Death 7/28/13

Paul Celan was one of the most influential poets who took a chance writing about the holocaust. Although many critics were very negative about such a topic, Celan wrote very moving poetry centering around death and dying. In “Shibboleth,” he writes about the movement of the chosen people in the afterlife. The “twin reddenings / in Vienna and Madrid” represent two extremely influential and violent events in which there was much death (“Shibboleth” 12-13). He goes on to emphasize this with the next verse, which begins with “Set your flag at half mast,” symbolizing the death at these events (14). The emphasis of death during political struggles is one that resonates well with his holocaust experiences as well, as Celan survived but saw both parents killed in Nazi prison camps. He had first hand experience with the impact that so much death and destruction can have on a person, their livelihood, and even their culture. In the situations at both Vienna and Madrid, the devastation was intense enough to reshape their cultures just as the Jewish culture was reshaped by the Nazis.

Possibly the most famous work by Celan is “Deathfugue,” which offers a comparison between a Jewish woman and a German woman at a prison camp during World War II. In this poem, the Jewish girl, Shulamith, is repeatedly reminded of the death around her. In the first verse, the Jews have been told to “shovel a grave in the ground” (“Deathfugue” 8). In the next verse, her hair is described as “ashen,” which symbolizes the cremation of the Jewish prisoners after they were killed (14). The comparison between the golden hair of the German girl and the ashen hair of Shulamith is repeated throughout the poem, emphasizing the eventual death of the Jewish people by the hands of the Germans. The passion within this work and the emotion Celan is able to express regarding the death around them is palatable. Paul Celan committed suicide after bouts of paranoia related to anti-Semitism. Reading the emotions he expressed after his experiences with the prison camps, it is easy to see how much of an impact the experiences of his youth and the death of so many around him had on both his work and his life.

Works Cited

Celan, Paul. "Deathfugue." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 1469-70. Print.

- - -. "Shibboleth." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 1471-72. Print.