Abend Der Worte

Celan crafted his poetry so it was strange and hard to understand, integrating many ideas from the different writers whose works he moved across languages. In his work as a translator, Celan encountered and was influenced by “French symbolists as well as contemporary poets” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Page 568). He spoke many languages and, in his own poetry, “estranged language to the limits of comprehension while underscoring the urgency of dialogue” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Page 568).

Some light can be shed on Celan’s work in the context of the Frankfurt School. This collection of academics, political theorists, and other intellectuals came together in the interwar period (between the two World Wars) to offer a new kind of critical theory. One important figure in the Frankfurt School was influential German philosopher Theodor Adorno, who condemned writing poetry after Auschwitz, calling the act barbaric. Adorno’s point was the unspeakable massacres the Nazis perpetrated in death camps like Auschwitz and the collaboration of many European countries revealed such ugliness in human nature that poetry, an art that typically celebrates beauty, could never be authentic again. In response, Celan wrote “extraordinarily grim [...] unprecedentedly brutal, ‘barbaric,’ and difficult” poems. (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Page 522). Celan explored how to use metaphor in a meaningful way after the Holocaust.