Breathturn into Timestead (33 page)

I disagree with Bücher's suggestion that the poem should be “understood entirely” from this perspective (especially since Celan did edit out the specific reference to Jewish religion and mythology) and prefer to read it both with a more personal and a wider view. Take the image of the mulberry tree: as personal reference we know that Celan planted three of these trees in the garden of the family's summer home in Moisville, life symbols for each of the three members of the family. Besides its associations with silk, the mulberry tree is richly represented in various mythologies; as Lefebvre suggests, for example, “in China it is the tree of the Levant, in Greek mythology it is the meeting place for Pyramus and Thisbe. The walking tree may evoke Orpheus” (
RDS
, pp. 192–93).

“Von Ungeträumtem” | “By the undreamt”

October 16, 1963. The earliest version of this poem begins: “Traumgeätzt, / wirft das durchwanderte Brotland den Berg auf.” (Dream-etched, / the wandered-through breadland casts up the mountain.) A handwritten emendation inserts
schlaflos
, which then requires in the following version of the poem the logical change from
traumgeätzt
into its opposite,
von Ungeträumten geätzt
. Bürger's comment on this is worth quoting in extenso: “This will to paradox, which corresponds with the often observed paradoxes of Celan's work, here shows itself most clearly as determining and putting into motion the poetic fixing-process. Only insofar as a logical paradox seems to be cleared up, namely the contradiction between sleeplessness and dream-reality, does an extremely effective pictorial paradox arise—in the reality and effectiveness of an absence, the ‘undreamt.' In this paradox, the ‘undreamt' is yet again tendered in the poem as dream-reality, and enters into a new contradiction with “sleeplessly” in the second line.”

geätzt | etched: Evoked here is the process of using strong acid or mordant (from French
mordre
, “to bite”) to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface (usually copper, zinc, or steel) to create a design in intaglio in the metal. This was the core process
GCL
used in her art. See introduction notes for
Atemwende
, and this cycle,
Atemkristall
, above.

“In die Rillen” | “Into the furrows”

October 16, 1963.

Himmelsmünze: In the first edition, as in my 1969 translation of this volume, the word was given as
Himmelssäure
(heavensacid), which turned out to be a typo.

“In den Flüssen” | “In the rivers”

October 16, 1963. The north is for Celan associated with ice and snow, and thus landscapes of death and desolation. Useful here may be to remember that the ur-mythologies the Nazi system misused were such Nordic settings and heroes, as Friedrich Nietzsche postulated, for example, in the opening paragraph of his
Antichrist
, worth quoting here in full (in H. L. Mencken's translation):

Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how remote our place is. “Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the Hyperboreans”: even Pindar, in his day, knew that much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness … We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who else has found it?—The man of today?—“I don't know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn't know either the way out or the way in”—so sighs the man of today … This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,—we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that “forgives” everything because it “understands” everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such south-winds!… We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from “resignation” … There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal.

Lefebvre also points to Henri Michaux's poem “Icebergs” and its hyperborean landscapes; the second stanza reads: “Icebergs, icebergs, cathedrals without religion of the eternal winter, wrapped in the glacial icecap of planet Earth.”

beschwerst | weight: Besides the meaning “to weigh (down) with,” the German
beschweren
also resonates with the meanings of sich
beschweren
, “to complain,” and one can hear
beschwören
as “invoke,” “conjure,” “beseech.”

“Vor dein spätes Gesicht” | “Before your late face”

Exact date of composition unknown.

“Die Schwermutsschnellen hindurch” | “Down melancholy's rapids”

October 17, 1963. On a list with corrections for the proofs, Celan noted: “re: melancholy's rapids:… / there the forty and four / (check the date in the original)” (
TA
,
Atemwende
, p. 16). Celan's forty-fourth birthday was November 23, 1964. Barbara Wiedemann (
BW
, p. 720) notes that, computing from Celan's birth year, the number forty gives 1960, the year Celan received the Büchner Prize and gave the Meridian speech. This is, however, also the year in which the Goll affair reached its paroxysm. Calculating backward from the date of composition of the poem, the number four gives October 17, 1959, the day on which Celan read the, to him, very painful review of
Sprachgitter
by Günter Blöcker.

vierzig | forty: Also connotes a range of biblical meanings; it is a number often used by God to represent a period of testing or judgment, thus the forty years the Israelites spent in the wilderness, the forty days of rain in the days of the flood, the forty-day periods of fasting, testing, and communing with God faced by Moses (who was forty when God called on him) and Jesus, etc.

Lebensbäume | lifetrees: The first draft of the poem had
Lebensstämme
, where
stämme
, the plural of
Stamm
, can refer to a tree trunk and/or to a tribe, that is, a family line. See also the later poem “Zwanzig für immer” | “Twenty forever” (p. 22).

“Die Zahlen” | “The numbers”

October 18, 1963. First notes toward the poem on a page of the French daily
Le Monde
dated October 18, 1963 (which means the paper came out the previous afternoon) and on an envelope postmarked October 16, 1965. The following poem was also written that day. Lefebvre suggests “a relation between the title and the fact that this is the seventh poem of the cycle. Celan showed an interest in numbers that at times bordered on superstition, and that often linked to the interpretations of the esoteric tradition. But here it is mainly a matter of the numbers' association with the images in language in terms of quantity (number of words in a text, or in a verse) and as order of the elements of an alphabet or discourse. The numbers' alliance [my ‘in league'] with the images is thus also the combination of a kind of abstract rigor with the changing fate of images in poetry (Verhängnis)” (
RDS
, p. 197).

“Wege im Schatten-Gebräch” | “Paths in the shadow-break”

October 18, 1963.

Gebräch | break:
Gebräch
is a hunting term and refers to the ground uprooted by wild boars. Unable to find the exact corresponding term, I have preferred to translate—albeit by an overly abstract word—the core term of the German word, which is the verb
brechen
, “to break.” Lynch and Jakowsky have tried to keep the hunting image alive, and give the line as “PATHS in the boar-tusked shadowland,” which sounds not only contrived, though vaguely Celanian, but also introduces two terms, “boar” and “land,” that are not in Celan's text. By translating
wühlen
in the next stanza as “root up,” I hope that some sense of the hunting/animal terminology is brought back in. See also Celan's early poem “In der Gestalt eines Ebers” | “In the shape of a boar” (
Von Schwelle zu Schwelle
).

Georg-Michael Schulz provides a fascinating analysis of this poem in an essay in the
Celan-Jahrbuch
2 (“‘Sterblichkeitsbeflissen.' Zu Paul Celans Gedicht ‘Wege im Schatten-Gebräch,'” pp. 29–36). According to him, the poem is based on a very specific iconic image: “a figure one can find in Jewish cemeteries on a number of grave stones … a figure of two hands in the gesture of blessing.” He goes on to quote a description of how the hands have to be held during the blessing ritual which lies at the origin of the grave inscription. It is this mudralike figure that creates the “four-finger-furrow”: “the finger thus, with pinkie touching ring-finger, and the likewise linked middle and index fingers propped [
sic
], these (for their part) by both thumbs, so that five interstices ensue—two each opening up above; the middle ones, between the thumbs down below.”

“Weißgrau” | “Whitegray”

October 25, 1963.

Strandhafer | sea oats: A psammophylic (sand-loving) species of grass in the Poaceae family,
Leymus arenarius
, is commonly known as sea lyme grass, or simply lyme grass. It could also be of the genus
Uniola
, that is, the species
U. Paniculata
, which we call sea oats. Both are strong grasses that consolidate seaside sand dunes, thus reducing land erosion. I prefer the literal translation “sea oats” here to “lyme grass,” for being closer to the original. See also the poems “Vom Anblick der Amseln” | “From beholding the blackbirds” and “Wir, die wie der Strandhafer Wahren” | “We who like the sea oats guard” (pp. 94 and 432) and their respective commentaries (pp. 497 and 619).

ein Ohr, abgetrennt | an ear, severed: Reference to Van Gogh. See also the poem “Mächte, Gewalten” | “Principalities, powers” (p. 204).

Ein Aug, in Streifen geschnitten | An eye, cut in strips: Brings to mind a core image in Buñuel's film
Un chien andalou
.

“Mit erdwärts gesungenen Masten” | “With masts sung earthward”

October 26, 1963.

“Schläfenzange” | “Templeclamps”

November 8, 1963. Celan's firstborn son, François, had died exactly ten years and one month before this date, a death due to a mismanaged forceps delivery. This is the center poem of the first cycle.

Schläfenzange | Templeclamps: The usual German term for forceps is
Geburtszange
(birth tongs), but Celan's neologism is immediately obvious.

“Beim Hagelkorn” | “Next to the hailstone”

November 8, 1963. Same day as poem above.

den harten / Novembersternen | the hard / November stars … Schütze | archer: Celan was born on November 23, under the sign of Sagittarius, the archer.

“Stehen” | “To stand”

November 11, 1963. Armistice Day in France, the celebration of the end of World War I. Lefebvre (
RDS
, p. 203) links this poem to Celan's translations of Shakespeare's sonnets 79, 81, and 106. Exactly three years earlier, on November 11, 1960, an article by Rainer Kabel in
Die Welt
had made public in great detail Claire Goll's accusations of plagiarism against Celan and for the first time spoke of Goll's claims that the “Todesfuge” was essentially Goll. In the limited
Atemkristall
edition, the poem has a special position in that it is the only poem flanked on both sides by an etching by
GCL
(
BW
, p. 722).

Stehen | To stand: For the importance of this stance for Celan, see my introduction to
PCS
(p. 6); see also the earlier poem from
Die Niemandsrose
, “Eine Gauner- und Ganovenweise,” which ends with the lines: “But, / but it rises up [
bäumt sich
], the tree. It, / it too / stands against / the plague.” Further information can be found in the poems and commentaries on poems using the concept of the upright station, such as “Für Eric” | “For Eric” (pp. 362 and 594), “Wirk nicht voraus” | “Do not work ahead” (pp. 316 and 575), and “Es stand” | “It stood” (pp. 430 and 617).

für dich / allein | for you / alone: Both Wiedemann and Lefebvre link these lines to a quote, often cited by Celan during the Goll affair years, by Rabbi Hillel from the German edition by Reinhold Meyer, which says: “Wenn ich nicht für mich bin, wer ist dann für mich?” (If I am not for myself, who will be for me?) The Talmudic text continues: “And when I am for myself, what am ‘I'? And if not now, when?”

“Dein vom Wachen” | “Your dream”

November 25, 1963. This twelve-line poem coincides with the twelfth anniversary of Paul Celan and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange's first meeting in November 1951. This and the following poem have been analyzed in detail in relation to Celan's use of dream language by Böschenstein-Schäfer (“Traum und Sprache in der Dichtung Paul Celans,” pp. 223–38), who suggest that Celan, like many survivors of terrorist regimes, and despite his attraction to Surrealism, is wary of dreams and afraid of invasion or betrayal of/by that most private area, the unconscious. He has two ways of defending himself against this:

Of these the first is the concentration on awakening, the second, the replacement of the structures of dream speech in the poetic. In the place of the dream image the poet thematizes the attempt to produce, through the recollection of the dream, contact with the unconscious. “Shaft,” “gorge” and “suction pipe” are all variants of the vertical, which especially in the volumes
Breathturn
,
Threadsuns
, and
Lightduress
characterize the way dream elements enter into consciousness.