ABSTRACT
Impossible poetry To Theodor Adorno, architectural gestures toward transparent democracy such as the
renovation of the Reichstag in Berlin by Sir Norman Foster would be, in the aftermath of
the Holocaust, acts undertaken in the most perverse bad faith – or, at best, in an ignor-
ance so profound that it would betoken a world that had lost its memory altogether.1 His
declaration, that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” remains the most unequivo-
cal challenge yet formulated to the possibility of art and culture in our time. In its absolute
negativity, it draws, unambiguously, the line up to which art and ethics, if they wish to
amount to anything more than delusory cowardice, must step, and, in doing so, face the
improbability of their ever again merging to create culture. Furthermore, and crucially, it
offers no exits from this standoff.
