Mark Glanville
Poetry in Time of Catastrophe
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Summary
Plato wanted to banish the poets from his republic. Theodor Adorno said that it was barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz. Focusing on two major European Jewish poets, Paul Celan and Abraham Sutzkever, survivors who continued to write poetry of the highest order after the Holocaust, this lecture attempts to show that not only was Adorno wrong, but that a poetic response to catastrophes is an important way of coping with and transcending their traumatic consequences.
Mark Glanville
Mark Glanville read Classics and Philosophy at Oxford University before winning a scholarship to the Royal Northern College of Music. Following his debut for Opera North he sang as principal bass for, among others, Scottish Opera, Lisbon Opera, Israeli Opera, Opera Zuid and Omaha Opera. On the concert platform he has performed as soloist with Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Daniele Gatti, Sir David Willcocks, Pascal Tortelier and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. His ‘Yiddish Winterreise’ programme has been performed at the Kennedy Center, Leeds Lieder Festival and the Purcell Room. Mark’s programme of Mieczslaw Weinberg songs, ‘Citizen of Nowhere’ has been performed at the Purcell Room, the Polin Museum Warsaw and Israeli Opera. Mark’s memoir, ‘The Goldberg Variations: From football hooligan to opera singer’, published by Harper Collins, was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize for Jewish Literature. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, The Jewish Chronicle and many other papers and journals, specialising in the history and culture of central and eastern European Jewry.