Selected poems and prose of Paul Celan / translated by John Felstiner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Celan, Paul.

Contributor:

Felstiner, John.

Edward Zeigler Davis Fund.

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Works. Selections. English & German. 2000

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Celan, Paul--Translations into English.

Celan, Paul.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xxxvi, 426 pages : facsimiles ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York ; London : W. W. Norton, [2001 [that is, 2000]

Language Note:

German and English on opposing pages.

Summary:

Paul Celan was born in 1920 in the eastern European province of Bukovina. Soon after his parents, German-speaking Jews, had perished at Nazi hands, he wrote "Todesfuge" ("Deathfugue," 1945), the most compelling poem to emerge from the Holocaust. Self-exiled in Paris, Celan persisted in his German mother tongue for twenty-five years, although it had "passed through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech." His writing purges and remakes that language, often achieving a hope-struck radiance not seen before in modern poetry. But in 1970, his psychic wounds unhealed, Celan drowned himself in the Seine.

This rich new selection contains more of his work than any previous one, including for the first time Celan's youthful lyrics plus unpublished poems found after his death. Also included are lucid versions of the poet's three major speeches and his whimsical prose fiction, "Conversation in the Mountains." An engraving by Gisele Celan-Lestrange, echoing her husband's texts, is reproduced here, along with hitherto unpublished Celan manuscripts.

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."

Contents:

Early poems (1940-1943)

Mohn und Gedächtnis = Poppy and memory (1952)

Von Schwelle zu Schwelle = From threshold to threshold (1955)

Sprachgitter (1959) = Speech-grille

Die Niemandsrose (1963) = The no-one's-rose

Atemwende (1967) = Breathturn

Fadensonnen (1968) = Threadsuns

Lichtzwang (1970) = Light-compulsion

Schneepart (1971) = Snow-part

Zeitgehöft (1976) = Homestead of time

Uncollected poems. Wolfsbohne = Wolfsbean; Füll die Ödnis = Pour the wasteland; Schreib dich nicht = Don't write yourself; Gedichtzu, gedichtauf = Poem-closed, poem-open

Prose. Ansprache anlässlich der Entgegennahme des Literaturpreises der Freien Hansestadt Bremen (1958) = Speech on the occasion of receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen; Gespräch im Gebirg (1960) = Conversation in the mountains; Der Meridian. Rede anlässlich der Verleihung des Georg-Büchner-Preises (1961) = The meridian. Speech on the occasion of the Award of the Georg Büchner Prize; Ansprache vor dem hebräischen Schrifstellerverband (1970) = Speech to the Hebrew Writers Association.

Notes:

"First published as a Norton paperback 2001."

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Winner of The Modern Language Association's Lois Roth Award for Translation.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edward Zeigler Davis Fund.

ISBN:

039304999X

0393322246 :

OCLC:

44128063