Paris, Poetry, and the 'Work of Mourning' and Recovery

This year marks the 100th European anniversary of the First World War, which set the precedent for a twentieth century, that, says Bataille, “unfolded under the paradigm of war.” Europe’s Great War, what was at the time seen as the ‘war to end all wars,’ ushered in an era of unprecedented violence that left in its wake devastated civilian and soldier populations alike. The centennial commemorations throughout Europe call upon us to consider the ways in which we remember, mourn, and work through grief and trauma. In an age defined by a series of wars, in a perpetual cycle of ‘after tragedy,’ how is it that societies and individuals come to terms with the past? In this class, we will reach across the humanities to look at the relationship between literature and mourning, art and war, writing and recovery, and commemorating and remembering. Starting with the memorializing that is occurring across Europe, we will explore the way in which the past is brought into the present, and put these modes of remembering in conversation with the experimental art and literature that was produced or performed in Paris directly before and after the First World War. The 1920’s ushered in an era of much- anticipated peace to Europe, but it was also an era of mourning. Writers and thinkers produced work in an attempt to understand the world in a post-war Europe, to wrap their minds around and attempt to come to grips with what had happened. As a result, Paris of the 1920’s was a time of great artistic and literary innovation and will offer us an entrance into discourses interrogating the ‘work of mourning’ art and literature conduct