Perhaps, at the end, reading Celan
we are still the same.
Read together, read & read.
Perhaps the word is invisible,
the depths deepen
the wind, unbounded now.
I read that, but it’s wrong.
The years the words ever since.
The stone demands it, the stone ordains it
written in your eye or behind your eye.
What opens unending?
I read that but it’s wrong.
*
The sky descends, darkhoured & nightstrong.
We are still the same.
Vinegrowers, vintagers, late mouths
mute now, after
you read, read together, read & read.
How many voices once,
once in the silence of answers
I read that but it’s wrong.
We are still the same.
Perhaps you didn’t recognize them,
the words, the depths, deepening &
we are still the same.
Perhaps there was no Sabbath
at knifepoint like Isaac
no wall, no stone
gone dark & sunk down.
Perhaps I read that but it’s wrong
R. Kolewe. 2020-10-13
—
Notes on “Perhaps, at the end, reading Celan”
This poem mainly draws on three poems of Celan’s. First, there is Celan’s last poem, written April 1-13 1970, in Paris, finished a week before his death, eventually published in Zeitgehöft (1976)
Vinegrowers dig up
the dark-houred clock,
deep upon deep,
you read,
the
Invisible
summons the wind
into bounds,
you read,
the
Open ones carry
the stone behind their eye,
it knows you,
come the Sabbath.
[John Felstiner’s translation]
There are also translations of this poem by Pierre Joris, and Katherine Washburn and Margret Guillemin.
Barbara Wiedemann’s commentary on this poem compares line 3 with a poem in Die Niemandsrose (1963)
The word of going-to-the-depth
which we once read.
The years, the words ever since.
We are still the same.
You
know, space is unending,
you know, you don’t have to fly,
you know, what wrote itself into your eye
deepens the depth for us.
[Joachim Neugroschel’s translation]
According to Wiedemann’s commentary, this poem was originally written for Celan’s wife Gisèle Celan-Lestrange on her 32nd birthday in March 1959. It was originally titled “La leçon d’allemand” and refers to a poem by Georg Heym which Paul and Gisèle studied and translated from German together. The phrase “Wir sind es noch immer” became a motif in Celan’s letters to his wife Gisèle, and was last used by him in 1965, when he was a patient at Le Vésinet. See letter 106 and the notes thereon in the correspondence of Paul Celan and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange.
I don’t know of any other translation of this poem.
Then there’s an earlier poem from Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (1955)
The Vintagers
For Nani and Klaus Demus
They
autumn the wine of their eyes,
they press all the wept, this too:
so night will have it,
the night, they lean against, wall,
so the stone demands,
the stone, over which their crutch talks away
into the answer’s silence —
their crutch, that once,
once only in autumn,
when the year swells to death, as a bunch of grapes,
that once only speaks through the dumbness, down
into the shaft of the merely thought.
They
autumn, they press the wine,
they press time as they press their eyes,
they press the trickles in, the wept,
in the sun’s grave they prepare
with hands made strong by night:
so that a mouth will thirst for it, later —
a late mouth, resembling theirs:
skewed towards blind things and maimed —
a mouth to which drink foams up from the depth while
the sky descends to a waxen seas,
to gleam from afar as a candlestump
when at last the lip moistens.
[Michael Hamburger’s translation.]
There are other translations of this poem by John Felstiner, and Joachim Neugroschel.
There’s also the well-known fact that after Celan’s death, a biography of Hölderlin was found open on his desk, with the underlined passage: “Sometimes this genius goes dark and sinks down into the bitter well of his heart.” See John Felstiner’s biography of Celan, p.287.
And finally, there’s Celan’s delusion that he would be required to reenact Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, alluded to in one of his last letters his wife on January 14 1970. See letter 668 and the notes thereon in the correspondence of Paul Celan and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange.
References
Paul Celan. Die Gedichte. Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. Edited with commentary by Barbara Wiedemann. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003.
Paul Celan. Speech-Grille and Selected Poems. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. E.P. Dutton and Co. 1971.
Paul Celan. Last Poems. Translated by Katherine Washburn and Margret Guillemin. North Point Press, 1986.
Paul Celan. Poems of Paul Celan. Translated by Michael Hamburger. Persea Books, 2002.
Paul Celan. Breathturn Into Timestead. Translated by Pierre Joris. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014.
Paul Celan and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. Correspondance (1951-1970). Edited with commentary by Bertrand Badiou, with the assistance of Eric Celan. Le Seuil, 2001.
John Felstner. Paul Celan: poet, survivor, Jew. Yale University Press, 1995.
