Paul Celans pneumatisches Judentum

Discusses Celan's poetry as issuing from the Holocaust and pointing toward the Holocaust (rather than expressing or describing it: an impossibility), and as dialogue with the dead, in which the past is brought into the present. Analyzes the poetic devices with which he works and the sources of his allusions. Contends that for Celan, life after the Holocaust is a life without God and yet with responsibility toward God, in the sense of Buber, Hugo Bergmann, and the Kabbalah. Surveys the ways Jewish thinkers have coped with the Holocaust, and suggests that Celan could point the direction for Christian post-Holocaust theology, with three main elements: the invalidity of tradition, requiring a struggle for theological renewal at every moment; the ephemeral nature of God, who cannot be contained in a concept and whom we are called upon to give reality through our actions; and the importance of memory.