Breathturn

In the twenty-five years since his death in 1970, Paul Celan's reputation, though already firmly established while he was alive, has grown steadily. He is now clearly perceived as one of the two or three greatest German-language poets of the century. As the critic George Steiner wrote: "Celan is almost certainly the major European poet of the period after 1945." Today Celan functions for thinkers such as Otto Poggeler, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, and Hans-Georg Gadamer-each of whom has devoted at least one book to Celan's work-much as Holderlin functioned for the late Heidegger.