The Poetics of Paul Celan

Abstract

Critical interest in Paul Celan, the Jewish poet whom many acclaim as the most significant German-speaking lyricist since Rilke, has mushroomed in the last decade.1 In a relatively brief period of time he has become recognized as the most representatively modern of recent German poets. Modern German poetry, to corroborate Heinz Pointek's description, is here understood as a lyric characterized by selfimposed poetic restraint. It could further be pointed out that this starkness and austerity are precipitated by an intense mistrust of language, an implicit disavowal of its efficacy accurately to mobilize and express human experience. In post-World War II German poetry, and perhaps in modern poetry in general, this gesturing often results in the creation of a radically individual poetic idiom on the part of the poet. This idiom is, however, a two-edged sword; while it magnifies the possibilities of poetic accuracy, expression, and singularity, it concomitantly increases the precariousness and the vulnerability of the communicative attempt. It underscores once again the problem of language, and it heightens the demands made upon the reader of modern poetry. It is precisely in this sense that the poems of Paul Celan are demandingly modern. It is thus small wonder that many Celan critics, impelled perhaps by a desire to combat in their own writing a certain ineffability or transcendence which they find characteristic of Celan's poetry, choose to name-tag him poetically, so that he and his often elusive and paradoxical work may be more easily discussed. Any attempt to come to grips intelligently and intelligibly this poet is, to be sure, a considerable task; yet it should not be forgotten that the interpreter, like Celan himself, must, in the instance of this poet, go about this task with variable key.2 No one terminological catchphrase, be it hermeti-