Paul Celan vs. Gherasim Luca. Holocaustul şi poezia în Grupul Suprarealist Român din anii ’40

Paul Celan vs. Gherasim Luca is a study which analyses some Romanian prose poetries by Paul Celan, written between 1946 and 1947, when he was in Bucharest, writing the first version of Todesfuge – Tangoul Morţii, published for the first time on the Marxist review Contemporanul, (5th May 1947, Bucharest). These works, which represent Paul Celan’s mature period, are strongly influenced by Kafka and Urmuz, and, at the same time, they contrast the Romanian Surrealism by Gherasim Luca and Dolfi Trost (1945), and Romanian Fascism, containing some author’s biographical elements. The analysis of these poetical writings aims to show the historical, political, ideological and literary context in which the publication of Death Fugue occured, but first and foremost, its goal is to illustrate Paul Celan’s poetic perspective in his Romanian works.