Language:
English
Year of publication:
1993
Titel der Quelle:
Literature & Theology
Angaben zur Quelle:
7,4 (1993) 354-364
Keywords:
Pagis, Dan.
;
Levi, Primo,
;
Eve In literature
;
Bible In literature
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Hebrew poetry 20th century
;
Israeli literature 20th century
Abstract:
Analyzes the poem "Written in Pencil in a Sealed Railway-Car", by Israeli poet Dan Pagis (1929-1986). Born in Romania, Pagis was a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Israel in 1946. Discusses Primo Levi's view that testimony of the Shoah requires a Lager language all its own, and his query (in "Survival in Auschwitz") whether these testimonies are not themselves "stories of a new Bible". Plank asks whether the Hebrew Bible can provide the Shoah with a source for continuity and trope, as it does in Pagis's poem which places Eve and her son Abel in the sealed box-car, inscribing a pencilled message to her other son, Cain (who, as the reader knows, is the slayer of his brother). The message is cut off ("tell him that I"). States that the poem does not describe events of the Shoah as much as inscribe the dilemma they pose for those who would speak of them.
DOI:
10.1093/litthe/7.4.354
URL:
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