A Trauma-Theoretical Reading of Hugues C. Pernath's War Poetry
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the poetry of the canonical Flemish poet, Hugues C. Pernath (1931-1975), and establish a pertinent definition that will justify the inclusion of literary projects by certain post-war poets within trauma-theoretical discourse.
Abstract: Summary Dominick LaCapra has pointed out that from a trauma-theoretical perspective definitions which are too generally formulated lead to an unstable distinction between victim and commentator. According to LaCapra, the idea that “contemporary culture, or even all history, is essentially traumatic or that everyone in the post-Holocaust context is a survivor” is dubious (LaCapra 2001: x-xii). If LaCapra's findings are interpreted in a narrow sense, only Holocaust victims meet the criteria for traumatic experience. The aim of this article, which focuses on the poetry of the canonical Flemish poet, Hugues C. Pernath (1931-1975), is to establish a pertinent definition that will justify the inclusion of literary projects by certain post-war poets within trauma-theoretical discourse. Pernath was so moved by visiting Auschwitz and living with a Jewish survivor that his notions about humanity were fundamentally shaken. This rupture in his world view, which is also reflected in his poetry, can thus be called trau...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that poetry can be an effective medium by which trauma is examined, especially in the post-colonial context, and that it is possible to capture the nuances of traumatic experiences through the medium of poetry, rather than through fiction alone.
Abstract: This article argues that it is possible to capture the nuances of traumatic experiences through the medium of poetry, rather than through fiction alone. Because of its ability to be elliptic, its reliance on symbolism and especially syntactic interruptions, poetry can be an effective medium by which trauma is examined, especially in the postcolonial context. Studies have indicated that poetry is effective when used as therapy, that is when victims of traumatic experiences are encouraged to write the trauma out of themselves. Journals such as Traumatology and Journal of poetry therapy attest to the fact that poetry is a credible medium and can be effective as an aid to healing. The article explores the poetry of Ingrid de Kok, Alicia Partnoy and Mongane Wally Serote, who reflect on and write haunting poems showing the multifaceted perspectives on traumatic experiences in South Africa and Argentina. Trauma studies, an area of cultural investigation that came to prominence in the early to mid-1990s, ...
2 citations
01 Jun 2022
TL;DR: In this article , the authors explore how Robert Lowell's first two volumes Land of Unlikeness and Lord Weary's Castle can be examined from a trauma conceptual point of view.
Abstract: This paper aims to show how Robert Lowell’s first volumes Land of Unlikeness and Lord Weary’s Castle can be examined from a trauma conceptual point of view. It attempts to explore Lowell’s representation of his traumatic experiences in his early poetry by drawing heavily on Freud’s and Cathy Caruth’s theorizations of trauma. More specifically, the paper attempts to illustrate how Lowell’s mode of representing his traumatic experience of World War II is based on witnessing and documenting the war events and how he endeavors to use this mode of representation as a strategy for transcending his war trauma. In his first two volumes, Lowell identifies with the war sufferers and becomes so much imbued with their trauma that he starts to experience a secondary trauma. However, he attempts to survive his trauma by using two alternative strategies which conform to specific psychoanalytic techniques of healing trauma. He achieves this through his spiritual resignation and alternatively through his description of the traumatic scenes of World War II in order to reassure himself that these war scenes are only a matter of the past.
Keywords: War poetry; Robert Lowell; Land of Unlikeness; Lord Weary’s Castle; trauma; Freud; Cathy
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Book•
02 Nov 2000
TL;DR: In this article, a series of interlocking essays explores theoretical and literary-critical attempts to come to terms with trauma as well as the crucial role post-traumatic testimonies-particularly Holocaust testimonies-have assumed in recent thought and writing.
Abstract: Trauma and its often symptomatic aftermath pose acute problems for historical representation and understanding. In Writing History, Writing Trauma, Dominick LaCapra provides a broad-ranging, critical inquiry into the problem of trauma, notably with respect to major historical events. In a series of interlocking essays, he explores theoretical and literary-critical attempts to come to terms with trauma as well as the crucial role post-traumatic testimonies-particularly Holocaust testimonies-have assumed in recent thought and writing. In doing so, he adapts psychoanalytic concepts to historical analysis and employs sociocultural and political critique to elucidate trauma and its after effects in culture and in people. In the first chapter LaCapra addresses trauma from the perspective of history as a discipline. He then lays a theoretical groundwork for the book as a whole, exploring the concept of historical specificity and insisting on the difference between transhistorical and historical trauma. Subsequent chapters consider how Holocaust testimonies raise the problem of the role of affect and empathy in historical understanding, and respond to the debates surrounding Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. The book's concluding essay, "Writing (About) Trauma," examines the various ways that the voice of trauma emerges in written and oral accounts of historical events. Theoretically ambitious and historically informed, Writing History, Writing Trauma is an important contribution from one of today's foremost experts on trauma.
1,188 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the role of the family as a space of transmission and the function of gender as an idiom of remembrance of the Holocaust is discussed. But the focus is on the second generation, which is the hinge generation in which received, transferred knowledge of events is being transmuted into history or into myth.
Abstract: Postmemory describes the relationship of the second generation to power- ful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were never- theless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Focusing on the remembrance of the Holocaust, this essay elucidates the generation of postmemory and its reliance on photography as a primary medium of transgenerational transmission of trauma. Identifying tropes that most potently mobilize the work of postmemory, it examines the role of the family as a space of transmission and the function of gender as an idiom of remembrance. The guardianship of the Holocaust is being passed on to us. The second genera- tion is the hinge generation in which received, transferred knowledge of events is being transmuted into history, or into myth. It is also the generation in which we can think about certain questions arising from the Shoah with a sense of living
1,104 citations
Book•
16 Apr 2002
TL;DR: In this paper, a young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph, searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a "blind" old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr.
Abstract: "An astonishing feat" - "The Times". A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a "blind" old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive - a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find turns all their worlds upside down.
45 citations
Book•
01 Sep 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the First Modern Poet: Charles Baudelaire: 1. The experience of freedom 2. The settings of experience 3. Blindness and the sky Part II. Landscape and memory 6. Frames of experience
Abstract: List of illustrations Introduction: on the margins of modernity: Part I. The First Modern Poet: Charles Baudelaire: 1. The experience of freedom 2. The settings of experience 3. Blindness and the sky Part II. The Last Modern Poet: Paul Celan: 4. Laying language bare 5. Landscape and memory 6. Frames of experience: Conclusion Notes: Index.
40 citations
"A Trauma-Theoretical Reading of Hug..." refers background in this paper
...(Baer 2000: 11) Yet, for Baer there is no such thing as an absolutely singular poem....
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