Motivi escatologici e apocalittici nella poesia di Rose Ausländer

This study investigates the presence of apocalyptic and eschatological motifs in a selection of poems by Rose Ausländer, written in German and English. Drawing on key texts from the Jewish apocalyptic tradition as intertextual touchstones, it examines how the poet reimagines inherited symbols and images through the lens of her lived experience – shaped by exile, the Shoah, and her years in New York. The analysis traces the transformations of the apocalyptic imaginary and of ideas of renewal in relation to the sociocultural upheavals of the time, to historical trauma, and to the shaping power of language. Particular attention is devoted to the representation of cosmic destruction, to the tension between annihilation and revelation, and, ultimately, to the regenerative function of poetic discourse. The essay also considers the movement of certain poems toward a post-apocalyptic, at times messianic, horizon, where possibilities of resurrection and spiritual rebirth emerge as the outcome of an ethical reflection and of a collective work of memory mediated by the poetic word.