Paul+Celan

Valeria

PAUL CELAN

 Paul Celan was born as Paul Antschel, he changed his name when he became a poet. Paul Celan, was born in Czernovitz, in Romania, on November 23, 1920. He was the son of German speaking Jews, Paul Celan grew up speaking several languages, including Romanian, Russian, and French. He also understood Yiddish. He studied medicine in Paris in 1938, but returned to Romania before World War II started. His parents were deported and eventually died in Nazi labor camps; Paul Celan was interned for eighteen months before escaping to the Red Army.  In 1945, he moved to Bucharest and became friends with many of the best Romanian writers of the time. He worked as a reader in a publishing house and as a translator. He also began to publish his own poems and translations under a series of pseudonyms ( these are fake names). In 1947 he settled on the pseudonym Celan—an anagram of Ancel ( the same word but scrambled), the Romanian form of his surname. He lived shortly in Vienna before settling in Paris in 1948 to study German philology and literature. He took his Licence des Lettres in 1950, and in 1952 he married the graphic artist Gisele de Lestrange. They had a son, Eric, in 1955.

 Paul Celan's first book was published in 1947; it received very little critical attention. His second book, //Mohn und Gedaechtnis// (//Poppy and Memory//), however, got tremendous publicity and helped to establish his reputation. Among his best known and often-anthologized poems from this time is "Fugue of Death." The poem opens with the words "Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening / we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night" and it goes on to offer a stark evocation of life in the Nazi death camps.

 In 1959, Celan took a job as a reader in German Language and Literature at L'École Normal Superieure of the University of Paris, a position he would keep until his died in 1970. His poems from this period grew shorter, more fragmented and broken in their syntax and perceptions. In 1960 he received a Georg Buchner Prize. During the 1960s he published more than six books of poetry and gained international fame. In addition to his own poems, he continued to be a translator, bringing out works from writers such as Henri Michaux, Osip Mandelstam, Rene Char, Paul Valéry , and Fernando Pessoa. In 1970, Celan committed suicide. He is regarded as one of the most important poets to emerge from post-World War II Europe.

 Poems by title:

* aspen tree <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">* corona <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">* flower <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">* Fugue of death <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">* Homecoming <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">* tenebrae <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">* the straitening <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">* you were my death

<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 48px;">

<span style="color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: normal;"> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 60px; margin-right: 60px;">Poems by first line <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; display: block; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-left: 48px;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 130%; line-height: normal;">
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|Aspen Tree, your leaves glance white into the dark]
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends]
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall]
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|Driven into the]
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|Snowfall, denser and denser]
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|The stone]
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|We are near, Lord]
 * <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #32a3aa; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin-right: 58px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #ff9966; text-decoration: none;">[|You were my death]