Breathturn into Timestead
Page 29
“Singbarer Rest” | “Singable remnant”
January 29, 1964. Also published in the Susman Festschrift, and thus also readable as a conversation with her and her work, the poem is a poetological statement speaking of those remains that can be sung, which are a human figure—possibly the ghost shape of the exterminated—that yet manages to break through at a place associated with death—the snowplace—and witness, even if with “disenfranchised lip,” announcing that “something happens, still.”
“Flutender” | “Flowing”
January 30, 1969.
“Zwanzig für immer” | “Twenty forever”
End-of-year 1962 into 1963; finished February 5, 1964. Early note in Die Niemandsrose folder: “Zwanzig Schlüsselburgblumen und / zwanzig Gesänge dazu.” (Twenty key-castle-flowers and / twenty songs too.)
Schlüsselburg-Blumen | Schlüsselburg-primroses: A complex pun combining the name Schlüsselburg (an infamous Russian prison castle in Petrokrepost, a town on an island of the river Neva, where during the days of the czar many revolutionaries were imprisoned and/or executed) and Schlüsselblumen (primroses or cowslips), a traditional symbol of spring. Schlüssel means “key,” and Burg, “castle.” The town’s coat of arms included a golden key. The Russian revolutionary and writer Wera Figner (1852–1942), who was imprisoned there for twenty years, writes in her autobiography, Nacht über Russland (Night over Russia) (Berlin, 1928): “20 years in casemates. When the clock of life stopped.” (quoted by Wiedemann in BW, p. 728). Renate Böschenstein-Schäfer suggests that the number twenty may point to the twenty-one members of the Narodnaya Volya movement who were imprisoned in Petrokrepost in 1884 and nearly all died.
“Keine Sandkunst mehr” | “No sandart anymore”
February 10, 1964. The single draft shows that Celan made no emendations or changes to this poem, except for a pencil mark indicating a larger break between the last two lines.
Sandkunst | sandart: Badiou has pointed to reading traces in Eis, elaborated on in Barbara Wiedemann’s commentary (BW, p. 728): “‘Geomancy or sandart (in Arabic, ilm al-raml “Sand science”) is an ancient method of exploring the future’ and ‘most German sandbooks of the 14th to 16th centuries cannot be ascribed to a specific author’ (pp. 7 and 8).” She goes on: “Further on the process, which elsewhere is also called the ‘sandscience of the sixteen masters’ (p. 12), is explained: Through quadruple marking of a random number of points in the sand or by throwing the dice one of sixteen fixed figures is determined via fixed rules. The soothsaying text contains sixteen answers to sixteen fixed questions concerning the future directed to the ‘judges,’ who have Hebrew names (p. 9). The sandbook may only be used where no noise may disturn the operation (p. 8). The procedure spread throughout Europe through the agency of Jews, among others (p. 8).”
“Helligkeitshunger” | “Brightnesshunger”
February 15, 1964. The following poem was also written on that day.
“Als uns das Weiße anfiel” | “When whiteness assailed us”
February 15, 1964. Celan had written a poem on December 15, 1962, that started with the lines “als aus dem Spendekrug mehr / kam als Wasser” | “when from the libation-ewer more | than water came,” taken up here again. Here, that poem (note that Celan’s play on the homophonic words mehr, “more,” and Meer, “sea,” is lost in translation):
When from the libation-ewer more
than water came. When
pus came after the more.
And more than pus. When
the sea also
had come, then
a breath braided a face that was
sharp as the newly
born keel, standing upward, travelready, into
the other sea—the one
with the splinter and signs
and the signsplinters.
Don’t say there was
no lid
above the pair of eyes in
that face.
There were flightlids, lashed, the gazes
had their tent.
Opferglocke | sacrificebell: In all drafts, except the final print proof, the word is given as Opferlocke (Sacrifice-[hair]lock). We cannot be sure if Celan missed the typo or let it consciously stand as a meaningful “error,” in the way Robert Duncan was wont to speak—and make use—of such occurrences.
“Hohles Lebensgehöft” | “Hollow lifehomestead”
February 20, 1964.
Lebensgehöft | lifehomestead: The German noun Gehöft translates into our “farmstead,” which Merriam-Webster defines as “the buildings and adjacent service areas of a farm; broadly: a farm with its buildings,” or “homestead,” defined as the home and adjoining land occupied by a family. Celan will make use of the word—and even more so of its core seme, Hof (farm, space, courtyard, etc.)—on a number of occasions. Gehöft most visibly enters into the composition of the title of his last (posthumous volume) Zeitgehöft, which I translated as “Timestead.” These terms, as well as Zeithof (timehalo), also interest Celan because of the use to which they are put by the philosopher Edmund Husserl. For more details on this, see the commentary for the poem “Schwimmhäute” | “Webbing” (p. 566).
Schlafkorn | sleepcorn: Celan came across this term for a soporific grain in Jean Paul’s Hesperus. In the same sentence Jean Paul uses the word weggebeizt, “eroded,” which becomes the title of another Celan poem (see p. 18).
“Über drei” | “Over three”
February 26, 1964. Eve of Purim.
Braunalgenblut | brownalgae-blood: Reading traces indicated by Wiedemann (BW, p. 730) in Roland Brinkman’s Abriß der Geologie (p. 84): “On the oceanfloor the seaweeds belonging to the brown algae take root, as do the geologically important chalk-algae, that are composed of the lime-producing forms of the blue, red, and green algae.”
Brust- / warzensteine | breast- / nipplestones: Celan combines two words: the word Brustwarze refers to the nipple or teat of the breast. A Warzenstein, according to the Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch, is “ein versteinerter seeigel oder theil davon, mit erhöhungen an den stellen, wo stacheln gestanden haben” (a petrified sea urchin or a part thereof, with tubercles where the spines stood). Celan may have come across the latter term in Jean Paul’s Das Kampaner Thal.
“Am weißen Gebetriemen” | “On the white philactery”
March 5, 1964.
Gebetriemen | phylactery: Literally translated, Gebetriemen means “prayer-belt”; the term is, however, a specific object in Judaism (called “phylactery” in English), where it refers to either of two small leather boxes, each containing strips of parchment inscribed with quotations from the Hebrew scriptures. One is strapped to the forehead, the other to the left arm by observant Jewish men during morning worship, except on Sabbath and holidays.
A second, archaic meaning of “philactery” is “amulet, reminder.” Although the technical, Greek-derived term “phylactery” may seem odd or to even overdetermine the German compound, the context here clearly points to the Jewish cult object, something an English neologism such as “prayer belt” would not.
“Erblinde” | “Go blind”
March 13, 1964.
“Engholztag” | “Latewoodday”
March 15, 1964.
Engholztag | Latewoodday: Engholz, literally “narrow wood,” is rarer than its synonym Spätholz, literally “late wood.” The words come from botany and describe the yearly growth of trees: thus the inner portion of a tree’s growth ring, formed early in the growing season, when growth is comparatively rapid (hence the wood is less dense), is known as “early wood” or “spring wood” or “late-spring wood,” Frühholz in German. Engholz refers to the outer portion and is “late wood” (or “summer wood”) and is denser, as eng (narrow, tight, dense) indicates.
Tierblütige | Animal-bloodsoming: Blütig is a neologism that mixes blutig (bloody, bleeding, etc.) with blühen, blüte, etc.—that is, the word convolutes around flower/flowering/blossom. The translator’s neologism
“bloodsoming” tries, however clumsily, to render this double load.
“Heute” | “Today”
April 6, 1964, Moisville (for place, see commentary for “Du darfst“/ “You may,” p. 461).
Nacktpflanzenreigen | naked-plants-dance: Nacktpflanze is a botanical term (present in Celan’s Brockhaus dictionary of geology) for a kind of plant also called a psilophite, which literally means “naked plant.” These are simple dichotomously branched plants that first appeared during the Late Silurian, are now limited to two extant genera, lack true leaves and roots, and include the oldest known land plants with vascular tissue.
Halb- und Viertel-verbündete | Half- and quarter-allies: A number of references in this poem could point to Celan thinking about the Goll affair, during which people he thought were allies seemed often not to back him as much as he expected. Another possible reference to this could be the term “owl-pebble” above, which Lefebvre tentatively links to “the publishing house Ullstein (which had an owl as its emblem), expropriated by the Nazi regime and bought back by Axel Springer in the sixties” (RDS, p. 225).
Reichtümer an / verloren-vergällter / Sprache | Riches of / lost-soured / language: See certain formulation’s in Celan’s Bremen speech: “Only one thing remained reachable, close, and secure amid all the losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silences, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and would resurface, ‘enriched’ by it all” (PCCP, p. 34).
“Mittags” | “Midday”
April 30, 1964.
zwei Tage in Rom | two days in Rome: Celan traveled in Italy, first Rome, then Milan, from April 16 to April 21. From Rome, he visited Cerveteri, the largest extant Etruscan necropolis. Compare also the poem “Die Ewigkeit” | “Eternity” from the volume Fadensonnen | Threadsuns (p. 176).
“Unter die Haut” | “Sown under”
June 3, 1964.
“Das Stundenglas” | “The hourglass”
June 4, 1964, Moisville. Compare two earlier versions in the letters to his wife (PC/GCL, #184).
Päonienschatten | paeony shadow: The flower is named after Paeon—the name means “she who heals”—a student of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. It was traditionally used in medicine to treat epilepsy, convulsions, and nervous troubles (RDS, p. 227). In German it is also called a Pfingstrose, or “Pentecost rose.”
wo du versandend verhoffst | where you, mired, test the wind: This last line poses difficulties for the translation. Versandend has the sense of being progressively mired in sand, to “silt up”; Verhoffst, repeating the ver- particle in a typical Celanian way, seems at first semantically to reduplicate the meaning of versandend, suggesting the progressive loss of hope. But the verb verhoffen—in which one could hear hoffen, “to hope”—is, in fact, a technical hunting term usually used in reference to deer and meaning “to stand quietly and scent the wind.” This double meaning of loss of hope and yet of a still active listening to the world in literal translation loses the repetition (sameness in difference) and ambiguity of the German particle ver-. In previous versions, given the negative connotation of “bogged down” (now changed to “mired”), I tried to translate the active, hunting sense of “verhoffst” with “scent” (as in “to scent danger”), but now prefer to go with “test the wind”—longer but more accurate. It is also how I translated the “verhoffen” that Celan uses in the Meridian speech, where it occurs in the following sentence, which also uses a double “ver-,” though with a difference: “The poem tarries [verweilt] or tests the wind [verhofft]—a word related to the creaturely—through such thoughts … Nobody can tell how long the breath pause—the testing [das Verhoffen] and the thought—will last” (MFV, p. 8).
“Hafen | “Harbor”
June 24–25, 1964—Moisville, August 2, 1964. First notes (nautical vocabulary) toward the poem date to a stay in Hamburg for two readings on June 24 and 25 (TA, Atemwende, p. 82) and were possibly made on the occasion of a tour of the harbor, suggests Wiedemann (BW, p. 732).
Mutter Clausen | Mother Clausen: Mutter Paulsen in one of the early drafts, though no bar with either name can be verified as actually existing in Hamburg at that time. Mutter Paulsen is a figure in Theodor Storm’s Pole Poppenspäler.
zeitgrünen Uhrturm | timegreen clocktower: The word “clocktower” occurs in Celan’s Hamburg notes and refers to a clocktower on the jetties that besides the time also indicates the water level; its copper roof was discolored by verdigris (BW, p. 733).
ein Wahndock, / schwimmend, | a delusion-dock, / swimming: The notes also have the word Schwimmdocks (floating dock), on which the neologism is based.
die / Buchstaben der / Großkräne einen / Unnamen schreiben | the / letters of the / tower cranes write / an unname: Wiedemann, informed by Jürgen Köchel, indicates that the goliath cranes (Portalkräne in the notes) in the Hamburg harbor “consisted of an H-shaped structure topped by an A-shaped crane; the initials ‘AH’ Celan could possibly have read as ‘Adolf Hitler,’ certainly an ‘unname’ for him” (BW, p. 733).
Laufkatze Leben: An untranslatable compound in which Celan obviously wants the reader to hear Katze (cat) and Lauf (run) as descriptive of Leben, but the word Laufkatze is clearly, given the poem’s harbor geography, the technical apparatus called in English a “trolley” or “trolley hoist.” So far I have been unable to find an English equivalent that would render this meaning-complex in a satisfactory manner. Paratactic juxtaposition of both meanings seems the only way, combined with the female pronoun “she” rather than the expected “it.”
Ziehbrunnenwinde | draw well winch: An old reading trace locates the word Ziehbrunnen in Celan’s copy of the translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and in several poem fragments from that time.
eulenspiegelt | owlglasses: The play on spiegeln, “to mirror,” “to reflect,” and on the name Till Eulenspiegel, the Saxon Narr (fool), clear in German, does not translate well. The name has been translated as “Owlglass” in English versions of the tales and this seems to be here the best—or least deleterious—way of proceeding.
It may be noteworthy that Osip Mandelstam had been falsely accused of unethical translation practices close to plagiarism (as had Celan—see the Goll affair) in a 1928 scandal that came to be known as the Eulenspiegel affair, as it concerned the translation of the Belgian novelist Charles de Coster’s novel of that title.
III
“Schwarz” | “Black”
August 3–9, 1964. First notes closely connect to the next two poems.
Kronland | crownland: Celan’s homeland, the Bukovina, today part of Ukraine, was a (partly autonomous) crownland of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire.
“Hammerköpfiges” | “Anvilheadedness”
August 3–15, 1964. Lefebvre makes an interesting comment—valid for English as well as for French—concerning the translation of two terms in this poem, the neutral word Hämmerköpfiges and Silbriges, which, he writes, are “adjectives made into substantives that designate an apparent substantiality (that the proposed translation unhappily reduces into nouns—and thus into metaphors, which is not the status of the original terms)” (RDS, p. 92).
Hammerköpfiges | Anvilheadedness: The first drafts add the word Wolken, indicating the meteorological origin of the word, as “anvil clouds.” But the vocabulary quickly moves to horse-connected imagery, so that the first image of a possible “hammer-headed” horse cannot be excluded, thus:
Zeltgang | palfrey pace: The ability of certain horses (palfreys—the word comes from the German for horse, Pferd) to advance in a smooth, ambling gait rather than at a trot.
kentaurisch / gebäumt | centaurishly / rearing: The “palfrey” here becomes the centaur, half horse, half man, usually shown holding a bow and arrow, as archer, which is Celan’s astrological sign.
“Landschaft” | “Landscape”
August 3–16, 1964. Started in Moisville, where Celan noted on the back of the leaf on whose other side he sketched out the poem “Schwarz” | “Black”: “in dieser / Stunde der nuschelnden / Urnenwesen / lebten wir königlich nach / den erfüllten Gesetzen der Liebe” (in this / hour of the mumbling / urnbeings / we lived like kings according to / the fulfilled laws of love); the first actual draft has “Garotten- / Spanisch / von Rauchmund zu Rauchmund” (Garotte- / Spanish / from smokemouth to smokemouth), while the final version has simple “Gespräche” | “conversations” (TA Atemwende, p. 92). Lefebvre suggests that of this Spanish horizon there remains only “the half-shell (Jakobsmuschel | pilgrim’s scallop) of the pilgrims of St. James’ Way (the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostalla in Galicia, Spain) and the possible allusion to an execution. The Spanish state used the garrote to execute its condemned until 1975. But Muschel also calls up, via Mauscheln, the Jewish speech of the exiled, of the wandering pilgrim Jew (just as the urn and the smoke connote the crematory ovens)” (RDS, pp. 231–32).
Wiedemann (BW, p. 734) adds the following information: “During a visit by Celan’s friends Jean and Mayotte Bollack in the summer of 1964 to Moisville, Peter Szondi’s letter to the editor (6/25/1964) against Hans Egon Holthusen’s review of Die Niemandsrose in the FAZ of 5/2/1964 was at the center of the conversation: Holthusen had repeated his thesis, already stated in 1954, that phrases like ‘The mills of death’ were just made up and had no relation to the real. Afterward, Celan was hosted by the Bollacks in their house in the Périgord region of France.” That visit possibly inscribed in the “Tollhäusler-Trüffel” | “bedlamite’s truffle,” as the Périgord is famous for its truffles.