Professor David Peimer
“It is Barbaric to Write Poetry After Auschwitz” - Theodor Arno. Is Arno Correct?

Professor David Peimer - It is Barbaric to Write Poetry After Auschwitz - Theodor Adorno

- Continuing on with Germany, and today going to look at a quite a vexing, and I guess quite thought for me, very thought provoking question and series of queries which arose after the war. Obviously coming out of the German experience in the Holocaust. And Theodor Adorno, and I’m sure many people know who he was. He had some Jewish heritage, his father had converted, but was originally Jewish and the grandfather, so he was part Jewish in terms of heritage. Anyway, he had to leave, he leaves Germany in the thirties, obviously because of Hitler and because of his writings, basically he was what we would call today a cultural philosopher, or philosopher plus cultural thinker, I guess would be the phrase today. Without going into too much detail, But he was obsessed with what happened to the enlightenment, what was happening, what he called the authoritarian personality, obviously going on in Germany in the war and afterwards. He managed to get to America and he lived there, and was friends and worked with Brecht and Thomas Mann, and others in America of the artistic and literary emigres. And amongst many things, he wrote the “Dialectics of the Enlightenment,” “Negative Dialectics,” quite a few very important books which are regarded very important of the second half of the 20th century. And Adorno was also close to Walter Benjamin, and I guess he is quite similar, had Walter Benjamin lived, I think quite similar in terms of cultural thought and philosophy. And in the one essay he wrote, “It’s barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.”

And the focus of today is, I want to look at this obviously thought-provoking phrase of his, and then I want to look at what did he really mean? And then some examples from Brecht and from Paul Celan, Yevtushenko and others, one or two others, W.H. Auden. A couple of poems to show how they, I think, incorporated, if not his direct influence, at least unconsciously and artistically, the influence of that generation writing after the war. You had to take into account obviously what had happened in the war and, more directly, the Holocaust. So that’s the overall context. Bring on to the next slide, please. So what he wrote, the full quote, which ends with, you know, “It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.” The actual full quote from Adorno is, “After Auschwitz no poems are possible, except on the foundation of Auschwitz itself. Poetry, art, cannot be indifferent to what occurred in the Shoah, cannot simply resurrect or reconstruct culture as if industrialised slaughter was a blip.” So when one looks a little bit more in depth at the actual meaning of the quote, and the sense of the phrases around it, what is he really saying, is poetry, art, literature is only possible after Auschwitz, after the Holocaust, he means, if it takes into account what has happened. It cannot simply imagine industrialised slaughter was a blip on history. It has to centralise it completely in history, and it has to centralise it in the history and ongoing tradition of art and literature as a complete change in perception of human nature, and human society and what humans are capable of doing. So it’s not only writing about the Holocaust, but how it influences and must influence the artistic perception, and creation, and the creative endeavours afterwards. And that’s a much more profound meaning than simply, is barbaric to write poetry after the Holocaust, or isn’t it?

Which is a bit more of a, to me, simplistic polemic. He says, no poems are possible except if one takes into account the foundations of the Holocaust. And that’s an important phrase from the German translation, I think. You know, what gave rise to it? What the, the impact, the influences, how it shapes literature and art in the way that I think the First World War did, not only with Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but many, many other writers, poets, and artists. In the way, you know, Gauguin shaped it for Picasso, and so many others we can go on with. But this to me gives it a much more complex nuance of what he means. Adorno goes on that for him the Holocaust demonstrated the absolute failure of culture. And what he means by that is the traditions of the enlightenment of philosophy, art, music, the enlightenment, the growth of science, the separation of judiciary, religious, and state powers. It threw that all up. It shook it up and it said, well, is that the foundation? Is the enlightenment still, does it hold water at all? He goes on to say in the same very provocative and interesting essay that the Holocaust proved that this idea of a linear progress of history and civilization was alleged, was shown to be a nonsense, was not because it’s not a blip of history, it’s a fundamental shift in human’s history, and human social organisation. And that the progress of history was not this linear development, which the enlightenment proposed in a way. And secondly that it did not suspend barbarism at all. In fact, the opposite, it showed that it was ignorant.

The enlightenment was ignorant of the barbarism that was always there and ironically reinforced its return in the form of what he called utmost excess during the Holocaust. And he goes on, we can no longer hope for salvation in simply appealing to alleged universal cantian type reason, critique of reason. So the enlightenment had lost its own way. It lost its consciousness. And he has this philosophical phrase that became almost alienated from itself, that barbarism became an ideology. It was always there, that by controlling a mass of people, a culture can be promoted, which prioritises sameness over critique and tolerance of difference. Now, these are his phrases in a, you know, in one of the translations. And I think it’s important because it suggests a relentless understanding of the need to see everybody as the same, everybody as one mass, homogenous. You know, and the immigrants, the foreigners, the outsider, the Jew, and others, in his philosophy as needing to be kept outside. And that’s how you control the mass, you know? This idea of you need the scapegoat, but he go, he goes into it here with, it’s this idea of sameness. Everybody must be the same. And then it’s easy to create an other to hate, to be prejudiced against, and terrifyingly murder. So he tries to understand how writers need to now understand the new way of seeing culture, self and other superior, inferior, you know, can the other really be tolerated? Can the other really, you know, be tolerated, be allowed to live? In fact be be supported in some way in a society?

And he brings that back into the tension. So that’s a bit of a more of an understanding for me of Adorno. And trying to give it a bit of a context. I want to move to a couple of interesting surveys done in the last two or three years. And these are pretty reliable surveys in America and the UK, which I think can perhaps inform this way of thinking from a very contemporary database perspective. 58% of Americans believe the Holocaust could well happen again. 31% believe that substantially less than 6 million Jews were killed, and 31% suggested 2 million or far less. There were over 40,000 camps and ghettos, 45% of the American survey could not name one. That’s an American survey. A very similar contemporary survey done in the UK, 2021. 52% did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the war in the Holocaust. In fact, 22%, that’s one in five in the UK, thought that 2 million or far less Jewish people were killed. In the UK, 66% believed that the UK government allowed many, many Jewish refugees to immigrate to the UK during the war. And that’s why they are quote, “So many Jews.” In the UK, 56% believe that the Holocaust could well happen again today, this is 2021 survey. And 31% in the UK were unable to name a single concentration camp. And they were asked the question, “Could the Jewish people face another genocide?” 42% said yes, not maybe, yes. So I want to bring this in as a sense of where are we at today, given what Adorno is saying about the role of culture, the role of poetry, literature, art, education, knowledge of history, all of this put together.

And because I want to suggest that it is barbaric to not look at it in whatever form, whether it’s in documentary, or in art, or literature, or film. It would be more barbaric to deny, to ignore, or to look at it in such a minimal way when one is faced to these, for me, quite scary figures. So if we can go to the next slide, please. This is Pastor Niemoller. And Pastor Niemoller, who we all know wrote, you know, the probably the most famous and well-known poem after the war. And I want to show just the complexity of his life, which I don’t know how many people would know. He wrote the poem “First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists. I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews. And I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak out for me.” Now it’s, I’m sure many, many people would know his poem. It’s so well known and studied. What’s interesting, and this for me brings in the complexity of what I think Adorno is trying to get at, is Niemoller’s actual life. On the left is a photo of him in 1917 where he fought in the first world war, obviously as a German soldier. Young man in the later picture on the right. 1934 Niemoller met Hitler and discussed only religious topics. This is all according to Niemoller, because he was concerned about the church being marginalised, sidelined or worse under the Nazi state.

And Hitler reassured him, no, of course we’re going to keep the the church exactly as it is, a Protestant Catholic in Germany. We’re not going to touch it. In fact we’re going to, you know, support, et cetera, et cetera. Obviously all lies. In the 1920s and into the early 1930s, Niemoller held anti-Semitic views and he’s quoted as calling Jewish people a despised people and Christ killers. Then in the early to mid thirties, really 34, 35, he starts to become very anti the Nazis as he sees as a total takeover of an extreme military, and police state, and dictatorship, and his opposition begins and he’s arrested many times. 1937, he’s arrested again and again. He’s sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. 1941 he’s sent to Dachau, and he’s seriously tortured, imprisoned, treated horrifically and so on. So it’s about seven, eight years in prison in total. So, and then afterwards, you know, writes the poem and he helps to lead the, if you like, the deNazification efforts in West Germany after the war and speaks out very strongly, as he has been during the, from let’s say the mid thirties through until he was arrested, et cetera. So he is one of the clergy who absolutely speaks out. I just wanted to draw this picture, because he actually captures for me part of this complexity, and the arc of the journey of his life is remarkable, and it captures the nuance complexity of human nature, and you know, people change.As I think Churchill once said, you know, “If we can’t allow for human change, who are we?” So it, but for me it remains, his life almost becomes as interesting as the poem. The next clip, this is a film clip I’m going to show. It’s of the wonderful British actress Sheila Hancock reading a poem of W.H. Auden. And want to look at how W.H. Auden, the great British poet, how he incorporates some of Adorno’s ideas, if not consciously, at least unconsciously as an artist in this poem of his called “Refugee.”

• “Say, this city has 10 million souls. Some are living in mansion, some are living in holes, yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us. Once we had a country and we thought it fair. Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there. We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now. In the village churchyard there grows an old yew, every spring it blossoms anew. Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that. The consul banged the table and said, ‘If you’ve got no passport, you are officially dead.’ But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive. Went to a committee, they offered me a chair, asked me politely to return next year, but where shall we go today, my dear? But where shall we go today? Came to a public meeting, the speaker got up and said, ‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread.’ He was talking of you and me, my dear. He was talking of you and me. Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky. It was Hitler over Europe saying, ‘They must die.’ We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind. Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin, saw a door opened and a cat let in. But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews. Went down the harbour and stood up on the key, saw the fish swimming as if they were free. Only 10 feet away, my dear, only 10 feet away. Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees, they had no politicians and sang at their ease. They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race. Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors, a thousand windows, and a thousand doors. Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours. Stood on a great plain in the falling snow. 10,000 soldiers marched to and fro, looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.”

• I find it an amazing poem that W.H. Auden. And for me it captures so much of the brilliance of Adorno’s idea of how does one incorporate this for me, the most horrifically and also most momentous event in human history, in poetry? How does one even try to grapple with the idea of their words, of the unspeakable? Are they phrases? Because does one still talk about aesthetics in poetry, of rhythm and rhyme and beautiful languages and images? And Auden for me finds a way of being so delicately personal and yet it’s about “Refugee Blues,” it’s called, it’s refugees. Obviously the fish have no need for passport or visa, the birds in the sky and other, but not just as little cliches, the way he puts it inside, my dear, my dear, it’s like a couple, just an ordinary human couple, you know, trying to go from A to B and get away from horror to, you know, some sanity. And for me, it rings so strongly of those times and for our times today, ‘cause I’m trying to look today at different kinds of poetry rather than only the extremely well-known ones. And I think Auden for me is a brilliant poet, because there’s thought and there’s aesthetics and poetry, but there’s understanding of history, and culture in Adorno’s idea. Am I going to take on the barbarism that has occurred with culture, with society, and cannot and must not ever be ignored. And yet find his own artistic and literary voice in a way. You know, find his own way in. It revokes the questions of how to write about the holocaust or how to incorporate in Adorno’s idea, or how to be aware of it. In so many of it, can be more didactic, it can be more poetic, it can be more aesthetic, can be more rhythm and rhyme. It can be more direct, more lyrical or not, you know, the challenge to language itself. Because language in the end is how we frame our thoughts, and how we pass our ideas to children and grandchildren, and education, how we tell our stories, it’s language.

Obviously in our times it’s the visual image, or the internet, film, TV, and so on. But it’s language that goes with it. It always needs to be a language. And what he’s getting at, Adorno, is the very foundations of language himself has been challenged, if not shattered. And how to then, can’t just simply resurrect it, but how to rediscover some way of doing it. Interesting, because Primo Levi talks about can poems represent the Holocaust at all, or do they simply propagate what he calls, you know, stylized language. And he really means cliches. Do the words for the Holocaust, do we have them? Does the Holocaust mark the terrifying border of language? Is silence the only appropriate response? But if it is, how do we educate, how do we pass it on? How do we try and create an emotional, and factual, and conscious experience for people learning and discovering about it? Primo Levi goes on that the more the Holocaust is represented in language, the more the potential danger for it to become stylized, in his word. And so the language of representation can become, in a way it’s a kind of language of its own. You know, the terrifying phrase, holocaust industry, et cetera, et cetera. We all know these phrases. And historical studies need to take account of that. Documentary studies need to take account of that. Poetry, art, literature, fiction, needs to take account of the language that itself that it uses to keep in Primo Levi’s phrase, “To keep the cultural memory of the holocaust alive, at least.” So there’s a connection between past and present, between memory and contemporary imagination, between emotional subjectivity and history. And it’s always been a tenuous connection going way back to the ancient Greeks and to other writers always. You can go back to Homer, Trojan, you know, I’m not linking the Trojan War to Holocaust in the slightest, but just in this question of the tenuous relationship between memory and contemporary perception of memory, and how to write about it.

The facts of the Holocaust and our subjective response, do we need to think of making a holocaust poem work? And writers need to be aware of this. They need to make informed choices, I want to suggest. What is the role of aesthetics? Is it obscene to think of aesthetics in the face of such atrocity? How do we link emotion and memory, emotion and historical content? And this paradoxical tension is part of the precise challenge that I think Adorno threw out in that essay of his, you know, after the war. Going on to, if we can go onto the next slide, please. This is from W.H Auden. Now it’s written September 1st, 1939. But he is intuiting the exact dilemma to come. “I sit in one of the dives on Fifty-second street, uncertain and afraid as the clever hopes expire of a low dishonest decade.” What an extraordinary phrase, “Of a low dishonest decade. Waves of anger and fear circulate over the bright and darkened lands of the earth, obsessing our private lives. The unmentionable odour of death offends the September night.” This is so resonant for me of his time and for us. And for me, what Auden does is trying to bring the nuance of delicate thought together with an attempt to understand the zeitgeist of his own era and yet keep the rhythms, and beauty of language going in poetry. And I think he achieves it, “Of a low dishonest decade.” He doesn’t have to rant and rave, he doesn’t have to dismiss it. A terrible evil, you know, it’s more thought-provoking when one is a bit more circumspect and go with the old phrase, “A little bit less is more.” He understands that obsessing our private, et cetera. Now, on to the next slide please. This is the poem that goes on, “The enlightenment driven away mismanagement and grief. We must suffer them all again.” “The enlightenment is driven away.” He’s totally aware then of philosophy, history, everything we’ve been talking about. “Mismanagement and grief.” What interesting words to choose.

“We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air where blind skyscrapers use their full height to proclaim. We should see where we are lost in a haunted wood, children afraid of the night.” So he’s trying for me again to bring history, historical fact together with poetic language, and infused with a mixture of emotion and conscious thinking. We go onto the next slide, please. “All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the lie of authority whose buildings groped the sky, defenceless under the night. Our world in stupor lies. Yet, dotted everywhere, ironic points of light flash out wherever they just exchange their messages. May I show an affirming flame?” That same combination of historical awareness, of gentle thought, condensed and crystallised poetic language, very contemporary phrasing and words. And I think he’s so aware of the challenge to language , and poetry, you know, after what Adorno calls the barbarism of the Holocaust period. And on to the next slide, please. So I want to look at a bit of Brecht, because he obviously is so important. Not to go into his life. We all know the great playwright and poet for me of the first half of the 20th century, going into the latter half, coming from Germany. And one of the greats in the world with such a global influence. But I want to look at one or two of his different poems written around the time of the war. And then just after he escaped into exile to America, obviously not Jewish, but he obviously was on the Nazi hit list, he was going to be killed. Not only his books burned and banned, he got to America and then after the war, he went back to East Germany. We could have a look at the next slide, please. It Is Night. “The married couples lie in their beds. The young woman will bear orphans.”

In four lines, he’s doing what Auden does, which is aware of history ,is a bit of poetry inside, language, there’s thought together with emotion. And there’s, but what he adds in which is different to Auden’s poetic voice is the irony of intelligent, provocative, critical thinking. They will bear orphans. One line fists like a dialectic, as he would say, the whole thing. Go on to the next slide please. General, Your Tank Is A Powerful Vehicle. “It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men, but it has one defect, it needs a driver. General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect, it needs a mechanic. General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill, but he has one defect. He can think.” With a, again, history, historical and trying to be the poetic with the rhythms in the language, simple language. But he plays with irony and critical thought, playing with the dialectic, which is obviously what his big influence was, in the writing of poetry itself. And he makes us conscious, he makes us think with a smile, with an irony at the end, Brecht. And I think this is his voice in to respond to the Adorno provocation, you know, of how to incorporate what’s going on and what’s happened, but still find a way to write poetry about it, and make a plea for what you know, for how society and human nature needs to change. And ironic, because he is making a plea for rational, for thinking to come back, which is the enlightenment that Adorno is so sceptical about. You know that it’s over. Can I have a look at the next slide please? Is it Brecht’s? “The critical attitude strikes many people as unfruitful. That is because they find the state impervious to their criticism.

But what in this case is an unfruitful attitude is merely a feeble attitude. Give criticism arms and states can be demolished by it. Educating a person, transforming a state. These are instances of fruitful criticism. And at the same time instances of art.” It’s so simple, the language and it’s so twisted and turned. But for me, endlessly memorable goes deep in, because he’s finding this ironic dialectical way of provoking thinking in the reader together with an emotional, you know, response, and a slight and a bit of a smile. Well, what is the critical attitude? And he immediately goes through how many people see it. “Strikes many people as unfruitful.” John Lennon has understood it completely. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” In other words, the poet puts themselves in the position of the critical, or of the cynical opposer. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” John Lennon. “The critical attitude strikes many people as unfruitful.” Okay, so let me see. Is it unfruitful, what does it mean? We come back to educating a person, like trying to put it into the language of poetry. Go to the next slide please. So this for me is one of the poems that I love the most of Brecht, written after the war. And all it is, is four five lines, The Mask Of Evil. “On my wall hangs a Japanese carving. The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer. Sympathetically, I observe the swollen veins of the forehead indicating what a strain it is to be evil.” He has to have that ironic dialectical twist at the end. That ironic turn of phrase with a bit of wit. And it makes one think immediately. You know when you see a Carbo painting and you see, but he’s just looking at this, the veins on the forehead, you know, of an evil person. And it immediately changes our perception.

So it’s again, Brecht finding his way. And for me it’s adding this ironic voice, this approach to a bit of thinking into the emotion and deceptively simple language and rhythms of poetry. Go the next one, please. Brecht again, Parting. “We embrace, my fingers trace rich cloth, yours only threadbare fabric. A quick hug, we talk about the weather and our eternal friendship. Anything else would be too bitter.” These are not as well known perms of Brecht and I’m purposely choosing them. It’s so again, the same thing. It’s one simple moment we can imagine like Auden, The Two Refugees, you know, trying to escape, trying to get somewhere. He’s trying to find a more lyrical way of writing with rhyme, and language, and putting our thought and our emotion in those ways. The fish in the sea don’t need passports, et cetera. And for me, Brecht is not so far from that in this. But again, it’s a short poem, and he wrote many of them, which captures just one moment. Anything else would be too be, understands the human nature, but the absolute poignant delicacy of the goodbye. And it could be goodbye of refugees, of lovers, of Jewish people leaving, of others, whoever. The metaphor burns in to my imagination. Okay, I want to go on, we’re going to go on a little bit to Primo Levi, and if we can have the next slide, please. I want to look at one of Primo’s, and we all know about his life. I’m not going to go on about his life, but just look at one of his poems, and his phrase. And this has burned into my imagination ever since I read it many, many decades ago. “One,” it should be, “One must bear witness to the inhuman in the human. Our humanity in some sense depends on this. So one must bear witness to the inhuman in the human.

Our humanity in some sense depends on this. So we must show witness, we must represent the horror, the evil of what happened. Because our humanity depends on this. If we don’t, what will we become? So Primo for me, sums it up in two sentences, and I go very strong, I would connect with this completely in so find the individual voice, whether it’s Auden, Primo, or Brecht, or other voices trying to find their own poetic language and way in. But he sums up the reason why we cannot, not only not ignore it, but must write about it in all the different ways that are possible. Even if they’re open to obvious criticism. If it’s the unspeakable is their language isn’t there, even if it’s what I was talking about last week, the Schindler fictional version versus Claude Lanzmann Shoah nine hours of spoken testimony from witnesses. You know, we need many approaches, and we can debate the pros and cons, we can debate, you know, which is more effective from an educational artistic point of view, you know, poetic licence, et cetera. But I think the bottom line is what Primo says that our humanity depends on telling the stories of the inhuman in the human. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please. So in other words, for me, he’s closer to Kafka. Kafka’s definition that the novel is an axe to cut the frozen sea of the heart. You know, and there’s a similarity for me between the two. I’m sure many know this, but I’m just going to read it, because I think it shows Primo’s voice in poetry, obviously incorporating the warning coming out of Adorno’s idea that we must take the foundational ideas and events, and situations that led to the Holocaust. "You who live safe in your warm houses, you who find warm food and friendly faces when you return home. Consider if this be a man who works in mud, who knows no peace, who fights for a crust of bread, who dies by a yes or no. Consider if this is a woman without hair, without name, without a strength to remember.” Into the next slide, please.

“Empty are her eyes, cold her womb. Never forget that this has happened. Remember these words. Engrave them in your hearts when at home or in the street, when lying down, when getting up, repeat them to your children. Or may your houses be destroyed, may illness strike you down, may your children turn their faces from you.” So it’s obviously, it’s a warning, but it’s for me, it’s not didactic, it’s profound. Never forget it’s happened. And as Primo said in another context, “If it happened once, of course it could happen again.” And some of those figures I gave earlier, not going to say they’re going to happen, but it shows that in two of the most developed countries in the world, most educated, we would think, over half think that there’s a very good chance it’ll happen again. So engrave them in your hearts, wherever and repeat them. Educate, do it through poetry, do it through language, through docu-fiction, take poetic licence. Do it more through historical essays, whatever, but make sure it’s never forgotten to show the inhuman in the human. Bring on to the next slide please. This is another one here from Primo, but I’m going to move on 'cause I want to get onto one or two other things. And I’m sure people know these poems of Primo’s, which are more about the brutal night and his dreams. 'Cause I think he had terrified from his poetry, and some of his letters and writings we get, you know, the terrifying dreams that he had. On to the next slide, please.

“And a terror-filled dream has never ceased to haunt me. A dream embedded in another dream. I’m at a table, family, friends, or at work, or in the green countryside. In other words, in a peaceful, relaxed atmosphere, apparently devoid of any tension. And yet I have an insidious sense of profound anxiety, a definite sensation of something threatening about to occur. Indeed as the dream proceed little by little, or with suddenness, everything disintegrates around me. The dream-scene, the walls, the people, the anxiety becomes more intense. I’m alone in the middle of a grey void. I’m once again in the concentration camp and nothing outside the concentration camp was ever real. The rest was a brief holiday, a dream. The family, the flowering countryside, my home. Now this inner dream, the dream of peace is over. And in the outer dream, which icily proceeds, I hear a voice, a single word, it’s the dawn command in Auschwitz, a foreign word feared and expected, 'Get up!’ Wstawac.” Icily proceeds is such a remarkable sense of honesty, a gentleness, and yet an anger, you know, it’s of this and of course the profound anxiety, and its insidious from a very personal point of view trying to communicate to us the reader, the double dream. You know, which is the reality. What is post 1945, what is our reality and the barbarism versus the civilization? Where are we? Which is or are both absolutely parts of human nature, the inhuman inside the human?

And this writing, and he writes it and takes us into the dream, you know, back to the moment in the camp. And he structures it in this way as a story. It’s not as written as historical fact. It’s structured with the poetic licence of using some techniques of story in how to write memory. How to write memory, how to create it. Such a powerful and important question for any writer in our generation, and post 1945. Okay, I want to go onto the next slide please. So Paul Celan, as I’m sure many know, he was a Romanian born German language poet, born to a Jewish family in the then Romania. And while he was, he had just happened to be away one day from home, the 21st of June, 1942. And his parents were taken, father died of typhus in the camp and his mother was shot. He was taken to a slave labour camp in Romania. And Celan said of language after Auschwitz that the only one thing remained reachable amid all the loss, language. Yes language, in spite of everything it remained against loss, but it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through, it gave me no words for what was happening, but it went through, went through and could resurface. This is him as a poet trying to find the exact question that Adorno is posing. Is barbaric, is it possible to write? Is it speakable, unspeakable to write after you know the Holocaust? Eventually he finds a language, and he’s regarded as one of the most important German poets in terms of the rebirth of the German language post the war.

And I want to look at the poem, Death Fugue. On to next slide please. “Black milk of morning we drink you evenings.” I’m just going to move this here for one second. “We drink you at noon and mornings, we drink you at night, we drink and we drink. A man lives in the house he plays with the snakes. He writes, he writes, when it darkens to Deutschland your golden hair Margarete. He writes and steps in front of his house and the stars glisten and he whistles his dogs to come. He whistles his Jews to appear. Let a grave be dug in the earth, commands us. Play up for the dance. Black milk of dawn, we drink you at night, we drink you mornings at noontime, we drink you evenings. We drink and we drink. A man lives in the house he plays with the snakes. He writes, he writes, when it turns dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margarete. Your ashen hair Shulamit. We dig a grave in the air there one lies at ease.” To the next slide, please. “He calls, dig deeper into earth you there and you other men sing and play. He grabs the gun in his belt, he draws it, his eyes are blue. Dig deeper your spades you there and you other men continue to play for the dance. Black milk of dawn we drink you at night, we drink you at noon, we drink you evenings, we drink you and drinks, A man lives in the house. Your golden hair Margarete, your ashen hair Shulamit. He plays with the snakes. He calls out play death more sweetly. Death is a master from Deutschland. He calls scrape those fiddles more darkly then as smoke your rise in the air, then you’ll have a grave in the clouds there you’ll lie at ease.”

Next slide, please. “Black milk of dawn we drink you at night. We drink you at noon death is a master from Deutschland. We drink you evenings and mornings we drink and drink. Death is a master from Deutschland. His eye is blue. He strikes you with lead bullets his aim is true. A man lives in the house, your golden hair Margarete. He sets his dogs on us he gifts us a grave in the air. He plays with the snakes and dreams. Death is a master from Deutschland, your golden hair Margarete, your ashen hair Shulamit.” This together with the others is one of the most remarkable poems for me ever written, not only in the 20th century, but it’s written after Auschwitz, after Adorno’s phrase. And I want to try and give it a bit of the context of what I’ve been saying. Whereas for me, Paul Celan combines the thinking of Brecht, the lyrical poetry and rhyming Sheila Hancock was doing with the W.H. Auden. The repetition of phrases, of words is a very contemporary approach to writing, has become very contemporary approach to writing poetry. Not only in song lyrics. Some phrases which hint of folklore in Germany, some of the cliched phrases from the times, you know, the eyes blue, et cetera. All these other things. The gentle extreme beauty of a memory of a lover, Margarete, Shulamit, a partner, a wife, a daughter, doesn’t matter. A memory of the, you know, the fascist leader. Memories of many things. And how to ultimately with poetry, use poetics, aesthetics together with historical accuracy, together with rhymed, with rhythm, with a new language that he’s trying to find after 1945. So, for me, he pulls together quite a lot of these strands. I don’t want to get into whole English literature lecture at all, but it is so emotionally moving, and yet so thought provoking. And the images for me like gently sort of burn into the imagination again.

And each writer finds their own poetic voice, I guess. And you know, today I’m just looking at a few, but to try and provoke some of these thoughts. How on earth do we write about this kind of event after 1945? How do we educate? How do we use art, and memory, and aesthetics together with language and take on the challenge? You know, that Adorno I think presents us with. It cannot be ignored, and Primo Levi. We must write about the inhuman in order to make us more human. So the last piece I want to show it is going to show a little bit from it, is from Yevtushenko, who does a similar thing for me. If you go to the next slide, please. And Yevtushenko, you know, the great Russian poet who wrote the poem Babi Yar, which I gave a major talk about quite some time ago. So I’m not going into the talk again, but just in the context here of all the ideas I’ve been mentioning. What this poem together with Shostakovich’s 13 Symphony because later Shostakovich, he took four of the poems, obvious the main one being Babi Yar of Yevtushenko and composed the 13th Symphony using with the language of Yevtushenko’s poem about Babi Yar. And we all know Babi Yar, one of the most gruesome, horrific events in human history. 33,000 Jews slaughtered in two days. Just over the next slide please. This is one of the photos, that’s Babi Yar, which is just outside Kyiv as we all know, where 33,000 soldiers were killed, 33,000 Jewish people, sorry, were killed.

And with a mixture of local police, local soldiers, you know, under the command of the Germans, a mixture of them, et cetera. This picture, which for me is one of the most frightening pictures of the 20th end of all centuries for many, many reasons. How on earth does one take an event like this and write poetry? Should one, can one? Is silence the only appropriate response, is fictionalising poetic licence? Is it acceptable with memory, is it not? All these questions are importantly provoked and are ongoing debates, not only in with scholars, but with writers, and poets, and playwrights all together. How to represent the memory of the most extreme obscenity possible. And of course how that reverberates in many areas of literature today. So you know the next slide please. This is a, you know, one of the classic pictures of Babi Yar afterwards, or much later. And then the last one I want to show is a couple of minutes clip of Yevtushenko reading, a little bit in Russian first, and then a little bit of him reading the English part of the first part of the poem with Shostakovich’s music played by the New York City Philharmonic.

• No monument stands over Babi Yar A drop sheer as a crude gravestone. I am afraid. Today I am as old in years as all the Jewish people. Now I seem to be a Jew. Here I plod through ancient Egypt. Here I perish crucified on the cross, and to this day I bear the scars of nails. I seem to be Dreyfus. The Philistine is both informer and judge. I am behind bars. Beset on every side. Hounded, spat on, slandered. Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace stick their parasols into my face. I seem to be then a young boy in Byelostok. Blood runs, spilling over the floors. The barroom rabble-rousers give off a stench of vodka and onion. A boot kicks me aside, helpless. In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies. While they jeer and shout, ‘Beat the Yids. Save Russia!’ Some grain-marketer beats up my mother. O my Russian people! I know you are international to the core. But those with unclean hands have often made a jingle of your purest name. I know the goodness of my land. How vile these antisemites without a qualm they pompously called themselves the Union of the Russian People! I seem to be Anne Frank, transparent as a branch in April. And I love, and have no need of phrases. My need is that we gaze into each other. How little we can see or smell!

We are denied the leaves, we are denied the sky. Yet we can do so much, tenderly, embrace each other in a darkened room. They’re coming here? Be not afraid, those are the booming sounds of spring. Spring is coming here. Come then to me. Quick, give me your lips. Are they smashing down the door? No, no, it’s the ice breaking. The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar. The trees look ominous, like judges. Here all things scream silently, and, baring my head, slowly I feel myself turning grey. And I myself am one massive, soundless scream above the thousand thousand buried here. I am each old man here shot death. I am very child here shot death. Nothing in me shall ever forget! The ‘Internationale,’ let it thunder when the last antisemite on the earth is buried for ever. In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all antisemites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian!“

• Okay, I’m going to hold the chat, if we can hold it, please. And then the music goes on with Shostakovich’s 13 Symphony. Just to say extraordinary for me how for me, all of these ideas come together in this, and partly in Paul Celan as well. And perhaps to say that James Joyce’s phrase in Ulysses, "History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.” And perhaps maybe better, as Hamlet says at the end, you know, “In this harsh world, draw thy breath.” To enable us, “To tell my story.” Tell the story, whether it’s through this poet, whether it’s through other means. You know, I go back to the phrase of Primo Levi “Tell about the inhuman in the human.” And in all these different ways, I don’t think in the end there’s one better or worse. And the debates must and should continue of how much of poetic is licence, how much not, how memory is shown and represented decades after, and in the decades to come. Okay, so I want to hold it here and thank you very much, and we can look at some questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Mona, “Auden’s 1939, so memorable as a young student.” Yeah, I know. You know, and I purposely tried to look at some of these poems, which are, I mean Yevtushenko is more well known and Paul Celan, but the others not. And it’s just it this so long after it still hits us in the gut, I agree.

Sheila, “Ordinary refugee blues before.” Yep, the War, in 2017 included in commemoration. Oh, okay great, thank you.

Q: Randy, “As the last of the camp survivors pass away, how do we teach subsequent generations that the Holocaust did happen.”

A: I think we have to, you know, as times gets harder, we have to get tougher and never stop, and find ways with more poetic, more literary, fiction, memory, non-fiction, historical, you know, film, TV, internet, all the different genres possible. I think it has to, you know, one has to take on the mantle and absolutely never stop.

Q: Judith, “What’s the name of the book?”

A: That’s just the collected poems of Brecht. It’s a pretty thick book that I have of, I have a book of all his poems translated in English. Some of the best translations are by guy called John Willett, or if he’s edited it and, and put others to translate.

Q: Susan, “Hi, thank you and great to meet you briefly the other day, hope you’re well. Referring to earlier comments about the failure of enlightenment, were you saying that it failed because of its lack of recognition, even denial of humanity’s underlying potential brutality?

A: Yeah, and Primo Levi’s words echo.” Exactly Susan, I think that is exactly what Adorno is saying. I’m trying to put Adorno’s words, understand his phrase beyond the well-known phrase, “It’s baric to write poetry after Auschwitz.” But what he’s saying is that we, he goes on in the same essay to talk about, yes, enlightenment failed or partly failed because it denied, or didn’t give, I call it, real recognition to, as you’re saying, humanity’s underlying potential for brutality or barbarism as he would say. He thought that, they thought rationality and reason would keep barbarism and the irrational impulses, and brutality at bay. You know, to put it in a nutshell. And that was their failing.

Sharon, “Primo survived ‘cause he was a chemist.” Yep. Yeah, and the death, he missed it. Absolutely. Thank you.

Q: Madeline, “Why did Brecht move back?”

A: Well, Brecht was a committed, he was a, I guess he was a Hegelian, not just communist. But he believed in, I think philosophically in the dialectic, and he believed in Hegel, Marx partly, I think. But you know, he was a communist in the late twenties. In the twenties going into the thirties in Germany of the times. And I think also he found it very hard to get work in California. From a practical point of view and went back to, and probably wanted to go back to East Germany, Also, let’s not forget he wasn’t Jewish. So maybe that plays a role as well. I don’t know, it’s impossible to say, because there isn’t any absolute direct evidence as to him answering that question. Thanks Madeline.

Myrna, “I disagree with the gentleman who thoughts Holocaust was not unique. It was a thoughtful plan to eliminate people.” Absolutely. It absolutely was unique, and that’s what Adorno is saying. He is saying that we can only create poetry, and literature, and art if we are aware of the foundation of the Holocaust. If we are aware of the barbarity, the brutality, if we are aware of the conditions, social, economic, political. The conditions that give rise to that. And that writers need to take that into account as the decades and centuries evolve. He is absolutely saying, Adorno is saying it is unique.

Margaret, “Poetry is so economical.” One of the things I love about it and really good writing. Good monologues, good writing, drama, poetry, literature. It’s absolutely, cuts to the essence, you know, it’s just economical expression, that tip of the iceberg. And so much is left underneath for the audience, listener to experience.

Erin, “Thank you.” Yes, Young’s idea of the shadow, I agree entirely. Thank you, Alison. Thank you, Babi Yar poem, it’s available online, there’s some very good translations. Online, and this performance is available, if I remember through YouTube, I think, of Yevtushenko, with the New York City Philharmonic.

Cecile, “Some of Primo Levi’s poems are lines from the Shema, in the ironic use.” Yeah, exactly. I mean there are so many references that all of these poets are using. Auden, Brecht, Primo, Yevtushenko. They’re using so many references to the history of their own culture, if you like, or European culture, certainly Western cultures. The poetic traditions. Many, many references, which is too much to go into.

Okay, so I think, hold it there. Okay, thank you very much everyone, and hope you have a great rest of the weekend. And thanks, Emily.