Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan

by Celan, Paul; Felstiner, John; Felstiner, John

• ISBN13: 9780393049992
• ISBN10: 039304999X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: W W NORTON

Summary

The most wide-ranging volume of the work of Europe's leading postwar poet, including previously unpublished writings.

Author Biography

Paul Celan, born in 1920 in Czernowitz, northern Romania, lost his mother and father overnight in a Nazi deportation, then spent nineteen months at forced labor, while his parents were killed. After the war, a German-speaking Jewish exile in Paris, he married a French artist and had a son, taught at the Ecole Normale Superieure, translated forcefully from six languages, and wrote poetry that won him Germany's major literary prizes, ranking him with Holderlin and Rilke. But Celan's Holocaust trauma, plus German neo-Nazism, afflicted him even as his creativity persisted. He took his own life in 1970, at the age of 49 John Felstiner is the author of Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the MLA's James Russell Lowell Prize, and a recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism. It was named a Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Village Voice. He is also the author of Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu, a recipient of the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal, and teaches at Stanford University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xv
Acknowledgments	xvii
Preface	xix
EARLY POEMS (1940-1943)
The Dead Man	2	(2)
Darkness	4	(2)
Nocturne	6	(2)
[Winter]	8	(2)
Nearness of Graves	10	(2)
The Lonely One	12	(2)
Black Flakes	14	(4)
MOHN UND GEDACHTNIS (1952) POPPY AND MEMORY
A Song in the Wilderness	18	(2)
Aspen Tree	20	(2)
The Sand from the Urns	22	(2)
Praise of Distance	24	(2)
Late and Deep	26	(2)
Corona	28	(2)
Deathfugue	30	(4)
On a Journey	34	(2)
In Egypt	36	(2)
Crystal	38	(2)
The Tankards	40	(2)
So you are turned	42	(2)
The Travel Companion	44	(2)
Landscape	46	(2)
Count up the almonds	48	(4)
VON SCHWELLE ZU SCHWELLE (1995) FROM THRESHOLD TO THRESHOLD
I Heard It Said	52	(2)
By Twos	54	(2)
Epitaph for Francois	56	(2)
Assisi	58	(2)
In Front of a Candle	60	(4)
With a Changing Key	64	(2)
Remembrance	66	(2)
Nocturnally Pursed	68	(2)
Whichever Stone You Lift	70	(2)
In Memoriam Paul Eluard	72	(2)
Shibboleth	74	(2)
Speak You Too	76	(2)
Argumentum e Silentio	78	(4)
The Vintagers	82	(2)
Islandward	84	(4)
SPRACHGITTER (1959) SPEECH-GRILLE
Voices	88	(6)
Confidence	94	(2)
With Letter and Clock	96	(2)
Below a Painting	98	(2)
Streak	100	(2)
Tenebrae	102	(2)
Flower	104	(2)
Speech-Grille	106	(2)
Matiere de Bretagne	108	(2)
Cologne, at the Station	110	(2)
Into the Distance	112	(2)
Sketch of a Landscape	114	(2)
An Eye, Open	116	(2)
Stretto	118	(16)
DIE NIEMANDSROSE (1963) THE NO-ONE'S-ROSE
There was earth inside them	134	(2)
The word about going-to-the-depths	136	(2)
With wine and lostness	138	(2)
Zurich, at the Stork	140	(2)
By Threes, by Fours	142	(2)
Your being over there	144	(2)
Twelve Years	146	(2)
With all my thoughts	148	(2)
The Sluice	150	(2)
Mute autumn smells	152	(2)
Ice, Eden	154	(2)
Psalm	156	(2)
Tubingen, January	158	(2)
A Rougues' and Gonif's Ditty	160	(4)
...The Wellspring Rushes	164	(2)
Radix, Matrix	166	(4)
To one who stood before the door	170	(2)
Mandorla	172	(2)
Benedicta	174	(2)
The bright stones	176	(2)
A boomerang	178	(2)
Hawdalah	180	(2)
Afternoon with Circus and Citadel	182	(2)
I have out bamboo	184	(2)
What happened?	186	(2)
Un One	188	(2)
Crowned out	190	(4)
Where the word	194	(2)
Tabernacle Window	196	(4)
The Syllable Pain	200	(4)
It's all different	204	(6)
In the air	210	(12)
ATEMWENDE (1967) BREATHURN
You may	222	(2)
Into the grooves	224	(2)
In rivers	226	(2)
The numbers	228	(2)
Whitegray	230	(2)
With masts sung earthward	232	(2)
Temple-pincers	234	(2)
To stand	236	(2)
With the persecuted	238	(2)
Threadsuns	240	(2)
In the reptile-car	242	(2)
I know you	244	(2)
Etched away	246	(2)
Scooped	248	(2)
No more sand art	250	(2)
Hollow homestead of life	252	(2)
Black	254	(2)
Landscape	256	(2)
In Prague	258	(2)
Ash-aureole	260	(2)
What's written	262	(2)
Where?	264	(2)
King's rage	266	(2)
Solve	268	(2)
Coagula	270	(2)
Paschal smoke	272	(2)
Show-fringes, sense-fringes	274	(2)
A rumbling	276	(2)
Oozing	278	(2)
Once	280	(4)
FADENSONNEN (1968) THREADSUNS
Frankfurt, September	284	(2)
The trace of a bite	286	(2)
All your seals broken? Never.	288	(2)
Sleepscraps	290	(2)
Industrious	292	(2)
When I don't know, don't know	294	(2)
You were	296	(2)
Dew	298	(2)
Profuse announcement	300	(2)
Near, in the aorta's arch	302	(2)
Because you found the trouble-shared	304	(2)
Just Think	306	(4)
LICHTZWANG (1970) LIGHT-COMPULSION
Remnants of hearing, of seeing	310	(2)
We lay	312	(2)
Todtnauberg	314	(2)
Knock	316	(2)
Wan-voiced	318	(2)
Leap-centuries	320	(2)
You be like you	322	(2)
Do not work ahead	324	(4)
SCHNEEPART (1971) SNOW-PART
You lie	328	(2)
The broaches year	330	(2)
Illegible	332	(2)
I hear, the axe has flowered	334	(2)
World to be stuttered after	336	(2)
To night's order	338	(2)
For Eric	340	(2)
A leaf	342	(2)
In-edger	344	(2)
Flashlights	346	(4)
ZEITGEHOFT (1976) HOMESTEAD OF TIME
Wanderbush	350	(2)
Almonding one	352	(2)
There stood	354	(2)
The heat	356	(2)
That shining	358	(2)
The shofar place	360	(2)
The poles	362	(2)
The king's way	364	(2)
I drink wine	366	(2)
There will	368	(2)
Nothingness	370	(2)
Clearlit	372	(2)
Crocus	374	(2)
Vinegrowers	376	(4)
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
Wolfsbean	380	(6)
Pour the wasteland	386	(2)
Don't write yourself	388	(2)
Poem-closed, poem-open	390	(5)
PROSE
Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen	395	(2)
Conversation in the Mountains	397	(4)
The Meridian. Speech on the Occasion of the Award of the Georg Buchner Prize	401	(13)
Speech to the Hebrew Writers Association	414	(1)
Notes	415	(6)
English Index of Titles and First Lines	421	(3)
German Index of Titles and First Lines	424