Paratexte, ohne die es keine Literatur gäbe. Zur Rezeption des Werkes von Paul Celan und der Funktion von Paratexten in der totalitären Tschechoslowakei (1948–1989)

Abstract

The reception of literature written in German in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War was (and still is) in a hybrid position, oscillating between aversion to historical events that still resonate in Czech culture and society, and interest due to intensive cultural contacts and exchange projects between Germany and the Czech Republic. The reception of works by Paul Celan was all the more complicated because Jewish issues were by and large considered undesirable by the communist regime. The regime was officially only anti-Zionist, but de facto, as is well known, this meant anti-Semitic. In this article, attention is drawn to a neglected aspect of the surprising history of the reception of Celan’s poems in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1989 (with a brief excursion into the period 1990–2020) – namely, the “mediating function” of paratexts in the totalitarian regime. The first part briefly presents a definition of the term “paratext” and outlines the function of this type of text (taking into account the specific situation in which literature found itself in socialist Czechoslovakia). The following part illustrates the “mediating function” of paratexts in the Czechoslovak and the Czech editions of Celan’s poems.