Analyzing Paul Celan's Poem Aspen Tree

Paul Celan’s Poem “Aspen Tree” – How Personal Tragedy Can “Humanize” The Cosmos

08

JUL

2013

Posted by victor as Discussion and Mind-Probing, Paul Celan, Poetry analyzed

Aspen Tree Reflecting The “Starry Night”, And The Golden Loop Of The Round Star As A Projection Of A Wounded Soul

Aspen Tree

Aspen Tree, your leaves glance white into the dark.

My mother’s hair was never white.

Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine.

My yellow-haired mother did not come home.

Rain cloud, above the well do you hover?

My quiet mother weeps for everyone.

Round star, you wind the golden loop.

My mother’s heart was ripped by lead.

Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges?

My gentle mother cannot return.

Paul Celan

The yellow is the sun of the green; the white is the sun of the night.

The semantic opposition between the motif of the Aspen tree glance-whiteness of the night (when life reflects eternity) and life motif carried by the image of yellow-haired mother starts with the first two-lined stanza of

By the image of the rain cloud hovering over the well Celan creates the first image of a sacrificed humanity projecting itself (in the form of suffering and tears) into the world. It is, as if, the well dried of grief became rain cloud, not another way around when rain pours down on earth. The second line of the third stanza – “My quiet mother weeps for everyone”, provides the semantic key to the first line. It is, as if, mother’s death makes the well offer extra-tears to the cloud to weep instead of her. The spiritual energy is going not from the sky down, like with Aspen Tree, with its leaves glancing white (reflecting the starry whitishness), but going from the earth (from the well to the cloud) to the sky, from life to non-life, from human life to non-or