Research Paper on:
Paul Celan's Poetry and the Holocaust

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
of the Holocaust from one who actually lived through the horrific conditions. He was a man who as clearly tormented by his experiences, for as each year passed he seemed  to lose more and more contact with any chance at contentment. His poetry concerning the Holocaust is incredibly powerful, as well as subtly symbolic as it leaves the reader to  imagine. In the following paper we first examines the man who was the poet Paul Celan as he was connected to the Holocaust. The paper then examines three of his  poems as they relate to the Holocaust. The poems examined are "Aspen Tree," "Fugue of Death," and "Tenebrae." Paul Celan and the Holocaust Paul Celan was "An eastern  European holocaust survivor who wrote haunting poems about the darker spiritual trials of life and relationships that exhibit a compact style that fuses broken words and chopped syntax to produce  a stark musicality" (Goodwin). Yet, in order to understand something of his poetry concerning the Holocaust one must understand how he reacted to his turmoil which provided the poetry. Goodwin  indicates that "In 1952 Celan married a graphic artist and republished his first book of poetry, which brought him immediate recognition with its vivid and disturbing evocation of the holocaust.  He continued to publish regularly throughout the 50s, winning great public recognition and awards, if not peace of mind." These particular poems were often considered to be "somewhat socially conscious  and mixed elements of both expressionism and surrealism" (Goodwin). And, then beginning in the 1960s the impact of his life began to truly hit home as "The poems of this  period reflect his turbulent emotional life and his obsessive, easily wounded psyche that made him prone to mental breakdowns. He now wrote in an almost hermetic manner using a private