The Meridian—Paul Celan

While spending much of the weekend correcting the page proofs of my translation of Paul Celan—The Meridian: Final Version-Drafts-Materials forthcoming in the eponymous collection directed by Werner Hamacher at Stanford University Press, I noticed that the book is already available for pre-ordering from Amazon. Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

Originally presented as a speech to the German Academy for Language and Poetry on the occasion of Celan’s acceptance of the Georg Büchner Prize for literature, The Meridian is one of, if not the most important poetological statement of the second half of the twentieth century. Much more than a personal statement or occasional piece, it is a meditation on the state of poetry and art in general and a rigorous attempt to account for what poetry is, can, and must be after the Holocaust. This definitive historico-critical edition, available for the first time in English, presents not only the first drafts, but also a vast array of notes and preparatory work and a brief essay on Osip Mandelstam, all of which work to expand the field of reference of Celan’s manifesto and reveal its true scope. Rich commentaries clarify Celan’s notes to authors as diverse as Leibniz, Scheler, Kafka, Hofmannsthal, Husserl, Pascal, Valéry, Heidegger, and others.

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