Silence as A Means of Communication in The Poetry of Dan Pagis

Dan Pagis (1930-1986), the Romanian born Israeli poet and Holocaust survivor, is best known for his short, concentrated and multilayered Holocaust poem “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car”. This unfinished poem which carries a universal message with Biblical allusions to Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel invites its readers to complete Eve’s hanging and unarticulated message and to transmit it to others. Silence is Pagis’ way of communicating the unspeakable, the ineffable. This is a highly expressive silence that speaks louder and deeper than words do. This paper analyzes Pagis’ poem in the context of Adorno’s statement that “there can be no poetry after Auschwitz”