TY - BOOK ID - 78109818 TI - Musical Biographies PY - 2016 SN - 3110460467 3110460939 9783110460933 9783110460469 9783110460940 3110460947 9783110457957 3110457954 PB - Berlin Boston DB - UniCat KW - Music and literature KW - German fiction KW - Memory in literature. KW - Music in literature. KW - Memory as a theme in literature KW - Literature and music KW - Literature KW - History KW - History and criticism. KW - German culture. KW - Holocaust. KW - Musical Poetics. KW - narrative. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78109818 AB - Since the second half of the twentieth century various routes, including history and literature, are offered in dealing with the catastrophe of World War II and the Holocaust. Historiographies and novels are of course written with words; how can they bear witness to and reverberate with traumatic experience that escapes or resists language? In search for an alternative mode of expression and representation, this volume focuses on postwar German and Austrian writers who made use of music in their exploration of the National Socialist past. Their works invoke, however, new questions: What happens when we cross the line between narration and documentation, and between memory and a musical piece? How does identification and fascination affect our reading of the text? What kind of ethical issues do these testimonies raise? As this volume shows, reading these musical biographies is both troubling and compelling since they 'fail' to come to terms with the past. In playing the haunting music that does not let us put the matter to rest, they call into question not only the exclusion of personal stories by official narratives, but also challenge writers' and readers' most intimate perspectives on an unmasterable past. ER -