Theodore W. Adorno’s famous—and often misquoted— commentary that “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” raises a critical question to the mimetic function of poetry after the catastrophe, which is in itself not representable. As the critic Michael Rothberg in his essay “After Adorno” points out, such a diction (“writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”) actually combines a constellation of concepts—aesthetics (“poetry”), temporality (“after”), place (“Auschwitz”) and a morally evaluative predicate (“is barbaric”) (54). However unsettling it is, this controversial phrase of manifold meanings has indeed grounded the basis of discussion after the Holocaust. Critics like Robert Kaufman consider Adorno as the one who helped underscore or even reestablish the role of poetry in relation to ethics.

According to Kaufman, how to “live” after Auschwitz has always occupied the central space of Adorno’s contemplation of culture, although his attitude toward Auschwitz and aesthetics, as shown in his later works and unpublished essays, has changed several times. The complex of survivor’s guilt, the trouble of self-preservation and the irreconcilable shame of living in normalcy “again” all together mount to an inestimable challenge raised and presented to Paul Celan, whose life is summarized by John Felstiner with three words: “poet, survivor, Jew.” Celan wrote most of his poetry after the war with his eyes sturdily on Europe’s return to normalcy. Even in his time and today, Celan is regarded as the great German(-language) poet in the second half of the 20th century who inherits and extends the tradition in German poetry that runs from Holderlin, Trakl and Rilke. In the critical reception of Celan, his poetry is often thought to be exemplary poems in response to Auschwitz, and such a positioning renders Celan’s voice as representative of “poetry after Auschwitz.”

With this context in mind, the course is set to explore the intersection of aesthetics and ethics in terms of Celan’s poetry and his translations. This course aims to answer the following questions: How does Celan—if at all—respond to the question of life after Auschwitz in his poetry? Does it mean to artistically revivify the brutality of mere survival? Has Celan managed to separate poetry from life and therefore from ethics?