Paul Celan’s exceptional oeuvre of letters – half of them unpublished so far: An oeuvre, on par with the poetic works, of immense stylistic range. Biographically insightful and poetologically fruitful.

Paul Celan, the most-interpreted German-speaking poet after 1945, is also the author of an eminent opus of letters. In this edition, it becomes visible as its own oeuvre for the first time: in 691 letters, 330 of them unpublished so far, to 252 addressees. Who are these addressees? They are members of Celan’s family, women he loved, authors he was friends with, young and enthusiastic readers, fellow translators, French philosophers as well as German scholars and the employees of numerous publishing houses. All of these letters create a life in letters in chronological order spanning across four decades.

They show Celan as an exceptional correspondent with an immense stylistic range, distinguished by his ability to defer to strangers. The letters reveal a multitude of thus far unknown biographic facts, allow for the specification of his poetology while showing him as a person in his ordinary everyday life at the same time.

Poems