Paul Celan's poetry is renowned for its subtlety and profundity, showcasing the traumas of individuals and history through fragmented language. Celan breaks the silence through poetry and explores the intertwined relationship between death and history, memory, emotions, body, and matter. The article will analyze the poetry of Celan in different periods, revealing the rich expressions and deep meanings of the theme of death.

1、 The Kinship between Death and Writing

Under the trauma of World War II, Celan's complex attitude towards the German language was both seen as a symbol of sin and slaughter, and had to be used in his creations. In his poetry, German becomes a tool for carrying darkness and historical truth, facing death and pain directly. In Celan's poetry, the boundaries between life and death, presence and absence are blurred, and the juxtaposition of the dead and the living presents a new possibility of discourse. He believes in the power of language and sees poetry as a possibility for dialogue, even though such dialogue is often hopeless. Celan's writing behavior is dynamic and practical, aiming to achieve deep communication through language while recognizing the difficulties of understanding. In his poetry, fragmented and isolated words reflect the cracks and scars of words, and are a posture of questioning and resisting loss. Although precious things no longer exist, some things worth cherishing have not been completely lost.

2、 Death Writing and Body Imagery

In Celan's poetry, body images such as hair, forehead, eyes, mouth, etc. are closely linked to death and suffering, creating a dark landscape. Especially the images of eyes and mouth, which are closely related to writing, reading, and speaking, are used to depict the gaze of death and death entering the body through the mouth. In The Fugue of Death, the blue eyes coincide with the gaze of death, while the almond eyes are associated with memories of a deceased mother, symbolizing the suffering and destruction of the Jewish nation. Snowbed links blind eyes with death, implying the process of formation and creation. The vocabulary and compound words related to the eyes in Celan's poetry, such as eyeballs, irises, eyelashes, as well as the gaze of inward vision, are all related to the experience and communication of darkness. The Sphere combines the universe with the body, the exterior with the interior, reflecting the homogeneity of death, abyss, words, and phrases. In 'From Darkness to Darkness', personal pain experiences are transformed into another possibility of light through language. The mouth is often associated with the tongue, silence, voice, speech, and other aspects, and injured eyes and mouth are associated with pain and death. In 'The Fugue of Death', 'we' drink 'black milk', which means sipping death. The scenes of drinking empty in "The Great Glass" and "From You to My Years" both imply death. In religious traditions, drinking wine symbolizes drinking the blood of God, while the prayer, drinking blood, and mouth in the "Light Out Worship" show a connection between the image and the mouth. The imagery of "dark plants" in "At the Height of the Mouth" implies threats and impending death, while the fact that "lips know", although silenced due to expression obstruction, is also a form of archiving and witnessing.

3、 Death Writing and Objects

Celan's death writing is closely related to objects, with snow and stone being two representative elements. Snow symbolizes isolation, death, and graves, as well as purity, innocence, and beauty, and the annihilation of traces or marks. In Celan's poetry, snow is associated with memories of mothers and others, and also leads to loneliness, isolation, burial, and death. Stones are intricately associated with the universe and the body, representing eternity, nobility, beauty, as well as hardness, firmness, and insensitivity. Celan links stones with poetry and art, emphasizing the connection between stones and primitive writing. Stones detach from the geological whole and exist independently, resisting the passage of time. Celan's poetry touches the boundaries of language and imagination, presenting the various facets of death in a rich and solemn way.