ABSTRACT

This essay argues that plants are an integral part of Jon Silkin’s poetic memorialisation of the Holocaust. The distinctiveness of Silkin’s Holocaust memorial poetics lies in its suggestion that plants can be witnesses to memory of the Holocaust. Silkin’s plant witnesses demonstrate human-like capacity for empathy and affect, as the boundary of species between plants and humans is reconstituted. In this essay I analyse three poems from the span of Silkin’s career, ‘Milkmaids’ (1964), ‘The People’ (1974), and ‘Trying to Hide Treblinka’ (1992), which each defamiliarise concentration camp sites by depicting them as natural spaces where plants grow. In reading these poems, I consider the ecological form of memorialisation that Silkin creates, exploring what poetry at the interface between ecological poetics and Holocaust memorialisation can look like. I consider the implications this poetics has for an alternative understanding of the spatialisation of Holocaust memory.

摘要

这篇文章认为，植物是乔恩·西尔金 (Jon Silkin) 对大屠杀的诗意纪念的一个组成部分。Silkin 的大屠杀纪念诗学的独特之处在于它暗示植物可以见证大屠杀的记忆。Silkin 的植物目击者展示了人类的同理心和情感能力，因为植物和人类之间的物种边界被重建。在这篇文章中，我分析了丝金职业生涯中的三首诗，“挤奶女工”（1964 年）、“人民”（1974 年）和“试图隐藏特雷布林卡”（1992 年），每首诗都通过将集中营地点描述为：植物生长的自然空间。在阅读这些诗歌时，我考虑了 Silkin 创造的生态纪念形式，探索生态诗学和大屠杀纪念之间的交界处的诗歌会是什么样子。