Paul Celan

Paul Celan was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born into a German-speaking Jewish family and his work is profoundly marked by the Holocaust and his experience with it. Celan's parents were deported and perished in an extermination camp during World War II, deeply affecting him and his future writings. His most famous work, "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue"), is a haunting portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust. Celan's poetry is characterized by its intense lyricism and use of language, which he saw as a way to recover from trauma and express the inexpressible. Despite the darkness that pervades his work, Celan's poems also convey a deep sense of hope and the possibility of understanding. He spent most of his adult life in Paris, where he wrote and translated works until his death by suicide in 1970.