Publisher and poet Klaus Reichert remembers

The translator and essayist Klaus Reichert is a scholar in English andAmerican studies (especially a renowned expert on James Joyce), editor ofHans Carl Artmann's poetical works, andformer President of the Deutsche Akademie fiir Sprache und Dichtung (20022011). From 1965 to 1969, he served as Paul Celans first reader at Suhrkamp. His book Paul Celan. Erinnerungen und Briefe (2020) is the testimony ofthe last contemporary who knew both the poet and the man. His many notes on personal matters and aesthetic debates testify to a close bond with the sensitive, often reserved, sometimes even irritable Celan. In response to his uncomprehending interlocutors, critics, and the literary establishment in general, Celans vehement clarifications shed new light on his conception of language, poetry and the poet in the face of "that which happened" (das Geschehene).