scholarly journals Hearing the Form: Breath and the Structures of Poetry in Charles Olson and Paul Celan

2021 ◽  
pp. 409-434
Author(s):  
David Fuller
Keyword(s):  
American Poetry ◽  
William Carlos Williams ◽  
First Century ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Post War

AbstractThis essay examines the ways in which the American poet Charles Olson, and the German-speaking Romanian Jewish poet Paul Celan, each in relation to specific post-war cultural circumstances, experimented with new ways of structuring poetry in relation to the breath: Olson in response to new global scientific, political, and intellectual currents; Celan in response to the Holocaust. The essay discusses not only how the poets wrote but also how they realised the printed forms of their poetry in performance, contrasting Olson’s literal performance of his theories with the different relation of print to performance of his contemporary and associate William Carlos Williams. It argues that Olson’s experiments, polemically formulated in his manifesto Projective Verse, while they have influenced central currents of American poetry since the 1950s, have remained largely American, whereas Celan’s, tentatively intimated in his anti-manifesto Der Meridian, and inimitably personal in their specific forms, can also be seen as modelling ways in which a wide range of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry can be realised in reading aloud.

The Galician Paradigm? Post-war Voices of German-Speaking Polish Jewish Survivors1

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Aleksiun
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
German Culture ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Historical Commissions ◽  
Post War ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Jewish Survivors ◽  
Second World

Abstract This paper examines the experience of Galician-Jewish survivors who were fluent in German and who had developed close ties to German culture before the Second World War. It suggests that looking through the German linguistic lens highlights the multilayered nature of Jewish cultural identity in Galicia and offers an important critical tool with which to understand the distinct ways in which Galician Jews experienced the Holocaust. Using personal accounts, this article analyzes the ways in which complex cultural biographies of Galician Jews shaped their identities as eastern European Jews, Polish citizens, and Holocaust survivors. On the basis of testimonies included in early accounts for the Jewish historical commissions, statements by Jewish witnesses in post-war trials, oral interviews, and memoirs, this article discusses the ways in which Galician Jews remembered their relationship with German culture and how their complex cultural identity shaped their personal trajectories after the liberation.

scholarly journals How Jewish Refugee Critics Changed British Literary Criticism, 1970–2020

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
David Herman
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Jewish Refugee ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Post War

During the mid- and late 20th century, a small group of Jewish refugee critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why. These outsiders went on to have an enormous impact on late 20th-century British literary culture. What was this impact? Why in the last third of the 20th century? Why did British literary culture become so much more receptive to critics like George Steiner, Gabriel Josipovici, Martin Esslin and SS Prawer and to a new canon of continental Jewish writers? The obstacles to Jewish refugee critics were formidable. Yet their work on writers like Kafka, Brecht and Paul Celan, and thinkers like Heidegger and Lukacs had a huge impact. They also broke the post-war silence about the Holocaust and moved the Jewish Bibl from the margins of English-speaking culture.

Społeczeństwo holenderskie i los Żydów: skomplikowana historia

2016 ◽  
pp. 425-434
Author(s):  
Dan Michman
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Western European ◽  
Post War ◽  
Of Greece

The percentage of victimization of Dutch Jewry during the Shoah is the highest of Western, Central and Southern Europe (except, perhaps of Greece), and close to the Polish one: 75%, more than 104.000 souls. The question of disproportion between the apparent favorable status of the Jews in society – they had acquired emancipation in 1796 - and the disastrous outcome of the Nazi occupation as compared to other countries in general and Western European in particular has haunted Dutch historiography of the Shoah. Who should be blamed for that outcome: the perpetrators, i.e. the Germans, the bystanders, i.e. the Dutch or the victims, i.e. the Dutch Jews? The article first surveys the answers given to this question since the beginnings of Dutch Holocaust historiography in the immediate post-war period until the debates of today and the factors that influenced the shaping of some basic perceptions on “Dutch society and the Jews”. It then proceeds to detailing several facts from the Holocaust period that are essential for an evaluation of gentile attitudes. The article concludes with the observation that – in spite of ongoing debates – the overall picture which has accumulated after decades of research will not essentially being altered. Although the Holocaust was initiated, planned and carried out from Berlin, and although a considerable number of Dutchmen helped and hid Jews and the majority definitely despised the Germans, considerable parts of Dutch society contributed to the disastrous outcome of the Jewish lot in the Netherlands – through a high amount of servility towards the German authorities, through indifference when Jewish fellow-citizens were persecuted, through economically benefiting from the persecution and from the disappearance of Jewish neighbors, and through actual collaboration (stemming from a variety of reasons). Consequently, the picture of the Holocaust in the Netherlands is multi-dimensional, but altogether puzzling and not favorable.

Short Films from a Small Nation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Public Information ◽  
Industrial Process ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Art And Architecture

The first book-length study in English of a national corpus of state-sponsored informational film, this book traces how Danish shorts on topics including social welfare, industry, art and architecture were commissioned, funded, produced and reviewed from the inter-war period to the 1960s. For three decades, state-sponsored short filmmaking educated Danish citizens, promoted Denmark to the world, and shaped the careers of renowned directors like Carl Th. Dreyer. Examining the life cycle of a representative selection of films, and discussing their preservation and mediation in the digital age, this book presents a detailed case study of how informational cinema is shaped by, and indeed shapes, its cultural, political and technological contexts.The book combines close textual analysis of a broad range of films with detailed accounts of their commissioning, production, distribution and reception in Denmark and abroad, drawing on Actor-Network Theory to emphasise the role of a wide range of entities in these processes. It considers a broad range of genres and sub-genres, including industrial process films, public information films, art films, the city symphony, the essay film, and many more. It also maps international networks of informational and documentary films in the post-war period, and explores the role of informational film in Danish cultural and political history.

Possession and Repetition

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 243-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yohan Yoo
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Lay Buddhists ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
And Function ◽  
To Receive

This article demonstrates the need for the iconic status and function of Buddhist scripture to receive more attention by illuminating how lay Korean Buddhists try to appropriate the power of sutras. The oral and aural aspects of scripture, explained by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, provide only a limited understanding of the characteristics of scripture. It should be noted that, before modern times, most lay people, not only in Buddhist cultures but also in Christian and other traditions, neither had the chance to recite scriptures nor to listen to their recitations regularly. Several clear examples demonstrate contemporary Korean Buddhists’ acceptance of the iconic status of sutras and their attempt to appropriate the power and status of those sacred texts. In contemporary Korea, lay Buddhists try to claim the power of scriptures in their daily lives by repeating and possessing them. Twenty-first century lay believers who cannot read or recite in a traditional style have found new methods of repetition, such as internet programs for copying sacred texts and for playing recordings of their recitations. In addition, many Korean Buddhists consider the act of having sutras in one’s possession to be an effective way of accessing the sacred status and power of these texts. Hence, various ways of possessing them have been developed in a wide range of products, from fancy gilded sutras to sneakers embroidered with mantras.

Myths of the Underworld in Contemporary Culture

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
First Century ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Cinematic Adaptation ◽  
Narrative Tradition ◽  
Wide Range

Stories of a visit to the realm of the dead and a return to the upper world are among the oldest narratives in European literature, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and extending to contemporary culture. This volume examines a series of fictional works by twentieth- and twenty-first century authors, such Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, which deal in various ways with the descent to Hades. Myths of the Underworld in Contemporary Culture surveys a wide range of genres, including novels, short stories, comics, a cinematic adaptation, poetry, and juvenile fiction. It examines not only those texts that feature a literal catabasis, such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, but also those where the descent to the underworld is evoked in more metaphorical ways as a kind of border crossing, for instance Salman Rushdie’s use of the Orpheus myth to signify the trauma of migration. The analyses examine how these retellings relate to earlier versions of the mythical theme, including their ancient precedents by Homer and Vergil, but also to post-classical receptions of underworld narratives by authors such as Dante, Ezra Pound, and Joseph Conrad. Arguing that the underworld has come to connote a cultural archive of narrative tradition, the book offers a series of case studies that examine the adaptation of underworld myths in contemporary culture in relation to the discourses of postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism.

Three Challenges for the Social Investment Strategy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Myles
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Current Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Wage Outcomes

Three challenges are highlighted in this chapter to the realization of the social investment strategy in our twenty-first-century world. The first such challenge—intertemporal politics—lies in the term ‘investment’, a willingness to forego some measure of current consumption in order to realize often uncertain gains in the future that would not occur otherwise, such as better schooling, employment, and wage outcomes for the next generation. Second, the conditions that enabled our post-war predecessors to invest heavily in future-oriented public goods—a sustained period of economic growth and historically exceptional tolerance for high levels of taxation—no longer obtain. Third, the millennial cohorts who will bear the costs of a new, post-industrial, investment strategy are more economically divided than earlier cohorts and face multiple demands raised by issues such as population aging and global warming, among others.

Charles Olson and American Modernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Byers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
Instrumental Reason ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
American Modernism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
American Poet ◽  
Mark Rothko

The Practice of the Self situates the work of American poet Charles Olson (1910–70) at the centre of the early postwar American avant-garde. It shows Olson to have been one of the major advocates and theorists of American modernism in the late 1940s and early 1950s; a poet who responded fully and variously to the political, ethical, and aesthetic urgencies driving innovation across contemporary American art. Reading Olson’s work alongside that of contemporaries associated with the New York Schools of painting and music (as well as the exiled Frankfurt School), the book draws on Olson’s published and unpublished writings to establish an original account of early postwar American modernism. The development of Olson’s work is seen to illustrate two primary drivers of formal innovation in the period: the evolution of a new model of political action pivoting around the radical individual and, relatedly, a powerful new critique of instrumental reason and the Enlightenment tradition. Drawing on extensive archival research and featuring readings of a wide range of artists—including, prominently, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Wolfgang Paalen, and John Cage—The Practice of the Self offers a new reading of a major American poet and an original account of the emergence of postwar American modernism.

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