Pauline Hurley
Post Graduate Certificate in Holocaust Education.
REALITY AND CREATIVITY
The search for Post-Holocaust identity through the use of
memory and new language creation in the works of poet Paul
Celan, artist Judy Chicago and musician Steve Reich.
“The task of memory is to fight the risk that history will finally
fall into the dark side of lethe.”
Note:
I envisage the following dissertation as being useful to teachers of senior
cycle who have an interest in developing new routes into Holocaust
education and who wish to explore the creation of a new module for their
classroom. The content is suitable for students with a good prior
knowledge of the Holocaust. The development of the material by teachers
calls for a cross-curricular approach which supports the use of ‗Multiple
Intelligences‘ and ‗Assessment for Learning‘ techniques. The choice of
content is subjective to this writer but there is adequate scope for teachers
to develop their own choices which are very much dependant on specific
student requirements. Self-directed learning and a willingness to explore
Post-Holocaust memory, identity and language are facets that are
paramount to student engagement with the material.
To speak of the creation of memory through new language in Post-Holocaust terms is
perhaps somewhat contradictory. After all, the erasure of memory seemed to have
been a necessity for the continuation and renewal of a normality of sorts. Memory
loss and negation of identity seem to be, on the surface at least, less problematic than
the self-reflective analysis and genesis of memory that this writer will focus on. The
three varying genres of poetry, art and music allow for an exploration of the reality of
the experience of Celan paralleled with a possible identification with the creative
process and questioning of the final artistic products of Reich but particularly
Chicago. All three, I believe, show the difficulty of searching for a Post-Holocaust
identity which allows for a questioning of the role of artistic endeavour and the
acceptance of a limited language in an environment where some think that the
―Holocaust cannot be explained or visualised‖.1 This essay will begin by looking at
the work of survivor Paul Celan who expresses the inexpressible and compare this
with Chicago and Reich, both of whom are influenced by personal experience, their
Jewish heritage and their search for identity.
―Through
the sluice I had to go,
to salvage the word back into
and out of and across the salt flood‖
The Sluice
Paul Celan(was born Paul Antschel) in Czernowitz, Bukovina. His parents were
German speaking Jews and he lived in a multi-ethnic environment alongside
―Romanians, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles, Hutzuls and Gypsies‖ 2 Celan wrote poetry
from an early age and began to find recognition at the time when Adorno stated that
―to write poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric‖3 Celan‘s voice in his poetry comes to
us through German, which his mother in particular wished him to speak. High
German was after all the language of the cultured and educated. His German mother
1
Elie Wiesel
Felstiner, J, Paul Celan, Poet, Survivor, Jew,( Yale University, 2001), introduction pg xvii
3
Adorno revised this statement in 1973 in response to Celan‘s work
2
tongue became ―memory-rich and memory-ridden.‖4 He wrote about 800 poems
between 1938 until his death in 1970. Most of these poems center on his search for
identity and his creation of a new way of describing the indescribable. Many have
questioned his inaccessibility, including those who rejected him for the Nobel prize in
1966. Yet Celan himself stated that ―I went with my very being towards language‖
and according to Felstner that is ―what the reader is apt to do in order to meet him half
way.‖5
His identity and his language were very much bound together and when this identity
was broken so was his connection with the language he knew. All of Celan‘s poetry
must therefore be approached through his ―speech-grille‖ and translated back and
through this new language. The development of his new identity does of course have
its genesis in the actuality and memory of the Holocaust. There is some obscurity
about the facts relating to the deportation of Celan‘s parents. Celan never spoke
publicly about the event and the details seem somewhat vague. Fellow survivor
Alfred Kittner felt that ―he suffered a severe psychic shock he never overcame and
felt a heavy burden of conscience- the thought that maybe he could have prevented his
parents‘ murder in the camp if he had gone with them‖6 An East German émigré poet
published an account supposedly given to him by Celan of a camp selection where
Celan slipped from one line to another thus allowing someone else take his place in
the gas chambers. This then gave Celan‘s writing a ―futile attempt to silence the voice
of guilt‖.7 Celan‘s friend Ruth Lacher gives an account of finding a small office in a
factory and telling Celan to hide there with his parents during the roundups. Celan did
in fact hide there but without his parents who apparently refused to go. On returning
home after one such roundup Celan found his home sealed and his parents gone. His
father died from typhus and his mother was shot as ‗unproductive‘. This loss
obviously permeates his poetry. His own period of forced labour from 1942-1944 also
remains obscure. When asked what he did during this time he replied ―shovelling‖
4
Chalfen, I Paul Celan, A Biography Of His Youth,( N.Y. 1979), pg xx of introduction
Felstiner, Paul Celan, pg 20
6
Ibid, pg 26
7
This account is problematic as it would suggest that it was easy to slip from one line to another at
selection and we do not have any corroborating evidence for this
5
and did not go into further details. This is undoubtedly understandable and indeed the
word shovelling brings to mind a multitude of images all equally horrific.
On hearing of his father‘s death he wrote‖ Black Flakes‖(see appendix 1). He
recreates a memory in the poem of receiving a letter from his mother telling him of
the death of his father. We hear the son‘s voice in the first stanza, the mother‘s next
and then the son‘s again. ‗Black Flakes frames memory around experience‖ 8. It also
centres on his Jewishness as it remembers Jacob- the song of Cedar. Also this
reference points to the Biblical cedars of Lebanon and the anthem of the first Zionist
congress ―There where the slender cedar kissed the skies/ …there on the blue sea‘s
shore my homeland lies. Here we see a link to Celan‘s father and his Zionist leanings
which at this time Celan did not follow. The snow falls at the start of the poem and
reminds us of the 16th century folk song ―The snow has fallen‖. Here ―the lover begs
his beloved to wrap him in her arms and banish winter‖9 Winter though is not
banished. The Christian hope seen in the ―monkish cowl‖ also refuses to bring hope.
The only minute hope is found through his mother‘s letter but this again is
paradoxical as the letter tells of the death of his father. He makes her letter part of the
poem and in a sense she becomes his muse. Her, and in a sense, Jewish persecution is
seen from Jacob through to the 17th century Hetman to the present Second World
War. ―Black Flakes holds in a single moment the European Jewish catastrophe, Paul
Antschel‘s private loss and a poet‘s calling.‖ 10It is especially poignant as we see the
role reversal of the mother-child relationship. Here it is the mother figure who seeks
help from the child. This is an all too common image in Holocaust history.
In late 1942 or early 1943 Celan found out from a relative who escaped Transnistria
that his mother had been shot as unproductive, in other words, unable to work and
therefore a ‗useless eater‘. On hearing this he recreated a scene from a memory made
from this information and created ―Winter‖ (see appendix 2). Here he specifically
mentions a place, the Ukraine, thus making the memory real and tangible. The
―Saviour‘s Crown‖ again brings no solace and the ‗victims‘ arms are ―candlesticks‖
8
Felstiner, Paul Celan, pg 19
ibid
10
Ibid, pg 21
9
reminiscent of menorah. Celan seems to set Christian suffering against Jewish
suffering. The image of the harp has associations with exile.11 The poem ends with a
question to his mother. Would the poet in him awaken if he too sank in the snows of
the Ukraine? Again the poignancy and loss are evident here as is his link with Jewish
imagery and his search for his identity without his parents, particularly his mother.
‗Aspen Tree‘(see appendix 3) also locates his loss in the Ukraine where ―my yellowhaired mother did not come home‖ and ―my gentle mother cannot return‖. The
possessive ‗my‘ reverberates throughout this poem and makes the loss seem greater to
Celan yet from a survivor‘s point of view it could be any mother dying at anytime
during the Holocaust.
When Celan returned from forced labour camps he had created 93 poems. He then
began working in a psychiatric clinic and also translated texts from Romanian to
Ukrainian. He began studying English at what was then a Soviet sponsored university.
He felt though that there was nothing for him in what was Bukovina and he did not
want to live under a Soviet regime. It was about mid 1944 that news of the death of
his uncle, Bruno Schrager, who had lived in Paris, reached him. He had been deported
from Drancy to Auschwitz. From his transport of 500 only 30 survived. It was also at
this time that further details of the death camps were being spoken about and this led
Celan to write what is deemed to be his most famous poem Todesfuge (translated
Deathfuge, Fugue of Death, Death‘s Fugue or Death Fugue). (see appendix 4 and
,www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVwlqEHDCQE)
―No lyric has exposed the exigencies of its time so radically as this one, whose
speakers- Jewish prisoners tyrannized by a camp commander- starts off with the
words Black milk of day-break we drink it at evening‖12 The metaphors for the reader
of black milk, graves dug in the air, hair of ash, dances fiddled for gravediggers are
not metaphors for survivors but reality. Celan here is memory keeper and reporter.
The fact that Celan had begun the poem in late 1944 (but later dates it to 1945) shows
the immediacy of the memory and the new identity created by those who had to live
such ‗metaphors‘. The need for the creation of new language to describe what had not
11
12
Psalm 137- ―We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows‖
Felstiner, pg 26
previously been even imagined is evident. This new language is made of ―ruptured
syntax, ellipses, buried allusion and contradiction,‖13 plus repetition and images that
are not created from poetic imagination but are grounded in reality.
The connection of music with death during the Holocaust is extremely poignant. Near
Czernowitz at the Janowsk camp in Lvov an SS lieutenant ordered Jewish fiddlers to
play a tango with new lyrics called death tango. This was used during marches,
tortures, grave digging and executions. Celan originally called his poem death tango.
At Auschwitz the orchestra played tangos and prisoners used the term death tango for
what ever music was being played when prisoners were shot (see appendix 5). Celan
did associate death and music. Bach fugues were heard from the commandant‘s house
in Auschwitz and Primo Levi says it is the last thing that could be forgotten from the
lager. ―In this poem we find traces of Genesis, Bach, Wagner, Heinrich Heine, the
tango, Faust‘s heroine Margareta alongside Shulamith from the Song of Songs.‖ 14 As
well as showing Celan‘s own suffering ―we shovel‖ it also shows the suffering of
others in the camps. On listening to Celan‘s recording of Todesfugue one is
immediately struck by the urgency, rhythm and rhyme of the poem even if one is
unable to understand the language. The musicality of the poem is very obvious and
this connection between death and music becomes embedded in the narrative of the
work. All four stanzas start with ―black milk‖. This image of the food of milk being
relegated to something unpalatable yet consistently evident in the camps goes against
the nurturing image of milk. Some have questioned the need for figurative language
to describe the living death of the camps but I feel that Celan creates for those of us
who cannot begin to imagine the horrors of camp life, an image that goes beyond
poetics into the realm of reality. Celan makes the commandant write home to his
loved one, his ―golden haired Margareta‖. She is epitome of the eternal feminine. This
same man who is able to write love letters is able to whistle his hounds to come close
and his Jews to appear. We are told through a victim‘s voice that he also orders them
to ―play up for the dance‖ giving the reader an image of death. The black milk has
now become ‗you‘ instead of ‗it‘. The ‗ashen haired Shulamith‘ is summoned into the
poem. Her name has overtones of ‗shalom‘ and ‗Yerushalayim – Jeruslaem‘. She is
13
14
Ibid, pg xv11
Felstiner,Paul Celan, pg 26
therefore a sign of hopefulness particularly when we realise that she promises a return
to Zion in the ‗Song of Songs‘. Yet Celan does not allow a connection between
Margareta and Shulamith and thus there is no return for the majority. However
Shulamith ends the poem holding on to an identity. She has the last word. Perhaps we
can see here a glimpse of hope for the future but she also holds the memories of those
who have died and the anguish created by their loss.
By the end of 1945 Celan left for Bucharest ―crossing a personal as well as political
border‖.15 A Song in the Desert came from the period 16 (see appendix 6). As well as
seeing himself as a wanderer he also changes his name to Celan. This change of name
must have had an emotional impact and again led to a search for new identity. By
1947 Jews were reaching Vienna, their spiritual home. Celan was amongst them. By
1948 the Austrian government had ‗forgiven‘ all minor offenders in the Holocaust and
Celan stated that ―I did not stay long, I found nothing I‘d hoped to find‖. 1948 was
also a period for Celan that he found difficulty in writing ―for months I haven‘t
written because something unnameable is laming me‖. His subsequent move to Paris
produced Number me among the almonds (see appendix 7). The poet here is speaking
to his mother and the image of the almond represents his Jewishness.
17
The order to
count also has connotations around the Nazi headcount in the camps. Supposedly the
gas Zyklon B also had a smell of almonds. 18 The idea of remembering and naming
restores the identity of those who were murdered and dehumanized. This of course
included the poet himself who is still on a journey seeking his identity. The latter was
also under duress during his trip to Germany in 1952 where he stated that he felt used
within Germany‘s cultural recovery after the third Reich. His poem Todesfugue had
found itself onto the German school curriculum and both teachers and students alike
were in awe of it. They did though seem to respect it more for its technical brilliance
rather than for its content. Students seemed to view it as a positive step towards
forgiveness and reconciliation rather than a mouthpiece for those who were murdered.
15
Felstiner, Paul Celan, pg 43
A song in the wilderness telling of the Israelites exodus from Egypt
17
Num 17.23 Aaron‘s rod bears ripe almonds
Exod. 25.33 The Israelites menorah in the wilderness has almond blossom designs
16
18
Felstiner, Paul Celan, pg 64
This, along with other misrepresentations of the poem, seemed to make Celan lose
faith in it and even when in Israel he did not recite it.
Celan seems by the mid 1950s to have incorporated his Jewish tradition into the
essence of his identity and has done this through memory and language. The Hebrew
―Shibboleth‖ serves the purpose of counting him amongst those who knew the
password for suffering (see appendix 8). His cry of shibboleth in an alien world
searches for those like him and again links his poetry to his tradition. 19 He also makes
reference to other historical events like the destruction of Austrian socialism and
Spanish republicanism. He links events in this poem to the month of February thus
following the ―ancient Jewish bent of mind‖, 20 marking great historical events on a
single date. This poem was included in a book of poetry called ‗From Threshold to
Threshold‘ suggesting that Celan reaches a threshold but cannot enter and then moves
on to another. Celan said ―I am on the outside‖ and this feeling sums up his longing to
belong. This longing began to lead to bitterness for Celan. This is very evident in
Tenerbrae from 1957 (see appendix 9) where Celan seems to be enveloped in an
emotional darkness and his references bear this out.21 The connection between
Catholic and Judaic mysteries is obvious here yet there is no saving grace. The
‗clawed and clawing‘ are almost animalistic images and in the film ‗Night and Fog‘
we are reminded about the clawing inside the gas chambers.22 The terrain in the poem
is open and wild and evokes the terrain of the Einsatzkommandos. Celan tries to
reclaim the fate of the Jews by showing their image in Christ‘s reflection. He reclaims
suffering from the Christian tradition to that of the Jewish but again there doesn‘t
seem to be any hope of salvation.
In 1958 he won the Bremen prize for literature and based his speech on ‗thinking and
thanking‘. He also spoke about his origin ―it was a region in which human beings and
books used to live‖. Without saying too much he says a lot and allows the audience to
19
Shibboleth is an Israelite tribal password that the Gileadites used at the river Jordan against the
Ephraimites. Mispronunciation of this word led to death and identified friend from foe.
20
Felstiner, Paul Celan, pg 82
21
Gen 1:2
darkness upon the face of the deep
Exodus 10:22 darkness in all Egypt
Deut 5:20
God speak out amid darkness at Sinai
22
Night and fog at 4 min 94
recognise that his poetry has to use language that ―gave back no words for that which
happened‖. He therefore had to create new words and new ways of speaking in a
tongue which was a constant reminder of death. It is unsurprising really even at this
stage that Celan did not speak out against Nazi genocide in a more direct way but
again allowed his poetry to reach out like ―a message in a bottle…in the belief that
somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps‖23
In 1958 he also recorded Todesfugue. This was its only recording. 1959 saw the birth
of There was earth inside them (see appendix 10.) where those in the camps or those
now as survivors dig and dig and do not praise God. 24 They are in fact digging their
own graves. Celan may also have been reminded of Jacob Glatstein‘s poem
―We received the Torah in Sinai
And in Lublin we gave it back
Dead men don‘t praise God‖25
The Dead don‘t praise God
Those digging did not learn a new song so now it is up to Celan to learn this song, this
new way of speaking, this new language.
Nineteen sixty saw the media reporting on Nazi criminals as well as new neo-Nazi
tendencies. Celan was also falsely accused of plagiarism, a charge which he never
fully forgot. Psalm (see appendix 11) was written at this time and his poetry in general
resonates with Jewish themes and imagery. He states that he is trying to hold onto
what is left of him and his poem Psalm reflects this in a prayer-like way. In 1962 he
wrote no poetry as he now suffered from depression from which he felt enveloped.
His doctors told him that this depression could not possibly be linked to events of the
Holocaust as these events were too far removed from him now. It was perhaps in
some way to receive an acknowledgement of his and others suffering that he visited
the philosopher Martin Heidegger whom he admired but had declared the ―inner truth
and greatness of Nazism‖ in 1935. His poem Todtnauberg (see appendix 12) speaks of
23
Felstiner, Paul Celan, pg 115
Psalm 115:16 ―and the dead praise not the Lord, neither they that go down into silence‖
25
Felstiner, Paul Celan, l pg151
24
this meeting. The naming of Arnica at the start should signify healing but this does
not follow through in the poem. ―along the paths of German language Celan could
only go half way with Heidegger‖.26 A word of acknowledgement or sorrow did not
come from the latter.
On Celan‘s trip to Israel he stressed his Jewishness and also the fact that the German
culture was also important to him. He seems to revel in uniqueness of this visit and
said that ―Jerusalem would be a turning, a caesura in my life‖. That positive turning
point was not to be as Celan committed suicide by drowning around Passover, April
1970. Fault feels that maybe he felt too alone as ―no one witnesses for the witness‖.
Language in Celan‘s poetry is a reminder though of individuality and a return to
humanization of Holocaust ‗victims‘. ―The German language for him was never far
removed from the lacerations of pain and death held in memory.‖ 27 He searched for
words that had not been replicated in history and this search led him to examine
memory, albeit in a difficult way, and to create a new identity, one which allowed him
to speak in a language of ―shibboleth‖ and be understood by those dispossessed by
language and those willing to open his message in a bottle with his ‗variable key‘.
Unlike Celan, Judy Chicago‘s Holocaust journey began through a chance meeting
with the poet Harvey Mudd in Sante Fe, 1984. Mudd had just completed a long poem
on the Holocaust and spoke to Chicago about this. To his amazement she knew very
little about the Holocaust and had never heard of the words ‗Arbeit macht frei‘. So
began her interest and her search for her own Jewish identity and heritage as well as
several years of research which would ultimately result in ‗The Holocaust Project,
From Darkness Into Light‘. Her prior work had received as much criticism as
acclamation. The ‗Dinner Party‘ in particular, which according to Chicago is a
‗symbolic history of women in Western Civilization‘, has been the subject of much
debate and discussion. As a pioneer of feminist art and founder of the Feminist Art
Movement of the 1970s, her work spans topics such as pregnancy, childbirth and
menstruation. How then does Chicago deal with the topic of the Holocaust and how
does she claim to represent the suffering of Holocaust ‗victims‘ through her art? Does
26
27
Ibid, pg 246
Wordtraces, Readings of Paul Celan, ed Aris Fioretos,( London, 1994), pg 113
Chicago, through creativity and imagination, link in anyway to the raw emotion of
Celan who had first hand experience? Her own heritage and her search for identity as
well as her creation of new means of communication through art all combine to shed
some light on these questions.
Like Celan, Chicago changes her surname. The magazine ‗Artform‘ says that she did
so ―to divest herself of all names imposed on her through male social dominance‖.
For both then, albeit for different reasons, there is a liberation attached to a change of
name as well as the genesis of a new identity. For Chicago, this is very much bound
up with what she sees as power and powerlessness. Her feminist leanings see her
equating all power as being divested in a male dominated society from which females,
particularly female artists, have been written out of. From this idea she began to focus
on the construction of masculinity and its relationship to power and this along with
her fledgling interest in the Holocaust led her to her Holocaust Project.
Growing up in a very politically aware household, of Jewish parents and a father in
particular who encouraged his daughter to debate and question everything, it is for
Chicago, almost unbelievable that the Holocaust was barely mentioned. Neither of her
parents ―liked the politics of the Jewish organisations, as for Zionism, my father had
dismissed Israel as a potential power keg.‖ 28 This aside, it is still ironic that such a
major part of Jewish history was not discussed in what was an era for her of
questioning. Chicago‘s mother recounts the story of listening to a Rabbi answer a
question about the Holocaust during the early 1940s and he ―put his finger to his lips
and said, we must say nothing or it will happen to us too‖29 We have no corroborating
evidence for this memory but Chicago questioned her mother at length about why she
knew so little of the Holocaust. Indeed Chicago states that ―the issue of anti-Semitism
was never discussed, not in class, not at home but when a teacher made a comment
about Roosevelt and the Jewish conspiracy 95% of the class (who were Jewish)
28
Chicago, J, Holocaust Project From Darkness Into Light, with photographs by Donald
Woodman,(N.Y. 1993), pg 24
29
Ibid, pg 29
walked out‖30 Chicago did not analyse this at the time or did she feel that she was
being in anyway victimised. It is from this background that Chicago goes on her
personal journey to research the Holocaust with her husband the photographer Donald
Woodman and they go on to create a new method of combining painting and
photography as well as work in stained glass and tapestry, which they envisaged as ―a
vehicle for intellectual transformation and social change.‖ 31
Chicago‘s project took her and Woodman through 8 years of travel, study and artistic
creation. Both travelled to various Holocaust sites and read widely on the subject.
During her travels Chicago kept a diary account of her reactions to various places
where her documentation of various sites and events is illuminating for the reader.
This is particularly true in Vilna where she said she is descended from Gaon of Vilna,
the 18th century Lithuanian Rabbi. Her father had rejected his Orthodox Jewish life
and Chicago herself felt that when she visited Israel her feminist ideals were
challenged by such Orthodoxy. She then needed to find a way to align her ideas of
abuse of power, her feminist values and her tradition into one project while still
remaining faithful to the essence of Holocaust representation and memory.
Many of the pieces in the Holocaust project take on iconic photographs thus assuring
the viewer of its authenticity and its link with primary source material. These
photographs are then assimilated into the painting allowing Chicago to incorporate
her own memories created from research with the memories of those who had first
hand experience of these horrors. ―The Holocaust is approached as an event that
happened at the core of our civilization, the heart of our culture and in the midst of
societies resembling our own.‖32Chicago also began to see the Holocaust as being
engineered solely by men. She acknowledges that women were involved but the
architects of the Holocaust were all men. This brings her to her original thesis of
women‘s powerlessness and ―the relationship between traditional concepts of
30
Ibid, pg 24
Ibid, introduction.
32
Women and art- an interview with Judy Chicago, N.Y. 1998.
31
masculinity and Nazi ideology‖. 33 She also began to look at the way the Holocaust
was represented in different ways in Western and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. She particularly saw conflict arising from the lack of commeration of
gay ‗victims‘ of the Holocaust. Indeed when she was in Dachau in 1987 she witnesses
a protest by gay men regarding their lack of acknowledgement. She incorporates this
into her paintings.
She had some difficulty, at the start at least, in seeing the uniqueness of the Holocaust
in its ―intentionality, planning, scope and implementation.‖ 34 She makes unfounded
comparisons between the treatment of women in the Holocaust and the burning or
witches but eventually through her work the viewer does see ―a method honouring the
uniqueness of the Holocaust…a metaphor for the fact that we are examining
connections not suggesting that the Holocaust is exactly like any other historic
event‖35 This writer feels that Chicago through her comparisons does not see the
Holocaust as unique but as ―the universal exposition of victimization that is part of a
hierarchical system of power.‖36 In saying that Chicago has been named as one of the
8 Jewish women who changed the world‖37 through her art.
―We can only hope that Judy Chicago‘s unfortunate tendency to tackle and trivialise
great issues has peaked with the Holocaust and that she will in future, occupy herself,
with some more productive activity – learning to draw, say.‖ 38 Such vitriolic attacks
are not uncommon when one speaks about the work of Chicago. Is there some
relevance in the comment regarding the trivialisation of the Holocaust? In order to
assess this one needs to look at some of the examples of her work from her Holocaust
project.
Different coloured triangles mark the entrance to the project (see appendix 13) and
these are based on the different coloured triangles worn by those in the camps.
Chicago reverses the way the triangles were worn in order to suggest power or
resistance. The triangles are surrounded by barbed wire and fire. ―The overall image
33
Chicago, Holocaust project, pg 4
Isaiah Kurperstein, paper to the Holocaust Project commissioned by the Spertus Museum
35
Chicago, Holocaust project, pg 10
36
From Jewish Women‘s Archive
37
Union of Reform Judaism, 1998
38
Boston Globe, September 22nd 1995
34
is intended to commemorate the courage and survival of the Holocaust survivors.‖ 39
This image then does correspond with reality and is historically accurate as regards
the triangles and colours. Chicago subverts them in order to suggest survival and a
viewer would understand this. Actuality and imaginative creation are in alliance with
one another here.
The Fall (appendix 14) ―provides a retelling of history in which violent, patriarchal
civilization overtakes ancient matriarchal cultures.‖ 40It also questions the rise of
industrial technology and represents a search for origins, which of course Chicago is
concerned with. The middle section rewords ‗Ventruvian man‘ and links the violence
of man with the rise of science and technology. On the right hand side there are
representations of the Holocaust with particular reference to the assembly line. The
graphic details in this part of the painting are in stark contrast to the method in which
Celan describes his experiences. Is there a need for graphic images when the viewer
has adequate knowledge to fill in the blanks so to speak? Chicago does state that she
paints her ‗victims‘ in ways that show their resistance which she felt other Holocaust
painting in the 1980s did not do.
Bones of Treblinka and Banality of Evil/Struthof (see appendix 15 and 16) both
depict the reality of primary source photography with the creativity of painting. The
memorial at Treblinka is manipulated with names added to the stones and the
photograph of Struthof if manipulated to show the perpetrators and bystanders in front
of those going to the ‗showers‘. Again this new way of combining photography and
painting allows for a new artistic language to be created in order to communicate with
the viewer. Whether one thinks that this manipulation distracts from the central
essence of the work is questionable.
Wall Of Indifference (see appendix 17) brings up the very relevant question of
bystanders and shows in the background examples of death while those in power do
nothing.
39
40
Chicago,Holocaust project, introduction
Ibid, pg 88
Banality of Evil/Then and Now(see appendix 18) juxtaposes the domestic scene of the
SS officer with this family while a chimney can be seen in the background, with that
of an 1980s family relaxing while missiles are being tested. This image as with other
in the project show Chicago‘s anxiety for the planet and sees the Holocaust as a
springboard where other topics can be addresses. We see this again in See No
Evil/Hear No Evil and in Four Questions both of which examine modern day
dilemmas such as ―When do the end justify the means?‖ and ―Who controls human
destiny?‖ Again we see a move away from purely dealing with the Holocaust to the
incorporation of varying and wide questions. This writer, while finding the themes
interesting, does not think that the juxtapositioning of these with the Holocaust is
particularly relevant or necessary. However such a stance is purely a personal one and
it is up to each individual to assess his/her own feelings on the matter.
Rainbow Shabbat (see appendix 19) ends the project on a note of hope of healing
―heal those broken souls who have no peace and lead us all from darkness into light‖.
There are certainly conflicting interpretations when comparing Chicago‘s work with
that of Celans. Apart from the difference in genre ,Celan, in his new language ,created
a different narrative to that of Chicago, however both experience an inner journey that
forms their own personal narratives and as such the Holocaust affected them both
albeit from different perspectives. Both feel that they should be voices for the
voiceless and Chicago in particular sees that the Holocaust shows the vulnerability of
all human beings ―and by extension, of all species on our fragile planet as well‖ 41 She
uses her art form to go from ‗darkness to light‘ in her personal quest for reversal of
gender imbalance in history plus her desire to develop her relationship between her
Jewishness, her art and her womanhood.
―There‘s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have
altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them‖ 42 Born in
41
42
Chicago, Holocaust Project, pg 9
The Guardian (London), April 2004
New York and raised there and in California, Reich studied philosophy at Cornell and
received an M.A. in music from Mills College. He also studied African drumming and
traditional forms of cantillation of Hebrew Scriptures in New York and Jerusalem.
His music has been performed by major orchestras throughout the world. During the
war Reich made train journeys between New York and Los Angeles to visit his
parents who had separated. Years later he thought about the fact that if he had been a
Jew living in Europe at this time he would have been travelling on a very different
train and taking a very different journey.
Reich was very drawn to ―how we normally use language‖ 43 and to the philosopher
Wittgenstein‘s examination of the use of everyday speech. Like Celan, Reich felt that
there must be ways of searching for words that have no replication in memory. He
also became very interested in oral transmission of history and memory and from this
began to search for his own identity. ―As a Jew I‘m a member of an ancient
civilization but I don‘t have the faintest idea of what it is I come from‖. It was
paradoxically the study of West African and Balinese music that awakened his
curiosity about his cultural background. This then led on to the writing of ‗Different
Trains‘ (see attached CD). Reich states that ―I felt I had to write ‗Different Trains‘.
―I‘ve been given my assignment, just as everyone has his/her assignment and I want
to take care of that because it‘s unique‖44 This uniqueness led Reich to create a new
musical language from his own memory and also from the memories of Holocaust
survivors. Like Chicago, his use of primary source material, through the voices of the
individuals in the music, give it an air of authenticity and reality breaks into the
creative process. Reich is aware of the sensitivity of using the Holocaust but what
makes the piece work for him is ―that it contains the voices of people recounting what
happened to them‖ and Reich is ―simply transcribing their speech melody and
composing from that musical starting point. The documentary nature of the piece is
essential to what it is.‖45
43
Interview with Anne Teres de Keersmaker – ―Do aesthetic influences matter‖?
Interview with Steve Reich by Johathon Cott, N.Y. 1996
45
Interview with Steve Reich ―From New York to Vermont: Conversations with Steve Reich‖Rebecca Y Kim.
44
‗Different Trains‘ marks the genesis of a new compositional method – a new language
– where speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments. The
New York Times hailed it ―as a work of such astonishing originality that break
through seems the only possible description‖. Reich assumes the role of reporter and
the music is weaved like a tapestry into and through the voices. The link of music
with the subject matter is a known historical fact. Primo Levi speaks about the music
in the camps as ―infernal‖ and August Kowalczyk who spent a year and a half at
Auschwitz remembers the waltzes and arias from operas. The historian Guido Fackler
in his essay ―Music in Auschwitz‖ records the case of the violinist Ota Sattler being
forced to play ―A Jew had a wife‖ as his wife and three sons filed past him on the way
to the gas chambers. The irony then of listening to Reich and applauding his
originality while knowing the connotations of the orchestras in the camps is evident.
The piece itself is divided into three movements:
America - Before the War
Europe - During the War
After the War
In the first movement Reich‘s former governess Virginia and Lawrence Davis, a
Pullman porter reminisce about train travel in the United States. American train
sounds are heard in the background.
In the second movement three Holocaust survivors, Paul, Rachel and Rachella, speak
about their experiences in Europe during the war. They talk about their train trips to
concentration camps. These children‘s memories are very poignant. They speak about
things that mark time for children such as birthdays and school. The story is linear and
the accounts take the listener through German invasions, attempts to hide, being taken
away on a train, shaven and tattooed. European train sounds and sirens are heard and
have replaced the sounds of American trains.
In the third movement the three survivors talk about their years immediately after the
war and this mixes with recordings of Virginia and Davis. There is a return to
American train sounds in this piece. The line ―but today they‘re all gone‖ allows the
listener to question whether the reference is to the Jews, the Nazis or the trains. Reich
also has one of the survivors tell the story of a young girl who sang for the Germans
in the camps. The very last line is ―and when she stopped singing they always said
more, more, and clapped‖. The quartet here continues to play and when it stops the
listener is left with the feeling of being complicit if he/she also claps.
The 46 samples of speech create a new musical language through their use as the
source for the melodies. Reich himself also creates an identity where he sees his
heritage and his music as being linked and recreates from memory and research ―the
only adequate musical response – one of the few adequate artistic responses in any
medium – to the Holocaust‖46 Paul Hillier, artistic director of the Kronos Quartet,
who were the first to play this piece, feels indebted to Reich for ―unlocking many
rooms full of possibilities‖. The Smith Quartets recording of Different Trains at the
time of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau shows for this
writer
the
culmination
of
these
possibilities.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZRBfRXJyak)
For Celan, Chicago and Reich the journey to creation of Post-Holocaust identity
through memory and the formation of new language, is a complex and altering
experience. For Celan his first had accounts see him take on the role of survivor and
reporter whereas for Chicago and Reich the role of reporter is mixed with that of
personal journey towards the reawakening of lost heritage and identity. Both Celan
and Reich realise the necessity of oblique references which in fact increase the
essence of the events unlike Chicago who assaults the viewer with explicit art and
personal memory which is at times for this writer is unnecessary. The reality of
events for Celan compared with the emotional and artistic creativity of Chicago and
Reich allow individuals to respond on a personal level to the different genres and to
envisage a revisiting of loss through memory and a realisation that from this ―some
other thing is also set free.‖47
46
47
Richard Taruskin
Paul Celan
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bekker, H, Paul Celan, studies in his early poetry, N.Y. 2008
Felstiner, J, Paul Celan, Poet, survivor, Jew, Yale University, 1995
Word Traces, Readings of Paul Celan, Fioretos, A, ed. U.S. 1994
Rosenthal, B, Pathways to Paul Celan, A History of Critical Responses as a Chorus
of Discordant Voices, (studies in modern German literature, vol 73), N.Y.1995
Poems of From New York to Vermont:Conversations Paul Celan, translated by
Michael Hamburger, N.Y.1988
Hillard, D, Poetry as individuality, the discourse of observation in Paul Celan,
Bucknell University Press, 2010
Chalfen, I, Paul Celan, A biography of his youth,(translated by Maximilian Bleyleben,
U.S.1991
Chicago, J, Holocaust Project, From Darkness Into Light, N.Y.1993
http://www.Steve Reich .com /bio.html
Interview with Steve Reich by Anne Teresa de Keersmaker
Interview with Steve Reich ―with Steve Reich, by Rebecca Y Kim.
McCabe, D, Analysis of Steve Reich Different Trains, Mills College, centre for
contemporary music, California
http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql4JmBwpzlg
http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZRBfRXJyak
http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmjgBQicTRC
http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVwlqEHDCQE
Appendices
Appendix 1
Black flakes
Snow has fallen, with no light. A month
has gone by now or two, since autumn in its monkish cowl
brought tidings my way, a leaf from Ukrainian slopes :
―Remember it‘s wintry here too, for the thousandth time now
in the land where the broadest torrent flows :
Ya‘akov‘s heavenly blood, blessed by axes…
Oh ice of unearthly red – their hetman wades with all
his troop into darkening suns… Oh for a cloth, child,
to wrap myself when it‘s flashing with helmets,
when the rosy floe bursts, when snowdrifts sifts your father‘s
bones, hooves crushing
the Song of the Cedar…
A shawl, just a thin little shawl, so I keep
by my side, now you‘re learning to weep, this anguish,
this world that will never turn green, my child, for your child‖ !
Autumn bled all away, Mother, snow burned me through :
I sought out my heart so it might weep, I found – oh the summer‘s breath
it was like you.
Then came my tears. I wove the shawl.
Appendix 2
Winter
It‘s falling, Mother, snow in the Ukraine:
The Savior‘s crown a thousand grains of grief.
Here all my tears reach out to you in vain.
One proud mute glance is all of my relief...
We‘re dying now: why won‘t you sleep, you huts?
Even this wind slinks round in frightened rags.
Are these the ones, freezing in slag-choked rutsWhose arms are candlesticks, whose hearts are flags?
I stayed the same in darknesses forlorn:
Will days heal softly, will they cut too sharp?
Among my stars are drifting now the torn
Strings of a strident and discordant harp...
On it at times a rose-filled hour is tuned.
Expiring: once. Just once, again ...
What would come, Mother: wakening or woundIf I too sank in snows of the Ukraine?
Appendix 3
Aspen tree
Aspen Tree, your leaves glance white into the dark.
My mother's hair was never white.
Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine.
My yellow-haired mother did not come home.
Rain cloud, above the well do you hover?
My quiet mother weeps for everyone.
Round star, you wind the golden loop.
My mother's heart was ripped by lead.
Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges?
My gentle mother cannot return.
Appendix 4
Deathfugue
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink it
we shovel a grave in the air where you won‘t lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair
Margareta
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to stay close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he commands us play up for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning at midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with the vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair
Margareta
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air where you won‘t
lie too cramped
He shouts dig this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and
play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are so blue
stick your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house your golden Harr Margareta
Your aschenes Harr Shulamith he plays with the vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly this Death is a master from
Deutschland
He shouts play scrape your strings darker you‘ll rise then as smoke to the sky
you‘ll then have a grave in the clouds where you won‘t lie too cramped
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldeness Harr Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams der Tod ist ein Meister
aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith
Appendix 5
Orchestra playing ―Death Tango‖ in Janowska Road Camp, Lvov
Appendix 6
A song in the desert
A wreath was wrapped in a dense black foliage in the area of Akra:
there, I tore around the black horse and thrust at the death with the sword.
I also drank from wooden bowls from the ashes of the fountain Akra
and moved forward with precipitated sight of the ruins of the sky.
For the angels are dead and blind, was the man in the area of Akra,
and there is none that look after me in his sleep went to rest here.
Shame smashed was the moon, the flower of the area of Akra:
Sun bloom, which imitate the thorns there, his hands with rusty rings.
So I have to bend down to kiss me probably last, when they pray in Akra. . .
O was bad, the breastplate of the night, the blood seeps through the clips!
So I was smiling her brother, the iron cherub of Akra.
So I speak the name of yet and still feel the fire on the cheeks.
NEIGHT Fever is your body of God's brown:
My mouth swinging torches on your cheeks.
Was not rocked, they sang the song no sleep.
The hand full of snow, I went to you,
and uncertain, as your eyes Blauner
in Stundenrund. (The moon was once a round.)
Verschluchzt in empty camping is the miracle
iced the jug dream - what does it matter?
Memorial: a blackish sheet hung in the elder the nice sign for the cup of blood.
Appendix 7
Number me among the almonds
Count up the almonds,
count what was bitter and kept you waking,
count me in :
I looked for your eye when you opened it, no one was looking at
you,
I spun that secret thread
on which the dew you were thinking
slid down to the jugs
guarded by words that no one‘s heart found their way.
Only there did you wholly enter the name that is yours,
sure-footed stepped into yourself,
freely the hammers swung in the bell frame of your silence,
the listened for reached you,
what is dead put its arm around you also
and the three of you walked through the evening.
Make me bitter.
Count me among the almonds.
Appendix 8
Shibboleth
Together with my stones
grown big with weeping
behind the bars,
they dragged me out into
the middle of the market,
that place
where the flag unfurls to which
I swore no kind of allegiance.
Flute,
double flute of night:
remember the dark
twin redness
of Vienna and Madrid.
Set your flag at half-mast,
memory.
At half-mast
today and for ever.
Heart:
here too reveal what you are,
here, in the midst of the market.
Call the shibboleth, call it out
into your alien homeland:
February. No pasarán
Unicorn:
you know about hte stones,
you know about hte water,
come.
I shall lead you away
to the voices
of Estremadura
Appendix 9
Tenerbrae
We are near, Lord,
near and at hand.
Handled already, Lord,
clawed and clawing as though
the body of each of us were
your body, Lord.
Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
we are near.
Wind-awry we went there,
went there to bend
over hollow and ditch.
To be watered we went there, Lord.
It was blood, it was
what you shed, Lord.
It gleamed.
It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.
Our eyes and our mouths are open and empty, Lord.
We have drunk, Lord.
The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.
Pray, Lord.
We are near.
Appendix 10
There was earth inside them
There was earth inside them, and
they dug.
They dug and dug, and so their day
Went by for them, their night. And they did not praise God,
who, so they heard, wanted all this,
who, so they heard, knew all this.
They dug and heard nothing more;
they did not grow wise, invented no song,
thought up for themselves no sort of language.
They dug.
There came a stillness, and there came a storm,
all of the oceans came.
I dig, you dig, and the worm, digs too,
and the singing there says: They dig.
O one, O none, O no one, O you:
Where did the way lead when it lead nowhere?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you,
and on our fingers the ring awakes.
Appendix 11
Psalm
No one kneads us again out of earth and clay,
no one conjures our dust.
No one.
Praised be your name, no one.
For your sake
we shall flower.
Towards
you.
A nothing
we were, are, shall
remain, flowering:
the nothing-, the
no one‘s-rose.
With
our pistil soul-bright,
with our stamen heaven- ravaged,
our corolla red
with the crimson word which we sang
over, O above
the thorn.
Appendix 12
Todtnaugerg
Arnica, eyebright, the
draft from the well with the
starred die above it,
in the
hütte,
the line
—whose name did the book
register before mine—?
the line inscribed
in that book about
a hope, today,
of a thinking man‘s
coming
word
in the heart,
woodland sward, unleveled,
orchid and orchid, single,
coarse stuff, later, clear
in passing,
he who drives us, the man,
who listens in,
the halftrodden wretched
tracks through the high moors,
dampness,
much.
Appendix 13
Coloured Triangles
Appendix 14
The Fall
Appendix 15
Bones of Treblinka
Appendix 16
Banality of Evil/ Struthof
Appendix 17
Wall of Indifference
Appendix 18
Banality of Evil/ Then and Now
Appendix 19
Rainbow Shabbat