Traumatic Verses
On Poetry in German from the Concentration Camps, 1933-1945
Andrés Nader
Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Christianstadt, Dachau. The names of Nazi concentration camps evoke images of radical destitution. The atrocities we call the Holocaust defy comprehension, while thinkers continue to ponder the possibility of "poetry after Auschwitz." And yet a number of people composed poems while imprisoned in the camps. Unlike most documents about the camps, these poems are self-representations that convey the perspective of the inmates who wrote them. Traumatic Verses provides psychoanalytically informed close readings of a range of poems and discusses their significance for aesthetic theory and for research on the camps. It also tells the stories behind the composition and preservation of these poems and the history of their publication since 1945. Most of the poems appear here for the first time in English translation along with the original texts. This book fills a gap left by literary historians, who have mostly ignored writings from the camps and avoided careful scrutiny of literature produced under the Nazi regime. Studies of trauma have concentrated on post-traumatic experiences; discussions of aesthetics after the Holocaust have neglected the issue of the artistic impulse in the camps. On both counts this book constitutes a unique contribution to scholarship, showing that, when read attentively, the poems written in the camps are invaluable sites for confronting the Nazi past.
Andrés J. Nader is Project Manager at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation in Berlin, and lectures at the Humboldt University.
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DETAILS
Size: 9 x 6 in
13 digit ISBN: 9781571133755
Binding: Hardback
First published: 01/Oct/2007
Last printed: 01/Oct/2007
Price: 80.00 USD / 45.00 GBP
Imprint: Camden House
Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture
BIC class: AVH
STATUS: Available
Details updated on 05/01/2009
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Contents
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Introduction
| 1 | |
Literary Activities in the Camps
| 2 | |
Identity under Threat
| 3 | |
"Everyday Life" in the Concentrationary Universe
| 4 | |
Communicating Torture
| 5 | |
Contemporaneous Poetry in the Third Reich
| 6 | |
Conclusion
| 7 | |
Appendix of Complete Poems
| 8 | |
Notes
| 9 | |
Works Cited
| 10 | |
Index
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Reviews
Winner of 2008 Modern Language Association Book Prize for Independent Scholars
The elegiac Holocaust poetry composed after WW II by Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan ... is a far cry from this poetry, which, writes Nader, has more in common with the German classical-romantic aesthetic ideal of 1933-45 than with the canonized Holocaust poetry of the postwar era... [E]nriches the reader's knowledge of a neglected literary period. CHOICE
This book fills an important gap.... Its aim is to illuminate ... poems written by authors imprisoned in the camps ... and to enable these poems to reverberate and do cultural work. The cultural work they did then and ... now is examined and vital questions are asked and answered. What is the creative legacy of the poets? Why did inmates write and how? What perspective did they have in their poems? What was the healing power of poetry therapy?... [Nader's book] should be required reading for English-language Shoah courses. GERMAN QUARTERLY
[S]ome courageous inmates of Nazi concentration camps secretly wrote and then hid a remarkable corpus of poems in German, many of which have miraculously survived. What made them take such a risk? Drawing on research in a wide range of relevant fields, notably psychoanalysis, Andrés Nader argues that their basic motive was to thwart the Nazis' attempt to erase their identities as individual human beings.... Nader notes that in general the poems have been seen as 'aesthetically second-rate [and] of questionable documentary value' -- a judgement which his study persuasively contradicts. JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES
Leading a new generation of students of the Holocaust, Andrés Nader persuasively analyzes the psychological needs and motivations behind a broad sampling of poetry composed in the concentration camps. Displaying a strong command of trauma and pain theory, as well as the prior history of Holocaust studies, [Nader's book] illuminates the role of poetry in the camp inmates' reclamation of the German language and cultural heritage. Offering many poems in English for the first time, in elegant translation, Nader's anthology and commentary add a significant new dimension to Holocaust studies. -- Selection Committee, MLA Award for Independent Scholars
[A]rgues convincingly for a new approach to concentration camp poetry that considers its traumatic verses integral to German literary history. GEGENWARTSLITERATUR
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