Why Paul Celan Took Alarm

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-212
Author(s):  
Yves Bonnefoy ◽  
John Felstiner
Keyword(s):  
Paul Celan ◽  
Open Wound ◽  
French Writer ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Yves Bonnefoy

Paul Celan Breaks Into “Tears, His Body Shaken by Sobbing, the Whole Affair Again Present, Accusings, Denouncings, as Stunned and distressed as on day 1.” It's June 1966 in Paris, and he has gone with Yves Bonnefoy to visit a “most generous, most welcoming” friend who has “deep instincts for a poet's quality and for how infamous these attacks on Celan were.” But “[t]hat trustful welcome had only deepened the open wound.”Nothing in the life of Paul Celan (1920-70), short of his parents' murder in the Holocaust, racked him more than the vicious, specious plagiarism charges a German French writer, Claire Goll, launched against him on behalf of her deceased husband. As Bonnefoy saw all too well, Celan never recovered from them.

„In den Lüften liegt Man nicht eng“. Anmerkungen zur unauflösbaren Tragik des Dichters Paul Celan

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-34
Author(s):  
Horst Samson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Personal Tragedy

"“In the Air Where You Won’t Lie Too Cramped.” Notes on the Irresolvable Tragedy of the Poet Paul Celan. Paul Celan's work is characterized by reflections on the power and possibilities of language and poetry in general in processing personal tragedy and painful borderline experiences, especially the experience of the Holocaust. These experiences range from the persecution of Jews, the deportation and murder of his parents, to the ""Goll Plagiarism Affair"" or to mental illness in the last years of his life. These experiences of persecution and extermination of the Jews and Celan's involvement in the tragedy of his people are reflected in many of his poems, especially in Todesfuge. Keywords: Celan, Shoa, modern German poetry and language, tragedy "

Paul Celan, Poet of the Holocaust

Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 24-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luitgard N. Wundheiler
Keyword(s):  
Special Treatment ◽  
German Language ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Public Address ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The One ◽  
Native Tongue

The Jewish poet, Paul Celan, was born in Czernovitz, Rumania, in 1920 and committed suicide in Paris in 1970. His native tongue was German. He wrote eight volumes of poetry, all in German, although he spent almost half his life in France and was fluent in several languages. In a public address delivered in Bremen in 1958, on the occasion of being awarded a literary prize, he spoke of the German language as the one possession that had remained "reachable, close, and unlost in the midst of losses…although it had to pass through a thousand darknesses of deathdealing speech." German is the language of Holderlin, Biichner, and Rilke, all of whom Celan admired, but also the language in which the words Endlösung (final solution), Sonderbehandlung (special treatment), and judenrein (cleansed of Jews) were coined.

Manifestations of the Holocaust: Interpreting Paul Celan

Books Abroad ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Jerry Glenn
Keyword(s):  
Paul Celan ◽  
The Holocaust

How to Dance After Auschwitz? Ethics and Aesthetics of Representation in John Cranko's Song of My People—Forest People—Sea

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Liora Bing-Heidecker
Keyword(s):  
Paul Celan ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
The Holocaust

John Cranko's only ballet for the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel, Ami-Yam, Ami-Ya'ar (Song of My People—Forest People—Sea, 1971) is described in a program note as “A Nation and Man Move in Parallel Cycles from Death to Regeneration.” It has remained unique in Cranko's choreographic corpus and in the Batsheva repertoire. Based on recently discovered film evidence, I reread Cranko's largely forgotten project and discuss its problematic and controversial reception in Israel and abroad, in light of Adorno's statement that “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbarism.” I situate it as a landmark in tackling the Holocaust in dance in Israel as of 1971. I problematize the ethics and aesthetics of representation in Cranko's ballet on the grounds of Giorgio Agamben's discussion of testimony and in reference to Jacques Derrida's reading of Paul Celan.

scholarly journals The Polish-Jewish Lethal Polka Dance

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Nitza Nitza Davidovitch ◽  
Eyal Lewin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
World War ◽  
Open Wound ◽  
Cognitive Value ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Constant Friction ◽  
Polish People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Universal Values

Aim. This paper analyses the inherent paradoxes of Jewish-Polish relations. It portrays the main beliefs that construct the contradicting narratives of the Holocaust, trying to weigh which of them is closer to the historic truth. It seeks for an answer to the question whether the Polish people were brothers-in-fate, victimized like the Jews by the Nazis, or if they were rather a hostile ethnic group. Concept. First, the notion of Poland as a haven for Jews throughout history is conveyed. This historical review shows that the Polish people as a nation have always been most tolerant towards the Jews and that anti-Semitism has existed only on the margins of society. Next, the opposite account is brought, relying on literature that shows that one thousand years of Jewish residence in Poland were also a thousand years of constant friction, with continuous hatred towards the Jews. Consequently, different accounts of World War II are presented – one shows how the Polish people were the victims, and the others deal with Poles as by-standers and as perpetrators. Results and conclusion. Inconsistency remains the strongest consistency of the relations between Jews and Poles. With the unresolved puzzle of whether the Polish people were victims, bystanders or perpetrators, this paper concludes with some comments on Israeli domestic political and educational attitudes towards Poland, that eventually influence collective concepts. Cognitive value. The fact that the issue of the Israeli-Polish relationship has not been deeply inquired, seems to attest to the reluctance of both sides to deal with what seems to form an open wound. At the same time, the revival of Jewish culture in Poland shows that, today more than ever, the Polish people are reaching out to Israelis, and are willing to deal with history at an unprecedented level. As Israelis who wish to promote universal values, a significant encounter with the Polish people may constitute a door to acceptance and understanding of others. Such acceptance can only stem from mutual discourse and physical proximity between the two peoples.  

scholarly journals Hearing the Form: Breath and the Structures of Poetry in Charles Olson and Paul Celan

2021 ◽  
pp. 409-434
Author(s):  
David Fuller
Keyword(s):  
American Poetry ◽  
William Carlos Williams ◽  
First Century ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Post War

AbstractThis essay examines the ways in which the American poet Charles Olson, and the German-speaking Romanian Jewish poet Paul Celan, each in relation to specific post-war cultural circumstances, experimented with new ways of structuring poetry in relation to the breath: Olson in response to new global scientific, political, and intellectual currents; Celan in response to the Holocaust. The essay discusses not only how the poets wrote but also how they realised the printed forms of their poetry in performance, contrasting Olson’s literal performance of his theories with the different relation of print to performance of his contemporary and associate William Carlos Williams. It argues that Olson’s experiments, polemically formulated in his manifesto Projective Verse, while they have influenced central currents of American poetry since the 1950s, have remained largely American, whereas Celan’s, tentatively intimated in his anti-manifesto Der Meridian, and inimitably personal in their specific forms, can also be seen as modelling ways in which a wide range of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry can be realised in reading aloud.

scholarly journals How Jewish Refugee Critics Changed British Literary Criticism, 1970–2020

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
David Herman
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Paul Celan ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Jewish Refugee ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Post War

During the mid- and late 20th century, a small group of Jewish refugee critics changed the way British culture thought about what kind of literature mattered and why. These outsiders went on to have an enormous impact on late 20th-century British literary culture. What was this impact? Why in the last third of the 20th century? Why did British literary culture become so much more receptive to critics like George Steiner, Gabriel Josipovici, Martin Esslin and SS Prawer and to a new canon of continental Jewish writers? The obstacles to Jewish refugee critics were formidable. Yet their work on writers like Kafka, Brecht and Paul Celan, and thinkers like Heidegger and Lukacs had a huge impact. They also broke the post-war silence about the Holocaust and moved the Jewish Bibl from the margins of English-speaking culture.

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