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George Steiner has declared, "The quality of aloneness in Celan is pitiless." Paul Celan's hermetic, Holocaust-haunted works call out to us and then resort to difficulty, private language,and--in the late art--splintering and silence. Celan, who committed suicide in 1970, was born in Romania and wrote in a German taut with archetypes, archaisms, and neologisms, which has both frustrated and inspired fellow poets and translators. Michael Hamburgerhas been more daring than most. Laboring on a dual-language selection, he had to resort to biographical clues to unravel entire poems; he bluntly states that "much of Celan's later poetry can be intuitively grasped, but not rendered in another language, without as much knowledge as possible of his sources.... What makes them difficult is the terrain itself--a terrain in which milk is black, death is the all-encompassing reality--not the nature of its charting."

The reference is to Celan's most famous work, "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue"), a poem which grows more harrowing with each reading, particularly the iconic lines "death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue / he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true." Hamburger's translation begins:

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon and in the morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there lies one unconfined...

Customer Reviews (6)

A poet who moved from direct social relevance to difficulty and paradox
Paul Celan stands as one of the most influential and visible poets of the second half of the 20th-century. The work he produced from World War II to his suicide by drowning in 1970 has been lauded by subsequent poets, taught in German history courses, and set to music by Berio, Birtwistle, and Rihm. The central theme of most of Celan's poetry is the slaughter of European Jewry in the Holocaust, as the poet was born in a German-speaking Jewish enclave in Bucovina and there lost his parents and his home, scars which even a successful new life in Paris could never erase. This volume of selected poems with English translations by Michael Hamburger is a fine introduction to his work.

Celan's poem "Todesfuge" (Death Fugue) is one of his earliest mature pieces and the most common introduction to his poetry. It's opening lines "Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown / we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night / we drink and we drink it / we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined" are a powerful depiction of the death camps and fully repudiate Adorno's claim that poetry after Auschwitz is impossible.

Some critics have claimed that "Todesfuge" was Celan's only great poem and had it not been for that, then we would have never heard of him. That poem was certainly his break into the literary world, but other material in this volume is just as fine. "Einfuehrung" (The Straitening) is something of a rewriting of "Todesfuge" in considerably more desperate language and my favourite of Celan's poems. Here the motifs of the first poem are shattered into pieces ("Grass, written asunder. The stones, white / with the shadows of grass blades ... Ash. / Ash. ash. / Night. / Night-and-night.") which in turn are dissolved into their component atoms (Gales, / Gales, from the beginning of time, / whirl of particles.").

In "Tenebrae" Celan reverses the relationship of God and his people in Judaism and explicitly evokes the violence of the camps: "We are near, Lord, / near and at hand. // Handled already, Lord, / clawed and clawing as though / the body of each of us were your body, Lord." One of Celan's main concerns was how speech might remain meaningful when so much of life had become meaningless after the horrors of the war years. In "With a Variable Key" he writes: "With a variable key / you unlock the house in which / drifts the snow of that left unspoken ... You vary the key, you vary the word / that is free to drift with the flakes. / What snowball will form round the workd / depends on the wind that rebuffs you."

While much of Celan's work is haunting, I cannot make much of his last works. With the last collections he saw published in his lifetime ATEMWENDE (Breathturn) and FADENSONNEN (Threadsuns) his poetry became so hermitic and so obsessed with polysemy (multiple meanings) that it effectively means nothing. Take, for example, the poem "Coagula" which in its entirety reads: "Rosa, your / wound as well. // And the hornlight of your / Romanian buffaloes / instead of stars above / the sandbed, in / the talking, red- / ember-powerful / rifle butt."

Now, some of the linguistic games of these late poems are entertaining, but I cannot sketch them here because I'm assuming readers of this review have no German, and they indeed cannot be preserved in English. Hamburger has attempted to give the poems some intelligibility by basing his translations on our knowledge of Celan's life, but in doing so he collapses the possibilities inherent in the German text.

In reviewing this volume of selected poems, and consequently the poet's entire career, I'm not sure how to rate it overall and therefore have given it three stars. Celan is certainly a poet worth getting acquainted with, but I can't help feeling that he was going astray into irrelevance with the late poems that only the author himself would have understood. If you are a fan of modern European poetry, or interested in the Holocaust and its influence on literature, pick up Hamburger's translations if you cannot read the original German. John Felstiner's Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew also makes a good companion for those who might miss the Jewish symbolism found throughout the early poetry.

Classic Collection
This excellent edition of Paul Celan's major poetry (translated excellently by Michael Hamburger) provides the full scope of Celan's considerable genius. Included is the famous 'Death Fugue,' perhaps the most darkly beautiful and profound works of art about the Holocaust yet created. One is left with Celan's transitions; he began immersed in the syle of early 20th century German poets suck as Rilke, and later progressed in Breathturn and Threadsuns to reveal his capacity for highly creative and original linguistic play. The final poems are characterized by a deep morbidity and anguish; they are patently indicative of the poet's distrught spirits. He would later kill himself by drowning.

Celan is now written about intensively by the philosophers Derrida and Lyotard, he is probably as important to them as Holderlin was to Heidegger. The editor has included a poem that Celan did not intend for publication; but you can understand why it was included, as it is a magnificent triumph of expressive sorrow over the loss of his parents during the war. Celan was a very great poet, readers are still trying to catch up with his complexity and deep artistic insight.

Poetry After Auschwitz
Adorno was wrong. There is poetry after Auschwitz, and this is what it looks like. Celan's short poems are compressed visions of horror. He tears at the fabric of language in order to render the torn fabric of reality. Reading Celan, I think of the best paintings by the contemporary German artist Anselm Kiefer, an artist who, like Celan, attacks his materials with fire, sometimes even burning gaping holes into his vast canvases. Art after Auschwitz must be prepared to show the damage, the tears in the fabric of what makes us human. Celan--and Kiefer, at his best--points toward a new way to be human. I cannot praise an artist more highly than that.

With A Variable Key....
I first discovered Celan last November when I read "With A Variable Key" on the web page for Roman Polanski's "The Pianist."Curious, I checked out a book of his works from the university library and was immediately enthralled with Celan's world. I purchased this book soon after.
Celan gives new meaning to the idea of an artist putting his/her life into their work.His tortured existence replays itself over and over in his work and one can almost feel the agony Celan suffered through dealing with and ultimately losing the battle with his demons. Hamburger's introduction to Celan's life and his methods of translation were also insightful and ironic considering German was the language of Celan's own prison.
There is the darkness found in such sweeping works as "Death Fugue" and "Wolfs Bean."Then there is the subtle beauty which I personally find in "How You" and "Not Until."My favorite of his poems has to be "With A Variable Key."
Celan is hailed by some as one of the greatest poets of German literature and the 20th century.Hamburger's collection and translations do Celan's work justice.

The Best Bilingual Edition of Celan Thus Far
Poet and translator Michael Hamburger has done us an excellent service by giving us this book, which will certainly become the bilingual edition of choice for Paul Celan. A few words.

On Celan: Probably the second most important German-language poet of the 20th century after Rilke, but very different in style and mindset! Whereas Rilke provides incredible lyricism, Celan's poetry is jerky, raw, cut-off, even tortured. Struggling with how to write poetry in the German language after the Holocaust (Celan was a Jew), he chose to focus on the basics of language - prepositions, pronouns - and place the language under such pressure and in such tension that poetry could again speak. To Adorno's claim that there could be "no poetry after Auschwitz", Celan proved there was a way, but it was a very difficult one. If you have not yet come across Celan, I can heartily recommend him as one of the greats of the 20th century. His most famous poem is "Todesfuge" or "Death Fugue", but his other poems are also excellent. But be forewarned - this is no light verse. You'll get some heavy stuff, but you'll love it.

On Hamburger: he is a good poet in his own right and a wonderful translator, having already provided the best edition of Hoelderlin's poetry. Now that he has turned to Celan, we benefit very much from his efforts. Celan is incredibly difficult to translate, and the translator must make many choices and must try not to destroy the ambiguity in the German by reducing it simplistically into the English. Hamburger does a good job in this - in most cases a better job than Felstiner, who is the other main translator of Celan (and has a different collection). I would recommend Hamburger's translations over Felstiner. In most cases, he retains more, and there are fewer times when you will say "Eh? Why did he do that??" I suppose if you don't speak any German at all, this will make less of a difference, but if you're getting a bilingual edition you probably can at least read a little bit.

Well, a very good book of translations and a fantastic poet. What more could you ask for? ... Read more

Book Description

"Michael Hamburger is exactly the poet one would choose to perform the valuable service of bringing Goethe into focus for us."-Gavin Ewart

Customer Reviews (1)

Indispensable study of modern poetry
Michael Hamburger is one of those academic writers you just want to call up and thank.He seems to delight in making complex concepts plain, but without dumbing them down.Anyone who finds twentieth-century poetry "difficult" or irritating or considers it grossly inferior to the lyrical work that came before it should read this book.Hamburger narrates the century-long story of poetry wrestling with itself as it tries to find new ways to make meaning, and confronts (or evades) the political, philosophical and psychological developments of modern life. His observations on the use of "personae" and the problematic distinction between public and private poetry are particularly valuable, as is the breadth of this study which isn't limited to poetry written in English.Unlike so many academics, Hamburger recongnises that plenty of the works influencing a poet's practice were not even written in the same language (think of the French Symbolists' influence - it even got as far as Australia).Hamburger seems to be an ardent modernist, but he doesn't let his enthusiasm blind him to modernism's failings and contradictions - indeed, they're some of things that make it so interesting.His analysis of the work of several canonical modern poets is refreshingly evenhanded.His insightful exploration of Pound and Eliot is superb, particularly the way in which he relates Eliot's poetry to his philosophy and criticism.Those crouched at Eliot's feet might do well to look up for five minutes and read it. ... Read more

Book Description
Word count: 4133. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Fair collection
I don't have much to say about Holderlin's poetry, which I find a bit stodgy and ungraceful, but I have to say I cannot read it in German, which I believe is a necessary prerequisite to any true read of poetry. I would merely like to share a poem that I found beautiful:

Sunset

Where are you? Dazzled, drunken my soul grows faint
And dark with so much gladness; for even now
I listened while, too rich in golden
Sounds, the enrapturing youth, the sun-god

Intoned his evening hymn on a heavenly lyre;
All round the hills and forests re-echoed it,
Though far from here-to pious nations
Who still revere him-by now he's journeyed.

Wo bist du? Trunken dammert die Seele mir
Von aller deiner Wonne; denn eben ist's,
Dass ich gelauscht, wie, goldner Tone
Voll der entzukende Sonnenjungling

Sein Abendlied af himmlischer Leyer speilt';
Es tonten rings die Walder und Hugel nach.
Doch fern ist er zu frommen Volkern,
Die ihn noch ehren, hinweggegangen. (pp 16).

Enjoy the archaic read.

A nice selection, but go for the complete edition
This Penguin selection of Michael Hamburger's outstanding Holderlin translations is drawn from his 800+ page bilingual edition of Holderlin called "Poems and Fragments," published by Anvil Press (search for ISBN 0856463604).

If you love Holderlin, the complete 4th edition of "Poems and Fragments" is well worth the modest extra cost--it's a very hefty, very handsomely produced book, and of course it's the definitive Holderlin in English.

better to stand alone in a monolingual edition
The translations produced by Mr. Hamburger, himself a poet, reads very well indeed. But should they be used in such bilingual edition as this one, being not very literal?

In 'Dichterberuf'('The Poet's Vocation'), the 12th stanza reads:'Zu lang ist Gottliche dienstbar schon/ Und alle Himmelskrafte verscherzt, verbracht/ Die Gutigen, zur Lust, danklos, ein/ Schlaues Geschlecht und zu kennen wahnt es,' and the translation:'Too long now things divine have been cheaply used/ And all the powers of heaven, the kindly, spent/ In trifling waste by cold and cunning/ Men without thanks, who when he, the Hightest,'. We can see that the translator use the alliteration of 'cold' and 'cunning'(only 'Schlaues' in the original) to compensate that of 'verscherzt' and 'verbracht' (only 'spent' in the translation). We can understand why the previous reviewer says the translations are often surprising(and why I says they are not very literal).

excellent translations
As a german reader I must say that the author had made excellent translations.You have the feeling that he translated with heart - very rich in his speech and sometimes surprising. Some verses of Hoelderlin, which are strange and not easy to understand are in his translationsclearer and simpler to understand." But it is the sea / That takesand gives remembrance, / And love no less keeps eyes attentively fixed, /But what is lasting the poets provide" (Remembrance). ... Read more

Book Description

From the introduction by Michael Hamburger:

"Baudelaire's prose poems were written at long intervals during the last twelve or thirteen years of his life. The prose poem was a medium much suited to his habits and character. Being pre-eminently a moralist, he needed a medium that enabled him to illustrate a moral insight as briefly and vividly as possible. Being an artist and sensualist, he needed a medium that was epigrammatic or aphoristic, but allowed him scope for fantasy and for that element of suggestiveness which he considered essential to beauty. His thinking about society and politics, as about everything else, was experimental; like the thinking of most poets it drew on experience and imagination, rather than on facts and general arguments. That is another reason why the prose poem proved a medium so congenial to Baudelaire."

Customer Reviews (2)

One of the first modern poets
Modernity is what defines the work of Baudelaire. No elegant poems of love; no countryside-dreaming; no evocation of the Classics nor references to the past. On the contrary: urban life; the alienation brought aboout by capitalism; the angst of poor urban dwellers; alcohol and drugs. Poetry is no more just the search for beauty through words. Now, it is a vehicle for the expression of the individual. Content is more important than form, and therefore Baudelaire gets rid of the constraints imposed by verse, even free verse, and lets his soul spill out in a not lyrical, but dark manner.

Evocative
These prose poems were my first experience with Baudelaire.I didn't know what to expect, but they're pretty good.They are often vague, but even then manage to be evocative.I'll admit I also bought the book to help myFrench along (as it is bilingual), but it's Baudelaire and it's good andsometimes thought-provoking reading.Enivrez-vous!De vin, de poesie, devertu, a votre guise.Enjoy. ... Read more