Beyond the American Difficult Poem: Paul Celan’s “Du liegst”

This paper presents a close reading of a late poem by German poet Paul Celan, with a view to call into question several critical assumptions relating to modernist-derived “difficulty.” By looking in detail at what makes a poem “difficult” for the reader,a fact highlighted by a comparative approach, it becomes possible to move beyond such qualities as innovative, radical or avant-garde, and to consider what truly makes up our literary knowledge.