Lexington Books
Pages: 280
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-7936-3255-5 • Hardback • September 2021 • $122.00 • (£94.00)
978-1-7936-3256-2 • eBook • September 2021 • $45.00 • (£35.00)
Pajari Räsänen teaches comparative literature at the University of Helsinki.
Forecounterwords
Chapter 1: How to Avoid Praying?
Chapter 2: Undecidably Equivocal
Chapter 3: Squalls I
Chapter 4: Squalls II
Chapter 5: The Tropic of Circumcision
Chapter 6: In Life, Like a Secret
Chapter 7: Breathings
Räsänen's exquisite study not only offers an exemplary contribution to the philology of poetry—both as it is practiced in the writings of Paul Celan, and as it may yet be practiced in approaching those writings—: for it also extends the "unconditional hospitality" of Celan's oeuvre, in all senses of the word. Throughout, Räsänen invites readers into those spaces for encounter which Celan's poems open, drawing out the intersections among texts and voices that take place within them, and making further room for others yet to come. In a word: Räsänen speaks, with Celan, for "the other's time" in ways which call for reading, for ever another time.
— Kristina Mendicino, associate professor of German Studies, Brown University