The Terror of Our Days: Four American Poets Respond to the Holocaust (review)

To identify the Holocaust as an incident of historyóas merely an event in someone else's pastóis to dismantle its significance in favor of peace of mind. In her new book, The Terror of Our Days, Harriet Parmet questions whether the Holocaust can be claimed as a singly "psychological," "political," or "theological phenomenon" (p.17). In fact, the universal application of terms once associated with the Holocaust (i.e., using particular suffering as a metaphor) will lead, as Yehuda Bauer suggests, to its "de-Judaization" (p. 18). The risk, of course, involves trivializing events and reducing them to parable. As difficult as communication must be for those whose immediate history contains Holocaust experiences, there are others whose lives have been shaped by the Holocaust yet who have had no direct experience of suffering or persecution. Parmet's book identifies four individualsóSylvia Plath, William Heyen, Gerald Stern, and Jerome Rothenbergówho, because of their distance from the Holocaust, have been "denied a survivor's guilt," but for whom the Holocaust remained an inspiration to the soul and a muse for the writing spirit (p. 20).

Existing as both "original creation and as vital cultural transmission," writings about the Holocaust possess tremendous significance and hold great responsibility as means of communication (p. 19). Where words fail to describe an illogical event, where inability to articulate is the grandest battle, such writing is raised to even greater station.

In an extensive introduction to her text, Parmet identifies several schools of critical thought regarding Holocaust literature. The author acknowledges the key figures and effectively summarizes their modes of thought. After citing Theodor Adorno's oft-quoted claim that writing poetry after Auschwitz is "barbaric," Parmet skillfully discusses the literature of the absurd, a genre that responds "precisely to the collapse of language in contemporary civilization" (p. 22). Therefore, the purpose and relative success of Holocaust writing lies in its ability to illustrate the collapse of language and the resultant paralyzing silence. This ability may be one of the most effective tools for expression left to the writer (as featured in chapter 4, on the poetry of Jerome Rothenberg). For others, such as George Steiner, who claim that language itself has been usurped by the Nazisóthat it is "hopelessly corrupted"óParmet argues that, as a "tool of the wordsmith," language should be utilized to reveal oppression and intolerance (p. 27). Parmet identifies views that run counter to Steiner's, particularly those of Lawrence Langer, who claims that creative expression in any form may be the "last frontier against death" (p. 31). Other scholars cited include Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Susan Sontag, and Alvin Rosenfeld, whose discourse on Sylvia Plath's work illustrates the insufficient authority of the writer to portray a subject not of her experience. Parmet's introduction compares the confessional works of Plath and Heyen, both non-Jews, whom Parmet places squarely in the canon of Holocaust literature, along with Stern and Rothenberg.

Chapter 2, which focuses on the aforementioned works of Plath and Heyen, issubtitled "Searching for Expiation, Identification, and Communion with the Victims." In her working definition of confessional poetry, Parmet describes the "poet's ordered voice [giving] way to outburst" (p. 54). Articulating the poet's "loss and disintegration of self," this style of writing appeals directly to those whose experiences contain moments of severe trauma and confusion (p. 56). Plath establishes through powerful imagery "total communion with the tortured and annihilated" (p. 57). Parmet deftly interprets Plath's influential work Ariel (1960), arguing for Plath's application of Holocaust as metaphor in notable poems such as "Mary's Song," "Daddy," and "Lady Lazarus." Plath uses imagery associated with Nazi death camps, individual and collective suffering, and the destruction of the human spirit toapproach more closely her own sense of anguish and disillusionment...