Paul Celan at 100
Waterhour, the rubble scow ferries us into evening, we, like it, are in no hurry, a dead Why stands at the stern. —Paul Celan, "Rubble Scow" trans. Pierre Joris One hundred years ago, Paul Celan was born; fifty years ago, he died. A variety of books have been released to honor this occasion, but the most significant, for English-language readers at least, is Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry translated by Pierre Joris , who has made the translation of Celan a significant focus of his life's work. Joris's translation of Celan's 1967 collection Atemwende appeared from Sun & Moon Press in 1995 as Breathturn . This was followed by Threadsuns in 2000, Lightduress and Paul Celan: Selections in 2005, The Meridian: Final Version-Drafts-Materials in 2013, and then in 2014, the companion volume to the new one: the magisterial Breathturn Into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry , which collected Joris's previous translations al...
