PublishedNew York Review Books, June 2024 |
ISBN9781681378305 |
FormatSoftcover, 256 pages |
Dimensions17.8cm × 10.8cm |
Paul Celan, a Jewish poet born in the Bukovina, now part of Romania, who survived the Nazi genocide and moved to Paris while continuing to write in German, is recognized as one of the most powerful poetic imaginations of the second half of the twentieth century.
His work, a touchstone not only for poets but for historians and philosophers, has been translated into countless languages. The letters he wrote to his wife, the artist Gis le Lestrange, now published for the first time in English, provide the best picture we have of Celan's complicated personality and the course of his life, both private and public. The life was troubled by paranoid episodes and repeated mental breakdowns ending in hospitalization, and in 1970 he committed suicide. At the same time, his devotion to his work as a poet and translator (of Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Mandelstam, among others) was unflagging.
This selection of his letters to Gis le, which also includes his letters to his young son, Eric, as well as significant number of Gis le's own letters, covers almost all of his literary career, and while it is a personal document, offering a remarkable protrait of a great poet, a tender husband and father, and a difficult but enduring marriage, it is also a poetic one, providing Celan's translations for Gis le of his poems from German into French and his extensive commentaries on them. It takes us to Celan's work desk, capturing him in the act of composition while also giving us Celan's reading of Celan. Bertrand Badiou's notes transmit precious information about Celan's work and life. The volume also includes photographs and a detailed chronology of the poet's life.
Insightful and provocative letters by a great twentieth-century poet to his artist wife about life and, revealingly, his own writing. An intimate look at this canonical poet's process, mental health, and quotidian moments during the early 1950s.
Paul Celan is recognized as one of the most significant European poets of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Czernowitz,thenpart of Romaniaandnow in Ukraine, he survived the Nazi genocide and eventually settled in Paris. His work, a touchstone for other poets, writers, and philosophers, has been translated into many languages. The letters he wrote to his wife, the artist Gis le Celan-Lestrange, provide an intimate view of key turning points in Celan's literary career as well as of the most difficult moments ofhislife, spent in psychiatric clinics, during which he continued to write.
Letters to Gis le, which also includes letters to his young son, Eric, as well as a selection of Gis le's own letters, also presents a Celanian sense of humor shared with his wife and son. The reader of this volume will discover or rediscover poems sent by Celan to his wife with word-for-word translations and lists of translated orexplained vocabulary words. These materials are made availablehere forthe first time in an English-language publication, which seeks to take into account thesecret dialogue between languages within each letter or poem.
The notes include reproductions of Celan's annotations in the margins of his books,almost giving theimpressionoflooking over the shoulder of the poet as he is reading or writing. The volume also includes photographs of Celan's family and reproductions of manuscripts of poems and letters,aswell as a selection of etchings by Gis le Celan-Lestrange.
