Carved in the brain - Paul Celan's interpretation of lunacy

In the speech delivered when he was awarded the Buchner-Preis, Der Meridian, Celan illustrates his concept of the poem with two characters from Georg Buchners oeuvre, who are seen as living on the verge of madness: Lenz and Lucile. This happens during a period of his life in which he is falsely accused of plagiarism, and described by friends and critics as oversensitive and paranoiac. During the following years he has to stay several times in psychiatrical hospitals, and he openly reflects in his poems on the problem of mental derangement, referring again to 'madmen' in literature, like Holderlin, Woyzeck and King Lear. While this reflection appears on a thematic level in images of night and light, even in titles like Eingedunkelt or Lichtzwang, madness is represented in the poetic language as a stammer or stutter, this being the only but painful possibility to speak about an unhuman and de-ranged world.