Course Description
Summary
Philosopher Theodor Adorno famously claimed that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Adorno didn’t write this statement to silence poets. Specifically referencing the poet Paul Celan, he meant that poetry after the Holocaust would need to be radically different to account for these historic atrocities. We will begin by reading Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel, The Castle, a book which portends the coming brutalities. Next, we will take a close look at Paul Celan’s poetry, his fraught relationship with philosopher Martin Heidegger, as well as his correspondence with writers Nelly Sachs and Ingeborg Bachmann. Readings will include sections from Phillippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s Poetry as Experience, Kafka’s diaries, Walter Benjamin’s On the Concept of History, and relevant textual passages from Heidegger. Students are expected to write a shorter midterm paper and a longer final paper.
