ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Cesaire's poem, showing how it is aesthetically surrealist while also closely engaging with contemporary reality. It focuses on Celan's lexical and syntactical interventions in his translation, which may be summarized as an increase in the speaker's agency, thus intensifying the focus on the power of language; and the introduction of a bleaker tone, complemented by possible allusions to the Holocaust. The chapter explores this allusiveness by identifying points in the translations at which a German word or phrase, despite being apparently a direct translation of the original French term, takes on additional connotations because of its post-Holocaust context. Celan's translation demonstrates this post-cataclysmic tone and explores its implications for an understanding of Celan's poetics in the context of surrealist theory. Celan's version, undertones of post-Holocaust despair is added to Cesaire's hope for liberation from colonialism, through the introduction of two sets of new associations: the wounding and death of an individual and a lack of clo.
