Fathomsuns and Benighted

Born in Romania to Jewish parents, Paul Celan lived through the Third Reich and emerged as a poet, translator and teacher of great courage and resource. Fathomsuns, a collection published in 1968, is Celan’s longest collection and one of his most ambitious. Benighted is a sequence of 11 poems published in an anthology of abandoned works by various authors belonging to Celan’s publishing house Suhrkamp in 1968. Together, the works translated here show Celan at his most provocative, elusive, enticing and daring.