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Glottal Stop
A collection of poetry by the German poet whose parents were murdered in Nazi concentration camps and who eventually committed suicide features essays on Jewish heritage and alienation.
- GenresPoetry
147 pages, Hardcover
First published September 30, 2000
10 people are currently reading
199 people want to read
About the author
Paul Celan
215 books499 followersPoet, translator, essayist, and lecturer, influenced by French Surrealism and Symbolism. Celan was born in Cernăuţi, at the time Romania, now Ukraine, he lived in France, and wrote in German. His parents were killed in the Holocaust; the author himself escaped death by working in a Nazi labor camp. "Death is a Master from Germany", Celan's most quoted words, translated into English in different ways, are from the poem 'Todesfuge' (Death Fugue). Celan's body was found in the Seine river in late April 1970, he had committed suicide.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 4, 2016
my world was calling yours
its own, forever.
*
my soul, you were
in the ether with all
the other
scattershot suns.
*
What word could burn as witness for us two?
You’re my reality. I’m your mirage.
its own, forever.
*
my soul, you were
in the ether with all
the other
scattershot suns.
*
What word could burn as witness for us two?
You’re my reality. I’m your mirage.
Read
February 8, 2011Paul Celan is awesome. I like his more (frankly) readable, better-known works, and I liked these short little weirdos too. They're cosmopolitan as all get up, which is great, and allusive as all get up, which I'm at least OK with. I virtually never read full books of poetry, and reading Celan reminded me that I like it. It's like taking a bath in a tub full of pure language. I told one of my friends that Paul Celan's poems would probably make good Radiohead lyrics. That may be the most retarded thing I've ever said.
November 14, 2022
A disorienting experience with a very steep learning curve—no, I don't mean the poems themselves, but the footnotes! I didn't especially like the way in which the footnotes seemed to imitate Celan's unknowability. To me, they were written rather poorly, indulgently.
Granted, without the footnotes, I would be even more lost, so they evidently served some purpose.
The poetry itself felt frustrating to me in the way that reading Shaykh al-Karkari was: theoretically, I can be at peace with the fact that I'm not meant to understand, but with so many evident references, one can't help but feel as though a deeper understanding is possible and it's only lazy, foolish *me* whom such an understanding is eluding.
But yeah, it does make sense for Celan to truly seek works to convey what it is like to live through the Holocaust, to have both your parents murdered by Nazis, to have to spend something like 18 months in a forced labor camp—to seek words for such trauma, the truest artist may have to resort to an approach like Celan's.
I found myself reading the footnotes first, though often that still wasn't enough. Celan's ideas about time are particularly hard to make heads or tails of. And the super-nothing? Again, I'm convinced the footnotes could have been more effective if they were geared towards ordinary humans who need a bit more of a helping hand.
The above paragraphs are missing that the other day, I stayed up late reading some of these by candlelight and felt very moved... I can't imagine how it would have been to walk in Celan's shoes. Anyway, I'm writing now from a different headspace than then.
Granted, without the footnotes, I would be even more lost, so they evidently served some purpose.
The poetry itself felt frustrating to me in the way that reading Shaykh al-Karkari was: theoretically, I can be at peace with the fact that I'm not meant to understand, but with so many evident references, one can't help but feel as though a deeper understanding is possible and it's only lazy, foolish *me* whom such an understanding is eluding.
But yeah, it does make sense for Celan to truly seek works to convey what it is like to live through the Holocaust, to have both your parents murdered by Nazis, to have to spend something like 18 months in a forced labor camp—to seek words for such trauma, the truest artist may have to resort to an approach like Celan's.
I found myself reading the footnotes first, though often that still wasn't enough. Celan's ideas about time are particularly hard to make heads or tails of. And the super-nothing? Again, I'm convinced the footnotes could have been more effective if they were geared towards ordinary humans who need a bit more of a helping hand.
The above paragraphs are missing that the other day, I stayed up late reading some of these by candlelight and felt very moved... I can't imagine how it would have been to walk in Celan's shoes. Anyway, I'm writing now from a different headspace than then.
October 5, 2019
Don’t sign your name
between worlds,
surmount
the manifold of meanings,
trust the tearstain,
learn to live.
between worlds,
surmount
the manifold of meanings,
trust the tearstain,
learn to live.
March 21, 2009
My absolute favorite book of poetry. Celan is the master at a knife that caresses and cuts, pleasure and pain.
Naked under death leaves
their bodies both unsullied,
both defaced.
Pulled up on shore
by the whitest root of
the whitest tree.
Naked under death leaves
their bodies both unsullied,
both defaced.
Pulled up on shore
by the whitest root of
the whitest tree.
November 26, 2007
I agree with Mike completely on this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
June 11, 2009
In this book, Celan does what more poetry should do: create another language.
January 19, 2022
Evenings delve
into your eye. Lip-
pickled syllables -
a lovely voiceless circle -
help the creeping star
into their ring. The stone, once
close tot he temporal zones, now opens up:
my soul, you were
in the ether with all
the other
scattershot suns.
* * *
Gray-white of sheer
excavated
feeling.
Beach-grasses scattered
here inland
blow sand patterns over
the smoke of wellside songs.
An ear, cut off, is listening.
An eye, cut into strips,
does justice to it all.
* * *
The hourglass buried
in peony-shadow:
when my thoughts finally come own
Pentecost Lane
they will inherit the Reich
where,
trapped in sand, you still
get whiffs of air.
* * *
You forget you forget
the words turned flint in the fist,
flashes of punctuation
crystallize
at your wrist,
out of the earth's
cracked crests,
pauses come charging,
there, at
the sacrificial bush
where memory flares up,
you two are taken
in One breath.
* * *
Eternities dead
and gone,
a letter touches
your still-un-
injured fingers,
a shining countenance
comes somersaulting in
and touches down in
smells, sounds.
* * *
Gigantic,
trackless, tree-
studded
hand-
tract,
Quincunx.
The branches, guided by nerves,
swoop down on
the already
red-tipped deep shadow,
a snakebite before
Rose-
rise.
* * *
It's late. A spongy fetish
eats the cones off the Christmas tree;
a wish frisks after them
roughened up by
aphorisms of frost;
the window flies open; we're outside;
the bump of Being
will not level out;
a nose-heavy
stunt-happy cloud
carries us above it
and away.
* * *
Walls of speech, space inwards -
wound into yourself,
you rave your way to the very last one.
The fogs burn off.
The heat sinks in.
* * *
Eternities swept
over his face and
onward.
A blaze slowly extinguished
every wick and candle.
A green, out of this world,
covered with down the chin of
the stone, the one the orphans
kept burying and re-
burying.
* * *
Open glottis, air flow,
the vowel, active
with its one
formant,
consonant concussions, the
evidence largely screened out,
shield against stimuli: consciousness,
unoccupiable
I and you, too,
superveri-
fied
the eye-greedy
memory-greedy
rolling
brand-
name,
the temporal lobe intact,
likewise the optic stem.
into your eye. Lip-
pickled syllables -
a lovely voiceless circle -
help the creeping star
into their ring. The stone, once
close tot he temporal zones, now opens up:
my soul, you were
in the ether with all
the other
scattershot suns.
- Erratic, pg. 7
* * *
Gray-white of sheer
excavated
feeling.
Beach-grasses scattered
here inland
blow sand patterns over
the smoke of wellside songs.
An ear, cut off, is listening.
An eye, cut into strips,
does justice to it all.
- Gray-white of sheer, pg. 18
* * *
The hourglass buried
in peony-shadow:
when my thoughts finally come own
Pentecost Lane
they will inherit the Reich
where,
trapped in sand, you still
get whiffs of air.
- The hourglass buried, pg. 25
* * *
You forget you forget
the words turned flint in the fist,
flashes of punctuation
crystallize
at your wrist,
out of the earth's
cracked crests,
pauses come charging,
there, at
the sacrificial bush
where memory flares up,
you two are taken
in One breath.
- You forget you forget, pg. 31
* * *
Eternities dead
and gone,
a letter touches
your still-un-
injured fingers,
a shining countenance
comes somersaulting in
and touches down in
smells, sounds.
- Eternities dead, pg. 49
* * *
Gigantic,
trackless, tree-
studded
hand-
tract,
Quincunx.
The branches, guided by nerves,
swoop down on
the already
red-tipped deep shadow,
a snakebite before
Rose-
rise.
- Gigantic, pg. 57
* * *
It's late. A spongy fetish
eats the cones off the Christmas tree;
a wish frisks after them
roughened up by
aphorisms of frost;
the window flies open; we're outside;
the bump of Being
will not level out;
a nose-heavy
stunt-happy cloud
carries us above it
and away.
- It's late, pg. 64
* * *
Walls of speech, space inwards -
wound into yourself,
you rave your way to the very last one.
The fogs burn off.
The heat sinks in.
- Walls of speech, pg. 72
* * *
Eternities swept
over his face and
onward.
A blaze slowly extinguished
every wick and candle.
A green, out of this world,
covered with down the chin of
the stone, the one the orphans
kept burying and re-
burying.
- Eternities swept, pg. 85
* * *
Open glottis, air flow,
the vowel, active
with its one
formant,
consonant concussions, the
evidence largely screened out,
shield against stimuli: consciousness,
unoccupiable
I and you, too,
superveri-
fied
the eye-greedy
memory-greedy
rolling
brand-
name,
the temporal lobe intact,
likewise the optic stem.
- Open glottis, pg. 97
December 17, 2022
** An excellent selection of work, with detailed, thought provoking commentary! **
Poetry and endnotes for lovers of a challenge, the arcane and inscrutable mystifying acts of genius undiluted and not waiting for you to catch up. This will be appreciated by fans of the films of David Lynch and Michael Haneke, the writings of Joyce, Faulkner, Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, David Foster Wallace. If you find those authors and auteurs distasteful you may want to pull up the preview for a quick gander so you understand what you're getting into. But for the brave and bold, those courageous literary and intellectual adventurers not frightened or turned off by a challenge, there is so much to enjoy and appreciate in this seminal volume. Also polyglot readers with an appreciation for multiple tongues, those with hard science backgrounds, and afficionados in religious mythology will be especially enchanted by both the poems and explanatory, in depth notes by the eloquent, knowledgeable translators! Highly recommended.
Poetry and endnotes for lovers of a challenge, the arcane and inscrutable mystifying acts of genius undiluted and not waiting for you to catch up. This will be appreciated by fans of the films of David Lynch and Michael Haneke, the writings of Joyce, Faulkner, Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, David Foster Wallace. If you find those authors and auteurs distasteful you may want to pull up the preview for a quick gander so you understand what you're getting into. But for the brave and bold, those courageous literary and intellectual adventurers not frightened or turned off by a challenge, there is so much to enjoy and appreciate in this seminal volume. Also polyglot readers with an appreciation for multiple tongues, those with hard science backgrounds, and afficionados in religious mythology will be especially enchanted by both the poems and explanatory, in depth notes by the eloquent, knowledgeable translators! Highly recommended.
September 1, 2021
Celan: no boring prosy semi-confessional homilies, but also very little “sense” in any ordinary sense of the term—strong unusual images, oblique quasi-statements, and from time to time an almost direct approach to the reader. Celan, again, defeats me.
December 30, 2025
Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan is a collection of 101 poems by the celebrated German poet.
Celan's reputation, though solid, doesn't do full justice to how great of a poet he was. People put him in a box as a "holocaust" poet; as someone who wrote about the tragedies of the war and how it affected Jewish people and he is so much more than that.
This book proves it.
Celan's reputation, though solid, doesn't do full justice to how great of a poet he was. People put him in a box as a "holocaust" poet; as someone who wrote about the tragedies of the war and how it affected Jewish people and he is so much more than that.
This book proves it.
July 13, 2015
Dark, difficult, dense and often violent, these poems are pervaded by both a sense of loss and of being lost.
The introduction touches on Celan's wordplay, the way he shades meaning with his juxtapositions and structure, and the difficulties of translating any writing. Especially poetry. Especially poetry that plays with words and derives its core from particular words and the particular ways they are used together.
Popov and McHugh attempted many more translations than are published here; they felt some of Celan's verse could simply not be fairly rendered in English.
Celan looks at what he does not wish to see and does not look away. He lets himself feel what seems impossible to grasp. He does not spare himself; he does not spare the reader.
To acknowledge these difficult places is necessary to life; they must neither be denied nor forgotten.
The introduction touches on Celan's wordplay, the way he shades meaning with his juxtapositions and structure, and the difficulties of translating any writing. Especially poetry. Especially poetry that plays with words and derives its core from particular words and the particular ways they are used together.
Popov and McHugh attempted many more translations than are published here; they felt some of Celan's verse could simply not be fairly rendered in English.
Celan looks at what he does not wish to see and does not look away. He lets himself feel what seems impossible to grasp. He does not spare himself; he does not spare the reader.
To acknowledge these difficult places is necessary to life; they must neither be denied nor forgotten.
December 16, 2008
Unfortunately, I have no other translation to compare these poems to. As poems, they are a thickened language. I guess many people have compared them to Dickinson, but they have such a larger despondence than Dickinson. In my opinion, this sentimental authority makes it possible for Celan to solidify what I think of as abstractions, and make them things, with agency.
April 5, 2007
pseudonymous, nazi-ed, and occluded.
this is my favorite translation of celan. mchugh has an affinity that shines through, and i think popov did a good job of keeping her from translating off the deep end.
this is my favorite translation of celan. mchugh has an affinity that shines through, and i think popov did a good job of keeping her from translating off the deep end.
May 8, 2008
This is a poet that uses the tools of language like a hammer. This translation should be commended as legendary. Love this book, a shame he committed suicide after surviving the Holocaust. I am sure he had more great poems in him.
June 18, 2008
Celan is amazing, but I don't love this translation...I prefer Hamburger (the translator, not the food).
June 27, 2010
Just bought this at a used bookstore in Richmond, Va. and have read through twice now. Paul Celan is a major, major poet.
April 11, 2017
Really did not do it for me.
December 15, 2013
Awful translation. I was not even reading Celan.
June 11, 2008
real puzzlers, these poems.
Want to read
June 11, 2009Read michael hamburger translations, recd by AR.
Read
May 4, 2013831.914 C3921g 2000
March 25, 2014
I want to do what Celan does with words. That is all.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews