M.A. Thesis: Final Draft

BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ABRAHAMS-CURIEL DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LITERATURES AND LINGUISTICS IRONY AFTER AUSCHWITZ?: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE HOLOCAUST POETRY OF DAN PAGIS AND A.M. KLEIN THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS MARK ELLIOTT SHAPIRO UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF: PROFESSOR EFRAIM SICHER Signature of student: _____________ Date: _______ Signature of supervisor: _____________ Date: _______ Signature of chairperson of the committee for graduate studies: _____________ Date: _______ AUGUST 2013 Table of Contents English abstract iv Acknowledgments v Foreword 1 1. Introduction 2 2. Parody and sacred parody 36 3. Irony and black humor 62 4. Satire 79 Conclusion 99 Works Cited 102 Hebrew abstract 106 ii English abstract This is a study of the use of parody (including sacred parody), irony and black humor, and satire in selected Holocaust poems by Israeli poet Dan Pagis and Canadian-Jewish poet A.M. Klein. Despite differences of biography (Pagis lived in Israel and Klein in Canada) and cultural milieu (Hebrew-speaking versus English-speaking environment), there are many similarities in their use of the above devices. In the discussion, considerable use will be made of two major theoretical texts: Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms and David G. Roskies’ Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture, particularly his theory of sacred parody. This study demonstrates that, in the employment of the device of sacred parody in their Holocaust poems, Pagis and Klein are operating within the context of the traditional Jewish response to catastrophe. iii Acknowledgments I wish to thank the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences for the summer grant it so kindly bestowed upon me and I also wish to thank Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Sidney R. and Esther Raab Center for Redemption and Holocaust Studies for an Award for Holocaust Research, 2011, which significantly helped me in completing this M.A. thesis. I am grateful to Galia Duchin-Ariel for her comments and suggestions. Most of all, I want to thank my children and grandchildren for their continuous moral support after my return to the academic world. iv Foreword Before engaging in the topic of this thesis, I feel that a prefatory note is needed, although it is not customary to place a caveat before the main proposition. Nonetheless, some people might consider that the very use of the word satire in connection with the Holocaust verges on sacrilege; moreover, I personally approach the Holocaust and Holocaust literature with a mixture of awe and caution. Thus, I consider it necessary to preface my analysis with the statement that my application of a term like satire or irony should not be interpreted as any expression of disrespect for such a weighty topic as the Holocaust. Although my parents were living in Canada while the annihilation of European Jewry was carried out, the Holocaust plays a major role in my outlook and in my poetry. A discussion of irony and parody in connection with the Holocaust should not be construed in any way as an irreverent view of the Holocaust; to talk about irony and parody in Holocaust literature – or Holocaust poetry, which is the pivot of my thesis – is not to diminish the Holocaust’s horror. 1 Chapter 1: Introduction Before engaging in the topic of this thesis, I feel that a prefatory note is needed, although it is not customary to place a caveat before the main proposition. Nonetheless, some people might consider that the very use of the word satire in connection with the Holocaust verges on sacrilege; moreover, I personally approach the Holocaust and Holocaust literature with a mixture of awe and caution. Thus, I consider it necessary to preface my analysis with the statement that my application of a term like satire or irony should not be interpreted as any expression of disrespect for such a weighty topic as the Holocaust. Although my parents were living in Canada while the annihilation of European Jewry was carried out, the Holocaust plays a major role in my outlook and in my poetry. A discussion of irony and parody in connection with the Holocaust should not be construed in any way as an irreverent view of the Holocaust; to talk about irony and parody in Holocaust literature – or Holocaust poetry, which is the pivot of my thesis – is not to diminish the Holocaust’s horror. There are three central arguments supporting an analysis of irony and parody in the Holocaust poems of the two poets I have chosen. Since 2 my thesis is in the realm of literature, not history or philosophy, I will only briefly present these three arguments. The first centers on the irony of the Holocaust, which has resulted in epistemological paradoxes for historians and literary scholars. It is, of course, ironic that Germany – the very country whose Jewish citizens considered themselves an integral part of its society and culture and which had made such a profound contribution to culture, philosophy, literature and music – created an entire system that murdered most of the German Jewish population as well as millions of Jews from other countries. The very character of this system refuted the underlying humanistic principles of culture, philosophy, literature and the arts. I have referred to the Holocaust as an ironic event. An alternative term perhaps would be “paradoxical” (e.g., George Steiner’s observation that the reading of Rilke’s poetry did not prevent the Nazis from gassing human beings). This paradox can be associated with the post-Holocaust crisis of the humanities in general and the reading of poetry in particular; however, such a discussion is beyond the limited parameters of this thesis. The second argument centers on the cruel irony that is represented by the Holocaust. The German nation, which had been identified as the cradle of Western civilization, used the end results of Enlightenment rationality – the tools of mass production and modern technology – not to 3 create products but rather to efficiently murder six million European Jews. Both irony and black humor depend on an unexpected distance between signifier and signified. That distance becomes horrifyingly colossal when culture and civilized behavior seem incompatible with a monstrous reality, as George Steiner points out: We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach or Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant (Steiner, Language and Silence, ix). The dissonance that Steiner refers to is also expressed in the fact that the death camps constituted a complete, coherent world. They had their own measure of time, which is pain. The unbearable was parceled out with pedantic nicety. The obscenities and abjections practiced in them were accompanied by prescribed rituals of derision and false promise. There were regulated gradations of horror within the total, concentric sphere. L’univers 4 concentrationnaire has no true counterpart in the secular mode. Its analogue is Hell (Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, 53). That dissonance was also expressed in phenomena associated with the Holocaust that seem grotesque. There are many examples that could be cited, among them, the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, the use of code words (such as special treatment, Final Solution, deportation) to hide what really transpired in the Holocaust, and the very existence of Terezin as a model community to conceal the Nazis’ true intentions toward the Jews. As I have noted above, I have referred to the Holocaust as an ironic event. An alternative term perhaps would be “paradoxical” (e.g., George Steiner’s observation that the reading of Rilke’s poetry did not prevent the Nazis from gassing human beings). This paradox can be associated with the post-Holocaust crisis of the humanities in general and the reading of poetry in particular; however, such a discussion is beyond the limited parameters of this thesis. The third central argument is the presence of the literary tools of irony and parody in the Holocaust poems of Dan Pagis and A.M. Klein. I will be defining irony in this thesis as a distancing between signifier and signified that places emphasis on the submerged rather than the visible 5 signified. The literary tools of irony effectively mirror the irony of the Holocaust to which I have just referred. Although Dan Pagis’ and A.M. Klein’s respective backgrounds, linguistic ambience (Hebrew versus English) and literary/cultural influences are so markedly different, these differences are, as I will try to demonstrate, overridden by a major similarity – the prominent use of irony and parody in their Holocaust poetry. Not only do Pagis and Klein employ parody, they also utilize sacred parody; I will discuss these two terms – parody and sacred parody – in the next chapter. As I will show, Pagis and Klein are working within a tradition in Hebrew and Yiddish literature of catastrophe (although Klein is known for his poetry in English). Three scholars whose works will be important in my thesis are Linda Hutcheon, Alan Mintz and David Roskies. Hutcheon discusses the complex theory of parody as reflected in 20th-century art forms and I will be making frequent references to her A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. In his Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature, Mintz surveys the response of Hebrew literature in Jewish catastrophe, such as the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem, the massacre of Jews in Europe during the Crusades, the pogroms in Czarist Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the Holocaust.

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