Language:
English
Year of publication:
2005
Titel der Quelle:
Poetics Today
Angaben zur Quelle:
26,2 (2005) 209-255
Keywords:
Pagis, Dan
;
Levi, Primo,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Personal narratives
Abstract:
Juxtaposes the approaches to Holocaust testimony of two survivors, the Italian Jewish prose writer Primo Levi and the Israeli poet Dan Pagis. Notes the change in Levi from optimism to pessimism about the effectiveness of witnessing to the Holocaust. In view of Levi's feeling of failure in terms of his historical, documentary approach, focuses on Pagis's alternative strategy that is indirect and lacks any details about the author's or anyone else's real story of survival. Pagis wrote eight relevant poems in this context, two of which are "Testimony" and "Another Testimony". They do not mention the immediate perpetrators of the Holocaust, but use symbols, like boots. In one poem, fantasy shifts the focus from 20th-century Jewish victims and Nazi victimizers to the original prototypes, Cain and Abel. In his testimony, Pagis implicates God as ultimately responsible for creating the kind of humans He did, including perpetrators, victims, and witnesses.
Note:
In juxtaposition with Primo Levi's testimony.
DOI:
10.1215/03335372-26-2-209
URL:
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