It's Only Normal that Paul Celan was harshly affected by the base slander—accusations of plagiarism—leveled at him by Claire Goll. It's less normal that he should have suffered from this all his life even though these clearly mendacious accusations allowed him to know that most readers spontaneously took his side.

This brief essay tries to grasp the reasons for this irreducible affliction and finds them in the deepest rapport between a poet and his thought of what poetry is.