Correspondence

Synopsis

Paul celan (1920–70) is one of the best-known german poets of the holocaust; many of his poems, admired for their spare, precise diction, deal directly with its stark themes. Austrian writer ingeborg bachmann (1926–73) is recognized as one of post–world war ii german literature’s most important novelists, poets, and playwrights. It seems only appropriate that these two contemporaries and masters of language were at one time lovers, and they shared a lengthy, artful, and passionate correspondence. Collected here for the first time in english are their letters written between 1948 and 1961.