Lightduress (Green Integer) [Paperback]

Paul Celan (Author), Pierre Joris (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2004 | Series: Green Integer

Continuing the work he began with Breathturn and Threadsuns, Celan further explores the great poetic “Wende” or change that characterized his last three works. Once again this bilingual volume, translated in this edition for the first time in English, reveals the importance of the great Romanian-German poet, who lived for most of his life in France. Translator Pierre Joris has achieved a great feat in bringing these three volumes into the English language.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in Bukovina (now part of Romania) Celan saw his father and mother die because of the Nazi take over of their country and their imprisonment in camps. He spent most of his life in Paris writing in German before committing suicide. Pierre Joris lives in Albany, New York and teaches of SUNY-Albany.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Green Integer (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931243751
• ISBN-13: 978-1931243759
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 4.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,976,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Volume of the Twentieth Century, That I've Read, February 5, 2006

By 

Zachary A. Hanson "Jazzpunk" (Tallahassee, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lightduress (Green Integer) (Paperback)

I guess this is the world I live in, where people are more eager to type reviews on flash-in-the-pan musical phenomena and rant and rave over Oprah's Frey guy fabricating aspects of his memoir, as if these are something new. And, uh, I am the first person to review perhaps the most striking and life-changing book of poetry to be produced in this or any other century. I should live in France or Germany: they've always been all over Celan there. As for America, we're still stuck on Eliot. Seems we have a hunch that poetry died after that. It's called television. Well, to catch us up, Paul Celan is the most strikingly innovative, tragic, cabbalistic, inter-animistic poet since Rimbaud (who, I suppose, is also considered a delicacy in these waters). If you want to read an account of surviving the Holocaust while watching your parents die from it, nothing could move your soul more mysteriously than the discombobulated rhythms and letters in these poems. Praying for the day when I talk about Celan in a deep and moving fashion with like-minded enthusiasts. Guess I have to take up comparative literature for that right now.

Well, Pierre Joris's adept translations of these poems do not necessitate that you move into comparative lit. You get to see the German originals on the left so you are effectively able to compare the translations on the right. Both sides defy what one imagines poetry could be. So much more moving than other poetry considered experimental. He was writing in the vanguard to save his life and it shows.