Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry: A Bilingual Edition

Paul Celan, one of the greatest German-language poets of the twentieth century, created an oeuvre that stands as testimony to the horrors of his times and as an attempt to chart a topography for a new, uncontaminated language and world.

Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry gathers the five final volumes of his life's work in a bilingual edition, translated and with commentary by the award-winning poet and translator Pierre Joris. This collection displays a mature writer at the height of his talents, following what Celan himself called the "e;turn"e; (Wende) of his work away from the lush, surreal metaphors of his earlier verse.

Given "e;the sinister events in its memory,"e; Celan believed that the language of poetry had to become "e;more sober, more factual . . . 'grayer.'"e; Abandoning the more sumptuous music of the first books, he pared down his compositions to increase the accuracy of the language that now "e;does not transfigure or render 'poetical'; it names, it posits, it tries to measure the area of the given and the possible."e; In his need for an inhabitable post-Holocaust world, Celan saw that "e;reality is not simply there; it must be searched for and won."e; Breathturn into Timestead reveals a poet undergoing a profound artistic reinvention.

The work is that of a witness and a visionary.