Synopses & Reviews
Memory Rose into Threshold Speech gathers the first four books of the celebrated poet Paul Celan's oeuvre, written between 1952 and 1963, which established his reputation as perhaps the greatest major post-World War II German-language poet.
Translated by the prize-winning translator Pierre Joris, this bilingual edition follows the 2014 publication of Breathturn into Timestead, Celan's collected later poetry. Finally, Celan's readers are able to read his work in full, with a new introduction and expert commentary from Joris. Celan, a Romanian Jew who lived through the Holocaust, displays his sharp ability to pinpoint totalitarian cultural and political tendencies.
The work, however, is not only reflective: there is in Celan a profound need and desire to create a new, inhabitable world and a new language for it. In Memory Rose into Threshold Speech, Celan's reader witnesses his poems, which start lush with surrealistic imagery and become pared down, with the syntax growing tighter and his trademark neologisms and word-creations increasing. The four volumes in this edition show the flowering of one of the major literary figures of the last century.
This volume includes: Sprachgitter, Die Niemandsrose, Mohn und Gedachtnis, and Von schwelle zu Schwelle.
Review
“To read Joris's Celan is to see not only the insights and the horrors, but also intimacy, sexual jealousy, irony, even humor and hope.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Synopsis
Memory Rose into Threshold Speech gathers the poet Paul Celan's first four books, written between 1952 and 1963, which established his reputation as the major post-World War II German-language poet.
Celan, a Bukovinian Jew who lived through the Holocaust, created work that displays both great lyric power and an uncanny ability to pinpoint totalitarian cultural and political tendencies. His quest, however, is not only reflective: there is in Celan's writing a profound need and desire to create a new, inhabitable world and a new language for it. In Memory Rose into Threshold Speech, Celan's reader witnesses his poetry, which starts lush with surrealistic imagery, become gradually pared down; its syntax tightens and his trademark neologisms and word formations increase toward a polysemic language of great accuracy that tries, in the poet's own words, "to measure the area of the given and the possible."
Translated by the prize-winning poet and translator Pierre Joris, this bilingual edition follows the 2014 publication of Breathturn into Timestead, Celan's collected later poetry. All nine volumes of Celan's poetry are now available in Joris's carefully crafted translations, accompanied here by a new introduction and extensive commentary. The four volumes in this edition show the flowering of one of the major literary figures of the last century.
This volume collects Celan's first four books: Mohn und Ged chtnis (Poppy and Memory), Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (Threshold to Threshold), Sprachgitter (Speechgrille), and Die Niemandsrose (NoOnesRose).
About the Author
Paul Celan was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, in 1920, and is considered by many to be the greatest German-language poet of the second half of the twentieth century. He survived the Holocaust and settled in Paris in 1948, where he lived and wrote until his suicide in 1970.
Pierre Joris is the author of more than fifty books of poetry, essays, translations, and anthologies, most recently Arabia (not so) Deserta and, with Adonis, Conversations in the Pyrenees. Joris is the editor and translator of Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry of Paul Celan. In 2005 he received the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for his translation of Celan's Lichtzwang/Lightduress.