Paul Celan: Selections (Poets for the Millennium)

by Paul Celan

published

March 14th 2005 by University of California Press

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binding

Paperback, 242 pages

isbn

0520241681 (isbn13: 9780520241688)

description

The best introduction to the work of Paul Celan, this anthology offers a broad collection of his writing in unsurpassed English translations along wit...more

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Andy rated it:

05/05/08

Read in May, 2008

A great book. Pierre Joris' translations of Celan's late work are the primary way that I have come in contact with Celan, and it is through that contact that Celan has become such a large figure for me, one who directly affects how I write (even while I realize this is a mediated contact). The meat of this book is Joris' translations, so it is, of course, going to be a solid book for me.

What makes this book all the more exciting is to see translations from other capable voices. I'd most of a...more A great book. Pierre Joris' translations of Celan's late work are the primary way that I have come in contact with Celan, and it is through that contact that Celan has become such a large figure for me, one who directly affects how I write (even while I realize this is a mediated contact). The meat of this book is Joris' translations, so it is, of course, going to be a solid book for me.

What makes this book all the more exciting is to see translations from other capable voices. I'd most of all like to highlight Cid Corman's work. Here's a taste:


     Pray, Lord,
     Pray to us,
     we are nigh.

     Windskew we went on,
     we went on, to bend ourselves
     at hollow and hole.

     To the trough we went, Lord.

     It was blood, it was,
     which you had spilt, Lord.

     It glittered.

Corman, these days, is better known as publisher of the legendary Orgin magazine than as a poet. I know him through his wonderful translation of René Char, Leaves of Hypnos. Reading his rendering of Char and reading his rendering of Celan makes me want to finally pick up a book of Corman's and look at his poetry outside of translating others.

It's rare to find a poetry as intense as the poem selected above, and while the terror is certainly Celan's, it's no easy task to render it in another language. Corman's translations are one of those few places were I can see Olson's idea of the poem as energy-field. They never let up; they let the horrors Celan depicted be horrors....less

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Bruce rated it:

02/13/08

Read in January, 2006

Occasionally, when approaching a new translation of a writer whom one has felt he has lived with for a time, whom one has felt he has “known” across the divide of translation, whom one has tried to listen to earnestly in word & phrase, in gap & measure, ellipsis, silence, & the felt sense of what is imparted within & beyond what is said & spoken... occasionally one has a sense that such a process of discovery & journey is beginning again afresh & anew & that w...more

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Paul Celan: Selections (Poets for the Millennium)

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