Ian Fairley

I'm a translator from German and Hungarian, and am nearing the end of work to translate a selection of poems and prose by Paul Celan (1920-1970) written between 1938 and 1948. This first decade of Celan's writing life concludes with his emigration from Bucharest to Vienna to Paris, and with the publication of his first book, Der Sand aus den Urnen (1948). Sand from the Urns is my working title for this project, which contains something like 80 texts. I hope that these translations will offer insight into Celan's lyric beginnings, and that they will complement my published versions of his work from the middle and late 1960s, Fadensonnen (Fathomsuns) and Schneepart (Snow Part).