Allmählich clowngesichtig. Zu einer literarischen Maske des modernen Autors am Beispiel Paul Celans

Abstract Most of the times the tragic mask of the madman has fascinated artistic and literary modernity, inspiring a series of painters and writers through its complex expresivity and semantics. Balancing between lie and truth, covering and revelating, through anarchy and virtuosity, the mask of the tragic clown reflects loneliness, the anxieties and demones of the modern individual in a world of violence and alienation. In Celan’s late poetry, the mask of the tragic clown describes another kafkian metamorphosis which the present paper analyses in a cultural, biographic and intertextual context.