"Qui témoigne pour le témoin?" : questions de la liberté littéraire à l'exemple de Jan Karski de Yannick Haenel

This article discusses the use of historical motifs in Yannick Haenel's controversial novel Jan Karski, which outraged a great number of historians, including the film director Claude Lanzmann, who had interviewed the title Holocaust witness in his film Shoah (1985). By comparing the critics' remarks with Yannick Haenel's point of view, we want to present two approaches towards utilisation of History in fiction. The aim of this essay is to analyze Jan Karski in light of new tendencies in French contemporary novels, to establish its differences and similarities with other historical fictions, and finally to study the true reasons of the controversy surrounding the release. Furthermore, this article tries to show the innovative structure of Jan Karski (i.e. narration, title, documentary and fictional elements) that contributes to the vanishing of the border between fiction and reality. At the time of great History witnesses' disappearance, we have to consider the role of literature in transmission of their personal stories. Yannick Haenel, who in a radical way benefits from the Second Wilde War experiences of a legend Polish resistant in his literary project, claims unlimited rights of a writer to create by using historical facts in his fiction. However, this approach seems to be inappropriate for many historians and other cultural personalities who firmly demand intransigent historical truth even in literature. That is why it is worth considering how to "witness on behalf of a witness" nowadays.