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Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan

Paul Celan author John Felstiner translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:WW Norton & Co

Published:13th Feb '02

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Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan cover

Paul Celan was born in 1920 in the East European province of Bukovina. Soon after his parents, German-speaking Jews, had perished at the hands of the Nazis, Celan wrote "Todesfuge" ("Deathfugue"), the most compelling poem to emerge from the Holocaust. Self-exiled in Paris, for twenty-five years Celan continued writing in his German mother tongue, although it had "passed through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech." His writing purges and remakes that language, often achieving a hope-struck radiance never before seen in modern poetry. But in 1970, his psychic wounds unhealed, Celan drowned himself in the Seine. This landmark volume includes youthful lyrics, unpublished poems, and prose. All poems appear in the original and in translation on facing pages. 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."

  • Winner of MLA Lois Roth Award 2000
  • Winner of PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation 2001
  • Winner of PEN/West Translation Award 2001
  • Winner of New York Times Notable Selection 2000
  • Joint winner of American Translation Society German Translation Prize 2017

ISBN: 9780393322248

Dimensions: 236mm x 155mm x 23mm

Weight: 714g

466 pages