The idea of boundaries is a complex one. Perhaps this could be discussed better not by referring to Gormley’s comment, but to such things as Roberto Benigni’s ‘Life is Beautiful’, a film that deals with history in a way that confounded a great many critics at the time of the film’s release. Most criticism had to do with the film’s generic boundaries.

Maybe we’re picking on Gormley too much. I expected better of him to respect boundaries. And respecting boundaries doesn’t mean that the resulting work is unchallenging. It means that we observe the need to respect boundaries of taste. Surely this forms part of the approach to formulating a response to certain experiences that militate against the use of language?

I just think Gormley could’ve thought up a more fitting simile to describe what he was talking about. As I said in my post, as an artist, you would think Gormley would want to search for a much more technical and well turned-out phrase. As it stands, his comment is a real clanger.

To argue that there isn’t an adequate language in which to go about describing post-Holocaust trauma does not mean that we should go about describing it in any way that we see fit, or that comes to mind before adequate levels of reflection in which the demand to consider language on balance is the primary one – are practised. What you say, though, about the language used being intrinsically inadequate, subsequent even to careful consideration, rings true. There is an entire debate about this in the field of Holocaust Studies, particularly in the case of literary representations.

In any case, one could argue whether it is up to those who have not suffered the traumatic event itself to go about deciding what the boundaries are. Which is precisely why Gormley is not our spokesperson. (I’m not saying that he was claiming to be a spokesperson in this sense, but since his simile generated this debate..) Something like a language which describes the traumatic experiences of others but not through the first person of the victim is in evidence in the work of W. G. Sebald. In his work, a certain timidity expresses itself in the confrontation with and retrospective reflection on traumatic histories, managing to be supremely challenging at the same time as it respects boundaries.

All best wishes
Attic Fantasist

No charges of piety here. There are a good many things that irk Miss Mussel that would not cause you to bat an eye. Disbelief regarding the two posts is merely a function of the latter. Had you not drawn attention to it, Miss Mussel would not have given the simile a second thought.

Of course bittersweet does not wholly describe post-Holocaust trauma, but what vocabulary does? What could possibly written that doesn’t sound trite or pat? That is one of the ironies of language. So many words but yet at the time we really need something, it seems the right one is never available. Even if an appropriate one can be found to reflect one’s own thoughts and feelings, chances are good that it won’t work so well for another.

The main thing Miss Mussel took away from your posts was the idea of boundaries. Should there be any? If so, temporary or indefinite?

As far as comic treatment goes, no one does it like the merchants.( link)

Oh? Not in this country they didn’t. 9/11 is still not a matter for comic treatment here. And quite right, too.

“Does reducing something as loaded as the Holocaust to an idiom or comedy sketch trivialize it or encourage healing?”

The answer to that question is this brilliant insight from Herr Nietzsche: “A joke is the epigraph on the death of a feeling.”

ACD