You ask a ghost for reasons
And give him a uniform of tin
On which taps a timeless finger
He who has but few words
A widow
A madness
A. Sorrow
A. chain ( not long)
That leads to nowhere.
.
Malcolm Paul
Paul Celan’s father died in autumn 1942. It is unclear whether he died from typhus and exhaustion or whether he was shot. It seems that Paul Celan heard about this from a letter from his mother around this time. At the end of 1943 he heard from one of his relatives that also his mother was dead, she was killed by a German soldier through a shot in her neck.
On 6 November 1969 he moved a last time in an apartment in 6 Avenue Émile Zola (15e). From this house it is only a few steps to the Seine and to Pont Mirabeau – the bridge about which Guillaume Apollinaire had written a famous poem. Paul Celan committed suicide most likely in the night of 19 to 20 April 1970. It is assumed that he went into the Seine from Pont Mirabeau. He did not leave a note, but a biography about Hölderlin was open on his desk with the following sentence from a letter by Clemens Brentano about Hölderlin underlined
Manchmal wird dieser Genius dunkel und versinkt in den bitteren Brunnen seines Herzens.
(“Sometimes this genius gets dark and sinks in the bitter wells of his heart”)
In my opinion Paul Celan was the greatest 20 th Century European poet…..
It’s a short poem,as we’re many of Paul Celans.