This book provides access to the Jewish mystic side of selected poems by Paul Celan. The reader is led to a crossing point in the poem with the poet's consciously or unconsciously instilled cultural knowledge. Here an interpretation is proposed which correlates with the poet's cultural knowledge and reading experience. Thus many of Celan's poems follow cabbalistic practice by narrating in numbers. Structural numbers and the symbolic meanings of numbers are therefore to be identified and interpreted as bearing meaning.

This book received the "Wissenschaftspreis 2008" [Price for the best dissertation in German Studies] of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Germanistik [Austrian Society of German Studies].

Autorentext

Irene Fußl, Universität Salzburg, Österreich.