Briefwechsel

Even the best are all too eager to elevate the Jew – and this is nothing but a manifestation of the human, yet still a manifestation – to the status of subject and pervert it into an object, Paul Celan writes in 1961 to Peter Szondi. The poet and the literary scholar met in Paris in 1959. They exchanged over 150 letters, postcards, telegrams, and dedications from Zurich, Berlin, Göttingen, and Paris until Celan's death in 1970, which are now published in full for the first time, along with commentary.

The Goll affair, in which Szondi decisively defended Celan, their shared Jewish identity, Celan's depression, and the understanding of Celan's poems, especially the ethical claims underlying Szondi's literary hermeneutics – all of this is addressed. With his Celan studies (published posthumously in 1972), Szondi was able to raise the question of biography in Celan's work early on, and precisely because he was involved in Celan's life, he recognized the critical, linguistic individuality of his poems. Furthermore, this correspondence is a document of a significant, always precarious friendship that included a third party: Jean Bollack, the classicist and philosopher in Paris. Excerpts from the letters to him and from him shape the correspondence with a substantial voice that is sometimes participatory, sometimes commentary.