Philosopher Theodor Adomo said that no lyric poetry could be written after Auschwitz. Paul Celan was a poet who battled with this paradox all his life. He is widely regarded as the finest postwar poet in the German language and the one who perhaps best sums up the terrors of the 20th century. A Romanian-born, German-speaking
Jew, he lived mainly in Paris until his suicide in 1970, always haunted by his need to express himself in a tongue which he associated with his mother's fate in the death camps.
Philip Brady talks to people who knew
Cfelan and who were Influenced by his poetry, including his first champion In English, George Steiner ; his biographer John Felstiner ; and Michael Hamburger , whose translations have done much to excite growing interest in this unique poet. Producer Paul Quinn