title: The Meridian: Final VersionDraftsMaterials (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
author:  Paul Celan 
description: "The Meridian speech is one of Paul Celan's key works. This meticulous, fascinating, and, finally, compelling edition begins by unlocking what seems to be the work's multifoliate nature. Ultimately, though, and with the help of Pierre Joris's eloquent translation, we discover that that under the many surfaces of this magisterial essay is an abyss of poetic thinking struggling to emerge into the light of our encounter." (Charles Bernstein <i>University of Pennsylvania</i>)<br /><br />"It may seem quixotic to undertake a translation of all the notes and drafts leading up to <i>The Meridian</i>. However, with a poet of Celan's importancea poet not given to writing statements at all and whose collected prose amounts to some 50 pagesjust tracing the genesis of this major poetics statement would be worthwhile. But what we have here is more: it is a record of Celan's thinking. In other words, a treasure." (<i>Rosmarie Waldrop</i>)<br /><br />"Over the last half century Paul Celan has emerged as the iconic poet of the postwar/post-Holocaust periodfor some of us the greatest German-language poet of the twentieth century as a whole. To those for whom he has served as a guide or beacon, his Meridian speech from 1960 remains his most telling testament to the powers and problematics of poetry and art. Now, in this remarkable work of scholarship, a still greater body of poetics and poesis comes to light. Inaugurated by Bernhard Bschenstein and Heino Schmull, and carried over into English by poet and translator Pierre Joris, Celan's celebration of the uncanny and transitory appears along with its several early versions and with a range of source materials that make up a poetic collage, an implicit epic, in their own right. Those who know how to read it will find sustenance here for years to come." (<i>Jerome Rothenberg</i>)<br /><br />"This translation of a critical edition represents, as Joris himself notes, an epic work. In minute detail it traces the origins and evolution of Celan's Meridian speech for an Anglophone readership, thus making Celan's text as close as possible to an 'original' work in a language other than the one in which it was conceived and published. The volume represents an important step in 'naturalizing' Celan into the English language and (almost) opening his creative process and universe to non-native speakers of German." (Dagmar C. G. Lorenz <i><i>Journal of Austrian Studies</i></i>)
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  MERIDIAN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Crossing Aesthetics
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Werner Hamacher
  
  
  & David E. Wellbery
  
  
  Editors
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Stanford
  
  
  University
  
  
  Press
  
  
  Stanford
  
  
  California
  
  
  1999
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE GRAY BOOK
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Aris Fioretos
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![Image for page 5](../data/content-0002.png)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For William Gass
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie
  
  
  —Goethe
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Gray and falling, and while falling waiting for the strange moment when the
  tongue turns light and limber, liquid with avowal, the teeth become dragons,
  and the instant suddenly resembles the drowners last dream, he who fell from a
  precipice and now sinks like a stone but lackadaisically as a leaf, winging
  swinging like a dim dot suspended in motion, yet moving toward rest because
  the presents elastic membrane has placidly expanded, now permitting images of
  past and