On the possibility of culture after Auschwitz

A prisoner at Auschwitz:
Krystyna Trzesniewska, born on February 2, 1929, registered as a prisoner at Auschwitz on December 13, 1942, executed on May 18, 1943.

Berlin Zeughaus Museum.




A very famous quote from Theodor Adorno, totally taken out of context: “Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch.” (To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric). It has been interpreted as an injunction against writing poetry, or as the proclamation of a taboo on cultural expression. It is not. Not only does the lack of context result in hiding the reasons why the statement was originally advanced, but it further disguises the fact that Adorno meant it as an aporetic statement: No poetry can any longer be written, but it must be written. This latter point is clearly made in an excellent article by Elaine Martin, Re-reading Adorno: The ‘after-Auschwitz’ Aporia, FORUM: Fear and Terror, National University of Ireland, Maynooth).

My particular interest in the issue is based on the reasons which underlie Adorno’s initial statement, the answers to the question which naturally arises therefrom: why is it barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz? Here, two issues are necessarily highlighted: the failure of a culture that is complicit in a monstrous crime, and the impossibility of using that culture’s language or discourse after it has been used for the perpetration of such monstrous crime. To the aesthetic dilemma is added a moral quandary, and both extend beyond the German context. The issue of form, the poisoning of the language and the taint on the culture, is the aesthetic quandary. The question of whether there is a danger of romanticizing the crime sets up its ethical dimension.

From the Belvedere Palace in Weimar, the palace of the Dukes of Sachse-Weimar, where Goethe was often a guest and where he served as Privy Counselor (Geheimrat) to Duke Karl August, the monument to the victims at Buchenwald is clearly visible.



[be sure and click on the photo for enhanced viewing]


















Buchenwald Concentration Camp Monument, visible from the
grounds of the Belvedere Palace in Weimar.



German Culture and Buchenwald, and Auschwitz? German Culture and the Shoah? How was this debasement possible? That is not so much the interesting question any longer, one that can only lead to trite answers and tired liberal-humanistic shibboleths. The important fact is that it happened, because it shows that even the greatest and richest cultures can fail. When a culture commits mass murder and genocide, it has failed. After Auschwitz, Adorno argues, to write poetry in the German language is to attempt to create beauty in a medium that has been tainted and corrupted.

It is tainted and corrupted unto silence and paralysis. In what manner has this occurred? As Elaine Martin points out in her article, for Adorno, the language became a tool of instrumental reason the function of which was to make a ‘thing’ out of a human being, one that served, in other words, to reify humanity. This language, this discourse, can thereafter no longer be used to express “the knowledge of its own impossibility.” The destruction of the traditional notion of the individual’s autonomy, which is by far the least of what occurred at Auschwitz or Buchenwald, the fact that the one who utters the language is no longer a human being but a 'thing,' makes it impossible for the language to record how such an expression is itself no longer possible. Auschwitz destroyed the very possibility of the poet.

"The impossibility of portraying Fascism stems from the fact that in it subjective freedom no longer exists. Absolute lack of freedom cannot be represented." (Adorno, Minima Moralia, 148. Elaine Martin trans.)

The extinction of the very possibility of poetic discourse, arguably the consequence of reification, is both cause and consequence of the extinction of the culture that sustained it. Insofar as language makes us, - determines the structure and context of our cultural upbringing-, a tainted language gives birth to a tainted culture. A language in bondage, itself the offspring of a failed culture, can only engender a new culture which is also in bondage. How can any cultural or artistic discourse have any credibility after it commits a monstrous crime? What else can that culture say? How can it create beauty? How can it even entertain? In this regard, there is a revealing anecdote, I believe it’s from Bruno Bettleheim, about his walking with another prisoner at Buchenwald and politely greeting a camp officer as the latter walked by. “Now I finally understand Hegel’s dictum, that 'the real is rational and the rational is real,'” one of the prisoners says to the other. “When the prisoner doffs his hat at the executioner, then the real has become rational.” A culture so debased, where criminal behavior becomes the accepted norm, can no longer produce Beauty.

How then is it possible to ‘get back to normal?’ How is it possible to start writing poetry again?

















Theodor W. Adorno
(1903-1969)




Theodor Adorno’s “post-Auschwitz” aporia consists in the fact that the culture cannot acknowledge the crime it has committed because it cannot express itself autonomously any longer in its own language, and yet poetry must be written in order to articulate the crime, and thus acknowledge and stand witness to it. In short, poetry cannot be written, but it must be written, so that it bears witness to what has been done. From this there is no exit.


















Botero, Abu Ghraib, 2005








 




























In his paintings of 2005, (above) Botero has beautified the crime of Abu Ghraib, by aestheticizing the actual event and its horror, a crime which is not yet atoned for. The beautification of that which is criminal is a forgiveness, though the artist no doubt was making in this instance a clearly critical statement. It shifts the viewer's value-making system from the ethical realm to the aesthetic. The painting is judged aesthetically; the crime is out of consciousness, if even for a second. Botero's work here illustrates Adorno's understanding of the 'aporia.' The poem cannot be written, but it must be written.

The "post-Auschwitz" aporia transcends the peculiarly horrifying context of its own historical origin. Poetry must bear witness, but the corruption of its language by the enormity of the underlying crime, and the mere possibility that it may romanticize or beautify its subject matter, brings about a dumbfounded silence. Today, we stare into a similar void. The noise of the culture industry will only continue to obfuscate a silence which is in fact, by and large, a total void of culture.

TRAVEL DIARIES: FLIGHT TO EUROPE

SAN DIEGO-MINNEAPOLIS-AMSTERDAM

6-14-10

My uncle in Holland has the collected diaries of Thomas Mann, and I am bemused by the fact that Mann would report daily on the weather and on his accomplishments of each day. There are other commentaries, references and memoranda that he includes in his diary entries, but the weather report and the record of his achievements in his writing and research are almost always there.

Well, the weather here in Noordwijk has been extremely variable since my arrival. It was initially very hot, then cold and windy, overcast and rainy weather followed, and now it is again sunny and hot. The dark overcast day, the wind and rain from the North Sea, I find conducive to the study and appreciation of Dutch culture, and I welcomed that gloom of rainy weather in my early wandering in Dutch cities.

But it all started last week in San Diego, on June 14, at Lindbergh field, where I went through the many motions of boarding the plane, clearing security, checking the luggage, and preparing psychologically for the thirteen hour trip. As I surveyed my environment, I was struck by the affluence of the people who were traveling alongside me, a radiance in their countenance, elegant clothing and luggage, polite children. The class divisions in America are increasingly evident and can be sought out in different locales where the identification becomes easy.











Minneapolis

As the plane descended over Minneapolis I began to see the green that would accompany me to Holland and beyond. The green started there. I saw the Mississippi, unexpectedly narrow in those latitudes, winding its way through the city, and surrounded by trees on all sides. It was cool weather upon arrival, a contrast with the boiling hot and dry San Diego, and there was little to do at the airport for an hour. A class of young girls, about ten or eleven-year-olds, boarded the plane there. They were loud and boisterous, and ran about in the aisles. But it wasn't their rambunctiousness that struck me, rather their narcissism and arrogance, strange at their age. I had them all about me, behind me and to the side, and so I could overhear their conversation for several hours. Everything they said was self-referential, and they acted contemptuously towards the services provided, arrogantly dismissed the quality of the food, as if they were entitled to gourmet fare. They were modestly attired, which made me think it was probably a religious institution they hailed from, and they were all wearing the same colors. The plane inched its way over the desolate regions of Eastern Canada, a bumpy ride. A short night followed after we began to fly over the Atlantic. As the dawn began to clear ahead, I saw Dublin all lit up. I thought of my previous flights to Europe, the past of England and Ireland, and began to feel the emotional pull of the old world. The slow descent to Amsterdam began when we were still over Nottingham. It is remarkable to me how close England and Holland are, historically, culturally, and geographically in space and time. In no time at all, we were aiming at Amsterdam. The clouds parted over the North Sea just in time to see the dunes of South Holland, and then came the green again, a clearer green, the green of the polders and the waterways that determined the history of the Dutch. Early in this Dutch morning, I arrived at Schiphol airport.











Shiphol Airport, Amsterdam

The Obama Years

The decline of the American Empire does not seem as if it will be a dramatic, or traumatic, affair, or sorrowful, with solemnly departing viceroys and lowering flags, like the British Empire after the last World War. It appears rather as if it will be a hushed, imperceptible devolution, lost in details, inconspicuous for long stretches of time, a gradual diminishing of the light. The people of America are not encouraged to be informed about what happens abroad, nor are they predisposed to the study of History, and they consequently do not know of the passing of old empires and the birth of new ones. They don’t know of the great cities that are rising in India, in China, in Brazil, in Europe, of the dazzling new architecture, efficient means of transport and communications, orderly schools, and colorful markets and fairs. They don’t know what is happening outside, as their own lights begin to dim. The spread of debilitating poverty occurs in small increments. After each economic downturn there follows a lackluster period of recovery, each one less of a recovery than the previous one. Permanent unemployment and under-employment grow. It takes years to notice the decline in our collective education and the impoverishment of our discourse, which follows, as day follows night. It takes decades to note the deterioration of our health, and the gradual deformation of our bodies. Can we tell that our culture is increasingly threadbare entertainment, the more boring it becomes, the more passivity it induces in us? What do we produce anymore? Is there industry left in America? Are we making anything other than money? And our unending imperial adventures and wars, isn’t that where all our money is wasted? But the decline is not noticed. Every morning there is ‘Good Morning America,’ and the ‘Early Show’ and the ‘Today Show,’ and everyone is laughing and running about, working to exhaustion. The devotion for mediocrities and the engorgement of our plutocrats is our only real show. And every few years there is a new wave of gadgets and toys to play with, and the kids don’t know things are getting worse, imperceptibly, quietly . . . .


WALLS
C.P. Cavafy

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind—
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)