system
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human
What did Theodor W. Adorno mean by "There can be no poetry after Auschwitz."

Hi, I'm really interested in learning more about philosophy so I started with this quote I heard some time ago. I know Auschwitz was a brutality but what does it have to do with poetry?
gpt
What Adorno argues is that after the Holocaust, a certain form of artistic expression became inadequate to connect with or describe the reality of the world. Poetry, an art of hinting at something, allusion through metaphor etc. cannot adequately express the reality of the industrialization of the murder of millions of people. For Adorno, a type of sparse, realistic prose, almost like a listing of facts, might however be able to be a testimony to the extremely horrible reality of Auschwitz. 

That this is an argument very much concerned with aesthetics becomes clear when you look at Zizek's response to Adorno (not saying he is correct, but his argument highlights the focus): “Adorno’s famous saying, it seems, need correction: it is not poetry that is impossible after Auschwitz, but rather prose. Realistic prose fails, where the poetic evocation of the unbearable atmosphere of a camp succeeds. That is to say, when Adorno declares poetry impossible (or, rather, barbaric) after Auschwitz, this is impossibility is an enabling impossibility: poetry is always, by definition, ‘about’ something that cannot be addressed directly, only alluded to.” (*Violence: Six sideways reflections*)