Landscapes of Postmemory - CeON [PDF]

Si TES A N D N O N - S i T E S OF ME M OR Y

ALEKSANDRA SZCZEPAN

LANDSCAPES OF POSTMEMORY

Aleksandra Szczepan

Landscapes of Postmemory

T h is p r o je c t w a s f u n d e e b y t h e N a t io n a l S c ie n c e C e n t e r on t h e g ro u n d

D O I:io .i8 3 i8 / td .2 o i6 .e n .i.i5

o f d e c is io n n o. D E C 2 0 12 / 0 7 / N / H S 2 / 0 2 5 0 8 .

Perturbing N am es Various perturbing geographical nam es alw ays come up in

Aleksandra Szczepan - literary

m y mind in the sam e gloomy, stubborn, and intrusive fashion. Suffice that I am to move from any point A to any point B. For

theorist and histo­

other travellers, who are equipped w ith better histories than I am, these nam es are but invisible. N am es displayed on plat­

co-founder o f the

rian o f philosophy, Ośrodek Badań nad Kulturami Pamięci,

form s move casually behind the window, betw een one sip of white coffee in a bar carriage and the next. Eyes slide on their

a research fellow of

surface, w ith no subtexts received.

the Departm ent of M. Tulli, Italian Stilettos''

Literary Anthropology and Cultural Studies,

Post-H olocaust topography in the above quoted p a s­

Jagiellonian Univer­

sage from M agd alen a Tulli's te xt se em s to be devoid o f

sity. She researches

any landm arks or clear-cut dem arcation lines. One could

the redefinition of

divide it, in an y chosen way, into an in finite num ber o f

realism in literature and art of the 20th

segm ents w ith arbitrarily nam ed end points: A and B. In

century, the question

th is space, one should travel b y train, y e t n o t all trav e l­

o f performativity of

lers w ill see the sam e th in gs through the w in dow . The m on oton ou s lan d scap e w ith o u t an y defining qualities gets delam inated at tim es, revealing to the chosen ones

memory as well as trauma and identity. She is the author of

Realista Robbe-Grillet

its perturbing layers. T hese view s are not defined by any

(2015) and numer­

distinguishing landscape, nor do they attract attention by

ous articles. Her

presenting som ething exceptional or threatening; in fact,

research was funded

it w ould be im possible to recognise th em w ithout a v e r­ b al hin t. W h at attracts the attention o f som e travellers,

by, i.a. European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, ERSTE Stiftung, and the Sylff

i

M agdalena Tulli, Włoskie szpilki (W arszaw a: Nisza, 2011), 66.

Programm.

255

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w h a t m akes th eir h ead s tu rn and th eir b o d ies shiver are the geographical n am es - they introduce difference into the topographical hom ogeneity, and tear aw ay the safe screen o f the redundant landscape. For som e, betw een any point A and B, w here A is the departure and B the destination, an unknow n is alw ays in hiding, an x w aitin g for the equation to be solved. H ow ever, not everyone w ill be distracted by the v ie w o f a w hite sign w ith black letters, nor w ill th e y be provoked to th ro w a su sp icio u s look on the v ie w outside. The second layer o f a given landscape is visible only to a few, and Tulli m akes quite clear the nature o f th is distinction: d elam in ation o f cogn ition is n ot deter­ m in ed b y any exceptional sen sib ility or acuity o f the view er; w hat uncovers the un kn ow n , w h at lets one see an em p ty sp ot in the p assage o f m eadow s and hills is the heritage o f the “cursed chest,” “the legacy”2 o f the H olocaust past. The eyes o f those equipped w ith better histories m ove casually on the surface, “w ith no subtexts received,” w h ile the eyes o f those w h ose present is m ark ed b y a trau m atic p ast w ill re p e ate d ly stum b le u p o n “p ertu rb in g nam es.” In Tulli's novel, th o se w ho d iscern the dark un d erto n es o f the peacefu l landscape are descendants of Jews, H olocaust survivors, representatives o f the generation of postm em ory. The scenes that provide this specific experience of landscape are the “bloodlands” o f eastern Central Europe,3 a location of events that inherited m em ory is tryin g to rew ork. It is a “m ythical territory «further to the East»,”4 m arked b y sites o f collective and individual death, w here, h o w ­ ever, “there is no longer anything there to see,”5 as traces o f historical catas­ trophes have sunk into the ordinary landscape o f hills, forests and m eadow s. T hese territories, view ed from a posttraum atic perspective and constituting b oth its grounds and condition, create a particular phenom enon: landscapes o f H olocaust postm em ory. A s I w ill try to show, land scapes o f postm em ory, construed both as a spatial d isposition o f an area that w orks as a correlative o f historical experience, and as cultural representation (m ostly photographic, cinem atic, and literary), help rethink tw o problem s that are crucial for stu d ­ ies on m em ory and traum a. Firstly, the spatial dim en sion o f m em ory and the significance o f place/landscape for the experience o f postm em ory; secondly,

2

Ibid., 76, 64.

3

S e e T im othy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (N ew York: Basic Books, 2010).

4

Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence. The Photography ofTraum a (Cam bridge, M A and London: MIT P ress, 2002), 72.

5

G e o rg e s Didi-H uberm an, "The Site, D espite Everything,” in Claude Lanzm ann'sShoah. Key

Essays, ed. S tu a rt Liebm an (Oxford and N ew York: Oxford U niversity P ress, 2007), 114.

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landscapes of postmemory

a reinterpretation o f the archive o f visual clichés related to representations of spaces m arked b y h istorical traum a, and hence id en tifyin g elem ents o f this “trau m atic” canon, its dynam ic and cultural origin. A s I w ill attem pt to prove, in landscapes construed as figures o f represen tation and as a cognitive m a ­ trix, categories o f seeing and categories o f space form especially interesting patterns and open n ew perspectives for an answ er to the question o f h ow w e see the H olocaust. The above m entioned geographical nam es, w h ich abound in Polish lan d ­ scapes and perturb som e travellers in Tulli's prose, should be g iven a closer look for y e t one m ore reason . W hite sign s w ith b lack letters, p laced am ong m ead o w s an d h ills, se em to h ave an u n cle ar se m io tic natu re. I f one tried to p u t th em into one o f Peirce's three cate g o rie s,6 one w ou ld quickly find th em avoiding any attem pts at labellin g. Firstly, the p ertu rb ing w hite signs are in d e x ic a lly lin k ed w ith p lace s th a t h ad re c en tly b e e n site s o f cam ps, ghettos, and pogrom s. Indexes, or sign s that “establish their m ean in g along the ax is o f p h ysic al re la tio n sh ip to th e ir re feren ts,”7 are ta n g ib ly related to w h a t th e y refer to. In h er an aly sis, R o salin d K rau ss lin k s in d e xe s w ith Jakobson's sh ifters th at take on m e an in g in a deictic g estu re, and are “in ­ h eren tly « e m p ty », its sign ification [...] gu aran teed b y the existen tial p re s ­ ence o f ju st th is object.”8 Sign s w ith n am es o f sites o f slaughter, recogn ised o n ly b y th e d e sce n d a n ts o f the p erse cu te d , lo cate th e ir m e a n in g in th is ve ry p h ysical bond, w ith th eir roots in the place w here th ey w ere installed. Their m ean in g is played out in a dialectical tension , cutting through a m o ­ n oton ous lan d scap e, revealin g its secon d layer anchored in the p ast, thus sin glin g out p reviou sly un distin guishab le g eographical spots. O n the other hand, th e ir m e an in g can n o t be re a lise d an yw h ere else. It is to p o g ra p h i­ cally im m obilised, in grained in the very m ateriality o f the Polish landscape. H ow ever, elem en ts d escrib ed in Italian Stilettos a llo w for a d ifferen t in te r­ p re tatio n as w e ll. S e e n fro m a train w in d o w , the w h ite sig n s in the P o l­ ish lan d scap e evoke cultural m em o ries o f a still from C laude Lanzm ann's Shoah, a scene w here as view ers w e p articipate in a n e w ly staged situ ation o f a packed train arrivin g at the station in Treblinka. The still from the film, sh ow in g the conductor H enryk G aw kow ski lean in g from the locom otive in the backdrop o f a sign sayin g “Treblinka” and the v ie w o f a spring landscape,

6

S e e Charles Sa n d ers Peirce, "Logic as Sem io tics: The T h eory o f Sig n s,” in Philosophic Writ­

ings o f Peirce (N ew York: Dover Publications, 1955). 7

Rosalind Krauss, "N o tes on th e Index: Part 1,” in The Originality o f the Avant-Garde and

O ther Modernist Myths (Cam bridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1987), 198. 8

Ibid., 206.

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has b ecom e one o f the iconic im ages o f the H olocau st9 and w orks as one of the “m em o ry cu es”10 w h ich im m ed iately refer us to a com b in ation o f facts and m ean in gs collected un der the um b rella term “ H olocaust.”ii T herefore, the icon ic nature o f th is im age, w h ich looks like w h at it refers to, takes on sym b o lic p o te n tia l (form in g m e a n in g b y an a rb itra ry lin k b e tw e e n sign and referen t) - a sig n w ith th e n am e o f a site o f slau gh ter d o e s n o t only refer to a ce rtain p o in t on the m ap , b u t also refers to all other sim ilar lo ­ cation s, and th e lin g u istic natu re o f th is m ed iu m only enhances sem iotic in terpretation .

S till fr o m

S hoah

It is th is v e ry o scillatio n b e tw e e n co n trastin g d yn am ics o f m ean in g th at in ve sts the catego ry o f p o stm e m o ry lan d scap e w ith in terp retative

9

S e e David Bathrick, "Introduction: Se ein g A g ain st th e Grain: Re-visualizing th e Holo­ ca u st,” in Visualizing the Holocaust: Docum ents, Aesthetics, Memory, ed. David Bathrick, Brad Prager, M ichael David Richardson (R och ester: C am den House, 2008), 1.

10

A term coined by Barbie Zelizer, se e her Rem em bering to F o rg et Holocaust Memory

Through the Cam era's Eye, (Chicago and London: The U niversity o f C hicago Press, 1998). 11

This still is usually used on th e cover o f m o st ed ition s o f th e film.

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potential: th ey in d exically refer to the events th at took place at these sites, they icon ically-sym b olically expand the visu al repository o f “m em ory cues,” and finally, they redefine the notion o f the traum atic.

C oncentration Cam p a s a Site? A disturbing experience o f space is a com m on elem ent o f the H olocaust sur­ vivors' cam p experience. In their m em oirs, th ey refer to death cam ps as n o n ­ sites, u n recogn isab le lan d scap es, rem oved from a k n o w n territo ry b y long journeys in a closed w in dow less train carriage.^ W hat is clear in the attem pts at w ork in g through the trau m a o f w ar is that the p o ssib ility o f pro cesses of m em ory and m ourning depends on im bedding the traum atic experience in a concrete space. The experience o f a cam p as a place is inherently fractured, displaced and m akes im possible any iden tification w ith the territory w here events took place. The H olocaust b rings a com plete destruction o f w hat the survivors identified as place; equally broken are m em ories o f hom e from b e ­ fore the w ar - im ages o f p re-w ar reality petrify in schem atic, faded d escrip­ tions and are devoid o f any dynam ics.13 The dislocated experience o f space during the H olocaust has resulted in a m ore in -depth analysis o f the phenom enology and the dynam ics o f sites of m em ory in various fields of the hum anities, w orking as a negative point of ref­ erence for these interpretations. For G eoffrey H artm ann, w ho conceptualised the notion of the m em ory of place on the basis o f his analysis of Wordsworth's poetry, it constitutes a space tran sform ed in the pro cesses o f recallin g and describing past em otional states, w hich gains tem poral consciousness.™ A l­ though H artm ann relates this term also to sites that w itn essed the subject's traum atic experiences, an attem pt to apply it in analysing places o f the Shoah

12

S e e for exam p le Ruth Klüger's acco u n t: "C on cen tration cam p a s a m em orial site? Land­ sca p e, s e a sc a p e - th ere should be a w ord like tim escape to indicate th e nature o f a place in tim e, th a t is, a t a certain tim e, n either b efo re nor after.” "W e p a ssed su m m er cam p for yo u n g sters. I sa w a boy in th e d ista n ce en e rgetica lly w av in g a large flag. [...] I still see m y se lf rushing p a st him: I se e him and he d o esn 't s e e m e, for I am inside th e train. But perh aps he s e e s th e train. P assing trains fit into th e im age o f such a lan d scape (part p h o ­ tography, p art illusion); th ey con vey a p lea sa n t se n se o f w an d erlu st, th e urge to travel. It w a s th e sa m e train for both o f us, th e sa m e lan dscape, too, y e t th e sa m e for retina only - for th e mind, tw o irreconci lable sigh ts.” Ruth Klüger, Landscapes o f M em ory:A Holocaust

Girlhood Rem em bered (London: B loo m sbu ry 2004), 73, 134. 13

S e e A nne W hitehead, "G eo ffrey H artm ann and th e Ethics o f Place: L an d scape, M em ory, Traum a,” European Journal o f English Studies 7(3) (2003): 288.

14

S e e Anne W hitehead, Trauma Fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U niversity P ress, 2004), 49.

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proves futile - radical negativity o f the spatial experience o f cam ps m akes the category (strictly Rom antic in origin) im possible to be applied elsewhere. For Pierre Nora, the m eaning o f lieux de mémoire is m ostly b ased on their com m u­ nity-form in g potential, since they are points in space around w hich collective m em ory is organised. H owever, H olocaust sites are deprived o f this positive value - th e y are rather non-lieux de mémoire as C laude Lan zm ann d escribes them - residues of traum a and disrupted experience.15 Finally, Nora's analyses are u sed by Jam es E. Young as a theoretical fram ew ork for h is d iscussion of H olocaust m em orial sites, focusing m ain ly on m useum practices w hich, in ­ stead o f creating active spaces o f m em ory and w orking through traum a, often becom e m ore like agents fetishising objects, and sources o f victim isation of H olocaust survivors.™ Therefore, analyses o f the spatial d im ension o f the H olocaust experience have been dominated by interpretations of specific sites of the Shoah: concen­ tration cam ps, ghettos, sites o f slaughter, as w ell m useum s and other form s of m em orialising. In the m inds o f w itn esses, landscapes o f the Shoah are often identified w ith death cam ps that th ey can rem em ber to the m inutest detail.” The usual elem ents o f gate, barracks, guard tow ers and barbed w ire, especially as related by form er cam p prisoners w ho visit th em later on as tourists, form a kind o f affective “m icro-geography,” an active landscape that lets one face the traum a o f the past again.18

Landscape a s M em ory The experiential disruption o f space o f concentration cam p prisoners ch ar­ acterises also the experien ce o f the so -calle d secon d gen eratio n - the d e ­ scendants o f H olocau st survivors, w ho spend their childhood and you th in the sh adow o f their paren ts' trau m atic m em ories. T h ey are connected w ith 15

For a co m p reh en sive ph en o m en ological analysis o f n o n -sites o f m em o ry and its history as a ca te g o ry se e : Roma Sen d yk a, "Pryzm a - zrozum ieć n ie-m ie jsce p am ięci,” Teksty Dru­

gie 1 - 2 (2013). S e e also Pierre Nora, "B etw e en M em ory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire," tran s. M arc Roudebush, Representations 26 (1989); Dom inick LaCapra, "Lanzm ann's Sh o ­

ah: Here There Is No Why,” in History and M em ory after Auschw itz (Ithaca: Cornell Univer­ sity Press, 1998). 16

S e e W hitehead, Trauma Fiction, 52; Ja m e s E. Young, The Texture o f Memory: Holocaust Me­

morials and Meaning (N ew Haven: Yale U niversity Press, 1993). 17

S e e B aer's rem ark: "Traum a survivo rs m ay recall a particular place or area in g re a t detail w ith o u t being able to a sso cia te it w ith th e actu al e ve n t,” Spectral Evidence, 79.

18

S e e Tim Cole, "C rem atoria, Barracks, G a te w a y : Survivo rs' Return V isits to th e M em ory L an d scap es o f A usch w itz," History and M em ory 25 (2) (2013).

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their parents' history b y the dynam ic link w hich M arianne H irsch calls p o st­ m em ory: an active form o f m e m o ry w h o se relation w ith the p ast is m e d i­ ated n o t b y rem em b erin g, b u t b y the w o rk o f im agin ation , pro jection and creation, an in ter-gen eratio n al structure through w h ich trau m atic exp e ri­ ences recur. W hen this gen eration o f p ostm em ory is denied access to fa m ­ ily history, th e y experien ce th is exclu sion in the sp atial realm as w ell; for the children o f H olocau st survivors, no place m en tion ed b y th eir paren ts is in fact accessib le - n eith er death cam ps, h id eo u ts an d escape routes, nor m yth ical h om etow n s from before the w ar. H irsch w rite s th at “«h om e» is alw ays elsew h ere, even for th ose w ho return to V ien n a, B erlin, Paris, or Cracow , b ecau se the cities to w h ich th e y can return are no longer th ose in w hich their parents had lived as Jew s before the genocide, but are in stead the cities w h ere the genocide h appen ed and from w h ich th ey and th eir m e m ­ ory have b een expelled.”19 S im ilar exclusion is experienced b y descendants o f Jew s w ho decided to stay in places th at w ere the settin gs o f th eir you th and torm en ts o f the w ar - as in the quoted passage from M agd alen a Tulli's Italian Stilettos, the p o stm em o ry experience o f space is o f a p o w erfu lly am ­ bivalen t nature, and attem pts at dealing w ith the paren ts' p ast are co m p li­ cated b y fact th at very often the children's Jew ish id en tity rem ains a fam ily secret.20 N evertheless, the second generation's disturbed, negative experience o f space is m arked b y a kind o f shift; w hile in the case o f their parents, the lan d ­ scape o f cam ps or the inaccessible spaces of p re-w ar cities and tow ns serve as topographical points o f reference, postm em ory narratives and artistic projects are devoid o f any stable geography. For the second generation, the space of the Holocaust becom es m uch m ore heterogenic: it is m ediated b y incom plete ac­ counts o f their parents, often m ade taboo or m ythologised through nostalgic stories, and it spreads across a m uch w id er territory than the in dexical and actual m em ories o f parents. Scholars exam ining literary and artistic representations o f the experience o f space in w orks o f artists w ho b elong to the postm em ory generation u s u ­ ally draw attention to the robust iden tity-form in g nature o f such w orks and their focus on the audience. Follow ing Sim on Scham a's intuition, according to w h o m lan d scap e is a fo rm atio n d eep ly rooted in p ro ce sse s o f m em o ry and im agination, 2 i A n n e W hitehead interprets p o st-H o lo cau st landscapes described in A n n e M ich aels's Fugitive Pieces as the “grad u al sed im en tation

19

M arianne Hirsch, "P a st Lives: P o stm em o ries in Exile,” Poetics Today 17(4) (1996): 662.

20

S e e au to b io grap h ies o f Ewa Kuryluk, M agdalena Tulli, A g ata Tuszyńska, Bożena Keff.

21

Sim on Sch am a, Landscape and M em ory (London: Fontana Press, 1996).

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o f m em ory.”22 The m ateriality o f geological form s, w here m em ory is stored, supports the p ro cess o f creating n e w posttrau m atic id en tities for the p ro ­ tago n ists. Jenni A d a m s read s lan d scap e in p o stm em o ry n arratives (again Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault by A . M ichaels, Wou le souvenir d enfance by G. Perec) w ith a sim ilar len s, looking at th ese w o rk s for “th erapeu tic lin k ­ ings o f m em ory and sp ace .”23 In her in terpretation, land scape plays, for the descendants o f victim s o f historical catastrophes, a positive, consoling role as a screen onto w hich the protagonists project traum atic m em ories, and w hich becom es a substitute for memory.24 Thus construed, landscape h as a cau sa­ tive, p ro ce ss-b ase d nature th at enables it to in teract w ith the experiencing subject - it oscillates betw een b eing the landscape o fm em ory and the lan d ­ scape as memory.25 This approach o f un derstanding land scape as an active agent o f e x p e ri­ ence and m em o ry is taken up b y B rett A sh le y K aplan in Landscapes o f Holo­ caust Postmemory. The lan d scap e o f p o stm em o ry is rooted in the m em o ry o f H olocau st survivors, a con stan tly shrinking dem ographic, and its role is that o f an “unstable w itn ess” o f events.26 K aplan links the term s “landscape,” “H olocaust” and “postm em ory” in casual sem antic arrangem ents; landscape in her in terp retation lo ses its strictly geograph ic or sp atial nature, servin g as an anthropological fram e for discussin g the h isto ry o f a N azi holiday re ­ sort in O bersalzberg, H olocau st-related photographs (including those ta k ­ en b y the A m e rican correspon den t Lee M iller docu m entin g the liberation o f the cam ps in B uchenw ald and D achau, Su san S ilas's p o stm em o ry w ork Helmbrechts Walk, C ollier Schorr's p o stm o d ern ist im ag es o f the N azis), and fin ally the m ean in g o f the w ord “H olocau st” in J.M . C oetzee's w ork and its d isse m in atio n in co n tem p o rary culture. K ap lan u n d e rstan d s the spatial category in a double sense - as a geographical space and its representation,

22

W hitehead, Trauma Fiction, 61.

23

Jenni A dam s, "C ities Under a S k y o f Mud: L an d scap es o f M ourning in H olocau st T exts,” in

Land and Identity: Theory, Memory, and Practice, ed. Christine Berberich and Neil Cam pbell (A m sterdam : Rodopi, 2012), 146. 24 25

Ibid., 154. D istinction introduced by Su sa n n e Küchler; cited in Katharina Schram m , "L an d sca p e s o f V iolence: M em ory and Sacred S p a ce ,” H istory and M emory 23 (1) (2011): 8. S e e also S u ­ san n e Küchler, "L an d sca p e as M em ory: The M apping o f P rocess and Its R epresen tation in a M elanesian So cie ty ,” in Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, ed. Barbara Bender (Provi­ d ence, RI and O xford: Berg, 1993), 8 5 -10 6 .

26

Bret A sh ley Kaplan, Landscapes o f Holocaust Postm em ory (N ew York and London: Routledge, 2011), 2, 4.

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takin g as his subject o f research the “geographical and p sych ological la n d ­ scapes o f the afte r-effe cts o f the N azi genocide.”27 The other tw o term s get sim ilarly dispersed: postm em ory is un derstood here very broadly, as a type o f collective cultural m em ory w hich is a repository o f im ages o f a “m ultin a­ tio n al lan d scap e o f the H olocau st,’^8 w h ere the H olocau st its e lf b ecom es a glob al phenom enon, circulating both in discursive as w e ll as geographical space. W hat the above m en tion ed an alyses also share is a con clusion th at the spatial experience o f the generation o f p ostm em ory is characterised b y the incongruence o f the observed landscape - the “m isleading air o f norm alcy’^9 clashing w ith the know ledge o f the events that happened in it. The landscape o f postm em ory is often an indistinguishable n on -site o f m em ory, w here n a t­ ural processes have covered the traces o f tragic history, rather than a m useologically preserved space o f form er cam ps. “H olocaust com m em oration is not site-specific,”3 ° w rites U lrich Baer. Locating the phenom enon o f landscapes o f postm em ory w ithin the pictorial tradition o f landscape, B aer analyses two photographs taken b y artists o f the second generation: a picture show ing an in con spicu ou s space, p revio u sly the So bibor cam p grounds, taken b y Dirk Reinartz (part o f the project Deathly Still:Pictures o f Former Concentration Camps, 1995)

and a sim ilar picture o f Nordlager O hrdruf b y M ikael Levin (part o f War

Story, 1996). Baer traces the tension betw een the artists' rom antic convention o f landscape, w hich deludes w ith its explicit aura, seem ingly positioning the view er as a subject and point o f reference for the observed landscape; and the exclusion o f the view er from the represented space b y the im plicit historicity of photography as a genre. A s view ers, w e have a feeling that our sight is called to id en tify w h at w e alread y know, y e t w e have no access to events th at the pictures seem to refer to, and the only referent is absence and em ptiness that w e are forced to confront. Therefore, im ages o f landscapes o f m em ory require the view er to consciously reflect not only on w h a t is being seen, but also on the h o w a n d w h e n c e , and the am bivalen t nature o f photographs both protects us from the traum atic im pact o f the past, as w ell as exposes us to its power. In her essay on the nature o f n o n -sites o f m em ory, Rom a Sendyka points to the fact that Baer, in his analysis o f w orks b y Reinhard and Levin, rem ains in the id iom o f aesthetic, m od ern ist in terpretations o f sin gular and unique 27

Ibid., 1.

28

Ibid., 5.

29

Baer, Spectral Evidence, 78.

30

Ibid., 83.

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black-an d -w h ite pictures, thus sacrificing the sin gularity and authenticity of the photographed sites and their relation w ith surrounding nature.31 Indeed, the m onochrom atic aesthetics o f these w orks needs to be taken into account - especially if contrasted w ith Susan Silas's series o f video w orks show ing still im ages from four death camps: Treblinka, Bełżec, Chełm no, and Sobibór .32 The coloured video im age show ing grass covered parts of no longer existing camps is gradually de-saturated, and the sound o f birds replaced w ith the sound of m oving tape. T his sound, added to go along w ith the im age in p ostp rod u c­ tion, quickly changes into a m etallic n oise th at evokes a sen se o f threat. In her film s, Silas decon structs w h at w orks as an un stated prem ise o f Levin's and Reinhard's w o rk s: n am e ly th at the v isu a l experien ce o f the H olocaust is grounded in a com m on know ledge o f certain codes o f represen tation and b ased on a repertory o f e asily recognisable clichés and m en tal shortcuts. It is only the decoloured still, now so sim ilar to photographs analysed b y Baer, that is endow ed w ith qualities m aking it readable as a represen tation o f the Shoah. Sim ilarly, the accom pan yin g soun d o f the projector - m onotonous, m alicious - m akes one realise the b asic source o f the com m only shared im ­ ages o f “w h at the H olocau st looks like,” n am e ly the reproduced im ag es o f n ew sreel and press photos m ade b y A m e rican and B ritish correspondents. Finally, the im m ob ile fram e th at ch aracterises S ilas's four film s, capturing se em in gly in sig n ifican t piece o f lan d scap e, h elp s recogn ise y e t one m ore visual trope: long panoram ic shots know n from Claude Lanzm ann's Shoah. As I w ill try to prove in the follow ing parts of this text, despite the director's h eat­ edly voiced protests, they establish a separate genre o f iconic representations o f the Shoah. W hile the above quoted accounts focus on the in d exical nature o f la n d ­ scap es o f p o stm em o ry stem m in g from the subject's p e rso n al experien ce (both the se co n d ary w itn ess, as w e ll as the vie w er or reader), S ilas's w ork h e lp s id e n tify the oth er side o f th ese sp a tio -re p re se n ta tio n a l d is p o s i­ tio n s: the ic o n icity o f som e rep resen tatio n s o f p o st-H o lo cau st space, and th eir deep em b ed m en t in the n etw ork o f p ictorial and literary tro p es and traditions.

31 32

Send yka, Pryzm a, 32 7 -3 2 8 . Films w ere recorded in 199 8 and exhibited a t C oolay M em orial G allery in Portland. Infor­ m ation in Dora A pel, M em ory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art o f Secondary Witnessing (N ew Brunsw ick and London: R utgers U niversity Press, 2002), 219. S e e th e vid eo w ork online, a c c e sse d Jan uary 22, 2014, h ttp://w w w .su sa n sila s.co m /v id eo /u n titled -m a y -20 0 1. html

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S t ills fr o m S u s a n S il a s 's

U n title d

ALEKSANDRA SZCZEPAN

LANDSCAPES CF PCSTMEMCRY

(M a y 1 1 - 1 4 , 1 9 9 8 ) 2 0 0 1 : S o b ib ó r

The Traum atic Canon A s Barbie Zelizer em phasises, “the H olocaust's visu alisation is so prevalent th at it h as b ecom e an in tegral p art o f our un d erstan d in g and recollection o f the atrocities o f W orld W ar II.”33 The v isu a l archive o f the H olocau st has been extensively analysed and catalogued: despite the com m on in sistence on the fu ndam entally un representab le nature o f the Shoah, it seem s to r e ­ m ain a decidedly im aginable event. W hat is m ore, it is evoked b y m ean s o f roughly a dozen clichés circulating in cessan tly in the cultural m ilieu, w hose provenance how ever rem ains som ew h at unclear: the b o y from the W arsaw ghetto, Buchenw ald prisoners staring straight at the cam era, the gate o f A u s ­ chwitz, piles o f shoes, glasses and w om en's hair, and finally the train arriving at Treblinka. Im ages su p p o sed ly rep resen tin g the atro cities o f the Second W orld W ar w o rk in our m e m o ry “like a fam iliar sequence o f m u sical notes that seem s to appear from nowhere.”34 The status of H olocaust photographs as in dexical signs o f w hat happened, physically linked w ith the past as a “result of a physical im print transferred by light reflections onto a sensitive surface,’^5 as m aterial traces o f „th a t-h a s-b e e n ,”36 is replaced b y a conviction th at due to in ce ssan t circulation, th ese im ages have reached a p oin t o f s a tu ra tio n ^ and their authenticity and role as efficient m arkers o f the p ast have b een e x ­ hausted. T hese photographs have lost their spatial specificity and im pact, and

33

Barbie Zelizer, "Introduction: On Visualizing th e H olocaust,” in Visual Culture and the Holo­

caust, ed. Barbie Zelizer (London: The A thlone Press, 2001), 1. 34

Zelizer, Rem em bering to Forget, 2.

35

Krauss, "N o te s on th e Index: Part 1,” 203.

36

S e e Roland B arthes, Cam era Lucida. Reflections on Photography, tran s. Richard Howard (N ew York: Hill and W ang, 1981), 77, 85.

37

Susan S o n ta g, On Photography (N ew York: Farrar, S trau s and Giroux, 1977).

265

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have becom e m erely iconic representations that w ork as “m em ory cues” and “represen tations w ith ou t su b stan ce”38 - pictures show ing the liberation o f D achau, B e rg e n -B e lse n and B uchenw ald (w hose circulation in culture has been m eticu lously analysed b y Barbie Zelizer) pow erin g the im agery o f the H olocaust up to the 19 8 0 s, as w ell as the still operating iconography o f A u s ­ chw itz as a sym bo l o f the “H olocau st as a w h ole.”39 T h ese im ages, referred to by V icky G oldberg as “secular icons,”40 gain sym bolic status because they refer not only to their physical referents, but also to the entire set o f im ages and b eliefs about the H olocaust. M e m o ry cues w o rk like a short circuit, an autom atic recalling that refers one to superficial know ledge, w ith no em bed­ ding in an affective or ethical relation. Hence, iconisation o f photographs of the H olocaust is interpreted as a negative phenom enon at least for tw o re a ­ sons: firstly, their repetitiveness and routinisation anaesthetises us to cruelty, blunts our sensibility, and the sterile, closed im ages m ake the suffering they are supposed to attest to quite invisible. Secondly, w hat has been selected for m ass circulation after the w ar has b een but a sm all fragm ent o f vast p h o to ­ graphic m aterial. The sm all bunch o f pictures, n o w deprived o f their original context, have com p letely lo st th eir con tingen t and sin gu lar nature. Iconic represen tation s reduce the in d ivid u al and the person al to the abstract, the n on -particular, and the w id ely accessible form . In After Such Knowledge, Eva H offm an states that “through literature and film , through m em oirs and oral testim ony, these com ponents o f horror becam e part o f a w hole generation s store o f im ag ery and narration, the icon s and sagas o f the p o st-H o lo cau st w orld . In retrosp ect, and as kn ow led g e ab ou t the H o lo cau st h a s grow n, w e can see th at every su rvivor h a s lived throu gh a m yth ical trial, an epic, an odyssey.”41 It needs to be noted that this reduced inventory o f H olocaust represen ta­ tions w h ose negative anaesthetic role is em ph asised b y Sontag, Zelizer and H artm an, con sists o f num erous im ages o f strictly spatial nature. A ccording

38

Zelizer, Rem em bering to Forget, 200, 202. S e e also G e o ffrey H artm an, The Longest Shadow (Bloom ington: Indiana U niversity Press, 1996), 152.

39

On th e ch an ge o f paradigm in im ages o f th e H olocau st s e e Tim Cole, Selling the Holo­

caust. From Auschw itz to Schindler. How History Is Bought, Packed and Sold (N ew York: R outledge, 2000). 40

Vicky G oldberg, The Power o f Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives (New York: Abbeville Press, 1991); cited in Cornelia Brink, "Secular Icons,” History and M em ory 12 (1) (2000): 137.

41

Eva H offm an, After Such Knowledge. Memory, History, and the Legacy o f the Holocaust (London: Secker & W arburg, 2004), 12.

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to M arian n e H irsch, th e y con stitute a “rad ically d elim ited ”42 v isu a l la n d ­ scape o f postm em ory, w h o se repetitiven ess, as she suggests, in the case o f the n ext tw o g e n eratio n s, does n o t have to b e “an in stru m e n t o f fix ity or p aralysis or sim ple retrau m atisation , as it often is for su rvivors o f traum a, b u t a m o stly h elp fu l vehicle o f tran sm ittin g an in h erited trau m atic past in such a w a y th at it can b e w ork ed through.”43 It is p ossib le th an ks to the postm em ory practices o f repetition, displacem ent, and decontextualisation, w hich reclaim the authentic “traum atic effect” o f photography, exposing the v ie w ers a n e w to the distu rb in g w o rk o f the past, at the sam e tim e a llo w ­ in g for the p ro ce sse s o f m ourn in g and reintegration. H irsch claim s th is is the essence o f practices o f artists b elon gin g to the second generation, who m ake icon ic re p resen tatio n s o f the H olocau st p art o f th e ir co llage -b ase d w ork (Lorie N ovak, M uriel H asbun, A rt Spiegelm an), thus reclaim ing their original authentic potential in the n ew context o f a landscape o f p o stm em ­ ory. P ictu re-co llages fo rm a p ecu liar relatio n w ith th eir vie w ers, one that H irsch - fo llow in g M argaret O lin - calls a p erform ative index, an in dex o f id en tification, w ith its pow er b ased on em otion s, desires and n eed s o f the view er, rather th an on the actu al “th a t-h a s-b e e n ” o f photography.44 S im i­ lar conclusions are reached b y C ecilia Brink, w ho in her analysis o f “secular ico n s” states th at “photographs in stall an ordered tran sitio n from paralysis to revival .”45 A liso n Lan dsberg seem s to seek a com forting in terpretation o f the p ro ­ liferation o f H olocau st clichés as w ell. Prosth etic m em ories, as she refers to them , m ass produced and distributed^6 have the pow er to evoke em pathy and w id e n the experience o f people w ho do n o t ow n them , as w e ll as offer access to know ledge often im possib le to gain through trad itio n al cognitive m ean s .47

42

M arianne Hirsch, "Su rvivin g Im ages,” in The Generation o f Postm em ory: Writing and Visual

Culture after the Holocaust (N ew York: Colum bia U niversity Press, 2012), 107. 43

Ibid., 108.

44

S e e M arianne Hirsch, "The G eneration o f Postm em ory,” in The Generation o f Postm em ory, 48. S e e also M argaret Olin, Touching Photographs (Chicago: U niversity o f Chicago Press, 2012).

45

Brink, Secular Icons, 147.

46

S e e Alison Lan dsb erg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation o f Am erican Remembrance

in the Age o f Mass Culture (N ew York: Colum bia U niversity Press, 2004), 20. 47

Ibid., 113.

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Im ages W ithout Im agination There is y e t another debate un fold in g parallel to the d iscu ssio n on the in ­ creasing anaesthetisation o f visual representations o f the H olocaust. Its m ain postulate is the inherently unim aginable and unrepresentable nature o f the H olocaust and, w h at follow s, its unknow able and incom prehensible aspect. A ccording to som e scholars, the enorm ity o f the Nazi crim e and the destruc­ tion o f the m ajority o f evidence determ ine the fact that the Shoah is an ab so­ lutely unique event, beyond history, and any attem pt at representing it w ould m ean an attem pt to create an “im age o f the un im aginab le.”48 The aesthetic ban o f m im esis in the case o f the Shoah (thus interpreting Adorno's fam ous statem ent on the im possib ility o f poetry after Auschw itz) is, in a q u asi-re li­ gious interpretation, linked w ith the Biblical taboo o f im age production from the second com m andm ent, the so-called Bilderverbot“9, and hence located in a m oral context. Claude Lanzm ann's Shoah (1985) - because o f the director's refusal to use any archival m aterials, relying in stead solely on the testim ony o f victim s, w itn e sse s and p erp etrato rs o f N azi gen ocide - h as w ork ed as a central point o f reference for this discussion since the ye a r it w as produced. A s D om inick L aC ap ra has p e rsu asively explain ed, Lanzm ann's Bilderverbot is closely linked w ith a differen t kind o f tab oo: n am ely Warumverbot, or the ban on asking “w h y”50 - thus iden tifyin g any attem pt at com prehending the Shoah w ith breaking a m oral ban, and placing the event itse lf in the realm of an unknow able sacrum . A ccording to the director, Shoah is firstly, “not at all represen tation al;’^ secondly, it “is not m ade to com m unicate bits o f in fo r­ m ation, b ut tells everyth in g .”52 A ccording to Lanzm ann, the form er p o stu ­ late is achieved b y avoidance o f any cinem atic realism , as w ell as refraining 48

Term o f G ertrud Koch. S e e "The A e sth etic Transform ation o f th e Im age o f th e U nim agina­ ble: N otes on C laude Lanzm ann's Sh o ah ,” tran s. Jam ie Owen Daniel and Miriam Hansen,

October 48 (Spring, 1989): 21. 49

S e e Miriam Bratu H ansen, "Schin dler's List Is Not Sh o ah : The Seco n d C om m and m en t, Popular M odernism , and Public M em ory,” Critical Inquiry 22 (2) (1996): 3 0 0 -3 0 2 ; Karyn Ball, "For and A g ain st th e Bilderverbot: The Rhetoric o f 'U n represen tab ility' and R em e­ diated 'A uth en ticity' in th e G erm an R eception o f Steven Sp ielb erg 's Schindler's List," in

Visualizing the Holocaust, 16 3 -18 5 . 50 51

S e e LaCapra, Lanzm ann's Shoah, 100. Claude Lanzm ann, Ruth Larson, David Rodowick, "Sem in ar w ith Claude Lanzm ann," Yale

French Studies (1990) : 97. 52

Claude Lanzm ann, "Le m on um en t co n tre l'archive? (en tretien t av ec Daniel Bougnoux, Régis Debray, Claude Mollard e t al.),” Les Cahiers de m édiologie 11 (2007^274; cited in: G e o rg e s Didi-H uberm an, Im ages in Spite o f All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, trans. Sh an e Brendan Lillis (Chicago: C hicago U niversity P ress, 2008), 96.

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from u sin g any archival m aterial docum enting the Shoah.53 Lanzm ann refers to archival photographs calling them “im ages w ithou t im agination,” as they offer an incom plete, fragm en tary im age o f the H olocaust, b ased m ain ly on pictures o f concentration cam ps such as B uchenw ald or D achau, w h ile the undocumented slaughter of European Jew s took place in sm aller death camps: Chełm no, Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec. Lanzm ann opposes these im ages w ith his cinem atic “m onum ent,” the w ord (i.e. oral testim ony) as h is w arran t .54 Significantly, the oral testim ony in Shoah is accom panied w ith visual m ate­ rial that is not lim ited to m ere docum entation o f interview s conducted b y the director. A separate sub-genre in Lanzm ann's film , servin g as a background for oral accounts, includes long shots o f rail tracks, trains, the speakers' su r­ roundings, finally - em pty landscapes, often devoid o f any clear geographical identity.

S ty lised U n representability The extended shots o f fo rests, clearings, m ead ow s, and field ro ad s spread across the entire n in e -h o u r-lo n g film . U su ally ap p earin g w h e n a w itn ess speaks about a death cam p destroyed b y the Nazis, th ey m ake visib le w hat Lanzm ann called a non-lieux, and D idi-H u berm an - a site par excellence, a site despite everyth in g .55 N evertheless, it is im possib le to define the role o f the m otionless im ages in each p articular case - very often, th ey are not related directly to the sto ry th at is b ein g told, and their w ork co n sists in b oth d is­ tractin g and attractin g the v ie w ers' attention. W hen one fo llow s the slo w m ovem en t o f the cam era, the w itn ess's vo ice is so m e h o w detached from the p erso n and one n eed s a m om en t to rem em b er w h o is actu ally sp e ak ­ ing. Som etim es rem aining nam eless, the stories o f different cam ps echoe in em pty land scapes, m aking their im age pow erfully cast in m em ory. Yet, it is difficult to say w hat has actually been rem em bered as the repetitiveness and sim ilarity o f these view s m akes it im possible to list any distinguishable fe a­ tures: a field, a dark line o f the forest, a clearing surrounded b y trees, a path in the fields bordered b y bunches o f dry grass. Though Lanzm ann dism isses 53

S e e D eb ates th a t Lanzm ann particip ated in: on realism in Schindler's List and pictures taken by So n derkom m an do, interpreted by G e o rg e s D idi-H uberm an and included in the exhibition ca ta lo g u e "M ém oire des ca m p s. P hotograph ies d es ca m p s de co n cen tration e t d'exterm ination nazis, 19 33-19 9 9 .” S e e G e o rg e s Didi-H uberm an, Im ages in Spite o f All, H ansen, "Schindler's List Is Not Sh o ah ,” Ball, "For and A g ain st th e "Bilderverbot," Claude Lanzm ann, "W hy Sp ielb erg Has D istorted th e Truth,” Guardian Weekly April 3, 1994.

54

Didi-H uberm an, Im ages in spite o f All, 94.

55

S e e Didi-H uberm an, The Site, despite Everything, 114 , 115 ; Send yka, Pryzm a, 325.

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“im ages w ithou t im agination,” im ages o f the Shoah from archival m aterials preserved in view ers' m em ory, he creates at the sam e tim e his ow n aesthetics o f “stylised unrepresentability.”56

S till fro m

Shoah

(T re b lin k a)

It is largely a topographical stylisation, w here incom plete, traum atic n a r­ ratives infect the observed space, forcing one to look for sym ptom s o f history, and to gaze su spiciously at the calm landscape. “It's hard to see h ow the faces captured on the Shoah film could escape the status o f «iconic» im ages,” states D idi-H u berm an. 57 Indeed, seem ingly Lanzm ann's tradem ark, this aesthetic is all but unprecedented: Shoah’s empty, frozen landscapes resem ble equally still and heavy stills from A lain Resnais's Night and Fog. M ade in 19 55 , the film begins w ith a fam ous shot o f a calm Polish landscape, w ith a voiceover com ­ m e n tary w ritte n b y Jean C ayrol: “Even a tran qu il lan d scape, even a prairie w ith crow s flyin g [...] can lead very sim ply to a concentration cam p. [...] T o­ day, on the sam e track, it is a daylight and the sun is shining.” 58 I f Resnais's

56

S e e Ball, "For and A g ain st th e Bilderverbot," 168.

57

Didi-H uberm an, Im ages in Spite o f All, 126.

58

Jean Cayrol, N uit et brouillard (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 17, 21; cited in G e o rg e s Didi-H uberm an,

Im ages in Spite o f All, 129.

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heterogenic w ork, w h ich com bines an im m obile “haun ted” land scape w ith archival m aterial from a new sreel, w ere to be seen as a source o f tw o parallel idiom s o f im agining the H olocaust, Lanzm ann appears as a faithful follower o f the former, “n on -representational” line. Shoah’s influence, and Lanzm ann's position w ithin the discourse o f representation o f the H olocaust, contributed to the preservation o f this w ay o f seeing the space o f the Shoah, a paradigm crucial for the experience o f landscape by the generation o f postm em ory.

S till fr o m

N ig h t a n d Fog

H owever, to provide a fuller picture o f this experience, one needs to take a closer look at a special kind o f “land scape” scene from Lanzm ann's film. One o f the film 's introductory sequences is a story told by the daughter o f M otke Zajdel - one o f the survivors o f the V ilnius ghetto annihilation w ho w orked at the crem ation site in the nearby fo rest o f Ponari. W hen Zajdel beings his account, the view ers are show n B en Shem en forest in Israel. ZAJDEL: The place resem bles Ponari: the forest, the ditches. It's as if the bodies have been burned here. Except there were no stones in Ponari. LAN ZM AN N : But the Lithuanian forests are denser than the Israeli for­ est, no? ZAJDEL: Of course. The trees are similar, but taller and fuller in Lithuania.

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The im age on the screen changes - n o w w e can see a sligh tly different forest, denser and greener, w ith three people w alking. It is a forest in Sobibór w h ich Lan zm ann, a ssisted b y an in terpreter, d iscu sse s w ith Jan Piw oński, a p oin tsm an at the local station. In the preceding scene - the fam ous op en ­ in g o f the film w h ere Szym on Srebrn ik trie s to discern traces o f death, the death o f thousands o f people in the fo rest clearing o f C hełm no - as w ell as in m any other sim ilar shots, Lanzm ann treats space as a sym ptom o f history, w here land scape is com bin ed w ith testim o n y into one, in sep arable w hole. H ow ever, in the scene featu ring M otke Z ajdel, the situ ation is sligh tly d if­ ferent: firstly, the story o f the survivor is told b y his daughter (one o f the few fem ale characters in Lanzm ann's film and the only representative o f the se c­ ond generation) w ho, instead o f recounting her father's w ar experience, talks about her ow n childhood spent in the shadow o f his stubborn silence about this period. W hen the voice o f Zajdel him self is heard, a landscape can be seen as w ell, but not in the role o f supporting the testim ony, for it is a com pletely different forest located elsewhere. Secondly, the death o f Jew s in Ponari is not recounted at all. The only th in g Z ajd el refers to is an Israeli lan d scape: “It's as i f the b o d ies have b een b urn ed here.” Ponari rem ain s an in visible re fe r­ ent, an unavoidable part o f the com parison. A m om ent later, another lan d ­ scape is presented, and before the nam e Sobibór is displayed, the vie w er is

Still fro m

Shoah

( f o r e s t in S o b ib ó r )

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m om entarily convinced that this is the forest in Ponari - an authentic place, w here there is “no longer anything to see.” The forest in Sobibor, though h av­ ing its ow n tragic history, thus tem porarily loses its exceptional identity - it is a traum atic landscape only by force o f sim ilarity. The triple order o f this scene (em phatically opened b y a representative o f the second generation narrating) aptly illustrates the peculiar nature o f the landscape o f postm em ory, taking into account the subject's id en tification o f the “in n ocen t” land scape o f Ben Sh em en w ith the trau m atic m e m o ry o f Ponari, b ifu rcatin g it into the past and p resen t. In the ob served lan d scape, the trau m atic referen t is reflected like a spectre - it haunts the former, rather than recalling its source, and ac­ com panied b y a v ie w o f a d ifferen t fo rest (a d ifferent site o f genocide), w e are left confused b y the sim ilarity, incapable o f ascertainin g its particularity. These n o n -sp ecific lan d scapes can be collectively regarded as the iconographic reservoir, sim ilar to the “im ages w ith o u t im agin ation ,” em ployed b y lite ra ry and v isu a l rep re se n tatio n s o f the Shoah, esp ecially th o se cre­ ated by m em bers o f the p ostm em ory generation. Lanzm ann's id iom can be spotted in R einhard's w o rk and Levin's War Story (both an alysed b y Baer), in Su san Silas's video w o rk s like Helmbrechts Walk (19 9 8 -200 3) w h ich in ­ clu des p ictu res o f lan d scap e s tak en du rin g her jo u rn e y re -e n a c tin g the death m arch o f p riso n e rs from H elm brechts in C zech R epu b lic ,59 as w ell as in A n d rzej K ram arz's photographs.60 W h at is ty p ic a l for lan d scap e s o f p o stm e m o ry is n o t the u n iq u en e ss o f the place, b u t th e ir v isu a l u n i­ form ity, m ultiplicity, and re d u n d an cy th at a lm o st deprive th e m o f th eir singularity.

F r a g m e n t s o f M ik ae l L e v in 's

59

W a r S to ry (19 9 5 )

Silas's w ork can be seen online, a c c e sse d Jan uary 22, 2014, h ttp ://w w w .h elm b rech tsw alk . com /portfo lio/e/helm b rech ts1.htm l

60 A Piece o f Land (20 0 8-20 0 9).

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Two Types o f Arcadia “A s w e get into h is tin y Polish Fiat,” w rite s E va H offm an on h er jo u rn e y to Brańsk, Z bigniew tells me that Szepietowo w as a stopping point for Jew s who were being transported to Treblinka. Instantly, the pleasant station build­ ing loses its air of innocence. Instantly, I flash to the scenes that must have taken place here. (...) Instantly, the landscape in m y mind is diagrammed by tw o sets o f m eanings. H ow to reconcile them , how not to blam e the land for w hat happened on it?61 H istory invests the picturesque view o f a sm all station in a Polish pro vin­ cial tow n w ith another layer: the m em ory o f events that took place in it. From the m om ent o f iden tifyin g its “actual” nature, the place can only be perceived through tw o sets o f m eanings. Im m ediately, the affective d im en sion o f the ob served space is ch an g ed : d eligh t in its id yllic character tran sfo rm s into dumb silence, and the face o f the view er petrifies in anagn orisis: the p le a s­ ant station, the cosy coppice, and the bloom ing m eadow w ill never again be the sam e. “A s I w alk around Brańsk w ith Zbyszek and contem plate its lovely view s,” w rite s H offm an later, “the angled slope o f the riverbank, the gentle curve o f the river - I n o w cannot help b u t im agin e: th at flat stretch o f land leading aw ay from the river w as an escape route to ostensibly safer p laces .”62 The act o f identification (anagnorisis) - so crucial in both H offm an's as w ell as Tulli's prose - proves to be also an act of anam nesis: the past bursts through the sm ooth surface o f the landscape, m arking and d istinguishing w hat is in ­ visible in the present. A sim ilar experience is shared b y other second gen eration authors who un dertake th eir jo u rn eys to cou n tries o f E ast C en tral Europe w ith d iffe r­ ent m otivation s. D escribin g h is first im p ression s o f G ib y in Podlasie, from w hich he b egins his saga on m em ory and landscape, Sim on Scham a w rites: “ [...] Som ething about [the hill] snagged m y attention, m ade me feel uneasy, required I take another look .”63 A n d though this m om ent o f hesitation is ex­ plained further on w h en it turns out that it w as the site o f the death o f Polish partisans, this rem ark applies to the entire experience o f the Polish landscape w hich Scham a here anticipates, a landscape w hich includes, according to his

61

Eva Hoffm an, Shtetl: The Life and Death o f a Sm all Town and the World o f Polish Jews (B o s­ ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 20, 21.

62

Ibid., 245.

63

Sch am a, Landscape and Memory, 23.

SI TES A N D N O N - S i T E S OF ME M OR Y

ALEKSANDRA SZCZEPAN

LANDSCAPES O f POSTMEMORY

fam ous statem ent, also Treblinka: “b rillian tly vivid countryside; [...] rolling, gentle land, lined b y avenues o f aspen.”64 In M artin G ilbert's HolocaustJourney - a journal itin erary o f a tw o -w ee k journ ey in search o f traces o f the Shoah - every tim e the author stops his account to provide a description o f the lan d ­ scape, it is acco m pan ied b y a gloom y chorus: “The b eau ty o f the scen ery grassy m eadow s in the valley, p in e-clad hills above - is in extrem e contrast to the g rim n e ss o f the jo u rn e y fifty -tw o y e a rs a g o ... We drive on through a w onderful, peacefu l, p asto ral scene, o f gentle ro llin g h ills and cultivated fields. To our left, just to the north o f the road, runs the railw ay that in those days led to B elzec .”65 Therefore, landscapes o f postm em ory are fundam entally characterised by incongruence and incoherence, as w ell as a sense o f the uncanny - w h en the “m isleading air o f n orm alcy” is broken, w h en pastoral, m onotonously sim ilar landscapes disclose the knowledge of the events that they have w itnessed. The discrepancy betw een w hat w e kn ow and w hat w e see is a vehicle for this d is­ sonance. Sim ilarly, in Tulli's short story, the cue com es from the “geographical n am es” and the landscape itse lf does not really in sist on d isclosing its past. Postm em ory im ages - as their photographic and cinem atic representations clearly in dicate - are like pictures devoid o f punctum due to their torm en tingly inconspicuous nature: our gaze is not attracted b y any particular detail w here the process o f un derstanding can be anchored. N evertheless, the very confrontation leaves one full o f anxiety. The m eaning o f these view s is then form ed in the d ialectical sp lit o f m e m o ry and forgettin g, o b servatio n and identification, the in distinguishable and the specific, the repetitive and the authentic. Lan dscapes o f po stm em o ry seem to y ie ld to a b asic m echanism o f traum atic realism : the everyday and the trivial hides the extrem e and the traum atic, escapin g the language o f representation.66 Idyllic spaces turn out to be escape routes, the present is infected w ith the past, and the k n ow n and fam iliar becom e threatening and alien. Lan dscapes o f postm em ory are both in dexical and iconic im ages: shifters related to overgrow n sites o f slaughter, as w ell as icons o f the H olocaust referring to sequences o f represen tational topoi. 64

Ibid., 26.

65

M artin Gilbert, Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search o f the Past (London: W eidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), 122, 196.

66

S e e M ichael Rothberg, "B etw e en th e E xtrem e and th e Everyday: Ruth Klüger's Traum atic Realism ,” in Extremities. Trauma, Testimony, and Com m unity, ed . N ancy K. Miller, Jason Daniel T ougaw (Urbana and C hicago: U niversity o f Illinois Press, 2002); s e e also his Trau­

m atic Realism. The Dem ands o f Holocaust Representation (M in n eapo lis-L o nd o n : Univer­ sity o f M inn esota Press, 2000).

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Sources o f this iconicity can also be found in a slightly m ore rem ote trad i­ tion: “There have alw ays been tw o kinds o f arcadia: shaggy and sm ooth; dark and light; a p lace o f bucolic leisure and a place o f prim itive p an ic ,”67 w rites Sim o n Scham a. The g e n e alo g y o f the m yth o f A rcad ia as a land origin ally m arked b y darkness is traced by E rw in Panofsky in his essay discussing the in scrip tio n “et in A rcad ia ego.”68 From the p oin t o f v ie w o f syn tax, he su g ­ gests that these w ords w ere n o t o riginally supposed to m ean “A n d I as w ell w as b orn in A rcadia,” referring to a retrospective visio n o f a land o f an ideal future, but rather “I am p resent even in A rcad ia” - m e, death, the dark lining present even in an idyllic scene. This dialectic in representations o f A rcadia is inherent in the experience o f postm em ory landscape: the m om ent o f realisa­ tion discloses the original flaw in the illusory calm o f the observed space, the flaw b ecom ing the fundam ental point o f reference for perceiving the idyllic scene.

The Traum atic o f Landscape The indexicality of postm em ory landscapes is thus closer to perform ativity, as defined b y H irsch and Olin, than to any form o f perm anence relating the h is­ tory o f events that have tran spired there, an inherent authenticity that DidiH uberm an seem s to suggest w hen he w rites about sites despite everything. A place takes on traum atic m eaning w hen its traum atic aspect is discerned. H ow ever, the act o f identification, the act o f poin tin g out that “this is here,” in m an y cases proves te m p o rary and accidental. M arian n e H irsch and Leo Spitzer's ow n search for the cam p in V apniarka in U kraine, w here their re la­ tives w ere im prisoned, proves to be an alm ost futile task: “We h ad intended to connect m em ory to p l a c e . If through our visit, w e brought the m em ory of its past back to the place, then that return is as evanescent as that hazy su m ­ m er afternoon . It is an act, a perform an ce th at briefly, fleetingly, re-p laced history in a landscape that had eradicated it.”6® H irsch and Spitzer, equipped w ith drawings and m em oirs o f cam p prisoners, look for a particular place, yet their experience seem s out o f place, and the traum atic aspect o f the identified land scape is but a tem p orary effect. Yet, w h ere can w e locate the vehicle o f tran sm ission o f this effect if w e conceive o f postm em ory in a broader context,

67 68

Sch am a, Landscape and Memory, 517. Erwin Panofsky, "Et in Arcadia Ego. Poussin and th e Elegiac Tradition,” in Meaning and the

Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (Garden City: D oubleday A nchor Books, 1955). 69

M arianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, Ghosts o f Home: The Afterlife o f Czernow itz in Jewish

M em ory (Berkeley and London: U niversity o f California Press, 2010), 230.

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ALEKSANDRA SZCZEPAN

LANDSCAPES O f POSTMEMORY

going beyond the experience o f just fam ily m em bers o f survivors and regard­ ing “the relationship that the [whole] generation after bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trau m a o f those w ho cam e before - to experien ces they rem em ber only b y m eans ofth e stories, im ages, and behaviours am ong w hich they grew u p ”?™ In her Originality o f theAvant-Garde, Rosalind Krauss analyses a passage from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey w here a you n g provincial, C atherine M orland, goes for a w alk w ith tw o o f her frien ds: soon enough it turns out she know s nothing about the nature o f picturesque landscapes appreciated by her com ­ panions. A s Krauss indicates, it is not the landscape that constitutes the pictur­ esque, but “through the action o f the picturesque the very notion o f landscape is constructed as a second term o f w hich the first is a representation.” Se e m ­ in gly authentic and non -m ediated, it b ecom es a “reduplication o f a picture w hich preceded it.”71 The singular and the form ulaic (the repetitive) each form two logical halves o f the concept of landscape. “The priorness and repetition of pictures is n ecessary to the singularity o f the picturesque.”72 A s for the viewer, singularity depends on w hether he or she can actually recognise it as such, and the act o f id en tification is possib le only thanks to the existence o f previous m odels. I f in th e case o f p o stm e m o ry lan d scap e s, “th e p ic tu re sq u e ” is su b ­ stitu ted w ith “th e trau m atic,” th ese lan d scap e s becom e v isu a l clich és o f space re late d to h isto ric a l or p e rso n a l trau m as, a ffe ctiv e ly lin ked w ith m e m o ry in accessib le for su b seq u en t g e n eratio n s. A t the sam e tim e, th ey serve as a re p o sito ry o f im ag es w h o se ap p aren t n o n -sp e c ific ity and s i­ m u ltan e o u sly u n can n y nature b eco m es an icon ic m ark o f th e trau m atic, b elon gin g to a certain “trau m atic” can on o f culturally diverse provenance. T h is re p o s ito ry o f la n d sc a p e s w o u ld in clu d e a m a jo rity o f p o s t-L a n zm an n v is u a l re p re se n ta tio n s o f se e m in g ly n eu tral e le m e n ts o f space th at are in vested w ith sin ister m ean in g through the d issem in atio n o f the traum atic. N evertheless, the experience o f the landscape o f postm em ory is not only b ased on a m ore or less in ten tion al kn ow ledge o f iconic represen tation s cultural kn ow ledge tran sm itted “b y m e an s o f stories, im ag es, and b eh a v ­ io u rs” - b u t also on a certain cognitive disposition, prone to tracin g flaw s,

70 71

M arianne Hirsch, "Introduction,” in The Generation o f Postm em ory, 5. Rosalind Krauss, "The O riginality o f th e A van t-G ard e,” in The Originality o f the Avant­

Garde, 163. 72

Ibid., 166.

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to “paranoid re a d in g ^ ]”73 o f the surrounding area, to constant suspicions re ­ garding non -specific sights and idyllic view s o f the eastern Central European landscape. The H olocaust is crucial to un derstanding the phenom enology of postm em ory landscapes not just in its ow n context, but m ore generally w hen it com es to other radical historic spatial ruptures in Polish h istory in the 20th century. The status o f lan d scape as an “u n stab le w itn ess,” as B rett K ap lan refers to it, gains n ew m eaning in the case o f postm em ory landscapes because what is at issue is the role o f the view er as one w ho recognises the authenticity of a posttraum atic landscape, responding to its silent call. The relation betw een the view er and the space should play out m ore in the tension betw een the a c ­ tive “connective m em ory to a p lace” and the com m on tropes o f postm em ory w hich evoke and preserve m em ory - “the priorness and repetition o f pictures is n ecessary to the sin gularity o f the traum atic.” Translation: Karolina Kolenda

73

S e e Eve K osofsky S e d g w ic k , "Paranoid Reading and R eparative Reading, or, You're S o Para­ noid, You Probably Think This E ssay Is a b o u t You,” in Touching, Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy,

Perform ativity (Durham and London: Duke U niversity P ress, 2003).