Paul Celan
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16. bio and picture of Paul Celan Anne
this bio is really interesting. his parents died in concentration camps. he was only 50 when he died. i have found a "young" picture of him and an "older" one.
"Truth stands outside the doors of our souls...and knocks." Gregory of Nyssa
Paul Celan (1920-1970)
Pseudonym for Paul Antschel
Poet and lecturer, influenced by French
Surrealism <abreton.htm>and Symbolism <mallarme.htm>, born in Romania, lived in France, wrote in German, author and gave German literature one of its most powerful voices.Paul Celan was born in a German-speaking area of Romania in Czwernowitz. He studied medicine in Paris in 1938 and then Romance philology at the University of Czernowitz. His parents were deported to death camps, where they died long afterward. During World War II Celan, a Jew, was sent to a forced-labour camp, where he worked until heavy snow forced it to close. Celan managed to survive the Holocaust, although he was imprisoned until 1943.
When the Russian Army reinvaded his homeland in 1944, Celan went to Bucharest, where he continued reading the great German lyric poets Georg Trakl and Rainer Maria Rilke. He changed his name to Paul Aurel, then to Paul Ancel and finally to Paul Celan.
After the war he moved to Bukarest, where he worked as a translators and editor at an publishing company. In 1947 he went to Vienna and immigrated then to Paris, where he became a teacher of German language at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In 1952 Celan married the graphic artist Gisèle Lestrange.
Celan established his reputation first in West Germany. His first poems started to appear in the periodicals in the late 1940s. His second book, MOHN UND GEDACHTNIS (Poppy and Memories, 1952) established his reputation as an important poet of the Holocaust. Todesfugue, Celan's most famous poem, describes the Jewish experience under Nazism. Celan's friends René Char, Nellie Sachs, and other poets felt the restrictions placed on them by their indentity and by the nightmare of history that the Holocaust represented. As Celan said in his acceptance speech for Georg Bühner prize, language must be set free from the history.
In the 1950s Celan's work was becoming known for its broken syntax and short length, expressing his perception of the fragmented world in which he lived. Celan's radical minimalaism concentrated the poetry to the essential core of the experience.
In 1960 Celan received Georg Büchner Prize. He translated also works from such writers as
Cocteau <cocteau.htm>, Michaux, Mandelstam <mandelst.htm>, Ungaretti, Pessoa, Rimbaud, Valéry, Char, du Bouchet, and Dupin. He suffered from bouts of depression throughout the 1960', and when Claire Goll, poet Yvan Goll's wife, accused him of plagiarizing some of his husband's work, Celan suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1970, overcome with his struggle with language, Celan died by his own hand: he drowned himself in Seine on May 1, at the age of 49.For further reading: Paul Celan by Amy Colin (1991); The Art of Hunger by Paul Auster (1992)
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16. Celan // Graves Rising Jeff
"Deathfugue"
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
There is tension of opposites in the first two words. "Black milk" catches me off guard the second time I read the poem. I, for some reason, did not stop to ponder the tension here the first time around. Milk is not black and black is not milk. I can think of no drink that I have ever drunk that is black, and I can’t think of describing the color black with milk. However, Celan does. Is it because it is dark outside that everything is a black color to them? Why isn’t the moon shining white? They must be locked up away inside working then. Could he be signifying some sort of equality in the races? Instead of specifying the specific color of our skin, he blends the two together to the point where it is hard to distinguish between the two. Is that not what is happening today between skin color and even sexes? A "white" person today could easily be categorized as a black because of his/her ancestry. Similarly, more and more women are blending their feminine appearance to look masculine. Often it is hard to distinguish if a person is a guy or a girl.
There is also tension here in the time of the day. Having the words "daybreak" before "evening" in the same line just doesn’t make sense. I suppose if this is in a concentration camp, you probably wouldn’t know what day it is or even what time of day it might be. This is further supported in the next line.
We drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
It is almost as if the reader is going backwards in time here. I suppose that is what a concentration camp might be like. There is no progress, only a moving away from progress. In this poem we move from daybreak, evening, midday, to morning. Think about this progression. It is as if we move BACKWARDS in time! This order of time must be deliberate by the poet. If we strictly look at this line, we see that we move from midday to morning to night. Hmm. This wouldn’t make since. The poet, if he wanted to move forward in time, would have moved from morning to midday to night.
We drink and we drink
I have a feeling that they are not actually drinking here. This drinking must mean something else. I want to say that drinking is working, but I’m not too sure. Maybe drinking is just the want of drinking, but not actually the act of drinking. For instance, when I get really thirsty without access to water, I will literally try to drink my saliva. These Jews probably already have dry mouths. They are drinking air. They are drinking but not drinking. They are so helpless that they dream about drinking constantly. It is interesting that what they drink turns to be "you" later in the poem. They begin to drink off the people that control them. This in turn gives total power to the Nazis. The Nazis have complete control not only of their works, but their bodies too.
We shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped
This line is another line that shows up again and again in the poem. Each time that it shows up, it has a different twist to it. There is a different image to each line. This one sends the image of a gravestone hovering in the air just below the clouds. The next one is an image of a grave below the earth. The next one is a grave floating above the clouds. The final image is one of a grave floating in the clouds. Just like the order in the time of the day, the pattern here does not fit. The pattern is not familiar to me because the grave is neither ascending nor descending. It is floating down and up and back down again.
Another interesting thing about this line is the words "you won’t lie too cramped." These words surface again and again in the poem. The Jews are shoveling their own graves and are being told that they will all fit. The graves that they shovel, though extending beyond the limits of the soil and into the sky, are never big enough! The reality is that they are too cramped in the grave.
The repetition in this poem is something that should be analyzed further. It is interesting to note that most all of the lines begin with the words "black, we, he, your, or a." I wonder what those last two words are in German. Could they be one of these English words?
Finally, read the line quoted above again. Do you see where the comma should be? There should be a comma before "there," but there is not one. There is something peculiar of twisting the words of "air" and "there" together. Though this was written in German, could the poet have deliberately known about the twisting that is going on here in the English language. "There" sounds just like "air." There air. Air there. There air there. Air there air.
Maybe this wasn’t deliberate because there are no commas separating the parts of the earth from "there you won’t lie too cramped" in the proceeding lines. There is no comma after "sky," nor a comma after "clouds."
Come on Celan, come and tell me why you didn’t use the comma. Now that I think about it, there should be a period there! HEY-Celan does not use one comma or one period in his entire poem. We have to rely on the natural breaks in the lines to know where to pause. Why?
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16. Celan // the poison of black milk Anne
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
Immediately I am struck by the contrasting images: black and milk. I tend to think of milk as something pure, innocent, and childlike. What's more universal than milk and cookies? However, the milk is black, probably from the ashes of the detention camp. This imagery is dark and forbearing. When I see the word "daybreak" I think of morning of a fresh start, but the author is talking about milk in the evening. What else could the milk represent? It isn't a nourishing milk, it is the dark "milk" of nazism.
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
There is not end to the drinking of this dark "milk." The repetition of the word "drink" reminds me of a constant grind and after reading some information about Celan, I see these images of him slaving away at a work camp.
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
Why are they shoveling a grave in the air? Later, the same line is repeated except they are digging a grave in the "sky." Later, the Nazi character "grants us a grave in the air." The speaker is no longer preparing the graves of others, he is a victim as well. The earth and sky are not cramped places, rather they are freeing. However, the contrast the word "grave" grabs the reader into realizing these shoveling actions do not have a positive result.
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
I a reminded of the image of the Nazi general in the movie Schindler's List. For some reason, I picture the scene where he is standing on his porch, over-looking the detention camp. All of a sudden he picks up his rifle and shoots a couple of Jews.
In this line, the word "plays" is a contrast to the image of the workers slaving away, shoveling graves. "writes"--represents some kind of civility in the mad context of the poem. Thousands of people are being killed and tortured, and yet this German? man is sitting in his house, writing his girlfriend with golden hair. He lives in a "house" which has more confinement than the "air" and "sky" mentioned throughout the poem.
Line by line analysis, I really like the first line ..
Black--dark imagery, evil, in contrast to milk. "Black milk" is used throughout the poem. It never changes. Perhaps it represents the constant ash of the burning bodies at the detention camps or the burning of coal. "Black milk" is the poison of the Nazi's that the Jews are forced to drink.
milk--such a stark contrast to "black." I tend to think of milk as creamy and white, not black. milk is a source of nurturing, as babies we drink the milk of our mothers, it is supposed to help us grow, this "black milk" has the opposite effect. it is killing the workers.
of daybreak --the "black milk" comes from the daybreak, daybreaks are supposed to be sunny and bright with the promise of a new day. for the speaker, daybreak starts dark.
we --the author is not alone, they are drinking together
drink--the author is taking it in, ingesting it ...
it at evening--all day the workers drink. this also makes me think that maybe they were given three breaks during their work days. morning/midday/and evening. during these times they were given something to drink, but it was always clouded by ash.
I like this line because of the contrasting images of the words and because of the beauty in the individual words.
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16.5 Celan // Response to Anne // Black Milk Secrets Unveiled Jeff
Hey Anne,
I see that we were the only two to choose this poem, and I have just had some new insight on it that I thought you might like to consider. In Ellie Wiesel’s Night, the story ends with a man sucking the milk from the breasts of a woman. I think this is the image Celan is trying to provoke for us! The constant referral of drinking with the immediate image of milk at the beginning of the poem is definitely given to clue us in here. What do they drink from? They drink "You." How do you possibly drink someone?
J Yep, you’ve got it. The only time in our lives where we drink of a person is during communion and as a young infant. Now, I’m going to exclude the communion possibility within this poem because I see no reference to any Christ-like symbols. That leaves me with the image of an infant being nourished through the mother’s milk in her breasts. These Jews were at their life’s last straw. The only possible way of surviving would be to drink of this milk at night so no one would see this evil act, hence, "black milk."Agree or disagree?
Jeff
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18. Celan // The Fugue Plays on... Ryan
As the title often sets the tone of the poem and can reveal much information, it is important to know what a fugue is. A fugue is a style of classical music in which a common theme is repeated and slightly added upon and changed. The result is a very complex piece of music the evolves over time. The metaphor of this poem is a fugue is readily apparent with the repetition of drinking and black milk. Repetition is a powerful tool that can push a point and create incredible amounts of tension. After reading this poem, the reader can begin to associate with the cycle of terror and repetition and sense of no escape to be found in a concentration camp. The repetition of the drinking almost makes the reader sick, compelling more and more drinking, being out of control and unable to stop. Helpless.
he-
Male. "The Man." Power and oppression. Although this could be Hitler, it could also be any officer in a concentration camp. These officers must have been like evil gods to the Jews, able to allow life to live or die on a whim. The names of these people are not important. No names are important in this poem. Either you live or die, you oppress or are oppressed. This entire poem has a deep sense of anonymity, "we" versus "they."
orders-
Like a man would whistle to his dog. Also, an image of pain and sorrow. Order fits well into this line and the jarbledness of the poem because it plays on the central theme of music. The title, "Deathfugue," makes this whistling the music, the repetitious fugue to which the Jews are forced to dance. As we all know, whistling is easy and fun, but the Jews are ordered to dance to the sick music, to dance and whistle along with it.
us-
Again, a level of anonymity. Who is the "us?" There is a sense of giving up, giving in in this line, like people have been responding to the whistle many times, a sick routine.
Strike-
Strike is a powerful, violent, fast word. A word that sounds like it sounds, like the crack of a whip. This word adds great amounts of tension to the line. First, it can be interpreted as the person ordering people in line and then for no reason striking someone in the crowd. A spontaneous burst of violence. Also, it is a mocking command. He orders us to strike out, lash out against your captors- if you dare! A taunt from someone with power. It is effective because the reader does not know what is coming next and asks, "what are we striking out against?"
up-
Rising, perhaps even rising above. "Strike up" is a term used in music to begin a song or a dance. The Jews are forced to strike up the dance as if they were at some formal ball or something. Also, this word fits the poem well as it parallels the part when the Jews are digging a grave in the sky, and will be forcefully struck up into those graves. As the Jews were forced to do labor that would propagate the German war machine that oppressed them, they must have felt like they were actively aiding their own demise.
and play-
Wow. Being forced to dance and play to add to your own destruction. What horrible imagery. How, in the midst of this dark, horrible poem can the word "play" be brought in?
for the dance-
Startling imagery that brings us back to the music/fugue aspect of the poem. The Jews were forced to enjoy what was happening, dancing like cruel marionettes under Nazi power. A sad, sad fate for the Jews.
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17. Great Poets Paper
Ryan Schultz
Surrealist Poet
The poetry of Paul Celan is filled with a dark intensity and surrealism that transcends the boundaries of modern language. Armed with this new language, Celan approaches the traumatic experience of the death of his parents due to the Holocaust by utilizing paradoxical metaphors and powerful juxtapositions in time and space. Language, sound and sight merge to give the reader no choice but to change their thoughts and perceptions, to view, only if for a moment, the world through the eyes of Celan.
The Holocaust had a profound impact on Celan, as both his mother and father died in concentration camps. Celan’s struggle with the holocaust is a common theme in his poetry, and his anger toward God is apparent. In Alchemical, Celan mocks the blessing from God, and is angered at his ability to do nothing. The first word of the poem, silence, illustrates the frustration and pain of inability to stop the horror in the camps. Celan blames both himself and God for being silent, for the inability to do something, anything. This phrase is repeated later in the seventh stanza, and is followed by the image of Fingers, insubstantial as smoke. These fingers represent both the hands of the Jews that have been cruelly reduced to ash, and the hand of God, which have no power.
Burning and ash are recurrent themes in this poem. Charred hands and burnt names and grey ash is all that is left. In a mocking tone, Celan writes that there is so much ash to be blessed by the char-less, cinder-less God who did nothing. What good is the blessing now? The consumption of souls is likened to a holy war with land won for God. And the victims? Weightless, rings of souls. The use of the word weightless is another instance of nothingness, inability to be heard or to act. Weightless, though, has a double meaning; insubstantial. Celan views the destruction caused by the Holocaust as a sacrifice to God which who is unable to understand the horror the people are going through. This dichotomy makes the souls of those who perished as insignificant. It is also interesting to note that the souls rise in rings, as smoke rises in rings. The allusion to smoke and ash is obvious, but a ring also symbolizes marriage. Marriage is very powerful metaphor because the Jews are God’s chosen people and even referred to in Hosea as the wife of God. Through the metaphors and language in Alchemical, Celan introduces the reader to his world of blame and pain.
In Tenebrae, Celan further explores his anger and emotions toward God. This poem seeks revenge on God for the Holocaust by removing His power and raising the speaker above God. The poem opens with a threat: We are near, Lord,/near and at hand. This line sets the tone of the poem, the speaker is making his presence known. During the Holocaust, Jews felt that God ignored their sufferings, that God left them. Celan changes the attitude as he is now seeking out the God that killed his parents and ravaged his people. There is an obvious mocking tone as the word Lord is repeated, often sounding like a command. Accusations are made in the fourth stanza when blames that the blood is the blood that God shed. To this point, the poem seems to be a court case with God on the stand, and the Jews as the jury. A total reversal of power occurs in the third stanza when the speaker exclaims Pray, Lord,/ Pray to us,/ We are near. The voice, which had no power during the holocaust, is now screaming. God is found guilty and his sentence is the Holocaust. Celan’s anger and emotional stress are poured forth in Tenebrae.
A common theme in Celan’s poems is for emotions to take a physical state. I am the First speaks of pain and sadness made physical. The first line is enigmatic; how can someone look for his or her own eye? The result is a futile search for the blue, which is free like the sky, in a world where the blue cannot find itself. Drinking from the footprint in the second line, is a metaphor for remembering the past, taking in from the residue someone has left behind. What is left behind? A pearl. A pearl is a beautiful, priceless jewel formed layer by layer in an ugly oyster. This pearl also is connected to the eye in the first line, as both are white and round. Up to this point, the reader does not know what the pearl is. The reader is free to make any of the usual associations to a pearl, such as beauty, etc. Not until the fifth line does Celan reveal the shocking truth of the pearl, that it is the black hailstone of sadness. This is an example of Celan re-creating language to make an emotion physical. In the end, the white pearl is caught in a white handkerchief. The only thing that exists is the sterile, white bleached world devoid of feelings and emotions but sadness.
Utilizing and re-creating language to fit the world of emotions, Paul Celan wrote poems which caught the real sense of pain and the Holocaust. The poems Tenebrae, I am the First, and Alchemical, exemplify the unique style of Celan’s writing. Filled with emotion and electricity, the poems make the emotional struggle real for the reader. Unfortunately, we are unable to view the truth in the poems as they are not presented in there original German. “Only in one’s mother tongue,” Celan wrote, “can one express one’s own truth. In a foreign language, the poet lies” (McClatchy 209). We must live this lie.
Appendix:
Alchemical
Silence,
cooked like gold, in
Charred
Hands.
Great, grey
Sisterly shape
Near like all that is lost:
All the names, all those
Names
Burnt
with the rest. So much
Ash to be blessed. So much
Land won
Above
The weightless, so weightless
Rings
of
souls.
Great,
grey one. Cinder-
Less.
You,
then
You
with the pale
Bit-open
bud,
You
in the wine-flood.
(Us
too, don’t you think,
this
clock dismissed?
Good,
Good,
how your word died past us here.)
Silence,
cooked like gold, in
Charred,
charred
Hands.
Fingers,
insubstantial as smoke. Like crests, crests
of air
Around----
Great,
grey one. Wake-
Less.
Re-
Gal
one.
Tenebrae
We are near, Lord,
Near and at hand.
Handled already, Lord,
Clawed and clawing as though
The body of each of us
were
your body, Lord.
Pray,
Lord,
Pray
to us,
We
are near.
Wind
awry we went there,
Went
there to bend
Over
hollow and ditch.
To
be watered we went there, Lord.
It
was blood, it was
What
you shed, Lord.
It
gleamed.
It
cast you image into our eyes, Lord.
Our
eyes and our mouths are so open and empty, Lord.
We
have drunk, Lord.
The
blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.
Pray,
Lord.
We
are near.
I
am the first to drink of the blue that still looks for its eye.
I
drink from your footprint and see:
You
roll through my fingers, pearl, and you grow!
You
grow, as do all the forgotten.
You
roll: the black hailstone of sadness
Is
caught by a kerchief turned white with waving goodbye.
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22. Celan // too much Joanna
I was struck by the poem Thread suns, by Paul Celan because of its simplicity.
The poem draws a very distinct picture in my head. I picture myself in the
"grey-black wilderness" which is nothing like the image of the forest I am used
to. It is dark and intimidating, and tiny, weak threads of sunlight filter through
the trees. The sun, which could be a symbol of hope and happiness, is distant, above
the cover of the trees. The trees are reaching towards it, but in their enthusiasm
they stifle out the very thing they are reaching for. Trees are such a symbol of
life and comfort to me, that it is strange to me to use them in this way.
tunes in to light's pitch: there are
still songs to be sung on the other side
of mankind.
(Celan, "Thread suns", Vintage
p. 215)
I'm not really sure why the image of music is used here. Maybe music is a metaphor
for life. Even though the speaker is caught in the wilderness of despair, life still
does exist- at least for other people. The reaching trees realize that there is
still life to be lived, if they can reach it. The whole poem gives me a sense of
being trapped and smothered- life can be like that sometimes. It reminds me of the
times when I am worried about a number of things and feel myself being pulled in multiple
directions by friends and family who need me to be there for them, and by my own emotional
needs. In those times, all of those things feel so important and overwhelming, and I
have distinct memories of sitting in front of my homework and not being able to focus at
all. I feel trapped by my responsibilities to school, and overwhelmed by everything
else that is going on at the time. There are so many things I feel like I should be
doing, yet as I reach for that light and the healing it could bring, I am smothered
because, in my overzealousness, I try to do too much. Like the trees that reach and
grow until they are too dense to more than threads of light come through, I feel like if I
push myself beyond my limits and stretch my energy in too many directions, the light can
not reach me either.
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Celan Ryan
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Mike Sersch
Great Poets
Fr Mark Thamert
The Poem is Lonely:
Paul Celan and the Search for Meaning
Paul Celan is charged with one of the most daunting tasks any of us can be given. He, as an artist, is responsible to not only make sense of his own world, but to do so as a Holocaust survivor. How can one create meaning after the gas chambers? When all of Western culture has lead us to that point, the lowest in all of human history, what are to make of our collective past. Celan response by recreating the world he has been given, turning things on their head, retelling legends that have been darkened by ash.
Black milk. Celan begins his famous "Todesfugue" with this memorable contradiction. As Jeff from our class has put it: "Milk is not black and black is not milk." Celan sets us up with a point of tension: a horrifying image of that which is associated with mother, with growth and health being corrupted, made obscene.
Celan has no choice. The Holocaust: with the genocide, gassings, labor camps, and other atrocities, goes beyond the human imagination. The levels of human depravity boggles the mind, goes beyond our most twisted fantasies. The evil done in that time still remains unexplainable, hence the necessity of metaphor to describe it and its effects on the human psyche. We need the artist to (re)create the world of experience for us in order for the artist to make sense, in order for us to understand, in order to bring order out of chaos. Each reading, in this sense, recreates the poem and recreates the world, maybe necessarily in contrast to all that we had previously held to be true. Any interpretation only goes so far, there are always gaps, openings with which the chaotic (yet primordial and essential) seeps in.
When we read a phrase like Black milk, a sense of vertigo occurs. We (the readers) need to place ourselves back into a point of perspective. Celan is not just writing of his experience, he is working off of the entire Western history. The title of the poem is "Death Fugue", a sharp comment on art in general:
. . . since ‘Art of the Fugue’ was the summa of Johann Sebastian Bach, our paragon Meister aus Deutschland . Now Celan’s term Todesfugue throws into doubt the acme of music, which is itself the quintessential art. That doubt was already blatant when Bach fugues were heard from the commandant’s residence at Auschwitz. . . . Celan’s verse undermines any high idea of music ordering our lives (Felstiner 33).
Celan goes beyond just music, he is speaking of all methods of communication. How are we to connect, what value is there within it (certainly there is something essential in communication, that is what makes us alive and human) and how can we do it now? By casting doubt, by undermining music, Celan undermines all of art, his own included.
Within the vacuum that is created by the undermining of art, of communication, and hence of meaning (the world as we know it), Celan sets up his own version of legend, folklore and myth. "A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes/ he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden haired Margarete" (Todesfugue, lines 5-6.) Margarete, the image of Germanic womanhood in general, is linked to the man who stands for the power of the Nazi’s, and in some Satanic (serpents) way he is linked to art, "he writes" and commands the Jews to dance (line 9). Germany, as both male and female (and hence, the whole of Germany, and hence, all of Europe) is linked to this destruction, this black milk.
We come upon the figure of Margarete again in the next stanza. Celan repeats the lines quoted above, and adds after "golden haired Margarete/ your ashen haired Shulamith we dig a grave in the breezes there once lies unconfined" (lines 14-15). Shulamith, the folkloric image of Jewish womanhood, is "ashen haired", the ovens have covered her in a snow of human combustion. She is in direct contrast to the German woman, whose hair is golden. By introducing Margarete first, Celan shows us the beautiful (even though we know it is hollow). He then reveals the true terror that is behind the golden hair, the death camps.
The switch from gold to ash is a theme repeated in the poem "Alchemical". Alchemy, the forgotten medieval art of turning lead to gold, gave birth to modern chemistry. In this poem, Celan criticizes not only our Western past, but our present, our scientific knowledge that did nothing to save the six million Jews (in fact, this scientific knowledge helped the Nazi cause, and when the war was done many of these scientists came over the States).
The alchemist began with lead, a gray, heavy and solid substance that would be turned to gold. Celan begins with a twist:
Silence, cooked like gold, in
charred
hands. (lines 1- 3)
We do not have lead, which is natural if ugly. Instead, we begin with silence; the silence of the world while the Nazi’s first attempted to deport the Jews from within their borders, the silence of those in the camps who had no words to speak of what was happening to them. For a poet to begin with silence is another of Celan’s attempts to express the inexpressible, we know that he uses a voice, but we also know that his silence (along with the silence of the dead, "names/ burnt with the rest. So much" (lines 7-8)) speaks much more. Celan is speaking not only from his own experience, but also as one of too many whose lives had been cut short in the terrors of the Holocaust. He speaks from a long tradition, a tradition that had unshy bigotry against his people.
Let us go now to another of Celan’s poems, "Tenebrae". The title refers to Matins and Lauds offered on the last three days of Holy Week, done in a funereal setting. As Benedict XIV (Institut., 24), describes this commemoration:
"Lauds follow immediately on Matins, which in this occasion terminate with the close of day, in order to signify the setting of the Sun of Justice and the darkness of the Jewish people who knew not our Lord and condemned Him to the gibbet of the cross" (Catholic Encyclopedia).
Celan is speaking ironically, playing of the institutional anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church. Only in the poem, Celan connects the experiences of the Jewish people during the Holocaust with crucifixion of Jesus (the devout Jew).
Handled already, Lord
clawed and clawing as though
the body of each of us were
your body, Lord. (lines 3- 6).
The Jewish people are not only identified with Christ the victim, they are connected with God in the next stanza.
Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
we are near. (lines 7-9)
Heaven and earth have been switched, the cries of a desperate people are now the objects of prayers, prayers from a Deity that appears unable to offer help. It is not just Christianity that appears at fault, but the Christian God, once thought omnipotent and actively involved in the course of human history, now appears inept and mournful.
Art, science, religion, even God are questioned and undermined in Celan’s poetry. Meaning, a sense of purpose or beauty in the world is a struggle when we are still treading on the ashes of the dead. Celan asks the questions, his poetry even lives these questions (as he also did). It is our charge, now, to live these questions, to intake these poems in such a way that we may, as Rilke advises us, "Live these questions into answers."
Bibliography
Celan, Paul. "Todesfugue" ("Death Fugue"), "Tenebrae", "Alchemical", translated from the German by Michael Hamburger in The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry. ed. by McClatchy, J.D.; Vintage Books, New York, 1996
Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. "Seeking The Meridian: The Reconstruction of Space and Audience in the Poetry of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis." Religion and the Authority of the Past, ed. by Siebers, Tobin, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor; 1993
Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995
Markwardt, Jeffrey R. "Graves Rising", e mail post on Tuesday, March 14, 2000 8:42 PM
Thurston, Herbert. entry under "Tenebrae" in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV. Robert Appleton Company, 1912; Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14506a.htm,
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