Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan Summary and Reviews

Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan
by Paul Celan

Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan
List Price: $21.95
Our Price: $13.85
You Save: $8.10 (37%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $10.50 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


or

Book Summary Information

Author: Paul Celan
Translator: John Felstiner
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-12
ISBN: 0393322246
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Book Reviews of Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan

Book Review: Art from the ashes
Summary: 5 Stars

I don't pretend to understand Celan intellectually. I don't know if a lifetime's worth of study and analysis can ultimately decipher what is innately indecipherable, but I suppose you can, in a way, make the same claim for the poetry of Dickinson and Crane..complex and powerful poetry with perhaps all too obvious driving forces, but with roots that tap into depths both private, and mysterious. But while my mind can't always make sense of language and verse so richly allusive, metaphoric, neologistic, and symbolic, my heart understands every jot and tittle. To me, Celan's poetry is simultaneously an anguished cry and triumphant shout from the ashes of the Holocaust. Using the favored language of his parents, the language of the poetry of Heine and Rilke that he and his beloved mother loved, the native language of her murderers, he twists, transmutes and ultimately transfigures it into a sublime artifice that allows him to go on living in the face of an unthinkable past, a cruel and hypocritical present, and an uncertain future that would tragically end under the waters of the Seine in 1970. Paul Celan thus becomes the greatest post WW2 poet of the German language. In his Bremen speech Celan wrote:

It, the language, remained, not lost, yes in spite of everything. But it had to pass through it's own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, "enriched" by all this. In this language I have sought, during those years and the years since then, to write poems: so as to speak, to orient myself, to find out where I was and where I was meant to go, to sketch out reality for myself.

The above mentioned difficulty with Celan is compounded by the fact that for the individual who cannot read German, much can be lost in translation. There is a distinctly different rhythm to German verse, and many German words have multiple meanings, some explicit and others oblique, which force translators into critical decisions in the selection process. I have read both Felstiner's and Joris's translations of Celan, and prefer the less literal method of Felstiner. A further bonus in this volume is having the original German text adjacent to the translations.

Poetry Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Poetry Books
FOUR QUARTETS. ImageFOUR QUARTETS.
by T. S. Eliot
Faber & Faber; Published: 1944; Hardcover; Book
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ImageRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
by Omar Khayyam
St. Martin's Press; Published: 1983-08-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.75
Price in other shops: $11.95
The Priapus Poems: EROTIC EPIGRAMS FROM ANCIENT ROME ImageThe Priapus Poems: EROTIC EPIGRAMS FROM ANCIENT ROME
University of Illinois Press; Published: 1999-05-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $180.00
Beowulf ImageBeowulf
by Seamus Heaney
Penguin Books; Published: 2000-09-28; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $14.94
Void of Course (Poets, Penguin) ImageVoid of Course (Poets, Penguin)
by Jim Carroll
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1998-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.94
Price in other shops: $15.00
Speaking of Siva (Penguin Classics) ImageSpeaking of Siva (Penguin Classics)
by Anonymous
Penguin Classics; Published: 1973-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.67
Price in other shops: $15.00
A Night Without Armor : Poems ImageA Night Without Armor : Poems
by Jewel
It Books; Published: 1999-08-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.84
Price in other shops: $11.95
Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems ImageGiven Sugar, Given Salt: Poems
by Jane Hirshfield
Harper Perennial; Published: 2002-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.46
Price in other shops: $13.99
Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963 ImageLetters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963
by Sylvia Plath
Harper Perennial; Published: 1992-04-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.91
Price in other shops: $18.00
Yeats Folklore and Occultism ImageYeats Folklore and Occultism
by Frank Kinahan
Unwin Hyman; Published: 1988-10; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops: $59.95
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Why Translation Matters (Why X Matters Series) ImageWhy Translation Matters (Why X Matters Series)
by Edith Grossman
Yale University Press; Published: 2011-03-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.58
Price in other shops: $16.00
Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida ImageTheories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1992-04-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $17.18
Price in other shops: $22.50
Poetry as Experience (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) ImagePoetry as Experience (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Stanford University Press; Published: 1999-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.24
Price in other shops: $20.95
The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel ImageThe Collected Stories of Isaac Babel
by Isaac Babel
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2002-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.25
Price in other shops: $18.95
Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems (Sheep Meadow Poetry) ImagePoems of Jerusalem and Love Poems (Sheep Meadow Poetry)
by Yehuda Amichai
Sheep Meadow; Published: 1992-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.69
Price in other shops: $15.95
Acts of Literature ImageActs of Literature
by Jacques Derrida
Routledge; Published: 1991-11-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.38
Price in other shops: $38.95
On the Origin of Language ImageOn the Origin of Language
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1986-03-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.78
Price in other shops: $15.00
The Flowers of Evil (Oxford World's Classics) (English and French Edition) ImageThe Flowers of Evil (Oxford World's Classics) (English and French Edition)
by Charles Baudelaire
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2008-05-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.78
Price in other shops: $13.95
Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (Nota Bene) ImagePaul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (Nota Bene)
by Mr. John Felstiner
Yale University Press; Published: 2001-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.49
Price in other shops: $37.00
Poems of Paul Celan: A Bilingual German/English Edition, Revised Edition ImagePoems of Paul Celan: A Bilingual German/ English Edition, Revised Edition
by Paul Celan
Persea Books; Published: 2002-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.13
Price in other shops: $18.95