Si TES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O F P O S T M E M O R Y 2 5 5
Aleksandra Szczepan
Landscapes of Postmemory
D O I:io .i8 3 i8 / td .2 o i6 .e n .i.i5
Perturbing N am es
Various perturbing geographical nam es alw ays come up in 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 other travellers, who are equipped w ith better histories than I am, these nam es are but invisible. N am es displayed on plat
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 surface, w ith no subtexts received.
M. Tulli, Italian Stilettos''
Post-H olocaust topography in the above quoted p a s
sage from M agd alen a Tulli's te x t se em s to be devoid o f any landm arks or clear-cut dem arcation lines. One could divide it, in an y chosen way, into an in finite num ber o f segm ents w ith arbitrarily nam ed end points: A and B. In th is space, one should travel b y train, y e t n o t all tra v e l
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 ch osen ones its perturbing layers. T hese view s are not defined by any distinguishing landscape, nor do they attract attention by presenting som ething exceptional or threatening; in fact, 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,
i M agdalena Tulli, Włoskie szpilki (W arszawa: Nisza, 2011), 66.
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 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 .
Aleksandra Szczepan - literary theorist and histo
rian o f philosophy, co-founder o f the Ośrodek Badań nad Kulturami Pamięci, a research fellow of the Departm ent of Literary Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Jagiellonian Univer
sity. She researches the redefinition of realism in literature and art of the 20th century, the question o f performativity of memory as well as trauma and identity.
She is the author of Realista Robbe-Grillet (2015) and numer
ous articles. Her research was funded by, i.a. European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, ERSTE Stiftung, and the Sylff Programm.
w h a t m akes th eir h ead s tu rn and th eir b o d ies shiver are the geograph ical 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 h at uncovers the un kn ow n , w h a t lets one see an em p ty sp ot in the p assage o f m ead ow 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 th ose 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 h istorical ca ta s
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, MA 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 art Liebm an (Oxford and N ew York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 114.
SITES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N l a n d s c a p e s o fp o s t m e m o r y
257
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 la n 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 a r 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 h ite 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 th eir 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 a ly sis, R o salin d K ra u ss lin k s in d e x e 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 guish ab 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 tra in w in d o w , th e 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.
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 u n 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 ila r lo cation s, and th e lin g u istic natu re o f th is m ed iu m only enh ances sem iotic in terpretation .
S till fr o m Shoah
It is th is v e ry o scillatio n b e tw e e n co n trastin g d yn a m ics o f m ean in g th at in ve sts the catego ry o f p o stm e m o ry la n 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 Chicago 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.
Si TES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O F P O S T M E M O R Y 259
potential: th ey in d exically refer to the events th at took place at th ese sites, they icon ically-sym b olically expand the visu al rep ository 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 a r is th at 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 h at 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 rg etica 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: Bloom sbury 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 Press, 2004), 49.
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 th is 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 th eoretical 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 fetish ising 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 k ind 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 th eir 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 een M em ory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,"
tran s. M arc Roudebush, Representations 26 (1989); Dominick 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; Jam 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).
SITES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O F P O S T M E M O R Y 26l
their parents' history b y the dynam ic link w h ich 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 a tia l 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 a m bivalen t nature, and attem pts at dealing w ith the paren ts' p a st 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 th an 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,2i 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).
o f m em ory.”22 The m ateriality o f geological form s, w here m em ory is stored, supp orts 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 d erstanding 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 h oliday re sort in O bersalzberg, H olocau st-related photographs (including th ose 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 rsta n 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 sterd am : Rodopi, 2012), 146.
24 Ibid., 154.
25 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: Rout- ledge, 2011), 2, 4.
Si TES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O F P O S T M E M O R Y 263
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 h ich 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 h appened 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 useo- logically 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,
1 9 9 5) 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.
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 th reat. 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 rica n 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 a l 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 ca u st space, and th eir deep em b ed m en t in the n etw ork o f p ictorial and litera ry tro p es and traditions.
31 Send yka, Pryzm a, 32 7 -3 2 8 .
32 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
SI TES AND N O N - S I T E S OF ME M OR Y A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S C F P C S T M E M C R Y 265
S t ills fr o m S u s a n S il a s 's U n title d (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 Athlone 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, trans. 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, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
have becom e m erely iconic representations that w ork as “m em ory cues” and
“rep resen tations w ith ou t su b stan ce”38 - pictures sh ow 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 sh ort 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 -p articular, 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 ca u 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 eoffrey H artm an, The Longest Shadow (Bloom ington: Indiana U niversity Press, 1996), 152.
39 On th e ch an g e 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.
SITES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O f P O S T M E M O R Y 267
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 tra u m a tic 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 p ostm 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 a rt o f th e ir co lla ge -b a se 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 ph otography.44 S im i
lar conclusions are reached b y C ecilia Brink, w h o 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 clich és 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.
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 N azi 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 p oetry after Auschw itz) is, in a q u a si-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 andm 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 tability' 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 S e e LaCapra, Lanzm ann's Shoah, 100.
51 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 o n 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.
SITES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O F P O S T M E M O R Y 269
from u sin g any archival m aterial docum enting the Shoah.53 Lanzm ann refers to archival photographs calling them “im ages w ith ou 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 uch enw 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 th ese 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 detach ed 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 th eir 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 ; Sendyka, Pryzm a, 325.
“im ages w ithou t im agination,” im ages o f the Sh oah 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 S h oa h (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 eo rg es Didi-Huberm an, Im ages in Spite o f All, 129.
SITES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O f P O S T M E M O R Y 2 J 1
heterogenic w ork, w h ich com bines an im m obile “h aun 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 nd 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.
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 la n 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 )
SITES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O f P O S T M E M O R Y
273
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 icon- ographic 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 ecia lly 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 brech ts 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 la n d sca p 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 a n 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 W a r S to ry (19 9 5 )
59 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 /po rtfo lio/e/helm b rech ts1.htm l
60 A Piece o f Land (2008-2009).
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 h at 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 h esitation is ex plained further on w h en it turns out that it w a s 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 os
ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 20, 21.
62 Ibid., 245.
63 Sch am a, Landscape and Memory, 23.
SITES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O f P O S T M E M O R Y 2 7 5
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 Holocaust Journey - 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 th eir torm en t- ingly 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 th ese 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 d scapes o f po stm em o ry seem to y ie ld to a b asic m ech anism 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 eapolis-London : Univer
sity o f M inn esota Press, 2000).
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 a n 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 Didi- H uberm an seem s to suggest w h en he w rites about sites despite everything.
A place takes on traum atic m eaning w h en 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 Sch am a, Landscape and Memory, 517.
68 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 Anchor 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.
Si TES AND N O N - S i T E S OF ME MORY A L E K S A N D R A S Z C Z E P A N L A N D S C A P E S O f P O S T M E M O R Y 2 7 7
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 the Avant-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 n on -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 sca p 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 la n d scap e s becom e v isu a l clich és o f sp ace re late d to h isto ric a l or p e rso n a l tra u 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 a rk 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 a n 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 M arianne Hirsch, "Introduction,” in The Generation o f Postm em ory, 5.
71 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.
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 land scapes 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 Press, 2003).
