Poesis in Extremis
Literature Witnessing the Holocaust
1st Edition
Published on 8. February 2024
272 pages
979-8-7651-0020-2 (ISBN)
Description
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2025
How can genocide be witnessed through imaginative literature? How can the Holocaust affect readers who were not there?
Reading the work of major figures such as Elie Wiesel, Paul Celan, Avrom Sutzkever, Ida Fink, Wladyslaw Szlengel, Itzhak Katzenelson, and Czeslaw Milosz, Poesis in Extremis poses fundamental questions about how prose and poetry are written under extreme conditions, either in real time or immediately after the Holocaust.
Framed by discussion of literary testimony, with Wiesel's literary memoir Night as an entry point, this innovative study explores the blurred boundary of fact and fiction in Holocaust literature. It asks whether there is a poetics of the Holocaust and what might be the criteria for literary witnessing. Wartime writing in particular tests the limits of "poesis in extremis" when poets faced their own annihilation and wrote in the hope that their words, like a message in a bottle, would somehow reach readers. Through Poesis in Extremis, Daniel Feldman and Efraim Sicher probe the boundaries of Holocaust literature, as well as the limits of representation.
How can genocide be witnessed through imaginative literature? How can the Holocaust affect readers who were not there?
Reading the work of major figures such as Elie Wiesel, Paul Celan, Avrom Sutzkever, Ida Fink, Wladyslaw Szlengel, Itzhak Katzenelson, and Czeslaw Milosz, Poesis in Extremis poses fundamental questions about how prose and poetry are written under extreme conditions, either in real time or immediately after the Holocaust.
Framed by discussion of literary testimony, with Wiesel's literary memoir Night as an entry point, this innovative study explores the blurred boundary of fact and fiction in Holocaust literature. It asks whether there is a poetics of the Holocaust and what might be the criteria for literary witnessing. Wartime writing in particular tests the limits of "poesis in extremis" when poets faced their own annihilation and wrote in the hope that their words, like a message in a bottle, would somehow reach readers. Through Poesis in Extremis, Daniel Feldman and Efraim Sicher probe the boundaries of Holocaust literature, as well as the limits of representation.
More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
ISBN-13
979-8-7651-0020-2 (9798765100202)
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Schweitzer Classification
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08/2025
Bloomsbury Academic
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02/2024
Bloomsbury Academic
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Persons
Daniel Feldman is Senior Lecturer of English Literature at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, with a focus on Holocaust literature and children's literature. His scholarship has been recognized with the Children's Literature Association Honor Article, the Children's Literature Association Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Honor Award, and two research grants from the Israel Science Foundation. He is the author of a series of articles on the depiction of the Holocaust in Polish, German, Hebrew, and English poetry and prose. His research has appeared in Comparative Literature, Partial Answers, Children's Literature in Education, Children's Literature, Lion and the Unicorn, and Children's Literature Association Quarterly.
Efraim Sicher is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and is author of The Holocaust Novel (2005) and editor of the Dictionary of Literary Biography volume on Holocaust Novelists (2004). His most recent books include The Jew's Daughter: A Cultural History of a Conversion Narrative (2017), Re-envisioning Jewish Identities: Reflections on Contemporary Israeli and Diaspora Culture (2021), and Postmodern Love in the Contemporary Jewish Imagination: Negotiating Identities and Spaces (2022).
Efraim Sicher is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and is author of The Holocaust Novel (2005) and editor of the Dictionary of Literary Biography volume on Holocaust Novelists (2004). His most recent books include The Jew's Daughter: A Cultural History of a Conversion Narrative (2017), Re-envisioning Jewish Identities: Reflections on Contemporary Israeli and Diaspora Culture (2021), and Postmodern Love in the Contemporary Jewish Imagination: Negotiating Identities and Spaces (2022).
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction (Daniel Feldman and Efraim Sicher)
Part I
1. Elie Wiesel's Night: Literature as Testimony (Efraim Sicher)
Part II
2. A Poetics of the Holocaust?: Celan, Sutzkever, Milosz (Efraim Sicher)
3. Writing Nothing: Negation and Subjectivity in the Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis (Daniel Feldman)
4. Miklós Radnóti: Postcards from a Death March (Efraim Sicher)
5. Wladymir Szlengel's Ghetto Poems: Writing to the Dead (Daniel Feldman)
6. "Poem in a Bottle": Itzhak Katzenelson's Song of the Murdered Jewish People (Daniel Feldman)
Part III
7. Translating Oral Memory in Ida Fink's "Traces" (Daniel Feldman)
Postscript (Daniel Feldman and Efraim Sicher)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction (Daniel Feldman and Efraim Sicher)
Part I
1. Elie Wiesel's Night: Literature as Testimony (Efraim Sicher)
Part II
2. A Poetics of the Holocaust?: Celan, Sutzkever, Milosz (Efraim Sicher)
3. Writing Nothing: Negation and Subjectivity in the Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis (Daniel Feldman)
4. Miklós Radnóti: Postcards from a Death March (Efraim Sicher)
5. Wladymir Szlengel's Ghetto Poems: Writing to the Dead (Daniel Feldman)
6. "Poem in a Bottle": Itzhak Katzenelson's Song of the Murdered Jewish People (Daniel Feldman)
Part III
7. Translating Oral Memory in Ida Fink's "Traces" (Daniel Feldman)
Postscript (Daniel Feldman and Efraim Sicher)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
