Tony Harrison and the HolocaustThis book argues that Tony Harrison's poetry is barbaric. It revisits one of the most misquoted passages of twentieth-century philosophy: Theodor Adorno's apparent dismissal of post-Holocaust poetry as 'impossible' or 'barbaric'. His statement is reinterpreted as opening up the possibility that the awkward and embarrassing poetics of writers such as Harrison might be re-evaluated as committed responses to the worst horrors of twentieth-century history. Most of the existing critical work on Harrison focuses on his representation of class, which occludes his interest in other aspects of historiography. The poet's predilection for establishing links between the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the prospect of global annihilation is examined as a commitment to oppose the dangers of linguistic silence. Hence Harrison's work can be read fruitfully within the growing field of Holocaust Studies: his texts enter into arguments about the ethics of representing traumatic incidents that still haunt the contemporary. Harrison's status as a 'non-victim' author of the events is stressed throughout. His writing of the Holocaust, allied bombings and atom bomb is mediated by his reception of the events through newsreels as a child, and his adoption and subversion, as an adult poet, of traditional poetic forms such as the elegy and sonnet. This book also discusses the ways in which Holocaust literature engages with a number of concepts challenged or altered by the historical events, such as love, mourning, memory, humanism, culture and barbarism, articulacy and silence. |
Contents
A NonVictim Approach to the Holocaust | 33 |
Amorous Discourse and Bolts of Annihilation | 87 |
Mourning and Annihilation in the Family | 144 |
The Fragility of Memory | 195 |
CultureBarbarism Dialectics in Harrisons | 248 |
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Adorno aesthetic American poems amorous discourse amorous subject annihilation appears argues articulacy articulation Astley atom bomb atrocity Auschwitz awkwardness barbaric Barthes Belsen camps celebration classical committed concept contemporary context contrast corpse dead death depicted Derrida dialectic elegiac elegy engage event extreme situation family sonnets fantasy father film fusion Geoffrey Hill Gorgon grief grieving Harrison's poems Harrison's poetry Hence hibakusha historical Holocaust human humanist iambic pentameter iambs John Keats Keats Kumquat language Leeds linguistic silence literary literature Loiners London loved object Lover's Discourse lovers Loving Memory Luddites masculinity melancholia memorialisation memory-work mourning narrative narrator Nazi notion nuclear nuclear war Oxyrhyncus Peanuts Joe Penguin pentameter Philip Larkin Pocket Wars poet poet's poetic post-Holocaust pre-Holocaust recognises refers representation Rhubarbarians School of Eloquence Selected Poems sense sequence sexuality Shadow of Hiroshima skinhead stanza Sylvia Plath Tony Harrison tradition trope twentieth-century victims Wars of Peanuts whereas working-class writing