Title 8:

[Cover photograph: Jack Ross / Cover layout: June Lincoln]


To Terezín:
A Travelogue

by Jack Ross

Afterword by Martin Edmond

Social and Cultural Studies 8
(June 2007)
ISSN: 1175-7132


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from the Preface:

“Your irritation at the disunity is, justifiably or not, the effect I intend.”

So W. H. Auden to one of the first critics of The Sea and the Mirror (1944), his wartime verse commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. More specifically, to criticism of the discordant moment in the poem when Caliban addresses the audience in the urbane, prosy accents of Henry James.

The most natural style for talking about the horrors of Nazi oppression during the Second World War has come to be the clipped, gnomic phrases of Paul Celan or Nellie Sachs – both camp survivors who managed thus to refute Adorno’s famous dictum that “writing lyric poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”

Whatever the possibilities for Celan and Sachs, it seems (to say the least) rather presumptuous to attempt to walk in their footsteps so many decades later.

My problem was to write “naturally” and approachably about one of the most unnatural acts of modern times – without a distinct personal axe to grind and with full awareness of my temerity in doing so. If the result seems smooth, seamless and entirely self-justifying then I will have failed. My interest is more in the questions I raise than in the answers I’ve attempted to provide. ...

– Jack Ross

Notes on Contributors:

Martin Edmond’s most recent book is Luca Antara: Passages in Search of Australia (East Street, 2006), described by J. M. Coetzee as “a book-lover’s book, a graceful and mesmerizing blend of history, autobiography, travel and romance.” His other publications include The Autobiography of My Father (AUP, 1992), The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont (AUP, 1999), Fenua Imi: The Pacific in History and Imaginary (Bumper Books, 2002), Chronicle of the Unsung (AUP, 2004) and Ghost Who Writes (Four Winds Press, 2004).

Dr Jack Ross is a lecturer in English and Creative writing at the School of Social and Cultural Studies, Massey Albany. He is the author of various books of poems, including City of Strange Brunettes (Pohutukawa Press, 1998) and Chantal’s Book (HeadworX, 2002), as well as four works of fiction: Nights with Giordano Bruno (Bumper Books, 2000), Monkey Miss Her Now (Danger Publishing, 2004), Trouble in Mind (Titus, 2005), and The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis (Titus, 2006). He also edited, with Jan Kemp, the spoken-word anthologies Classic NZ Poets & Contemporary NZ Poets in Performance (AUP, 2006 & 2007).