Abstract

In Paul Celan’s poetry there are some fundamental philosophical and religious issues: the problem of God’s absence, the scandal of evil, the questions of theodicy. The paper resumes firstly the dialogic conception of Celan’s poetics (§ 1). Secondly, it examines the poem “Zürich, Zum Storchenµ, where we can find an in-depth critical dialogue with two significant exponents of German Jewry in exile: Nelly Sachs and Margarete Susman. This dialogue documents the importance of the religious context for understanding Celan’s poems.