by Paul Celan
*Asked to do so by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Edmond Jabes, La mimoire des mots (Paris: Fourbis, 1990).
To whom to speak when the other no longer is?
The place is empty when emptiness occupies all of the place.
Paul Celan's voice reading in my house, for me, some of his poems, has never fallen silent. I hear it, at this very moment when, pen in hand, I listen to my words going toward his. I listen to his words in mine, as one listens to the heartbeat of a person one has not left, in the shadow where, henceforth, he stands.
This voice is at the center of the reading I do of his poems; for I can read Paul Celan only in translation; but through the means I have given myself to approach his texts, helped by the poet's unforgettable voice, most of the time I have the sense of not betraying him.
Paul Celan himself was an admirable translator.
One day, when I told him I had trouble recognizing the poems he was reading to me in the French translations I was looking at — there were few of them in 1968 — he said that on the whole he was satisfied with those translations.
"Translation" — as the poet Philippe Soupault wrote in his preface to Prince Igor — "is treason only when it pretends, like photography, to reproduce reality. It would mean to decide beforehand that a text has neither relief, nor harmonics, nor colors, nor, before all, rhythm."
It's true; but what then happens to the original text?
The satisfaction Paul Celan expressed concerning the translations, published or about to be published, puzzled me. "It is difficult to do any better," he would add. Is it because, deep inside himself, he knew, better than any other writer, that he was an untranslatable author?
Behind the language of Paul Celan lies the never extinguished echo of another language.
Like us, skirting before crossing at a certain hour of the day the border of shadow and light, the words of Paul Celan move and affirm themselves at the edge of two languages of the same size — that of renouncement and that of hope.
A language of poverty, a language of riches.
On one side, clarity; on the other, obscurity. But how to distinguish between them when they are blended to such a degree?
Glorious morning or mournful evening? Neither the one nor the other, but — inexpressible pain — the vast and desolate field wrapped in fog, of what cannot express itself alone, outside and in time.
Neither day nor night, then, but by means of their conjugated voices, the undefined space, left vacant by the retreat of the dispossessed language at the core of the refound language.
And as if that word could raise itself only on the ruins of the other, with and without it.
Dust, dust.
Silence, as all writers know, allows the word to be heard. At a given moment, the silence is so strong that the words express nothing but it alone.
Does this silence, capable of making language tilt over, possess its own language to which one can attribute neither origin nor name?
Inaudible language of the secret?
Those who have been reduced to silence, once, know it best, but know also that they can hear it, can understand it only through the words of the language they work in.
Uninterrupted passage from silence to silence and from word to silence.
But the question remains: is the language of silence that of the refusal of language or, to the contrary, the language of the memory of the first word?
Didn't we know it? The word which is formed by letters and sounds keeps the memory of the school book or of any other book that revealed it to us one day, revealed it, by revealing it to itself; keeps the memory, also, of all the voices that over the course of years — and even centuries — have pronounced and spread it.
Words discovered or transmitted by foreign or familiar hands, by distant or close voices, voices from yesterday, sweet to the ear or cruel and feared.
There is, I am certain, no history of the word; but there is a history of the silence every word narrates.
The words saying only that silence. Theirs and ours.
To interrogate a writer means first of all to interrogate the words of his memory, the words of his silence; to tunnel down into their past as "vocables" — the words are older than us and the text has no age.
For Paul Celan the German language, though it is the one in which he immersed himself, is also the one which for a time those who claimed to be its protectors had forbidden him.
If it is indeed the language of his pride, it is also that of his humiliation. Isn't it with the words of his allegiance that they had tried to tear him from himself and to abandon him to solitude or errancy, not having managed to hand him over to death immediately?
There is something paradoxical to stand suddenly alien to the world and to totally invest yourself in the language of a country that rejects you, to the point of claiming that language for yourself alone.
As if the language belonged truly only to those who love it beyond anything else and feel riveted to it forever.
Strange passion, which has for itself only the strength and determination of its own passion.
Stephane Moses notes in his analysis of Conversation in the Mountains that in this poem Celan's use of certain expressions borrowed from Judeo-German could well be on his part a challenge to the executioner.
This does not seem evident to me.
The challenge to the executioner lies elsewhere. It resides in the very language of the poetry. A language he has lifted to its summits.
The constant battle that every writer fights with the words to force them to express his deepest intimacy, no one lived it as desperately in his own body, lived it doubly, as did Paul Celan.
To know how to glorify the word that kills us. To kill the word that saves us and glorifies us.
The love-hate relationship with the German language led him toward the end of his life to write poems of which one can only read the tearing.
Hence the reader's difficulty to approach them straight on.
In his first poems Paul Celan is carried by the words of the language of his thought and of his breath: the language of his soul.
He is in need of this language in order to live. His life is written, in the language of his writing, with the words of his life itself and with those of death, which is a further word.
In his last poems the relentlessness he musters against it reaches its peak. To die at the heart of his love.
To destroy what tries to say itself, before saying it; as if now silence alone had the right to be there: this silence from before and after the words, this silence between the words, between two languages, arrayed one against the other and yet promised to the same fate.
All his poetry was a search for a reality. The reality of a language? The real is the absolute.
To confront his executioners in the name of the language they share with him, and to force them to their knees.
That was the major bet, held.
If to translate is, truly, to betray, do I dare admit that, in order to hear Paul Celan better, I have taken the road of treason?
But isn't every personal reading in itself an act of treason?
Incapable of reading directly in German, I read Paul Celan in his various translations: French, English or Italian. All acceptable. All insufficient but permitting a better comprehension of the original text.
What one lacks, the other helps me to grasp better.
I read these translations without ever losing sight of the German text, trying to discover in it the rhythm, the movement, the music, the caesura. Guided by the accurate voice of Paul Celan. Hadn't he himself initiated me into this reading?
All the languages that I know help me enter into his, which I don't know. By this rare, unusual detour I come as close as possible to his poetry.
Have I ever read Paul Celan? I have listened to him for a long time, I listen to him. Each time his books renew a dialogue the beginning of which I can't remember, though nothing has come to
interrupt it since then.
Silent dialogue through words as light as free and adventurous birds; all the world's gravity being in the sky; like stones laid by nostalgic ghosts on the marble of nonexistent tombs; all the world's pain being in the earth; and like ashes of an interminable day of horror of which there remains but the unbearable image of pink smoke above millions of burned bodies.
A nothing rose
a Noone's Rose
A nothing
were we, are we, will
we remain, blossoming:
the nothing —, the
noonesrose.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AND ON PAUL CELAN
BY PAUL CELAN
IN GERMAN
Gesammelte Werkf infiinfBanden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983.
Gedichte aus dem Nachlass. Herausgegeben von Bertrand Badiou, Jean-Claude Rambach und Barbara Wiedemann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997.
Der Meridian, Endfassung, Vorstufen, Materialien. Herausgegeben von Bernhard Boschenstein und Heino Schmull. Tiibinger Ausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999.
Die Gedichte: Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Barbara Wiedemann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003.
IN FRENCH
Paul Celan, Gisele Celan-Lestrange, Correspondance. Edited et commence par Bertrand Badiou avec le concours de Eric Cclan. 2 vols. Paris: Le Seuil, 2001.
IN ENGLISH
Breathturn. Translated by Pierre Jons. Copenhagen: Green Integer, 2004.
Threadsuns. Translated by Pierre Joris. Copenhagen: Green Integer, 2004.
Lightduress. Translated by Pierre Joris. Copenhagen: Green Integer, 2004.
Romanian Poems. Translated by Julian Semilian and Sanda Agalidi. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2003.
Poems of Paul Celan. Revised and expanded edition. Translated by Michael Hamburger. New York: Persea Books, 2002; Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2002.
Two Volumes: Fathomsuns and Benighted. Translated by Ian Fairley. Riverdaleon-Hudson: Sheep Meadow Press, 2001.
Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan. Translated by John Felstiner. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.
Last Poems. Translated by Katherine Washburn and Margret Guillemin. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1986. [o.p.]
Collected Prose. Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1986.
65 Poems. Translated by Brian Lynch and Peter Jankowsky. Dublin: Raven Arts Press, 1985. [o.p.]
Prose Writings and Selected Poems. Translated by Walter Billeter and Jerry Glenn. Carlton, Victoria, Australia: Paper Castle, 1977. [o.p.]
Breath Crystal. Translated by Walter Billeter. Rigmarole of the Hours, 3. Ivanhoe, Victoria, Australia: Ragman Productions, 1975. [o.p.]
Speech-Grille and Selected Poems. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971. [o.p.]
ON PAUL CELAN
Celan-Jahrbuch. Edited by Hans-Michael Speier. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 1987. (Eight issues have been published to date.)
Kommentar zu Paul Celans "Die Niemandsrose." Edited by Jiirgen Lehmann. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 1997. (This is the first in a series of planned volumes of commentaries on individual poetry titles by Paul Celan.)
BOOKS
Blanchot, M. Le dernier a parler. Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1984.
Chalfen, Israel. Paul Celan: A Biography of His Youth. New York: Persea Books, 1991.
Derrida, Jacques. Schibboleth. Paris: Galilee, 1986.
Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Fioretos, Aris, ed. Word Traces: Readings of Paul Celan. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. "Who Am I and Who Are You?" and Other Essays. SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
Hollander, Benjamin, ed. Translating Tradition: Paul Celan in France. San Francisco: ACTS 8/9, 1988.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Poetry as Experience. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Nielsen, Karsten Hvidtfelt, and Harold Pors. Index zur Lyrik Paul Celans. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1981.
Poggeler, Otto. Spurdes Wortes. Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1986.
- . Der Stein hinterm Aug. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2000.
Wiedemann, Barbara, ed. Paul Celan — Die Goll-Affare. Dofamente zu einer "Infamie." Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2000.
Wiedemann-Wolf, Barbara. Antschel Paul — Paul Celan. Tubingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 1985.
ESSAYS
Derrida, Jacques. "'A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text': Poetics and Politics of Witnessing." In Revenge of the Aesthetic: The Place of Literature in Theory Today, edited by Michael P. Clark: Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Glenn, Jerry. Paul Celan: A Bibliography of English -Language Primary and Secondary Literature, 7955— 7996. http://www.polyglot.Iss.wisc.edu/german/ celan;biblio/. 1997.
Hamacher, Werner. "The Second of Inversion: Movements of a Figure through Celan's Poetry." Yale French Studies 69 (1985): 276—314.
Joris, Pierre. "Paul Celan in English, circa 1989." In The Poetry of Paul Celan, edited by Haskell Block. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.
- . "Translation at the Mountain of Death: Celan and Heidegger." In Poetik der Transformation: Paul Celan — Ubersetzer und Ubersetzt, edited by Alfred Bodenheimer and Shimon Sandbank. Conditio Judaica, no. 28. Tubingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 1999.
Silberman, Edith. "Erinnerungen an Paul Celan." In Argumentum e Silentio: International Paul Celan Symposium. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1987.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS OF PERMISSIONS
Permission for inclusion in this selection of the following material has been granted by the publishers and individuals indicated below.
Poems from Mohn and Gedachtnis and Von Schwellezu Schwelle reprinted by permission of Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, GmbH, Stuttgart.
Poems from Sprachgitter and Niemandsrose reprinted by permission of S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
Poems from Atemwende, Fadensonnen, Lichtzwang, Schneepart, and Zeitgehoft reprinted by permission of Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
Permission to print their translations of Paul Celan's poems was granted by Jerome Rothenberg (for "Corona," "Death Fugue," "Count the Almonds," and "Shibboleth"); by Cid Gorman (for "Voices," "Tenebrae," "There Was Earth in Them," "Zurich, Zum Storchen," "Psalm," "Blackearth," "To One Who Stood at the Door"); by Joachim Neugroschel (for "In Praise of Remoteness," "The Vintagers," "Speech-Grille," "Matiere de Bretagne," and "And with the Book from Tarussa"); by Robert Kelly (for "Stretto"); and by Pierre Joris (for the remaining translations).
Pierre Joris's translations from the volumes Breathtum, Threadsuns, and Lightduress reprinted by permission of Green Integer Press.
"Conversation in the Mountains" and "The Meridian" by Paul Celan, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop, reprinted by permission of the translator and of Carcanet Press, Manchester, U.K.
Letters by Paul Celan reprinted by permission of Eric Celan and Editions du Seuil, Paris.
Etchings by Gisele Celan-Lestrange (Je maintiendrai; no. 4 in the series Atemkristall; no. I in the series Schwarzmaut; no. 11 in the series Schwarzmaut; no. 15 in the series Schwarzmaut), reprinted by permission of Eric Celan and Editions du Seuil, Paris.
Photos of Paul Celan (Paul and Gisele, rue de Montevideo, 1956; Paul Celan in his library, rue de Longchamp, 1958; Paul Celan and his son at their summer home, August 1958; Paul Celan reading at the Galerie Dorothea Loehr, Frankfurt am Main, July 18, 1964), reprinted by permission of Eric Celan and Editions du Seuil, Paris.
Manuscript pages reprinted by permission of Eric Celan and Editions du Seuil, Paris.
"Paul Celan and Language" by Jacques Derrida, from an interview with Evelyne Grossman, in Europe 861-62 (January-February 2001): 90—91, reprinted by permission of the author.
"Encounters with Paul Celan" by E. M. Cioran, re
printed by permission of Norma Cole.
"For Paul Celan" by Andrea Zanzotto, reprinted by permission of Agenzia Letteraria Internazionale.
Extract from Turmbau: Stoffe 1V-IX, pp. 160-71, by Friedrich Diirrenmatt, by permission of Diogenes Verlag, Zurich.