Death

Paul Celan was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust whose poetry emotes feelings of grief and suffering. His experience in the death camps left him so scarred that he committed suicide by “jumping off a bridge into the Seine, in Paris”(Puchner, 1468). The themes of death and martyrdom that overshadowed Celan’s life are most evident in the poems “Deathfugue” and “Aspen Tree”.

“Deathfugue” was Celan’s first published poem and his most famous. Its title in Romanian is “Tangoul Morti” or “Tango of Death”(Puchner, 1468). In this poem, death constantly surrounds the prisoners, especially when they are digging their own graves while under the supervision and beating of the German Commandant. The repetition of “We shovel a grave in the air”(lines 4 and 14) and “You’ll then have a grave in the clouds”(line 24) are the beating drum of impending doom. The irony of the grave digging is a metaphorical one as they know they will not lie in a grave dug into the earth but rather “a grave in the air”(line 32) as their bodies will most likely be burnt to ash upon their demise. Martyrdom is presented in the languid movements of the prisoners doing a dance of death to appease the guard. The prisoners go through the motions he demands without resistance and are resigned to their fate.

In “Aspen Tree”, Celan mourns his mother who “was shot when she was no longer capable of working” within the camps (Puchner, 1467). Images of nature such as wood, dandelions, rain clouds and stars are the juxtaposition of the poem within the poem which mixes the living with the lament of the dead mother. Celan remarks how “My mother’s hair never turned white”(line 2) in the same breath of remarking on the Aspen tree’s “leaves glance white in the dark”(line 1). The living wood brings to mind that fact that life goes on after his mother’s death.

Works Cited:

Celan, Paul. "Aspen Tree." Ed. Puchner, Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1470. Print.

Celan, Paul. "Deathfugue." Ed. Puchner, Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1469. Print.

Martin, Puchner. "Paul Celan, 1920-1970." THe Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1467-1469. Print.