Correspondance

by Paul Celan, Ilana Shmueli, Bertrand Badiou (Tradutor)

"Surely, this correspondence gives us a more intimate understanding of Celan than we have without it. Further, the correspondence introduces Shmueli, an important writer, to English readers for the first time. Ironically, the correspondence is a living account of their old and new environment, their art, culture and intelligence, their extraordinary dialogue. We also encounter the 'people and books' that inhabited their biography and their writing, the history of their inner landscape. It is a gift that deserves the deepest and consistent attention--that 'natural prayer of the soul, ' as Ilana Shmueli says, quoting from Celan and Malebranche."
--From the Introduction by Norman Manea

Genres: Poetry

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Poet, 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.

Reviews

[Tatyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You should know that I talk to you almost all the time, I hope it is not a burden to you"
- Ilana Shmueli to Paul Celan (October 19, 1969)

"I ask myself again and again whether you want and need me and to what extent you really want and need me, whether what I bring is not too little, for you. On the other hand, again, I have the great and absolute wish to give you everything that I hold ready for you inside me, & that cannot remain one-sided after all. You see, I am trying to be simple, and you know it is anything but simple."
- Ilana Shmueli to Paul Celan (October 19, 1969)

"I see you, as you are departing in the night, see you passing over into this night, and wish I were there, at the other end, to take you up into the unsayable.
With my arms around you, at the gates of everything that is in vain, in spite of it all."
- Paul Celan, in a letter to Ilana Shmueli (October 21, 1969)