Caesurae. Paul Celan’s Later Work

Date: 

Tue, 12/11/2019 - 09:00 to Thu, 14/11/2019 - 18:00
Caesurae. Paul Celan’s Later Work

Location: 

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Mandel Building, Room 530

From September 30th until October 17th, 1969, the poet Paul Celan visited Israel for the first and only time. He was welcomed by old friends from his birthplace Czernowitz and read his poems both in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It was a profoundly significant journey that Celan, who had been living in exile in Paris since 1948, had meant to undertake for some time. Back in Paris, Celan wrote a dense series of poems reflecting the places, encounters and contradictions he experienced in Israel, especially in Jerusalem. The city became, as he wrote in a letter, a “turn, a caesura in my life”. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Paul Celan’s visit to Israel, renowned international scholars will gather at the Hebrew University to remember and reflect on this “caesura” and illuminate aspects of Celan’s later work, to which still little attention has been devoted.