Poems of Paul Celan: A Bilingual Edition in German and English

This excellent edition of Paul Celan's major poetry (translated excellently by Michael Hamburger) provides the full scope of Celan's considerable genius. Included is the famous 'Death Fugue,' perhaps the most darkly beautiful and profound works of art about the Holocaust yet created. One is left with Celan's transitions; he began immersed in the syle of early 20th century German poets suck as Rilke, and later progressed in Breathturn and Threadsuns to reveal his capacity for highly creative and original linguistic play. The final poems are characterized by a deep morbidity and anguish; they are patently indicative of the poet's distrught spirits. He would later kill himself by drowning. Celan is now written about intensively by the philosophers Derrida and Lyotard, he is probably as important to them as Holderlin was to Heidegger. The editor has included a poem that Celan did not intend for publication; but you can understand why it was included, as it is a magnificent triumph of expressive sorrow over the loss of his parents during the war. Celan was a very great poet, readers are still trying to catch up with his complexity and deep artistic insight.

Adorno was wrong. There is poetry after Auschwitz, and this is what it looks like. Celan's short poems are compressed visions of horror. He tears at the fabric of language in order to render the torn fabric of reality. Reading Celan, I think of the best paintings by the contemporary German artist Anselm Kiefer, an artist who, like Celan, attacks his materials with fire, sometimes even burning gaping holes into his vast canvases. Art after Auschwitz must be prepared to show the damage, the tears in the fabric of what makes us human. Celan--and Kiefer, at his best--points toward a new way to be human. I cannot praise an artist more highly than that.

I first discovered Celan last November when I read "With A Variable Key" on the web page for Roman Polanski's "The Pianist." Curious, I checked out a book of his works from the university library and was immediately enthralled with Celan's world. I purchased this book soon after. Celan gives new meaning to the idea of an artist putting his/her life into their work. His tortured existence replays itself over and over in his work and one can almost feel the agony Celan suffered through dealing with and ultimately losing the battle with his demons. Hamburger's introduction to Celan's life and his methods of translation were also insightful and ironic considering German was the language of Celan's own prison. There is the darkness found in such sweeping works as "Death Fugue" and "Wolfs Bean." Then there is the subtle beauty which I personally find in "How You" and "Not Until." My favorite of his poems has to be "With A Variable Key."Celan is hailed by some as one of the greatest poets of German literature and the 20th century. Hamburger's collection and translations do Celan's work justice.

Poet and translator Michael Hamburger has done us an excellent service by giving us this book, which will certainly become the bilingual edition of choice for Paul Celan. A few words.On Celan: Probably the second most important German-language poet of the 20th century after Rilke, but very different in style and mindset! Whereas Rilke provides incredible lyricism, Celan's poetry is jerky, raw, cut-off, even tortured. Struggling with how to write poetry in the German language after the Holocaust (Celan was a Jew), he chose to focus on the basics of language - prepositions, pronouns - and place the language under such pressure and in such tension that poetry could again speak. To Adorno's claim that there could be "no poetry after Auschwitz", Celan proved there was a way, but it was a very difficult one. If you have not yet come across Celan, I can heartily recommend him as one of the greats of the 20th century. His most famous poem is "Todesfuge" or "Death Fugue", but his other poems are also excellent. But be forewarned - this is no light verse. You'll get some heavy stuff, but you'll love it.On Hamburger: he is a good poet in his own right and a wonderful translator, having already provided the best edition of Hoelderlin's poetry. Now that he has turned to Celan, we benefit very much from his efforts. Celan is incredibly difficult to translate, and the translator must make many choices and must try not to destroy the ambiguity in the German by reducing it simplistically into the English. Hamburger does a good job in this - in most cases a better job than Felstiner, who is the other main translator of Celan (and has a different collection). I would recommend Hamburger's translations over Felstiner. In most cases, he retains more, and there are fewer times when you will say "Eh? Why did he do that??" I suppose if you don't speak any German at all, this will make less of a difference, but if you're getting a bilingual edition you probably can at least read a little bit.Well, a very good book of translations and a fantastic poet. What more could you ask for?

...have been for him to come across the words he found growing in himself in the tongue of the enemy: Schimmelgrün ist das Haus des Vergessens. Vor jedem der wehenden Tore blaut dein enthaupteter Spielmann. Er schlägt dir die Trommel aus Moos und bitterem Schamhaar; mit schwärender Zehe malt er im Sand deine Braue. Länger zeichnet er sie als sie war, und das Rot deiner Lippe. Du füllst hier die Urnen und speisest dein Herz.------------------------------ Green as mould is the house of oblivion. Before each of the blowing gates your beheaded minstrel turns blue. For you he beats his drum made of moss and of harsh pubic hair; With a festering toe in the sand he traces your eyebrow. Longer he draws it than ever it was, and the red of your lip. You fill up the urns here and nourish your heart.---------------------------I read these translations side-by-side with the originals, and find them to be about as ept as it gets -- German poetry is clunky enough put into English, but with Celan it gets completely out of hand -- his Deutsch reads like a patois of German and Martian -- twisting the sounds into shapes like a balloon-animal-maker before a birthday party of children, wringing meaning and context and consonance from consonantless animal cries, deep in the night, skinned on frost, in a crater of some prison moon, staring down at the earth very small and far away and jewellike from that distance...He is such a poet of genuine Mystery -- each poem is like a game wherein he asks you, very nicely, to allow him to blindfold you; you assent to it, and then let him lead down through the scrub and over the cobbles and down to the riverbank and then you hear him jump in. By the time you get the blindfold off and figure out where you are, he has sunk from sight, shoes full of stones... All that is left is the poem, written on dry leaves with a stick dipped in mud, already coming apart in your paws...