René Staar

... und mein Schatten ringt mit Deinem Schrei .... op. 27/III/B/1

The title of the work is taken from the poem "Finsternis" [Darkness] by Paul Celan, written in 1941. The poem speaks of painful loss in times of violence, and culminates in the line that was chosen as the title of this piece. This line of poetry is ambiguous. A scream implies the reaction to an act of violence, and evokes associations such as the cry of pain, the cry of horror, the cry of death. The shadow, in turn, has something to do with the past and with transience. So when the poet says "my shadow" and "your cry," it implies that there must have been a person close to the author that was apparently abused. Whether this person is still alive, however, is not disclosed. The "struggle," on the other hand, suggests that the emotional overcoming of this event is still ongoing. We are therefore dealing with a very personal and painful, probably often recurring memory of a traumatic experience. The "and" was deliberately added to the title to further emphasize the ambiguity of the line: an ambiguity that leaves plenty of room for a wordless music of painful sensation.