\u201cSometimes I am asked if I know ‘the response\u2019 to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don’t even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.\u201d\u2014Elie Wiesel<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In his insightful essay \u201cRealism in the Concentrationary Universe,\u201d Michael Rothberg astutely references Hannah Arendt\u2019s notion of the \u201cbanality of evil,\u201d which proposes, \u201cthat catastrophic events are generated from within a matrix of the everyday, and thus the extremity is just a particularly volatile mixture of quotidian elements\u201d (117).[1]<\/a> This profound concept encapsulates the monumental task authors, educators, philosophers, etc. are faced with in contemporary society when both confronting and representing the Holocaust, or \u201cShoah,\u201d the inconceivable genocide and \u201crelapse into barbarism\u201d that has defined the 20th<\/sup> century and on (Adorno, \u201cEducation After Auschwitz\u201d 191). The challenge arises from the notion that \u201cthe concentrationary universe emerges as a contradictory phenomenon,\u201d a Modernist project of unparalleled savagery and \u201cuniversal coldness\u201d unfolding in a time in which modern innovation, efficiency, technology, and essentially \u201ccivilization\u201d was at a peak (Adorno 203; Rothberg \u201cRealism\u201d 116). Subsequently, the allegory of Auschwitz poses precisely the paradoxical conundrum that challenges the realm of typical modern literary representations and \u201cgenres\u201d suitable for the \u201cConcentrationary Universe\u201d: on the one hand, \u201cit is a place beyond the bounds of normality where \u2018everything is possible\u2019\u201d and is an \u201cexperience impossible to communicate,\u201d yet \u201cthose very extreme qualities reveal a sheer fact of the living, in itself, brutal, entirely stripped of all superstructures\u201d (Rothberg 116). Thus, the Holocaust necessarily requires new modes of representation apart from traditional realist methods.<\/p>\n Two of the most well known Auschwitz survivors and prolific Holocaust writers, Charlotte Delbo and Primo Levi, are able to answer this call for new representation by inventing new forms \u201cof narration to capture the trauma of genocide\u201d (Rothberg, \u201cUnbearable Witness\u201d 114). In this paper, I will concentrate on Charlotte Delbo\u2019s gripping survivor account Auschwitz and After <\/em>and suggest that this novel ties together all of the aforementioned ideas: that it is precisely this \u201cbanality of evil\u201d that Delbo (and Levi) struggles to express that consequently embodies the idea of traumatic modernity through constant repetition of ideas, thoughts, and events, ultimately signifying this return to and reopening of \u201cthe wound.\u201d Furthermore, Delbo\u2019s testimony demonstrates an example of \u201ctraumatic realism\u201d in that it \u201cseeks to produce a new understanding of history and a new vision of community by\u2026 disrupting the fetishized separation of the everyday and the extreme, the individual and history, then and now\u201d (Rothberg, \u201cUnbearable Witness\u201d 145). I will further argue that while Delbo defies Adorno\u2019s notion that \u201cto write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric\u201d by providing a unique amalgam of poetry and prose that allows her to \u201cfreeze [the] horror,\u201d her intended purpose of \u201cthey must be made to see\u201d<\/em> links her work back to Adorno with the primary concern of educating people after Auschwitz and making sure Auschwitz never happens again, raising the stakes of her work to be both \u201cepistemological and pedagogical\u201d and elevating her memoir to be of the utmost importance (Langer x; Rothberg, \u201cRealism\u201d 103). Ultimately, through the use of melodic repetitions, metaphorical language, and poetic prose, Delbo \u201cinvites us to see the unthinkable,\u201d utilizing techniques that capture images of this borderland of bare life and of the homo sacer<\/em> that epitomize this paradoxical third realm that distinguishes and defines the horror of the \u201cConcentrationary Universe\u201d (Langer xvii).<\/p>\n One of the most prominent techniques Delbo employs throughout her work is that of constant repetition of words and phrases, which reflects the idea that most, if not all, representations of the Holocaust have a traumatic structure, trauma<\/em> being defined as \u201can event in the subject\u2019s life defined by it\u2019s intensity, by the subject\u2019s incapacity to respond adequately to it, and by the upheaval and long-lasting effects that it brings about in the psychical organization\u201d (Laplanche, \u201cTrauma\u201d 465). As Rothberg confirms, \u201cThere is no gradual developmental progress in the working through of genocide,\u201d and claims, \u201cpost-Holocaust history has a traumatic structure<\/em>\u2014it is repetitive, discontinuous, and characterized by obsessive returns to the past and the troubling of simple chronology\u201d (\u201cModernism After Auschwitz\u201d19). In accordance with these ideas, in her section titled \u201cThirst,\u201d Delbo delves into the \u201cobsession to drink,\u201d and portrays the overwhelming, innate, and animalistic instincts that take control of a person who has been deprived of basic human needs (Delbo 71). \u201cThe thirst of the marsh is more searing than that of the desert\u201d she contends, using a metaphorical description to evoke this feeling of the extreme condition that normal representation fails to convey, noting that while \u201creason is able to overcome most everything, it succumbs to thirst\u201d (this type of metaphorical language is similarly crucial in Levi\u2019s novel) (Delbo 70). While thirst is considered something commonplace, perhaps something we wouldn\u2019t immediately recognize or acknowledge as a sensation potentially manipulated for torture or control, it is this deficiency of primal human necessities such as warmth, food, and rest that Delbo returns to over and over and indicates to be the cause of the \u201cdeath\u201d of her consciousness and humanity in the camps.<\/p>\n Likewise, this mechanism of producing musilmen, <\/em>or as Levi puts it, \u201cthe drowned\u201d or \u201cthe men in decay,\u201d is precisely how the Nazis thrived, through this prolongment of their power by bringing prisoners to the edge of the \u201cabyss\u201d but not allowing them the solace, or perhaps the dignity, of death, as death would hinder the Nazis in exercising their supremacy (Levi 89). This means of absolute power, of willfully and knowingly reducing human life and consciousness to nearly nothing, exemplifies, too, Adorno\u2019s notion of the \u201ccoldness,\u201d the complete disregard for human life in favor of self-interest and reward from the institution (\u201cEducation\u201d 203). \u201cReason no longer exercises control\u201d Delbo repeats in an empty, detached voice, \u201cThirst. Am I breathing? I\u2019m thirsty. It is colder, or less cold, I cannot feel it\u201d (Delbo 71). This aching, powerful repetition demonstrates Delbo\u2019s inability to abreact and \u201cliberate\u201d herself from the trauma, trauma which remains within her \u201clike a foreign body,\u201d as she returns over and over to \u201cthe thirst of the morning and the thirst of the day,\u201d \u201cthe thirst of the day and the thirst of the evening\u201d (Delbo 73, 74). Moreover, the everyday sensation of thirst when stretched to its utmost limits, a sensation so insurmountable it causes her \u201cwillpower to collapse\u201d and for her to be reduced to \u201cthe full awareness of the state of being dead,\u201d demonstrates the triumph of total power over the human being by the Nazis (Delbo 70). Levi generates this idea in Survival in Auschwitz<\/em> as well, describing \u201can emaciated man, with head dropped and shoulders curved, on whose face and in whose eyes not a trace of a thought is to be seen\u201d engendering this image in which Delbo more indirectly, though just as effectively, describes through her \u201caesthetics of agitation\u201d (Levi 90; Langer xvi). These ideas encapsulate the reproduction of a new type of modernist \u201csociety\u201d within the camps themselves, with their own regulated power dynamic and systemized procedures that were meant strictly to oppress and dehumanize the prisoners, a mass example of reification. The ironic, ambiguous simplicity of the titles of each section\u2014\u201cMorning,\u201d \u201cRoll Call,\u201d and \u201cThe Next Day,\u201d for instance\u2014are examples of synecdoche, of parts that represent the whole, and function in such a way that once again combines the ordinariness of routine, order, and the familiar with the extreme terror and torment each word conjures within the realm of Auschwitz (which is itself a synecdoche). Thus, Delbo\u2019s intricate work, in its rethinking of space and time, not only \u201cmarks the invasion of modernism by trauma\u2026 by returning again and again to the space of the concentration camp\u201d but displays the traumatized discourse of the survivor, reflecting the overall traumatic structure of both modernity and realism by bringing together the notions of the \u201ceveryday\u201d and the \u201cextreme\u201d in Auschwitz (Rothberg, \u201cModernism\u201d 21).<\/p>\n However, Adorno raises the idea that poetry, and by extension artistic production, is barbaric after Auschwitz because to represent something as momentous as the Holocaust with this type of language would, in some way, validate the culture that produced it; as George Steiner reflects of the \u201cstatus of poetry and language\u201d after Auschwitz, \u201cWe know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day\u2019s work at Auschwitz in the morning\u201d (Rothberg, \u201cAfter Adorno,\u201d 31). Yet, Delbo resists and refutes this idea by writing in a poetic prose that fundamentally \u201cseeks visual images equivalent to the rhythmic phrases of sound\u201d in order to \u201cchallenge our ability and willingness to see,\u201d which enriches and enhances our understanding of the severity and paradox of Auschwitz (Langer xvii). A particularly poignant example of the ability of Delbo\u2019s poetry to inimitably allow us to gain access to the inconceivable, and of expressing ideas of trauma and constant repetition, is found within one of Delbo\u2019s poems in Useless Knowledge<\/em>, which presents the lines:<\/p>\n \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned<\/p>\n I\u2019m still there<\/p>\n Dying there<\/p>\n A little more each day<\/p>\n Dying over again<\/p>\n The death of those who died\u201d (Delbo 204).<\/p>\n This concept of continuously undergoing the process of dying, even after the victim has been displaced from the site of trauma, again represents an inability to abreact. Moreover, the juxtaposition of past and present in the poem leaves us in this \u201cthird realm\u201d once again of living and dying, of being both dead and alive simultaneously and remaining in this \u201cborderland\u201d despite being physically freed. Through her broken, unpunctuated sentences that appear throughout the text, Delbo mirrors the experience of struggling to articulate her \u201cdeep memory\u201d through \u201ca genre of discourse\u201d that exposes \u201cthe naked self divested of its heroic garments, a self cold, filthy, gaunt, the victim of unbearable pain\u201d (Langer xiii). This irreparable brokenness and the idea of being the homo sacer<\/em>, the individual \u201cwho can be killed but not sacrificed\u2026 because they\u2019re defined as outside the recognized terrain of valued life,\u201d are revisited again and again, causing the reader to catch a glimpse of \u201cthe unimaginable anguish leading to this death\u201d (Agamben \u201cIn Theory\u201d; Langer xiv). \u201cI thought of nothing\u201d she states, \u201cthe will to resist was doubtlessly buried in some deep, hidden spring which is now broken, I will never know,\u201d a statement signifying the profound pain she endured that caused this traumatic break in her psyche, and therefore, a need for a new way of describing her post-Holocaust consciousness (Delbo 64). This capacity to allow the reader to see<\/em> this individualistic memory and history of the Holocaust through imagery created by diction and form, yet to depict an alternate reality so corrupt and barbaric it is nearly unimaginable, embodies the idea of traumatic realism. Delbo thus unifies the individual and history as interconnected rather than separate, but also implicates the reader as a part of this history too, a history that is continually unfurling and whose importance lives on. Likewise, because in Delbo\u2019s work, the \u201ccategory of reality that it seeks to register and produce demands an alternate account of the relationship between writer, reader, and the event,\u201d and there is \u201can attempt to produce the traumatic event as an object of knowledge and to program and thus transform its readers so that they are forced to acknowledge their relationship to posttraumatic culture,\u201d her lyrical prose can be considered a form of traumatic realism (Rothberg, \u201cRealism\u201d 103). Thus, Delbo\u2019s employment of stylistic amenities, such as anaphora, metaphor, and fragmentary language within her poetic prose serve to further illustrate her experiences with the atrocities of Auschwitz through this lens of traumatic realism, for Delbo \u201cunderstood that before one could speak of the renewal of the human image after Auschwitz, one had to crystallize its disfigured form and the horror that had defaced it\u201d (Langer xvi).<\/p>\n Finally, Delbo\u2019s novel should undeniably be considered important for educating people after Auschwitz because it serves as a constant reminder of what has been, and what must never be again. Just as Theodor Adorno begins his critical essay \u201cEducation After Auschwitz\u201d with the words, \u201cThe premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again,\u201d Delbo\u2019s book \u201creminds us that the Auschwitz past is not really past and never will be,\u201d imploring us to explore the causes of the event so that we may prevent them from ever happening again (Adorno 191; Langer xi). As a representation of the Holocaust, Delbo\u2019s work embodies ideas of reification, repression, and the ideal of being \u201chard\u201d mentioned in Adorno that contributed to this wound in modernity. Through its chillingly beautiful style and language, Delbo\u2019s novel leaves a deep impression on the reader, constructing their historical imaginary and constituting the basis of their knowledge of what the Holocaust really means, and to whom<\/em>. Therefore, by reading Delbo and understanding the Holocaust\u2019s overwhelming effect upon modern culture, we can gain an astounding new perspective, avert any future existence of this \u201cthird realm\u201d of bare human life, and use the past as a foundation to constantly be redeeming and bettering ourselves from so that the atrocity of the Holocaust is not for nothing\u2014as Levi puts it, these stories of survival can become \u201cstories for a new bible\u201d (Levi 64).<\/p>\n Ultimately, Delbo\u2019s representation of the Holocaust eloquently and articulately forces readers to directly confront the horrors, sorrows, and sufferings of life in Auschwitz and within the Concentrationary Universe. Through her painful repetitions, striking use of figurative language, and seemingly contradictory yet seamless utilization of prose and poetry, Delbo encapsulates the paradoxical nature of the Holocaust as the joining of the most banal with the most extreme, consequently reflecting both of the notions of traumatic modernity and traumatic realism. As Rothberg reminds us, \u201cit was the combination of growing potency of means and the unconstrained determination to use it in the service of an artificial designed order, that gave human cruelty its distinctly modern touch and made [Auschwitz] possible, perhaps even unavoidable\u201d (Modernism After Auschwitz, 21). Yet, Delbo\u2019s memoir serves as a beacon of potential hope for the future, and as a consistent aide-m\u00e9moire for \u201cthose who came after her [who] might prefer not to think about it at all\u201d (Langer xi). Thus, Delbo\u2019s account demonstrates that there is no definitive, \u201cright\u201d way to represent or respond to the Holocaust, but that, in some way or another, it is critical that every work portray the notion that \u201cAuschwitz should never happen again\u201d (Adorno 203).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Endnotes<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Rothberg, Michael. \u201cChapter 4: Unbearable Witness\u2014Charlotte Delbo\u2019s Traumatic Timescapes.\u201d Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation<\/em>. 144.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n Adorno, Theodor. \u201cEducation After Auschwitz,\u201d Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford. Columbia University Press, 1967.<\/p>\n Agamben, Giorgio. \u201cIn Theory: The State and the Concentration Camp.” Ceasefire Magazine RSS<\/em>, 7 Jan. 2011, ceasefiremagazine.co.uk\/in-theory-giorgio-agamben-the-state-and-the-concentration-camp\/<\/a>. Accessed 2 June 2016.<\/p>\n Delbo, Charlotte, Rosette C. Lamont, and Lawrence L. Langer. Auschwitz and After<\/em>. Yale University Press, 1995.<\/p>\n Laplanche, Jean, Pontalis, J.B. \u201cTrauma.\u201d The Language of Psychoanalysis<\/em>. WW Norton & Co, 1973.<\/p>\n Levi, Primo, S. J. Woolf, and Philip Roth. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity<\/em>. Simon & Schuster, 1996.<\/p>\n Rothberg, Michael. \u201cAfter Adorno.\u201d Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation. University of Minneapolis Press, 2000.<\/p>\n –. \u201cModernism After Auschwitz.\u201d Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation.\u00a0<\/em>University of Minneapolis Press, 2000.<\/p>\n –. \u201cRealism in the Concentrationary Universe.\u201d Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation.<\/em>\u00a0University of Minneapolis Press, 2000.<\/p>\n –. \u201cUnbearable Witness: Charlotte Delbo\u2019s Traumatic Timescapes.\u201d Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation<\/em>. University of Minneapolis Press, 2000.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Mirabella McDowell \u201cSometimes I am asked if I know ‘the response\u2019 to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don’t even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.\u201d\u2014Elie Wiesel In his insightful essay \u201cRealism in the Concentrationary Universe,\u201d Michael Rothberg astutely references Hannah … Continue reading The “Borderland”: Representing the “Third Realm” of Auschwitz in Literature and Understanding Trauma, Realism, and Modernity in the Concentrationary Universe<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[57,34,33,32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1094,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions\/1094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}