“I like this mishmash.” Enumeration in Julian Kornhauser’s works

Abstract

In this article, I analyze how enumeration functions in Kornhauser’s poetry, looking at the various stages of the poet’s life. Enumeration plays a number of roles in Kornhauser’s poetry. While, in a way, it “laminates” fragments of reality, it primarily attempts to extract things and memories from the past, retrieve them retroactively, albeit in an incomplete form. Inherently avant-garde and experimental, enumeration is meant to express the essence of the lyrical I. Drawing on Umberto Eco and Michel Foucault who (each in their own right) referred to the infinite possibilities of lists in their works, I analyze the different systems and functions of enumeration, and above all the ways in which Kornhauser uses enumeration in his works.