by Paul Celan
denkenden Löwen | thinking lions: Celan had written to Franz Wurm on May 7: “Let me greet your and all our lions” (PC/FW, #108). This was a response to something Wurm had written in a letter of May 5, comparing the heraldic animals of his country (Bohemia) and of Germany: “That the double-tailed (and often tail-wagging) Lion seems more reasonable to me than the two-headed eagle, one of whose heads never knew what the other one’s couldn’t think anyway” (PC/FW, #145).
“Für Eric” | “For Eric”
May 31, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. The dedicatee is Celan’s son Eric (b. 1955). Despite his separation from Gisèle at this point, Celan sees his son regularly. See also the poem with the same title farther on in the cycle, page 362.
pfeilende | arrowing: Possible reference to Celan’s astrological sign, Sagittarius.
“Wer pflügt nichts um?” | “Who doesn’t plough up something?”
May 31, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort.
er kätnert | he roustabouts: A verb Celan builds on the noun Kätner, someone who lives in a Kate, or shack, a transient or migrant worker.
“Levkojen” | “Gillyflowers”
May 31, 1968, Paris, allée de l’Observatoire.
The German name for a flower native to the eastern Mediterranean seaboard comes from a mispronunciation of the first syllable of the Greek name (leukos = white), and in Lev one can hear the Russian version of Celan’s father’s first name, Leo, corresponding in Hebrew to the word “heart” (PDN, p. 132).
katzenbemündigt | cat-enfranchised: Bemündigen (rare) is the opposite of entmündigen, meaning “to disenfranchise, to incapacitate legally.” What is lost in the translation is the word mund (mouth), here meaning “to give speech,” “the permission to express oneself.”
der / maltesische Jude | the / Maltese Jew: Compare Christopher Marlowe’s 1591 play The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta. Lefebvre, via the original spelling of the title word with an I, “Iew,” suggests that the word here links to Lew, Lev, Leo (PDN, p. 132).
“Du durchklafterst” | “You transfathom”
June 1–2, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort/while traveling.
“Für Eric” | “For Eric”
June 2, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. See poem (and its commentary) with same title earlier in the cycle, pages 356 and 593.
Flüstertüte | megaphone: BA, vol. 10.2, p. 143, points to Robert Held’s article “Revolutionary Spring” (FAZ, June 1–2, 1968) on the expulsion and readmittance of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, one of the leaders of the French student movement, who, though born in France, designated himself as German and Jewish. Held: “Cool, loud and clear his voice sounds through the megaphone [Flüstertüte]. The transistor-powered megaphone has become the tactical weapon.” When Cohn-Bendit was expelled from France by the Gaullist government, the student movement created the slogan “We are all German Jews.”
raupen | crawl: Celan found the word raupen in relation to the movement of tanks in Arno Schmidt’s book Leviathan. In German it is a noun that means “caterpillar,” which Schmidt turned into a verb evoking the movement of a caterpillar.
Seide | silk: Possible reference to the rich silk clothes of the bourgeois progovernment counterdemonstrators in the Right Bank quarters that included the rue de Longchamp, where Eric Celan lived.
wir stehen | we stand: See Celan’s numerous references to the act of standing throughout the work, and, for example, the commentary on the poem “Wirk nicht voraus” | “Do not work ahead” (p. 575).
“Dein Blondschatten” | “Your blondshadow”
June 2, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort.
Blondschatten | blondshadow: Compare Held’s article: “Cohn-Bendit, blue eyes, slightly messy eyelashes, reddish blond hair, stubble beard, brandishes a few white pages.”
The four terms Trense, Schabracke, Hankenmal, and Levade (snaffle, shabrack, haunchmark, and levade) used in the poem are horse-riding terms that Celan found in an article on horsemanship by Maria von Loesch, next to Held’s article in the FAZ. Celan had already noted these words in the fifties when reading Friedrich Behn’s Kultur der Urzeit.
Schwimm … Wasser | swim … water: The water images here seem to refer back to a Cohn-Bendit quote in Held’s article: “When we say: the movement is carried by the workers movements in Paris, by the students, by the intellectuals, that means that each of these is interchangeable and that no one in France is indispensable. That’s why my expulsion is like giving a thrashing to water.”
“Die Abgründe streunen” | “The abysses roam”
Composed on June 6, 1968, with place of the composition given on the draft as the “Pont des Arts,” the footbridge that links the Louvre on the Right Bank of the Seine to the Académie Française and the Institut de France on the Left Bank. Linked, probably, to Celan’s reading of that day’s FAZ.
Taubheitsgefühlen | feelings of numbness: FAZ article on thalidomide victims: “One morning she woke up and found her left foot numb, a few days later the right one … The operation was a success, she started gaining weight again, but the feelings of numbness remained.”
Lockstoffe | baits: possibly via article in FAZ on how rabbits mark their territories and a short piece titled “Sexuallockstoffe bei den Trichinen” (Pheromones among trichinellas).
“Dein Mähnen-Echo” | “Your mane-echo”
June 13, 1968, Paris, rue d’Ulm.
beleu- / mundet | be- / famed: Celanesque construction of the intransitive verbal expression (gut/schlecht) beleumundet sein (to be in [good/bad] repute).
IV
“Das Im-Ohrgerät” | “The in-ear-device”
Written on a reading trip to Germany in Freiburg im Breisgau on June 25, 1968. That week’s Spiegel magazine published an article on industrial espionage with a photo of a hearing aid completely insertable into the ear. The article quoted the following line: “Do not trust anyone—not even yourself,” as the motto of a successful antispying system (BW, p. 848).
“Der halbzerfressene” | “The halfgnawed”
Written June 30, 1968, at the Kieler Förde, a small inlet through which the harbor town Kiel has access to the Baltic Sea.
“Ein Blatt” | “A leaf”
July 1968, Freiburg, Frankfurt am Main, Kiel. Celan’s response to Bertolt Brecht’s poem “An die Nachgeborenen,” the second stanza of which asks:
What kind of times are these when
To talk about trees is nearly a crime,
Because it avoids speaking of all that’s evil!
“Playtime” | “Playtime”
July 16, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. Allusion to Playtime, a 1967 film by Jacques Tati, in which American tourists visit a futuristic Paris, and in which many scenes are shot through windows and mirrors.
Lines 2–5: Wiedemann (BW, p. 849) suggests a possible connection to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, act 1, scene 2, where Horatio recalls the ghostly apparition: “a figure like your father … Thrice he walked / by their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes, / Within his truncheon’s length; while they, distill’d / Almost to jelly with the act of fear, / stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me / in dreadful secrecy impart they did.”
du stehst | you stand: See the importance of this stance as detailed in other commentaries, for example, pages 617–18.
vergleichnisten | parabelized: Celanian neologism incorporating vergleichen (to compare) and Gleichnis (parable or allegory).
“Aus der Vergängnis” | “Out of future-past fate”
July 18, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort.
Vergängnis | future-past fate: A neologism that combines Vergangen, “passed,” and Vergangenheit, “the past,” with Verhängnis, “fate,” “fatality,” “doom”—that is, the past and the future. (Trying to find an English neologism, I came up with “pasture,” which does not work. Nor does “transience,” which I had used in an earlier version, have the complexity the temporal load that Celan’s term carries.)
das ins Ohr Geträufelte | what’s poured in the ear: Hamle
t, act 1, scene 5: “Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, / With juice of cursed hebona in a vial, / And in the porches of my ears did pour / The leperous distilment.”
mündigt | emancipates: Verbalized form of mündig, “of age,” “adult emancipated,” but also carries sound rhymes that link the work to münden, “to flow into,” as a river, thus the fjords of the next stanza, and Mund, “mouth,” as the mouth of a river or a human mouth that speaks or says.
nüchtern Erzähltes / träumt | what’s recounted on an empty stomach / dreams: See Walter Benjamin, the opening sentence of the chapter “Breakfast Room” in One-Way Street: “A popular tradition warns against recounting dreams the next morning on an empty stomach” (Selected Writings, vol. 1, p. 444).
“Offene Glottis” | “Open glottis”
Composed on July 19, 1968, one of ten poems written that day. For all of those poems, as for the one above, Celan’s reading of Walter Benjamin is important. The first draft sheet has Benjamin quotes, and Benjamin quoting Freud, on it. This poem can be read as a poetological statement or, as Lefebvre puts it, “a brief manifesto of Celan’s philosophy of language … [using] the linguistic terminology of the 50s and 60s, strongly influenced by [Ferdinand de] Saussure and [Emile] Benveniste.”
Offene Glottis, Luftstrom | Open glottis, airstream: Reading trace in Reichel/Bleichert: “The narrowing (of the by quiet breathing open) glottis to a slit rests on the collaboration of the muscles of the larynx, that bring the arytenoid cartilage closer together … and tauten the vocal cords” (p. 215).
Formanten | formant: Any of several bands of frequency that determine the phonetic quality of a vowel. The spectral peaks of the sound spectrum | P(f) | ’ of the voice (Gunnar Fant). It also refers to the acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract, often measured as an amplitude peak of the frequency spectrum of a sound (New Oxford American Dictionary).
Mitlautstöße | consonant-thrusts: In Mitlaut one probably hears the mit, “with,” and laut, “sound/ing,” better than in “consonant,” though of course our Latinate term has the “con” (with) and “sonare” (to sound), so it has the same two meaning syllables. Reading trace in Reichel/Bleichert, page 215: “The very variable character of the consonants rests without exception on a typical form of the supraglottic air passages in mouth and nose, through which the air is blown spasmodically or more continuously.”
Reizschutz | protection shield: A term from Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where Celan underlined it, usually translated as “protection against stimulation (or stimuli).”
As Rainer Nägele, whose term “protection shield” I am using, writes: “Like his name, Freud’s vocabulary gives us no license to translate the poems into psychoanalytic theory. Yet we cannot discard the signals set by this vocabulary. We have to take the poem on its own terms, which includes the recognition that its ‘own terms’ are not entirely its own. We have to recognize the poem as a translation, not a translation of Freud’s text, but a translation like Freud’s text” (Reading After Freud, p. 157).
“Aus dem Moorboden” | “From the moorfloor”
This poem of July 17, despite its shortness, has given rise to a wide range of commentaries. Core to it is Celan’s reading of Walter Benjamin, and specifically the latter’s Kafka essay (WBSW, vol. 2, pp. 794–818). The most essential secondary literature on it is Werner Hamacher’s essay “Häm,” unhappily not yet translated into English.
Ohnebild | sans-image: At the surface level this neologism can be read as that which is without an image, in a poetics that, according to Lefebvre (PDN, p. 141), “puts metaphor and parable on trial … but also as the image ‘without,’ ‘sans,’ the anti-image that takes on nothingness.”
Häm | hemo: See commentary on “Schaltjahrhunderte” | “Leapcenturies” (p. 572). This links Häm to “hemo(globin),” though there are many more ways of reading the word, or part word. What elsewhere I have referred to as the “polysemy without mask” of Celan’s text, can be seen in this term, which, beyond “hemoglobin” can be linked to heim(at), “home(land)”; hem, the Hebrew third (male) person plural pronoun; the English “aim” (picked up in Ziel, “aim,” two lines farther down); the first syllable of Hemmung, “interruption,” “stopping,” as in a stutter (“hemming and hawing”), etc. See also, possibly, Celan’s use of the word Gram in “Mit uns” | “With us,” the final poem of the series Tenebrae’d, written two years earlier (p. 232).
im Flintenlauf | in the gun barrel: The poem’s first draft has “in der Pfanne” | “in the pan” instead, which is also readable as a gun term, the flash or priming pan. Another reading sees a play on Benjamin’s word Finte, meaning a feint.
Dorfluft | Village air: Compare Benjamin: “Kafka’s America ends with the rustic ceremonies of Oklahoma. ‘In Kafka,’ said Soma Morgenstern, ‘there is the air of a village, as with all great founders of religion’” (WBSW, vol 2., p. 805).
rue Tournefort: The street on which Celan was living at this time, named after the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656–1704). The French name can also be read as the verb tourner, “to turn,” and the adjective fort, “strong.” In a letter to Franz Wurm of November 22, 1967, Celan had punned on his new address, wondering if it meant something “qui tourne (et tournera) fort?” (that is [and will be a] strong turn [away]). Such a “strong turn” can also be seen poetologically as the Wendung, or Wende, named in Atemwende | Breathturn.
“Hochmoor” | “Highmoor”
July 20, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. In his Brockhaus geology manual, Celan underlined several terms descriptive of moor and swamp geology, such as uhrglasförmige aufgewölbte Oberfläche, Lagg, Schwingmoor oder Wassenkissen, vertorft, and Vertorfung. In Kurd von Bülow’s Moorkunde, he underlined Schwingrasen (pp. 77 and 84). Compare also the previous poem and the ongoing Benjamin readings.
Ritter | knights: Meant here is the knight butterfly (Lebadea martha).
sonnentausüchtig | sundewaddicted: Sonnentau, literally “sundew,” is the name of a carniverous plant (Drosera rossolis) that grows on moors, owing its name to the dewlike drops of mucus that form on its leaves and in which insects get trapped.
Lagg | lagg: Is the swamp at the edge of rain moors, in which water collects. From the usually convexly shaped center of the hochmoor (compare “watch-glass-shaped”) water flows through narrow grooves down the often steep wall to the foot of the edge wall, where it collects and meets here at the border of the moor floor and the mineral floor with the water from the surroundings.
Sabbatkerzen | Sabbath candles: The poem was written on July 20, 1968, which was a Sabbath; Lefebvre suggests that the word is also another name for a variety of reeds, Typhia latifolia (bulrush, cattail).
“Erzflitter” | “Oreglitter”
July 20, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort.
Angiospermen | angiosperms: The class of flowering and seed-producing plants. Etymologically, “angiosperm” means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure.
Karstwannen | karst depression: A karst is a geological formation shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock, such as limestone or dolomite. As the result of subterranean drainage, there may be very limited surface water with no rivers or lakes. Many karst regions display distinctive surface features, with cenotes, sinkholes, or dolines being the most common.
“Einkanter” | “Einkanter”
July 20, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. The title refers to a stone with a single sharp edge worn by wind-driven sand (compare Dreikanter, “ventifact”). Celan found the term in his Brockhaus.
Rembrandt: in 1967 and again in 1968, on his visits to London, Celan saw Rembrandt’s painting A Man Seated Reading at a Table in a Lofty Room in the National Gallery (mentioned in his letter to Franz Wurm of April 18, 1968 [PC/FW, #102]).
Bartlocke | beardlock: Traditional Jewish payot. Rembrandt painted a number of portraits of Jews in traditional dress as well as illustrations of the Bible.
sechzehnte Psalm | sixte
enth psalm: In the King James version, this psalm, named “A Goodly Heritage,” opens: “Preserve me, O God: / for in thee do I put my trust. / O my soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord: / my goodness extendeth not to thee; / but to the saints that are in the earth, / and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.” But see above all verse 8: “I have set the LORD always before me: / because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” In the poem “24 rue Tournefort” (not included in any volume, but see BW, p. 525, and Nomadics blog: www.pierrejoris.com/blog/?p=9851), Celan cites the core term of Psalm 16, Shiviti, translated in the King James version as “set before me.”
24 RUE TOURNEFORT
You and your
kitchensink German—yes, sink-,
yes, before—ossuaries.
Say: Löwig. Say: Shiviti
The black cloth
they lowered before you,
when your breath
swelled scarward,
brothers too, you stones,
image the word shut behind
side glances.
“Mit Rebmessern” | “With pruning hooks”
July 21, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. A poem with a nearly exclusive nautical vocabulary, in which Lefebvre sees “an existential, biographico-poetological poem, through the figure of the sailor on great world circumnavigating sail ships, crossing or following the meridians, armed with a pruning knife with curved blade in the shape of a large lunar crescent—used here like a sailor’s knife or shackle opener. A number of the terms used were underlined by Celan in books read at different times: Siegmund Günther’s Physische Geographie for ‘Kalmenzone’ | ‘calmzone’ (p. 63), Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim for ‘die Spaken’ (handspike, capstan bar), and Conrad’s An Outcast of the Islands for ‘das Beiboot’ | ‘the dinghy’” (PDN, p. 145).