Breathturn into Timestead (37 page)

October 1, 1964. During this period, Celan took a leave of absence from his teaching and spent time in psychiatric hospitals. It is possible that the first stanza alludes to electroshock treatments he received at that time. The final stanza's complexly convoluted syntax is not reproducible in English. The first version of my translation read:

The from you also star-

eyed loafer melancholy

hears of it.

A second version tried to clarify the English while still keeping what I have elsewhere called the “corkscrew motion” of the syntax in Celan's sentence:

The—because of you also star-

eyed—vagabond Melancholy

learns of it.

Defeated, I decided for once to alter the syntax in English and reconstruct the stanza.

“Schwirrhölzer” | “Bullroarers”

October 3, 1964.

Schwirrhölzer | Bullroarers: An ethnological term referring to a cult object used in Africa and Australia. The German word lets the reader also hear the two basic words that make up the compound, namely “wood” and “whirring.” I have tried to retain some of that whirr/whizz sound by translating the indeterminate
fahren
as “whizz.” There are reading traces in Celan's copy of Leo Frobenius's
Kulturgeschichte Afrikas
.

“Abends” | “Evening”

November 8, 1964. Hamburg. Celan stayed in that city in early November 1964 for a radio recording at the Norddeutscher Rundfunk. The poem is drafted on paper bearing the logo of the Hotel Alster-Hof. On November 8 he saw Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's opera
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
.

unendlicher Schuhriemen | endless shoelace: In the margin of an essay by Hugo Bergmann (“Die Heiligung des Namens [Kiddusch haschem],” in
Vom Judentum: Ein Sammelbuch
, edited by Verein jüdischer Hochschüler Bar Kochba [Prague] [Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1913], p. 43), Celan wrote, “Reread 2/20/65. What a confirmation!” next to the sentence asking that in a time of persecution the Jew be serious about the “sanctifiction of the Name,” and that he should “refuse to knot the shoelace in the manner of the heathens.”

“Bei den zusammengetretenen” | “At the assembled”

November 17–25, 1964. On November 17 Celan returned from his trip to Germany, after a stop in Cologne to visit with Heinrich Böll. Wiedemann reports that “in Cologne he remembered his first visit there in 1954, when he saw the plague-cross in the Saint Mary church in the Capitol: ‘destroyed romanesque church, one of which, I thought about it again yesterday, with a so-called “plague-cross,” arms V-shaped' (
PC
/
GCL
, #191). Celan links the concept of the plague-cross to the plague outbreak in Cologne in 1349, which was followed by a pogrom in which the whole Jewish community of the city was wiped out” (
BW
, p. 737).

Ölzelt | oiltent: Lefebvre reads this as referring probably to the “tabernacle where the chrism, the consecrated oil was kept” (
RDS
, p. 241).

“Das aufwärtsstehende Land” | “The upward-standing country”

December 3, 1964.

Steinschlucht | steep ravine: The first draft had
Wortschlucht
, “wordravine.”

“Das umhergestoßene” | “The pushed-around”

December 9–10, 1964.

“Aschenglorie” | “Ashglory”

December 15, 1964.

Pontisches Einstmal | Pontic erstwhile: In 1947 Celan spent his summer holidays in Mangalia on the Black Sea—
Pontus Euxinus
in Latin—with his friends Petre Solomon and Nina Cassian. Mangalia, a resort much frequented by artists, was partly peopled by Tatars.

The Black Sea is also the place where Ovid was exiled and wrote his
Tristia
and Pontic epistles, and where Osip Mandelstam spent much time. In his letter to Petre Solomon of November 23, 1967, Celan says of this poem: “C'est quelquechose comme l'anamnèse de Mangalia.” (It is something like the anamnesis of Mangalia.) (
PC
/
PS
, p. 238)

ertrunkenen Ruderblatt | drowned rudder blade: Wiedemann (
BW
, p. 738) connects this with the death by drowning (a possible suicide) of Celan's friend Lia Fingerhut (with whom he had also been in Mangalia) in the Mediterranean off Israel, of which he learned on November 2, 1961, and about which he wrote to Petre Solomon on November 23, 1967: “I'm thinking of our excursion into the Carpathians more than 20 years ago, Lia, Lia, drowned, drowned” (
PC
/
PS
, p. 238). Lefebvre suggests that Celan may also have been thinking of the actress Corinna Marcovici, with whom Celan had a relationship at that time (RDS, p. 243).

Niemand / zeugt für den / Zeugen | No one / bears witness for the / witness: For an analysis of this statement and the translation problems it poses, see my essay “Paul Celan's Counterword: Who Witnesses for the Witness?” (
Justifying the Margins
, pp. 79–86). See also Jacques Derrida's essay “Poetics and Politics of Witnessing” (
Sovereignties in Question
, pp. 65–96).

IV

“Das Geschriebene” | “The written”

December 19, 1964.

Tümmler | dolphins: The German word for “dolphin” is more descriptive of movement:
sich tummeln
means “to splash about in the water” and can be said of children as much as of dolphins. (Celan marked the word in his etymological dictionary.)

wo nur? | where only?: The first draft had in
Dortmund
replaced in the final version by the question (
TA
,
Atemwende
, pp. 122–23).

“Cello-Einsatz” | “Cello-entry”

December 24, 1964.

Cello-Einsatz | Cello-entry: Gisela Dischner informed Wiedemann (
BW
, p. 739) of a connection to the solo cello entry in the Adagio ma non troppo section of Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto op. 104.

Schwarz / -blütige | black / -biled:
Schwarzblütig
(blackblooded) is a common term describing someone melancholic. As the Greek word μελαγχολία (melancholia) literally means “black bile,” I've elected to stay with that word.

“Frihed” | “Frihed”

December 25, 1964.

Frihed: The Danish word meaning “freedom.” In early November 1964 Celan had visited the Frihedsmuseet (Freedom Museum) in Copenhagen with its exhibits of the Danish resistance against the Nazi occupation, including documentation of acts of sabotage and of the efforts to save the Jewish population.

Steinboote | stone boats: The Danes transported many Jews to safety in Sweden in fishing and leisure boats in October 1943, an act remembered in a stone monument in Jerusalem. See also “Es stand” | “It stood” and the commentary to that poem (pp. 430 and 617).

Orlog-Wort | man-of-war-word:
Orlog
is an old German word meaning “war,” which has survived in the Scandinavian countries in the vocabulary of the navy; there is thus an Orlogsmuseet, a museum of the Royal Danish Navy, in Copenhagen. Celan seems to have known the word from his readings in Hans Henny Jahnn's 1949 novel
Das Holzschiff
, where the expression
Orlogschiff
is underlined.

ich singe – // was sing ich? | I sing— // what do I sing?: In the draft versions Celan had written: “ich sang // El Canto, El Canto / de Riego” (I sang // El Canto, El Canto / de Riego), which refers to the revolutionary patriotic hymn of the Spanish republic.

mit den roten, den weißen | with the red, with the white: red and white are the national colors of Denmark.

“Den verkieselten Spruch” | “The silicified saying”

December 27, 1964, Paris.

verkieselten | silicified: A term from petrology describing the process in which organic matter becomes saturated with silica. A common source of silica is volcanic material. Celan had the term via his book on geology by Roland Brinkman.

schießen / … an | crystallize: The German verb
anschießen
(though also having a range of meanings connected to shooting, and thus to speed and noise) here refers to the process of crystal formation in crystallography. Lefebvre refers the reader to Celan's earlier poem “Engführung” | “Stretto” (
PCS
, p. 67) in the volume
Sprachgitter
|
Speechgrille
, adding: “The points and the edges of the crystal are in a way structured by a network of punctuations” (
RDS
, p. 247).

“Wo?” | “Where?”

December 30, 1964, Paris.

Lockermassen | friable matter: A geological term Celan located in his geology books. I use “matter” rather than “mass,” as the compound “friable mass” in English is used specifically in medicine to describe tumorlike formations.

“Königswut” | “King's rage”

February 1, 1965, Paris.

“Solve” | “Solve”

February 20, 1965. On the same day “Coagula” was finished. It is useful to read the diptych “Solve” and “Coagula” as programmatic of the poetics of late Celan: a dissolving and a reorganization of both reality and language. See also next note. In Celan's notebook under the date of May 24, 1964, he reports a visit to “Waterloo-Plein / 41: Spinoza's birthhouse: no longer there” and a draft for a poem “To the memory of Leo Shestov.” The first draft of the poem “Solve” also has the place indication “Amsterdam, Waterloo-Plein,” edited out of the second draft, while the geographic indication “rheinaufwärts … rheinabwärts” (referring to the river Rhine) will also be reduced to the final “stromaufwärts, strom- / abwärts” | “upstream, down- / stream.” That draft also included the phrase “Denkerbildnis aus Wolfenbüttel” (Thinker's portrait from Wolfenbüttel), which refers to a portrait of Spinoza, of which Celan owned a copy (
TA
,
Atemwende
, p. 136). See also the poem “Pau, Später” | “Pau, Later” (p. 126).

Solve: Part of the classical alchemical formula “Solve et Coagula.” There are reading traces in Hugo von Hoffmanthal's
Andreas oder die Vereinigten
: “True poetry is the arcanum that united us with life, that separates us from life. The separation—through separating we start to live—we separate, so then death too remains bearable, only the composite is gruesome (a fine, pure hour of death like Stillings's)—but joining is just as essential as separating—the aura catena of Homer—‘Separabis terram ab igne, subtile ab spisso, suaviter magna cum ingenio | thou shalt separate earth from fire, the subtle from the dense, smoothly and with great skill' and—
solve et coagula. the universal binding agent: gluten; the universal seperating agent: alkahest.
” Otto Pöggeler also points to a further phrase in Andreas: “Das ‘Ergon,' sagt die Fama, ‘ist die Heiligung des inneren Menschen, die Goldmacherkunst ist das Parergon'—solve et coagula” (The “Ergon,” says the Fama, “is the sanctification of the inner man, the art of making gold is the parergon”—solve et coagula) (
SPUR
, p. 306). Celan's use is more poetological, as this action of dissolving and (re)joining closely approximates the process to which his work subjects language. Wiedemann also points us to a note by Celan dated November 1, 1966, “concerning a phrase by [Margarete] Susman in connection with a remark by Rosa Luxemburg: ‘To be good is the main thing. To be good simply and humbly,
that dissolves and joins everything
and is better than all intelligence and self-righteousness' (From
Geheimnis der Freiheit
, p. 274)” (
BW
, p. 741).

Gift- / pfalzen | Poison- /Palatinates: An easy misreading here would let one hear
Giftpflanze
(poisonous plant) rather than
Giftpfalze
(poison-palatinate), which would also make sense in the alchemical mode of the poem. Interestingly enough,
Gift
here could further be understood in an older meaning, still current in Goethe's time, where, besides the meaning of poison, it also had the meaning that the English word “gift” has today, that of something given, offered, a present.

“Coagula” | “Coagula”

February 18, 1962–February 20, 1965. First notes date to the time of
Die Niemandsrose
. The title completes the alchemical theme of “solve et coagula.” There are also possible references to the esoteric Christian mysticism of the Rosy Cross, though the “Rosa” here is usually read as referring to Rosa Luxemburg through the “Romanian buffaloes,” which Celan mentions in a letter to Petre Solomon of November 23, 1967 (
PC
/
PS
, p. 238): “The Romanian buffaloes seen by Rosa Luxemburg through the bars of her prison window converge with the three words of Kafka's ‘Country Doctor'—and with that name—Rosa. I coagulate, I try to make coagulation happen.” In relation to Rosa Luxemburg, compare the poem “Du liegst” | “You lie” (p. 322) from “Schneepart” | “Snowpart” and the relevant commentary (p. 578). A further reference enriching the word “Rosa” leads to a friend and lover from Czernowitz and Bukarest named Rosa Leibovici who died of tuberculosis in the early sixties; Israel Chalfen reports that “Celan, who received the news of her death in Paris, was said to have been deeply distressed” (Chalfen, p. 187).

Compare also the poem “In Prag” | “In Prague” (p. 52) for alchemical themes. On the image of the rose in Celan's poems, see also M. Winkler's 1972 essay “On Paul Celan's Rose Images” (
Neophilologus
56 (1):72–78).

“Schädeldenken” | “Skullthinking”