Aris Fioretos

Word Traces
Readings of Paul Celan

Essays
Editor
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1994, xxv + 404 pages
Cover Art: Håkan Rehnberg, Untitled (1990)
ISBN: 0-8018-4525-4 (cloth); 0-8018-4767-2 (paper)

The crucial role of Paul Celan in postwar literature is widely recognized among European scholars, but has been addressed only scarcely in the Anglo-American academy. In Word Traces, Aris Fioretos attempts to redress that imbalance, bringing together thirteen expert readers in the most extensive English-language critical collection on Celan yet published.
The volume begins with the first complete English translation of Jacques Derrida’s book-length essay, “Schibboleth for Paul Celan.” Chapters by Otto Pöggeler, Dennis J. Schmidt, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe then explore the relationship of poetry and philosophy in Celan’s work. Christopher Fynsk, Joel Golb, and Werner Hamacher discuss the interrelation of poetry and poetics, and Anders Olsson, Hans-Jost Frey, and volume editor Aris Fioretos examine the peculiarly “written” character of Celan’s poetry. In the book’s final section, chapters by Hans-Jost Frey, Thomas Pepper, and Leonard Olschner treat the implications of Celan’s practice of translation.

“Despite a growing interest in Celan over the past twenty years, there is no collection in English which comes close to the extended critical presentation assembled here. Word Traces will be a standard text on Celan — the variety of the essays is wide and will appeal to specialists in philosophy, German studies, modern poetry, comparative literature, and literary theory. This is an impressive collection of texts written by philosophers and critics whose concerns show the pertinence and breadth of Celan’s writings for contemporary thought.” — Steven Ungar, University of Iowa