Have to admit that I am not a great one for anniversary commemorations, but with Paul Celan, will make an exception. The year 2020 sees both the centenary of his birth and the half centenary year of his death
Some background
Paul Celan's upbringing and young adulthood were crucial to his work.
Celan was born on 23rd November 1920 as Paul Antschel ,into a German speaking Jewish family in Czernowitz Bukovina , Romania. Bokovina was part of the Autstro-Hungarian empire and ceded to Romania after the Treaty of Versailles. Around 4% of the population of the new Romania were Jewish. By the late 1930's their position within Romania deteriorated. Viewed with suspicion by the authorities, Jews were despised by the right wing social revolutionaries, the Iron Guard who had quite a sizeable following. In 1940, Romania was forced to cede Bukovina to the Soviet Union on 28th June 1940. In September 1940 a right wing coalition took power,-which included the Iron Guard- and weeks later a German military mission came to Romania. On 20th November 1940, Romania formerly joined the Axis powers. On 21st January 1941, the Iron Guard staged a successful rebellion and a gruesome pogrom against Jews began in Bucharest.
Romania took back control of Bukovina following the launch of Operation Barborosa in June 1941. More pogroms took places in Romania, most notably at Iasi in July 1941, instigated by the Iron Guard.
On the 27th June and 28th June 1942 the Jews of Bukovina were rounded up -Celan's parents among them- and interned by the Romanian regime, who by now had taken control of the region of the Ukraine between the rivers Dniester and Bug to establish the province of Transnistria. Many Jews were deported to the area, or died on the way or were simply murdered where they lived. Celan initially avoided arrest by hiding in a friend's house. Jews imprisoned in Transnistria were sometimes sent into German custody on the other side of the River Bug. His mother was later shot after becoming too ill to work, whilst Celan's father died as a prisoner, possibly from typhus.
The grief of his parents death and what would now be called 'survivors guilt', along with his Celan's own experiences, haunts his work.'Aspen Tree' is stark and moving. The reference to the Ukraine indicates that Celan seemed to have established that his mother was killed somewhere in Transnistria.
Aspen Tree
Aspen tree, your leaves glance white into the dark.
My mother's hair never turned white.
Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine.
My fair-haired mother did not come home.
Rain cloud, do you linger at the well?
My soft-voiced mother weeps for all.
Rounded star, you coil the golden loop.
My mother's heart was hurt by lead.
Oaken door, who hove you off your hinge?
My gentle mother cannot return.
translated by John Felstiner from 'Second World War Poems', chosen by Hugh Haughton.
Another possibility was that his mother fell ill, was amongst a transport of Jews who were to be sent across the River Bug and was shot as she would not survive the journey. Another poem by Celan 'Nearness of Graves' open with the lines
'Still do the southerly Bug waters know,
Mother, the wave whose blows wounded you so ?'
The Life of Celan
Celan had some awareness of how severe the threat of Nazism was. He supported the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War , and 1938 travelled to Paris to study medicine. His biography details on the Poemhunter website states that he travelled through Berlin during Kristallnacht in1938. Celan was studying literature and languages back in Romania by 1939. Following his parents internment Celan was arrested and worked as a forced labourer When the Soviets took over the country, Celan worked in a psychiatric hospital caring for Soviet airmen in Bucharest, and had some poetry published. It was at this point he took the name Paul Celan. In 1947 he left Romania, and headed for Vienna then settled in Paris in 1948. Here Celan became a translator, a lecturer and made contact with other poets, particularly Nelly Sachs . Celan attracted a following in Germany and in 1960 was awarded the Georg Buchner Prize, one of the most prestigious German literary awards.
Arguably Celan's most famous poem is 'Deathfuge' , about concentration camp inmates being serenaded with music before being led off to execution. Its so haunting because it has the rhythm of an upbeat song.
Deathfuge /'Todesfuge ' (first verse)
" Black milk of daybreak, we drink it at evening
we drink it midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and drink
we shovel a grave in the air where you won't lie too cramped
a man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden
hair Margareta
he write it and steps out of doors and the stars are all
sparkling he whistles his hounds to stay close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the
ground
he commands we play up for the dance ...."
translated by John Felstiner from 'Second World War Poems', chosen by Hugh Haughton.
Death
On 20th April 1970, Paul Celan took his own life by drowning in the Seine. Though Celan's work is so rooted in the poetry of the Holocaust, there has to be enough space given to look at his other writing. To me, it would be too tragic if his whole life and work was completely defined by the Holocaust. Found a poem -'This Evening Also'- via Poemhunter , the translator is not credited.
This Evening Also
more fully,
since snow fell even on this
sun-drifted, sun drenched sea,
blossoms the ice in those baskets
you carry into town.
sand
you demand in return
for the last
rose back home
this evening also wants to be fed
out of the trickling hour.
Sources
Poemhunter entry for the poetry of Paul Celan
The Holocaust Encyclopedia Entry for Romania
Spring Magazine on English Literature, Trauma and its Traces in the Poetry of Paul Celan by Semanti Nandi
'Poetry of the Second World War- An International Anthology' edited by Desmond Graham ,Chato & Windus, London 1995
'Second World War Poetry ', Chosen by Hugh Haughton, ,Faber & Faber, London 2004
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