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Abstract: The article analyzes the peculiarities of Russian reception of the creative work and the personality of the ‘European citizen’, German-language poet Paul Celan (23.11.1920, Czernowitz, Romania – 20.04.1970, Paris, France). Paul Celan, – a Jew by birth, a Soviet Ukrainian by compulsion, an Austrian and a German by the language and a Frenchman by the place of emigration and death – brought into the European culture “after the Holocaust” acutely tragic, saliently humane and morally eternal meanings. His creative activity is still attractive to the reading and academic community. The article emphasizes the evolution of perception and the peculiarities of canonization of this man of letters in our country and the meaning of the creative activity of Paul Celan for the contemporary Russian literary process, and specifically the problem of translation (translatability) of Celan’s works. Paul Celan is considered by contemporary Russian Germanists as a most eminent German-language poet of the first half of the 20th century. Russian Slavists appreciate him as the first and still unsurpassed translator of Yesenin’s, Khlebnikov’s, and Mandelstam’s works. The history of the Soviet recognition of Celan’s work begins in the 1950s. Researchers are interested both in the poet’s own works and in his translations of the Russian poetry. The author’s nationality of origin is still being traditionally defined as an Austrian of Jewish origin. The number of studies devoted to Celan is fairly representative: there are numerous scientific publications in Russia, both in the form of monographs and journal articles, which give a good picture of both his own works, which are actively translated into Russian, and of his translations of Russian poets. The analysis of the specificity of the current poet’s reception, considering its dynamics over time, allows one to conclude that there is a clear trend towards literary canonization of the poet in the post-Soviet cultural space.