Remembering the Past and the Trap of Consciousness: Dan Pagis and the Photograph

Photographs are a recurrent motif in Dan Pagis's poetry, which attests to the profound connection between his poetry and various aspects of the art of photography. In Pagis's work, poems dealing with photographs usually illustrate the limitations of memory. It is ironic that photographs, which can ostensibly bring us closer to the past, serve as additional means in the poetics of displacement that characterizes the poetry of a survivor unable, or unwilling, to remember. In my article I focus on the erasure of memory that characterizes most of his poetry. I prefer to analyze Pagis's use of photographs to point to the captivity of consciousness, and offer several prominent examples that place his photography poems in the broader context of his oeuvre.