Serhii Osadchuk, historian and translator, activist of the local NGO “My Home Town,” told a news conference that his organization, in collaboration with the Meridian Czernowitz International Literature Corporation and Chernivtsi City Council, would lay the foundation stone in what would become a museum dedicated to Paul Celan (1920-70), a noted Jewish-Romanian-German poet born in Chernivtsi.
The project is underway and the local authorities have allocated the site.
Critics regard Celan as an outstanding Austrian [sic] poet of the 20th century; some single him out as a prominent post-WW II lyricist. His creative endeavors were strongly influenced by French symbolism and surrealism. He translated into German poems written by Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. He also translated into German and Romanian works by Mandelstam, Yesenin, Blok, Lermontov, Turgenev, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Valery, and other authors. His first book of verse entitled Poppy and Memory was published in France, in 1952, as an elegiac cycle in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Another collection of verse, entitled From Threshold to Threshold, appeared in print in 1955. Celan’s literary kudos includes Germany’s major Georg Buchner Prize.
Serhii Osadchuk: “I believe that the launching of these premises is the key event of the Meridian Czernowitz poetry festival. Here will evolve a major center of education where people will study the literary heritage of Chernivtsi, Bukovyna, and that of Paul Celan. The location is perfect: first floor in a building on a downtown crossing of Kobylianska and Cheliuskintsi streets. We expect to launch an interesting exposition there during the fifth Meridian Czernowitz festival next year. This exhibit will be different: instead of the usual items on display, like a chair on which the poet had sat, we’ll stage a modern exposition using European technologies befitting this European city.”
