Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan

A complex writer, with deep vision of the Shoah, very painful, as the inhumanity and violence of the Holocaust are unspeakable, so finding words is beyond difficult. Much of his later work slides into abstraction, imagery, non discursive, where the surface of words and how they echo on the reader is all there is. I had questions about some of the translation, though it is celebrated, and even bought a German dictionary and found a few translations that took some liberties with the original, though close in spirit.

all good

I don't pretend to understand Celan intellectually. I don't know if a lifetime's worth of study and analysis can ultimately decipher what is innately indecipherable, but I suppose you can, in a way, make the same claim for the poetry of Dickinson and Crane..complex and powerful poetry with perhaps all too obvious driving forces, but with roots that tap into depths both private, and mysterious. But while my mind can't always make sense of language and verse so richly allusive, metaphoric, neologistic, and symbolic, my heart understands every jot and tittle. To me, Celan's poetry is simultaneously an anguished cry and triumphant shout from the ashes of the Holocaust. Using the favored language of his parents, the language of the poetry of Heine and Rilke that he and his beloved mother loved, the native language of her murderers, he twists, transmutes and ultimately transfigures it into a sublime artifice that allows him to go on living in the face of an unthinkable past, a cruel and hypocritical present, and an uncertain future that would tragically end under the waters of the Seine in 1970. Paul Celan thus becomes the greatest post WW2 poet of the German language. In his Bremen speech Celan wrote:It, the language, remained, not lost, yes in spite of everything. But it had to pass through it's own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, "enriched" by all this. In this language I have sought, during those years and the years since then, to write poems: so as to speak, to orient myself, to find out where I was and where I was meant to go, to sketch out reality for myself.The above mentioned difficulty with Celan is compounded by the fact that for the individual who cannot read German, much can be lost in translation. There is a distinctly different rhythm to German verse, and many German words have multiple meanings, some explicit and others oblique, which force translators into critical decisions in the selection process. I have read both Felstiner's and Joris's translations of Celan, and prefer the less literal method of Felstiner. A further bonus in this volume is having the original German text adjacent to the translations.

Paul Celan is now considered one of the great postwar poets, perhaps the greatest poet to come out of the Holocaust, and the 2nd most influential German poet after Rilke. His most famous poem, "Todesfuge" (Deathfugue) is considered the most important poem on the Holocaust.But beyond all that hyperbolic praise lies a poet who defies easy description, whose poetry is both demanding, difficult, beautiful and lyrical, and who deserves to be read by a wider audience.Felstiner provides us with one of the 2 best bilingual editions of Celan's most important work (the other is by Michael Hamburger), and supplements it with a very well written introduction and translations of Celan's most important prose writings, including the Buchner speech "The Meridian". These prose pieces will be essential for students of Celan, and cast an important light on the poems.The translations of the poems themselves are quite good, and at times brilliant, such as the innovative way that Felstiner translates "Deathfugue," subtly interweaving the original German more and more in the repetitions of the chorus until the poem ends with two lines entirely in German. The effect is chilling. Felstiner deserves the translation award he won for this book solely on the basis of this one poem, which shocked me anew when I read it in his English translation.If you are unfamiliar with Celan up to now, this is a good place to start. If you are already an admirer of Celan's poems, this will be a welcome addition to your library. See also Felstiner's biography on Celan, "Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew".

An excellent translation of one of the great voices of modern poetry. Celan, perhaps more than any other poet, bore witness to the destruction of humanity by the Nazi German regime. His poems sear through the heart like no other. One of he greatest works, "Deathfugue" or "Todesfuge" which resonates through the past throughout time:"Black milk of daybreak we drink it at eveningwe drink it at midday and morning we drink it at nightwe drink and we drinkwe shovel a grave in the air where you won't lie too crampedA man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writeshe writes when it grows dark in Deutschland your golden hair Margareta..."

I bought this book after reading a single line--"the light and the Light." Felstiner renders Celan's notoriously intricate verse into poems so direct and luminous that you might mistake them for having been written in English. I also appreciated the spare notes; he trusts you and the poems to find each other on your own, and doesn't try to footnote away the mystery. I'm grateful for a book that makes Celan's beauty, sadness and experiment so visible in English. A labor of light.

This is a great, highly satisfying translation of the poetry of a tortured genius whose voice rang through holocaust death camps into 21st century living rooms. The metaphors of Celan are of tragic acuity, & his tropes & experiments will keep you awake at night. He didn't write to avoid the real world. He wrote so that he could clench in his sore fists the very world that clenched him in its. The prose selections at the end of the book, speeches he gave, are also very, very interesting & provide a different angle by which to view his great mind, of how he spoke when not funneling the thinking into a certain art.

I have read a lot of poetry, but had not come across Paul Celan until going to the Anselm Kiefer exhibition, and seeing the Alan Yentob documentary on Anselm Kiefer. His poetry is strong, moving, and evocative, almost sculptural in quality. An excellent edition.

According to some, the world's best poet. Note, this is an admirable bilingual edition.

A beautiful book in very good condition

Thank you. Prompt delivery. Love the book.

Spare, bleak, musical, Celan dredges exquisitely finished miniatures from his catastrophic war time experiences. The translations do a decent job of translating the untranslatable, but the German originals speak for themselves even to those with no so much German. Celan died after walking into the river Seine in the middle of the night. An absolutely essential twentieth century voice.