Breathturn into Timestead

by Paul Celan

  Gebetshub | prayer’s tidal range: Neologism based on Tidenhub (tidal amplitude or range).

  Lößpuppen | Loessdolls

  July 21, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. The title refers to geological formations that in Celan’s Brockhaus Taschenbuch der Geologie are called Lößkindel or Lößpuppen (loess-children or loess-dolls). Loess is an aeolian sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown silt.

  V

  “Stahlschüssiger Sehstein” | “Steeluginous visionstone”

  July 24, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort.

  Stahlschüssiger | Steeluginous: Reading traces in the Brockhaus Taschenbuch der Geologie, where Celan underlined eisenschüssige, meaning “ferrous” or “ferruginous,” and used it to create the neologism “steeluginous.”

  Palmfarne | palm ferns: Also from the Brockhaus. Cycads, of the biological division Cicadophyta, are gymnosperm seed plants typically characterized by a stout and woody trunk with a crown of large, hard, and stiff evergreen leaves.

  Castrup: Could refer to Copenhagen airport, Kastrup (given some of the other images in the poem); could also refer to a town in the Ruhr region of Germany, called Castrop(-Rauxel), though that would mean a spelling error by Celan, which Wiedemann suggests could be willed, in that Celan may have consciously wanted an interior rhyme with Vortrupp (BW, p. 855). Near Castrop there are marl pits in which fossil remains have been found.

  Vortrupp | vanguard troop: Word underlined by Celan in his copy of the German translation of Joyce’s Ulysses (vol. 2, p. 101). I have not been able to verify original word.

  Flughaut | flightskin: The term occurs in Brockhaus, and refers to the alar membranes of the pterosaurians, the first vertebrates to fly (technically, like bats today) during the Jurassic period. The word was already underlined by Celan in Jean Paul, though there it was associated with butterflies.

  “Und Kraft und Schmerz” | “And strength and pain”

  July 27, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. In the last draft the poem is diagonally struck out, with a question mark in the top right-hand corner. In her collected volume, Wiedemann has restored the poem, using its penultimate, uncrossed-out version, though restoring a line Celan had crossed out in that one: “your typhus, Tanja.”

  Hall-Schalt- / Jahre | jubilee-leap- / years: 1968 was a leap year; Hall also means “sound.” For Halljahr, see “Die fleißigen” | “The industrious” (p. 152), with the lines: “The not-to-be-deciphered / jubilee.”

  Tanja: Tanja Adler (Sternberg, by marriage) was a friend of Celan’s from university days in Czernowitz who emigrated to the Soviet Union, where she married, and then returned to Czernowitz. Celan had gotten back in touch with her in 1962. He had dedicated the 1941 poem “Gemurmel der Toten” (“Mutterings of the Dead”) to her.

  “Miterhoben” | “Raised together”

  July 28, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort.

  seine Aura | his aura: Leads back to Celan’s reading of Walter Benjamin during the summer of 1968. Compare “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” specifically: “If we think of the associations which, at home in the mémoire involontaire, seek to cluster around an object of perception, and if we call those associations the aura of that object, then the aura attaching to the object of a perception corresponds precisely to the experience [Erfahrung] which, in the case of an object of use, inscribes itself as long practice” (WBSW, vol. 4, p. 337). Lefebvre notes that “aura” is not without relationship to the “halo” (Hof) of Husserlian phenomenology of the consciousness of time or to the Baudelairian “correspondences.”

  On the same day Celan wrote an uncollected poem that also uses the word “aura”:

  YOU MICHAELA,

  and as you talk-

  stammer, there:

  You, aura,

  and big-lipped like you,

  Be-yidst, res-

  ponded, Jewess,

  you, knowing-unknowing,

  at the point of indifference

  of the reflexion

  the bitter-planet spoke

  overprecise.

  Quentchen | quantum: Originally from Latin, quintus, “fifth,” has come to mean “a tiny part,” easily, nearly homophonically, rendered in English as “quantum,” though that loses the older connection of the German term to alchemical lore. (Also a measure, as in: “For the sake of experiment I took for several days four quentschen [that is, two drams] of good Cinchona twice a day.”)

  “Steinschlag” | “Falling rocks”

  August 10, 1968, Paris.

  heimstehen in seine | home-standing into: Lefebvre notes regarding the grammatical form of the German that “the accusative, as often in Celan, signals the dynamic force and the historicity of what in all appearance stands immobile and fixed (you could call this a syntactic oxymoron)” (PDN, p. 149).

  ausschreitende | striding: See also title/opening line of the next poem.

  “Ich schreite” | “I stride across”

  Written probably on August 16, 1968, though reworked in November of that year while Celan was hospitalized in Épinay-sur-Orge for psychiatric treatment. At that point he added the end line “Eric, live strong and large,” cut out of the final manuscript version.

  kalben | calf: The verb covers two domains, (1) biological: a cow giving birth to a calf, and (2) geological: the sudden breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier, giving birth to icebergs.

  irgendein Toter | a, any, dead one: Possible reference to François, the dead son, as the whole poem seems to be a bitter attack on his estranged wife, Gisèle.

  “Leuchtstäbe” | “Lightrods”

  Composed on August 21, 1968, the night Warsaw Pact troops occupied Czechoslovakia, putting an end to the so-called Prague Spring.

  Leuchtstäbe | lightrods: This term was for a while considered as a possible title for this (and for the next) volume of poems. The German stab (rod) has also the connotation of “letter,” as in Buchstab. It also suggests neon tubes and could possibly be connected to an article in the FAZ of that day on blindness (see next poem).

  grätschen | straddle: To spread the legs wide laterally, as when hopping over an aggressive defense in soccer.

  Klöten | ballocks: Reading trace in Celan’s German translation of Joyce’s Ulysses, where he circled: “ZOE: (Turns) Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got” (p. 667), and an earlier mark for: “ZOE: How’s the nuts? BLOOM: Offside. Curiously they are on the right” (p. 599 of the 1966 Bodley Head edition). The German translation uses the word Klöten on both occasion.

  ZK: Zentralkomitee, literally, “Central Committee.” I prefer to leave the German ZK, especially as it ghosts its infamous reverse, KZ (Konzentrationslager, “concentration camp”).

  Evidenz | evidence: In May 1968, Celan had noted: “There is no evidence anymore | Margarete Susman, über Kafka, | p. 360.” (Bertrand Badiou pointed this out.) Celan is referring to a 1929 essay by Susman, “Das Hiob-Problem by Franz Kafka,” reprinted in 1954 under the title “Früheste Deutung Franz Kafkas,” in her Gestalten und Kreise (Stuttgart/Konstanz/Zurich: Diana Verlag, 1954), p. 355. The longer sentence, quoted by Wiedemann, is: “The last link to a world that is shared, ordered according to ideas: memory, is torn—there is no evidence anymore; that is, the illumination of things is no longer proof of their Being in truth; there is only presence: irrefutable, overpowering presence” (BW, p. 858).

  “Ein Leseast” | “One reading branch”

  A range of the vocabulary and information of this poem of August 21–22, 1968, comes from several articles from the Nature and Science section of the FAZ of August 21, 1968, such as N. Wyss’s “Noch keine brauchbaren Seehilfen für Blinde” (No useful visual aids yet for blind people), Beatrice Flad-Schnorrenberg’s “Wo sitzt die Intelligenz der Vögel?” (Where is the seat of birds’ intelligence?), and the article “Basaltisches Mondgestein” (Basalt moon rocks) signed R. (BW, pp. 858–59; PDN, pp. 151–53). At some point Leseast was considered as possible title for the volume as a whole.

  Leseast | reading branch … S
tirnhaut | forehead skin: N. Wyss mentions inconclusive experiments toward a transistorized device that would send photoelectric impulses to the brain through electrodes implanted above the eyes, in the skin of the forehead, via the ophtalmic branch (Ast) of the trigeminal nerve.

  Lichtquelle | light source: N. Wyss: “The device was tried out on a largish number of blind people; of light sources it transmits a blurred, uncolored image.”

  Wirtsgewebe | host-tissue: Another FAZ article, “Immunological Mimicry,” signed “R.F.,” says: “In a sort of immunological mimicry the worms protect themselves against their hosts’ immunological defense reactions through the incorporation of host tissue.”

  Rückstreu-Sonden | backscatter-probes: Surveyor 5 (launched September 8, 1967; landed on the moon September 11, 1967) carried a miniature chemical analysis lab with an alpha particle backscatter device used to determine that the lunar surface soil consisted of basaltic rock.

  Hornhautüber- / zogner | Cornea-covered: Reading traces in another FAZ article of that day: “Hornhautprothesen” (Cornea prostheses), stating that such prostheses so much improved the vision of seven blind adults that they could care for themselves again.

  The sixth stanza contains allusions to Celan’s suicide attempt of the previous year, when he tried to stab himself, missing the heart but seriously wounding his lung. The postcard seems to refer (BW, p. 859) to a New Year’s postcard he had received from František Fabian from Radio Pilsen, and further to a newspaper article Celan read that mentioned the silencing of the radio station that had backed Alexander Dubček even as the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring.

  “Zerr dir” | “Tear your”

  August 23, 1968

  pack deinen Schuh rein | pack your shoe into: Possible reference to Ingeborg Bachmann’s poem “Die gestundete Zeit”: “Sie dich nicht um. / Schnür deinen Schuh.” (Don’t look back. / Lace up your shoe.) (In Werke, edited by Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, and Clemens Münster [Munich/ Zurich: Piper Verlag, 1978], 1:37.)

  Rauschelbeeräugige | mezery-eyed: Rauschelbeere does not exist, though Rauschbeere does and corresponds to Vaccinium uliginosum (our bog bilberry or northern bilberry) and/or to Daphne mezereum, which produces a red, very toxic berry, at home in the subalpine vegetation zone of Germany and Austria.

  “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 pavlač, 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 r
ejection.

  “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).