Breathturn

Suhrkamp | Insel

Breathturn / Atemwende
Celan’s first major volume of poems, Mohn und Gedächtnis, published in 1952, brought him instant recognition and a measure of fame. A new volume of poems followed roughly every three years until his death by drowning in April 1970.

In the early 1960s, midway through his writing career, a poetic change or “Wende” took place, inscribed in the title of the 1967 volume Breathtturn and lasting to the posthumous volumes. His poems, which had always been highly complex but...
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Celan’s first major volume of poems, Mohn und Gedächtnis, published in 1952, brought him instant recognition and a measure of fame. A new volume of poems followed roughly every three years until his death by drowning in April 1970.

In the early 1960s, midway through his writing career, a poetic change or “Wende” took place, inscribed in the title of the 1967 volume Breathtturn and lasting to the posthumous volumes. His poems, which had always been highly complex but rather lush in a near-surrealistic way, were pared down, the syntax growing tighter and more spiny, his trademark neologisms and telescoping of words increasing, with the overall composition of the work becoming more serial in nature.
2001, 110 pages
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Persons

Paul Celan was born on 23 November 1920 as Paul Antschel, the sole son of German-speaking Jewish parents in the then Romanian city of Czernowitz. After completing school in 1938, he began studying medicine in Tours, France, but returned to Romania a year later to complete a degree in Romance studies. In 1942, Celan’s parents were deported to a labour camp. In the autumn of that year, his father died of typhoid, and his mother was shot. Between 1942 and 1944, Celan was made to do forced labour in several Romanian camps. From 1945 to 1947 he worked as an editor and translator in Bucharest and began to publish his first poems. In 1948, he moved to Paris, where he lived until his death. That same year, he met Ingeborg Bachmann, and in 1951, Celan met the artist Gisèle de...

Paul Celan was born on 23 November 1920 as Paul Antschel, the sole son of German-speaking Jewish parents in the then Romanian city of Czernowitz....


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

»an entirely personal matter«
Year of Publication: 2019
Paul CelanYear of Publication: 2019

Paul Celan’s exceptional oeuvre of letters – half of them unpublished so far: An oeuvre, on par with the poetic works, of immense stylistic range.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

Poems
Year of Publication: 2018
Paul CelanYear of Publication: 2018

For Paul Celan reading was always an experience as well: the books, journals, and daily newspapers he read were as much a source of his poems as personal encounters and political events. When a...

Rights sold to:

USA (FSG), Spanish world rights (Trotta), Portuguese rights (Assírio & Alvim), France (Seuil), Italy (Mondadori), Denmark (Rosinante), Sweden (Ellerströms), Norway (Kolon), Korea (Munhakdongne), Malaysia (Kala), Poland (A5), Slovenia (Beletrina), Ukraine (Knihy XXI)

Herzzeit – The Bachmann–Celan Correspondence
Year of Publication: 2008
Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul CelanYear of Publication: 2008
»Books of this stature appear only every few decades.« Deutschlandradio


The correspondence from the period 1948-61 – a last letter penned by Celan...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Portuguese rights (Antígona), Chinese simplex rights (China Renmin UP), Russia (Ad marginem), France (Seuil), Italy (Nottetempo), Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Denmark (Vandkunsten), Sweden (Ellerströms), Japan (Seidosha), Poland (A5), Czech Republic (Pulchra), Bulgaria (Panorama), Romania (Art), Turkey (Kirmizi Kedi), Ukraine (Knihy XXI), Georgia (Ibis)

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Fondo Cultura), Croatia (OceanMore)

The Sachs–Celan Correspondence
Year of Publication: 1993
Paul Celan, Nelly SachsYear of Publication: 1993
Here are the letters between Nelly Sachs (1891–1970), recipient of the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, and the great German-speaking poet Paul Celan (1920–1970). Their correspondence lasted from...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Sheap Meadow Press), Spanish world rights (Trotta), France (Belin), Italy (Giuntina), Japan (Seiji Biblos), Sweden (Ellerströms), Israel (Keshev)