Artistic homage: Paul Celan's poems newly invigorated in Homburg gallery!

Artistic homage: Paul Celan's poems newly invigorated in Homburg gallery!

On April 23, 2025, a cultural homage to the poet Paul Celan is underway. Klaus Kadel-Magin from Pirmasens created an impressive serigraphy on Fabrianopapier, inspired by Celan's poem "Open Glottis". These works of art are part of a larger work show in which artists from Kaiserslautern, the Southwest Palatinate and beyond Celan illustrate. It is particularly noteworthy that this initiative was launched by Paul Celan in 2020 in response to the 50th anniversary of the death, whose planned artist book and the associated exhibition could not take place in the Homburg gallery at the time. In this context, the artists Mathias Beck and Heike Wilhelm should be emphasized.

The connection of poetry and visual art is the focus of this project. Each poem has inspired artists to create their own visual interpretations. In addition, the innovative combination of poem and image was supplemented by an artistic speech version of the respective poem, which is also audible to visitors. This gives the exhibition a multidimensional depth and shows how art can harmoniously combine different elements. The concept of the innovator is illuminated by a bond at Joseph Schumpeter, who taught at the University of Czernowitz when the Bukovina belonged to Austria-Hungary

reinterpreted a classic

Paul Celan (1920-1970) is one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Known for its complex poems and its unique diction, his work is now also reflected on by a newly selected collection of poems, published by Aris Fioretos. This collection is illustrated with etchings by Gisèle Celan-Lestrange and contains, among other things, Celan's poem "Zurich, the Storchen", which he devoted to the later Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sachs.

Celan's poetic language is strongly shaped by its biographical origin. He experienced the horrors of the Holocaust during his childhood and later lived in Paris as an exile. There he worked as a lecturer for German on the École Normale Supérieure and led a love relationship with the poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who was accompanied by an intensive correspondence. His works are multilingual and combine elements from Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, French and Italian. Celan's poems often address the attempt to find a direction through language and art, especially in the face of the National Socialist horrors.

a continued existence of Celan's heir

A special facet of his art is reflection on loss and identity. Celan's influence extends over literary currents, including Rimbaud and Russian Orphic futurism and surrealism. His suicide on April 26, 1970 left a profound emptiness in the literary world, but his work was commented extensively after his death and finally published by publishers like Suhrkamp to underline his relevance even after forty years.

The ongoing homage to Paul Celan testifies to the ongoing interest in his work and his thoughts. Artists and literary scholars create the old and new elements in a creative way to emphasize Celan's lasting influence on contemporary art and literature. This interdisciplinary collaboration illustrates how diverse and deeply the response from Celan's poetry remains to the present day.