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Threadsuns
A Bilingual Edition, with German and English on facing pages. Born in Czernowitz—the capital of the Bukovina (now part of the Ukraine and Rumania)—in 1920, Paul Celan is now recognized as one of the great poets of the 20th century. Threadsuns , published as Fadensonnen two years before his suicide by drowning, continues Green Integer’s commitment to publish his last great works. One of Celan’s most important books, Threadsuns follows the Green Integer press publication of Breathturn , which received international critical acclaim. Consisting of 105 poems, arranged in five cycles, Threadsuns was composed between September 1965 and June 1967. If Breathturn was the opening gambit of Celan’s “turn,� the entry into the late work, then Threadsuns —the volume that may have received the least amount of commentary and analysis to date—may be said to be not only an extension or continuation of the previous volume, but the full-blown realization of Celan’s late work. Poet, translator, and essayist Pierre Joris is the author of Selected Poems 1986-1999 , and A Nomad Poetics (essays) and co-editor (with Jerome Rothenberg) of the award-winning Poems for the Millennium anthologies. He teaches poetry and poetics at SUNY-Albany. During fall of 2003 he was Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
- GenresPoetryGerman Literature
271 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
7 people are currently reading
391 people want to read
About the author
Paul Celan
216books482followersPoet, translator, essayist, and lecturer, influenced by French Surrealism and Symbolism. Celan was born in Cernăuţi, at the time Romania, now Ukraine, he lived in France, and wrote in German. His parents were killed in the Holocaust; the author himself escaped death by working in a Nazi labor camp. "Death is a Master from Germany", Celan's most quoted words, translated into English in different ways, are from the poem 'Todesfuge' (Death Fugue). Celan's body was found in the Seine river in late April 1970, he had committed suicide.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
November 29, 2020
ѴÍշ
íԲٱ:
el soldado en la ciénaga de Masada
aprende patria, de la manera
más imborrable,
contra
cada púa en el alambre.
íԲٱ:
los que no tienen ojos ni figura
te llevan libremente a través del gentío, tú
te vas fortaleciendo
cada vez más.
íԲٱ:
tu propia mano
ha sostenido
este pedazo
de tierra habitable
alzado
de nuevo
a la vida
por el sufrimiento.
íԲٱ:
esto me tocó en suerte,
en vela el nombre, en vela la mano
para siempre,
desde lo insepultable.
íԲٱ:
el soldado en la ciénaga de Masada
aprende patria, de la manera
más imborrable,
contra
cada púa en el alambre.
íԲٱ:
los que no tienen ojos ni figura
te llevan libremente a través del gentío, tú
te vas fortaleciendo
cada vez más.
íԲٱ:
tu propia mano
ha sostenido
este pedazo
de tierra habitable
alzado
de nuevo
a la vida
por el sufrimiento.
íԲٱ:
esto me tocó en suerte,
en vela el nombre, en vela la mano
para siempre,
desde lo insepultable.
October 8, 2008
Paul Celan stands as the greatest of the post-war German poets, and this later collection represents a remarkable development in his stylistic "turn." Expertly translated by Pierre Jorris, Celan's acute play with words and sound resonate beautifully in this important volume. Celan's poems during this period have become increasingly brief and cryptic. For instance,
"In-Heavened in plague-
shrouds. At the disnighted
place.
The eyelidreflexes during
the luxuriant
dreamlevel
null.
This is poetry at its most difficult to translate, and Joris has done a remarkable job retaining the brilliant creativity of Celan's word-play while keeping the meaning intact. An outstanding book.
"In-Heavened in plague-
shrouds. At the disnighted
place.
The eyelidreflexes during
the luxuriant
dreamlevel
null.
This is poetry at its most difficult to translate, and Joris has done a remarkable job retaining the brilliant creativity of Celan's word-play while keeping the meaning intact. An outstanding book.
July 17, 2016
My head responded to the crystalline world a poet created to showcase a humanity's salvation at its most desperate space.
July 19, 2022
When we remove any sort of narrative or sense from poetry (in the hands, of course, of a great poet), we can be left with a kind of concentrated language... All we have in these poems is imagery, rhythm, and sound, but, somehow, Celan knew exactly how to put them together in exactly the right order. I believe that few poets and writers really have this talent. I can't imagine having the gift of language to this capacity, but thank God I know what it feels like to read writers who do.
One of my (many) favorites:
Whitesounds, bundled,
ray-
passages
over the table
with the bottle post hence.
(It listens to itself, listens
to a sea, drinks it
too, unveils
the roadheavy
mouths.)
The One Secret
butts forever into the word.
(Whoever falls off that, rolls
under the leafless tree.)
All the
shadowclasps
on all the
shadowjoints
audible-inaudible
that announce themselves now.
One of my (many) favorites:
Whitesounds, bundled,
ray-
passages
over the table
with the bottle post hence.
(It listens to itself, listens
to a sea, drinks it
too, unveils
the roadheavy
mouths.)
The One Secret
butts forever into the word.
(Whoever falls off that, rolls
under the leafless tree.)
All the
shadowclasps
on all the
shadowjoints
audible-inaudible
that announce themselves now.
November 3, 2024
TRUTH, roped to
the abandoned dream relics,
comes as a child
over the ridge.
The crook in the valley,
beset by clods,
by scree, by
eyeseed,
sprouts leaves in the
blossoming No on high � in the
crown.
[79]
DAYCAST: the
passlight thorn-
temple
grabs one more
sullen dewfresh
darkness.
At the apex of the heart
a muscle fibre comes
sensibly by death.
[213]
the abandoned dream relics,
comes as a child
over the ridge.
The crook in the valley,
beset by clods,
by scree, by
eyeseed,
sprouts leaves in the
blossoming No on high � in the
crown.
[79]
DAYCAST: the
passlight thorn-
temple
grabs one more
sullen dewfresh
darkness.
At the apex of the heart
a muscle fibre comes
sensibly by death.
[213]
June 29, 2010
Threadsuns was the last of Celan’s volumes before he committed suicide. It consisting of 105 poems arranged in “cycles� which, according to the translator Pierre Joris, was part of the working mode of folding and integration Celan worked in. The poems are tough, wry and erotic, employing beautifully fused images at odd angles with their partner words. He writes of terror, pain and love in a stunning lyric that reinvents language. I can’t imagine trying to translate what Joris claims to be difficult German for German speakers to grasp—a combination of dialects and heritages reflecting Celan’s uneasy relationship to his native language, post-holocaust.
This book is extremely valuable to me as a poet and a human. His work is conceived with the linguistic mind of a visual artist, and his phrases, word-shifts resonate and spark. His poems encourage me to think deeply about the roots of my line or word-driven thought, to find the distillation.
This book is extremely valuable to me as a poet and a human. His work is conceived with the linguistic mind of a visual artist, and his phrases, word-shifts resonate and spark. His poems encourage me to think deeply about the roots of my line or word-driven thought, to find the distillation.
August 4, 2007
small, terrifying, beautiful poems. evocative. mysterious. read this in bars, in storms, in libraries.
January 3, 2025
Минулого року не дочитала буквально 5 сторінок. Коли занурюєшся в поезію Целана, складається враження, наче мій мозок обгорнули плівкою для запікання і в мене підіймається температура. Нічого не зрозуміло, Глосарій не допоміг. Знайшла у цій книзі колись любу мені закладку з портретом, від погляду на який стає дуже боляче. Та й узагалі читати Целана боляче. Я його не розумію, а якщо і розумію, то на три відсотки. І дякую, що хоч три.
January 17, 2022
Celan's poetry after
Breathturn
is best summarized by translator Pierre Joris in his Introduction to
Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry
...
My favourite passages...
In the early sixties, that is, midway through Paul Celan's writing career, a radical change, a poetic Wende, or turn, occurred, later inscribed in the title of the volume Atemwende | Breathturn, heralding the poetic he was to explore for the rest of his life. His poems, which had always been highly complex but rather lush, with an abundance of near-surrealistic imagery and sometimes labyrinthine metaphorically - though he vehemently denied critics' suggestion that his was a "hermetic" poetry - were pared down, the syntax grew tighter and more spiny, and his trademark neologism and telescoping of words increased, while the overall composition of the work became much more serial in nature. That is, rather than insisting on individual, titled poems, he moved toward a method of composition by cycles and volumes.
My favourite passages...
Sleepmorsels, wedges
driven into the nowhere:
we remain equal to ourselves,
the turned-
about roundstar
agrees with us.
*
Eternities, died
over and above you,
a letter touches
your still un-
wounded fingers,
the shining forehead
vaults hither
and beds itself in
odors, noises.
*
Throw the solar year, to which you cling,
over the heart railings
and row to, starve yourself away, copulating:
two germ cells, two metazoons,
that's what you were,
the inanimate, the homeland,
now requests return - :
later, who knows,
one of you two, transformed,
may reemerge,
a slipper animalcule,
ciliated,
in the shield.
*
Dysposition, I know
your knives swarming like
minnows,
closer to the wind than I
nobody sailed,
nobody more than I
was cut by the hail squall
to the seaclear knived
brain.
*
Imagine:
the moorsoldier from Masada
teaches himself homeland, in
the most inextinguishable way,
against
all barbs in the wire.
Imagine:
the eyeless without shape
lead you free through the throng, you
grow stronger and
stronger.
Imagine: your
own hand
was held once
more this
into life re-
suffered
piece of
inhabitable earth.
Imagine:
that came toward me,
awake to the name, awake to the hand,
forever,
from what cannot be buried.
- Imagine
March 27, 2021
Or maybe one star? I was told it was OK that it didn't make any sense, because poetry, and, anyway, he's dead now and doesn't need stars.
February 17, 2024
Para nunca olvidar la potencia de la poesía.
July 5, 2023
DESCICATRIZADOS cuerpos de los dos,
funerarias hojas de los dos sobre la desnudez,
desrrealizado rostro de los dos.
A la tierra atraídos por
la raíz más blanca
del árbol
más blanco.
funerarias hojas de los dos sobre la desnudez,
desrrealizado rostro de los dos.
A la tierra atraídos por
la raíz más blanca
del árbol
más blanco.
March 23, 2011
FADDENSONNEN ("Threadsuns"), published in 1968 and translated here by Pierre Joris in 2005, was the second collection from Paul Celan's late period, when the poet had turned to highly obscure allusions and polysemy. Celan always denied that his poetry was hermitic. He maintained rather that these poems were an attempt to deal with life's complexity in a faithful fashion, showing things from several angles at once. Nonetheless, some of the poems here will prove baffling to most. Take, for example, the poem "Pau, at Night": "The immortality cypher, by Henry / the Fourth cradled in- / to tortoise-nobility, / sneers eleatically / behind itself." When Celan was writing these poems over 1965-1966, he was often in psychiatric care, and a certain fragmentation of the personality and a desperation for wholeness comes through in what is seemingly nonsensical.
That said, many of the poems here have a curious logic to them, avoiding easy interpretation but deeply resonating with the reader: "Shells inside finitude, strechable / in each / another figure grows itself fast // A thousand / is not even yet One. // Each arrow you loose is accompanied by the sent-along target / into the unerringly-secret / tumult." There's even one poem here where Celan returns to depicting the World War II death camps ("The industrious mineral resources, homey"), and though not everything in the poem is clear, the effect is utterly chilling.
Then there are moments of complete lucidity: "Sleepmorsels, wedges, / driven into the nowhere: / we remain equal to ourselves, / the turned / about roundstar / agrees with us." Or this elegant little poem, which could have come from Sandor Weores: "You were my death: / you I could hold, / when all fell from me."
I give this book three stars because Celan's poetry is something I wrestle with, something that awes and frustrates simultaneously. Still, I feel that any reviews I write for his books are provisional, that an ever greater insight into his work can be achieved over time. And I do feel that Celan's poetry has changed my life (though I'm not always sure it has been for the better). If you have never read the poet before, I'd suggest Michael Hamburger's volume of translations POEMS OF PAUL CELAN, which has a selection covering his whole output. A foothold on the earlier or middle work is recommended before tackling the late poems.
That said, many of the poems here have a curious logic to them, avoiding easy interpretation but deeply resonating with the reader: "Shells inside finitude, strechable / in each / another figure grows itself fast // A thousand / is not even yet One. // Each arrow you loose is accompanied by the sent-along target / into the unerringly-secret / tumult." There's even one poem here where Celan returns to depicting the World War II death camps ("The industrious mineral resources, homey"), and though not everything in the poem is clear, the effect is utterly chilling.
Then there are moments of complete lucidity: "Sleepmorsels, wedges, / driven into the nowhere: / we remain equal to ourselves, / the turned / about roundstar / agrees with us." Or this elegant little poem, which could have come from Sandor Weores: "You were my death: / you I could hold, / when all fell from me."
I give this book three stars because Celan's poetry is something I wrestle with, something that awes and frustrates simultaneously. Still, I feel that any reviews I write for his books are provisional, that an ever greater insight into his work can be achieved over time. And I do feel that Celan's poetry has changed my life (though I'm not always sure it has been for the better). If you have never read the poet before, I'd suggest Michael Hamburger's volume of translations POEMS OF PAUL CELAN, which has a selection covering his whole output. A foothold on the earlier or middle work is recommended before tackling the late poems.
May 1, 2011
Thinking about Threadsuns, I cannot help but compare Paul Celan to the Beatles, or so many other bands who grew increasingly strange and opaque with the age. Reading Threadsuns, and comparing it with some of Celan's earlier work, I had the sensation of watching language reach the point of non-function. In nearly ever poem in the collection, it is impossible to separate words and sounds from any sort of meaning. As words unravel, as new words come from old words, as nouns and adjectives and verbs are matched in increasingly bizarre pairs, the temptation emerges to stop looking for any meaning beyond the words. This is Paul Celan's test, his examination of what language can and cannot do and express. Though I missed the obvious melancholia and mourning seen in "Deathfugue," I was struck by Threadsuns as an entity both fragmentary and overwhelming, snippets of words which seem to tease at a hidden truth but upon closer analysis, tend to nonsense.
There is a fair amount of variation in the Threadsuns, in terms of length and structure. While a number of poems are very short, a few lines or a single stanza, others, several are composed of three or four stanzas. While Celan (or his translator) rarely rhymes, there are frequent uses of word play. Lines like "Mismeasure, unmeasure, misplaced, unworded," force us to examine similar sounding words which carry meanings both divergent and interrelated. At the same time, their placement in a single like ask us to look at them as merely similar, signifiers divorced from meaning entirely. This is language as language, as if Celan challenges us to make sense of the senseless.
While I enjoyed many of the poems in collection, I was particularly attracted to Celan's shortest works. In "On The Rainsoaked Spoor," for example, Celan gives us only fifteen words in two stanzas. The last couplet: It is as if you could hear/as if I still loved you," is both abstract and personal, incomprehensible and visceral. Rarely in the collection do we have any sense of pronouns: "You" and "I" remain mysteries. It is almost like watching a movie of love and heartbreak in an unknown tongue, sensing the powerful surges of feeling but failing to fully understand.
There is a fair amount of variation in the Threadsuns, in terms of length and structure. While a number of poems are very short, a few lines or a single stanza, others, several are composed of three or four stanzas. While Celan (or his translator) rarely rhymes, there are frequent uses of word play. Lines like "Mismeasure, unmeasure, misplaced, unworded," force us to examine similar sounding words which carry meanings both divergent and interrelated. At the same time, their placement in a single like ask us to look at them as merely similar, signifiers divorced from meaning entirely. This is language as language, as if Celan challenges us to make sense of the senseless.
While I enjoyed many of the poems in collection, I was particularly attracted to Celan's shortest works. In "On The Rainsoaked Spoor," for example, Celan gives us only fifteen words in two stanzas. The last couplet: It is as if you could hear/as if I still loved you," is both abstract and personal, incomprehensible and visceral. Rarely in the collection do we have any sense of pronouns: "You" and "I" remain mysteries. It is almost like watching a movie of love and heartbreak in an unknown tongue, sensing the powerful surges of feeling but failing to fully understand.
June 9, 2013
A bilingual edition of Celan's unsettling, frightening, fierce post-Holocaust poetry. These are not easy reading on any level: grammatical, emotional, intellectual. They are casually defiant, though he claimed his writing non-hermetic. You sit with these, one, then two, at a time, and let it, them, eat into your categories and challenge your expectations. The decision comes down to whether you want to keep your categories and expectations of poetry unchanged, or if you are willing to set them down and let these rough little rocks and debris seemingly thrown on the page at random to guide you into the heart of searing pain and loss. I look forward to reading other translations, his work being notoriously difficult to translate. A dictionary is necessary, and sometimes the ability to read a melted combination of two words (example not taken from book: eyear, which combine eye, ear, and "a year" [bp nichol example]. Challenging. Necessary.
February 27, 2023
Third time reading it. Utterly like no other poetry (I swear!), a new language with compounded words like "sleepmorsels" and dizzying logic like "coast-like, you survive yourself." Celan's poetry as well as his consciousness is the in-between, lives in the gaps, on the margins -- it breathes its own air. Try it.
July 17, 2008
A bilingual collaboration of two extraordinary creative achievements - Celan's and translator Joris'. Every thought, every turn of phrase is of poetic immanence to nothing other than itself. Nothing here is frivolous or mystic or otherwise artistic, nothing is cheaper than your death. Do it.
Read it slowly, literally, and more than once.
Read it slowly, literally, and more than once.
April 11, 2017
You were my death:
you I could hold on to,
while all fell from me.
you I could hold on to,
while all fell from me.
December 20, 2007
essential
Want to read
January 31, 2008Green Integer Books is a treasure of great writing from past and present in its past and forthcoming titles. One can find good reads here to last a long time. Thanks, Andrew.
August 1, 2012
Incomprehensible nonsense.
Want to read
June 11, 2009Read Michael Hamburger translation (recommended by AR).
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