Sir, - I see Prof Declan Kiberd is at it again (The Irish Times, January 24th). When Kiberd lionised Francis Stuart as a major writer at the time of Stuart's elevation to the rank of Saoi in Aosdana (October, 1996), I pointed out that it was rather strange that such a "major and influential writer" merited only three mentions in Kiberd's Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation.
People did not say that "after Auschwitz, the creation of poetry was unthinkable," as Kiberd maintains. It was, in fact, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno who said that "to write poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric", a remark he later retracted. And as for Sylvia Plath "carrying a concentration camp around in her head", one really has to call a halt.
Contrary to Adorno's remark, writing after Auschwitz became a necessity, particularly for the survivors who felt a deep need to write/testify on behalf of those who never returned. As Paul Ricoeur says, in a slightly different context, these writers were driven by the biblical watchword: Zakhor (Remember)!
Nor does it do any justice to Plath and her work to talk about her carrying a concentration camp around in her head. Those who were there, and did, found that unbearable enough.
Read Primo Levi or Jorge Semprun if you really want to know. -Yours, etc.,
Llewellyn Grove, Dublin 16.