Book

Conversation in the Mountains

Collected Prose of Paul Celan

Paul Celan, Rosmarie Waldrop

New Directions Publishing · Print & ebook · Forthcoming

Reading lane: Eastern European Collections

“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.