A Poetics of Survival: Figures and Forms of the Ethical in Poetry after the Shoah By Naomi Eleanor Shulman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Judith Butler, Co-Chair Professor Chana Kronfeld, Co-Chair Professor Robert Alter Professor Winfried Kudszus Spring 2011 A Poetics of Survival: Figures and Forms of the Ethical in Poetry after the Shoah © 2011 By Naomi Eleanor Shulman Abstract A Poetics of Survival: Figures and Forms of the Ethical in Poetry after the Shoah by Naomi Eleanor Shulman Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Judith Butler, Co-Chair Professor Chana Kronfeld, Co-Chair This dissertation considers poetic responses to the Shoah: the critical and cultural consequences of the genre in relation to this catastrophe have been largely neglected or discussed primarily in light of Theodor Adorno’s narrow statement questioning the possibility of writing poetry after Auschwitz. I maintain, however, that it is vital to engage the transnational and multi-lingual breadth of poetry, which lays claim to the problems as well as the significance of its endurance, as it confronts attempts to regulate creative impulses on the one hand and to mandate forms of testimony and commemoration on the other hand. In what I term a “poetics of survival,” the works I examine employ intertextuality to question the ethical implications of situating poetic voice and address. These works explore the limits of poetic form, in order to foreground poetry as a literary mode that is involved in critical discourse and ethical critique rather than invested only in aesthetic or historical representation. Thus, the poets insist upon their dialogues and disputes across genres ranging from correspondence to philosophy, as they confront cultural and textual traditions that seek to mourn and commemorate devastating loss. In the Introduction, I focus on theoretical and critical conceptions of survival, illustrating the ways in which a poetics of survival problematizes literary forms that attempt to make sense of individual and communal suffering, both through authoring and through reading. Chapter One investigates Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ long poem “Draft 52: Midrash,” which argues with Adorno’s famous declaration that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”1 Through elaborating and responding to her interpretation of Adorno’s claim, DuPlessis’ poem urges us to reconsider the categorical understanding of his pronouncement, which has shaped critical discourse. I take up DuPlessis’ poetic challenge to Adorno’s critical authority at the same time that I investigate the manifold ways in which he himself modulated this argument throughout his oeuvre. Chapter Two reflects on the intertextual resonances in both the poetry and the correspondence between Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs: I examine their figurations of breath, which I read as the critical boundary that simultaneously separates and binds together life and death, and as the mutual foundation and limit of poetry and existence after the Shoah. Chapter Three offers readings of the Yiddish poet Malka Heifetz Tussman, whose work confronts, 1 Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber Nicholson, Can One Live After Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Rodney Livingstone et al. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003), 162. 1 refutes, and reimagines the viability of a poetics of survival in a language whose very existence has been called into question through the annihilation of so many of its speakers. Ultimately, I postulate that a poetics of survival both institutes and explores a crucial tension between experience and expression. This tension takes shape as a limit-space, where the urgency and difficulty of the poetic emerge with particular force, since poetry is the genre most intimately and consciously bound up with the consequence of voice and address in the context of an exploration of form. By looking at the complicated relationship between body and text – particularly through the ways in which the writers figure survival as a condition that entangles life and language – I illuminate the intertwined pressures of ethics and memory, while questioning implicit hierarchies that seek to regulate the connections between the literal and the figural, the critical and the poetic, the historical and the aesthetic. 2 For my mother and father, with gratitude and love i TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments iii Introduction Critical and Poetic Models 1 Chapter One Addressing the Critical / Poetic Divide: 20 Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ Arguments with Theodor W. Adorno Chapter Two Figuring Relation: 56 Breath’s Travels in the Work of Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs Chapter Three A Yiddish Poetics of Survival in America: 99 Malka Heifetz Tussman and the Refusal of Lament Bibliography 134 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My enduring interest in the possibilities and limits of poetic encounters has been shaped by my exchanges with the many people who contributed to this dissertation – I thank them for their conversations, which enriched my thinking, and for their support and encouragement, which sustained me during the realization of this project. My committee was unfailingly committed to my intellectual growth, and I am deeply grateful for their engaging discussions, their attentive readings, and their perceptive comments. One and all, they have been unparalleled role models of scholarship and teaching. Always generous with her time and her reflections, Judith Butler urged me to articulate my theoretical and critical positions and my intellectual convictions to the best of my abilities. Her abiding concerns with critique and the ethical in relation to stories and histories of loss and mourning have deepened my thinking about these questions. Chana Kronfeld welcomed me to graduate studies at Berkeley: Her enthusiasm for poetry – both for its beauty and its political and cultural importance – is moving, and her care for her students’ well-being is both nourishing and heartwarming. Robert Alter’s seminar on translation attuned my ear to the expressive nuances of a project on multilingual and intertextual poetry, and his guidance on many matters from the intellectual to the organizational has been invaluable. Winfried Kudszus’ dedication to exploring literature as a meditative process that conjoins the aesthetic, historical, and critical has encouraged me to appreciate poetry’s inimitable way of combining the pleasurable and the philosophical. I am also indebted to other interlocutors, whom I met as a graduate student: I learned much from Ernst van Alphen, Michael André Bernstein, Yael Chaver, and from Bluma Goldstein, whose humor, wisdom, and friendship are equally exceptional. Alvin Rosenfeld, who first mentored me at Indiana University Bloomington, not only encouraged the course of my intellectual development but impressed me with his whole-hearted dedication to his field and with the lucidity and force of his thought. I also benefited from Dov- Ber Kerler’s wealth of knowledge about Yiddish language, literature, and culture. The Department of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley has been a wonderful intellectual home. Erica Roberts has gone above and beyond the call of duty many times, saving me from organizational distress with grace and kindness. I thank the Jewish Studies Program for the periods of generous fellowship support, which enabled me to research, write, and present my work at academic conferences. I am also indebted to the departments of Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies for their support of various summer research projects, which inform Chapters Two and Three of this dissertation. With the aid of the DAAD (the German Academic Exchange Service), I spent a year in Berlin working on this project, and I thank Joseph Vogl, of the Humboldt Universität Berlin, for inviting me to do so. Because I have moved a lot over the past several years – from the Bay Area to Berlin and then to Paris – friends are scattered far and wide. Whether currently in the same country or not, I am grateful for laughter and stories shared with them, for their lasting interest in and observations on my work. Cara Berends, Yaira Urban, Victoria Gosling, Catherine Lees, Sandra Bedenk, Tania Teague, Lilja Sautter, Erika Otto, Anne Stähr, Hannah Frahm, Judith Mormann, Katie Jones, Kerri Hardman, Jane Weston, Celine Piser: To the good times we’ve had together, and to many to come! iii Theodor Shulman, my brother, has been a true friend, especially in these last months, when our correspondence has cheered me: Teddy knows how to combine commitment, intellectual rigor, and kindness, and I admire him for these qualities and many others. Guillaume Conan, who listened patiently to infinite versions of my thoughts and concerns, who soothed all worries with his optimism and cooked delicious dinners every night for months so I would be free to write, who believes in me and articulates his love and his support in the most constant and profound forms, is inscribed in this work and in my life in a way that goes beyond the words I can find to express my gratitude. Ultimately, this project began with my parents, Heidemarie and Michael Shulman, who raised me to believe in the importance of pursuing knowledge and led me to experience the joy that comes with immersing oneself in study. Their abiding faith in my abilities has nurtured me and made it possible to conceive and carry out this work. My mother, the most well-read and discerning of critics, shaped my taste and appetite for reading from the start: She offered me books from her vast library, and her choices and recommendations were unerringly precise and eye-opening. Throughout the years, she has read and commented on my writing and has, without fail, improved it immeasurably. Her passion for teaching and learning and her dedication to her students inspires me.