Paul Celan

Selections

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by Paul Celan,

Edited by Pierre Joris

University of California Press

Due/Published March 2005, 256 pages, paper

ISBN 0520241681

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.

Contents

Introduction: "Polysemy without mask"
Key to Translators

I. POEMS
from Romanian Prose Poems (c. 1947)
from Mohn und Gedächtnis/Poppy and Memory (1952)
from Von Schwelle zu Schwelle/From Threshold to Threshold (1955)
from Sprachgitter/Speech-Grille (1959)
from Die Niemandsrose/The Noonesrose (1963)
from Atemwende/Breathturn (1967)
from Fadensonnen/Threadsuns (1968)
from Lichtzwang/Lightduress (1970)
from Schneepart/Snowpart (1971)
from Zeitgehöft/Timehalo (1976)

II. PROSEConversation in the Mountains (1959)
The Meridian (1960)

III. DOCUMENTS
from the Correspondence
Letter #1: To Gisèle Celan-Lestrange (1952)
Letter #2: To Gisèle Celan-Lestrange (1952)
Letter #3: To René Char (unsent) (1962)
Letter #4: To Erich Einhorn (1962)
Letter #5: To Jean-Paul Sartre (unsent) (1962)
Letter #6: To Erich Einhorn (1962)
Letter #7: To Gisèle Celan-Lestrange (1965)
Letter #8: To Eric Celan (1968)
Letter #9: From Gisèle Celan-Lestrange to Paul (1969)
Letter #10: To Gisèle Celan-Lestrange (1970)
Das Stundenglass, tief (facsimile)
Uber dich hinaus (facsimile)
Es wird etwas sein, später (facsimile)

IV. ON PAUL CELAN
Paul Celan and Language--Jacques Derrida
Encounters with Paul Celan--E.M. Cioran
For Paul Celan--Andrea Zanzotto
On Paul Celan in Neuchâtel--Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Memory of Words--Edmond Jabes

Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments of Permissions