Glottal Stop

by Celan, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780819567208
• ISBN10: 0819567205
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-02-25
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

Paul Celan s widely recognized as the greatest and most studied post-war European poet. At once demanding and highly rewarding, his poetry dominates the field in the aftermath of the Holocaust. This selection of poems, now available in paper for the first time, is comprised of previously untranslated work, opening facets of Celan's oeuvre never before available to readers of English. These translations, called "perfect in language, music, and spirit" by Yehuda Amichai, work from the implied premise of what has been called Intention auf die Sprache, delivering the spirit of Celan's work--his dense multilingual resonances, his brutal broken music, syntactic ruptures and dizzying wordplay.

Author Biography

NIKOLAI POPOV teaches English at the University of Washington in Seattle. A James Joyce scholar and translator, he also co-translated with Heather McHugh a collection of the poems of Blaga Dimitrova (Wesleyan, 1989). HEATHER MCHUGH is Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. In addition to seven acclaimed books of poetry and the collection of essays Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (Wesleyan, 1994), she has translated poems by Jean Follain and Euripides' Cyclops.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface	xi
Glottal Stop
Voices, scored into	1	(3)
SUMMER REPORT	4	(2)
With wine and being lost, with	5	(1)
THREESOME, FOURSOME	6	(1)
ERRATIC	7	(6)
Hand-	8	(1)
To one who stood outside the door, one	9	(2)
Flung wood	11	(1)
How low could it go, my once immortal word	12	(1)
PAIN, THE SYLLABLE	13	(2)
LA CONTRESCARPE	15	(21)
Floated down blackwater rapids	17	(1)
Gray-white of sheer	18	(1)
(I know you: you're the one who's bent so low	19	(1)
Singable remainder-trace	20	(1)
Flooding, big	21	(1)
Go blind at once, today	22	(1)
Ring-narrowing Day under	23	(2)
At high noon, in	25	(1)
The hourglass buried	25	(1)
Behind the charcoal surfaces of sleep	26	(1)
Go back and add up	27	(1)
Half-mauled, mask-	28	(1)
From fists white with the truth	29	(1)
Noisemakers shoot into the light: it's the Truth	30	(1)
You forget you forget	31	(1)
Crackpots, decomposing	32	(1)
Lichtenberg's heir-	33	(1)
The sight of the songbirds at dusk	34	(1)
Gurgling, then	35	(1)
FRANKFURT, SEPTEMBER	36	(5)
Coincidence staged, the signs all	38	(1)
Who	39	(1)
Spasms, I love you, psalms	40	(1)
NIGHT IN PAU	41	(1)
LATER IN PAU	42	(2)
The ounce of truth In the depths of delusion	43	(1)
LYON, LES ARCHERS	44	(35)
Sleep-pieces, wedges	45	(1)
Attached to out-cast	46	(1)
Graygreens	47	(1)
Chitin sunlings	48	(1)
Eternities dead	49	(1)
Hothouse of an asylum	50	(1)
Lucky, the	51	(1)
On the rainsoaked rutted road	52	(1)
White noises, bundled	53	(1)
Your heart manholed	54	(1)
Here are the industrious	55	(1)
When I don't know, when I don't know	56	(1)
Gigantic	57	(1)
Day freed from demons	58	(1)
Husks of the finite, stretchable	59	(1)
Wet from the world	60	(1)
Hush, you hag, and ferry me across the rapids	61	(1)
Eyeshot's island, broken	62	(1)
Eternity gets older: at	63	(1)
It's late. A fat fetish	64	(1)
Come, we are cutting out	65	(1)
Free of dross, free of dross	66	(1)
Soul-blind behind the ashes	67	(1)
Next-door-neighbor Night	68	(1)
The ropes, stiff with salt water	69	(1)
Out of angel flesh, on	70	(1)
Upholster the word-hollows	71	(1)
Walls of speech, space inwards	72	(1)
Four ells of earth	73	(1)
Naked under death leaves	74	(1)
Stone of incest, rolled away	75	(1)
As loud colors, heaped up	76	(1)
The chimney-swallow, sister	77	(1)
White, white, white	78	(1)
HAUT MAL	79	(16)
The golfball growth	80	(1)
Windfield bound for winter: this	81	(1)
Who stood that round?	82	(1)
Audio-visual vestiges in	83	(1)
Knock out	84	(1)
Eternities swept	85	(1)
She of the freckled farewells	86	(1)
Degenerate	87	(1)
Assembly-	88	(1)
Weather hand	89	(1)
Nightsources, distant	90	(1)
Unwashed, unpainted	91	(1)
Lilac twilight daubed with yellow windows	92	(1)
You with the dark slingshot	93	(1)
I gave a chance	94	(1)
PROVERB ON THE WALL	95	(14)
The aural apparatus drives a flower	96	(1)
Open glottis, air flow	97	(1)
Raised bog, the shape of	98	(1)
Particles, patriarchs, buried	99	(1)
And force and pain	100	(1)
A reading branch, just one	101	(2)
The cables have already been laid	103	(1)
The splintering echo, darkened	104	(1)
Nowhere, with its silken veil	104	(1)
In the most remote of	105	(2)
O little root of a dream	107	(1)
Don't sign your name	108	(1)
Notes	109	(32)
Index of English Titles/First Lines and German Titles/Half Titles	141