Critical Approaches to "Death Fugue" by Paul Celan

"Death Fugue" is a poem that was written by a Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan, and gives readers a different understanding of the horrors of concentration camps. This poem is exceptional among literature that explores that the Holocaust because of its form, its use of irony, of allusions, of style, there are really just so many different elements to unpack and explore.

• [Biographical] I want to look at the way that Paul Celan's experience with literature shows up in the poem (he was very well read), also the ways that the poem reflects his own experience in concentration camps and the Holocaust and his conflicted relationship with Germany. Celan was very well educated before the war and it shows in his style. I think taking a Biographical approach would help to breakdown his technique, his allusions, and the type of descriptions/scenes he relies on. 
• [Source Studies] I have already looked into this some in the past because of the lines " your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamite" which alludes to both the Bible and the German legend of Faust. I think between these and obviously the Holocaust as a source there is a lot of very interesting material to tie together. I really want to know why this line is repeated, what its significance is!
• [Christian Lit] This is another literary theory that would could be traced between the Shulamite line, the mention of serpents, and the roles of Jews in the poem and in the Bible. Also just exploring death from this theory inside the poem what be something worth looking at. 
• [Archetypal] I think this would be a really intriguing way to look at the poem because its got a postmodern feel, it doesn't have a hero. I think that there is a lot of symbolism to break down and I think it would also be interesting to trace the experience of death throughout the poem but it definitely plays against archetypes in a lot of plays so it would be a lot of fun to look at it from this angle.