Dialogue in the Mountains

In July 1959 the Jewish poet Paul Celan travels from Paris to Sils-Maria for a holiday, in the company of his wife and child. During his stay in the Engadine he hopes to meet the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, whose aphorism "To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric" launched a controversy on the justifiability of art in a world that has experienced the holocaust. However since Adorno did not appear, the meeting was unable to take place. Celan cut short his holiday, and on his return to Paris penned the painfully beautiful story "Gespräch im Gebirg" (Conversation in the Mountains), in which two Jews meet in the mountains in the middle of the night for a conversation. In this film, Mattias Caduff attempts a very personal approach to this difficult text, an approach which includes considering his own point of view as a reader.