Paul Celan: Studies in His Early Poetry scrutinizes the influences detectable in the poems written during 1938-48. Among German writers, Buchner, Goethe, Gottfried von Strassburg, Gryphius, Morike, the poet of the Nibelungenlied, Novalis, Rilke, and Trakl all provided motifs that, often repeated, make for a dense network inviting attention to the self-referential and self-revealing patterns in Celan's early work. In addition, there are many poems that contain motifs gleaned from Greek mythology and/or biblical data. These references, on occasion quite clear, more often so obscure as to be...