One of the greatest poets to write in German and among the most gifted writers of the twentieth century in any language, Paul Celan was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, in 1920. He survived the Holocaust and settled in Paris in 1948, where he lived until his suicide by drowning in 1970. Pierre Joris is the author of many books of poetry as well as a range of anthologies and translations; he recently published A Nomad Poetics, a volume of essays. In 2003 he was Berlin Prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He is Professor of English at the State University of New York, Albany.

• Introduction: "Polysemy without mask" Key to Translators I. POEMS from Romanian Prose Poems (c. 1947) from Mohn und Gedachtnis/Poppy and Memory (1952) from Von Schwelle zu Schwelle/From Threshold to Threshold (1955) from Sprachgitter/Speech-Grille (1959) from Die Niemandsrose/The Noonesrose (1963) from Atemwende/Breathturn (1967) from Fadensonnen/Threadsuns (1968) from Lichtzwang/Lightduress (1970) from Schneepart/Snowpart (1971) from Zeitgehoft/Timehalo (1976) II. PROSES Conversation in the Mountains (1959) The Meridian (1960) III. DOCUMENTS from the Correspondence Letter #1: To Gisele Celan-Lestrange (1952) Letter #2: To Gisele Celan-Lestrange (1952) Letter #3: To Rene Char (unsent) (1962) Letter #4: To Erich Einhorn (1962) Letter #5: To Jean-Paul Sartre (unsent) (1962) Letter #6: To Erich Einhorn (1962) Letter #7: To Gisele Celan-Lestrange (1965) Letter #8: To Eric Celan (1968) Letter #9: From Gisele Celan-Lestrange to Paul (1969) Letter #10: To Gisele Celan-Lestrange (1970) Das Stundenglass, tief (facsimile) Uber dich hinaus (facsimile) Es wird etwas sein, spater (facsimile) IV. ON PAUL CELAN Paul Celan and Language--Jacques Derrida Encounters with Paul Celan--E.M. Cioran For Paul Celan--Andrea Zanzotto On Paul Celan in Neuchatel--Friedrich Durrenmatt The Memory of Words--Edmond Jabes Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments of Permissions

“In this generous collection of Celan’s poetry, prose, and letters, Joris and his collaborators have done an excellent job of turning Celan’s work into English.”