It is natural to compare. Comparison is fundamental to understanding - not only understanding what makes one phenomenon like another but also what makes many phenomena different from the others. This volume focuses on the distinctions, overlap and integration of comparative studies across disciplinary boundaries, broadly speaking.

Paul Celan s widely recognized as the greatest and most studied post-war European poet. At once demanding and highly rewarding, his poetry dominates the field in the aftermath of the Holocaust. This selection of poems, now available in paper for the first time, is comprised of previously untranslated work, opening facets of Celan's oeuvre never before available to readers of English. These translations, called "perfect in language, music, and spirit" by Yehuda Amichai, work from the implied premise of what has been called Intention auf die Sprache, delivering the spirit of Celan's work--his dense multilingual resonances, his brutal broken music, syntactic ruptures and dizzying wordplay.