In my reading of it, it has to do with the cutting of hair and shaving of imprisoned Jews in the concentration camps, ostensibly to combat lice but was actually a part of the industrialized murder where prisoners were reduced to raw resources; they processed the hair into yarn, felt, even insulation and stuffing for beds, matrasses and walls.
Hence “Your hair is not brown.” but also “They come for you on ships, loaded down with your hair. They bargain for it everywhere in the markets of lust.”
There is no return to what was, the epynomous ‘you’ has irrevocably changed. Even her hair. And therefore especially her hair signifies this.
Thank you for posting a poem by Paul Celan, a Holocaust survivor whose pain and guilt were too enormous to survive beyond physical survival. He drowned himself in the Seine. We need to keep everyone's story alive.
I recently bought his complete poetry in Dutch while visiting the Kiefer exhibition. Knew of his work through Benjamin. He is more relevant than ever, Benjamin too, especially with regards to the genocide in Gaza and the Westbank. Adorno was right when he said "There can be no poetry after Auschwitz," in its implications, history once again repeating itself through a cruel, macabre inversion.
I love this poem but someone please tell me what the fuck it means.
In my reading of it, it has to do with the cutting of hair and shaving of imprisoned Jews in the concentration camps, ostensibly to combat lice but was actually a part of the industrialized murder where prisoners were reduced to raw resources; they processed the hair into yarn, felt, even insulation and stuffing for beds, matrasses and walls.
Hence “Your hair is not brown.” but also “They come for you on ships, loaded down with your hair. They bargain for it everywhere in the markets of lust.”
There is no return to what was, the epynomous ‘you’ has irrevocably changed. Even her hair. And therefore especially her hair signifies this.
This is immensely helpful, thank you so much.
Here is the word-oddness I need in order for me to see a work as brilliant. Which this Celan certainly is.
Thank you for posting a poem by Paul Celan, a Holocaust survivor whose pain and guilt were too enormous to survive beyond physical survival. He drowned himself in the Seine. We need to keep everyone's story alive.
I recently bought his complete poetry in Dutch while visiting the Kiefer exhibition. Knew of his work through Benjamin. He is more relevant than ever, Benjamin too, especially with regards to the genocide in Gaza and the Westbank. Adorno was right when he said "There can be no poetry after Auschwitz," in its implications, history once again repeating itself through a cruel, macabre inversion.
One of the things that makes it so powerful is that he can express it in surrealism and yet we feel the weight of it.