I Reilig Père Lachaise

Publication Instance Details #333

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	Genocide War
War / Genocide Referenced	War: Second World War Genocide: Holocaust
Irish Context	Other
Languages	Irish
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Paratext Text	Páras, Meitheamh 1995
Notes	The speaker of the poem describes the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, a famous open cemetery in which many writers and artists were buried. Despite the speaker's disbelief in the 'Rebirth' - of Christ, perhaps, he visits the cemetery with a companion. In this poem, the speaker describes various graves and memorials in the cemetery: Germans walking past a memorial for the Jewish people killed in Auschwitz; Oscar Wilde's grave; the grave of the French surrealist poet, Paul Éluard, who wrote clandestine anti-Nazi poetry during World War II and became known as the 'poet of Freedom'. The speaker also mentions the homeless people who frequent the graveyard.