nacht der Girondijnen by Jacob Presser