Les ‘chants du mort’ et la splendeur noircie de la vie qui résiste

Songs to the dead and the dark splendor of life which resists. This study aims to demonstrate how some Songs ‘To the dead’ from Gorj district (collected by Constantin Brăiloiu and translated in French by Ilarie Voronca, with the title Chants du mort) have considerably influenced the European poetry in the XXth century. These funeral songs, coming from an ancient oral tradition and very popular during the Romanian Middle Age, are the archaic proof of Romanian popular poetry, since they deal with Pre-Christian immaginary. In these songs the dead aims to be ready for a long trip, where he meets some supernatural entities, who drive him to the afterlife. In this article, a relevant part is dedicated to Paul Celan and Ilarie Voronca, and a specific attention is paid to the revolutionary trait of the sense of loss, to grief elaboration and to exile, in a world which has been destroyed by the Holocaust.