The Germans are not the only objects of scorn in Celan's poetry. The traditional God of Judaism and Christianity is another, and these objects of scorn—I hesitate to say hate, although it would perhaps be valid—are certainly quite closely related to each other…. Celan's pessimism cannot be explained in terms of a general post-Nietzschean conviction that God is dead; it is rather a very specific form of theological thinking found in a number of contemporary Jewish poets and philosophers…. Celan's poems sometimes display an awareness of the role of Christianity in the historical development of anti-Semitism. The poem "Spät und tief" …, for example, while alluding to Jewish "guilt" in the death of Christ, denies the possibility of the Resurrection, in effect reversing or refuting the Christian symbolism contained in the poem. Much of Celan's verse is profoundly pessimistic and correct interpretation is facilitated if the...