scholarly journals “Die Grenzen des Sagbaren”: H. G. Adler (on) Writing Literature after the Holocaust

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Traci S. O’Brien

Taking the next step in our understanding of the testimony of Holocaust literature involves taking a step back to recuperate a theoretical approach that does not cede all human attempts at knowledge to skepticism. At odds with Theodor Adorno about the possibility of writing poetry after Auschwitz, Adler, a survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, transformed his experiences into fiction. In his novel, Eine Reise, published in 1962, and in his 1965 essay on “Die Grenzen des Sagbaren,” or the limits of the sayable, Adler addresses these dilemmas. While Adorno collapses traditions of value into barbarity, Adler struggles to maintain, describe and explain the possibility of human resistance to evil. I examine Adler’s nuanced use of language in these two works and show that the rage and epistemological uncertainty that dominate the post-Holocaust world do not necessarily lead to the destruction of all traditional forms of meaning.

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Robinson

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has been notorious since its first publication in 1948, but rarely, if ever, has it been read in light of its immediate historical context. This essay draws on literature, philosophy, and anthropology from the period to argue that Jackson’s story, which scholars have traditionally read through the lens of gender studies, invokes the themes of Holocaust literature. To support this argument, the essay explores imaginative Holocaust literature from the period by David Rousset, whose Holocaust memoir The Other Kingdom appeared in English translation in 1946, anthropological discourse from the period on scapegoating and European anti-Semitism, and critical discourse on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism from the period by Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno. The analysis finds that, in representing the phenomena of scapegoating and death selection in a small town in the US, Jackson’s story belongs to an abstract discourse on Holocaust-related themes and topics that was actively produced at midcentury, as evidenced partly by Rousset’s influential memoir. A master of the horror genre, Jackson could have drawn on her own experience of anti-Semitism, along with her known interest in the study of folklore, to contribute this chilling representation of the personal experience of death selection to a discourse on Holocaust-related themes. As this article shows, the abstract discourse Jackson’s story joined is marked by skepticism about or disinterest in ethnic difference and anthropological concepts. Due to the fact that this article features comparative analysis of Holocaust literature, a sub-topic is the debate among scholars concerning the ethics of literary representation of the Shoah and of analysis of Holocaust memoir. Jackson’s story and its context invoke perennially important questions about identity and representation in discourse about the Shoah and anti-Semitism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Michael Berkowitz

This article argues that Albert Friedlander’s edited book, Out of the Whirlwind (1968), should be recognised as pathbreaking. Among the first to articulate the idea of ‘Holocaust literature’, it established a body of texts and contextualised these as a way to integrate literature – as well as historical writing, music, art and poetry – as critical to an understanding of the Holocaust. This article also situates Out of the Whirlwind through the personal history of Friedlander and his wife Evelyn, who was a co-creator of the book, his colleagues from Hebrew Union College, and the illustrator, Jacob Landau. It explores the work’s connection to the expansive, humanistic development of progressive Judaism in the United States, Britain and continental Europe. It also underscores Friedlander’s study of Leo Baeck as a means to understand the importance of mutual accountability, not only between Jews, but in Jews’ engagement with the wider world.


2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (01) ◽  
pp. 71-113
Author(s):  
Silvana Vetö

En este trabajo se examinarán algunos de los problemas éticos que el Holocausto ha planteado a los medios de representación de la historia, para luego ligar las distintas narrativas que resultan de dichas representaciones, con las posibilidades de duelo y elaboración. Se abordarán primero los planteamientos de Theodor Adorno respecto de las posibilidades del arte frente al sufrimiento. Luego se expondrán algunos aspectos del debate surgido al final de la década del 70 a propósito de la representación del Holocausto en medios de comunicación de masa y en la “alta” cultura. Se mostrará como persiste en ese debate una perspectiva dicotómica respecto del trauma, de la cual surgen dos tipos de narrativas post-traumáticas supuestamente irreconciliables, que no permiten una adecuada elaboración y un duelo satisfactorio respecto de las pérdidas implicadas en el acontecimiento traumático. Finalmente, analizaremos en detalle la novela gráfica Maus. Relato de un superviviente, cuya narrativa experimental permite cuestionar y deconstruir la dicotomía redención/aporía de manera novedosa, planteando nuevos problemas vinculados a la memoria del Holocausto y a la posibilidades de duelo. In this work, we will focus on some of the ethical problems that the Holocaust has posed to the representation of historical limit-events. We will then link the different narratives emerging from these representations to the possibilities of mourning and elaboration. First, we will examine the German philosopher Theodor Adorno’s propositions concerning the possibilities of art in the face of suffering. Then, we will present some aspects of the debate that arose in the late 70s regarding the representation of the Holocaust in mass media and in ‘high’ culture. It will be shown how in this debate there persists a dichotomist perspective of trauma, which creates two supposedly irreconcilable types of post-traumatic narratives that do not permit an appropriate elaboration and mourning of losses caused by the traumatic event. Finally, we will analyze the graphic novel Maus. A Survivor’s Tale, whose experimental and open narrative allows an original questioning and deconstruction of the redemption/aporia dichotomy, putting forward new problems related to the memory of the Holocaust and the possibilities of mourning.


Author(s):  
Richard S. Esbenshade

THE long-accepted, fairly universal idea of a ‘great silence’ on the Holocaust in general, and in Hungary in particular, extending from the end of the Second World War until the Eichmann trial, has recently been challenged.1 The return or emergence from hiding of survivors quickly led to an explosion of Holocaust literature. Before the communist takeover, in the midst of difficult material and turbulent political conditions, Jenő Lévai and others published collections of documents;...


2020 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Кринка [Krinka] Видаковић-Петров [Vidaković-Petrov]

Transgenerational Memory: From Pre-Holocaust to Post-YugoslaviaThe study focuses on Fanika as an example of documentary writing by firstand second-generation survivors, i.e. women in the mother-daughter relationship (Hanna Altarac/Fanika Lučić and Branka Jovičić), both from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. The timeline of the life story of Hanna/Fanika, born in 1922 in a Sephardic family from Sarajevo, coincides on the macro level with the history of Yugoslavia (the establishment of the state and the interwar period, World War Two and the Holocaust, the postwar socialist period, the break-up of the country and post-Yugoslavia), which is important for the contextualization of the narrative. We have analyzed the motivation of first-generation survivor Fanika Lučić to present her memories of the Holocaust, highlighting the importance of communicative memory as an instrument of their transmission to a second-generation survivor as well as the process involved in their transfer from private to public narrative. Further analysis refers to the generic frames of the narrative, its hybrid character, and its liminal position at a point where biography and autobiography meet and interact. Mediation is a key procedure in Fanika, so attention has been dedicated to determining the degrees of mediation, their variation throughout the narrative and their impact on the substructures (narrative segments). Finally, we have identified, interpreted, and contextualized several gender markers appearing at various levels of the text. In conclusion, the book was designed not only to transmit the Holocaust testimony of Fanika Lučić, but also to provide a biographical account of her life in socialist Yugoslavia, her experience of the war in Bosnia, and the final phase of her life as a Canadian immigrant. Transgenerational memory and gender play a key role in the hybrid structure of this book, which is a welcome contribution to Yugoslav Holocaust literature. Pamięć międzypokoleniowa: od czasów przed Holokaustem do okresu postjugosłowiańskiegoArtykuł analizuje książkę Fanika jako przykład prozy dokumentalnej, autorstwa dwóch kobiet należących kolejno do pierwszego i drugiego pokolenia ocalałych z Holokaustu. Są to pochodzące z Sarajewa matka i córka – Hanna Altarac/Fanika Lučic i Branka Jovičic. Ramy czasowe historii życia Hanny/Faniki (ur. 1922 w sefardyjskiej rodzinie) zbiegają się z historią Jugosławii (powstanie państwa i okres międzywojenny, II wojna światowa i Holokaust, powojenny socjalistyczny okres, rozpad kraju i okres postjugosłowiański), co stanowi istotny punkt wyjścia dla kontekstualizacji narracji. W artykule poddano analizie zarówno motywację ocalałej z pierwszego pokolenia Faniki Lučić do przedstawienia swoich wspomnień z Holokaustu, podkreślając znaczenie pamięci komunikacyjnej jako narzędzia służącego do przekazywania wspomnień ocalałemu z drugiego pokolenia, jak i proces transferu wspomnień z narracji prywatnej do publicznej. Dalsza analiza odnosi się do ogólnych ram narracji, jej hybrydowego charakteru i jej pozycji liminalnej w punkcie, w którym biografia i autobiografia spotykają się i współdziałają. Ponieważ mediacja jest procedurą kluczową w Fanice, zwrócono uwagę na określenie stopnia mediacji, jej zmienności poprzez narrację, a także jej wpływu na narracyjne podstruktury (segmenty narracyjne). Wreszcie zidentyfikowano, zinterpretowano i osadzono w kontekście kilka wyznaczników płci pojawiających się na różnych poziomach tekstu. Podsumowując, książka miała na celu nie tylko przekazanie świadectwa o Holokauście Faniki Lučić, ale także przedstawienie biograficznego opisu jej życia w socjalistycznej Jugosławii, jej doświadczeń wojny w Bośni i ostatniej fazy jej życia jako imigrantki w Kanadzie. Pamięć międzypokoleniowa i płeć odgrywają kluczową rolę w hybrydowej strukturze tej książki, która wnosi istotny wkład do jugosłowiańskiej literatury Holokaustu.


2020 ◽  
pp. 409-425
Author(s):  
Tatiana Czerska

The article presents findings contained in the work by Arkadiusz Morawiec entitled Literatura polska wobec ludobójstwa. Rekonesans [Polish literature faced with genocide. Reconnaissance]. The scholar from Łódź calls into question the hitherto established hierarchy of genocides. Extensive comparative research into literary representations of particular wartime massacres is what constitutes the thematic pivot of the said treatise, which joins in the discussion scope outlined by genocide studies. Subsequent chapters of the presented book are devoted to literary reverberations of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by Turks, the Nazi-Germany extermination of persons with physical and mental retardation as well as Sinti and Roma, the Srebrenica massacres carried out by Serbs. The remaining chapters deal with the Holocaust literature and, according to the author’s intentions, an attempt to enrich the state of research, and sometimes – to amend some of their findings.


PMLA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Alan Itkin

The scenario of someone gazing at corpses plays an important role in the work of three authors representing three generations of Holocaust literature: Peter Weiss, W. G. Sebald, and Jonathan Littell. Plato and Aristotle used this scenario to address a key question raised by the concept of poetic vividness, which they defined as putting a described scene before the reader's eyes: If literature shows us gruesome sights that we should not desire to see or enjoy seeing, does this make literature a form of voyeurism? Weiss, Sebald, and Littell evoke corpse gazing in the context of the Holocaust to answer this question and to articulate unique poetic philosophies that respond to the challenge to literature's validity constituted by the Holocaust. The diferent ways in which they use corpse gazing reveal how Holocaust literature has changed and continues to change as the era of survivor testimony wanes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talia Crockett

© 2020 Talia E. Crockett. Holocaust literature is a challenging space in which to write, seeking to convey an event that cannot truly be represented in words: the systematic destruction of millions of lives, an estimated 1.5 million of which were children who were permanently silenced in the concentration camps. Young adult authors have the added challenge of creating texts that convey the trauma of the Holocaust in ways that are accessible to teenage readers, attempting to reconcile a moral duty to historical accuracy with the desire for an engaging, empathetic novel. This article addresses the evolving use of silence and fragmentation to represent the trauma of the Holocaust in three young adult novels from the last thirty-five years: Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose (1992), Marianne Fredriksson’s Simon och ekarna (Simon and the Oaks, 1985), and Sharon Hart-Green’s Come Back for Me (2017). As this event recedes further into history, historical knowledge of it may be in decline, while anti-Semitism is still prevalent. The Holocaust is something about which we must continue to speak, but now we must do so in different ways. Building on the work of Lydia Kokkola and Leona Toker, this article demonstrates how silence has been used to represent the trauma of the Holocaust as we become increasingly removed from the event. If a traumatic event is understood as it returns to a victim in shards of memories, then fragmentation can be used to recreate the experience for a reader, representing the chaos as opposed to attempting to order it. By writing in a form rife with silent gaps in narrative, knowledge, and understanding, young adult authors can select that which they reveal to their readers according to present historical knowledge while simultaneously mimicking the chaotic, fractured experience of trauma itself. Ultimately, that which is not said be-comes as powerful as that which is.


Author(s):  
Joanna Nazimek

Models of testimony: “re-writing the Holocaust literature”AbstractThe article is a critical discussion of Pawel Wolski’s treatise titled Tadeusz Borowski – PrimoLevi. Prze-pisywanie literatury Holocaustu (Warsaw 2013). It is setting out selected aspects oftraversing of the researcher from Szczecin by considering the status of testimony literature.Also there is an emphasis put on the phenomenon of profiling using forms of utterancesin Holocaust discourse. The article shows two distinct strategies (analyzed by Wolski) ofautomodeling of writers’ own utterances: “towards” (Tadeusz Borowski) and “accordingto” (Primo Levi) preferred model of testimony shaped under the influence of contemporarypublic debate.Keywords: Tadeusz Borowski, Primo Levi, testimonial literature, Holocaust discourse


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document