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Introduction, James K. Lyon

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Introduction to the special issue on Paul Celan

Ambiguities Of Interpretation: Translating The Late Celan, Nicholas J. Meyerhofer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Celan's later poems are seen as increasingly problematic because of their inherent tension between speaking and not speaking, because of their formalization (semantic and syntactic) of this tension, and also because of Celan's poetic intentionality. The latter, described as a poetics of ambiguity, is the focus of this article. Particular attention is given to the implications such a poetics has for the task of the (English) translator. To illustrate in the concrete this poetics, and to show how its intentional integration of thematic and etymological ambiguity must be taken into account by the translator, two late lyrics ("Einkanter: Rembrandt" and …

Encounters: American Poets On Paul Celan, Various Authors

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The Poetry of Exile. Paul Auster.

Paul Celan: A Memoir and A Poem. Jerome Rothenberg.

Paul Celan. Jed Rasula.

Paul Celan. Cid Corman.

A Note on Paul Celan. Clayton Eshleman.

[Paul Celan.] Jack Hirschman.

The Name Reversed — To Paul Anczel. David Meltzer.

Paul Celan In Translation: "Du Sei Wie Du", John Felstiner

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Translating the lyric poetry of Paul Celan, especially his later poems, carries not only the endemic challenge and difficulty of any verse translation, but the added incentive of doing justice to a writer whose whole recourse after the Holocaust—whose sanctuary, if he was to have any at all—he sought in language itself, specifically in the Muttersprache, the mother tongue that was as well the tongue of those who murdered his mother and father. This essay exposes a process of translating "Du sei wie du" (1970), which perhaps more than any other poem by Celan, at once solicits and defies …

Poetry And The Extremities Of Language: From Concretism To Paul Celan, James K. Lyon

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Despite his disdain for most contemporary German language poets, Paul Celan in his own verse shares and reflects in several ways the attitudes toward language and the possibilities of poetic speech found in the practitioners of so-called "concrete poetry." Skeptical of language that had fallen victim to the "verbicide" of modern usage, each set out to re-create or revitalize language by using it in an anti-metaphorical sense where words, rather than functioning as bearers of meaning, are often employed as unconventional, in some cases anti-referential sign systems that have meaning only in relationship to themselves, but which simultaneously attempt to …

Celan And The "Stumbling Block" Of Mysticism, Joachim Schulze

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In certain poems, Celan uses concepts that derive in part indirectly, in part directly from mystical sources (Gershom Scholem, Meister Eckhart). In other poems, the reader also finds themes related to mysticism. This discovery raises the question of whether one may read these poems as mystical expressions, or whether they should not in fact be viewed instead as "poetic transpositions" of concepts drawn from the "raw material" of mysticism.

Using a specific example, this essay will demonstrate the possibility of reading a poem in a mystical context, i.e. as a mystical expression, and then address the question from two perspectives. …

Paul Celan: A Selected Bibliography Of Recent Secondary Literature, Jerry Glenn

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Paul Celan: A Selected Bibliography of Recent Secondary Literature

Paul Celan In English: A Bibliography Of Primary And Secondary Literature, Jerry Glenn

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Literature of Paul Celan