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The visionary Jewish poet who survived the Holocaust but not its aftermath

JL;DR SUMMARY Paul Celan, a Holocaust survivor celebrated for his poem "Deathfugue," is the subject of Anna Arno's biography "Paul Celan: A Life," which delves into his complex persona and innovative impact on German poetry. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

HolocaustPoetryTranslationMental IllnessPaul CelanDeathfugueIngeborg BachmannGisle LestrangeClaire Goll

Places mentioned

Israel
"During a 1969 poetry reading in Israel, Paul Celans audience requested Deathfugue, his most famous poem."
Germany
"With its hypnotic images of death as a master from Deutschland, prisoners drinking the black milk of dawn and smoke rising to a grave in the clouds, it remains one of the most powerful artifacts of the Holocaust."
Cernăuți, Cluj, Romania
"Celan was born Paul Antschel in 1920 in Czernowitz, Romania (officially Cernui, and now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) on the fringes of the recently defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire."
Chernivtsi, Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine
"Celan was born Paul Antschel in 1920 in Czernowitz, Romania (officially Cernui, and now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) on the fringes of the recently defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire."
Paris, Île-de-France, France
"and French, the language of his postwar life in Paris, he learned Russian (under Soviet occupation) and English."
Vienna, Austria
"Bucharest, where Celan translated, wrote poetry, flirted with Surrealism and bounced from one relationship to the next, he traveled to Vienna."

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