Dreadful Noise: Jean-Claude Pecker on Loss, Remembrance, and Silence

Abstract

Abstract: French astrophysicist Jean-Claude Pecker, who passed away in early 2020, left behind a rich body of work that reflects his active engagement with areas beyond the scientific, among them the visual arts, social activism, and poetry. This paper follows Pecker as he grapples with the loss of his parents in the Holocaust and articulates the impact of this loss on his life and work. My discussion draws primarily on Pecker’s poetry collections Galets poétiques and Lamento 1944–1994 , with occasional references to other writings, among them a provisional draft of the opening chapter from Pecker’s memoir and letters recounting his family history. Allusions to Pecker’s Jewish heritage are absent from the poetry collections yet are prominently present in other writings in the context of antisemitism as the core of his “feeling Jewish” on the one hand and the rejection of Judaism among all other religions on the other. Reflecting on the violence that afflicted his life during the war years and admitting his deep pessimism regarding the future of both humanity and the environment, the elderly Pecker conveys in his writings a sense of diminished agency both in his own life and in that of the sun, the celestial body broadly considered a mainstay of his scientific work. Contextualizing Pecker among his peers, I suggest that while the themes of deportation and death figure centrally in the poems, Pecker is less in conversation with Holocaust poetry or poets and more in dialogue with a group of French artist-friends, united in the knowledge of nature’s timeless beauty and in the recognition of the presence within humanity of love, friendship, and the unlimited capacity for inflicting harm and great pain.