1995 Jewish Studies 366 pp. 17 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 Cloth ISBN 0-300-06068-8 $45.00 Paper ISBN 0-300-06387-3 $18.95

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Reviews

This book is the first critical biography of Paul Celan, a German-speaking East European Jew who was Europe's most compelling postwar poet. It tells the story of Celan's life, offers new translations of his poems, and illuminates the connection between Celan's lived experience and his poetry.

"This is a deeply moving, impressively learned, highly rewarding book."--Joseph Grange, International Studies in Philosophy

"An important book. Celan is indeed a very great poet, Felstiner's English translations of the poems are remarkably accurate and effective, and the argument of the book is both persuasive and informative."--Cyrus Hamlin, Yale University

"I have been eagerly awaiting this book. John Felstiner's brilliant and illuminating talks and articles about Celan, with the translations of his poems which they incorporate, have been of great interest to me for the past several years; and now we are provided with the comprehensive study toward which these were working. Felstiner is that increasingly rare thing, a critic who loves his subjects and enables readers to share that love by guiding them into a deeper understanding of their resonances. This is especially valuable in the case of Celan, whose work is at once so inward and such a quintessential artifact of history."--Denise Levertov

"This is an absolutely essential study of one of the genuinely great, and in so many ways enigmatic, poets of our time, a literary biography in the best sense, informative and penetratingly interpretive. Felstiner's fine translations of Celan's often very difficult poetry arise from, and are worked seamlessly into, the stuff of his chronicle, and they are of immense value in their own right. A book of this kind has been long overdue: this authoritative instance of it now appears to have been well worth waiting for."--John Hollander

"Felstiner has done the impossible--integrated Celan's life and poetry without stinting either. The full weight and agony of the poet's fate as Jew and survivor are captured. Felstiner translates with care and caring the major poems and makes them accessible by a commentary that scrupulously records the occasions to which they are linked and the literary allusions they encode. The scholar becomes a poet writing about the greatest of the post-war German poets."--Geoffrey Hartman, Yale University

"Felstiner's book is, on every level, superb: it is essential to anyone interested in the work of one of the greatest and most moving Jewish poets of our turbulent time."--Elie Wiesel, Boston University

"[A] masterly book. . . . Rich in insights."--Nathaniel Tarn, Voice Literary Supplement

"Felstiner's critical biography of Celan is a literary event of the first order. . . . The most definitive account of Celan in any language. . . . The author sheds new light on virtually every aspect of Celan's life and work and has identified so profoundly with his subject that the reader throughout feels the impossible weight of Celan's effort to speak poetically for the victims of the Holocaust."--Choice

"[Felstiner's] book acquires Celan's poverty of life and his reticence as a way of conveying him. It is paradoxical . . . and it works."--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Celan's splendor has been brought to life, and his silence brought to speech, by a book that is a labor not just of love but of passion. . . . A pilgrimage to a hard place by a pilgrim who does all the walking we do and, astonishingly, gets us up there . . . brings us within living, breathing reach of the original."--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"First and foremost, [Felstiner] is a reader of Celan equipped, both in a scholarly way and in sensibility, to apprehend the Judaic centre . . . He does so by virtue of his personal commitment to the exact arts of translation . . . by virtue of his patient fervour for poetry and his critical good sense. This volume has been long and justly awaited. It is the finest approach to the Celan-world so far available. The very riches provided by Felstiner's study point towards much which remains to be understood."--George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement

"This long-overdue study illuminates the rich biographical meaning behind much of Celan's spare, enigmatic verse."--New Yorker

"Felstiner masterfully interweaves Celan's poetry with his life experience in a way that enriches our understanding of both. The book also offers new translations of well-known and little-known poems. This biography brings out the poet's intense affinities with Kafka, Heine, Rilke, Buber, and others. The result is a moving portrait of a courageous and troubled man whose life cannot be separated from his poetry."--Menorah Review Supplement

"As a reader, I am simply grateful for Felstiner's careful and moving translations, his patient, often word-by-word analysis, and the wealth of Biblical and linguistic expertise he brings to bear on so many otherwise enigmatic poems . . . In Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew John Felstiner teaches us how to pay better attention to one of the most serious and rewarding poets of our time."--Michael Dirdas, Washington Post Book World

"Felstiner's study is admirably attentive to Celan's work. Phrases are traced to ghetto folksongs, to scriptural passages, to lines from Goethe or Heine. Such attention to the associations and jarrings of words unpack the hidden facets of Celan's history . . . The poems are not a hermetic code, but reveal the criss-crossed paths of memories. Felstiner's careful tracing of these paths is an attempt to reconstitute not just Celan's voice, but the geography of a lost and impossible culture."--Matt Ffytch, The Independent on Sunday

"Felstiner is clear, intelligent and quietly erudite. Nor does he neglect the poetry while narrating this harrowing life story; his translations are sensitive to the infinite nuances of Celan's formidably introspective verse. This will surely remain the definitive work on him."--Daniel Johnson, The Times

"At last, Paul Celan has received a treatment that does him justice, making his work accessible to those who don't know German--and, as it happens, to Germans, too. . . . The poetry is magnificently there; no longer will Celan be lost in translation."--Voice Literary Supplement

"[Felstiner's] biography of Celan is the first critical biography of the poet in any language--valuable for that reason alone--but it is also an unusually personal work. . . . [We] remain grateful to John Felstiner for bringing Paul Celan so forcefully to our attention."--Paul Preuss, San Francisco Review of Books

"In his luminous new stud, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew, Felstiner deftly weaves together the events of Celan's life and the poems that erupted in its wake. Felstiner's translations of Celan's poetry (the process, as he describes it, of "voicing a poem anew") are remarkably successful--sensitive, often brilliant. . . . Felstiner's superb book helps us decipher the enigmatic, oblique messages this anguished poet manages to leave for us before he hurled himself into the Seine in April 1970."--Susan Miron, Dimensions

"[A] modest but invaluable contribution."--John Simon, New Criterion

"A remarkable work that seamlessly weaves together the three subjects of [Celan's] subtitle: poet, survivor, Jew."--Judith Bolton-Fasman, Baltimore Jewish Times

"An essential book on an essential poet, bringing the reader so close to the man and work that you can hear him breathe."--Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

"John Flestiner, an immensely learned and sympathetic translator, has done a great service to Celan and to his readers. . . . I cannot imagine a better treatment of the subject."--John Banville, The Observer (London)

"The perfect guide. . . . The tone is faultless, free from gratuitous pathos emotional bullying, and any trace of self-regard."--D.J. Enright, London Magazine

"The book succeeds, sometimes brilliantly, in elucidating the poet as he comes forth in the body of poetry."--David M. Katz, Congress Monthly

"[Felstiner's] biography is the first critical biography of the poet in any language--valuable for that reason alone--but it is also an unusual personal work."--Paul Preuss, San Francisco Book Review

"[An] admirably detailed and understanding study. . . . It is the great merit of Felstiner's study not only to put Celan's life and achievement in a detailed . . . perspective which should help to make them much better known among English speakers, but to have presented the poetry in a sensible and straightforward way, with an unpretentious and comparative commentary."--John Bayley, New York Review of Books

"The book is at once a biography of Celan, a study of his poems, and an account of the author's struggle with translation."--Robert Hass, Washington Post Book World

"Felstiner's insistence on the factual grounding of many of Celan's 'metaphors' helps us see both Celan's torment and his lyric genius."--Malcolm Farley, Boston Review

"No previous translator has made so careful and uncoercive a case for a particular rendering, or integrated translation and commentary, so thoughtfully. . . . Nobody has so convincingly registered the Jewish dimension in Celan's language and thought as Felstiner."--New Republic

"Felstiner's book, which happily combines a fifteen-year labor of love with immense erudition, will stand as the landmark accomplishment in Celan commentary. . . . Vibrantly written, in a prose style that evinces both a scholarly and a deeply personal respect for its subject, equipped with helpful indexes, richly illustrated and handsomely printed, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew will reward its readers many times over."--Sidney Rosenfeld, World Literature Today

"Felstiner emerges as a sensitive transistor of Celan's unique idiom, and in this respect Celan's poetry should become more accessible to interested readers who do not understand German."--Bianca Rosenthal, Germanic Notes and Reviews

"A vivid re-creation of the Romanian Jewish poet who drowned himself in the Seine at fifty, and who added imperishably to the poetic achievement of the German language. . . . Felstiner's study is itself a fine achievement."--John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement

"A book at once humble and audacious. . . . Like his earlier book on Neruda, Felstiner's Celan is a pioneering work of literary criticism and of translation."--Modern Poetry in Translation

"Felstiner;s is an amazing piece of work. . . . One of the very few books in which a poet's life (where poetry is life, and vice versa) begins to make sense."--The Herald (London)

"The book's underlying arguments . . . are laid out with passion, precision, and convincing detail. Felstiner's book is that rare hybrid, an engaging biography and a rigourous interpretive tour through the major poems. . . . Felstiner's love for his subject and evocation of Celan's agony as survivor endow the work with an inner necessity and readability that are refreshing indeed. This handsome volume . . . is certainly required reading for scholars of Celan and Holocaust literature in general, but also deserves a much wider readership."--Felix W. Tweraser, German Studies Review

"Felstiner is not only a good translator; he is the best translator of Celan I know. . . . [His] book should be required reading. Every choice he makes is justified; for every difficulty he encounters. . . . As a guide and interpreter of Celan's most celebrated poem, Felstiner is invaluable."--Gail Hoist-Warhaft, The Bookpress

"Felstiner's book is bound to become one of the classics of Celan scholarship. . . . No better scholarly monograph on Celan has appeared in this country or abroad."--Leonard Neufeldt, Shofar

"[Felstiner] offers us the life an world of a supremely gifted poet whose words always reward us with meaning and memory."--Avi Kempinski, Hadassah Magazine

"Readers familiar with the Celan literature will appreciate Felstiner's contributions to an understanding of a turbulent life and might find something new in his translations/interpretations. Others will find this biography and excellent introduction to a complicated poet, and therein lies its greatest value."--Jonathan Skolnik, Germanic Review

"Felstiner has written a fascinating and indispensable book on Paul Celan that every researcher of the work of this 'exemplary postwar poet' will have to come to terms with. . . . Felstiner has give us a sensitive and an important book. The information he has unearthed and has gathered together from an impressive range of sources will be indispensable to Celan scholars for a long time. . . . We owe him a debt of gratitude."--Michael Ossar, Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"In light of Celan's popularity and critical importance, John Felstiner's elegantly written and well-researched biography Paul Celan is an important book and one absolutely essential for anyone interested in Celan's work. . . . An illuminating account of how the task of the translator may turn into a consuming quest to understand and integrate the poet's life and work. . . . Indispensable not only for those interested in Celan's work, Judaism, or modern European poetry but also for those concerned with questions of contested identity, survival, theories and practices of translation, and the cultural history of post-war Europe."--Ulrich Baer, Comparative Literature

"This is a deeply moving, impressively learned, highly rewarding book."--Martin Bidney, International Studies in Philosophy

"For readers without knowledge of German, this is an invaluable introduction to the greatest poet to have written in German in the past half-century; and readers who know Celan's poetry in the original are sure to have their appreciation enhanced."--Ritchie Robertson, Language, Literature and the Arts

"Scholars of Celan' s work will garner much from Felstiner' s ingenuity and comprehensiveness."--Bernhard Frank, Judaism

John Felstiner teaches English and Jewish studies at Stanford University.

This book is the first critical biography of Paul Celan, a German-speaking East European Jew who was Europe' s most compelling postwar poet. It tells the story of Celan' s life, offers new translations of his poems, and illuminates the connection between Celan' s lived experience and his poetry.

"This volume has been long and justly awaited. It is the finest approach to the Celan-world so far available."--George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement

"This long-overdue study illuminates the rich biographical meaning behind much of Celan' s spare, enigmatic verse."--New Yorker

"The book is at once a biography of Celan, a study of his poems, and an account of the author' s struggle with translation."--Robert Hass, Washington Post Book World

"Felstiner is clear, intelligent and quietly erudite. . . . His translations are sensitive to the infinite nuances of Celan' s formidably introspective verse. This will surely remain the definitive work on him."--Daniel Johnson, Times (London)

Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award

Chosen as a best book of 1995 by Choice magazine, Village Voice, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Philadelphia Inquirer

Winner of the 1997 University of Iowa Writers' Workshop Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin

John Felstiner teaches English and Jewish studies at Stanford University. He is also the translator of Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan.

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