“Take nothing as yours”: Eurydice and the Scene of Writing in Michael Palmer's “Baudelaire Series”

Abstract

Abstract: Michael Palmer's 1988 poem, “Baudelaire Series,” is often read as an elegy for the history of the Western lyric from Hölderlin to Eliot. Replete with allusion and quotation, it creates a mise en abyme effect which both embodies and negates what lyric is capable of. However, it can also be read as a poem grappling with the conundrum articulated by Theodor Adorno about poetry after Auschwitz. In this essay, I explore how Palmer comes to terms with Adorno through his use of the figure of Eurydice. In particular, I examine how he engages with Rilke's famous poem, “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes,” which dramatizes her fatal disappearance back into Hades at the very threshold to the upper world, thereby creating the conditions necessary for the song of Orpheus to unfold amid a world of loss and catastrophe but only as trace.

Key words: Palmer, Adorno, Auschwitz, Eurydice, negation

Patrick Pritchett. “Take nothing as yours”: Eurydice and the Scene of Writing in Michael Palmer's “Baudelaire Series”[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2021, 43(3): 33-51.

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