Writing Nothing: Negation and Subjectivity in the Holocaust Poetry of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis

2014 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-458
Author(s):  
D. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Paul Celan ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Holocaust Poetry

Polish and Hungarian Poets on the Holocaust

2019 ◽  
pp. 395-408
Author(s):  
George Gömöri
Keyword(s):  
Eastern European ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Holocaust Poetry ◽  
Nelly Sachs ◽  
Second World ◽  
Large Corpus

WHEN discussing Holocaust poetry two names usually spring to mind: Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs. There is, however, a large corpus of poems on the subject from two eastern European countries, both of which had large Jewish communities before the Second World War: Poland and Hungary. In what follows I shall discuss the best poetry on the Holocaust from both countries, excluding that written in Yiddish....

„In den Lüften liegt Man nicht eng“. Anmerkungen zur unauflösbaren Tragik des Dichters Paul Celan

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-34
Author(s):  
Horst Samson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Personal Tragedy

"“In the Air Where You Won’t Lie Too Cramped.” Notes on the Irresolvable Tragedy of the Poet Paul Celan. Paul Celan's work is characterized by reflections on the power and possibilities of language and poetry in general in processing personal tragedy and painful borderline experiences, especially the experience of the Holocaust. These experiences range from the persecution of Jews, the deportation and murder of his parents, to the ""Goll Plagiarism Affair"" or to mental illness in the last years of his life. These experiences of persecution and extermination of the Jews and Celan's involvement in the tragedy of his people are reflected in many of his poems, especially in Todesfuge. Keywords: Celan, Shoa, modern German poetry and language, tragedy "

Paul Celan, Poet of the Holocaust

Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 24-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luitgard N. Wundheiler
Keyword(s):  
Special Treatment ◽  
German Language ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Public Address ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The One ◽  
Native Tongue

The Jewish poet, Paul Celan, was born in Czernovitz, Rumania, in 1920 and committed suicide in Paris in 1970. His native tongue was German. He wrote eight volumes of poetry, all in German, although he spent almost half his life in France and was fluent in several languages. In a public address delivered in Bremen in 1958, on the occasion of being awarded a literary prize, he spoke of the German language as the one possession that had remained "reachable, close, and unlost in the midst of losses…although it had to pass through a thousand darknesses of deathdealing speech." German is the language of Holderlin, Biichner, and Rilke, all of whom Celan admired, but also the language in which the words Endlösung (final solution), Sonderbehandlung (special treatment), and judenrein (cleansed of Jews) were coined.

Manifestations of the Holocaust: Interpreting Paul Celan

Books Abroad ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Jerry Glenn
Keyword(s):  
Paul Celan ◽  
The Holocaust

A semiosic translation of Paul Celan’s Schwarze Flocken and Weggebeizt

Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (231) ◽  
pp. 279-305
Author(s):  
Sergio Torres-Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Abductive Inference ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Sign System ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Poetic Translation ◽  
Holocaust Poetry

AbstractThe need for a comprehensive semiotic understanding of poetic translation is at the heart of the present paper. This task is framed in terms of a multidisciplinary theoretical framework termed semiosic translation that I apply in this article to the translation of Holocaust poetry. This type of poetry is characterized as a distinct sign system that poses a number of challenges to both translators and semioticians. One of the most conspicuous problems is the ineffability of nothingness, which is particularly evident in the poetry of Paul Celan. Building on the notions of abductive inference (Charles S. Peirce) and rule-following (Ludwig Wittgenstein), I introduce a method for the translation of two key poems Schwarze Flocken (‘Black Snowflakes’), corresponding to Celan’s early period, and Weggebeizt (‘Worn down,’ a poem written in 1963). The semiotic method applied shows that the underlying Firstness of Holocaust art (an anti-semiotic sign system) is the driving force behind Celan’s poetry. It is also suggested that iconicity and indexicality are not peripheral semiotic processes but central elements to elucidating how the translation across sign systems takes place.

How to Dance After Auschwitz? Ethics and Aesthetics of Representation in John Cranko's Song of My People—Forest People—Sea

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Liora Bing-Heidecker
Keyword(s):  
Paul Celan ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
The Holocaust

John Cranko's only ballet for the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel, Ami-Yam, Ami-Ya'ar (Song of My People—Forest People—Sea, 1971) is described in a program note as “A Nation and Man Move in Parallel Cycles from Death to Regeneration.” It has remained unique in Cranko's choreographic corpus and in the Batsheva repertoire. Based on recently discovered film evidence, I reread Cranko's largely forgotten project and discuss its problematic and controversial reception in Israel and abroad, in light of Adorno's statement that “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbarism.” I situate it as a landmark in tackling the Holocaust in dance in Israel as of 1971. I problematize the ethics and aesthetics of representation in Cranko's ballet on the grounds of Giorgio Agamben's discussion of testimony and in reference to Jacques Derrida's reading of Paul Celan.

scholarly journals Hearing the Form: Breath and the Structures of Poetry in Charles Olson and Paul Celan

2021 ◽  
pp. 409-434
Author(s):  
David Fuller
Keyword(s):  
American Poetry ◽  
William Carlos Williams ◽  
First Century ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Post War

AbstractThis essay examines the ways in which the American poet Charles Olson, and the German-speaking Romanian Jewish poet Paul Celan, each in relation to specific post-war cultural circumstances, experimented with new ways of structuring poetry in relation to the breath: Olson in response to new global scientific, political, and intellectual currents; Celan in response to the Holocaust. The essay discusses not only how the poets wrote but also how they realised the printed forms of their poetry in performance, contrasting Olson’s literal performance of his theories with the different relation of print to performance of his contemporary and associate William Carlos Williams. It argues that Olson’s experiments, polemically formulated in his manifesto Projective Verse, while they have influenced central currents of American poetry since the 1950s, have remained largely American, whereas Celan’s, tentatively intimated in his anti-manifesto Der Meridian, and inimitably personal in their specific forms, can also be seen as modelling ways in which a wide range of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry can be realised in reading aloud.

scholarly journals A Poetics of the Holocaust? Three Exemplary Poets

2020 ◽  
pp. 343-371
Author(s):  
Efraim Sicher
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Literary Influences ◽  
Holocaust Poetry ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Desperate Attempt

Whether or not we understand the Holocaust to be unique or following a series of catastrophes in Jewish history, there is no doubt that the writing that came out of those traumaticevents is worth examining both as testimony and as literature. This article looks again at Holocaust poetry, this time circumventing Adorno’s much-cited and often misquoted dictum onpoetry after Auschwitz. The essay challenges the binary of either “Holocaust poetry is barbaric and impossible” or “art is uplifting and unaffected by the Holocaust.” I analyse three individual cases of Holocaust poetry as a means of both survival and testimony during the Holocaust – not retrospectively or seen by poets who were not there. Aesthetic and ethical issues are very much part of a writing in extremis which is conscious of the challenge well before Adorno and critical theory. In a comparison of Celan, Sutzkever, and Miłosz we can see their desperate attempt to write a poetry that meets the challenge of the historical moment, for all the differences between them in their cultural backgrounds, language traditions, and literary influences. As I argue, although scholars and critics have read these poets separately, they should be studied as part of the phenomenon of grappling with an unprecedented horror which they could not possibly at the time understand in all its historical dimension and outcome. We should no longer ignore their sources and antecedents in trying to gauge what they did with them in forging a “Holocaust poetics” that would convey something of the inadequacy of language and the failure of the imagination in representing the unspeakable, which they personally experienced on a day to day basis. By not reading “after Adorno” we can arrive at a more nuanced discussion of whether there isa Holocaust poetics.

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