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Poems of Paul Celan

Paul Celan

Translated by Michael Hamburger

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Imprint: Anvil Press Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Hardback (432 pages)
(Pub. Mar 2007)
9780856463990
Out of Stock
  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Paul Celan is among the most important German-language poets of the century, and, in George Steiner’s words, ‘almost certainly the major European poet of the period after 1945.’ Language, Celan said, was the only thing that remained intact for him after the war. His experiences of the war years and of the loss of his parents are the recurrent themes of his poetry. In the end they led as well to his suicide by drowning in 1970.

    Michael Hamburger’s extensive selection of Celan’s poems is presented in facing-text form, prefaced by an illuminating introduction. This third Anvil edition of his selected translations now includes the previously uncollected longer poem ‘Wolf’s Bean’, several additional short poems, and the essay ‘On Translating Celan’ in which he discusses the challenges faced over many years in his engagement with Celan’s poetry.

    Paul Celan
    Paul Celan (1920–1970) was born Paul Antschel into a Jewish family in Bukovina, a German enclave in Romania which was destroyed by the Nazis. His parents were taken to a concentration camp in 1942, and did not return; Celan managed to escape deportation and to survive. After settling in Paris in ... read more
    Michael Hamburger
    Michael Hamburger (1924–2007) was a poet and critic of distinction as well as the outstanding translator of German poetry. His awards include the Schlegel-Tieck Prize (1981), the German Federal Republic’s Goethe Medal (1986) and the EC’s first European Translation Prize (1990) for Poems of Paul Celan . Five collections of his ... read more
    Awards won by Paul Celan Winner, 1990 European Poetry Translation Prize (Poems of Paul Celan)
    Praise for Paul Celan 'The correspondence includes lovely Sachs poems and interesting accounts of their meeting and of contact with other prominent writers of the time. The introduction and afterword are indispensable, as is the entire book.'
    Choice
    Praise for Michael Hamburger 'O'Driscoll manages to get the reader as close to Hamburger as possible in one book. It feels very much like spending a week at your grandfather's house - getting to listen to all his stories, roaming through cupboards, reading the works hidden inside.'
    Dominik Szczepaniak, DURA
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