Conversation in the Mountains

The essential prose works of the great Paul Celan, beautifully translated by Rosmarie Waldrop “I am supposed to tell you some of the words I heard deep down in the sea where there is much silence and so much happens.” So begins the first text in this indispensable volume, which includes: “Edgar Jené and the Dream about the Dream,” “Backlight,” “The Meridian,” and the piece which Celan himself deemed his most important, “Conversation in the Mountains.” George Steiner wrote in The New Yorker that Celan's prose was "transforming the landscape of poetic theory and of the philosophy of language.” This collection of essays, speeches, letters, as well as notes on Alexander Blok and Osip Mandelstam is a great gift to readers and to anyone who wishes to understand the twentieth century. As the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote, “Paul Celan's poems reach us, but we miss them.” Perhaps through these rare prose texts we may find the key to what we missed.

Paul Celan (1920-1970) was born Paul Antschel of a German-speaking Jewish family in Czernowitz, Bukovina, then part of Romania. He was sent to a labor camp during World War II. After the war, he settled in Paris where he lived with his wife Gisèle Lestrange until his death. He is widely considered to be one of the most innovative and important poets of the twentieth century.