Paul Celan

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 Gisele Celan-Lestrange; to his friend Erich Einhorn; and to Rene Char and Jean-Paul Sartre - all appearing here for the first time in English.

Paul Celan was born in 1920 in the East European province of Bukovina. Soon after his parents, German-speaking Jews, had perished at the hands of the Nazis, Celan wrote "Todesfuge" ("Deathfugue"), the most compelling poem to emerge from the Holocaust. Self-exiled in Paris, for twenty-five years Celan continued writing in his German mother tongue, although it had "passed through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech." His writing purges and remakes that language, often achieving a hope-struck radiance never before seen in modern poetry. But in 1970, his psychic wounds unhealed, Celan drowned himself in the Seine. This landmark volume includes youthful lyrics, unpublished poems, and prose. All poems appear in the original and in translation on facing pages. John Felstiner's translations stem from a twenty-year immersion in Celan's life and work. John Bayley wrote in the New York Review of Books, "Felstiner translates ... brilliantly."

"I am supposed to tell you some of the words I heard deep down in the sea where there is much silence and so much happens." So begins the first text in this indispensable volume, which includes: "Edgar Jen and the Dream about the Dream," "Backlight," "The Meridian," and the piece which Celan himself deemed his most important, "Conversation in the Mountains." George Steiner wrote in The New Yorker that Celan's prose was "transforming the landscape of poetic theory and of the philosophy of language." This collection of essays, speeches, letters, as well as notes on Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelstam is a great gift to readers and to anyone who wishes to understand the twentieth century. As the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote, "Paul Celan's poems reach us, but we miss them." Perhaps through these rare prose texts we may find the key to what we missed.

Paul Celan's Collected Prose reissued as a Carcanet Classic.

Insightful and provocative letters by a great twentieth-century poet to his artist wife about life and, revealingly, his own writing. An intimate look at this canonical poet's process, mental health, and quotidian moments during the early 1950s. Paul Celan, a Jewish poet born in the Bukovina, now part of Romania, who survived the Nazi genocide and moved to Paris while continuing to write in German, is recognized as one of the most powerful poetic imaginations of the second half of the twentieth century. His work, a touchstone not only for poets but for historians and philosophers, has been translated into countless languages. The letters he wrote to his wife, the artist Gis le Lestrange, now published for the first time in English, provide the best picture we have of Celan's complicated personality and the course of his life, both private and public. The life was troubled by paranoid episodes and repeated mental breakdowns ending in hospitalization, and in 1970 he committed suicide. At the same time, his devotion to his work as a poet and translator (of Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Mandelstam, among others) was unflagging. This selection of his letters to Gis le, which also includes his letters to his young son, Eric, as well as significant number of Gis le's own letters, covers almost all of his literary career, and while it is a personal document, offering a remarkable protrait of a great poet, a tender husband and father, and a difficult but enduring marriage, it is also a poetic one, providing Celan's translations for Gis le of his poems from German into French and his extensive commentaries on them. It takes us to Celan's work desk, capturing him in the act of composition while also giving us Celan's reading of Celan. Bertrand Badiou's notes transmit precious information about Celan's work and life. The volume also includes photographs and a detailed chronology of the poet's life.

Memory Rose into Threshold Speech gathers the poet Paul Celan's first four books, written between 1952 and 1963, which established his reputation as a major post-World War II German-language poet. Celan, a Bukovinian Jew who lived through the Holocaust, created work that displays both great lyric power and an uncanny ability to pinpoint totalitarian cultural and political tendencies. His quest, however, is not only reflective: there is in Celan's writing 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 poetry, which starts lush with surrealistic imagery, become gradually pared down; its syntax tightens and his trademark neologisms and word formations increase toward a polysemic language of great accuracy that tries, in the poet's own words, "to measure the area of the given and the possible." Translated by the prize-winning poet and translator Pierre Joris, this bilingual edition follows the 2014 publication of Breathturn into Timestead, Celan's collected later poetry. All nine volumes of Celan's poetry are now available in Joris's carefully crafted translations, accompanied here by a new introduction, as well as extensive commentary by Joris and Barbara Wiedemann. The four volumes in this edition show the flowering of one of the major literary figures of the last century. This volume collects Celan's first four books: Mohn und Ged chtnis (Poppy and Memory), Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (Threshold to Threshold), Sprachgitter (Speechgrille), and Die Niemandsrose (NoOnesRose).

It is generally accepted that Paul Celan is a notoriously ‘difficult’ poet to understand, yet this small collection, with an introduction by a leading expert on Holocaust poetry, and with each of the ten poems accompanied by a brief note which acts as a contextual orientation for the reader, is an excellent starting-point for anyone who is not familiar with his poems.

Språkgaller, första gången utgiven 1959, är Paul Celans tredje diktsamling. Bokens fem cykler avslutas av den mäktiga långdikten »Trångföring«. För första gången någonsin presenteras hela denna samling på svenska, i översättning av Björn Sandmark och Mikael van Reis.

Vallmo och minne, första gången utgiven 1952, är Paul Celans egentliga debutsamling. Bokens fyra cykler, tillkomna under åtta års tid, rymmer några av den tyskspråkiga efterkrigslyrikens starkaste dikter. För första gången någonsin presenteras hela denna samling på svenska, i översättning av Björn Sandmark och Eva Ström.

Från tröskel till tröskel, första gången utgiven 1955, är Paul Celans andra diktsamling, författad under två år i Paris. För första gången någonsin presenteras hela denna bok på svenska, i översättning av Björn Sandmark och Eva Ström.

Ingenmansrosen, första gången utgiven 1963, är Paul Celans fjärde och mest berömda diktsamling, av många ansedd som en av den tyska 1900-talspoesins verkliga höjdpunkter. För första gången någonsin presenteras hela denna samling på svenska, i översättning av Björn Sandmark och Mikael van Reis.

Paul Celan (1920-1970) oli romanialaissyntyinen runoilija, jota pidetään 1900-luvun tärkeimpänä saksaksi kirjoittaneena runoilijana. Celanin suhdetta äidinkieleensä saksaan sävyttivät toisen maailmansodan aikaiset kokemukset työleirillä. Hänen vanhempansa kuolivat natsien leirillä - vanhempien kohtalo on runoilijalle pysyvä trauma, joka varjostaa koko hänen tuotantoaan. Celanin runous tunnetaan erityisesti omalaatuisesta kielestään. Hän korosti runouden olevan dialogisessa suhteessa lukijaansa. Alkutuotannon jälkeen runojen säkeet lyhenivät, yhdyssanat lisääntyivät ja syntaksi mutkistui. Mitä lyhyemmäksi runot ja varsinkin yksittäiset säkeet muuttuvat, sitä enemmän jokainen sana vaatii lukijan huomiota. Näiden runojen lukemiseen tarvitaan kaikkia aisteja. Sanojen sointi on yhtä tärkeää kuin niiden graafinen muoto paperilla, ja myös sanojen välittämät kuvat vaativat huomiota.Lumen ääni on ensimmäinen kokonaan suomennettu Paul Celanin kokoelma. Alkuteos ilmestyi Celan kuoltua, ja sitä pidetään yhtenä hänen keskeisimmästä kokoelmistaan. Aiemmin Paul Celania on ilmestynyt Jukka Koskelaisen suomentamana vuonna 1993.Kustannusliike Parkko on käännösrunouteen erikoistunut kustantamo, joka julkaisee 4-6 kirjaa vuodessa.

I år är det hundra år sedan poeten Paul Celan (1920–1970) föddes. "Det sena verket" består av Celans fem sista diktsamlingar och en extra svit – tidigare har inga av hans samlingar förutom Andningsvändning (1967), den som inleder "Det sena verket", översatts i sin helhet. 50–60 år efter deras tillkomst ter sig dessa dikter kanske mer angelägna än någonsin. Inte nödvändigtvis för att vi nu kan blicka tillbaka på dem på avstånd, utan för att vi börjar hinna ifatt dem. I översättning av Anders Olsson med redaktörskap av Gabriel Itkes-Sznap samt med kommentarer av dem båda.

Memory Rose into Threshold Speech gathers the poet Paul Celan's first four books, written between 1952 and 1963, which established his reputation as the major post-World War II German-language poet. Celan, a Bukovinian Jew who lived through the Holocaust, created work that displays both great lyric power and an uncanny ability to pinpoint totalitarian cultural and political tendencies. His quest, however, is not only reflective: there is in Celan's writing 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 poetry, which starts lush with surrealistic imagery, become gradually pared down; its syntax tightens and his trademark neologisms and word formations increase toward a polysemic language of great accuracy that tries, in the poet's own words, "to measure the area of the given and the possible." Translated by the prize-winning poet and translator Pierre Joris, this bilingual edition follows the 2014 publication of Breathturn into Timestead, Celan's collected later poetry. All nine volumes of Celan's poetry are now available in Joris's carefully crafted translations, accompanied here by a new introduction and extensive commentary. The four volumes in this edition show the flowering of one of the major literary figures of the last century. This volume collects Celan's first four books: Mohn und Ged chtnis (Poppy and Memory), Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (Threshold to Threshold), Sprachgitter (Speechgrille), and Die Niemandsrose (NoOnesRose).