Writing a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric

“Writing a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” is a statement by Theodor W. Adorno from his essay Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft , which was written in 1949 and published for the first time in 1951. The sentence was interpreted in different ways: it was understood as a general verdict against any poetry after the Holocaust , as a specific prohibition on the representation of poems about Auschwitz and the concentration camps, or as a mere provocative dictum . The concrete judgment passed on poetry was extended to literature or art in general.

Adorno explained and modified the statement several times, late statements were understood as a revision or revocation of the original thesis. The essay Cultural Criticism and Society arose after the National Socialist era from a fundamental distrust of the possibilities of culture , but also of cultural criticism , and formulated a dialectical position. The general public, however, only perceived the pointed individual thesis: "Writing a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric." The sentence was controversially discussed by philosophers , literary scholars and writers for decades and aroused the resistance of poets who came up with counter-theses or poetic works responded to the statement. For Robert Weninger, the discussion about Adorno's sentence became “perhaps the most important turning point in the aesthetic discourse of the post-war period ”. According to Günther Bonheim, "there is probably no second statement about literature in German literary history that has become as well known as this one."

Adorno's statements

The thesis "To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric" comes from the essay Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft that Theodor W. Adorno wrote in 1949 and published for the first time in 1951 as part of a commemorative publication for the sociologist Leopold von Wiese . The full sentence from cultural criticism and society is:

"Cultural criticism is opposed to the last stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that also eats up the knowledge that expresses why it was impossible to write poetry today."

- Theodor W. Adorno : Cultural Criticism and Society

The so-called "dialectic of culture and barbarism," a thesis Adorno and attacks Max Horkheimer from their joint work Dialectic of Enlightenment on, after which the culture at its peak of civilization and enlightenment in the reification of man and thus in barbarism and totalitarianism turn over threaten, for which National Socialism could serve as an example. In cultural criticism and society , after the experience of the Holocaust, Adorno expressed a fundamental distrust of the whole of culture, including cultural criticism . The cultural criticism also shares “with its object its delusion” and distracts from the actual horror. In this respect, dialectical cultural criticism must “participate and not participate” in culture. This leads to the contradicting judgment that on the one hand poems after Auschwitz are “barbaric”, but at the same time the criticism of them is questionable.

In the essay Those Twenties, published in 1962, Adorno returns to the question of a culture after Auschwitz against the background of an artistic return from the 1920s and describes a "current cultural aporia " while he argues for the first time in favor of the continued existence of an art after Auschwitz:

“The concept of a culture resurrected after Auschwitz is illusory and absurd, and every structure that still emerges has to pay the bitter price for it. However, because the world has survived its own downfall, it nonetheless needs art as its unconscious writing of history. The authentic contemporary artists are those in whose works the extreme horror trembles. "

- Theodor W. Adorno : Those twenties

In the same year, Adorno affirmed and explained his judgment on poetry after Auschwitz in the essay Engagement :

“I don't want to soften the sentence that after Auschwitz to write poetry is barbaric; The impulse that animates the committed poetry is expressed negatively. "

- Theodor W. Adorno : Commitment

Adorno basically acknowledges Hans Magnus Enzensberger's reply that “poetry must stand up to this verdict”. He also confirms the need for artistic preservation: "The excess of real suffering does not tolerate forgetting." Nevertheless, the artistic implementation carries the risk of an aesthetic stylization towards a "pleasure" and a "meaning": "something of that is transfigured." Horror taken away; that alone causes injustice to the victims, while no art stands up to justice. "

In 1966, however, in a passage from Negative Dialectic, Adorno partially revised his thesis:

“Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as the tortured man has to roar; therefore it may have been wrong that after Auschwitz one could no longer write a poem. Not wrong, however, is the less cultural question of whether it is still possible to live after Auschwitz, whether it should be allowed whoever escaped by chance and should have been rightfully killed. "

- Theodor W. Adorno : Negative Dialectic

Even after this partial retraction of the original statement, Adorno insists that Auschwitz has "irrefutably proven the failure of culture.": "All culture after Auschwitz, including the urgent criticism of it, is rubbish." With their support, they make themselves an accomplice, with theirs Refusal promotes barbarism. “Not even silence comes out of the circle; it only rationalizes one's own subjective inability to use the level of objective truth and thereby again demeans it to a lie. "

Adorno later explains that his statement "To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric" was not meant as a prohibition and aimed not only at poetry but also at culture in general, whereby he grants suffering the "right to expression". Art remains necessary as the "historical speaker of suppressed nature". In his Aesthetic Theory from 1972 he opposes every prohibition of art, every totalitarian verdict and judges, for example, about Paul Celan , in whose works he sees his ideal of an art realized as well as with Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka :

“This lyric is permeated with the shame of art in the face of suffering, which, like experience, evades sublimation. Celan's poems want to express the utmost horror through silence. Their truth content itself becomes a negative. "

- Theodor W. Adorno : Aesthetic Theory

discourse

As Adorno these "apodictic formulation" was coined, which was to become the "topos of literary theory, especially as the critical", there were already "poems about Auschwitz" as Paul Celan's Death Fugue , the 1949 cycle published in the apartments of the death of Nelly Sachs or the poem Poor Christ, composed in 1945, sees the ghetto of Czesław Miłosz , which Adorno probably did not know. Apparently it was precisely such poems that later made him doubt his own judgment. “The sentence from cultural criticism and society , no matter how conclusive or final it may be, actually represents the beginning of Adorno's reflection on poetry after the Holocaust,” said Dieter Lamping.

The beginning of the critical examination of Adorno's ban on representation, which Wolfdietrich Schnurre referred to as a “clubbing verdict”, can be traced back, according to Lamping, to Hans Magnus Enzensberger's review The Stones of Freedom from poems by Nelly Sachs . Enzensberger urged a refutation of Adorno's statement. In her poems there is no language for the executioners, accomplices and accomplices, rather the poems speak of “what has a human face, of the victims”. In an argument with Enzensberger's arguments, Adorno did not want to “soften” his statement, but confessed ambivalent differentiating from: “But that suffering […] also requires the continuation of art, which it forbids; Hardly anywhere else does suffering find its own voice, the consolation that it does not immediately reveal ”.

With regard to Adorno's thesis in 1967, Peter Härtling restricted: “Poems were written after Auschwitz, but not about Auschwitz; Celan's death fugue also paraphrases the echo of the death screams incomparably. She does not make the murder visible. We have not found any poetics that reflect the horror of our contemporaries. ”In his Imre Kertész dictionary , László F. Földényi summarized the interpretation of the writer and Nobel Prize winner about Adorno's statement under the heading of atonality : what this may have had in mind Kertész formulated more precisely with Adorno's favorite composer Arnold Schönberg : "After Auschwitz one can only write authentically in an atonal language".

Celan's lyrics

In particular Celan's well-known poem Death Fugue , composed between 1944 and 1945 and published for the first time in 1947, became “the focus” of Adorno's word, which, according to Ruth Klüger , is to be seen in a context in which “is about the dialectical relationship between culture and barbarism becomes". The clarification of Adorno's position, which has lasted over two decades, accompanies the development story of Celan's poem. Celan himself had rejected Adorno's thesis: “What is assumed here as an idea of ​​a poem? The arrogance of those who hypothetically speculatively consider Auschwitz from the nightingale or song thrush perspective or to report ”. Wolfdietrich Schnurre reacted with similar severity: “Did the self-related poems by Andreas Gryphius withstand the atrocities of the Thirty Years War or not. They withstood them just as Celan's fugue of death withstands the files of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial ”. Human language is not meant to be silenced, "it is meant to be spoken". Hilde Domin , Marie Luise Kaschnitz , Ernst Meister , Ruth Klüger and other voices emphasized the legitimation of their poetry and the comforting power of language. Despite Adorno's dictum, Celan, too, professed the power of language in his literary speech in Bremen (1958): “In the midst of the losses, one thing remained accessible, close and not lost: language. You, the language remained untouched, yes, in spite of everything. ”When Adorno withdrew his verdict, this also happened“ under the impression above all of Celan's Holocaust poetry ”.

The literary scholar Alexis Nouss wrote that the survival of the deportation to the concentration camp and the posthumous (as "  temps d'Auschwitz  " (German: "Auschwitz time")) remove the concept of the after, the distinction between before and after. Regarding Adorno's verdict:

«La fameuse proposition d'Adorno peut se comprendre dans cet éclairage: écrire un poème après Auschwitz serait barbare, car il n'y a pas d'après, au sens que la notion est vide; et tenter d'en maintenir ou d'en rétablir un serait moralement condamnable, conceptuellement vain, et barrerait l'issue d'un avenir qui doit être redéfini dans une nouvelle philosophie de l'histoire, radicalement nouvelle, seul moyen de ne pas retomber in the catastrophe. […] Écrire un poème après Auschwitz serait barbare: après mais pas den le temps d'Auschwitz. Une poétique du posthume qui est celle de Celan. »

“In view of this realization, Adorno's famous statement suggests that to write a poem after Auschwitz would be barbaric because there is no after, in the sense that the term is empty; and to try to maintain it or to re-establish it would be morally reprehensible, conceptually invalid, and would stand in the way of a way out of a future that has to be redefined in a new philosophy of history, radically new, the only means not to fall back into catastrophe. […] To write a poem after Auschwitz would be barbaric: after , but not in the time of Auschwitz. A poetics of the posthumous like the Celans. "

- Alexis Nouss : Parole sans voix

Processings in lyric

Poets like the fugue of death did not only write poems about Auschwitz and the Holocaust . They also took up Adorno's thesis and in turn worked it into poems. The spectrum of reactions ranges from contradiction and protest to irony. Robert Gernhardt asks whether it is still permissible to write poetry “after all the killing, all the destruction” and answers with a rhymed performative contradiction :

"The answer can only be the following:
NO three times!"

- Robert Gernhardt : Question

Peter Rühmkorf simply reverses the ban against its author:

"Speaking of which, who actually wrote the quote
'After Auschwitz you can't read Adorno anymore'?"

- Peter Rühmkorf : From the individual to the thousandth

Even Kurt Drawert runs the statement in his resignation list that one can do nothing against it all:

"And so it is true: after Auschwitz
, Germans
only have a right
to poetry."

- Kurt Drawert : You can't do anything about it

Richard Exner begins his poem After Auschwitz with the question “No more poems?” At the end he draws the conclusion “Still poems” and explains:

“Since Auschwitz [...]
nothing is
impossible.
Not even poems. "

- Richard Exner : After Auschwitz

And Hans Sahl , for whom Adorno reduced poems to the function of “soul comforters” and “slugs”, concludes:

"We believe that poems
have only now become possible
again, inasmuch as it is
only in the poem that we can say
what otherwise
defies description."

- Hans Sahl : Memo

For Petra Kiedaisch, the poetic answers to Adorno's thesis show an unbroken lyrical self-image. At the same time, however, their rejection of the thesis only reinforces it, only the violent protest against the abbreviated statement elevates it to the status of a ban. The effect of the poems is thus a paradox .

literature

• Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-15-009363-5 . (= RUB 9363)
• Robert Weninger: Arguable writers. Controversies and scandal in German literature from Adorno to Walser. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51132-5 , pp. 32-49.
• Klaus Hofmann: Poetry after Auschwitz - Adorno's Dictum . In: German Life and Letters 58, 2 (2005), pp. 182-94.
• Marc Kleine: Whether it is still possible at all: Literature after Auschwitz in Adorno's aesthetic theory . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-89528-884-5 .
• Wolfgang Johann: Adorno's dictum. Adaptations and Poetics. Reconstruction of a debate. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8260-6398-5 .

Web links

• Ágnes Heller : The world clock stood still. Writing to Auschwitz? Silence about Auschwitz? Philosophical considerations of a taboo. In: Die Zeit , No. 19/1993.
• Klaus Laermann: The voice remains. Theodor W. Adorno's dictum - considerations on a display ban . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/1992.
• Peter Stein: "That may be why it was wrong, after Auschwitz no more poem could be written." (Adorno). Revocation of a verdict? A quote and its abbreviation . (PDF; 73 kB) In: Weimar Contributions , 1996, issue 4, pp. 485–508.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. P. 10.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Robert Weninger: Warring writers. Controversies and scandal in German literature from Adorno to Walser. P. 33.
3. ↑ Günther Bonheim: Attempt to show that Adorno was right in claiming that after Auschwitz no more poems could be written. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2327-7 , p. 7.
4. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Cultural Criticism and Society. In: Gesammelte Schriften , Volume 10.1: Cultural Criticism and Society I, “Prisms. Without a mission statement ". Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07172-6 , p. 30.
5. ↑ Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. P. 13.
6. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Those twenties. Quoted from: Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Lyrik nach Auschwitz. Adorno and the Poets , p. 53.
7. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Engagement. Quoted from: Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Lyrik nach Auschwitz. Adorno and the Poets , p. 53.
8. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Engagement. Quoted from: Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Lyrik nach Auschwitz. Adorno and the Poets , pp. 54–55.
9. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Negative Dialektik. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-518-06572-6 , p. 355.
10. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Negative Dialektik. Quoted from: Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Lyrik nach Auschwitz. Adorno and the Poets , pp. 61–62.
11. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Paralipomena to "Aesthetic Theory". Quoted from: Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Lyrik nach Auschwitz. Adorno and the Poets , p. 16.
12. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 477.
13. ↑ Dieter Lamping: Are poems about Auschwitz barbaric? About the humanity of Holocaust poetry. In: Ders .: Literature and Theory: About poetological problems of modernity. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-525-01217-9 , pp. 100–118, here p. 100.
14. ↑ Compare with Lamping: Are poems about Auschwitz barbaric? P. 102.
15. ↑ Wolfdietrich Schnurre: Thirteen theses against the claim that it is barbaric to write a poem after Auschwitz. In: The shadow photographer . Paul List Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-548-26024-1 ; also: Ullstein book no. 26042, pp. 454–457.
16. ↑ quoted in Lamping: Are poems about Auschwitz barbaric? Pp. 102-103.
17. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Engagement. In: Ders .: Notes on literature, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, pp. 35–53, here p. 35.
18. ^ Robert Weninger: Disputeable literati. Controversies and scandal in German literature from Adorno to Walser. P. 32.
19. ^ László F. Földényi: Fatelessness: An Imre-Kertész Dictionary. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-498-02122-1 , p. 32.
20. ↑ Ruth Klüger: Paul Celan: The death fugue. In dsb: painted window panes. About lyric. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89244-490-9 , p. 134.
21. ↑ Markus May, Peter Großens, Jürgen Lehmann (eds.): Celan manual, life-work-effect. Metzler, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02063-5 , p. 62.
22. ^ Robert Weninger: Disputeable literati. Controversies and scandal in German literature from Adorno to Walser. P. 38.
23. ↑ Schnurre: Thirteen theses against the assertion that it is barbaric to write a poem after Auschwitz ', 5th and 6th thesis.
24. ↑ See the examples in the Petra Kiedaisch Collection: Lyrik nach Auschwitz.
25. ↑ Ruth Klüger: live on. A youth. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-7632-4238-4 , pp. 36, 110, 125-126.
26. ^ Lamping: Are poems about Auschwitz barbaric? P. 104.
27. ↑ Alexis Nouss: Parole sans voix . In: Dire l'événement, est-ce possible? Séminaire de Montréal, pour Jacques Derrida (=  Collection Esthétiques ). L'Harmattan, 2001, ISBN 2-7475-0221-X , p. 69-70 (after a seminar on April 1, 1997).
28. ↑ Alexis Nouss, p. 50.
29. ↑ Alexis Nouss, p. 52.
30. ↑ Alexis Nouss, pp. 70-71.
31. ↑ Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. P. 146.
32. ↑ Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. P. 156.
33. ↑ Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. P. 158.
34. ^ Richard Exner: Gedichte 1953-1991 , Radius-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, p. 94ff.
35. ↑ Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. P. 145.
36. ↑ Petra Kiedaisch (Ed.): Poetry after Auschwitz. Adorno and the poets. Pp. 21-22.