PAUL CELAN

Selected Poems
(translated by John Felstiner) Paul Celan ( 1920-70), originally Paul Anczel, was born in Cernauti, then in Romania; previously it was known as Czernowitz, the capital of the Bukovina province of the Austrian Empire; it is now Chernovtsy in Ukraine. His parent were German-speaking Orthodox Jews for whom German was the supreme language of culture. Like many others, they suffered the hideous irony of being deported by the German forces in 1942 to a concentration camp across the River Dniester, where they died. Paul survived by luck, doing forced labour until the Soviets occupied his home town in 1943. After the war he lived in Bucharest, translating from Russian into Romanian, but in 1947, to avoid the Communists, he went first to Vienna, then in 1948 to Paris, where in 1952 he married the artist Gisle Lestrange ( 1927-91) and lived as a translator and language teacher, later a lecturer at the Ecole Normale Suprieur, until his suicide. Celan is now recognized as the greatest German poet since Rilke. Yet he was sharply conscious of the problems, not only of writing poetry after the Holocaust, but of writing it in the language employed and arguably tainted in the administration of mass murder. The long, surging, dactylic lines of his early poems soon became compressed into concise, emotionally restrained, mostly rhymeless verse, fragmentary in syntax, tentative and questioning in tone. 'The poem today tends towards silence,' he said in 1960; 'the poem survives on the edge of itself.' He called the poem a 'crystal' from which all clichs, 'the garish talk of rubbed-off experience', have been 'etched away'. But he also described his poems as 'messages in bottles, dispatched in the hope that they will be washed up on land, somewhere and some time'. Despite their obscurity, they are dialogic poems, in which the pronoun 'you', addressed to the reader, to God, or to the poet himself, occurs much more often than the familiar lyric 'I'. His few prose writings include the story 'Conversation in the Mountains' ( 1959), a dialogue between two Jewish voices, and his speech 'The Meridian', acknowledging the award of the distinguished Bchner Prize in 1960. The poems here were selected, and the translations made, by the Celan scholar John Felstiner. Most have already appeared in his book Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew ( 1995), but some have undergone slight revisions, and two, which were only partially translated in his book, are given here complete. The annotations also depend heavily on Felstiner's book, to which the reader is referred for an exploration of the net of associations - not reducible to any cut-anddried interpretation - that the poems evoke. The first poem, 'Black Flakes', dates from 1943, when Celan learnt that his mother had been found unfit for work and shot. It was originally entitled 'Mother'. 'Deathfugue', Celan's first published poem, returns on a more universal plane to the experience of the death-camp inmates. It is a fugue-like composition in which the same recurring phrases are varied and interwoven. Felstiner's translation adds to the texture by gradually introducing German phrases, thus suggesting, as he puts it, 'the darkness of deathbringing speech', and bringing home the paradox that Celan felt obliged to write poetry commemorating the death-camps in the language of the perpetrators, which was also that of Goethe and Heine. The poem was first published in Romanian as 'Tango of Death', apparently alluding to the fact that at a camp in Galicia an SS lieutenant ordered Jewish violinists to accompany marches, gravedigging, and executions with a tango. This allusion survives in the phrase 'play on for the dancing'.

After moving to France in 1948, celan evoked biblical exile with 'In Egypt', whose title alludes to the captivity of the Hebrews in the land of the Pharaohs. "'Tenebrae'", written in March 1957, associates the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust with that of Christ on the Cross, addressing God in a tone of restrained reproach, alluding both to the tortured body on the cross and to the body received in the Eucharist, and implying an immense scepticism with the phrase 'open and void'. The remaining poems come from the 1963 collection Die Niemandsrose ( "'The No One's Rose'" or "'The No-Man's-Rose'", by analogy with 'noman's-land'). It is here that celan explores his Jewish heritage most extensively. The book is dedicated to the memory of another Jewish poet, Osip Mandelstam ( 1891-1938?), who perished in the Gulag; Celan translated many of his poems from Russian into German. The untitled poem beginning 'There was earth inside them', a kind of inverted psalm which stubbornly refuses to praise the Lord, recalls the forced labour of "'Deathfugue'" and the reproachful tone of "'Tenebrae'", but ends with the hope of communication and a suggestion of fidelity in the shared ring 'on our finger'. Similarly, "'Zurich, at the Stork'" reports that in his conversation with Nelly Sacjs on Ascension Day, 26 May 1960, Celan 'spoke against' the God in whom Sachs believed, and records her gentle and enigmatic rejoinder. Sachs is also the 'sister' addressed in 'The Sluice', a poem which sets Jewish memory against the devastation wrought by German barbarism. "'Psalm'" is an anti-psalm, negating in its first line the act of creation by which God 'formed man of the dust of the ground' ( Genesis 2:7), and opposing God with the defiantly humanistic and vitalist rose. The 'purpleword' and the 'thorn' suggest the crown of thorns and purple robe which accompanied Christ's crucifixion, but the word here seems to be the poetic word of man set against the creative and destructive word of God. Celan displays his versatility which the ballad 'A Rogues' and Gonifs' Ditty...', written early in 1961. Satirically adopting the supposed view of anti-Semites, he casts himself as a hooknosed Jew, a member of the underworld, who will end up on the gallows, and associates himself with the medieval poet of low-life Paris, Francois Villon, and with the traditional view of Yiddish as a secret Language used by thieves. But the low is also the high: Sadagora, a small town near Celan's birthplace Czernowitz (the poem reverses their usual relations), was the seat of a famous dynasty of hasidic rabbis. The poem continues into word-play which is more meaningful than it looks at first sight, for 'almond-tree' is the literal meaning of "'Mandelstam'", and Celan mutates it into 'Machandelbaum', 'juniper-tree', the title of one of the Grimms' fairy-tales; the translator has ingeniously substituted 'Allemandtree' (from French allemand, 'German'). "'Radix, Matrix'" returns to the Bible, asking how the prophecy that the descendants of Abraham would bring forth the Messiah can be related to the mass murder of the Jews, introducing aggressively phallic imagery, but also incorporating into this history Celan's own family and addressing his mother as 'you'. Like "'Psalm'", it ends with strange, defiant hope: the way down may lead to 'one of the wild- blooming crowns', recalling the motif of kingship and the rose of the earlier poem. 'Mandorla' indicates Celan's increasing interest in Jewish mysticism. When he wrote it, he had moved on from reading Buber to studying Scholem. Hence the stress on 'Nothing', supported by an aural Hebrew pun on ayin meaning both 'nothing' and 'eye'. The 'almond', which is the literal meaning of the Italian mandorla, also evokes Mandelstam again (German Mandel, almond), while the 'King' suggests the royal title so often used in the Bible (e.g. Psalm 24). Finally, a Jewish legend is evoked in 'To one who stood before the door', begun on the same day that Celan wrote 'Mandorla'. Thebeing addressed is the Golem, the speechless man made out of clay by the sixteenth-century rabbi Lw of Prague to defend the Jews. Legend often depicts him as a dangerous figure who gets out of control, but here he is the object of prayer, described as a 'brother' and a 'chittering manikin', who evokes not fear but pitty.

Black Flakes
Snow has fallen, with no light. A month has gone by now or two, since autumn in its monkish cowl brought tidings my way, a leaf from Ukrainian slopes: 'Remember, it's winter here too, for the thousandth time now in the land where the broadest torrent flows: Ya'akov's* heavenly blood, blessed by axes... Oh ice of unearthly red--their Hetman* wades with all his troop into darkening suns... Oh for a cloth, child, to wrap myself when it's flashing with helmets, when the rosy floe bursts, when snowdrift sifts your father's bones, hooves crushing the Song of the Cedar*... A shawl, just a thin little shawl, so I have by my side, now you're learning to weep, this hard world that will never turn green, my child, for your child!' Autumn bled all away, Mother, snow burned me through: I sought out my heart so it might weep, I found--oh the summer's breath, it was like you. Then came my tears. I wove the shawl.

Deathfugue
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night we drink and we drink we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margareta* he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling he whistles his hounds to come close he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground he commands us play up for the dance Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening we drink and we drink A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margareta Your ashen hair Shulamith* we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped

He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes they are blue jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening we drink and we drink A man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margareta your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers He shouts play death more sweetly this Death is a master from Deutschland he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then as smoke to the sky you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air he plays with his vipers and daydreams der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland dein goidenes Haar Margarete dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

In Egypt
Thou shalt say to the eye of the woman stranger: Be the water. Thou shalt seek in the stranger's eye those thou knowest are in the water. Thou shalt call them up from the water: Ruth! Naomi! Miriam!* Thou shalt adorn them when thou liest with the stranger. Thou shalt adorn them with the stranger's cloud-hair. Thou shalt say to Ruth and Miriam and Naomi: Behold, I sleep with her! Thou shalt most beautifully adorn the woman stranger near thee. Thou shalt adorn her with sorrow for Ruth, for Miriam and Naomi. Thou shah say to the stranger: Behold, I slept with them!

Tenebrae*

Near are we,* Lord, near and graspable. Grasped already, Lord, clawed into each other,* as if each of our bodies were your body, Lord. Pray, Lord, pray to us, we are near. Wind-skewed we went there, went there, to bend over pit and crater. Went to the water-trough, Lord. It was blood, it was what you shed, Lord. It shone. It cast your image into our eyes, Lord. Eyes and mouth stand so open and void, Lord. We have drunk, Lord. The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord. Pray, Lord. We are near.

THERE WAS EARTH INSIDE THEM, and they dug.

They dug and dug, and so their day went past, their night. And they did not praise God,* who, so they heard, wanted all this, who, so they heard, witnessed all this. They dug and heard nothing more; they did not grow wise, invented no song, devised for themselves no sort of language. They dug.

There came then a stillness, there came also storm, all of the oceans came. I dig, you dig, and the worm also digs, and the singing there says: They dig. O one, o none, o no one, o you. Where did it go, when it went nowhere at all? O you dig and I dig, and I dig through to you, and the ring on our finger awakens.

Zurich, at the Stork

For Nelly Sachs Our talk was of Too Much, of Too Little. Of Thou and Yet-Thou, of clouding through brightness, of Jewishness, of your God. Of-that. On the day of an ascension, the Minster stood over there, it came with some gold across the water. Our talk was of your God, I spoke against him, I let the heart that I had hope: for his highest, death-rattled, his wrangling word-Your eye looked at me, looked away, your mouth spoke toward the eye, I heard: We really don't know, you know, we really don't know what counts.

The Sluice

Over all this grief of yours: no second heaven. .......... To a mouth for which it was a thousandword,* lost-I lost a word that was left to me: Sister. To polygoddedness* I lost a word that sought me: Kaddish.* Through the sluice I had to go, to salvage the word back into and out of and across the salt flood: Yizkor.*

Psalm
No one kneads us again out of earth and clay, no one incants our dust No one. Blessd art thou, No One. In thy sight would we bloom. In thy spite. A Nothing we were, are now, and ever shall be, blooming: the Nothing-, the No-One's-Rose. With our pistil soul-bright, our stamen heaven-waste, our corolla red from the purpleword we sang

over, O over the thorn.

A ROGUES' AND GONIFS'* DITTY SUNG AT PARIS EMPRS PONTOISE* BY PAUL CELAN FROM CZERNOWITZ NEAR SADAGORA
Now and then only, in dark times. ( HEINRICH HEINE, "to Edom')* Back then, when they still had gallows, then--right? --they had an On High. Wind, where's my beard got to, where's my Jew-patch,* where's my beard that you pluck? Crooked, the path I took was crooked, yes, for yes it was straight.* Hey-ho. Crooked, so goes my nose. Nose. And we made for Friuli.* There we would have, there we would have. For the almond tree was blossoming. Almondtree, Taimundree. Almonddream, Dralmondream. And the Allemandtree too. Lemandtree. Hey-ho. Aum. Envoi* But, but it rears up,* that tree. It, it too stands against the Plague.

Radix, Matrix*
As one speaks to stone, as you, to me from the abyss, from a homeland consanguined, uphurled, you, you of old to me, you to me in the nix of a night, you in Yet-Night encountered, you Yet-You--: Back then, when I wasn't there, back then, when you paced along the field, alone:* Who, who was it, that stock, that murdered one, that one standing black into heaven: rod and testis--? (Root. Root of Abraham. Root of Jesse.* No One's root--O ours.) Yes, as one speaks to the stone, as you thrust with my hands there and into Nothingness, so it is with what's here: even this spore bed splits, this Downward is one of the wildblooming crowns.

Mandorla*
In the almond--what stands in the almond? The Nothing.

The Nothing stands in the almond. There it stands and stands. In the Nothing--who stands there? The King. There stands the King, the King. There he stands and stands. Jewish curls, no grey for you. And your eye--whereto stands your eye? Your eye stands opposite the almond. Your eye, the Nothing it stands opposite. It stands behind the King. So it stands and stands. Human curls, no grey for you. Empty almond, royal blue. To ONE WHO STOOD BEFORE THE DOOR, one evening: to him I opened my word--: toward the clod I saw him trot, toward the halfbaked brother born in a doughboy's dung-caked boot, him with his godlike loins all bloody, the chittering manikin. Rabbi, I gnashed, Rabbi Lw:* For this one circumcise his word, for this one scribe the living Nothing on his soul, for this one spread your two cripplefingers in the halemaking prayer. For this one. .......... Slam the evening door* shut, Rabbi. ..........

Fling the morning door open, Ra--