Is the Unspeakable Singable? Henryk Górecki, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and the Ethics of Holocaust Empathy

Moore, A

Is the Unspeakable Singable? Henryk Górecki, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and the Ethics of Holocaust Empathy

Moore, A

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Publisher:: UTSePress
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2011, 8 (1), pp. 1 - 17
Issue Date:: 2011-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Moore, A	en_US
dc.date.issued	2011-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2011, 8 (1), pp. 1 - 17	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1449-2490	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/31642
dc.description.abstract	Debates about Holocaust representation have long been haunted by the idea that the enormity and intensity of human suffering in the events of World War Two are `unspeakable. In many such statements the capacity for cognition and the ethical dimension of aestheticisation are blurred the Holocaust is `unspeakable both in the sense of being impossible to imagine in its full horror, but also morally inappropriate as the subject of artistic production. But do all forms of cultural representation of the Holocaust fail in the same way as words or to the same degree, in the eyes of those who would judge their merits according the tenet of unspeakability? This paper considers one particularly renowned work Henryk Góreckis symphony no. 3 (Symfonia pies'ni z.a?osnych) of 1976, discussing how it mediated both the global politics of Holocaust representation and the recuperation of victimhood in postcommunist Poland. Górecki claimed a subjectivity of failure in response to the challenge of representing the events of World War Two and has insisted that the symphony is not about war but about sorrow. The vocal lyrics are nonetheless profoundly thematised around war suffering, and the Second World War in particular - events he approached with a musical language of epic, pathos and redemption. In framing the subject of his work, he emphasised a Polish national suffering that both eschewed mention of specifically targeted groups of victims, and beckoned to Polish folk and catholic traditions. This article presents a new hypothesis about the success of Góreckis work by considering it in relation to the ethical debates about Holocaust empathic response that have occurred in relation to historiographic, literary and filmic representation.	en_US
dc.publisher	UTSePress	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies	en_US
dc.title	Is the Unspeakable Singable? Henryk Górecki, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and the Ethics of Holocaust Empathy	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	1	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	8	en_US
utslib.for	2002 Cultural Studies	en_US
utslib.for	2005 Literary Studies	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/e-Press
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	true	en_US
pubs.issue	1	en_US
pubs.volume	8	en_US

Abstract:

Debates about Holocaust representation have long been haunted by the idea that the enormity and intensity of human suffering in the events of World War Two are `unspeakable. In many such statements the capacity for cognition and the ethical dimension of aestheticisation are blurred the Holocaust is `unspeakable both in the sense of being impossible to imagine in its full horror, but also morally inappropriate as the subject of artistic production. But do all forms of cultural representation of the Holocaust fail in the same way as words or to the same degree, in the eyes of those who would judge their merits according the tenet of unspeakability? This paper considers one particularly renowned work Henryk Góreckis symphony no. 3 (Symfonia pies'ni z.a?osnych) of 1976, discussing how it mediated both the global politics of Holocaust representation and the recuperation of victimhood in postcommunist Poland. Górecki claimed a subjectivity of failure in response to the challenge of representing the events of World War Two and has insisted that the symphony is not about war but about sorrow. The vocal lyrics are nonetheless profoundly thematised around war suffering, and the Second World War in particular - events he approached with a musical language of epic, pathos and redemption. In framing the subject of his work, he emphasised a Polish national suffering that both eschewed mention of specifically targeted groups of victims, and beckoned to Polish folk and catholic traditions. This article presents a new hypothesis about the success of Góreckis work by considering it in relation to the ethical debates about Holocaust empathic response that have occurred in relation to historiographic, literary and filmic representation.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/31642