Breathturn into Timestead (40 page)

“Die Spur eines Bisses” | “The trace of a bite”

October 5, 1965.

“In der ewigen Teufe” | “In the eternal depth”

October 10, 1965, Paris.

ewigen Teufe | eternal depth: In the
Brockhaus-Taschenbuch der Geologie
(p. 174): “Keine Faltung geht bis in the ‘ewige Teufe'” (No convolution reaches into “the eternal depth”).

brennst ein Gebet ab | blow up a prayer:
Abbrennen
(literally, “to burn off”) in mining parlance refers to setting off an explosion (
TA
,
Fadensonnen
, p. 14).

“Sichtbar” | “Visible”

October 14, 1965.

Hirnstamm | brainstem: The brainstem (or brain stem) is the posterior stemlike part of the base of the brain that is connected to the spinal cord. The brain stem controls the flow of messages between the brain and the rest of the body, including the corticospinal tract (motor), the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway (fine touch, vibration sensation, and proprioception), and the spinothalamic tract (pain, temperature, itch, and crude touch). It also controls basic body functions, such as breathing, swallowing, heart rate, and blood pressure, and is pivotal in maintaining consciousness and regulating the sleep cycle. The brain stem consists of the midbrain (mesencephalon), the pons (part of metencephalon), and the medulla oblongata (myelencephalon), the base of the brain, which is formed by the enlarged top of the spinal cord. The medulla oblongata directly controls breathing, blood flow, heart rate, eating, and other essential functions (adapted from
MedicineNet.com
and other sources). In an article on the risks of psychopharmacopoeia, extant in Celan's estate, the following sentence occurs: “In contrast to sleeping pills like Luminal the new medications act directly on the brainstem.”

“Umweg- / Karten” | “Detour- / maps”

October 15, 1965, Paris.

folie à deux: Literally, “a madness shared by two,” a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another; now more often referred to in the medical literature as “shared psychotic disorder” or “induced delusional disorder.” By this time, Paul Celan's psychological problems had come to a crisis, and he and Gisèle, their relationship having become deeply conflictual, begin speaking of a separation, necessary according to Gisèle, though Celan refuses to entertain the idea. The concept of a “folie à deux” is his reaction to this looming separation.

“Sackleinen-Gugel” | “Sackcloth-mold”

October 17, 1965, Paris.

-fibrille | -fibril: A fibril is a fine fiber, such as a nerve fiber or neurofibril, that is about ten nanometers in diameter.

“Spasmen” | “Spasms”

October 18, 1965, Paris.

Knochenstabritzung | bone-rod-incisions: In Behn,
Kultur der Urzeit
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950), there is a reading trace mentioning the natural arts of the Old Stone Age, including “Eskimo incisions on reindeer bones” (
BW
, p. 755).

Grandelkranz | eyetooth-circlet:
Grandel
is given as “upper eyetooth” (Langenscheid's
Encyclopaedic Muret-Sanders
) and as “large canine tooth in the upper jaw of a deer” (Harrap's
Standard Dictionary
). The Grimms give it the meaning
härchen
, “little hair,” and link it to
Granne
, meaning “stacheliges, steifes Haar, vorzüglich vom Barthaar, nicht aber vom Haupthaar; älterer Sprache zugehörig” (prickly, stiff hair, rather from beard hair than from head hair; belonging to an older language). Wiedemann indicates that the word can be used both for the hair and for the tooth (
BW
, p. 755).

“Deine Augen im Arm” | “Your eyes in the arm”

October 20–21, 1965.

Herzschatten | heartshadow: See the similar word formation in “Osterqualm” | “Eastersmoke” (p. 78), where the poem speaks of a
Herzschattenseil
, a “heartshadowcord.”

“Hendaye” | “Hendaye”

October 22, 1965, Hendaye/Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Celan's psychological crisis has deepened, and on October 21 he starts an impromptu journey through France that will last until October 29. “In seven days Celan performs a sort of tour de France: Paris, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Ascain, Hendaye, Pau, Tarbes, Toulouse, Montpellier, Avignon, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Valence, Lyon, Paris. He sends a postcard to his son from nearly each stopping place … During this errancy he writes or drafts seven poems that will make up one part of the first cycle of
Threadsuns
and sends two of them to his wife [‘The ounce of truth' and ‘In the noises,' p. 128].” He wrote from the border town Hendaye to his son Eric: “Same day, a bit further on, in Hendaye. I came here over the road along the steep coastal cliffs—it lies at a distance of 14 kilometers from St-Jean-de-Luz” (
PC
/
GCL
, #287).

Hendaye: An early draft title for the poem was “Garotten-Grenze” | “Garrote-Border,” the method of execution used in Franco's Spain. On October 23, 1940, exactly twenty-five years earlier, Hitler and Franco had a meeting in this town.

“Pau, Nachts” | “Pau, by Night”

October 23, 1965, Pau. Celan was born on a twenty-third of November and married on a twenty-third of December; he attributed a talismanic meaning to this day in the month, calling those days in November and December
grands anniversaires
(great birthdays/anniversaries) and the twenty-thirds of the other months
petits anniversaires
(small birthdays/anniversaries). As he points out in the letter to Gisèle written that day from Pau: “Again, a happy anniversary! In two months it will be out great anniversary—may we have many more like them, in midst our strengths,
all
our re-found strengths, raising Eric!” (
PC
/
GCL
, #287).

Heinrich / dem Vierten | Henry / the Fourth: Henry IV of France (1553–1610), king of Navarre, then king of France, was born in a room in the castle in Pau, in which a tortoise shell that supposedly served as his cradle is exhibited. Henry IV was murdered by the Catholic fanatic François Ravaillac.

Unsterblichkeitsziffer | immortality cypher / Schildkrötenadel | tortoise-nobility / eleatisch | eleatically: Zeno of Elea (ca. 490
B.C.E.
–ca
.
430
B.C.E.
), a member of the Eleatic school founded by Parmenides, was famous for his paradox of the tortoise and Achilles, which suggests that motion is impossible as it plays on the concept of infinity.

“Pau, Später” | “Pau, Later”

October 23, 1965, Pau–October 30, 1965, Paris.

Albigenserschatten | Albigenses-shadow: Catharism was a Christian religious movement that flourished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Languedoc region of southern France. Seen as heretics by the Catholic church, the Cathars were reviled by the pope, who called for their suppression, which eventually led to twenty years of war against the Cathars and their allies in Languedoc, the so-called Albigensian Crusade (the castle town of Albi being a central stronghold)—a true extermination campaign in which a vast number of men, women, and children were killed.

Waterloo-Plein: See the commentary on the poem “Solve” | “Solve,” page 491. For a more detailed comment on this poem, see Janz,
Vom Engagement absoluter Poesie
, #114, p. 185.

Baruch: Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), a major Jewish-Dutch philosopher who, accused of being a heretical thinker, had been excluded from his religious community.

die / kantige | the / angular … [to end of poem]: Spinoza made his living as a lens grinder.

“Der Hengst” | “The stallion”

October 23, 1965, Pau/Tarbes. Early versions were titled “In the Pyrenees.”

“Die Unze Wahrheit” | “The ounce of truth”

October 25, Montpellier–October 26, 1965, on train from Montpellier to Avignon. That latter town had also been the first stage of his honeymoon trip in December 1952. The first draft of the poem read: “The ounce of truth / behind delusion / shoved my enemies / into boiling nothingness.”

das kämpfend in Herz- / höhe | in struggle to heart- / level: Jean Starobinski had written to Celan in a letter dated March 29, 1965: “My father was a Jew according to
the law of the heart
(and not the rite); you belong to that same community, and I feel more strongly attached to it today” (editor's emphasis). Celan had thanked Starobinski exactly for those words, repeating the expression “the law of the heart” (
PC
/
GCL
, 2:261 and 209).

Sohn, siegt | son, wins: In his notebook, next to the version of October 25, Celan had added: “
You
win, Eric, with me / and your mother” (
PC
/
GCL
, 2:261).

“In den Geräuschen” | “In the noises”

October 26, 1965, Valence.

“Lyon, Les Archers” | “Lyon, Les Archers”

October 29–30, 1965, Paris. The poem arises from a note Celan took on October 25 in Lyon: “Café Les Archers, the girl reading the Stranger.” The reference is to Albert Camus' novel
L'Étranger
|
The Stranger
(
TA
,
Fadensonnen
, p. 39).

Archers | Archers: Celan's astrological sign was Sagittarius.

“Die Köpfe” | “The heads”

November 12, 1965, Paris.

“Wo bin ich” | “Where am I”

November 17, 1965, Paris.

“Die längst Entdeckten” | “The long discovered”

November 21, 1965, Paris–February 8, 1967. On November 21, 1965, Celan undertook a trip to Switzerland and also wrote the following poem, not included in
Threadsuns
(
BW
, p. 485):

BELEAGUERED

The delusion-runs: say,

that they are delusion-runs,

of the murder-

mouths and -writings and -signs,

say, that they are composed [erdichtet]

by you.

Of the rain don't say:

he rains.

Say: it

rains.

Say

Don't say

Say

Don't say

Say

Don't say it

Treppe / zum Hafen | staircase / to the harbor … Odessitka | Odessitka: The final word of the poem is the Russian name for a female inhabitant of Odessa, and the final stanzas of the poem recall the scene in Sergei Eisenstein's
Battleship Potemkin
(1925) when czarist troops goose-step down the seemingly endless flight of stairs known as the “Odessa steps,” mowing down men, women, and children. Celan had a lifelong interest in the Russian Revolution, revolutionary politics in general, and Eisenstein's work, but always with a critical mind for both the politics and the art. In a letter to Gisèle of August 21, 1965, he writes after watching Eisenstein's
October
at the Cinémathèque (
PCS
, #267):

So, all alone, I saw Petersburg, the workers, the sailors of the Aurora. It was very moving, at times reminding one of the “Potemkin,” bringing to mind the thoughts and dreams of my childhood, my thoughts of today and of always, poetry-always-true-always-faithful, I saw my placards, many of them, those that, not very long ago, I evoked in the poem I sent you—Vaporband-, banderole-uprising,” I saw the October Revolution, its men, its flags, I saw hope always en route, the brother of poetry, I saw …

Then, at a certain moment, at the moment when the insurgents occupy the Winter Palace, it began to desert poetry and to become Cinema, motion-picture shots, tendentious and overdone, the intertexts became propaganda—all that was History and its Personages had anyway been, from the very beginning, what was the least convincing, the role of the Left Social-Revolutionaries was completely expunged—, so then the heart loosened, searched for its silences (won, lost, won again), wrapped them around itself and led me outside, alone, as I had come in, running the gauntlet between young cinephile gents and young girls “mit tupierter Frisur,” with too much makeup, in pants, sort of leftist sixteenth arrondissement, erratic and flabby.—But there were some, no doubt, who knew, taking, here too, responsibility for the terrible eclipses.

Long live the sailors of Kronstadt!

    Long live the Revolution! Long live Love!

       Long live Petersburg! Long live Paris!

         Long live Poetry!”

“All deine Siegel erbrochen? Nie.” | “All your seals broken open? Never.”

Composed on the train from Montpellier to Avignon on October 26 and completed on November 23, 1965 (his forty-fifth birthday) in Switzerland.

verzedere | cedarize: A Celanian neologism, of which Ulrich Konietzny says: “The verb ‘verzedern' can only be deduced connotatively maybe with the meaning that something like cedar wood should be worked through. One can also read it as an allusion to the habitual burning of strongly aromatic cedar wood in Israel” (Konietzny, 1988, p. 108). I do, however, always hear the particle
ver
- in Celan as indicating a deviation from a direction or aim into something that is wrong, or into the opposite of what was intended, and as the destructive motion in words like
verreißen
, “to pull to pieces,” etc. There are of course some positive meanings to this particle, as in
verknüpfen
, “to tie together,”
verdichten
, “to tighten,” etc. There are close to three hundred occurrences of the particle
ver
- in Celan's work, many of them in neologic constructions, such as
verzedere
, and many of these with somewhat negative connotations.