ENG 201
30 August 2010
Art After Srebrenica
Theodor Adorno is often paraphrased in misquote as stating that no poetry should be produced after Auschwitz. The actual quote stems from an essay Adorno published in 1955, the relative translated extract stating, “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” (in its original form: “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch”). Recently, this reference was cited in the midst of my own research into the genocide and war which occurred in Bosnia between 1992-1996. The reference came after I visited the memorial in Potočari for the victims of the Srebrenica Massacre, and met with film director Danis Tanović at a café in Sarajevo. “I don’t know what you want to say about [Bosnia],” the director told me, “If there can be no poetry after the Holocaust, there can be no art of any kind after Sarajevo.”
My research is in the field of Literature. My subject this semester’s series of papers will involve genocide in Bosnia, particularly that which took place in Srebrenica. This topic is highly controversial, even to the debate of whether a massacre took place there and, if it did, does what happened actually constitute a “genocide”? Those questions are better left asked by a longer and more complex thesis than this series, as my argument will specifically address the Adorno quote as it was referenced by Tanović: is it barbaric to create art after genocide?
The irony of Mr. Tanović’s sardonic allusion is that there has been poetry after Auschwitz and art after Sarajevo; he himself is the creator of some. Historically, art has always followed tragedy. This can be found in the epic poetry of the Ancient Greeks and recounted in Hebrew victory songs in the Tanakh. This sort of art and literature becomes as vitally important as any political or historical documentation of events which transpired. Recording stories in oral tradition, verse, music, written narrative, or image is a way in which deeper connective meaning can be understood.
Such understanding came into my own experience when I walked through the rows of white obelisks at the memorial cemetery in Potočari and listened to the screaming silence that has shrouded that area for the past 15 years. The dead no longer have voices with which to tell their stories. It must be the living then, those who have ears to hear the stories unspoken, who must pass along the poetry of the dead; the art of slaughtered.
One aspect, one need, of art and poetry is to shape what is senseless into some temporary comprehensive form. Since the world we experience rarely makes sense, we create texts to offer reason and examination, to formulate some understanding about the way we view the world, especially when it seems to have no immediate meaning. An ubiquitous question asked following a tragedy is why?
What happened in Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996—and Srebrenica in July, 1995—staggers belief. As the twentieth century came to a close, a modern European capital became the site of the longest military siege in modern history while the rest of the world sat idly by and watched it take place. In Srebrenica, the United Nations, under the promise of protecting refugees, instead conspicuously assisted the aggressors and became complicit in their slaughter.
But all of this perspective is purely subjective. The question of the semester’s topic is not does art exist after a genocide?—for it is plainly clear and easily evidenced that it indeed does. Instead, the argument question I purpose is the debate of is it barbaric to create art in the wake of a genocide? Barbaric, in this context, should be taken to mean culturally offensive and/or dispassionate rather than excessively violent. This latter question then is one which has far more fertile ground in which to dig to seek out the opinions of the dead.
Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor. “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft.” Prismen, vol. 10A, 1955: pg. 30.
Tanović, Danis. Personal interview. 25 June 2010.
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