German and European Poetics After the Holocaust

by Hofmann, Gert; Magshamhrain, Rachel; Pajevic, Marko; Shields, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781571132901
• ISBN10: 1571132902
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-20
• Publisher: Camden House

Summary

Crisis presents chances for change and creativity: Adorno's famous dictum that writing poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric has haunted discourse on poetics, but has also given rise to poetic and theoretical acts of resistance. The essays in this volume discuss postwar poetics in terms of new poetological directions and territory rather than merely destruction of traditions. Embedded in the discourse triggered by Adorno, the volume's foci include the work of Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn, and Ingeborg Bachmann. Other German writers discussed are Ilse Aichinger, Rose Ausl+nder, Charlotte Beradt, Thomas Kling, Heiner M8ller, and Nelly Sachs; concrete poetry is also treated. The final section offers comparative views of the poetics of European literary figures such as Jean Paul Sartre, Andr_ Malraux, and Danilo Kis and a consideration of the aesthetics of Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah. Contributors: Chris Bezzel, Manuel BraganYa, Gisela Dischner, R8diger G_rner, Stefan Hajduk, Gert Hofmann, Aniela Knoblich, Marton Marko, Elaine Martin, Barry Murnane, Marko Pajevic, Tatjana Petzer, Renata Plaice, Annette Runte, Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, Peter Tame. Gert Hofmann is a Lecturer in German, Comparative Literature, Drama, and Film and Rachel MagShamhrfin is a Lecturer in German, Film, and Comparative Literature, both at University College Cork; Marko Pajevic is a Lecturer in German at Queen's University Belfast; Michael Shields is a Lecturer in German at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Author Biography

Gert Hofmann is a Lecturer in German, Comparative Literature, Drama, and Film, and Rachel MagShamhrain is a Lecturer in German, Film, and Comparative Literature, both at University College Cork; Marko Pajevic is a Lecturer in German at Queen's University Belfast; Michael Shields is a Lecturer in German at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Poetics after Auschwitz
The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs	p. 19
"Flaschenpost" and "Wurfholz": Reflections on Paul Celan's Poems and Poetics	p. 35
History and Nature in Motion: Paradigms of Transformation in the Postwar Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann	p. 53
Mourning as Remembrance: Writing as Figuration and Defiguration in the Poetry of Rose Auslander	p. 69
On the Fringes: Mistrust as Commitment in the Poetics of Ilse Aichinger	p. 88
Nazi Terror and the Poetical Potential of Dreams: Charlotte Beradt's Das Dritte Reich des Traums	p. 107
Tradition and Transgression
Between Kahlschlag and New Sensibilities: Notes toward a Poetics of Thought after Gottfried Benn	p. 125
"Barely explicable power of the word, that separates and conjoins": Gottfried Benn's Problems of Poetry and Its Poetology of Existence	p. 137
Concrete Poetry	p. 158
Heiner Muller: Discontinuity and Transgression	p. 170
Let's Begin, Again: History, Intertext, and Rupture in Heiner Muller's Germania Cycle	p. 180
Rupture, Tradition, and Achievement in Thomas Kling's Poetics and Poetry	p. 200
Comparative Explorations in European Poetics
Sartre and His Literary Alter Ego Mathieu in Les Chemins de la liberte (1938-49): From the Roads to an Abstract Freedom to the Roads of Authenticity	p. 219
Andre Malraux and Oswald Spengler: The Poetics of Metamorphosis	p. 236
Freud's Brain in the Snow: Catastrophe and Creativity in the Poetics of Danilo Kis	p. 253
Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and the Aesthetics of Ohnmacht	p. 267
Works Cited	p. 273
Notes on the Contributors	p. 295
Index	p. 301
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