Breathturn into Timestead

by Paul Celan

  but babble and babble.

  always, always

  agagain.

  (“Pallaksch. Pallaksch.”)

  “Du mit der Finsterzwille” | “You with the darkness slingshot”

  January 23, 1968, Paris. The “Zwille” | “slingshot and stone” image could easily be associated with the biblical David. Lefebvre suggests (PDN, p. 116) that it functions as an image for poetry (as do other projectile instruments such as boomerangs and bows). Celan’s astrological sign was Sagittarius, the archer.

  “Eingejännert” | “Enjanuaried”

  January 26, 1968, Paris. See the poem “Tübingen, Jänner” | “Tübingen, January” (p. 583), as well as the commentary for the poem “Ich höre, die Axt hat geblüht” | “I hear the axe has blossomed” (p. 581).

  “Schludere” | “Be sloppy”

  Night of January 29–30, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. Celan very carefully dated this poem to this specific night—that is, the anniversary of his suicide attempt the previous year.

  “Stückgut” | “Parceled goods”

  February 2, 1968, Paris.

  Stückgut | Parceled goods: Celan found and underlined in a German translation of Marguerite Duras’s novel Le Vice-Consul: “Stückgut mit Büchern kommt aus Frankreich an ihre Adresse” (Parceled goods containing books arrives from France at your address). A note in Celan’s hand reads: “Stückgut: Man [sic] und Holz, Stückgut und Vieh” (Parceled goods: man and wood, parceled goods and livestock).

  “Von querab” | “From abeam”

  February 2, 1968, Paris.

  “Holzgesichtiger” | “Woodfaced”

  February 6, 1968, Paris, rue d’Ulm. Wiedemann points out that the feuilleton page of the FAZ for that day reproduced a Swiss Shrovetide’s mask made of wood with a large hanging mouth, illustrating an article on folk art by Gisela Brackert, and another one, “Collapse of the Ego,” by Hans-Jürgen Heise, that compares the art of schizophrenics and the positions of contemporary poets (BW, p. 838).

  “Largo” | “Largo”

  February 9, 1968, Paris.

  Largo: A musical term for a very slow tempo or a musical piece or movement in such tempo.

  über- / sterbens- / groß | sur- / dying- / large: At the root of this Celan neologism one can hear the verb überleben, “to survive.” He had first used the term two days earlier in a poem he didn’t include in Shneepart | Snowpart:

  In my shot-up knee

  stood my father,

  sur-

  dying large he stood

  there,

  Michailowska and

  the cherry orchard stood around him,

  I knew it would

  come to this, he said.

  Michailowska is the the labor camp in Transnistria where Frederike and Leo Antschel, Celan’s parents, died in 1942. “The cherry orchard” is, of course, Chekhov’s.

  die Zeit- / lose | fall / crocus: the colchicum flower, or crocus; for Celan, a complex association, as colchicum (in French the flower is called colchique) links to Colchis and the Black Sea, which links to both Celan’s lost home country and to Mandelstam. Also, the literal translation of Zeitlose is “timeless”—obviously lost in translation here. This flower (and the “timeless” echo of its name) also links to Celan’s mother, as is made clear in the poem “The syllable pain,” which says: “fall / crocus in his sight, the mother- / flower” (PCS, p. 92).

  Lidern | lids: In a first draft of the poem was the homophonic Lieder, or songs (TA-SP, p. 47). Cutting out the e changed the semantic meaning but not the sound.

  Amselpaar | pair of blackbirds: The German bird name immediately calls up Celan’s original family name, Antschel, which could, in fact, be a deformation of Amsel. In the first draft of the poem, the pair of birds were cranes; changing it to Amsel points to a deliberate decision to cite this name, referencing his parents.

  “Zur Nachtordnung” | “To nightorder”

  Written on February 19, 1968, and, the manuscript tells us, on the place de la Contrescarpe, site of several of Celan’s poems, such “La Contrescarpe” (p. 513) and “Huriges Sonst” | “Whorish else” (p. 326).

  Weißkies- / stotterer | whitepebble- / stutterer: See note above for “The to-be-restuttered world,” as well as in the poem “Siberian” the lines: “with your / white pebble in the mouth” (PCS, p. 89).

  “Mit den Sackgassen” | “To speak with”

  Febraury 21, 1968, Paris.

  “Etwas wie Nacht” | “Something like night”

  March 8, 1968, Paris, place de la Contrescarpe.

  III

  “Warum dieses jähe Zuhause” | “Why this sudden at-homeness”

  Written on March 26, 1968, less than a week after Celan had met with Gisèle for the first time in a year, Gisèle having taken the decision to live apart in April 1967 as Celan’s psychic troubles posed a danger for her and their son Eric.

  einer, der sich in dich stach | someone who stabbed himself into / you: In a letter to me, the poet and translator Peter Cockelbergh wrote: “It’s strange, but I can feel why the ‘you’ is just right on the next line, but wonder what motivated you—is it because you changed that non-defining relative clause into a defining one? or the sound play (ich, dich, stach, stich > who, into, you + stabbed, bebreathes … which is more emphasized thus.” I responded:

  The Celan line: well, I don’t think I thought it totally through, that is, to start with the enjambment felt right as I was putting the words on paper, then, on second thought, it felt better even, because of the ambiguity the slight pause creates: he stabbed himself (as PC did with a Brieföffner, letter opener, missing his heart by a couple inches, in front of his wife) but he also tried to kill her at some point. And obviously unable to reproduce the tight/rhyming grammatical sequence of the German “einer, der sich in dich stach,” very trochaic but ending with a spondee, which is differently—but with similar expectations, maybe, reproduced, I think, by the enjambment. Of course my main focus was on how to translate beatmet and I am happy you like the “bebreathes”—a bit wild, but then given the importance of the word Atem in PC’s world, and the various neologisms he creates with it, why not create one in English even if it isn’t present in the original at that specific locus.

  Geschlecht | sex: The German word has the double meaning of sexual organ and progeny, family, lineage. Though the first meaning prevails here, the second, wider concept needs to be heard. For a complex philosophical investigation of this term, see Jacques Derrida’s essay “Geschlecht: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference,” in A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, edited by Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 381.

  “Warum aus dem Ungeschöpften” | “Why, from the uncreated”

  March 31, 1968, Paris, rue d’Ulm. One of the sources of this poem is no doubt Das Prinzip Hoffnung | The Principle of Hope by Ernst Bloch (1885–1997), published in three volumes (1954 to 1959) and exploring the utopian impulses present in art, literature, religion, and other forms of cultural expression. Celan marked and underlined several sentences in the first volume: “Mercury, the essence of quicksilver, counted as the most essential metal constituent; made of water and earth it permits elasticity and fusibility. Because of these passive qualities, mercury was considered a female power, as such it stands closest to the ‘materia prima’” (vol. 1, p. 749). “Like the ‘materia prima’ … Mercurius can be compared to the Virgin Mary, as the stone can be with the son” (vol. 1, p. 750f), and “The Virgin is Mercury, from here the Son is born, that is the stone” (Marsilio Ficinus quote, vol. 1, p. 151f).

  ein Weisensteinchen | a philosopher’s pebble: In the alchemical context of the poem, the German word suggests Stein der Weisen (see Bloch, p. 749), or the philosopher’s stone, which is supposed to be able to turn metals into gold and was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss. Celan underlined Bloch’s tracing of the word Aufklärung, �
�enlightenment,” back to the vocabulary of alchemy (BPPC, p. 318). Efforts to discover the philosopher’s stone were known as the Magnum Opus (Great Work).

  Magnalia: Ernst Bloch, on p. 765, writes: “Das Haus Salomonis birgt weiter Flugzeuge, Dampmaschinen, Wasserturbinen und noch andere ‘magnalia naturae, Großtaten der Natur,’ mit ihr und über sie hinaus” (The house of Solomon further holds airplanes, steam engines, water turbines and other “magnalia naturae, major deeds of nature”). The word usually refers to the greater works of God (magnalia dei); in the United States the word is familiar mainly from the title of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana.

  “Mapesbury Road” | “Mapesbury Road”

  April 14–15, 1968, London. The title names a road in London that connects with Willesden Lane, where Celan stayed from April 3 to April 16 with his father’s sister, Berta Antschel (1894–1981). In a letter from April 18 he wrote to Franz Wurm: “And then the darknesses from both ‘farther’ sides. But also walking and a walked-up poem, (Mapesbury Road: between the borough of Willesden and the borough of Hampstead, on an Easter—and Passover—Sunday, more accurately: on 14 April of this year” (PC/FW, #102). Those “darknesses” point to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1968) in Memphis, Tennessee, and the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke (April 11, 1968) in Berlin.

  magnolienstündige | magnolia-houred: In a letter to Gisèle, Celan mentioned that the magnolia already blooming in London reminded him of his hometown of Czernowitz (PC/GCL, #138).

  Zeithof | timehalo: See commentary on “Schwimmhäute” | “Webbing” (p. 566) and, below, on the title of the next volume, Zeitgehöft | Timestead (p. 610). In a letter to his friend Gisela Dischner of April 23, 1968, Celan writes: “By the way: the word timehalo you’ll find in Husserl.”

  Steckschuß | lodged bullet: The German papers (for example, FAZ of April 13, 1968) reported that Dutschke had been hit by “a bullet that lodged in his brain, another hit his cheek and a third one his right torso.” Celan confirmed to Dischner that the “Steckschuß” referred to Dutschke (letter of April 23, 1968).

  “Der überkübelte Zuruf” | “The overloaded call”

  April 17, 1968, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  die Barrikade | the barricade: Following the assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke, student demonstrations became widespread and more forceful in Berlin, including the building of barricades.

  “Hervorgedunkelt” | “Darkened forth”

  April 22, 1968, Paris, rue d’Ulm. The title plays with and against that of the cycle of poems called Eingedunkelt | Tenebrae’d (p. 222)

  Buche | beech tree: A marker of Celan’s origins in the Bukovina (Buchenland, “land of the beeches”; thus also Buchenwald, “beech tree forest”).

  “Mit dir Docke” | “With you, ragdoll”

  April 25–26, 1968, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  Docke | ragdoll: Celan had nine months earlier (July 1967) made a note concerning the word Teichdocke, which he had found in Jean Paul’s Kampaner Thal (vols. 39–40, p. 40). The word refers to a skein or hank of yarn, and by extension (in southern Germany) to a doll made of yarn.

  kungeln | to fiddle: Also kunkeln, from the noun Kunkel, which in south and west German dialect refers to the distaff in spinning. The verb (similar to another Celan word, mauscheln), according to Lefebvre (PDN, p. 125), means to talk and to make plans secretly in a lowered voice. Originally it meant to make a mess of a ball of threads, and then referred to doing bad work in the Kunkelstube, the room in which the spinning was done. By extension it came to refer to the flirting that went on in the spinning rooms between men and women. Maybe our “spinning a tale” links to this.

  “Auch der Runige” | “The runic one too”

  Composed on May 4 and 5, 1968, and finalized on May 14 with the dated note “das steht” (it holds up). On May 3 and 4, Celan had been reading several essays by Rudi Dutschke in Rebellion der Studenten oder Die neue Opposition, edited by Uwe Bergmann (Rowohlt Verlag, 1968), titled “The Contradictions of Advanced Capitalism, the Anti-authoritarian Students, and Their Relationship with the Third World” and “From Antisemitism to Anticommunism.” In Germany, the student demonstrations had been mounting in intensity for two years already (Benno Ohnesorg, a student, was shot dead by police at a demonstration in June 1967); in France, the “events of May 1968” started with a large student demonstration on May 3, and over the following two days a number of the arrested students got solid jail sentences.

  The TA (Schneepart, p. 69) indicates that on one of the typescripts Celan made the following handwritten notes in the lower margin: “Night before last, place Contrescarpe, the young PC [French Communist party]-man who defended leftwing nationalsocialism” and: “Yesterday, the 13th, at the demonstration, the arms stretched ‘ironically’ in the Hitler salutation behind the red and the black flag-,” and in the left margin: “also: next to the Trotsky portrait in the yard of the Sorbonne: CRS=SS (SS in runic script).”

  der Runige | The runic one: In a letter to Franz Wurm, Celan points to both extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing anti-Semitism in French newspapers, and also points it out in Dutschke’s essays (PC/FW, 146f). Celan also cites what became one of the best-known graffiti of May 1968 in France, “CRS=SS,” with the SS usually spelled in runic writing, a formulation Celan disagreed with totally.

  Greiftrupp | arrest-squad: Reading trace in Dutschke: “It should be mentioned that on April 6 the police engaged a large number of arrest-squads against the demonstrators for the first time. The arrest-squads had the task to go and arrest the active and leading students and workers within the mass of demonstrators and thus hinder the activity of the masses” (p. 79).

  Mohrrübe | carrot: Reading trace (BW, p. 843) in Achim von Arnim, Die Kronenwächter: “But the woman didn’t care for anything Anton undertook in the house, except when he sat down next to her at the window where she was scraping carrots, and spoke good words to her.” Mohrrübe is the north German for the usual Möhre (carrot); here, Lefebvre suggests (PDN, p. 127) a possible reference to Karl Marx’s nickname, “the Moor” (which would seem to point to Marx’s “Moorish” Jewish origins). In the poem, Mohr is picked up by “Moorigen,” and “Morgen,” here probably in the sense of “tomorrow” rather than “morning,” and thus bringing to mind the “tomorrows that sing” of communist revolutions. Moorig also recalls Celan’s poem “Denk Dir” | “Imagine” and the “moorsoldier from Masada” (p. 220). Der Morgen is also a measure of land, and further points to the Morgenland, the Orient—with Lefebvre suggesting this may connect to the Mao-influenced students at Celan’s school, the École Normale Supérieure.

  Zündschwamm | tinder-sponge: Reading trace (BW, p. 843) in Arnim, Die Kronenwächter: “to wash and clean the marks of the nails and bind them with tinder-sponge” (vol. 1, p. 923).

  Hirntransplantat | braintransplant: In a letter to Franz Wurm (PC/FW, #107) Celan writes: “Because earlier, dining contrescarpishly, and espying Karl Marx too on television and said to my table companion: ‘Eventually we’ll be able to transplant heads, but it’s not sure that we’ll know how to regrow the beards.’” Other traces (BW, p. 843) point to the poem “Dunstbänder-, Spruchbänder-Aufstand” | “Vaporband-, banderole-uprising” (p. 102) in connection with his reading of Arno Schmidt’s Gelehrtenrepublik | The Egghead Republic, which describes brain transplants.

  Wundstein | woundstone: A stone or mineral composite used for healing purposes.

  “Deinem, auch deinem” | “Your, even your”

  May 7, 1968, Paris.

  fehldurchläuteten | falsenotes: See last sentence of Kafka’s “Ein Landarzt”: “Einmal dem Fehlläuten der Nachtglocke gefolgt—es ist niemals gutzumachen” (Once you respond to the nightbell’s false alarm, there’s no making it good ever again.) In Celan’s notebooks from 1962, he already pointed to this Kafka sentence: “The nightbell’s false alarm: that is not something falsely, erroneously heard, but belongs most profoundly to the quality of the night
bell itself. (It is not a matter of ‘daybells’!) At least the ‘right’ cannot be differentiated from the false-notes—is thus the same.”

  Sechsstern | six-star: The star of David has six points.

  Zeitunterheiligtes | time undersanctified: In Achim von Arnim’s unfinished 1817 novel, Die Tronenwächter, which Celan read during May 1968, he makes a note of the word unterheiligt (double underline and exclamation point), when he marks a passage that criticizes the era’s tendency to oversanctify everything: “This I say earnestly to our era, which likes to oversanctify its temporality with completed, eternal determination, with holy wars, eternal peace and apocalypses” (see PDN, pp. 128–29; BW, pp. 843–44).

  “Mauerspruch” | “Wallslogan”

  First called “Mauerspruch für Paris” (“Wallslogan for Paris”), it was written on May 26, 1968 (after what looks like two weeks without a poem). By now a general strike had succeeded the many student demonstrations and the great student and workers’ march of May 13, followed by a range of spontaneous strikes throughout the country. On the twenty-sixth, the unions began negotiations with the Gaullist government. The previous day a regiment of paratroopers had arrived in Paris.

  ein Engel, erneut | an angel, anew: reading traces marked in with margins in Walter Benjamin’s essay on Karl Kraus: “Like a creature sprung from the child and the cannibal, his conqueror stands before him: not a new man—a monster, a new angel. Perhaps one of those who, according to the Talmud, are at each moment created anew in countless throngs, and who, once they have raised their voice before God, cease and pass into nothingness” (translation by Edmond Jephcott, in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2, p. 457). Further traces in Benjamin’s On the Concept of History:

  There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm. (Translation by Dennis Redmond)