Insightful and provocative letters by a great twentieth-century poet to his artist wife about life and, revealingly, his own writing. An intimate look at this canonical poet's process, mental health, and quotidian moments during the early 1950s.

Insightful and provocative letters by a great twentieth-century poet to his artist wife about life and, revealingly, his own writing. An intimate look at this canonical poet's process, mental health, and quotidian moments during the early 1950s.

Paul Celan is recognized as one of the most significant European poets of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Czernowitz,thenpart of Romaniaandnow in Ukraine, he survived the Nazi genocide and eventually settled in Paris. His work, a touchstone for other poets, writers, and philosophers, has been translated into many languages. The letters he wrote to his wife, the artist Gis le Celan-Lestrange, provide an intimate view of key turning points in Celan's literary career as well as of the most difficult moments ofhislife, spent in psychiatric clinics, during which he continued to write.

Letters to Gis le, which also includes letters to his young son, Eric, as well as a selection of Gis le's own letters, also presents a Celanian sense of humor shared with his wife and son. The reader of this volume will discover or rediscover poems sent by Celan to his wife with word-for-word translations and lists of translated orexplained vocabulary words. These materials are made availablehere forthe first time in an English-language publication, which seeks to take into account thesecret dialogue between languages within each letter or poem.

The notes include reproductions of Celan's annotations in the margins of his books,almost giving theimpressionoflooking over the shoulder of the poet as he is reading or writing. The volume also includes photographs of Celan's family and reproductions of manuscripts of poems and letters,aswell as a selection of etchings by Gis le Celan-Lestrange.