Abstract
Abstract
The article looks at Iossif Ventura’s collected edition of “Tanaïs” and “Kyklonio” (two poems commemorating the death by drowning of almost the entire Jewish community of Crete in 1944, published in English in 2015), exploring the themes of memory, trauma, and guilt, while linking the poems’ haunting underwater imagery with current concerns about the deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean. Drawing connections between Ventura, Jason deCaires Taylor’s underwater statues, and Marie Jalowicz Simon’s book about survival in Nazi Germany, Gone to Ground, the essay considers the psychological ramifications of precarious sea crossings aiming at escape and freedom.
Subject
Literature and Literary Theory,Religious studies,History,Cultural Studies