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9781138268548

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'This impressive debut book uses music, both as sound and as idea, to cut through the conventional wisdom about Paul Celan and to forge a more nuanced, more complex view of Celan's poetics than the one afforded by the legends that have accumulated around the poet. Axel Englund shows with meticulous argument and in lucid prose that Celan's lifelong return to figures of music forms a key arena for the playing out of his conflicted identity as a modern poet, and in particular as a poet whose modernity is over determined - but far from exhausted - by his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust.' Lawrence Kramer, Fordham University, USA 'Axel Englund's sophisticated study of Paul Celan combines the insights of a philologist with the keen ear of a composer-musicologist. It illuminates not only the extraordinary role that music plays in Celan's conception of poetry, but also the singular impact his work has had on contemporary classical music. A milestone in Celan studies.' Mark M. Anderson, Columbia University, USA ’The strength of the study lies in its broadly based examination of poems and musical compositions from every phase of Celan’s work’. Modern Language Review

'This impressive debut book uses music, both as sound and as idea, to cut through the conventional wisdom about Paul Celan and to forge a more nuanced, more complex view of Celan's poetics than the one afforded by the legends that have accumulated around the poet. Axel Englund shows with meticulous argument and in lucid prose that Celan's lifelong return to figures of music forms a key arena for the playing out of his conflicted identity as a modern poet, and in particular as a poet whose modernity is over determined - but far from exhausted - by his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust.' Lawrence Kramer, Fordham University, USA 'Axel Englund's sophisticated study of Paul Celan combines the insights of a philologist with the keen ear of a composer-musicologist. It illuminates not only the extraordinary role that music plays in Celan's conception of poetry, but also the singular impact his work has had on contemporary classical music. A milestone in Celan studies.' Mark M. Anderson, Columbia University, USA 'The strength of the study lies in its broadly based examination of poems and musical compositions from every phase of Celan's work'. Modern Language Review

Author Information

Axel Englund is Associate Professor of Literature at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research is primarily concerned with interrelations between the arts and media, in particular the music and poetry of the modernist era. His other fields of interest include twentieth-century exile literature, concepts of aesthetic authenticity, and representations of gender and sexuality in opera. In 2011, Englund was an Anna Lindh Fellow at Stanford University (Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies) and he has held visiting scholarships at Columbia University (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures) and Freie Universität Berlin (Institut für Theaterwissenschaft).

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