[New-Poetry] Paul Celan

[David Bircumshaw]

> Any Paul Celan fans out there? I just got a book of his German poems 
> translated by Michael Hamburger. The introduction was both fascinating 
> and saddening. He was persecuted by the Nazis but survived the Shoah, 
> yet his parents died in the extermination camps. This left an 
> indelible mark of tragedy on him and he committed suicide at age 49 in 
> 1970. His poems feature fragmentation and neologisms but are very 
> evocative. I've just started studying them. He was an extremely gifted 
> poet, multilingual and well published in his own time.
> Richard
Yes, Michael Hamburger's and also Pierre Joris's translations of Celan 
are excellent poetry in their own right.  I hope it's a  bi-lingual 
edition you have, if not, do get one, they're worth it, both Hamburger 
and Joris are available in that form. A German-Jewish friend of mine 
says the translations are not the 'same' as the originals, that it would 
be impossible for them to be so, but fine in their own right.

Celan was an outstanding poet, the fragmentation and neologisms, in his 
case, are justified, as they come an extreme edge of subject and 
experience. The poems are charged, like the equally intense short poems 
of Hopkins or Vallejo.

There are a few audio recordings of Celan on the Web, I can't recall the 
addresses off-hand, but a google will find them. I'd recommend too his 
(very short) 'Collected Prose', translated by Rosemarie Waldrop.

Best

Dave

-- 

David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk

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