Speaking shadows : human and divine possibility in the poetry of Paul Celan

Abstract

Paul Celan (1920-1970), the Jewish poet of German descent, lived through the greatest catastrophe of European Jewry of the modern age. He survived, as his parents and innumerable others did not, and dedicated his writing, his voice, to the reality he had witnessed. It would be a mistake, however, to think of him solely as a "Jewish" poet, a term he considered anti-Semitic (see Christina Ivanovic's '''All poets are Jews:' Paul Celan's Reading of Marina Tsvetaeva"). Celan wrote of the world as such; a world that was able to reorganize itself towards the annihilation of countless human beings. In its midst, he questioned how one could live, how brotherhood could still be possible, and how a God could possibly appear in such a place. This thesis follows his questioning and pursues, along with him, the course of poetry and poetic language through the appearance of atrocity