This author, influenced by French Surrealism and Symbolism, is renowned as a poet, translator, and essayist. Writing in German, his works often grapple with profound themes and personal tragedy, reflecting his experiences with the Holocaust and the loss of family. His distinct style is characterized by deep metaphor and urgent lyricism, creating powerful resonance for readers despite its complexity. His writings have become symbolic of literary endurance and remembrance.
The collection features letters from Paul Celan, a renowned twentieth-century poet, to his artist wife, Gisáele Lestrange, offering a profound glimpse into his creative process and personal struggles during the early 1950s. These intimate correspondences reveal Celan's complex personality, his battles with mental health, and the dynamics of his marriage. Alongside translations of his poems, the letters illuminate his literary career and familial relationships. The volume is enriched with photographs and a chronology, providing context to Celan's influential life and work.
Winning the 2015 National Translation Award in Poetry, this collection showcases the beauty and intricacies of translated verse. It highlights the skillful rendering of original works into English, emphasizing the cultural nuances and emotional depth of the poems. The award recognizes not only the translator's artistry but also the significance of bringing diverse voices to a broader audience, enriching the literary landscape. This collection is a testament to the power of language and the universal themes that connect us all.
Memory Rose into Threshold Speech gathers the first four books of the celebrated poet Paul Celan’s oeuvre, written between 1952 and 1963, which established his reputation as perhaps the greatest major post-World War II German–language poet. Translated by the prize-winning translator Pierre Joris, this bilingual edition follows the 2014 publication of Breathturn into Timestead, Celan’s collected later poetry. Finally, Celan’s readers are able to read his work in full, with a new introduction and expert commentary from Joris. Celan, a Romanian Jew who lived through the Holocaust, displays his sharp ability to pinpoint totalitarian cultural and political tendencies. The work, however, is not only reflective: there is in Celan a profound need and desire to create a new, inhabitable world and a new language for it. In Memory Rose into Threshold Speech, Celan’s reader witnesses his poems, which start lush with surrealistic imagery and become pared down, with the syntax growing tighter and his trademark neologisms and word-creations increasing. The four volumes in this edition show the flowering of one of the major literary figures of the last century. This volume includes: Sprachgitter, Die Niemandsrose, Mohn und Gedachtnis, and Von schwelle zu Schwelle.
Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the German by Susan H. Gillespie. Paul Celan, arguably the mid-20th century's most important German-language poet, is commonly pigeonholed as a poet of the Holocaust--a term, however, he never used. Undoing facile assumptions about Celan, CORONA charts a more idiosyncratic and personal path through Celan's large oeuvre, choosing 103 poems from among the more than 900 Celan published. The bilingual selection includes work from all of Celan's periods and genres. Without ignoring the poet's well-known work of memory and memorialization, it seeks to open a space for new appreciation of Celan's love poems, as well as his poems on political events, painful reflections on his stays in mental hospitals, and quasi-burlesque verse. Susan H. Gillespie's translations are characterized by their ease of diction and their attention to the "somatic" and rhetorical aspects of Celan's lines--their sound, gait, tone, and gravity--as well as to their internal and external echoes. The latter, elucidated in notes to the poems, include references to other poets and to Celan's wide readings of everything from specialized dictionaries to other writers--what Roman Jakobson called their "poetic etymology." "Here, poetry is not what gets lost in translation," writes Gillespie in the Introduction, "it is, itself, an act of translation--of experience and thought--into new language."
This bilingual edition features a new translation of Paul Celan's second book, capturing the essence of his unique poetic voice. David Young's introduction provides valuable context and acknowledges the contributions of other translators, highlighting the depth and complexity of Celan's work. Young's translation aims to honor the spirit of Celan's poetry, showcasing his innovative approach and emotional depth. The cover art by Gisele Celan-Lestrange adds a personal touch, enriching the overall presentation of this significant literary work.
This is the definitive edition (including drafts, notes, and ancillary
materials) of Paul Celan's Meridian, the most important poetological manifesto
of the second half of the twentieth century.
Includes the uncollected longer poem Wolf's Bean, several additional short
poems, and the essay On Translating Celan in which the author discusses the
challenges faced over many years in his engagement with Celan's poetry.
Paul Celan's final work offers a profound exploration of themes such as loss, memory, and the intricacies of language. This previously untranslated collection showcases his unique poetic voice, characterized by dense imagery and emotional depth. The poems reflect Celan's experiences and philosophical musings, inviting readers into a contemplative journey that resonates with the complexities of human existence. This posthumous publication is a significant addition to his body of work, providing insight into his artistic evolution and enduring legacy.
The best introduction to the work of Paul Celan, this anthology offers a broad collection of his writing in unsurpassed English translations along with a wealth of commentaries by major writers and philosophers. The present selection is based on Celan's own 1968 selected poems, though enlarged to include both earlier and later poems, as well as two prose works, The Meridian, Celan's core statement on poetics, and the narrative Conversation in the Mountains. This volume also includes letters to Celan's wife, the artist Gisèle Celan-Lestrange; to his friend Erich Einhorn; and to René Char and Jean-Paul Sartre—all appearing here for the first time in English.
