Product Description

This book is the first critical biography of Paul Celan, a German-speaking East European Jew who was Europe's most compelling postwar poet. It tells the story of Celan's life, offers new translations of his poems, and illuminates the connection between Celan's lived experience and his poetry. Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award Chosen as a best book of 1995 by Choice magazine, Village Voice, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Philadelphia Inquirer Winner of the 1997 University of Iowa Writers' Workshop Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #289660 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 290 pages

Review
"This volume has been long and justly awaited. It is the finest approach to the Celanworld so far available." George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement "John Felstiner... has done a great service to Celan and to his readers... I cannot imagine a better treatment of the subject." John Banville, The Observer "Felstiner is clear, intelligent and quietly erudite... His translations are sensitive to the infinite nuances of Celan's formidably introspective verse. This will surely remain the definitive work on him." Daniel Johnson, The Times "Felstiner is a most sensitive translator of Celan's work, and a perfect guide to its influences." Carole Angier, New Statesman and Society "John Felstiner's book is of inestimable value to anyone wanting to read Celan with understanding." Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books "This long-overdue study illuminates the rich biographical meaning behind much of Celan's spare, enigmatic verse." New Yorker "The book is at once a biography of Celan, a study of his poems, and an account of the author's struggle with translation." Robert Hass, Washington Post Book World"

John Banville, The Observer
"John Felstiner ... has done a great service to Celan and to his readers ... I cannot imagine a better treatment of the subject."

Daniel Johnson, The Times
"Felstiner is clear, intelligent and quietly erudite ... His translations are sensitive to the infinite nuances of Celan's formidably introspective verse. This will surely remain the definitive work on him."

Customer Reviews

Essential to understand one of the Great Poets of the XXth Century
To my great regret I came to the poetry (and the life story behind so much of it) of Paul Celan somewhat late in life, unpardonably late, even. But from the moment I did I knew that this was not just the Poet of the Holocaust - he was an unparalled poetic genius in the second half of he last century. This is a personal and totally biased opinion, so go read the poems, surely they speak for themselves. Yes they do.
But in this book we have contextualization, translations almost dissected (mostly in the German to English angle) and biographical notes along the way.
Paul Celan was himself a polyglot and a prolific translator. Born in a Romania that has changed borders to a jewish family that did not escape the fate of most others in Eastern Europe, eventually a French citizen, one of the great poets and shapers of the German language of all times.
His legacy is tremendous. His suicide perhaps a powerful statement of guilt or alienation - perhaps something entirely different that need not be dwelt on to enjoy the work.
Though "enjoy" seems to me to be an entirely personal approach.
He leads us to a labyrinth. To the depths of human cruelty. But he can see that all human passions have great surviving power.
Maybe not just after witnessing and enduring their extremes can one hope to reconcile itself with the humanity and the passions within.
The book is extraordinarily well-researched and written in a style I'd call 'academic but unassuming'. It will leave you with a longing to read more from Celan. That alone would justify its writing, apart from all its many merits.

Finally, a great book about the often ignored poet
Amongst all the books I have read concerning great figures in Jewish culture, I thought this account of Celan one of the best. The strongest point of the work is in its offering of new translations of some of Celan's greatest work - and the author has been kind enough to explain his reasoning in minute detail. Not only do we get a detailed account of his life but a critical examination of his works. Some of the biographical details at the beginning are a little sketchy, (which at first annoyed me because they proved so important in the forming of his poetry) but this is more due to Celan's private nature than author error. It would also have been good to read more about Celan's meeting with Heidegger to which only a short chapter is devoted. I now consider Celan my favourite poet, and rank his work along side Primo Levi's in its ability to move a reader into new areas of understanding, and illuminate in readers that rare thing - a moment of compelling sadness and fascination. I would also rank this book along side my favourite biography's and would advise anyone with more than a passing interest in Celan to buy it and give it the time it deserves.

The great book in English on Celan
John Felstiner's book on Paul Celan is an extraordinary act of critical sympathy and witness. Celan is a difficult poet, even if you know German, but Felstiner's achievement is to demonstrate that the difficulty is (for one thing) not all that difficult, and (also) the poet's entitlement. The extended assessment of Celan's most famous poem 'Todesfuge' (Death Fugue) is a lesson in patient and knowledgeable commentary (it comes as a bit of a shock to learn that when the poem first appeared, in a Romanian translation, it was called 'Death Tango'). Felstiner shows, with exemplary tact and discretion, how that poem's celebrated imagery is in fact nothing but literal truth.

Much of Celan is so tough to translate that I feel it's almost presumptuous of me to criticise Felstiner's translations, and yet I think he sometimes stumbles against the fierce and arduous wordplay of some of Celan's later stuff; but then, who wouldn't. Celan had a life marked by appalling loss and tragedy and misunderstanding, and Felstiner respects his subject's occasional failures of nerve; the gossippy bit of me wants to know exactly what it meant that Celan was occasionally 'violent', but then again, the man's parents were killed by the Nazis, we should really cut him some slack...

Read this book, by all means. But read the poems. And if you can only read one of the two (why should that be?), read the poems.