Paul Celan

Due to the richness and novelty of the sources, this biography is the first to provide comprehensive information about Paul Celan’s entire life in text and image. It thus enters a field of tension and faces a twofold challenge: for Celan resolutely rejected the biographical, especially the biographical approach to his poetry, and was also decidedly sceptical about the medium of photography. Only one framed photograph was displayed in his flat: the one picture Celan owned of his mother, who was murdered in Ukraine at the age of 47 by the SS.

And yet this documentation attempts to report on Celan’s life both vividly and episodically, in images and their explanation and in texts accompanied by images. For every anecdote and every image, however much they seem to be superficial and to defy Celan’s apodictic statement that »real poetry is anti-biographical«, the ethical and poetological dimension of his life is indelibly inscribed. And so this book draws from private photographic archives and from Celan’s estate, especially from the still unpublished diaries, precisely in those passages where the poet speaks of his mental troubles and his poetic work and resistance as if to himself. Here they are quoted from in detail for the first time.

»There is a great freight of information here, both new facts and further precisions about things halfknown. The book is an act of reverence, undoubtedly a homage of sorts ... [but] this doesn’t prevent it from making clear-sighted judgements, and Badiou helpfully breaks with the fervent, almost sacramental tone into which writers on Celan often fall.« Charlie Louth, Times Literary Supplement

»Badiou’s book is an event for everyone who feels connected to Celan’s poetry.« Boris Schumatsky, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

»Bertrand Badiou’s biography of Paul Celan is a monumental achievement, its value can scarcely be overstated.« Andreas Bernard, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Bertrand Badiou’s book is a wonderful text and picture puzzle.« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeit

»Bertrand Badiou draws from many sources. He cites these with such frequency and sometimes so extensively that we cannot just speak of this work as a biography or an illustrated book … but as a sourcebook.« Martin Oehlen, Frankfurter Rundschau

»With its detailed chronology and a wealth of previously unknown documents, Bertrand Badiou’s pictorial biography of Paul Celan is a genuine milestone.« Helmut Böttiger, Deutschlandfunk Kultur