Memory and Testimony in Extraordinary Times
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INTRODUCTION 1. Charles Esdaile, the Wars of Napoleon (New York, 1995), Ix; Philip Dwyer, “Preface,” Napoleon and Europe, E
Notes INTRODUCTION 1. Charles Esdaile, The Wars of Napoleon (New York, 1995), ix; Philip Dwyer, “Preface,” Napoleon and Europe, ed. Philip Dwyer (London, 2001), ix. 2. Michael Broers, Europe under Napoleon, 1799–1815 (London, 1996), 3. 3. An exception to the Franco-centric bibliography in English prior to the last decade is Owen Connelly, Napoleon’s Satellite Kingdoms (New York, 1965). Connelly discusses the developments in five satellite kingdoms: Italy, Naples, Holland, Westphalia, and Spain. Two other important works that appeared before 1990, which explore the internal developments in two countries during the Napoleonic period, are Gabriel Lovett, Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain (New York, 1965) and Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780–1813 (London, 1977). 4. Stuart Woolf, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe (London and New York, 1991), 8–13. 5. Geoffrey Ellis, “The Nature of Napoleonic Imperialism,” Napoleon and Europe, ed. Philip Dwyer (London, 2001), 102–5; Broers, Europe under Napoleon, passim. 1 THE FORMATION OF THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 1. Geoffrey Ellis, “The Nature of Napoleonic Imperialism,” Napoleon and Europe, ed. Philip Dwyer (London, 2001), 105. 2. Martyn Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution (New York, 1994), 43. 3. Ellis, “The Nature,” 104–5. 4. On the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and international relations, see Tim Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787–1802 (London, 1996); David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon: the Mind and Method of History’s Greatest Soldier (London, 1966); Owen Connelly, Blundering to Glory: Napoleon’s Military 212 Notes 213 Campaigns (Wilmington, DE, 1987); J. -
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Cultural Experimentation as Regulatory Mechanism in Response to Events of War and Revolution in Russia (1914-1940) Anita Tárnai Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Anita Tárnai All rights reserved ABSTRACT Cultural Experimentation as Regulatory Mechanism in Response to Events of War and Revolution in Russia (1914-1940) Anita Tárnai From 1914 to 1940 Russia lived through a series of traumatic events: World War I, the Bolshevik revolution, the Civil War, famine, and the Bolshevik and subsequently Stalinist terror. These events precipitated and facilitated a complete breakdown of the status quo associated with the tsarist regime and led to the emergence and eventual pervasive presence of a culture of violence propagated by the Bolshevik regime. This dissertation explores how the ongoing exposure to trauma impaired ordinary perception and everyday language use, which, in turn, informed literary language use in the writings of Viktor Shklovsky, the prominent Formalist theoretician, and of the avant-garde writer, Daniil Kharms. While trauma studies usually focus on the reconstructive and redeeming features of trauma narratives, I invite readers to explore the structural features of literary language and how these features parallel mechanisms of cognitive processing, established by medical research, that take place in the mind affected by traumatic encounters. Central to my analysis are Shklovsky’s memoir A Sentimental Journey and his early articles on the theory of prose “Art as Device” and “The Relationship between Devices of Plot Construction and General Devices of Style” and Daniil Karms’s theoretical writings on the concepts of “nothingness,” “circle,” and “zero,” and his prose work written in the 1930s. -
“IF THIS IS a MAN” the LIFE and LEGACY of PRIMO LEVI Wednesday and Thursday October 23 and 24, 2002
CALL FOR PAPERS HOFSTRA CULTURAL CENTER presents “IF THIS IS A MAN” THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF PRIMO LEVI Wednesday and Thursday October 23 and 24, 2002 Hofstra University is proud to sponsor an international conference on the life and philosophy of Primo Levi (1919-1987). His memoir, Survival in Auschwitz (If This Is a Man), has claimed a place among the masterpieces of Holocaust literature. Levi’s last work, The Drowned and the Saved, is arguably the most profound meditation on the Shoah. In his lifetime Levi forged an impressive body of work, and his writings remain a powerful reminder of what transpired in the extermination camps of Europe and what it means to be human after Auschwitz. We welcome paper proposals on any number of topics, including but not limited to: Levi and the Culture of Turin Levi and Italian Jews The Holocaust vs. the Culture of Science Memory and Holocaust Memoirs Language and Writing Levi, Theater and Film Representations of the Holocaust Suicide (?) Proposals for other presentations, lecture/demonstrations, panels, round-tables and workshops are also welcomed. A letter of intent, a three- to five-page abstract (in duplicate) and curriculum vitae should be sent by January 18, 2002, to: PRIMO LEVI CONFERENCE Hofstra Cultural Center (HCC) 200 Hofstra University Hempstead, New York 11549-2000 The deadline for completed double-spaced papers in duplicate is August 2, 2002. Presentation time for papers, lectures, lecture/demonstrations and workshops is limited to 20 minutes. (Papers should be limited to 10-12 typed, double- spaced pages, excluding notes.) As selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings, previously published material should not be submitted. -
Eui Working Papers in History
Repository. Research Institute University European Institute. Cadmus, '1 1 European European University Institute, Florence 1 on University Access European Open EUI EUI Working Paper Europe and the Nation-State WORKING EUI HISTORY PAPERS IN Author(s). Available S tuart The 2020. © in W HEC oolf Library No. No. 91/11 EUI the by produced version Digitised Repository. Research Institute University European Institute. Cadmus, on University Please note Please individually (e.g. EUI Working Paper LAWdivided No. into 90/1). six sub-series, each sub-series will be numberedAs from January 1990 the EUI Working Paper Series is Access European Open Author(s). Available The 2020. © in Library EUI the by produced version Digitised Repository. Research Institute University European Institute. Cadmus, Inaugural Lecture of the European University Institute on EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORYAND CIVILIZATION University BADIA FIESOLANA, SAN DOMENICO (FI) Access EUI EUI Working Paper delivered at the Badia Fiesolana European Europe and the Nation-State Open for the session 1990-1991 20 February 1991 S Author(s). Available tuart The 2020. © W in oolf HEC No. No. 91/11 Library EUI the by EUR 940 produced version Digitised Repository. Research Institute University European Institute. Cadmus, on University No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form form any in reproduced be may paper of this part No Access European Open without permission of permission the without author. European University Institute University European Printed in Italy in May 1991 Italy in in May Printed 1991 1-50016 San Domenico (FI) Domenico San 1-50016 All rights All rights reserved. -
12. Exile As Dehumanization: Primo Levi
12. Exile as Dehumanization: Primo Levi Among those bearing witness, the Italian chemist and writer Primo Levi (b. 1919 in Turin, d. 1987 in Turin) stands out due to his thorough, sober, and analytical approach to the Holocaust. He was the author of many books, novels, collections of short stories, essays, and poems. His best-known works include If This is a Man (1947; US title, Survival in Auschwitz, 1959), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp, The Truce (1963), The Periodic Table (1975), which linked Holocaust stories to the elements, and The Drowned and the Saved (1986). Levi became “the other” prominent voice in American Holocaust discourse during the 1980s. There is a huge body of literature comparing Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Of all Holocaust survivors, these two have become the most important voices, especially in the US, as their works were frequently written about in the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, the Hudson Review, World Literature Today, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, Time, The Nation, the New Republic, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times Book Review, Atlantic Monthly, the LA Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, and other influential media. They have also been widely discussed by American academics and featured in Jewish and Holocaust courses. Paradoxically, they are not so well known in Central and Eastern Europe due to those areas’ cultural insulation during the Communist period. Levi had an urgent concern to communicate his experiences during the Holocaust to a broader public, as well as to future generations, and judging from his reception both in his native Italy and particularly in the US, we can say he succeeded. -
As in the All the Other of Levi's Holocaust Poems I Discuss in This
Poetry as testimony: Primo Levi's collected poems Rowland, AC http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502360802271462 Title Poetry as testimony: Primo Levi's collected poems Authors Rowland, AC Type Article URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/9509/ Published Date 2008 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. Poetry as Testimony: Primo Levi’s Collected Poems Critics in the field of Holocaust and Trauma Studies have regarded the relationship between poetry and testimony as either non-existent or self-explanatory. In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub discuss Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Celan poems alongside Albert Camus’s novel The Plague, Sigmund Freud’s work and life testimonies, without commenting on the shift between analyses of different genres.1 Yet testimony is generally seen as an ‘unaesthetic’ form of written or oral attestation to historical suffering opposed to more self-consciously literary forms such as poetry. Hence in Beyond the Limit-Experience, Gary Mole illustrates that some critics assume that ‘the poetic and the testimonial [are] somehow incompatable’; Sue Vice points out that ‘it is not poetic testimony but prose testimony that is typical of Holocaust eye-witness, while Holocaust poetry is considered a separate and self-contained genre’.2 In this article I argue that, when a critical opposition between poetry and testimony is unravelled, Primo Levi’s poems can be read productively as testimonial acts. -
Primo-Levi-The-Voice-Of-Memory
THE VOICE OF MEMORY PRIMO LEVI Interviews, 1961-1987 Edited by M A R C 0 B E L P 0 L I T I and R 0 B E R T G 0 R D 0 N "Primo Levi is one of the most important and gifted writers of our time." -ITALO CALVINO The Voice of Memory The Voice of Memory Interviews 1961-1987 Primo Levi Edited by Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon Translated by Robert Gordon The New Press New York This collection © 2001 by Polity Press First published in Italy as Primo Levi: Conversazioni e interviste 1963-87, edited by Marco Belpoliti © 1997 Guilio Einaudi, 1997, with the exception of the interviews beginning on pages 3, 13, 23, and 34 (for further details see Acknowledgments page). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher. First published in the United Kingdom by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2001 Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2001 Distributed by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York ISBN 1-56584-645-1 (he.) CIP data available. The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable. The New Press, 450West 41st Street, 6th floor, NewYork, NY 10036 www.thenewpress.com Set in Plantin Printed in the -
Open Thesis.Pdf
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY THE PURPOSE AND FALL OF THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE IN THE LOW COUNTRIES AND ITALY NICHOLAS F. BORSUK-WOOMAN Spring 2010 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in History and Economics with honors in History Reviewed and approved* by the following: Sylvia Neely Associate Professor of History Thesis Supervisor Catherine Wanner Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies Honors Adviser * Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. ABSTRACT The Purpose and Fall of the Napoleonic Empire in the Low Countries and Italy investigates Napoleon’s aims for the Empire and the reasons for its final demise in the Low Countries and Italy. This work will examine these two aspects in Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern Italy, and Naples. First, I scrutinize Stuart’s Woolf’s thesis that Napoleon attempted to integrate Europe in order to create a single-European state that benefitted the entire continent. I attack his thesis by referring to Paul Schroeder’s argument that Napoleon viewed Europe as colonies that were meant to benefit France. Many of those European colonies benefitted from Napoleon’s colonization, Belgium, Piedmont, and the Kingdom of Italy, while others suffered under his demands, especially the Netherlands and Naples. The underlying theme was the institutions Napoleon implanted into these areas in order to extract their resources. The second argument assaults the view that nationalism was the cause of the fall of the Empire. Through analyzing the Low Countries and Italy, I demonstrate that entrenched political factions existed, separated on financial and economic issues, conscription, and religion. -
Historical Translatability
Historical Translatability Primo Levi Amongst the Snares of European History 1938– 1987 By Domenico S c a r p a (Turin) Taking his cue from the groundbreaking English translation of ›The Complete Works‹ of Primo Levi (recently published in America by Liveright) and focusing on Levi’s early writing, the author argues for the necessity of re-reading Primo Levi today, pleading for a new historical and chronological approach to his work. 1. I would like to begin with an explanation of the two dates in my subtitle, 1938 and 1987. 1938 is the year when the Fascist regime led by Mussolini passed rac- ist laws against Jews. This event not only put on Italian Jews the burden of an increasing self-consciousness, but it also marked the beginning of their “search for roots,” the construction of a cultural identity for the many of them who were not particularly religious or aware of their heritage or tradition. Primo Levi was himself such a secular Jew. More importantly, the racist laws of 1938 made Italian Jews aware of an im- pending catastrophe. 1938 brought about the recognition of a further dimen- sion in national and European history. Metaphorically speaking, 1938 broke the back of Italian historical continuity. Shattering Italian identity, it was the first of many fractures that were to occur in the decade to follow. There was the entry of Italy into World War II on June 10, 1940, the fall of the Fascist regime on July 25, 1943, the complete collapse and dissolution of the Italian state after the armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943, the liberation and the victory of the Italian Resistance on April 25, 1945, the institution of the republic in 1946 and, finally, the writing and promulgation of the new constitution of the Repubblica Italiana in 1948. -
If This Is a Man/The Truce PDF Book
IF THIS IS A MAN/THE TRUCE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Primo Levi,Stuart Woolf | 400 pages | 04 Jul 2003 | Little, Brown Book Group | 9780349100135 | English | London, United Kingdom If This is a Man/The Truce PDF Book Even outside the camps, struggles are rarely waged by Lumpenproletariat. No way. A must-read if you truly want to attempt to understand what happened in the camps and how hard it was to come back afterwards. Or else, it is raining and it is also windy: but you know that this evening it is your turn for the supplement of soup, so that even today you find the strength to reach the evening. Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Thus all healthy prisoners were evacuated, in frightful conditions, in the direction of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, while the sick were abandoned to their fate. Unbelievable as this may seem, some people have either forgotten or never cared to find out. One of the most important works of the 20th century. They all knew they were going to die, in a matter of time, but it was better to make their last time on earth the least unpleasant possible. O Primo Basilio by Eca de Queiros. It is better to content oneself with other more modest and less exiting truths, those one acquires painfully, little by little and without shortcuts, with study, discussion, and reasoning, those that can we verified and demonstrated. The ideas they proclaimed were not always the same and were, in general, aberrant or silly or cruel. -
Stuart Woolf: Napoleon
Stuart Woolf: Napoleon: politics of integration? Schriftenreihe Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom Band 127 (2013) Herausgegeben vom Deutschen Historischen Institut Rom Copyright Das Digitalisat wird Ihnen von perspectivia.net, der Online-Publikationsplattform der Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, zur Verfügung gestellt. Bitte beachten Sie, dass das Digitalisat der Creative- Commons-Lizenz Namensnennung-Keine kommerzielle Nutzung-Keine Bearbeitung (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) unterliegt. Erlaubt ist aber das Lesen, das Ausdrucken des Textes, das Herunterladen, das Speichern der Daten auf einem eigenen Datenträger soweit die vorgenannten Handlungen ausschließlich zu privaten und nicht-kommerziellen Zwecken erfolgen. Den Text der Lizenz erreichen Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode STUART WOOLF Napoleon: politics of integration? Over the past two decades research has immensely widened the range of ques- tions posed about the Napoleonic period and consequentially the forms of nar- rating these crucial years in the history of Europe. Previously the dominant modes of narration were either biographies of Napoleon or an exclusively na- tional perspective that recounted the Napoleonic years as an episode within the history of the individual state. The biographical tradition has continued, indeed the interminably prolonged bicentennial – from Brumaire to Waterloo – has already generated a flood of books on Napoleon that appears incom- parably greater than a century ago, no doubt judged by publishers appropri- ately commensurate to the changed scale of the market of readers. Instead, the Napoleonic years in national historiographies are no longer represented as an interlude or interruption in the teleological subtext of progress towards the nation state. -
The Ethical Limitations of Holocaust Literary Representation1
eSharp Issue 5 Borders and Boundaries The Ethical Limitations of Holocaust Literary Representation1 Anna Richardson (University of Manchester) To Speak or Not To Speak One of the most famous and frequently cited dictums on Holocaust representation is Theodor Adorno’s statement that ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’ (1982, p.34). Clearly Adorno is not merely speaking about the act of writing poetry, but rather the tension between ethics and aesthetics inherent in an act of artistic production that reproduces the cultural values of the society that generated the Holocaust. Adorno later qualified this statement, acknowledging that ‘suffering […] also demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids’ (1997, p.252). How then does one presume to represent something as extreme as the Holocaust, when in theory one cannot do so without in some way validating the culture that produced it? As Adorno notes: ‘When even genocide becomes cultural property in committed literature, it becomes easier to continue complying with the culture that gave rise to the murder’ (1997, pp.252-253). Coupled with this is the commonly held concept of the Holocaust as something that is ‘unspeakable’. As a number of scholars have noted, this is not true in the strictest sense of ‘unspeakability’, as much has been written, and indeed said, on the subject of the Holocaust. Even on the level of historical record, which methodologically adheres to hard fact and traditionally rejects survivor testimony as too ‘imaginative’:2 the verbal representability of facts suffices, in and of itself, to disprove the claim that the Holocaust is absolutely unspeakable.