Holocaust "survivor" Jean Améry knew as well as Primo Levi, another famous “survivor” of Auschwitz in the same sense that Améry was (both eventually committed suicide), that he was required to speak not only for his own sake but also above all for the sake of those who could no longer speak for themselves—those who could no longer speak for themselves, because they had been murdered by the Germans and their accomplices during the Holocaust.
Read moreForgetting Ourselves (3)
At rare times, what we call art provides us with a moment when we can at last forget ourselves in just such a truly liberating way. At those rare moments, art catches us up short, and opens before us at just that moment the opportunity to forget ourselves and to “set ourselves free”—free from ourselves, and thereby free at last just to be ourselves. It does so, according to Celan, at those moments when we are so suddenly and unexpectedly struck by a work of art, or something at work in that work, that it “takes our breath away,” as we commonly yet accurately say. We encounter “breath-taking beauty,” as we also say.
Read moreForgetting Ourselves (2)
What we call “art” can sometimes offer a false feeling of forgetting oneself in the positive sense, the sense of setting oneself free of “the bondage of self.” That is so, at least, for some of what we commonly call “art.”
Read moreForgetting Ourselves (1)
“Those who have art before their eyes and on their minds [. . .] have forgotten themselves. Art draws away from the I. Art here demands a certain distance in a certain direction, on a certain path.”[1]
The poet Paul Celan made those remarks some fifty-six years ago in “The Meridian,” his acceptance speech for the Georg Büchner Prize for literature.
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Thank you for visiting my new website! I will be making all my blog posts here from now on, beginning with the first new on Monday, January 9. After that, Mondays will be my regular days for putting up new posts.
Embracing Ourselves (3)
What projections are to us all individually, scapegoats are to us all collectively: the parts of ourselves we are continuing to disown.
Read moreEmbracing Ourselves (2)
How, for instance, can the United States of America, one of the communities to which I belong, embrace not just its war heroes but also its war murderers, as it were.
Read moreEmbracing Ourselves (1)
How can we embrace not just those parts of ourselves we are proud of, and would like to be known by, but also—and especially—those parts of ourselves we are not proud of, and would not like to be known by?
Read moreWounding Warriors: Their Own Wounds That Time Can't Heal (4)
As I have said before here, the issue is not to engage in some comparison of atrocities, trying to decide which atrocity was worse, which nation guilty of the most or worst crimes. We should have no patience for the disgusting business of drawing such comparisons, trying to establish the victor in the race of nations into moral depravity. That is not in the least the issue.
Read moreWounding Warriors: Their Own Wounds That Time Can’t Heal (3)
I have never killed any children, either intentionally—whether under orders or not—or by accident. Nor have I ever stood by and watched while others did such killing. But I certainly have done things of which I am far from proud, and I have suffered at the knowledge of my deeds. What is more, I will even disclose, share, and confess that I can understand how it is possible to do even such things as such vets themselves once did.
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