Breathturn into Timestead

by Paul Celan

  I

  “Wanderstaude, du fängst dir” | “Nomadforb, you catch yourself”

  February 25, 1969–January 21, 1970. Celan joined his own French interlinear translation when he sent a handwritten version of the poem to his wife on February 15, 1969, probably via his son Eric (PC/GCL, #639).

  Wanderstaude | Nomadforb: According to the Jewish calendar, on this day (seventh of Adar) Moses’s birth and death days were remembered. Wiedemann connects the poem to this feast, recalling that Moses “had received a wonder-making rod from God that served him as mark of recognition and as instrument for the feats he was to accomplish.” (Exod. 4:2–4 reads: “and the LORD said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. / And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. / And the LORD said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand.”) Sieghild Bogumil-Notz suggests that with this first image of Zeitgehöft | Timestead (as with most images in this, his last book), Celan “refers to and negates earlier images and statements,” in this case the word Wandergestalt (BW, p. 34) from the 1946 poem “Dunkles Aug im September” | “Dark eye in September,” as well as the whole theme of wandering, which appears at least sixteen times via variations on the word wandern in the oeuvre.

  Next to the draft of the poem there are, however, also the following notes by Celan: “Pindar: singer of sewed verses: Rhapsode,” and below that: “Rhapsode: singer to the rod [Sänger zum Stabe].”

  Blendung | blinding: The German word can mean both “to make blind” and “to dazzle.” Bernhard Böschenstein sees in the rod and the blinding an Oedipal scene/seen “évoqué et révoqué en même temps” (evoked and revoked simultaneously). He goes on to say: “This blind man of today sees what what needs to be seen thanks to his state for which he is himself responsible. His rod is also that of the rhapsode, but his song, because it is broken, brings the clarity that only Apollo had been able to bring to Oedipus. The labor of the poet today consists in making himself blind in order to make himself a seer [voyant]” (C-J, pp. 151–52).

  “Gehässige Monde” | “Spiteful moons”

  March 21, 1969, Paris. Celan joined his own French interlinear translation when he sent a handwritten version of the poem to his wife, probably via his son Eric (PC/GCL, #642), which moved GCL to create a watercolor by the same title (illustration XII in PC/GCL-French, vol. 2).

  “Gold” | “Gold”

  April 12, 1969, Paris/Dampierre-en-Burly, where Celan spent weekends at that time in the house of his friends Edmond and Rita Lutrand.

  Platanenstrünke | plane-tree trunks: With the chestnut tree, one of Celan’s talismanic trees; see PC/GCL, #27, n. 2.

  “Von der sinkenden Walstirn” | “From the sinking whale forehead”

  May 5, 1969, Paris.

  “Du liegst hinaus” | “You outlier”

  May 9, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  “Das seidenverhangene Nirgend” | “The silkbedecked Nowhere”

  June 4, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  “Die Weinbergsmauer erstürmt” | “The vineyardwall assailed”

  June 9, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  “Erst wenn ich dich” | “Only when I touch”

  June 25, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  Spät- / sinnigem | late- / meanings: Constructed from the German word Spürsinn (flair, instinct, ability, nose [for a dog]).

  Zeithöfen | timehalos: See pp. 566–67.

  “In der fernsten” | “In the remotest”

  July 18–19, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  traumfaserverstärkt | dreamfiberreinforced: See the article “Die Garderobe der Raumfahrer” (The wardrobe of the astronauts) in the FAZ of that day, which speaks of a glasfaserverstärkten, “fiberglass-reinforced,” protection layer for the helmets.

  Freizeichen | freesign: Celan had thought at some point of using this word as overall title of the volume.

  “Eingeschossen” | “Inserted into”

  July 19, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm. Celan sent this poem and “Chalk-crocus” (p. 388) to Franz Wurm in Prague (PC/FW, #162) in his letter referring to the moon landing of July 20, comparing it to his own “landing” in his new apartment on avenue Émile Zola: “I migrated [übersiedelte] drop by drop, braindrop by braindrop, one of these days I will indeed land in the new apartment and start the prospecting [zu schürfen beginnen].” The poem draws for some of its images on an article on the return flight of the command module, which was eingeschossen, “inserted,” into the orbit of the command spacecraft.

  Ungrund | unground: an older German word for the more usual Abgrund, “abyss.” Here it may play on the opposition of cosmic space (where the moon landing takes place) and the ground, with a rhyme on his well-known image from the Meridian speech, where Lenz wants to walk on his head so as to have the abyss beneath him. Another possible direction to explore is the term Ungrund in the mystical teachings of Jacob Boehme, as explicated by Nicolas Berdiaev in his “Etude I. The Teaching About the Ungrund and Freedom”: “The mysterious teaching of Boehme about the Ungrund, about the abyss, without foundation, dark and irrational, prior to being, is an attempt to provide and [sic] answer to the basic question of all questions, the question concerning the origin of the world and of the arising of evil. The whole teaching of Boehme about the Ungrund is so interwoven with the teaching concerning freedom, that it is impossible to separate them, for this is all part and parcel of the same teaching. And I am inclined to interpret the Ungrund, as a primordial meonic freedom, indeterminate even by God” (www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1930_349.html#q).

  If this mystical direction is correct, then the “Smaragdbahn” | “emerald-trajectory” of the second line could refer back to the Tabula Smaragdina, the Emerald Tablet, a core mystical and alchemical treatise supposedly composed and handed down by the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, and now believed to date back to the sixth to eighth century C.E. Celan, we know, had an abiding interest in alchemy.

  “Alle die Schlafgestalten, kristallin” | “All the sleepfigures, crystalline”

  July 23, 1969, Paris, place de la Contrescarpe.

  “Zwei Sehwülste, zwei” | “Two sightbulges, two”

  July 30, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  Narbennähte | scarseams: as Narbennaht, “scarseam,” considered at one point as possible title for the volume Lightduress.

  “Vor mein” | “Before my”

  August 3, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  kommt die Hand zu stehn | the hand comes to stand … im Kreis, den ich zog | in the circle I drew: Wiedemann (BW, p. 869) points to Celan’s unpublished translations of Romanian poet Nina Cassian’s poem “Jocul vu lumina,” which says: “I draw a yellow circle / on the white sheet, / and the sun comes and sits on your hands” (Jürgen Lehmann and Christine Ivanovíc, eds., Stationen [Heidelberg, 1997], p. 156).

  “Du wirfst mir” | “You throw gold”

  August 4, 1969, Paris, rue Tournefort. On this day Celan took off his wedding ring and sealed it in a dated envelope (BW, p. 869).

  “Das Flüsterhaus” | “The whisperhouse”

  August 29, 1969, written in Alpnachstad on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, where Celan holidayed from August 16 to August 31.

  den Enge-Laut ein, // für die Lallstufe | fricatives, // the lallation-stage: Nonidentified reading note in the notebook that also holds early drafts and fragments of the poem: “die vorsprachliche Lallstufe / Verschluß- und Engelaute” (the prelanguage lallation-stage / plosives and fricatives).

  “Kleine Nacht” | “Little night”

  September 5, 1969, Paris, rue Tournefort.

  “An die Haltlosigkeiten” | “To huddle against”

  September 6, 1969, Paris, avenue Émile Zola. The first poem written there, probably on a visit to the new apartment, where he would start living, however, only on November 6, 1969. See the poem “Du gleißende
” | “You, nitid,” p. 434, and the commentary on that poem, p. 620.

  Sudelheften | rough books: A first draft of the poem was jotted down in a Sudelheft (a rough book), from sudeln (to make a mess), Sudelei (a mess, slovenly work). Georg Christoph Lichtenberg used to call his notebooks Sudelbücher.

  “Ich albere” | “I fool around”

  September 12, 1969. Written in Dampierre-en-Burly on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. Marked as the first poem of that day, a day on which he also wrote the two following poems. For location, see commentary for “Gold,” page 611.

  “Dein Uhrengesicht” | “Your clockface”

  September 12, 1969. Written in Dampierre-en-Burly on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

  “Ich lotse dich” | “I pilot you”

  September 12, 1969. Written in Dampierre-en-Burly on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

  “Meine” | “My”

  September 13, 1969. Written in Dampierre-en-Burly. First day of Rosh Hashanah.

  “Ein Stern” | “A star”

  September 17, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm. First poem of that day. On top of the first draft of the poem, Celan wrote: “Mon judaïsme: ce que je / reconnais encore dans / les débris de mon existence” (My Judaism: what I still recognize among the wreckage of my existence) (BA, vol. 14, p. 271).

  “Kleines Wurzelgeträum” | “Little rootdreamings”

  September 17, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm. Marked as second poem of that day.

  II. (JERUSALEM CYCLE)

  “Mandelnde” | “Almonding you”

  September 2, 1968, Paris, rue Tournefort. Written on the same day as “Bergung” | “Rescue” (p. 396), it is the only poem in the volume that is earlier than all the other poems, which are arranged chronologically as written, between February 1969 and April 1970. Given the core image of the poem, the almond, Celan’s decision to use it as the opening poem of a cycle that gathers all the poems he wrote in relation to his visit to Israel, and more specifically, Jerusalem, is obvious. In this volume see also “almondeye” in “Sight threads, sense threads,” page 86, and “the almond-testicle” in “Me too,” page 298.

  Mandelnde | almonding: A core image of Celan’s work, reaching back to the 1944 poem “Nähe der Gräber” with the stanza: “And doesn’t the God with the flowering rod / climb up the hill, climb down the hill.” Maybe the most explicit working of the theme is the poem “Count the almonds,” here in Jerome Rothenberg’s translation (PCS, p. 49):

  Count the almonds,

  count what was bitter and kept you awake,

  count me in with them:

  I searched for your eye which broke open and nobody saw you,

  I spun that mysterious thread,

  down which the dew that you dreamed

  slithered into a pitcher,

  kept from harm by a word found in nobody’s heart.

  There you first came into a name that was yours,

  sure of foot you advanced on yourself,

  the clappers swung free in your silence’s belltower,

  the one who had heard it laid into you,

  the one who was dead laid a hand on you too,

  and threefold you moved through the evening.

  Make me bitter.

  Count me in with the almonds.

  The Old Testament has a range of references worth quoting (here, in the Jewish Publication Society Bible):

  Num. 17:20: “And it shall come to pass, that the man whom I shall choose, his rod shall bud; and I will make to cease from Me the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against you”; 17:23: “And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses went into the tent of the testimony; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and put forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and bore ripe almonds.”

  Jer. 1:11–12: “Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying: ‘Jeremiah, what seest thou?’ And I said: ‘I see a rod of an almond-tree.’”

  Eccles. 12:5: “Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and terrors shall be in the way; and the almond-tree shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall drag itself along, and the caperberry shall fail; because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.”

  Celan always spelled the name of his poet “brother” Osip Mandelstam with a double final m—as if to insist on the meaning stamm (tribe, family, descendance) in the context of the almond, thus emphasizing the Jewish descendance of that poet, of the poet.

  The almond is also the bitter fruit, and that bitterness is chemically linked to cyanhydric acid, in turn connected to Zyklon B, the gas used in the death chambers of the Nazi extermination camps.

  Hachnissini | Hachnisini: Opening word of Chaim Nachman Bialik’s poem “Hachnisini Tachat Knafech” (Shelter me under your wing), first published in 1905. Bialik (1873–1934), who wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish, is recognized as one of the fathers of modern Hebrew literature. Born in Russia into a traditional Jewish household, he received a traditional Jewish religious education but also explored European literature. He was later to translate work by a range of major European authors (Schiller, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Heine, and others) into Hebrew. He lived for many years in Odessa, a city important in Celan’s universe, linking to his own youth, and to Osip Mandelstam.

  Hachnisini means literally “take me in,” “take me under your wing,” “shelter me,” and here, as the last word before the Jerusalem cycle, the poet’s quest for hospitality is clear. Ilana Shmueli remembers an occasion in Jerusalem: “Often [Celan] would look for new words in Hebrew or tried to remember old ones, together we recited the little poem by Chaim Nachman, “Hachnisini,” that he still knew by heart, though he no longer understood it completely. I had to translate it word for word for him. Then he would research the roots of the Hebrew words, that fascinated him again and again” (IS, p. 26).

  “Es stand” | “It stood”

  October 17, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm. On October 20 he sent this poem and “Almonding you” to Shmueli.

  Es stand | It stood: the concept of standing upright, already noted in “Wirk nicht voraus” | “Do not work ahead” (pp. 316 and 575). See also my introduction to PCS (p. 6).

  In her memoir, Sag, daß Jerusalem ist, Ilana Shmueli writes (IS, p. 33):

  “And now our feet stand in your gates, Jerusalem”; “It stands” and “I stood”—Stehen: a meaningful word that demanded its place in all of his poems, in his letters and in our conversations. It meant: to stand forcefully, to stand against, to stand into something, to stand for oneself or to stand with and for someone else. And it also meant: “geschrieben stehn | to stand written.” I stood in You “written” as in a book, in the You—in Jerusalem …

  “on your lip: the figsplitter // it stood,” soft and hard, real, a “splinter,” that can also wound, despite the sweetness. Jerusalem stood, and above us stood the bright scent of pines, and I stood in you: I have arrived, the wish, the query “Hasnisini” has been fulfilled.

  Dänenschiff | Daneship: On the morning of October 9, 1969, Shmueli and Celan visited the momument of the Daneship on Kikar Denya (Denmark Square), erected in remembrance of the many Danes who, in October 1943, had helped as many as seven thousand Jews to safety in Sweden in their fishing and leisure boats. See also the poem “Frihed” (p. 68).

  “Die Glut” | “The swelter”

  October 21, 1969, Paris, rue d’Ulm.

  Shmueli (IS, p. 34) explains that the Jerusalem visit happened on a very hot day—October 9, 1969—on which the sweltering Khamsin, or desert wind, blew.

  Absaloms Grab | Absalom’s tomb: “Absalom’s Tomb is the most impressive and complete of the ancient tombs of wealthy Jewish families that lived in Jerusalem in Second Temple times … A popular Jewish tradition associates the monument with Absalom, King David’s rebellious son, of whom the Bible says: ‘Now Absalom in his life-time had taken and reared up for himself the pillar, which is in the king’s dale; for he said: “I have no son to keep my name in remembrance”; and h
e called the pillar after his own name; and it is called Absalom’s monument unto this day’ (2 Samuel 18:18). The identification is, of course, erroneous, for the monument was built about one thousand years after the time of Absalom. Nevertheless, it was customary in Jerusalem … for whoever passed by the monument to throw a stone at it, as if to proclaim the fate of a rebellious son.” (Jerusalem Archaeological Park website, www.archpark.org.il/article.asp?id=117)

  Shmueli writes (IS, p. 25): “Walked slowly down along the Jewish cemetery, past the Mary Magdalene church with its onion domes, the Garden of Gethsemane, which we did not enter—down to ‘Absalom’s tomb,’—Noon swelter—donkeys and mules braying.”

  Absalom was the disobedient son of King David, who after his rebellion died ignominiously while fleeing—so that now the father had to lament the son’s death. Writes Otto Pöggeler: “When Celan makes connections to this story, we may remember the father-son conflict that was renewed in the Western world in the late 60s, but also that Celan—married to a Christian—according to strict Jewish belief did not have a son. Celan’s ‘Mal’ [mark, (tomb)stone, mausoleum, etc.] his poetic oeuvre, is, like the ass’s bray, a protest against the swelter and burden of this world, and yet this scream unites the poet with his You, the Shekina” (STEIN, p. 69).

  “Wir, die wie der Strandhafer Wahren” | “We who like the sea oats guard”

  October 31, 1969, Dampierre-en-Burly.

  Strandhafer | sea oats: See “Weißgrau” | “Whitegray” (p. 8).

  N’we Awiwim | Neve Avivim: A residential neighborhood of Tel Aviv, located in the northwestern part of the city, by the sea; Celan stayed there at the house of friends.

  der ungeküßte / Stein einer Klage | the unkissed / stone of a complaint: On October 9, 1969, Celan had very briefly visited the Wailing Wall, which pious Jews traditionally kiss. Shmueli remembers him saying “no excavations, please” (IS, p. 25).