Abstract
Expressions of individual and collective memory, for those who lived through the Holocaust, shape and inform the central question for both poetry and philosophy in a post-World War II context: the ability to speak about the unspeakable. Both memory and imagination appear as private, but manifest publicly in political, legal, and even artistic discourse. This engagement with witnessing gives the Holocaust voice in public ritual and commemoration, offering a kind of philosophical and historical reflection. The atrocities that occurred during World War II have not only stretched language itself to its limits, but also ethics and justice. Throughout the testimonial poems written by Celan, Pagis, and Sachs, this chapter delineates various ways in which witnessing simultaneously engages public meaning and memorialization as well as individual suffering and memory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Adorno, T. W. Negative Dialektik; Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6). Surkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1973.
Boase-Beier, Jean. Translating Poetry of the Holocaust. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
Colin, Amy. Paul Celan: Holograms of Darkness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Ezrahai, Sidra DeKoven. Booking Passage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Felsteiner, John. “Explication of Written in Pencil.” In The Modern Hebrew Poem, edited by Ariel Hirschfeld, 221–224. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003.
Fox, Sylvan. Nelly Sachs Obituary. Stockholm: The New York Times, May 13, 1970.
Hamburger, Michael. Poems of Paul Celan. New York: Persea, 2002.
Lang, Berel. Holocaust Representation: Art Within the Limits of History and Ethics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Langer, Lawrence. Preempting the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Lipstadt, Deborah. Holocaust: An American Understanding. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016.
Ozsvath, Zsuzsanna. “Paul Celan.” In The Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature. London: Oryx Press, 2002.
Pagis, Dan. Gilgul. Hebrew Writers Association, 1970.
———. Variable Directions. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989.
———. “Written in Pencil in a Sealed Railway Car.” In The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself, edited by Ariel Hirschfeld, 221–224. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003.
Piazis, George, and Andrew Leak. The Holocaust and the Text: Speaking the Unspeakable. London: Palgrave, 2000.
Rothberg, Michael. Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Sachs, Nelly. O The Chimneys: Selected Poems and Eli a Verse Play. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.
Sachs, Nelly, and Paul Celan. Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs Correspondance. New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1995.
Wistrich, Robert. Hitler and the Holocaust. New York: Random House Publishing, 2003.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McCullough, S. (2020). Wound Marks in the Air and the Shadows Within: A Poetic Examination of Dan Pagis, Paul Celan, and Nelly Sachs. In: Aarons, V., Lassner, P. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33428-4_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33428-4_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33427-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33428-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)