Paul Celan (; ; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then

Kingdom of Romania The Kingdom of Romania ( ro, Regatul României) was a constitutional monarchy that existed in Romania from 13 March ( O.S.) / 25 March 1881 with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian ...

(now

Chernivtsi Chernivtsi ( uk, Чернівці́}, ; ro, Cernăuți, ; see also other names) is a city in the historical region of Bukovina, which is now divided along the borders of Romania and Ukraine, including this city, which is situated on the u ...

, Ukraine), and adopted the pseudonym "Paul Celan". He became one of the major German-language poets of the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

era.

Life

Early life

Celan was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Cernăuți,

Bukovina Bukovinagerman: Bukowina or ; hu, Bukovina; pl, Bukowina; ro, Bucovina; uk, Буковина, ; see also other languages. is a historical region, variously described as part of either Central or Eastern Europe (or both).Klaus Peter Berge ...

, a region then part of Romania and earlier part of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

(when his birthplace was known as Czernowitz). His first home was in the Wassilkogasse in Cernăuți. His father, Leo Antschel, was a

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

who advocated his son's education in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

at the Jewish school ''Safah Ivriah'' (meaning ''the Hebrew language''). Celan's mother, Fritzi, was an avid reader of

German literature German literature () comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a less ...

who insisted German be the language of the house. In his teens Celan became active in Jewish

Socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

organizations and fostered support for the Republican cause in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...

. His earliest known poem is titled ''Mother's Day 1938''. Paul attended the Liceul Ortodox de Băieți No. 1 (Boys' Orthodox Secondary School No. 1) from 1930 until 1935, Liceul de Băieți No. 2 în Cernăuți (Boys' Secondary School No. 2 in Cernăuți) from 1935 to 1936, followed by the Liceul Marele Voievod Mihai (Great Prince Mihai Preparatory School, now Chernivtsi School No. 5), where he studied from 1936 until graduating in 1938. At this time Celan secretly began to write poetry. In 1938 Celan traveled to

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metro ...

, France, to study

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...

. The

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germa ...

precluded his study in Vienna, and Romanian schools were harder to get into due to the newly imposed Jewish quota. His journey to France took him through Berlin as the events of '' Kristallnacht'' unfolded, and also introduced him to his uncle, Bruno Schrager, who was later among the French detainees murdered at

Birkenau Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It c ...

. Celan returned to Cernăuţi in 1939 to study

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to ...

and

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...

Life during World War II

Following the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

occupation of Bukovina in June 1940, deportations to

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...

started. A year later, following the reconquest by Romania,

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

and the then-fascist Romanian regime brought

ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished ...

s, internment, and forced labour (see Romania in World War II). On arrival in Cernăuți in July 1941, the German SS ''

Einsatzkommando During World War II, the Nazi German ' were a sub-group of the ' (mobile killing squads) – up to 3,000 men total – usually composed of 500–1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to exterminate Jews, Polish intellect ...

'' and their Romanian allies set the city's Great Synagogue on fire. In October, the Romanians deported a large number of Jews after forcing them into a ghetto, where Celan translated

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's sonnets and continued to write his own poetry. Before the ghetto was dissolved in the fall of that year, Celan was pressed into labor, first clearing the debris of a demolished post office, and then gathering and destroying Russian books. The local mayor,

Traian Popovici Traian Popovici (October 17, 1892 – June 4, 1946) was a Romanian lawyer and mayor of Cernăuți during World War II, known for saving 20,000 Jews of Bukovina from deportation. Life Popovici was born in Rușii Mănăstioarei village of t ...

, strove to mitigate the harsh circumstances, until the governor of Bukovina had the Jews rounded up and deported, starting on a Saturday night in June 1942. Celan hoped to convince his parents to leave the country so as to escape certain persecution. While Celan was away from home, on 21 June 1942, his parents were taken from their home and sent by train to an

internment camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...

in Transnistria Governorate, where two-thirds of the deportees eventually perished. Celan's father likely perished of

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

and his mother was shot after being exhausted by forced labour. Later that year, after being taken to a labour camp in

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

, Celan would receive reports of his parents' deaths. Celan remained imprisoned in a work-camp until February 1944, when the Red Army's advance forced the Romanians to abandon the camps, whereupon he returned to Cernăuţi shortly before the Soviets returned. There, he worked briefly as a nurse in the mental hospital. Friends from this period recall Celan expressing immense guilt over his separation from his parents, whom he had tried to convince to go into hiding prior to the deportations, shortly before their deaths.

Life after the war

Considering emigration to Palestine, Celan left Cernăuţi in 1945 for Bucharest, where he remained until 1947. He was active in the Jewish literary community as both a translator of Russian literature into Romanian, and as a poet, publishing his work under a variety of pseudonyms. The literary scene of the time was richly populated with surrealists – Gellu Naum, Ilarie Voronca, Gherasim Luca, Paul Păun, and

Dolfi Trost Dolfi or Dolphi Trost (1916 in Brăila – 1966 in Chicago, Illinois) was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of '' Dialectique de la ...

and it was in this period that Celan developed pseudonyms both for himself and his friends, including the one he took as his pen name. Here he also met with the poets Rose Ausländer and , elements of whose works he would reuse in his poem "

Todesfuge "" (Deathfugue) is a German language poem written by the Romanian-born poet Paul Celan probably around 1945 and first published in 1948. It is one of his best-known and often-anthologized poems. Despite critics claiming that the lyrical finesse an ...

" (1944–45). A version of Celan's poem "Todesfuge" appeared as "" ("Death Tango") in a Romanian translation of May 1947. Additional remarks were published explaining that the dancing and musical performances evoked in the poem were images of realities of the

extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

life.

Emigration and Paris years

On the emergence of the communist regime in Romania, Celan fled Romania for Vienna, Austria. It was there that he befriended

Ingeborg Bachmann Ingeborg Bachmann (25 June 1926 – 17 October 1973) was an Austrian poet and author. Biography Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of Olga (née Haas) and Matthias Bachmann, a schoolteacher. Her f ...

, who had just completed a dissertation on

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...

. Facing a city divided between occupying powers and with little resemblance to the mythic capital it once was, which had harboured the (now) shattered Austro-Hungarian Jewish community, he moved to Paris in 1948. In that year his first poetry collection, ''

Der Sand aus den Urnen ''Der Sand aus den Urnen'' (in English, ''The Sand from the Urns''), is a German-language poetry collection by Paul Celan, published in Vienna in 1948. It was the first publication of Celan in German, and contains one of his best-known poems, " To ...

'' ("Sand from the Urns"), was published in Vienna by A. Sexl. His first few years in Paris were marked by intense feelings of loneliness and isolation, as expressed in letters to his colleagues, including his longtime friend from Cernăuţi, Petre Solomon. It was also during this time that he exchanged many letters with Diet Kloos, a young Dutch singer and anti-Nazi resister who saw her husband of a few months tortured to death. She visited Celan twice in Paris between 1949 and 1951. In 1952, Celan's writing began to gain recognition when he read his poetry on his first reading trip to Germany where he was invited to read at the semiannual meetings of

Group 47 Gruppe 47 (Group 47) was a group of participants in German writers' meetings, invited by Hans Werner Richter between 1947 and 1967. The meetings served the dual goals of literary criticism as well as the promotion of young, unknown authors. In a d ...

. At their May meeting he read his poem ''

'' ("Death Fugue"), a depiction of concentration camp life. When

, with whom Celan had an affair, won the group's prize for her collection ' (''The Extended Hours''), Celan (whose work had received only six votes) said "After the meeting, only six people remembered my name". He did not attend any other meeting of the group. Grave-Paul-Celan

In November 1951, he met the graphic artist

Gisèle Lestrange Gisèle Lestrange or Gisèle de Lestrange, and after marriage, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange (19 March 1927 – 9 December 1991), was a French graphic artist. Biography Born in Paris, Lestrange studied drawing and painting at the Académie Julian in P ...

, in Paris. He sent her many love letters, influenced by

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...

's correspondence with

Milena Jesenská Milena Jesenská (; 10 August 1896 – 17 May 1944) was a Czech journalist, writer, editor and translator. Early life Jesenská was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). Her family is believed to descend from Jan Jesenius, ...

and Felice Bauer. They married on 21 December 1952, despite the opposition of her aristocratic family. During the following 18 years they wrote over 700 letters; amongst the active correspondents of Celan were

Hermann Lenz Hermann Karl Lenz (26 February 1913 – 12 May 1998) was a German writer of poetry, stories, and novels. A major part of his work is a series of nine semi-autobiographical novels centring on his alter ego "Eugen Rapp", a cycle that is also known ...

and his wife, Hanne. He made his living as a translator and lecturer in German at the

École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

. He was a close friend of Nelly Sachs, who later won the Nobel Prize for literature. Celan became a French citizen in 1955 and lived in Paris. Celan's sense of persecution increased after the widow of a friend, the French-German poet Yvan Goll, unjustly accused him of having plagiarised her husband's work. Celan was awarded the Bremen Literature Prize in 1958 and the Georg Büchner Prize in 1960. Celan drowned himself in the river

Seine ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/ Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributa ...

in Paris around 20 April 1970.

Poetry and poetics

The death of his parents and the experience of the Shoah (

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

) are defining forces in Celan's poetry and his use of language. In his Bremen Prize speech, Celan said of language after

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...

that: Celan also said: "There is nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German." His most famous poem, the early "

", is a work of great complexity and power, which may have drawn some key motifs from the poem "ER" by , another Czernovitz poet.Enzo Rostagn
"Paul Celan et la poésie de la destruction"
in "L'Histoire déchirée. Essai sur Auschwitz et les intellectuels", Les Éditions du Cerf 1997 (), in French. The characters of Margarete and Sulamith, with their respectively golden and ashen hair, can be interpreted as a reflection of Celan's Jewish-German culture, while the blue-eyed "Master from Germany" embodies German Nazism. In later years his poetry became progressively more cryptic, fractured and monosyllabic, bearing comparison to the music of Anton Webern. He also increased his use of German

neologism A neologism Ancient_Greek.html"_;"title="_from_Ancient_Greek">Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"is_a_relatively_recent_or_isolated_term,_word,_or_phrase_that_may_be_in_the_process_of_entering_com ...

s, especially in his later works '' Fadensonnen'' ("Threadsuns") and '' Lichtzwang''. In the eyes of some, Celan attempted in his poetry either to destroy or remake the German language. For others, he retained a sense for the lyricism of the German language which was rare in writers of that time. As he writes in a letter to his wife Gisèle Lestrange on one of his trips to Germany: "The German I talk is not the same as the language the German people are talking here". Writing in German was a way for him to think back and remember his parents, particularly his mother, from whom he had learned the language. This is underlined in "" (Lupin), a poem in which Paul Celan addresses his mother. The urgency and power of Celan's work stem from his attempt to find words "after", to bear (impossible) witness in a language that gives back no words "for that which happened". In addition to writing poetry (in German and, earlier, in Romanian), he was an extremely active translator and polyglot, translating literature from Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, and English into German.

Awards

* Bremen Literature Prize 1958 * Georg Büchner Prize 1960

Significance

Based on the reception of his work, it could be suggested that Celan, along with

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...

, Hölderlin and

Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogn ...

, is one of the most significant German poets who ever lived. Despite the difficulty of his work, his poetry is thoroughly researched, the total number of scholarly papers numbering in the thousands. Many contemporary philosophers, including Maurice Blanchot,

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed th ...

Hans-Georg Gadamer Hans-Georg Gadamer (; ; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 '' magnum opus'', '' Truth and Method'' (''Wahrheit und Methode''), on hermeneutics. Life Family ...

and others have devoted at least one of their books to his writing.

Bibliography

In German

* ''

'' (''The Sand from the Urns'', 1948) * ''

Mohn und Gedächtnis ''Mohn und Gedächtnis'' is a 1952 German-language poetry collection by Paul Celan. It has been translated into English by Michael Hamburger as ''Poppy and Memory''. It includes ''Todesfuge "" (Deathfugue) is a German language poem written by the ...

'' (''Poppy and Memory'', 1952) * '' Von Schwelle zu Schwelle'' (''From Threshold to Threshold'', 1955) * '' Sprachgitter'' (''Speechwicket'' / ''Speech Grille'', 1959) * ''

Die Niemandsrose ''Die Niemandsrose'' (in English ''The No-One's-Rose'') is a 1963 German-language poetry collection by Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born as Pau ...

'' (''The No-One's-Rose'', 1963) * '' Atemwende'' (''Breathturn'', 1967) * '' Fadensonnen'' (''Threadsuns'' / ''Twinesuns'' / ''Fathomsuns'', 1968) * '' Lichtzwang'' (''Lightduress'' / ''Light-Compulsion'', 1970) * '' Schneepart'' (''Snow Part'' osthumous 1971) * '' Zeitgehöft'' (''Timestead'' / ''Homestead of Time'' osthumous 1976)

Translations

Celan's poetry has been translated into English, with many of the volumes being bilingual. The most comprehensive collections are from

John Felstiner John Felstiner (July 5, 1936 – February 24, 2017), Professor Emeritus of English at Stanford University, was an American literary critic, translator, and poet. His interests included poetry in various languages, environmental and ecologic po ...

, Pierre Joris, and Michael Hamburger, who revised his translations of Celan over a period of two decades. Susan H. Gillespie and Ian Fairley have released English translations. Joris has also translated Celan's German poems into French: * ''"Speech-Grille" and Selected Poems'', translated by Joachim Neugroschel (1971) * ''Nineteen Poems by Paul Celan'', translated by Michael Hamburger (1972) * ''Paul Celan, 65 Poems'', translated by Brian Lynch and Peter Jankowsky (1985) * ''Last Poems'', translated by Katharine Washburn and Margret Guillemin (1986) * ''Collected Prose'', edited by Rosmarie Waldrop (1986) * ''Atemwende/Breathturn'', translated by Pierre Joris (1995) * ''Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs: Correspondence'', translated by Christopher Clark, edited with an introduction by John Felstiner (1998) * ''Glottal Stop: 101 Poems'', translated by Nikolai B. Popov and Heather McHugh (2000) (winner of the 2001 International

Griffin Poetry Prize The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English languag ...

) * * ''Poems of Paul Celan: A Bilingual German/English Edition, Revised Edition'', translated by Michael Hamburger (2001) * ''Fathomsuns/Fadensonnen and Benighted/Eingedunkelt'', translated by Ian Fairley (2001) * ''Paul Celan: Selections'', edited and with an introduction by Pierre Joris (2005) * ''Lichtzwang/Lightduress'', translated and with an introduction by Pierre Joris, a bilingual edition (

Green Integer Green Integer is an American publishing house of pocket-sized belles-lettres books, based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1997 by Douglas Messerli, whose former publishing house was Sun & Moon, and it is edited by Per Bregne. Gre ...

, 2005) * ''Snow Part'', translated by Ian Fairley (2007) * ''From Threshold to Threshold'', translated by David Young (2010) * ''Paul Celan,

: Correspondence'', translated by Wieland Hoban (2010) * ''The Correspondence of Paul Celan and Ilana Shmueli'', translated by Susan H. Gillespie with a preface by John Felstiner (2011) * ''The Meridian: Final Version – Drafts – Materials'', edited by Bernhard Böschenstein and Heino Schmull, translated by Pierre Joris (2011) * ''Corona: Selected Poems of Paul Celan'', translated by Susan H. Gillespie (Station Hill of Barrytown, 2013) *''Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry: A Bilingual Edition'', translated by Pierre Joris (2015) * ''Something is still present and isn't, of what's gone. A bilingual anthology of avant-garde and avant-garde inspired Rumanian poetry'', (translated by Victor Pambuccian), Aracne editrice, Rome, 2018. *''Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous Prose'', translated by Pierre Joris (2020) *''Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry, A Bilingual Edition'', translated by Pierre Joris (2020)

In Romanian

* ', Andrei Corbea Hoişie

Bilingual

* ''Paul Celan. /'', editor Andrei Corbea Hoişie * Schneepart / Snøpart. Translated 2012 to Norwegian by Anders Bærheim and Cornelia Simon

Writers translated by Celan

* Guillaume Apollinaire * Tudor Arghezi *

Antonin Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fr ...

* Alexander Blok * André Breton *

Jean Cayrol Jean Cayrol (; 6 June 1911 – 10 February 2005) was a French poet, publisher, and member of the Académie Goncourt born in Bordeaux. He is perhaps best known for writing the narration in Alain Resnais's 1955 documentary film, '' Night and Fog''. ...

Aimé Césaire Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; ; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word in French. He founded the P ...

* René Char * Emil Cioran * Jean Daive *

Robert Desnos Robert Desnos (; 4 July 1900 – 8 June 1945) was a French poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day. Biography Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900, the son of a licensed dealer in game and poultry at the '' ...

* Emily Dickinson * John Donne *

André du Bouchet André du Bouchet (April 7, 1924 – April 19, 2001) was a French poet. Biography Born in Paris, André du Bouchet lived in France until 1941 when his family left occupied Europe for the United States. He studied comparative literature first ...

* Jacques Dupin *

Paul Éluard Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement. In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...

Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American collo ...

* Clement Greenberg * A. E. Housman * Velimir Khlebnikov * Maurice Maeterlinck *

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...

* Osip Mandelstam * Andrew Marvell * Henri Michaux * Marianne Moore * Gellu Naum *

Gérard de Nerval Gérard de Nerval (; 22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855) was the pen name of the French writer, poet, and translator Gérard Labrunie, a major figure of French romanticism, best known for his novellas and poems, especially the collection '' Les ...

* *

Benjamin Péret Benjamin Péret (4 July 1899 – 18 September 1959) was a French poet, Parisian Dadaist and a founder and central member of the French Surrealist movement with his avid use of Surrealist automatism. Biography Benjamin Péret was born in Rezé, ...

* Fernando Pessoa *

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

* Arthur Rimbaud * *

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

* Georges Simenon * Jules Supervielle * *

Giuseppe Ungaretti Giuseppe Ungaretti (; 8 February 1888 – 2 June 1970) was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipient of the inaugural 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A leading representative of the experim ...

* Paul Valéry *

Sergei Yesenin Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin ( rus, Сергей Александрович Есенин, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ jɪˈsʲenʲɪn; ( 1895 – 28 December 1925), sometimes spelled as Esenin, was a Russian lyric poet. He is one o ...

* Yevgeny Yevtushenko

About translations

About translating David Rokeah from Hebrew, Celan wrote: "David Rokeah was here for two days, I have translated two poems for him, mediocre stuff, and given him comments on other German translation, suggested improvements ... I was glad, probably in the wrong place, to be able to decipher and translate a Hebrew text."

Biographies

* ''Paul Celan: A Biography of His Youth'' Israel Chalfen, intro.

, trans. Maximilian Bleyleben (New York: Persea Books, 1991) * ''Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew,'' John Felstiner (Yale University Press, 1995)

Selected criticism

* ''Word Traces'',

Aris Fioretos Aris Fioretos (born 6 February 1960 in Gothenburg) is a Swedish writer of Greek and Austrian extraction. Biography Aris Fioretos was born in Gothenburg. His Greek father was a professor of medicine, his Austrian mother ran a gallery. At hom ...

(ed.), includes contributions by

, Werner Hamacher, and

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe ( , ; 6 March 1940 – 28 January 2007) was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator. Lacoue-Labarthe published several influential works with his friend Jean-Luc Nancy. Lacoue-Labarthe was ...

(1994) * ''Gadamer on Celan: 'Who Am I and Who Are You?' and Other Essays'',

(trans.) and Richard Heinemann and Bruce Krajewski (eds.) (1997) * ''Poetry as Experience''

, Andrea Tarnowski (trans.) (1999) * ''Economy of the Unlost: Reading

Simonides Simonides of Ceos (; grc-gre, Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος; c. 556–468 BC) was a Greek lyric poet, born in Ioulis on Ceos. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of the nine lyric poets esteeme ...

of Keos with Paul Celan'', Carson, Anne. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1999) * ''Zur Poetik Paul Celans: Gedicht und Mensch - die Arbeit am Sinn'', Marko Pajević. Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg (2000). * ''Poésie contre poésie. Celan et la littérature'',

Jean Bollack Jean Bollack (15 March 1923 – 4 December 2012) was a French philosopher, philologist and literary critic. Biography He first studied classical philology at the University of Basel, among others with and Albert Béguin, and from 1945 at the ...

. PUF (2001) * ''Celan Studies'' Péter Szondi; Susan Bernofsky and Harvey Mendelsohn (trans.) (2003) * ''L'écrit : une poétique dans l'oeuvre de Celan'', Jean Bollack. PUF (2003) * ''Paul Celan et Martin Heidegger: le sens d'un dialogue'', Hadrien France-Lanord (2004) * ''Words from Abroad: Trauma and Displacement in Postwar German Jewish Writers'', Katja Garloff (2005) * ''Sovereignties in Question: the Poetics of Paul Celan'', Jacques Derrida (trans.), Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen (eds.), a collection of mostly late works, including "Rams," which is also a memorial essay on Gadamer and his ''Who Am I and Who Are You?'', and a new translation of ''Schibboleth'' (2005) * ''Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger: An Unresolved Conversation, 1951–1970'', James K. Lyon (2006) * ''

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan h ...

/Paul Celan. Myth, Mourning and Memory'', Andréa Lauterwein. With 157 illustrations, 140 in colour. Thames & Hudson, London. (2007) * ''Sites of the Uncanny: Paul Celan, Specularity and the Visual Arts'', Eric Kligerman. Berlin and New York (Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies, 3) (2007) * ''Vor Morgen. Bachmann und Celan. Die Minne im Angesicht der Morde''. Arnau Pons in ''Kultur & Genspenster''. Heft Nr. 10. (2010) * ''Das Gesicht des Gerechten. Paul Celan besucht Friedrich Dürrenmatt'', Werner Wögerbauer in ''Kultur & Genspenster''. Heft Nr. 10. (2010) * ''Poetry as Individuality: The Discourse of Observation in Paul Celan'', Derek Hillard. Bucknell University Press. (2010) * ''Vor Morgen. Bachmann und Celan. Die Minne im Angesicht der Morde'', Arnau Pons in ''Kultur & Genspenster''. Heft Nr. 10. (2010) * ''Still Songs: Music In and Around the Poetry of Paul Celan'', Axel Englund. Farnham: Ashgate. (2012) * ''

and Celan: A very brief comparative Study'', Pinaki Roy in ''Yearly Shakespeare'' (ISSN 0976-9536) (xviii): 118-24. (2020)

Audio-visual

Recordings

* ', readings of his original compositions * ', readings of his translations of Osip Mandelstam and

* ''Six Celan Songs'', texts of his poems , sung by

Ute Lemper Ute Gertrud Lemper (; born 4 July 1963) is a German singer and actress. Her roles in musicals include playing Sally Bowles in the original Paris production of ''Cabaret'', for which she won the 1987 Molière Award for Best Newcomer, and Velm ...

, set to music by

Michael Nyman Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film scores (many written during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Gre ...

* ''Tenebrae'' (') from ' (1998) of Marcus Ludwig, sung by the

ensemble amarcord amarcord is a German male classical vocal ensemble based in Leipzig, founded in 1992 by five former members of the Thomanerchor. They primarily perform Medieval music, Renaissance music as well as collaborating with contemporary composers. Until ...

* "" (from '), "Zähle die Mandeln" (from '), "Psalm" (from '), set to music by Giya Kancheli as parts II–IV of ''Exil'', sung by Maacha Deubner,

ECM ECM may refer to: Economics and commerce * Engineering change management * Equity capital markets * Error correction model, an econometric model * European Common Market Mathematics * Elliptic curve method * European Congress of Mathemat ...

(1995) * ''Pulse Shadows'' by Harrison Birtwistle; nine settings of poems by Celan, interleaved with nine pieces for string quartet (one of which is an instrumental setting of "Todesfuge").

Reviews

*Dove, Richard (1981), ''Mindus Inversus'', review of ''Selected Poems'' translated by Michael Humburger. in Murray, Glen (ed.), '' Cencrastus'' No. 7, Winter 1981-82, p. 48,

External links

* Selected Celan exhibits, sites, homepages on the web *
Link to the new site

Overview at Littlebluelight.com

Limited-edition of Paul Celan's reading before the German literary club, Group 47, from The Shackman Press

Spike Magazine's analysis on the writing of Celan

Selected poetry, poems, poetics on the web (English translations of Celan)

Jerry Glenn (copious bibliography, through 1995, in German) * Recent Celan essays by

: 1
"Paul Celan Meets Samuel Beckett"
''American Poetry Review'', July/August 2004 & poetrydaily.org, 6 July 2004; 2
"Writing Zion: An Exchange between Celan and Amichai"
''New Republic'', 12 June 2006
"Paul Celan and Yehuda Amichai: An Exchange on Nation and Exile"
wordswithoutborders.org; 3
"The One and Only Circle: Paul Celan's Letters to Gisèle"
''Fiction'' 54, 2008 and
expanded
) Mantis, 2009

featured on Pierre Joris's blog, this is a page of notes, fragments, sketches for sentences, etc., Celan took when preparing a radio-essay on Osip Mandelstam. However, as Joris points out: "some of the thinking reappears, transformed, in the Meridian".
"Four New Translations of Paul Celan", by Ian Fairley in ''Guernica Magazine''

in the original German with a translation into English by Ana Elsner
"Dissertation on the French Reception of Celan"

one of seven poems translated from the German by Heather McHugh and Nikolai Popov, originally published in '' Jubilat''
Extract from ''Lightduress'' (Cycle 6)
translated by Pierre Joris; originally published by '' Samizdat''
''Dan Kaufman & Barbez music recorded an album based upon the life and poems of Paul Celan''
published on the Tzadik label in the series of Radical Jewish Culture.

Cal Kinnear translates Paul Celan Selected multimedia presentations

* [http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/see-and-hear-poetry/h-n/heather-mchugh/ Griffin Poetry Prize reading by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh from Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan, including video clip]

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Celan, Paul 1920 births 1970 suicides Writers from Chernivtsi École Normale Supérieure faculty German-language poets Jewish poets French people of Romanian-Jewish descent Romanian emigrants to France Jewish Romanian writers Bukovina Jews Romanian male poets French male poets Romanian translators Romanian writers in French Romanian writers in German French writers in German Suicides by drowning in France Georg Büchner Prize winners Nazi-era ghetto inmates Jewish concentration camp survivors 20th-century French translators 20th-century Romanian poets 20th-century French poets Translators of William Shakespeare French male dramatists and playwrights Forced labourers under German rule during World War II