Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech (Poetry)

- Blurb -

Memory Rose into Threshold Speech gathers the first four books of the celebrated poet Paul Celan' s oeuvre, written between 1952 and 1963, which established his reputation as perhaps the greatest major post-World War II German-language poet. Translated by the prize-winning translator Pierre Joris, this bilingual edition follows the 2014 publication of Breathturn into Timestead, Celan' s collected later poetry. Finally, Celan' s readers are able to read his work in full, with a new introduction and expert commentary from Joris. Celan, a Romanian Jew who lived through the Holocaust, displays his sharp ability to pinpoint totalitarian cultural and political tendencies. The work, however, is not only reflective: there is in Celan a profound need and desire to create a new, inhabitable world and a new language for it. In Memory Rose into Threshold Speech, Celan' s reader witnesses his poems, which start lush with surrealistic imagery and become pared down, with the syntax growing tighter and his trademark neologisms and word-creations increasing. The four volumes in this edition show the flowering of one of the major literary figures of the last century. This volume includes: Sprachgitter, Die Niemandsrose, Mohn und Gedachtnis, and Von schwelle zu Schwelle.