Breathturn into Timestead (56 page)

“Kalk-Krokus” | “Chalk-crocus”

August 24, 1968.

In July 1969 Celan sent this poem to Franz Wurm in Prague—thus by the Vltava River; in German, the Moldau—and, citing the end of Kafka's story “An Imperial Message,” writes: “You may show both, ‘when evening comes,' to the city of Prague and your friends there—if your index finger agrees” (
PC
/
FW
, #162).

Delle Dasein | Dasein Dent: Celan has the note “Delle = flache Vertiefung; Beule” in Weigert (plus underlinings): “die
zügigen
Faltenbahnen,
dellen und wellen sich wie natürlicher Stoff
” (the fast fold plications, dent and wave like natural matter).

“Es sind schon” | “The cables are”

August 24, 1968. On that date
FAZ
carried an article on “Futurism in city building,” speaking of the “Entlastungsstadt Perlach für München,” that is, Perlach as “decongestion town” for Munich.

“In den Einstiegluken” | “In the access hatches”

August 26, 1968. Underlying this poem are
Der
Spiegel
(#35/1968) and that day's
FAZ
reporting on events in Czechoslovakia.

In den Einstiegluken | In the access hatches … Spürgeräte | detectors: The
Spiegel
story relates how young men would climb up on the Russian tanks and drop political tracts in Russian rather than Molotov cocktails into the access hatches. The article also mentions how the Russians tried to use detectors to locate the Czech radio stations that were set up in a number of towns and cities after the Russian invasion and were constantly moved to escape being detected.

Krähe | crow: A bird related to the jackdaw, that is, Kafka's name in Czech, and to the blackbird,
Amsel
in German, close to Celan's original name, Antschel.

halbmast | halfmast: The main article in
Der Spiegel
(p. 24) reports that “in Znaim the inhabitants flew the flags at half-mast or replaced them with a black one.”

“Und jetzt” | “And now”

August 27, 1968. The poem braids events in Czechoslovakia and a reference to Walter Benjamin's “Origin of German Tragic Drama,” in the expression “gesamtbarock” | “all-baroque.”

Lametta | tinsel: The German word refers to the shiny decorations on Christmas trees and here designates ironically the decorations on high military officers' uniforms. The stanza, Lefebvre suggests (
PDN
, p. 156), refers to the “pseudo-accords signed under duress by the Communist parties (Dubček among them) and the militaro-political dignitaries.”

Kommissur | commissure: See my comments pp. 537–38.

“Schnellfeuer-Perihel” | “Rapidfire-perihelion”

August 27, 1968. Second poem of the day. The title draws on the
Spiegel
article of August 27, 1968, “The Conjurors of Empty Fists,” which says: “On Thursday morning, after a night filled with light flares and the rataplan of rapid fire guns…” (p. 22).

Perihel | perihelion: From Greek
peri
(near) and
helios
(sun); the point in the orbit of a planet where it is nearest to the sun.

-Pawlatschen | -pawlatschen: From the Czech word
pavla
č, it refers to the makeshift stages put up by street singers in Vienna. As a reference to popular (street) theater it may (Lefebvre suggests) connect to Celan's reference to Benjamin's “baroque” in the previous poem.

“Wir Übertieften” | “We the overdeepened”

August 28, 1968. Vocabulary shows traces of Celan's Brockhaus geological dictionary.

Übertieften | overdeepened: Brockhaus gives the noun
Übertiefung
, describing glacial erosion and deepening of the bedrock of glaciers that can reach several hundred yards under the tongue of larger glaciers, less so on Firnfeld glaciers and small glacier spots. The second poem of the volume
Die Niemandsrose
is titled “Das Wort vom Zur-Tiefe-Gehn,” which Joachim Neugroschel translated as “The word of going-to-the-depth.” That poem was a present for Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, and the image links to a Georg Heym poem they had read together in the early fifties; the first stanza of the Heym poem says: “Your eyelashes, the long ones, / of your eyes, the dark water, / let me dive into it, / let me go into the depth” (“Laß mich zur Tiefe gehn”) (
BW
, p. 673).

Augenabdruck | eye imprint … Steinkern | rock- / kernel: Brockhaus: “But when the solid particles are dissolved and carried away, so that a hollow chamber is created inside the rock, its interior surface will at times show a faithful, though negative outer form of the erstwhile organism, the imprint.—If after the removal of the soft parts the interior of embedded mussel or snail shells is filled up, that creates a rock kernel” (
BW
, p. 865).

“Hinter Schläfensplittern” | “Behind the templesplinters”

Written August 31, 1968, in the Jardin des Plantes, not far from Celan's home in the rue Tournefort, the street named after a botanist who had been for a time in the garden's employ. The Jardin des Plantes is well-known in German literature, because Rilke wrote some of his best-known poems there—“The Panther,” subtitled “In the Jardin des Plantes,” among others. See also Franz Wurm's poem “An Ecksteinen, in Pflanzenbüchern,” dedicated to Paul Celan, of August 13, 1968, included in his letter of August 24, and Celan's response on August 27 (
PC
/
FW
, pp. 164–66).

der Ort, wo du herkommst | the place you come from: Franz Wurm hailed from Prague.

“Bergung” | “Rescue”

September 2, 1968. First poem of the day on which he also wrote “Mandelnde” | “Almonding you,” which opens the second cycle of
Timestead
(p. 428). That days's
FAZ
has an article titled “8.222 Tote geborgen” (8,222 dead rescued), in relation to the earthquake in Iran.

Cor- / respondenz | cor- / respondence … Sebstherz | selfheart … Abstoß | rejection: See article in the same
FAZ
on four heart-transplant operations in South Africa and the phenomenon of transplant rejection.

“Das gedunkelte” | “The darkened”

September 5, 1968, in his office on rue d'Ulm.

Buhne | portcullis: Reading trace in Albert Vigoleis Thelen,
Die Insel des zweiten Gesichts
. Celan had marked the passage that reads: “while you lie supine and despondent on the truss of a youth wasted wandering” (p. 258).

Kolbenschlag | gunbutt blow: The previous day's
FAZ
had an article on the musical program for early 1969 in West Berlin,
From Ulysses to Rosa Luxemburg
, in which Rosa Luxemburg, who had been assassinated by blows from a gun butt, was to be the central figure.

“Die Ewigkeit” | “Eternity”

October 18, 1968, in his office in rue d'Ulm. See several other poems in Celan's oeuvre with the same or similar titles.

ZEITGEHÖFT | TIMESTEAD

Celan wrote the fifty poems that make up this, the final posthumous volume, between September 2, 1968, and February 25, 1970. It was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1976 without indication of who edited the volume. None of the poems had been published or okayed for publication by Celan himself. The book is put together from three sheafs of poems that contain typed versions of the poems, though at times with handwritten corrections or additions (
BW
, p. 865). The title of the volume was that of the first cycle. The second cycle gathers the poems Celan wrote in the context of his October 1969 Israel trip organized by Czernowitz friends (David Seidman, professor of French language and literature at Tel Aviv University, and Celan's last lover, Ilana Shmueli). The Jerusalem stay lasted only seventeen days, as Celan broke off the journey suddenly and returned to Paris. The final short cycle is made up of the last seven poems written by Celan between February and mid-April 1970.

Title: See note for
Zeithof
and Edmund Husserl citations above, pages 566– 67. James K. Lyon sees another possible origin for the word
Zeitgehöft
, as an echo from the Rilke poem “Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens,” which contains the lines: “die letzte Ortschaft der Worte … / noch ein letztes / Gehöft von Gefühl” | “the last place of the words … / one last farmstead of feeling” (Colin,
Argumentum e Silencio
, p. 203).

I

“Wanderstaude, du fängst dir” | “Nomadforb, you catch yourself”

February 25, 1969–January 21, 1970. Celan joined his own French interlinear translation when he sent a handwritten version of the poem to his wife on February 15, 1969, probably via his son Eric (
PC
/
GCL
, #639).

Wanderstaude | Nomadforb: According to the Jewish calendar, on this day (seventh of Adar) Moses's birth and death days were remembered. Wiedemann connects the poem to this feast, recalling that Moses “had received a wonder-making rod from God that served him as mark of recognition and as instrument for the feats he was to accomplish.” (Exod. 4:2–4 reads: “and the LORD said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. / And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. / And the LORD said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand.”) Sieghild Bogumil-Notz suggests that with this first image of
Zeitgehöft
|
Timestead
(as with most images in this, his last book), Celan “refers to and negates earlier images and statements,” in this case the word
Wandergestalt
(
BW
, p. 34) from the 1946 poem “Dunkles Aug im September” | “Dark eye in September,” as well as the whole theme of wandering, which appears at least sixteen times via variations on the word
wandern
in the oeuvre.

Next to the draft of the poem there are, however, also the following notes by Celan: “Pindar: singer of sewed verses: Rhapsode,” and below that: “Rhapsode: singer to the rod [
Sänger zum Stabe
].”

Blendung | blinding: The German word can mean both “to make blind” and “to dazzle.” Bernhard Böschenstein sees in the rod and the blinding an Oedipal scene/seen “évoqué et révoqué en même temps” (evoked and revoked simultaneously). He goes on to say: “This blind man of today sees what what needs to be seen thanks to his state for which he is himself responsible. His rod is also that of the rhapsode, but his song, because it is broken, brings the clarity that only Apollo had been able to bring to Oedipus. The labor of the poet today consists in making himself blind in order to make himself a seer [
voyant
]” (
C-J
, pp. 151–52).

“Gehässige Monde” | “Spiteful moons”

March 21, 1969, Paris. Celan joined his own French interlinear translation when he sent a handwritten version of the poem to his wife, probably via his son Eric (
PC
/
GCL
, #642), which moved
GCL
to create a watercolor by the same title (illustration XII in
PC
/
GCL
-French, vol. 2).

“Gold” | “Gold”

April 12, 1969, Paris/Dampierre-en-Burly, where Celan spent weekends at that time in the house of his friends Edmond and Rita Lutrand.

Platanenstrünke | plane-tree trunks: With the chestnut tree, one of Celan's talismanic trees; see
PC
/
GCL
, #27, n. 2.

“Von der sinkenden Walstirn” | “From the sinking whale forehead”

May 5, 1969, Paris.

“Du liegst hinaus” | “You outlier”

May 9, 1969, Paris, rue d'Ulm.

“Das seidenverhangene Nirgend” | “The silkbedecked Nowhere”

June 4, 1969, Paris, rue d'Ulm.

“Die Weinbergsmauer erstürmt” | “The vineyardwall assailed”

June 9, 1969, Paris, rue d'Ulm.

“Erst wenn ich dich” | “Only when I touch”

June 25, 1969, Paris, rue d'Ulm.

Spät- / sinnigem | late- / meanings: Constructed from the German word
Spürsinn
(flair, instinct, ability, nose [for a dog]).

Zeithöfen | timehalos: See pp. 566–67.

“In der fernsten” | “In the remotest”

July 18–19, 1969, Paris, rue d'Ulm.

traumfaserverstärkt | dreamfiberreinforced: See the article “Die Garderobe der Raumfahrer” (The wardrobe of the astronauts) in the
FAZ
of that day, which speaks of a
glasfaserverstärkten
, “fiberglass-reinforced,” protection layer for the helmets.

Freizeichen | freesign: Celan had thought at some point of using this word as overall title of the volume.

“Eingeschossen” | “Inserted into”

July 19, 1969, Paris, rue d'Ulm. Celan sent this poem and “Chalk-crocus” (p. 388) to Franz Wurm in Prague (
PC
/
FW
, #162) in his letter referring to the moon landing of July 20, comparing it to his own “landing” in his new apartment on avenue Émile Zola: “I migrated [
übersiedelte
] drop by drop, braindrop by braindrop, one of these days I will indeed land in the new apartment and start the prospecting [
zu schürfen beginnen
].” The poem draws for some of its images on an article on the return flight of the command module, which was
eingeschossen
, “inserted,” into the orbit of the command spacecraft.