Poems

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 complete and annotated edition of Celan’s poems first appeared in 2003, the indexing of such sources was still at its beginning. In the meantime editions of his most important epistolary exchanges have been published, the critical editions have been completed, and research in Celan’s bequest library with its literary traces and annotations has forged ahead.

On this basis, the 2003 edition could be expanded by close to 60 poems, some of them appearing for the first time, and all of his texts underwent careful examination. The commentary has also been reorganized and expanded considerably, especially thanks to the editor’s intensive research of Celan’s reading of the press. Special attention has been paid – in line with his poetology – to the ›inscribed date‹ of every poem. With this new edition the reader is given a great wealth of clearly demonstrable information for understanding Celan’s poetry.

»[The] comments on the poems offer […] a lot of new detailed information by referencing what Celan would have been reading in newspapers at the time and with the strikingly meticulous archival research.« Helmut Böttiger, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»The complete edition of Paul Celan’s poems invites you to make new discoveries – and amidst the darkness, utopian aspects can be found.« Die Tagespost

»Reading Paul Celan’s poems means discovering unspeakably breathtaking and incomparable expanses of words.« Heiko Buhr, Lebensart

»The author, defamed as difficult, has his chance to speak with precision on his surprisingly realistic but at the same time so radical as well as poetically inventive experience of his self and the world to the last letter.« Mannheimer Morgen

»If you want to approach the work of Paul Celan, one of the most important modern poets, for the first time or if you are an advanced student of Celan’s works and want to immerse yourself deep in his poetry, you will greatly appreciate this newly commented complete edition.« Matthias Ehlers, WDR 5

»And so the door to a singular lyrical cosmos […] opens a little further and makes it accessible to a non-academic readership.« Heiko Kammerhoff, BÜCHERmagazin