Memory Rose into Threshold Speech gathers the poet Paul Celan's first four books, written between 1952 and 1963, which established his reputation as the major post-World War II German-language poet.Celan, a Bukovinian Jew who lived through the Holocaust, created work that displays both great lyric power and an uncanny ability to pinpoint totalitarian cultural and political tendencies. His quest, however, is not only reflective: there is in...

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.One of the most significant European poets of the twentieth century, Paul Celan came from an Eastern European Jewish family and lost his parents to the death camps of World War II. Transplanted to Paris, he produced a body o...

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...

"Paul Celan (1920-70) is one of the best-known German poets of the Holocaust; many of his poems, admired for their spare, precise diction, deal directly with its stark themes. Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-73) is recognized as one of post-World War II German literature's most important novelists, poets and playwrights. It seems only appropriate that these two contemporaries and masters of language were at one time lovers, and they shared a lengthy, artful and passionate correspon...

An inventive blend of memoir and family history that ponders those who didn't flee their German town in time: "Powerfully reclaimed—and imagined—reality." — The Jewish ChronicleWinner, French Voices Award for Excellence in Publication and TranslationFor about eighty years, the Jonas family of Osnabrück were part of a small but vibrant Jewish community in this mid-size city of Lower Saxony. After the war, Osnabrück counted not a single Jew. M...

Written during an astonishing outburst of creativity during a period of only two weeks in February 1922, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus is one of the great poetic works of the twentieth century. Willis Barnstone brings these striking poems into English with an approach honed through years of work on the philosophy of translation, about which he has written extensively. This dual-language edition allows readers to compare versions face-to-face to get a clear sense of the nuances of th...

"This miracle of a book, perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has ever produced," (Chicago Tribune) should stand as the definitive English language version.

**A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An essential new translation of the author’s complete, uncensored diaries—a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers.“An invaluable addition to Kafka’s oeuvre.”—The New York Times**An essential new translation of Franz Kafka’s complete, uncensored diaries—a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century’s most impo...

Essays and reflections from one of the twentieth century's most original cultural critics, with an introduction by Hannah Arendt.Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht's epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study "T...

**A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/WEST TRANSLATION AWARDThe 100th Anniversary Edition of a global classic, containing beautiful translations along with the original German text.**While visiting Russia in his twenties, Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the twentieth century's greatest poets, was moved by a spirituality he encountered there. Inspired, Rilke returned to Germany and put down on paper what he felt were spontaneously received prayers. Rilke's Book of Hours is the invigo...

'When the name "Hitler" is mentioned, nothing occurs to me' – so said Karl Kraus. For this leading Viennese Jewish critic and intellectual the touchstone of art was ethics. How could he be speechless in the face of a threat to all that ethics means?To answer this question, the author makes a detailed chronological study of Kraus's intellectual activity as reflected in his work on the theatre. The results are presented in five chapters, each dealing with a different 'mask' adopted b...

"Each [essay is] a model of clarity, weight, gravity . . . each superbly centered on the moods, manners, works . . . of ten exemplary men and women" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review)."Dark times" is Brecht's phrase, and Hannah Arendt uses it suggest that those she writes about are not "mouthpieces of the Zeitgeist", but, rather, that the routine repetitive horrors of the twentieth century form the substance of the dark against which their lives of illuminat...