Das Gedicht im Geheimnis der Begegnung

This is a study of Paul Celan's reception of Russian literature, with special reference to works of major poetological significance for him. The term Begegnung (encounter), so central to his remarks in the speech on the occasion of the award of the Büchner Prize, needs to be seen as a function of this reception process, a process that the present work sets out to delineate for the first time in full detail, drawing upon hitherto unknown material from Celan's posthumous papers. Alongside Mandel'stam there were a number of other Russian authors that Celan was greatly preoccupied with, notably in the period around 1960 (Chlebnikov, Zvetayeva, Esenin, Mayakovsky, Pasternak). Another >first< of this study is a detailed commentary on, and analysis of, Celan's radio broadcast on Mandel'stam.