Shortness of breath

Paul Celan's poetry collection "Break of Breath", the fifth in a series of complete works by the writer, contains 80 poems written in 1963-1965, which are divided into 6 cycles. In one of the letters to his wife, the author describes this collection as "truly the densest of everything I have written so far, but also the most voluminous". The concept of breath, already present in the title of the book, in many cases also defines its program - breath as a prerequisite for life and poetic creation, as a poetological-existential cipher of continuous human metamorphoses.