Breathturn into Timestead (32 page)

D
ER
K
ÖNIGSWEG
hinter der Scheintür,

das vom Gegen-

Zeichen umtodete

Löwenzeichen davor,

das Gestirn, kieloben,

umsumpft,

du, mit der

die Wunde auslotenden

Wimper.

 

 

E
S KOMMT
auch ein Sinn

die engere Schneise daher,

den erbricht

das tödlichste unsrer

stehenden Male.

 

 

I
CH TRINK
W
EIN
aus zwei Gläsern

und zackere an

der Königszäsur

wie Jener

am Pindar,

Gott gibt die Stimmgabel ab

als einer der kleinen

Gerechten,

aus der Lostrommel fällt

unser Deut.

 

 

E
S WIRD
etwas sein, später,

das füllt sich mit dir

und hebt sich

an einen Mund

Aus dem zerscherbten

Wahn

steh ich auf

und seh meiner Hand zu,

wie sie den einen

einzigen

Kreis zieht

 

 

D
AS
N
ICHTS
, um unsrer

Namen willen

– sie sammeln uns ein –,

siegelt,

das Ende glaubt uns

den Anfang,

vor den uns

umschweigenden

Meistern,

im Ungeschiednen, bezeugt sich

die klamme

Helle.

 

 

I
M
G
LOCKIGEN
jappen

die gläubig-ungläubigen

Seelen,

Sternunfug

setzt sich fort, auch mit meiner

im Wüstensinn von dir

umhügelten Hand,

wir sind

längst da.

 

 

W
IE ICH
den Ringschatten trage,

trägst du den Ring,

etwas, das Schweres gewohnt ist,

verhebt sich

an uns,

unendlich

Entimmernde du.

 

 

D
AS
F
REMDE

hat uns im Netz,

die Vergänglichkeit greift

ratlos duch uns hindurch,

zähl meinen Puls, auch ihn,

in dich hinein,

dann kommen wir auf,

gegen dich, gegen mich,

etwas kleidet uns ein,

in Taghaut, in Nachthaut,

fürs Spiel mit dem obersten, fall-

süchtigen Ernst.

 

 

U
MLICHTET
die Keime,

die ich in dir

erschwamm,

freigerudert

die Namen – sie

befahren die Engen,

ein Segensspruch, vorn,

ballt sich

zur wetterfühligen

Faust.

 

 

III

F
ORTGESALBT
, draußen, im Stein-

weizen,

von singenden

Händen,

die halbe Skabiose,

sparsam,

vorm Trommelfellriß,

unterm linken

Fuß

ein Fenster – der

Erde?

 

 

O
RTSWECHSEL
bei den Substanzen:

geh du zu dir, schließ dich an,

bei verschollenem

Erdlicht,

ich höre, wir waren

ein Himmelsgewächs,

das bleibt zu beweisen, von

obenher, an

unsern Wurzeln entlang,

zwei Sonnen gibts, hörst du,

zwei,

nicht eine –

ja und?

 

 

D
IE
W
ELT
, Welt,

in allen Fürzen gerecht,

ich, ich,

bei dir, dir, Kahl-

geschorne.

 

 

W
AS BITTERT

herein?

Die großen Alleinigkeiten

verzwergen

im Hörrinden-Hymnus,

selig

tuscheln die Daumenschrauben in

heiterer

Streckfolterhöhe,

die entscheidenden

Pausen

erhalten

Zufuhr,

in der Zählkammer,

rebellisch,

beten die Ringe

den Rest an.

 

 

D
IE GESENKTEN

Götterdaumen, ich hole, im Borken-

hemd,

die untersten Baumläufer ein, bald ist

heute, für immer, die

Markierungen, das

Strahlengezücht,

kommen

über die Antimaterie

getanzt, zu dir,

in die Kometen-

Schonung.

 

 

K
ROKUS
, vom gastlichen

Tisch aus gesehn:

zeichenfühliges

kleines Exil

einer gemeinsamen

Wahrheit,

du brauchst

jeden Halm.

 

 

R
EBLEUTE
graben

die dunkelstündige Uhr um,

Tiefe um Tiefe,

du liest,

es fordert

der Unsichtbare den Wind

in die Schranken,

du liest,

die Offenen tragen

den Stein hinterm Aug,

der erkennt dich,

am Sabbath.

Commentary

Besides their obvious function of trying to provide some minimal yet specific information concerning difficulties both in the original poems and in the translations, these commentaries want to point out the kind of complexities an in-depth reading, hermeneutical or other, will have to contend with. Obviously, what is proposed here are only a few examples that should not be mistaken for an annotated translation of any completeness. These minimalia function more as a map of our ignorance than as a showcase of our knowledges regarding Celan's late poems. They are gleaned from the vast array of Celan scholarship available and a detailed system of references would be too cumbersome and diminish readability too much. The core sources for the information in these commentaries come from Barbara Wiedemann's
Paul Celan, Die Gedichte: Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe
in einem Band
; from the two available scholarly editions (the so-called Bonner and Tübinger editions); from Jean-Pierre Lefebvre's French annotated editions of
Breathturn
and
Snowpart
; from the two volumes of annotated correspondence between Paul Celan and his wife, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange; as well as from various books and essays by Bertrand Badiou, Otto Pöggeler, Jean Bollack, and others. See also the bibliographies at the end of this book.

But a warning is also necessary in that however many links we can establish to an hors-texte (and there are such loci,
pace
Jacques Derrida), to this or that place or time or book, we should always remember Celan's own warning to Ilana Shmueli, who notes in her book after thinking of a specific biblical reference for a line in the poem “The trumpet's part” (p. 439): “But I note it down here with some hesitation and immediately remember that Celan often warned me about citations (especially biblical citations): ‘please write without citations,' he said, ‘let only your own words speak.' I shouldn't allow anything tendentious, didactic, I should remain ‘open' for my own reading and experiencing. The last two short lines (‘listen your way in / with the mouth') command you to be absolutely attentive to the text, the ‘Empty-text,' that carries the glowing enigma inside itself” (
IS
, p. 42).

And yet, a lifetime of reading and writing poetry has also taught me that to read a poem is always at least a double movement: the systole of absolute attentiveness brought to bear on the text, and the diastole of letting your mind move from every word in the text out into the world of both books and experience.

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.

ATEMWENDE | BREATHTURN

The eighty poems in this volume were composed between September 1963 and September 1965 and are organized into six near-chronological cycles. The first cycle is made up of the twenty-two poems of
Atemkristall
(see below), cycle 2 of seventeen poems written between January 22 and August 2, 1964, and cycle 3 of sixteen poems (eleven of which were written between August 9 and December 15, 1964, with four—“Wenn du im Bett,” “Von der Orchis her,” “Die Gauklertrommel,” and “In Prag”—written in September and October 1963 and moved as a block into this cycle). Cycle 4 gathers eighteen poems written between December 19, 1964, and May 23, 1965, while cycle 5 consists of seven poems dated June 7 to August 18, 1965. The final cycle 6 consists of a single poem. The poem “Coagula,” placed in the fourth cycle after “Solve,” had originally been part of a project conceived during the writing of
Die Niemandsrose
in 1962 called “Paris Elegy,” but was moved to its place in
Atemwende
after the writing of “Solve” on February 2, 1965.

Concerning
Atemwende
, Celan wrote to his wife, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, on March 8, 1967: “Yesterday and the day before I have been working on the manuscript of Atemwende. It is truly the most dense work I have written so far, also the most encompassing. At a number of turns in the text I have, I must admit, felt pride.—I finally divided the manuscript into cycles—it needed to be aerated—of unequal lengths, but ‘in sich geschlossen' (self-contained) as they say in German. At the end, separated by an empty page, single poem and cycle simultaneously, the ‘EINMAL' (ONCE)” (
PC
/
GCL
, #479).

The title was first used by Celan as a word/concept in the 1960 Meridian speech, where he wrote: “Poetry: that can mean an Atemwende, a breathturn. Who knows, perhaps poetry travels this route—also the route of art—for the sake of such a breathturn?” Speaking of Georg Büchner's character Lucile, he says: “Twice, with Lucile's ‘Long live the king,' and when the sky opened as an abyss beneath Lenz, the Atemwende, the breathturn seemed to happen.” In the notes he took for this speech he had written at one point: “I had survived some things,—but survival hopefully isn't ‘everything'—, I had a bad conscience; I was searching for—maybe I can call it that?—a my breathturn.” At the same time it should be noted that for a while Celan had several titles in mind, most, if not all, based on two words, breath (
Atem
) and/or delusion (
Wahn
), the latter pointing to the bouts of psychic instability, often accompanied by sojourns in psychiatric clinics, that Celan suffered from 1962 onward, triggered no doubt by the psychic load of the Goll affair. Among the rejected titles were: Wahndock | Delusiondock; Wahnspur | Delusionspoor; Atemkristall | Breathcrystal; Atemgänge | Breathpassages or -errands; also Atem, Aufruhr | Breath, Uproar (riot, tumult, insurrection, ferment); and Atemzeile | Breathline or -row.

The poems that make up the first cycle of
Atemwende
were published under the title
Atemkristall
with eight etchings by Gisèle Celan-Lestrange in a bibliophile edition from Brunidor, Paris, 1965. (The word
Atemkristall
appears in one of the poems of that cycle, “Weggebeizt” | “Eroded.”) This represents a first major collaborative realization where reflecting on the art of etching and lithographic reproduction becomes important for Celan's poetic art, as he acknowledges in a letter to his wife of March 29, 1965: “In your etchings I recognize my poems: they go through them and are there still.” And on May 20, 1965, from the clinic at Le Vésinet, the day before his release: “And we will pick up our work again. I have seen your etchings being born next to my poems, being born of those very poems, and you know well that ‘Atemkristall / breathcrystal,' which has reopened the path of poetry for me, was born from your etchings.”

I

“Du darfst” | “You may”

October 16, 1963. The next four poems were also written on that day. This cycle of
Atemwende
opens and closes with one of Celan's most powerful images: snow. (See also Hans-Michael Speier's essay on the posthumous volume
Schneepart
in
Celan-Jahrbuch
1, and the commentaries for that volume.) “Schnee” | “snow,”and the associated ice- and glacier-cosmos, marble Atemwende. See, for example, the well-known and much-commented lines (p. 24):

Tiefimschnee,

                        Iefimnee,

                                        I – i – e.

The image of snow, in this poem only a few words away from an evocation of summer, always rhymes with winter and death. It is, as Lefebvre writes, “the meteor of 20 january, of the Wannsee conference, of Auschwitz, of the crossing of the mountain by Lenz. Each time the word appears, that historical and semantic horizon is deployed” (
RDS
, p. 192).

In his essay “Erfahrenes Sprechen – Leseversuch an Celan-Entwürfen,” in
Argumentum e Silentio
, Rolf Bücher indicates that in the first manuscript version the second section (lines 3 through 6) of the poem reads: “ich komme mit sieben / Blättern vom Sieben- / stamm.” (I come with seven / leaves from the seven- / trunk.) After analyzing the Jewish/kabbalistic component of the early version, including the relation of the seven-armed candelabra, the menorah, to the world tree, Bücher writes: “The poem should still be understood entirely with an eye to this image's genealogical heritage, in the sense of the original image of the ‘seven-trunk'” (where
Stamm
means both tree trunk and tribe). Bücher goes on to suggest that a straightforward reading of the early version “would lead to a very abstract sense of ‘heritage,' which must also be seen, in its narrowest context, as a very concrete Judaicism,” concluding that it is specifically “this abstractness that is caught in the published version of the poem, and transposed into the image of a concrete life experience.”