History and Memory

Referring to poets and writers ranging from Sophocles to Paul Celan, from Wordsworth to Thomas Bernhard, and from Proust to Benjamin Fondane, the authors of this collection of essays ponder the relationship between history and suffering and ask what forms of narrative could articulate or mediate such a relationship. The title, History and Memory: Suffering and Art, implies a tragic collusion between history and suffering, but also a redemptive resolution of history and suffering through memory and art.