Jewish History and Memory in Paul Celan's "DU LIEGST"

In the poem "DU LIEGST" (1967), Paul Celan demonstrates his mindfulness of historical dates as memorials to past traumas—the execution of the conspirators of the plot to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944, the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in 1919, and the be-heading of Danton in 1794. Celan has also written the specific date of the poem into the text, although hidden, and weaves together Jewish tradition and events of the recent past in a lyric exploration of human suffering. Building on the hitherto predominantly biographical readings of the poem, the presence of traditional J... Mehr ...