Paul Celan: Poems

Paul Celan

Persea Books, 1980 - Poetry - 307 pages

Contents

• Introduction: 13
• Tallow Lamp: 29
• Night: 45

About the author

Paul Celan was born in 1920 in Czernowitz, Romania, to Jewish parents, who spoke German in the home. His mother and father were both deported to concentration camps during Nazi occupation and killed. Celan managed to hide for some time and then survived the war in a Romanian detention camp. After the war, he worked for a time as an editor and translator; he went to Paris to lecture on German literature. Celan began to receive recognition as a poet with the publication of his volume Mohn und Gedachtnis (Poppy and Memory) in 1952 and continued to publish steadily until his suicide in 1970. Divided between conflicting loyalties and cultures, Celan created a unique idiom. Despite the traumatic experience of Nazi occupation, he chose to devote himself to the study of German literature. His poetry is one of the most radical attempts to reconstruct the German language and literature in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Michael Hamburger was born on March 22, 1924 in Berlin, Germany. His family moved to the United Kingdom in 1933 as Adolf Hitler was coming to power. He attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he read modern languages (French and German). During World War II, he was drafted in the army as an infantryman. After the war, he held a series of teaching positions, initially in Germanic studies, on both sides of the Atlantic, including University College London, Reading University, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and the University of California at San Diego. He was the author of more than 20 volumes of poetry and many volumes of essays including Flowering Cactus, Collected Poems, and String of Beginnings. He was also a critic and translator of German works. He received numerous translation awards including the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, the Goethe Medal in 1986, and the European Translation Prize in 1990. He died on June 7, 2007 at the age of 83.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Paul Celan: Poems; Persea series of poetry in translation; Poetry in Translation Series
• Author: Paul Celan
• Editor: Michael Hamburger
• Translated by: Michael Hamburger
• Publisher: Persea Books, 1980
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Jul 1, 2008
• ISBN: 0892550430, 9780892550432
• Length: 307 pages
• Subjects: Poetry / General