- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
-
1 Introduction -
2 A Tamed ‘desire for images’ -
3 Ruined Waking Thoughts -
4 Making History -
5 Site, Sight, and Symbol -
6 Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii -
7 Objects of Affection -
8 Delusion and Dream in Théophile Gautier's Arria Marcella: Souvenir de Pompéi -
9 Archaeology Meets Fantasy -
10 Italian Classical-Revival Painters and the ‘Southern Question’ -
11 Cities of the Dead -
12 Christians and Jews at Pompeii in Late Nineteenth-Century Fiction -
13 Rocks, Ghosts, and Footprints -
14 On the Edge of the Volcano -
15 Experiencing the Last Days of Pompeii in Late Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia -
16 In Search of Lost Time and Pompeii -
17 Excavation Photographs and the Imagining of Pompeii's Streets -
18 The Getty Villa -
19 Pompeii in Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy -
20 The Censorship Myth and the Secret Museum -
21 Modern Tourists, Ancient Sexualities -
22 Writing Pompeii -
23 Pompeii, the Holocaust, and the Second World War -
24 Pompeii and the Cambridge Latin Course -
25 Ruins and Forgetfulness - Bibliography
- Index
Pompeii, the Holocaust, and the Second World War
Pompeii, the Holocaust, and the Second World War
- Chapter:
- (p.340) 23 Pompeii, the Holocaust, and the Second World War
- Source:
- Pompeii in the Public Imagination from its Rediscovery to Today
- Author(s):
Joanna Paul
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter focuses on the distinct use of Pompeii that emerges in the poem by Primo Levi, ‘La Bambina di Pompei’ (‘The Girl-Child of Pompeii’): that is, the recourse to Pompeii's destruction as a reference point in discourse surrounding modern disasters. This trope has a long history, reaching back to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, and continuing in responses to events such as 9/11 or the Haiti earthquake. The chapter, however, is concerned with World War Two and the Holocaust. Pompeii's proximity to Salerno, landing point for the Allied invasion that began on 9 September 1943, placed it on the frontline of hostilities, and so part of the discussion considers the unusual experiences of visiting the site during wartime. The chapter begins by examining Pompeii's invocation as imaginative symbol, as a way of addressing the anguish of conflict and its aftermath.
Keywords: Pompeii, Primo Levi, La Bambina di Pompei, The Girl-Child of Pompeii, World War II, Holocaust
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
-
1 Introduction -
2 A Tamed ‘desire for images’ -
3 Ruined Waking Thoughts -
4 Making History -
5 Site, Sight, and Symbol -
6 Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii -
7 Objects of Affection -
8 Delusion and Dream in Théophile Gautier's Arria Marcella: Souvenir de Pompéi -
9 Archaeology Meets Fantasy -
10 Italian Classical-Revival Painters and the ‘Southern Question’ -
11 Cities of the Dead -
12 Christians and Jews at Pompeii in Late Nineteenth-Century Fiction -
13 Rocks, Ghosts, and Footprints -
14 On the Edge of the Volcano -
15 Experiencing the Last Days of Pompeii in Late Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia -
16 In Search of Lost Time and Pompeii -
17 Excavation Photographs and the Imagining of Pompeii's Streets -
18 The Getty Villa -
19 Pompeii in Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy -
20 The Censorship Myth and the Secret Museum -
21 Modern Tourists, Ancient Sexualities -
22 Writing Pompeii -
23 Pompeii, the Holocaust, and the Second World War -
24 Pompeii and the Cambridge Latin Course -
25 Ruins and Forgetfulness - Bibliography
- Index
