Readig EngfuehrungSzondi

Reading "Engfhrung": An Essay on the Poetry of Paul Celan Author(s): Peter Szondi, D. Caldwell and S.
Esh Source: boundary 2, Vol. 11, No. 3, The Criticism of Peter Szondi (Spring, 1983), pp. 231-264 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303011 . Accessed: 10/06/2013 14:16
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Reading "Engfuhrung": An Essay on the Poetryof Paul Celan'
Peter Szondi
translated by D. Caldwell and S. Esh
ins [I,1] VERBRACHT Gelande mit der untrOglichen Spur: DRIVENinto the terrain with the infallible trace:
Difficulties in understanding begin with the opening words of the poem, which Celan wrote in 1958, but at the same time so does the possibility of recognizing the inadequacy of traditional methods of reading. Traditional approaches, especially when applied to texts considered obscure, falsify both the reading and the words being read. In this type of reading one would of course, yet unjustifiably, begin with the first lines of "Engf0hrung"and ask the meaning of "terrain I with the infallible trace." As a start one might be tempted to draw parallels between this passage and others, a procedure whereby one would compare the lines "terrain/with the infallible trace"-the sense of which is yet unclear-with other lines from Celan's work one believes to have understood, and in which one of these expression appears. Even if one assumes a phrase to have the same meaning in varying contexts-and this is a questionable supposition at best-and even if the meaning established for the phrase in a particular passage were 231
to illuminate to some extent the sense of the lines under study, these lines should nevertheless have been made clear without being understood; for the meaning of the words is revealed only by that particular use which at first eluded comprehension. Thus, the question of what is meant by the "infallible trace" is of less importance than the observation that in the first three lines, the meaning of the "infallible trace" is not given, though the repeated use of the definite article presumes that the reader already knows which "terrain" and which "trace" are meant. For this reason then, at the beginning of "Engf0hrung,"the (possible) sense of the wprds employed is of less importance than the fact that the reader is led into an unfamiliar context, one in which he is nevertheless treated as someone who knows it or, more precisely, as one not permitted to know. From the outset the reader is "driven" into a strange and unfamiliar landscape. Whether this place is the "terrain I with the infallible trace" is unknown, is not yet known. But this much is already manifest: were these lines to specify exactly what they are about, the reader would not be in a position to ask whether it might be himself that is referred to. Thus, once again, in lieu of a question that asks who it is that is "driven into/the terrain/ with the infallible trace" must come the recognition that this is not stated, and, therefore, since it remains unsaid, the reader can assume that the lines (also) refer to him. So, from its beginning, "Engf0hrung"allows the reader to understand that he is not being addressed by the poet (as is so often the case), and also that he is not te object of the poem: rather, he is transplanted to the interiorof the text in such a way that it becomes impossible to distinguish between the one reading and that which is being read; the reading subject coincides with the subject of the poem being read. The three lines which compose the first stanza end with a colon. The reader is therefore prepared to meet, in the lines that follow, something he doesn't yet know, and also something which is not to be known, something which, as the not knowable, becomes the content of a reading of the opening lines of "Engf0hrung." Gras, auseinandergeschrieben. Die Steine, weiss, [1,2] mit den Schatten der Halme: Grass, written asunder. The stones, white, with the shadows of grassblades: A grammatical reading would be possible, in which the grass itself, this "Grass, written asunder," is "driven into the/terrain/with the infallible trace." This possibility is unlikely but it exists nonetheless: again because of an ambiguity, the connection between the two first stanzas is re-established. "Grass, written asunder"-is this the "terrain / with the infallible trace" or is it that which was "driven"there? The ambiguity is not a defect nor mere stylistic contrivance, it is the structure of the poetic text itself. The reader, in lines 4 and 5, is confronted by a description of the "terrain / with the infallible trace": "Grass, written asunder. The stones, white, / with the shadows of grassblades." The scene is a
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landscape, but one described as if written: the "Grass" is "written asunder." A traditional textual explication, one bound to traditional rhetoric, would no doubt say that the grass of the landscape is being compared to letters, and that the analogy between the two (in accordance with the Aristotelian definition of metaphor) allows the poet to write: "Grass, written asunder," and the reader to understand this grass as shapes dissolved into letters. And yet, it is not "literally"a question of letters-and what is the poetic text if not the texture of words-but rather, distinctly of grass. It is grass that is "written asunder." In other words: the blades of grass are also letters, and the landscape is text. Only because the "terrain / with the infallible trace" is (also) text can the reader be "driven" into its interior. One might wish to know more about the character of this landscape, or, perhaps more simply, what it looks like. The second sentence of the stanza appears to offer the answer: "The stones, white, I with the shadows of grassblades." It is a terrainof whiteness and emptiness, yet also of stones and shadows. Whether these stones are gravestones or only those hard, lusterless, dense bodies, those at once diminished and protective forms of star and eye which play a significant part in Celan's "imaginary world,"2 we do not know, which means precisely that we are not meant to know. Only the text of the terrain is seen and known. If we read the grass as letters, then the white of the stones becomes the white of the page, becomes white in general,3 cut across only be letter-grassblades or, more exactly, by their shadows. This text is a terrain of death and sorrow. One could say that the reader has been "driven" into a landscape where death and shadows prevail-the dead and their remembrance. Yet such an interpretation founders once again on the textuality of a landscape that is not the object of what is being read, but is itself that which is read. For this reason the instructions the poet gives-to himself? to the reader? probably both-function differently from those in a certain kind of poetry, and not as an introduction. These imperatives can be perceived and followed only after one has been "driven" into the text-"terrain." [1,2] Lies nicht mehr-schau! Schau night mehr-geh! Read no more-look! Look no more-go!
Reading and looking stand in relation to the ambiguity of the terrain, which is at once text and scene. Because looking replaces reading, the first intruction appears to transcend textuality, appears to draw the landscape as such into consideration. Yet the second imperative, which contradicts and sublates the first (through, as will become clear, a rhetorical figure essential to "Engfuhrung"), substitutes movement for sight. Does this mean that the read text and the observed image are to yield to a reality which enables the readerspectator to "go"? Yes and no. For in no way is the fiction of textuality forfeited in favor of reality. It is not the receptive passivity of the reader-spectator that is to disappear in the face of supposedly real action, in the face of engagement. On the contrary, the text as such
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refuses to serve reality and longer, refuses to play the part assigned it since Aristotle. Poetry is not mimesis, is no longer representation: it becomes reality. Poetic reality, of course, text which no longer submits to reality, but frames and establishes itself as reality. That is why this text cannot be "read," nor can the image it describes be "looked" at. The poet desires that be and the reader, "go" forward into the "terrain" which is his text. How, and for what reason? [I,3] Geh, deine Stunde hat keine Schwestern, du bistbist zuhause. Ein Rad, iangsam, rollt aus sich selber, die Speichen klettern, klettern auf schwartzlichem Feld, die Nacht braucht keine Sterne, nirgends fragt es nach dir. Go, your hour has no sisters, you areare at home. A wheel, slowly, rolls out of itself, the spokes climb, climb on the blackish field, the night needs no stars, nowhere are you being asked about. The hour that has no more sisters is the last hour, death. Whoever is there is "at home." With Celan this trope takes on new meaning. Death was the harbor to which one returned, because life is considered a journey; now it is so because Celan's poetry has its origin in death, in memory of the dead, in "remembrance." If his poetry no longer describes reality, but itself becomes reality, then the "blackish field" is no longer the object of the poem's description, but rather that which comes to exist through it. Over the field, across which the poetry, writing itself, "goes," the reader also passes. But the fact that text-representation (which is supposed to serve reality) is replaced by text-reality in no way points toward aestheticism; rather, the will of the poet announces itself as determined not to meddle in the reality of death and the extermination camps, and not to act as though a poetic image of them could be created. At the same time, however, he allows the aesthetic reality of his poetry to remain, a reality dedicated almost exclusively to the memory of the dead. This reality is characterized by a movement which has no one is "at home" can apparently exist without the one who approaches it: the spokes of the wheel "climb" through the advance of the poet-reader. But this is not to say that the subject, whether author or reader, is pushed aside, replaced by an object, the wheel. Rather,
234 mover but itself: the "wheel . . . rolls out of itself." The place where
the subject ceases to be a subject when it is "at home," and enters even more radically into the text than at the beginning. Thus, the spokes, and not the subject, advance: having become a wheel it has ceased to be reader or observer, of anyone but itself. And "nowhere" in this kingdom of death, in this night which, if illuminated by stars, would no longer exist, "are you being asked about." These last words of the first section of "Engfihrung" reappear at the beginning of the second (the poem is composed of nine parts), but in a special way. Here, as in every other "transition" between sections, the final line(s)-varied in opposition to its first usage, newly combined, or, though this occurs only once, expanded-is(are) printed on the otherwise empty right side of the page, immediately preceding the actual beginning of the following section: Nirgends [ I ] fragt es nach dir-
Der Ort, wo sie lagen, er hat einen Namen-er hat keinen. Sie lagen nicht dort. Etwas lag zwischen ihnen. Sie sahn nicht hindurch. Sahn nicht, nein, redeten von Worten. Keines erwachte, der Schlaf kam Obersie. Nowhere are you being asked forThe place where they lay, it has a name-it has none. They did not lie there. Something lay between them. They did not see through it. Did not see, no, spoke of words. None awoke, sleep came over them.
The "rise"-"reprise" which on first reading might seem to be an echo, appears in a new light if the exact significance of the musical term Engfuhrung is considered. Engfuhrung means "temporal constriction," i.e., bringing together the themes of a composition in the
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most simultaneous contrapuntal manner possible. In the narrowest sense, the Engf0hrung (English: stretta) is the third (last, part of a fugue, in which the rapid succession of the canonic entry themes of the different voices produces an especially intense, interlaced contrapuntal pattern" (Der Grosse Brockhaus).4 Thus, to resume at the beginning of each section the concluding lines of the one preceding is not pure "prise"-"reprise". Rather, the words printed on the right side of the page merge with the entrance of the next voice. Their typographical arrangement expresses a near simultaneity, which is essential to the musical Engf0hrung and gives it its compressed character. However little this definition of Engf0hrung does justice to the poetic text, the composition of Celan's poem is nevertheless only to be comprehended through it. The principle of composition called Engf0hrung discloses on the one hand, the function of the repeated lines, and, also explains the tight, self-constricting relationship of the nine sections of the poem. On the other hand, it presents these sections as so many voices, as voices in the literal as well as musical sense of the word: the first section, in the present tense, assumes a subject that speaks to another: it gives him instructions ("Read no more-look!/ Look no more-go!"); It tells him: "Nowhere!are you being asked about." In the second section the past tense predominates. The description, which implies no "speaking" subject, is directed toward a "they": thus the third person plural is decisive for the "voice" of the second section. Among the further fragments of voices distributed through parts Ill to IX,the third is in the present and past tenses and uses the I lay between you"). direct discourse of the first person ("It is 1,1, /I The fourth, however, also in the present and past tenses, is similar to the second, except that time, not people, is spoken of, time through which these people pass or which was once their past ("Years, / years, a finger / feels down and up"). The fifth section, is preceded by the end of the fourth (or rather, begins at almost the same time as that ending), which reappears in reverse form ("who/ covered it up?" becomes 'Covered it/ up-who?"). The temporal sequence of present to past (from Ito IIand within IV),the opening direction, which corresponds to the act of memory is reversed as well in the fifth. At this point the poem proceeds from the past ("Came, came./ Came a
word . . . "), making its way into the present-first
of a specific time ("Night./ Night-and-night"),and into the present of someone being commanded ("Go/to the eye, to the moist one"). From this it can be established that the "transition" from part IVto V marks the turning point in "Engf0hrung" (the transition comprises, moreover, the poem's center, since the final, parenthesized section is in fact a reprise of the poem's opening). The sixth and longest section of the nine, in contrast to the poem's opening). The sixth and longest section of the nine, in contrast to the poem's first half (I-IV),introduces an "1"as the speaking subject which not only addresses a
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into the present
grasp/each other-each other with/ these/hands?"). This "we" reappears again in the eighth section ("near/our fled hands"), while the inof description and report makes no use at all of tervening section (VII) the personal pronoun ("Nights, demixed. Circles,/ green or blue, red/ squares: the/world puts its innermost play into play with the new/ hours."). In contrast to the first half of the poem (characterized by a sequence moving from second person singular to third person plural to first person singular), the second half, which also repeats the new order of tenses, from simple past [VI] is determined by to present [VIII]) the first person plural. Of course the sense of this composition as Engf0hrung is not yet fully grasped here. This will be possible only after the connections between the individual stanzas have been understood, that is, when they have been read; "read," although the connections are made apparent only through the interpretation, and are not the object but the result of the reading. Not only is there no object (none to be read) without a reading subject, without a reading-though it may not be necessary, it should be pointed out that this in no way implies that the reading can produce its object at will-but since the text is the texture of words, the interpretation introduces nothing that is alien to the text when it attempts to describe the verbal weave. This weave in "Engf0hrung" is most precisely the composition of the various voices which are the various parts of the poem. A simple consideration of the relationships between these voices (thus the individual parts of the poem) does not complete our understanding of this weave; it is also important to note that these textual connections are realized in a musical rather than discursive fashion: in the form of anEngfuhrung. Further, this title must be understood as a name (and not merely a musical reference), if one hopes to create a-necessarily open-reading of the poem "Engf0hrung,"since the connections between the individual sections determine the poem's progression; since, in addition, they are dependent on a construction which imitates music; and finally, since the musical construction has been transposed into the medium of language and has become recognizable, by name, in the poem's title. The first section of "Engf0hrung" "drives" the subject, author and reader, into a "terrain"that is at once both death and text. This is the point from which he proceeds, without anyone asking about him. The end of the first section ("Nowhere/ are you being asked about-") blends with the beginning of the second, the first stanza of which, once again, reads as follows: [11,1] Der Ort, wo sie lagen, er hat einen Namen-er hat keinen. Sie lagen nicht dort. Etwas lag zwischen ihnen. Sie sahn nicht hindurch.
as a "we" (" . . . we/ read it in the book, [
"you" ("you/ know it"), but also speaks of itself and those addressed
. .
. ] How/ did we
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The place where they lay, it has a name-it has none. They did not lie there. Something lay between them. They did not see through it. The composition of a poem on the model of an Engf0hrung (or, to be more general: a musical form), requires at least a partial avoidance of discursive speech. For this reason a reading must consider not only the words and sentences, but also, especially, the relationships produced by repetition, transformation, and contradiction. In "Engf0hrung"this is especially true for the "transitions," where the voices dissolve into one another. The relationships cannot be established with certainty since the idiom of the poem, unlike the language of the reading into which it is translated, is not discursive or tied to words. Yet if the language of the reading wishes to avoid adulterating that which is read, then it must avoid presenting its object in unequivocal or certain terms, since it neither issues from nor ends in such a reality. In considering the relationship between sections I and II,one would therefore presume that the subjects spoken of in the past tense in IIare those about whom it is "nowhere" asked, and, thus, some "other"; in that case the past which is spoken of is a past of which the person is reminded (or it by him), which advances into the "terrain" which is the poem. But this also implies that to advance is equally to return home: "you are-/ are at home" (I). The segmentation of the lines functions to characterize not only the sections (this is of marginal importance), but also the lines themselves, and indeed, Celan's poetry as a whole. The division at this point, intensified by the repetition of the verb form "are," characterizes nothing other than what is experienced in the process of reading. "You are-" it remains unclear whether additional information might be expected which would connect and explain either what "you are," or whether it is question of an existential declaration, of the fact that "you are." "Areat home"-at this point the reader posesses the additional information; he knows that it is a matter of being-at-home. Yet he knows equally (more precisely, he reads) that existence as such is also being considered, and (this he experiences only through the additional information) that his being-at-home, that existence, according to "Engf0hrung,"is only attained when one has returned (to the origins? to the Mother?-to what was for Celan the indelible memory of his mother's death in a concentration camp). Real existence unites itself with non-existence-more exactly, is existence only when it remains true to non-existence, remembers it. Since advance is return,the second section signifies a "place" belonging to the past, "where they lay." The "place [ . . . ] has/ a name-it has/ none." While investigating this figure, in rhetoric called "correctio," and one which, as already mentioned, is characteristic of "Engf0hrung," it must not be forgotten that here, once again, the reading subject is provided with no indication of the motive and basis for the correction (one affecting an immediate association with
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musical composition and its language). It might be said then, that if the place which has a name has no name, and if they do not lie in is the place where they lie, this must be so for a reason: "Something/lay between them." This "something," of which we as yet know nothing except that it prevents their seeing (themselves?), begins to speak in the third section, where it reveals its nature. This is the sense of the second "transition" (between II and III). Before the self-presentation of that which "lay between them," we must read the second stanza: [11,2] Sahn nicht, nein, redeten von Worten. Keines erwachte, der Schlaf kam uber sie. Did not see, no, spoke of words. None awoke, sleep came over them. "Spoke of/ words" indicates that the deficient mode of existence in this place, where "something/ lay between them," is simultaneously verbal (expressed through the medium of language), and the deficiency the word itself. Indeed, these three meanings can be viewed as separate, yet none has precedence over the others: only in their collective sense, here, as throughout, does the texture of Engf0hrung" arise. Furthermore, the pronoun "none" can just as well refer to the words as to those who spoke of them. This ambiguity becomes even more significant when it is "refuted" in the following lines "sleep/ came over them-")-our quotation marks indicate that this double sense is both refuted and not refuted, since, after all, the dynamic of the correction is characteristic of Celan's language. Of more importance, however, is the fact that in "none [of the words]/ awoke," deficiency characterizes not only these creatures and their existence, but also their language, which in "Engf0hrung,"is always, both existence and reality: linguistic reality, text. Because "None [of the words]/ awoke, sleep came over them." In the third section, that "something" which "lay between them" speaks': [111] Ich bins, ich, ich lag zwischen euch, ich war offen, war h6bar, ich tickte euch zu, euer Atem gehorchte, ich bin es noch immer, ihr schlaft ja.
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It is I, I I lay between you, I was open, was audible, I ticked at you, your breath obeyed, it is I still, and you sleep. First, instead of unchanged repetition of the end of part II ("Sleep /came over them"), on the right side of the page we find: "Came, came. Nowhere / asked anyone." Thus, the voice of that which "lay between them" (11) does not begin by identifying itself with the "sleep' that "came over them," it presents itself simply (if we "read" the musical "transition") as something which "came." This might be sleep and yet might also be something else. The abbreviated "reprise" of the close of IIat the "beginning" of Ill leaves undisclosed the identity of the "something" (corresponding to the ambiguity of "None awoke" is that the words or people?) Following the Engfohrung model, the "transition" indicates that that "something" which "lay between them," and that begins to speak, is something which comes, whose essence is arrival, an arrival on a "blackish field" where-in does keeping with the second part of the "reprise,"--"nowhere" will speak. anyone ask about the one to whom "something" What is this "something"? Without violating the thesis proposed for the reading of this text, we might attempt to identify "something," and do so without dispensing with interpretation (to do this is impossible), avoiding, however, mere association, or a purely personal reading. This "something," then, calls itself "open" and also "audible." Only at this point does the "report"in the second section become clear: those, "between" whom "something lay, spoke of The words lie sleeping because words," from which "non awoke" (11). they do not speak. Those who "spoke of words" did not know how to use the audibility of that which "lay between them." They experienced this "something" only as a partition-"they / did not see through it"-instead of recognizing that this was something which would have preserved accessibility, a new field, where being is always also word. This "something" "ticked at you." The action of "something" was ticking, and yet this action is directed at those of whom it is said: "I ticked at you." Today the meaning of ticken is more limited than it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it had the additional, gentle significance of "to touch with the fingertips." As an impassioned reader of dictionaries-he listed all those words of Jean Paul which are presently obscure, and kept them in a notebook (so, for example, Sprachgitter, the title of the volume which "Engf0hrung" closes)-Paul Celan must have known the meaning of ticken, and must have chosen it specifically for its double significance. Ticken in this verse means both what it signifies today and "touching"; the word imparts both meanings simultaneously, because both at this point become one. That which touches and ticks is at once an emblem of time, the clock, time itself, and temporality. What "lay between
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them," "open" and "audible" in this final hour ("your hour I has no sisters," I), is nothing but time, which comes, which "ticks" to those to whom it speaks, those whom it would take forcibly with it. Does it succeed? "Yourbreath I obeyed": Thus, this "audible something" is not really perceived yet nevertheless, it can "touch" (with the finger) that activity which is undisturbed by sleep-breathing. Though it controls their breathing, this "something" has certainly not yet achieved its entire purpose, otherwise "and/ you sleep" would not have been added. And yet "sleeping" means more than "sleeping." Used euphemistically it also means "to be dead," and here it has also a further connotation of "not hearing." Read correctly, this can, indeed must mean that "living" and "hearing" are the same-this supposition is thoroughly confirmed by the equation of "existence" with "word," and by the "textual" nature of the reality which is dictated to the reader from the beginning ("Grass, written asunder" 1,2). Therefore that which "lay between them," could have given life to those lying, could have led those sleeping on a "blackish field" (this is death, non-time) back into existence. Because of the double significance of ticken, the something which "lay between them" appears to be time (or a certain time, a certain temporality), and, at the same time, the word which could have become "audible" to them, and could have awakened them. This goal was not achieved: "you sleep." And yet the "something," a time-word Zeit-Wort("word" in the emphatic sense) that was audible, has a calming effect: "It / is I still." In anticipation of the next to last section of the poem it could be said, then, that "nothing / is lost." And with the assurance, which recalls the end of section III, the fourth section in fact begins on the right side of the page: [IV] Bin es noch immerJahre. Jahre, Jahre, ein Finger tastet hinab und hinan, tastet umher: Nahtstellen, fthlbar, hier klafft es weit auseinander, hier wuchs es wieder zusammen-wer deckte es zu? It is I still Years. Years, years, a finger feels down and up, feels about: seams; palpable, here it is split wide open, here it grew back together again-who covered it up? Whereas in the third section that "something" (which is at
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once time and word, and which begins here with the consolation that it "still is") speaks, the fourth section supplies a description, or rather, the actualization of that which is time, and, further, of the nature of the relationship between human begins and time. "Actualization" is the best expression, since the character of time, as well as the relationship human beings have to time, is not merely described, but also and especially expressed in the syntax. The verbal structure actualizes continuity and infinity in more than a semantic sense, and it also actualizes memory, the caesuras of inner time which the past introduces to human beings. "Years./ Years, years"-one must read that nothing is being said of this time-duration, that the poet only names it. And in the second line, we must read the repetitions as a form of iteration in which the name itself and the repetitions actualize permanence as its essential quality. Because time, as soon as one attempts its description (always, but especially in "Engf0hrung"), becomes space, the "terrain" of memory becomes surface, a no-man's-land with elevations and depths, but no vanishing points (Fluchtpunkte). Here man does not move by going, but by feeling: as though he were nothing but a finger. Perhaps at this point we could resort to the conventional language of textual explication, in this case to an "as if," in order to demonstrate the extent to which such a reading falsifies the written and that which is read. The passage makes use of synecdoche; the part (a finger) represents the whole (he who remembers). The essential point here, however, is that the knowledge of that which is represented by "finger" is irrelevant, and that nowhere in the entire passage is there a reference to what it might represent, that at base the there is no representation. The finger feels, nothing more. Feeling can be interpretated as the act of memory, but this interpretation, once again, fails, for it overlooks the fact that the text refers to "feeling" not "remembering."The "finger," which reminds us of those implied in ticken (touch with the fingertips) establishes an affinity beand tween human beings and time, between those whose sleep (111) that which "ticks at" them, the opening of inner time. Time, as "lost," wanted to become "audible" to them, setting them in search of it. The fact that the return home to the past has not yet taken place can perhaps be attributed to the special nature of this past: "seams, palpable, here/ it is split wide open, here / it grew back together again"-a traumatic past, a past full of wounds. For this reason time, is also "covered up" (IV).The two conwhich calls itself "open" (111), tradictory statements appear in two distinct voices: in that of the "something"-of-time (Zeit-"etwas") in the third section, and in that other, where those beings who only feel with their fingers are not yet willing to abandon themselves to the opening of memory (fourth section). To avoid a misreading through interpretation (and in the following the difference between reading and interpretation will become even clearer), we should recognize that in the fourth section there is no reference to "something" covered (indeed, that not once is the "object" in IVdescribed as that "something" which "lay between them," II).Only the question, "who / covered it up?" is posed.
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The reappearance of this question in reverse order prepares the entry of the next section: [V] Deckte es Kam, kam. Kam ein Wort, kam, kam durch die Nacht, wollt leuchten, wollt leuchten. Asche. Asche, asche. Nacht. Nacht-und-nacht.-Zum Aug geh, zum feuchten. Covered it up-who? zu-wer?
Came, came. Came a word, came, came through the night, wanted to shine, wanted to shine. Ash. Ash, ash. Night. Night-and-night.-Go to the eye, the most one.
This section is central to "Engfuhrung" (the division of the poem as a whole can be represented by the formula 4+1 + 4); it is the turning point on the path of that movement begun in the first section, the advance of the self-writing text as well as that of the reader whom it conducts. That it is question of a turning point here is already evident in the use of tenses, from present to past in Ito IV,and, then from past to present in V to IX.This change in direction is anticipated in abbreviated form in the fifth section: the first of the two stanzas is in the past tense, but the second in the present, corresponding to the evocative naming at the beginning ("Ash. / Ash, ash. / Night. / Nightand-night") and the final command, separated from the preceding passage by a dash ("Go/ to the eye, the moist one"). Having "read" the "transition" between IVand V and the structure of V as a musical score-that is, by way of analysis and not translation-one finds, at the center of the renewed question (Covered it up-who?), the rent and the chasm which separate the two strophes introduced by the question. The break is indicated by syntactical inversion ("who/ covered it up?" becomes "Covered it/ up-who?"), by the prosody of the enjambement ("covered it/ up,") and by the orthography of the dash, posed precisely at the point of the break ("Covered it / up-who?"). To enquire concerning the meaning
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of this break would be to abandon the principle of musical reading. Because the text under study is poetic, such a question is possible, however, and even the present reading does not claim to follow the announced principle completely. But here it seems advisable to retain it, since the break needs no interpretation. The entry is prepared for by the fragmented question, or, more exactly, the connection between question and entry clarifies the function of the break. (The "function" and not the "meaning," because "meaning" is a concept of semantics, while here "syntax" is discussed in the broader sense of the word as composition.) In this entry ("Came, came. / Came a word, came, I came through the night . . ."), the function of the break within the question becomes clear to the extent that it can no longer be understood as the response to the question: "who/ covered it up?" Yet it seems implausible that the word comes of its own accord-it comes because it wants to shine in this night of sleeping words ("None/ awoke" II)-and "covers up" the opening of memory. If one assumes this is untenable in order to draw some conclusion about the break, then one should also maintain that the pronoun in the question in the reprise is not the same "who?" as that of the closing question in IV("who/ covered it up?").This pronoun is no longer the subject of the predicate. This thesis is certainly neither out of the question nor erroneous. It would be erroneous, though, if one assumed that this "who?" in spite of everything (in spite of inversion and the dash), stands as the subject of a predicate which is not its own. What has been described, thanks to a method which derives more from musical analysis than textual explication, strongly resembles a particular possibility of musical composition, that of enharmonic change. To conceive of the "who?" in "Covered it/ up-who?" as the subject of the question, but also as separated from the rest ("Covered it/ up-") and posing a question which is to be answered by the subsequent lines ("Came, came. / Came a word"), is to postulate two separate functions, as well as a transition from one function to the other, in other words, precisely that which is designated by the musical term. This result only confirms the premise of our reading-that the poem requires less a consideration of literal meaning than of function. To return once again to the gap separating the two stanzas of the fifth part, we should note, above all, that it exists, and recognize its function, instead of translating a structural moment into the language of communication and meaning. The gap between the two stanzas, the radical opposition without mediation,5 is clear at first reading. Between the world of the word that "comes through the night, to shine," that is arrival ("Came, came. / Came a word"), and the world of "ash," the absolute "night" which knows only itself, that is "Night-and-night,"there is pure opposition, caesura. But the function of this caesura is recognizable only after a consideration of the poem as a whole, which requires an advance that is both a departing and a returning home (from present to past and from past to present), an experience made conscious by memory. Of course, this experience returns to its point departure, yet the place itself is changed by the experience-by the event that is nothing but the text itself on its way to
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realization. Midway on this path which is not described, but rather, taken, traveled, or, more exactly, is opened by the poem, there is a turning point on either side of which the two worlds stand opposed. Through this opposition alone, experience becomes a necessity. It is resolved only by that arrivalwhich is the action the poem, which is the poem itself. Nothing could be so foreign to Celan's language as to speak explicitly of this opposition. In "Engfuhrung"it is simply realized in the juxtaposition of these two stanzas in section V (this is not a limitation, but a transcendending of the traditional modes of language, which up to Mallarm6 remained represential). Since the poem's center itself enacts the opposition (the section is both preceded and followed by four others), the poem shows itself to be one that is its own progression, rather than thematically a description or representation. The command, separated from what precedes it by a dash, concludes the second stanza of V, and is taken up again in the "transition" from Part V to VI in unchanged form, but with the rhythm of a ritartando (of the three lines in which it unfolds): Zum Aug geh,
zum feuchten-
Go to the eye,
the moist one-
This command seems directed at the word, of which was said, at the beginning of V, it "came, came." But as command it also seems to recall part 1: [1,2] Lies nicht mehr-schau! Schau night mehr-geh! Read no more-look! Look no more-go! Instead of the traditional alternative, in which the command is directed at either the word or the poet-reader, here the two posibilities are not merely reconcilable, but identical, since the text is not just the progression of the poetic act, and the reading not merely that of the text, especially since progression coincides with the arrival("And/it came," VI)which is realized in the poem. This identity, that, paradoxical as it is, is an outcome of the poem's logic, finds expression in the sixth section, the lengthiest by far in the poem. There we are faced with an almost bewildering verbal profusion, and a line by line reading of the sort conducted earlier becomes impossible. And yet, to simply note this abundance, or, even more, to criticize it is not enough, instead the reason behind it must be discovered. Once more, though in a different form, the question arises as to what role the word is given in "Engf0hrung."
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Sleep "came over them" (11,2). This, to borrow from Hegel, is a "malefic" non-being ("schlechtes" Nicht-Sein), one which prevents them from hearing what approaches to speak to them and lead them to the opening of their past-which is also a non-being, but one without which, and without whose memory there is no existence. For this is the goal which "Engf0hrung"reveals. The word, too, comes (V). It crosses through the night, wants to "shine." The "moist" eye, full of tears-to which the word, at the end of V and in the "reprise" following the sixth section, is to go-is, so we think, that of those creatures of which it is said, at the beginning, "Something /lay between them. Did not see, no, I spoke of I words" They / did not see through it //II The sixth section describes what becomes of them when the word (11). arrives, or rather, what they do when they are awakened and prepared to do what is required of them: follow their way back through the past to a reality that is no longer speechless non-being. This movement does not shape the poem's content, but its progression, and the poem is not the representation of a reality, but reality itself. Thus, the sixth section concerns itself with nothing but the creation of the world and its recreation through the word. So it is not by coincidence that the first stanza actualizes, with two citations, the cosmogony of Democritus and the theological structure of the world found in Dante's works.6 [VI,1] Orkane. Orkane, von je, Partikelgestaber, das andre, du weissts ja, wir lasens im Buche, war Meinung. Gales. Gales, from the beginning of time, whirl of particles, the other, you know it though, we read it in the book, was opinion. According to Democritus, the world, as well as individual things and creatures, issues from the "whirl"of atoms. Along with the void this forms the foundation of the cosmos, "all else is mere opinion."7 For Celan, this "opinion" becomes the aforementioned "malefic" non-being, the "speaking of words" (11)which produces nothing. In reading this stanza it becomes clear how the prosodic interruption created by the separation of the lines accents those words whose importance first becomes recognizable in the second stanza of VI:"you," "we," "was," and even "opinion." Only the merging of these elements in the second stanza provides a basis for a more precise articulation of the supposed sense of "was / opinion.":
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[VI,2]
War, war Meinung. Wie fassten wir uns an-an mit diesen HAden? Was, was opinion. How did we grasp each other-each these hands?
other with
That which was only opinion, word without reality, stands opposed to the physical reality of grasping hands, of two bodies-something unexplained if not inexplicable, since the voice asks how it was possible. And yet this stanza indicates the role these two creatures have in the creation of the world through the word and through memory. In the course of reading, this creation'becomes more clearly an obligation, which devolves not merely on those two, but on the poem itself. The poem no longer speaks of particles (V,1),but atoms. It is, nevertheless, hardly comforting when the voice at this point asks how this grasping of hands occurred: it reminds us of the "finger" which "feels" down and up, "feels/ about" (IV)in that traumatic past, out of which the "hands' which grasp each other wish to create a new cosmos. That path taken by the word on its way "to the eye, the moist one" (V), the path taken by those who, with moist eyes, faced up to that obligation, was not the path which should have been taken: [VI,3-4] Es stand auch geschrieben, dass. Wo? Wir taten ein Schweigen dar0ber, giftgestillt, gross, ein gr0nes Schweigen, ein Kelchblatt, es hing ein Gedanke an Pflanzliches drangrun, ja, hing, ja, unter hAmischem Himmel. An, ja, Pflanzliches. And it was written, that. Where? We draped a silence over it, stilled with poisons, great,
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a green silence, a sepal, an idea of vegetation attached to itgreen, yes, attached, yes, under a mocking sky. Of, yes, vegetation. The sky is mocking because they failed to reach the goal. Instead of gaining possession of the word (but this means existence), instead of creating a new world in this final hour, this hour which has "no sisters" (I)they composed a "silence." Once more the past is repressed. The poet gives no explicit reason for this, and the poem at this point, as the reading of these three stanzas indicates, appears, in contrast to the preceding, to revert from musical composition to a traditional, hermetic language-and with it the reading, against its will, practically to an exercise in paraphrasic text to a textual explication performed by paraexplication. Nevertheless, the text alone provides the means for finding the reason for this failure-precisely that constellation in which the "idea of vegetation" and the "green silence" to which it was "attached" are arranged. The following two stanzas of section six indicate another possibility, one contrary to vegetationsilence. [VI,5-6] Ja. Orkane, Partiklgestdber, es blieb Zeit, blieb, es beim Stein zu versuchen-er war gastlich, er fiel nicht ins Wort:Wie gut wir es hatten: Kdrnig, k5rnig und faserig. Stengelig, dicht; traubig und strahlig; nierig, plattig und klumpig; locker, verAstelt-:
fiel nicht ins Wort, es sprach, sprach gerne zu trockenen Augen, eh es sie schloss.
er, es
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Yes. Gales, whirl of particles, there was time left, time to try it out with the stone-it was hospitable, it did not interrupt. How good we had it: Grainy, grainy and stringy. Stalky dense; grapy and radiant; kidneyish flatish and lumpy; loose, overgrown-: he, it did not interrupt, it spoke spoke willingly to dry eyes, before closing them. The "stone" stands opposed to "vegetation," as do "dryeyes" to "moist," word to "silence." And still we do not know why the stone acquires a capacity absent in the organic world-a poetic denial of what natural science expounds. But it is already clear in these two stanzas that the advance of the text and of the two creatures with whose actions it coincides at the beginning of the fifth stanza now lead to another attempt to establish a cosmogony: the beginning is the same ("Storms, rush of / particles," VI,5)as in the entry to VI.This beginning is said to join the progression of the text, to have a part in the efforts which are not thematic, but are the poem itself: "there was time / left, time / to try it out with the stone." This pausing by the stone becomes a new attempt, but one that appears to succeed: [VI,7] Sprach, sprach. War, War. Spoke, spoke. Was, was. These two lines return to the dry, laconic speech of the earlier sections, which not only describes the object, but also expresses it in the form of its composition; they seem to confirm and strengthen the success of this new attempt at a cosmogony. As an abstracting repetition of that which was just said (i.e., "he [the stone], it I did not interrupt,it/ spoke, /spoke willingly to dry eyes, before closing them," and the "stone was hospitable"), the double predication-itself doubled ("Spoke, spoke./ Was, was")-confirms that the "audible" (111) "something" (11),the "something" into which the "finger," feeling
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"down and up" and "about," attempts to penetrate, has finally reached its goal: all that which has been referred to thus far and which, as has become increasingly clear, is the same. Even though these lines are themselves the repetition of two verbs (from VI, 5-6), they still corroborate the achievement by introducing the words to speak and to be, and reinforce it through the iteration. At the same time this two-line stanza, which consists only of two verbs repeated, establishes the identity of word and being, and points to the accord between poetic reality and poetic text. The last two stanzas of part VI turn back to accomplish this creation of world in the word, this achievement which can explain why the creation of the new world and its cause are actualized by way of a bewildering profusion of words. Before attempting this explanation it would be appropriate to note the relationship, if not identification, of the "stone," which "did not interrupt," which "spoke to dry eyes," and the one to whom it spoke, and those who, before they "tried it out with the stone," with "moist" eyes chose a "green silence," a "sepal" (VI,3).In contrast to silence stands the word, spoken not by them, but by the stone. This stone, then, is related to the "dryeyes" to which it spoke "before closing them," while the "moist" eye (V,1),the reason for failure, stands in relation to the moist cosmos of vegetation, to which "silence" also thus, an belongs, "a sepal, an/idea of vegetation attached to it" (VI,3): opposition like that between the "stones, white" and "grassblades" at the poem's beginning. Both the white of the stones and the light of the word, which "came through the night" and "wanted to shine, wanted to shine" (V,1), stand in contrast to night's darkness. As the word "through" intimates, light and darkness do not stand in fixed opposition; rather, only in its passage through darkness does light become: this mediation is equally the lesson of stanzas VI,5-6. Of all the adjectives that one might at first feel obliged to apply solely to the stone (their gender is not established)-even if the immediately preceding lines seem to prepare for a clearer definition of "how good we had it"-a few in fact are related to stones ("grainy," "flatish," "lumpy," "loose"), others recall the plant world ("stringy," "stalky," "graphish," "overgrown"),while those remaining can refer to both the stone and plants ("dense," "radiant," "kidney-like").This piling up of unusual adjectives serves once again as a mediation, one also expressed in the transition from "he" (the stone) to "it" in the This kind of fusion was already prelines "he, it/ did not interrupt"(VI). sent at the beginning of the poem in the proximity of "stones, white," of "grass, written to asunder," and of "shadows of grassblades" (1,2). Both stone and grass, as opposite as white and black, become script and text only when united. In this way additional light is shed on the opposition of the word, on the one hand, which "came through the night" and "wanted to shine" (V,1) and, on the other, the "ash" of "Night-and-night" (V,2). The significance of the caesura for the composition of the two stanzas is thus evident, but the opposition between the two stanzas also serves to prepare the contrary: a mediation which is realized not only in the stanza admitting a blend of adjectives (VI,6), but throughout the entire poem.
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In the two last stanzas of the sixth section we find enunciated what was stated only implicitly in the two preceding lines ("Spoke, spoke./ Was, was."): the creation of a world. [VI,8-9] Wir liessen nicht locker, standen inmitten, ein Porenbau, und es kam. Kam auf uns zu, kam hindurch, flickte unsichtbar, flickte an der letzten Membran, und die Welt, ein Tausendkristall, schoss an, schoss an. We would not let go, stood in the midst, a pore-structure, and it came. Came at us, came through us, patched invisibly, patched away at the last membrane, and the world, a millicrystal, shot up, shot up. Whereas the last line, in diction not unlike that of VI,7contains merely an assertion and a substantiating iteration, in the other lines numerous passages from preceding parts of the poem appear to be refuted; in the meantime, since the poem unfolds within its own temporal dimensions, there is also an indication that the movement has concluded: there are signs of arrival.The world has now been created. Those "over" whom "sleep" came (II)would not let go"; those, "between" whom "something lay" that prevented their seeing "through," are themselves now "al pore-structure," "through" which something "approached" them, that now, with them, causes the world to shoot up. With time recovered, with re-created reality, with language arrived at speech, the author-readerappears to have reached his goal: "and/it came" (VI,8).But what is the essence of this newly found time, this regained reality, this newly achieved existence? And what lends the dry eyes their power, and the stone its unusual force, how can one explain the strange relationship, the identity of stone and creatures, of the night and those who cross through it? Without an answer to these questions, the poem remains an hermetic image within the tradition
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of symbolism, a further example that in poetic creation one is free to invent at will. But in "Engf0hrung"this is not the case, regardless of how radically Celan departs from representation and Aristotelian mimesis. The final sections of the poem show this clearly. The "reprise" in the "transition" from the sixth to seventh sections is the first and only one in the entire poem in which a completely new word is added. The re-presented expression is expanded in order to announce this novelty: [VII] Schoss an, schoss an. DannNachte, entmischt. Kreise, grOnoder blau, rote Quadrate: die Welt setzt ihr Innerstes ein im Spiel mit den neuen Stunden.-Kreise, rot oder schwartz, helle Quadrate, kein Flugschatten, kein Messtisch, keine Rauchseele steigt und spielt mit. Shot up, shot up. ThenNights, demixed. Circles, green or blue, red squares: the world puts its innermost into play with the new hours.-Circles, red or black, bright squares, no flight-shadow, no measuring table, no smoke-soul ascends and joins in. The (re-)creation of the world through the creatures remembering and through the arrival of the word-the event pointed to by the repeated words ("shot up, shot up")-resounds in the introductory "then" (dann), which rhymes with the preceding word. The rhyme accentuates the event which is to appear. Taking up once more the "whirl" of word-"particles" of VI, section seven describes the event whereby it replaces adjectives, half belonging to the organic, half to the inorganic worlds, with geometric elements and colors out of which the millicrystal is constructed, in keeping with the end of section six, is identical to the upward shooting world. The diction of the seventh section further distinguishes itself from that of stanza VI,6,
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through the clauses which introduce or interruptthe sequence of colored, geometric figures, in which the poem, after the "whirl,"definitely recovers its original language. The ambiguity and polysemy are essential. Even more than previously, this language makes use of allusion, made possible through a multiplicity of meanings, rather than direct statement, a language in which the poet has left the initiative to the words themselves, which, it is said. "s'allument de reflets reciproques comme une virtuelle trainee de feux surs les pierreries.'"8 Thus "shot up," a phrase expressing the manner in which the world is created, has echoes of "to shoot," which, in the eighth section, reappears in significant fashion in "target." The circumstances of the seventh section, prepared for by the "Then" in the "reprise," are different in that they present "Nights, demixed." How this occurs is not stated. The expression stands immediately after the emphatic "Then";this word order (in keeping with a musical reading) shows these "Nights, demixed" are antithetical to that other, the "Night./ Night-and-night"(V,2)through which the word that "wanted to shine" came (V,1).With the word arrivedand the world reestablished, nights are by no means replaced by days, for the path in "Engfihrung" does not lead from darkness to light. Up to this point the poem's progression, one completed by the reading, has achieved nothing but a surmounting of the malefic non-being of sleep and and "night," which "needs no stars" (1,3). The opposition between this new cosmos, with its "Nights, demixed," and that other cosmos which precedes the arrivalof the word and the arising of this "world" as "millicrystal," is substantiated by the second piece of information offered by this stanza: this world of crystal "puts its innermost into/ play with the new/hours." The hour at the beginning of the poem, which "has no sisters" (1,3),is made "new" (VII): the going which was begun in that final hour, the path, which was paradoxically entered upon in the moment of being-"at-home," leads to a new time. Yet what characterizes this time of "demixing," of crystalline purity, is also, probably the distance from the point of departure (which is also the place of return),the forgetting of them, whose remembrance the poet has taken upon himself, and this last the real source of strength for the poet's creativity. The negative definition of the cosmos of "Nights, demixed," in the final lines of the stanza supports this assumption: "no / flight-shadow,/ no / measuring table, no / smokesoul ascends and joins in." The triple negation demonstrates the emptiness, the "deficiency" of the "millicrystal (VI,9)"this newly created "world" whatever the "value" of that which is deemed absent. Indeed,the exact identities of this "flight-shadow," this "measuring table," this "smoke-soul," are not given. But because it is a question of a rhetorical obscuritas, that is, intentional obscurity, it should not be the task of this reading to propose hypotheses that fully explain them. Instead, we should observe the obscurity and try to comprehend its particularities, without overlooking that which nonetheless becomes apparent because of it. The obscurity here is distinct from that which begins
253 night, which are only sleep, "silence . . . stilled with poisons" (VI,3),
cludes a line and in one instance
"Engfuhrung":"Driven into the / terrain / with the infallible trace." There, the use of the definite article presumes a knowledge of the terrain, but this possibility is undercut by the line's position at the beginning of the poem. Here, however, there is no evidence that the reader ought to know exactly what is being discussed. That is not to say the poet should be reproached for inexactitude. Not long before writing "Engf0hrung," Celan said that the language of his poetry seeks "precision within all the unalterable many sidedness of a given utterence"9 Renouncing the desire to closely define the possible meaning of "flight-shadow," "measuring table," and "smoke-soul" in no way casts doubt on the precision of the language in "Engf0hrung," since such an "explanation" would necessarily be founded on personal and, thus, coincidental associations, and on only approximating hypotheses. Obversely, since it is precisely a concern for precision that urges restraint, it may be best to say merely that the accent in these lines is on negation and absence; the word no twice conis the entire line: ". .. no/ flight-
shadow,/ no / measuring-table, no, I smoke-soul ascends and joins in." Furthermore, the first and last of the three ("flight-shadow" and "smoke-soul") express a movement which mediates between heaven and earth, while the second ("measuring-table") belongs to the world of humans as they arrange their lives on earth. But this is to say that the world, "a millicrystal," with its "Nights, demixed," even if it does put "its innermost into / play with the new I hours," is not the ultimate goal of "Engf0hrung." Perhaps something essential is missing. However, the eighth section of the poem makes clear how this result is to be achieved, in order to satisfy the requirements contained in the negative definition ("no / flight-shadow, I no / measuringtable, no, I smoke-soul ascends and joins in." But our reading can already assert movement and mediation, the moment of the earthly and the mixed are absent from that crystalline world of pure forms ("circles," "squares") and solid colors (Circles, I red or black, bright / squares"). Moreover, in the seventh section it becomes necessary to consider the ambiguity of the expressions "flight-shadow" and "smokesoul," an ambiguity which transcends the boundaries of the signifier (there is more than simple polysemy at stake here). Celan takes frequent advantage of the possibility that exits in German for unlimited new word combinations; this is one of the hallmarks of his language. It is not a matter of pure stylistics, however (if such a thing could exist). Through the use of these composites, Celan succeeds in expressing himself in condensed syntagmata, while confining the discursive element to isolated words without eliminating it. Thus, the predication achieves a degree of freedom that, given the limits of syntactical ambiguity (which, as we know, is the basis of Mallarm6's language ), it does not have on its own. Precisely this fact, that the combined words are produced through a condensation of syntagmata, renders unnecessary any decision concerning which and how one of the (two or more) elements of a word determines the other. It follows that "flight-shadow" can just as easily mean the "shadow of
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flight" as "flying shadow" (or, more exactly: it means one as much as the other); and "smoke-soul" means not only "the soul turned to smoke," but also "the soul of smoke:" thus, smoke as soul, and soul of smoke. This essential ambiguity, containing at once both signifier and signified, allows us to understand why that world, "a millicrystal," composed of geometric elements, will not suffice; this is also the reason it is as inappropriate to use Saussures model of the sign in an analysis of Celan's poetry as it is to apply it to Mallarme's work.10The world, being demixed, lacks the differentiation on the basis of which it is mixed, and being mixed mediates itself. This world is too pure. On the other hand, the quasi-musical composition of "Engf0hrung" allows one or possibly both meanings of each composite, "flight-shadow" and "smoke-soul" (i.e., one of the associations which unite the parts of each composite), to prepare for the poem's eighth and culminating section. Once again, an "enharmonic" change prevails, for the last subject of VII-even if unnamed-is taken up once more in VIII.In fact, it is announced in the "reprise" the "transition" between the two sections, in two lines which have a predicate but no subject: [VIII,1] In der Eulenflucht, beim versteinerten Aussatz, bei unsern geflohenen Handen, in der j0ngsten Verwerfung, Oberm Kugelfang an der versch0tteten Mauer: Steigt und spielt mit-
In the owl-flight, near the petrified scabs, near our fled hands, in the latest rejection, above the targets on the buried wall:
Ascends and joins in-
The entry to this section is preceded by a predicate without subject, whose subject is in fact the "smoke-soul" of part seven. This means-if one "reads" the "transition"-that the predicate remains valid for what is stated in the eighth part, even if it receives a new subject, or another element appears in place of the subject of the seventh. At first one seems forced, in light of VIII,1, to adopt the latter construction, since it consists of only adverbial determinations of place and time. Furthermore, these are not always distinct modes,
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and from this uncertainty arises then a further ambiguity, one in which the profound identity of time and place is revealed. The entire stanza consists of these temporal and locational determinates-that are not used attributively, but as predicates. The fact that the predication of this stanza, one of the most decisive in the composition, unfolds in the form of situational determinates, indicates the important function these conditions have within the composition. In a figure similar to the correctio (the importance of which, for Celan, is already clear), these situational determinates replace and dissolve the pure, sharp, radiant elements of that crystalline cosmos in which the creative power of the word-that came-and the creatures which opened themselves to the word seemed to find completion ("We 1 would not let go, stood / in the midst, a / porestructure, and I it came" VI,8).The path of memory leads to a goal where that "world, a millicrystal," of nights "demixed," yields to another. Not only do each of these predicative determinates of situation contribute to the realization of this other; at the same time this other itself, as well as its relationship to other parts of the poem, is more precisely defined. And this is what must now be "read": "In the owl-flight"-the compound Eulenflucht is antiquated today, but it is nonetheless rich in meaning, since, as a composite, it is, necessarily, a "motivated" sign. According to Grimm's lexicon, Eulenflucht stands for dusk, the time when owls take flight." Through this reference alone a new hour, a new light, is introduced to the poem. It is not the night which "needs no stars" (1,3),nor the night of those who, because "sleep came over them," "did not see through it" nor is it, finally, the "demixed" night of the world which "puts its (11), innermost into / play with the new I hours" (VII), that world of "bright/ squares." It is, rather, the hour of the transitory, the intermediary, the hour at which day passes into night. At the same time, however, it is the hour of flight-with the substantive "flight" suggesting "to flee" as well as "to fly." The third of the adverbial determinates emphasizes the former. "Near / our fled hands"-the meaning of the finger ("a finger I, feels down and up, feels I about," IV) and of the hands ("How I did we grasp / each other-each other with / these I hands?" VI,2)has already been discussed: their function is not merely "thematic" (should such a possibility exist); it might instead by called "rhetorical" if it were not a question of going beyond synecdochal figures. Here, "finger" does not stand for another word that would designate a whole of which the finger in "reality"would be only a part, it is a "finger" feeling the uneven and unfamiliar surface of the traumatic past. Therefore, the place described in the eighth section of the poem is no longer the place of creatures fled, but rather that of "our fled hands"-those hands referred to by the question in VI,2 ("How / did we grasp / each other . . .")-and whose contact with the resurrection of the past does not lead to memory. On the contrary, I . . /a /green / . . . asepal, an / "We draped a silence over it, ./ idea of vegetation attached to it-" (VI,3).The location of these fled hands is contrasted with that non-place which is "the world, a
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millicrystal" (VI),a pure and radiant, a new world, but a world whose creation is ever more clearly shown to be deficient-however much it may also be a part of the event for which the poem provides a basis and in which it has its own basis. And, since this poem is a progression, the contrast indicates that this world must be surpassed. This creation, too, is deficient because it remains reduced to the crystalline, inorganic, and unmixed-a structure of geometric forms of circles and squares, and unmixed colors: "Circles, I green or blue, red / squares (VII)- a pure, "demixed" world, but one that cannot mediate, one with no connection between plant and stone, such as announced by that row of adjectives (Grainy, I grainy and stringy. Stalky, I dense . . . " VI,6)and by the change from "he" to "it" ("he, it I did not interrupt").Such connection however characterizes exactly the place described in the eighth section: "Near / the petrified scabs"-the expression is initially obscure, since it is not known why "scabs" have become a point of reference, nor what the significance of their being "petrified" might be. At the same time, however, this same expression is a clear "sign" of that connection binding the organic to the inorganic. The scab has become stone. Still, the two questions just posed demand an answer. Here "scab" not only signifies the disease [leprosy, (Aussatz)], it is also an allusion to casting out (aussetzen), the treatment inflected on those with the disease. Even if Aussatz is used today only in reference to the disease, in this context (where the words "s' allument de reflets r6ciproques," to cite Mollarm6 once again) it actualizes something else as well. In poetry, of course, actualizing, or bringing to mind, always means characterizing or more exactly realizing. Precisely what is meant by this Aussetzung is made clear in another line from this same stanza, one that is, again, a situational determinate: "In / the latest rejection;;-the "latest rejection" can characterize nothing other than the fate suffered by millions of Jews, including Celan's parents, during the Nazi era, the latest of the rejections suffered by Israel since the beginning of its history. The location, fixed in time and space by the various determinates of situation in this stanza, is certainly the place of the "final solution": the extermination camp. The Jews, "rejected" so often by the peoples among whom they lived in their long history, treated as "outcasts," are this time truly "cast out, driven"- to use the word that, with reason, began the poem." "Above / the targets on / the buried wall"-it is these last two allusions that define the place which, is burdened by a past that is not past and never will be. The "targets" are attached to the "buried wall" and the wall buried, probably because the present in this part of the poem seems to belong to another, later epoch. The "targets" designate the upper boundary of the extermination camp. That which is reported in the eighth section occurs "above I the targets on I the buried wall." While the other "situational determinates" introduced by "in" or "near," and not "above," refer to a place and time on this side of that boundary, the expression introduced by "above" indicates precisely that which, upon arrival,passes beyond its limits. The colon
257
at the end of the first stanza ("on / the buried wall:") indicates that what has arrived will now be named. [VIII,2] sichtbar, aufs neue: die Rillen, die visible, once again: the grooves, the What arrives at and goes beyond the place of rejection, of casting out, and of death, is epiphany. Not that of a god, but the appearance of "grooves," or, "traces," to recall once again the poem's beginning. What is meant by these "grooves"? "Engf0hrung," the poem that does not deal with progression and advent, but is them and, simultaneously, the movement of a knowledge developing towards a recognition of that which is advent, has, now, reached a stage where such questions can no longer go unanswered, where, in fact, the answers are made possible because of the advent. Having placed the words "the / grooves" after a colon (that promises the appearance of that which is become, "above once / again visible," the poet proceeds: "the /grooves, the." Then, after a very brief but expressive pause between the article and the noun it designates, a pause which marks not only the line's but also the stanza's end: [VIII,3] Chdre, damals, die Psalmen. Ho, hosianna. Choirs, at that time, the psalms. Ho, hosanna. As we know, the deported Jews, face to face with death, often began to pray and sing psalms. "Hosanna" is the Hebraic "O, help!" or "O, save me!" This prayertranscends the upper limit created by the "targets". With it those who speak it go beyond the place of their last torment: the prayer is itself like a target. Their salvation is the word. Of course, the poet says nothing of this. What he expresses is, rather, the lesson learned from the comportment of those on their way to death. The poem itself completes the evocation of facts from historical reality, and this evocation constitutes its end (in the double sense of the word) and shapes its lesson. [VIII,4-5] Also stehen noch Tempel. Ein Stern hat wohl noch Licht.
258
Nichts, nichts ist verloren. Hosianna. So there are temples yet. A star probably still has light. Nothing, nothing is lost. Hosanna. That what we have here is a lesson, that there is a conclusion to be drawn, is already indicated at the beginning of the fourth stanza by the word "so." If temples are still real, and still exist, then this is true because prayers were spoken (there where no temple stood), and even more because of these words: "the// choirs" and "the/ psalms" from "that time" are visible, once/ again" in the form of "grooves" etched forever into the memory of mankind by those who sang them in the "latest rejection." If there is memory, remembrance, it is thanks to the traces left behind by the victims remembered. It is because of the word. Memory testifies to the creative power of the word, that is, to the linguistic origins of reality-at least of the reality that matters. Only this capacity produces memory, and makes of it not merely a task, but a poetic obligation and necessity. Thus, the actualization of the extermination camp is not only the end of Celan's poem, but also its point of departure. "Engf hrung" is a very precise refutation of the
all too famous assertion
become impossible to write poems."'12 Adorno, who for years wanted to write a longer essay on Celan, whom he viewed, with Beckett, as the most important of the post-war poets, was well aware of the kind of misunderstanding his assertion made possible, and that it was perhaps wrong.'3 Poems are no longer possible after Auschwitz, unless founded on Auschwitz. Nowhere has Celan shown so well and so convincingly as in "Engf0hrung" how well-founded the hidden currency of his poetry, its essentially non-denominational, impersonal character. For this reason the creative word is not that mysterious word referred to in V,1, that "came, I came through the night, I wanted to shine, wanted to shine." Rather, it is the word spoken by deported Jews face to face with death, whose once again "grooves" become "visible" at the end of the poem. This perspective makes clear the radical opposition between the two stanzas of the fifth section. The first, devoted to the word that "wanted to shine," collides with the second: "Ash. / Ash, ash. / Night. / Night-and-night.-Go / to the eye, the moist one." The reality of ash, of the death camp and
its crematories, only seems to prevent the advent of the word, of the
by Adorno that "after Auschwitz
. . . it
259
re-creation of the World through language. This is so because "the world, a millicrystal," which "shot up" (VI),and which stood opposed to the other world whose creation was, through expulsion, shattered against that "silence . . . I stilled with poisons, great, I a / green / silence, a sepal" (VI,3), is not the world which "Engf0hrung" will create, is not the world "Engf0hrung" is: "no / flight-shadow / no / measuring-table, no / smoke-soul ascends and joins in" (VII).The poem is not this world because here one world opposes another, because something contradictory is present-an opposition between word and silence, stone and vegetation, dry eyes and moist eye. But the song ("the //II choirs, at that time, the / psalms") and the reality ("there are temples yet) and the light ("A / star / probably still has light) only come into being when the opposition is sublated. It arises out of the "petrified scabs" and by crossing over the nothingness which is the "rejection:" "Nothing, I nothing is lost" (VIII,4). And yet one cannot say this without reservations, reservations that indicate the fragility and the flaw, the painful doubt in it all, for without them our read would be unfaithful. Essential facts remain The "Ho-/sanna" (VIII,5). na" (VIII,3), "Nothing,/ nothing is lost" (VIII,4), voice that speaks, that of the poet or those whose memory he invokes, is hindered in speaking. There is no immediate "hosanna". After the first syllable the word, its prayer, breaks off. That which wants to address God is initially a profane, even vulgar cry: "Ho. ho-." Likewise, the "star" only "probably" has light. And if the break between the following lines ("Nothing,/ nothing is lost") is finally, "read,"one finds it by no means certain, not initially at least, that nothing is lost. At first only the word "Nothing" is read. It does not claim that nothing is lost; it is not the first word of a sentence that attempts to say this. "Nothing" means nothing. Only, perhaps, after "Nothing" is said, or rather, is asserted, can the next line assure us that "nothing is lost." Here these can be existence only when it transforms itself into memory, into the "trace" of non-existence. Thus, even though the word probably does not occur in the following lines ("Nothing,/ nothing is lost"), the break and the doubt return:"Ho-/sanna" (VIII,5). At the close of the eighth section, the end of the poem, its function in the poem as a whole remains in question. A reading of the musical moment in the "transition" at the entry to the section-"Ascends and I joins in"- indicates the relationship of the eighth to the seventh part. It becomes clear precisely because of the "transition." As already noted, it consists of the predicate of the preceding sentence, whose prior subject ("smokesoul") is absent. The reasons for this are provided by our reading of the eighth section, and this at the same time makes clear how the subject remains present with its predicate in this section. One cannot know the meaning of "smoke-soul" simply by reading the seventh section, where the expression first occurs; only the eighth section provides this knowledge, since the location of the "targets" is also the place of the crematories, whose ash was evoked in an earlier passage (V,2).This is not the only connection produced by the negations of the
260 unmentioned. Thus, the divided line, the caesuras: ".
.
. Ho, ho-/ san-
seventh in conjunction with the affirmations of the eighth sections: "no / flight-shadow" becomes active again in "owl-flight,"the hour in which day passes into night, and earth into sky. This "mixed" hour, of a world too which stands in contrast to the "nights, demixed" (VII) pure, without mediation and communication, in which "no / flightshadow, I no / measuring-table, no / smoke-soul ascends and joins in"-this hour of twilight rises once more at end of the eighth section, just before the poem takes up again, in parenthesis, the lines with which it began: [VIII,6] In der Eulenflucht, hier die Gesprtche, taggrau, der Grundwasserspuren. At owl's flight, here the conversations day-gray, of the groundwater-traces. The "groundwater-traces" speak, as do the "grooves," "above the targets." Heighth corresponds to depth; the "light" of a star" to the "day-gray" of the earth. But what is meant by corres(VIII,4) pond? If "Engf0hrung" writes itself as a progression, and if, in reading, it is a question of accompanying this progress (rather than reproducing it), then the "groundwater-traces" do not correspond to those heavenly grooves of prayer, but follow them. And in fact, they follow them in three senses of the word: 1) the poem puts the "groundwater-traces" in the place of the higher "grooves" 2) the "conversations . . / of the groundwater-traces" are, today, what "the /grooves, the //II choirs, that time, the/ psalms," were before; 3) the "groundwater-traces" speak during the same hour," "at owl's the "traces" succeed the "grooves" of the past, "visible, once/again" The conversations, day-gray,/ of the groundwater-traces" arise (VIII,2). from the "choirs," the prayers from the time of the "latest rejection." The memory of them that one maintains determines what one is and does today. But do these "groundwater-traces," really represent here that which was sought from the beginning, even if their "con(VIII,6) versations," their exchange of words, is counterpoised to the "speaking-of-words" in the second section? The repetition of the poem's opening line in parenthesis at the end, after the close of the stanza just discussed, indicates that this is so: [IX,1-2] der Grundwasserspuren (-taggrau, flight" (VIII,Iand VIII,6), as did the "grooves . . . // that time": today
Verbracht ins Gelande
261
mit der untr0glichen Spur: Gras, Gras, auseindergeschrieben,)

(-day-gray,
of the groundwater-
tracesDriven into the terrain with the infallible trace: Grass, Grass, written asunder.)
That does not mean the poem describes a circle, and returns to its point of departure. The parentheses alone indicate the inaccuracy of such an interpretation. They suggest the lines be read sotto voce, with a ritardando of the altered line division. The lines are recalled only to shed additional light on the preceding ones: "the conversations day-gray, I of the groundwater-traces." In this way the reprise of the first lines at the close of "Engf0hrung" functions in a way that corresponds to that of the "reprise" in the "transitions." Here it establishes a relationship between the "conversations . . . I of the groundwater-traces" and the "terrain / with / the infallible trace." However, the "infallible trace" and the "groundwater-traces" are one and the same: word. "Driven into the / terrain / with the infallible trace (1,1), the reader could not and was not permitted to know what the "infallible trace" was. Now, at the end of this progression, that is, after reading that which is itself progress, he can understand. For this reason nothing is explained. Once again the reader might disregard the principles of musical composition and ask what the "conversations daygray, I the groundwater-traces" mean. And once again a comparison to other passages in Celan's work (encouraged, no doubt, by the appearance a few years ago of a concordance) would provide no answer. But while at the beginning of the poem the reader needed to come to terms with the fact that he was obviously not yet supposed to know what it was talking about, now the assumption is that the reader already knows that the "groundwater-traces" are the "grooves, the //II choirs, that time, the / psalms," and also the "infallible trace" which was used to designate that "terrain"into which he has been displaced since the beginning of the readying, without knowing where he is. 262
The beginning is repeated so that he can now experience it. The "conversations . . . I of the groundwater-traces" and their communication through the word appear at the end, in place of the nonconversation of those who lay and did not lie, because "something lay between them" (11,1). That "silence . . . I stilled with poison which the words had "draped . . . over it" (VI,3),as well as the isolation which permitted words to be spoken of, "none" of which "awoke" has been overcome. (11,2), In contrast to the world of silence and expulsion, and the "demixed" non-world which is the world of the "millicrystal," the "groundwater"is mediation, and, thus, the negation of the two opposing elements, the negation of negations. Like the "petrified scabs" (VIII,1),the "groundwater-traces" speak; they become discourse because they are word, water below ground, water within ground (in stone), the trace of one in the other, as "shadows of grassblades" unites the "stones, white" with the "grass," and so creates the script, the "grass, written asunder" (1,2).An underneath, a ground (groundwater-traces): the conditon for the possibility of the textual reality of "Engf0hrung,"for the continued life of human beings today, "at owlof a humanity that has survived Auschwitz-no flight, here" (VIII,6) one knows how-and that continues to survive it-no one knows how. A further remark.The title, "Engf0hrung,"can be explained by an analogy between that part of the fugue which bears this name and the particular composition of Celan's text. This connection has been discussed in detail. And yet this explanation is necessarily incomplete. As a "motivated" sign (as a composite) necessarily incomplete. As a "motivated" sign (as a composite) the word Engf0hrung is of course a technical expression, yet even so it remains a designation which makes itself clear, and which contributes to an explanation of the poem whose title it is (as it is, also, explained by the poem). That is, it is also a name. The substantive formed of eng and fihren refers not only to a principle of musical composition which corresponds to that selected by the poet, but indicates-beyond the division of "parts" and "voices" which converge in the "reprise" in the transitions-that the poem is a progression; and more, that a path exists which the text makes accessible, which becomes a path for the reader to follow. The movements the reader and the text being read takes place in the contact between the sections, which are led into each other by the "transitions." This progression takes place along a path which leads in strict and narrow fashion through memory of the death camps. Remembrance becomes the basis for the poets "speaking." "Engf0hrung" passage through the narrows-does the title, which is also a name, refer to the strict development of the poem, or to the narrowness of the path along which the reader must accompany the poem in his reading; or finally, to the experience of remembering the straits of that "latest rejection"? Anyone who has learned to "read" Celan's text knows that it is not a question of deciding on any one meaning, but of realizing that these are not different, they are one. Ambiguity having become the means of awareness, makes visible the
263
unity of that which only appeared to be difference. It serves precision. NOTES

1 [This essay, which first appeared in French as "Lecturede 'Strette,' essai sur la pobsiede Paul Celan in Critique(May,1971), pp. 378-42, can also be found in a Germantranslation under the title, "Durchdie Enge gefuhrt. Versuch Oberdie VerstAndlichkeit des modernen Gedichts," in Peter Szondi, Celan-Studien (Frankfurta.M., 1972). In order to simplify the translator's task of rendering Celan and Szondi in English, the German text of Szondi's essay has been prcferred throughout. Footnotes in brackets have been added by either the German or American editors of Szondi's text.] [Theexpression, "imaginaryworld,"refers to the title of the book by Jean-Pierre Richard, L'universimaginaire de Mallarm6(Paris, 1961).] Cf. Jacques Derrida,"La double s6ance, Tel Quel, 42 (summer 1970), p. 20 ff.; rpt. La dissemination. Paris; 1972, p. 198 ff. [The musical term Engf0hrung,in French, is strette (fromstrictus). Szondi consolidates a definition from Littr6:"the part of a fugue in which only fragments of the theme appear, and which is expressed as a forced and violent dialogue," and from Robert:"the part in which the theme and its response are resolved in ever intensifying entries."] [The German editors of Szondi's essay note at this point that the Germantext, since it follows the French original, leaves unmentioned the rhyme scheme of Celan's poem (leuchten, feuchten, etc.) and that Szondi, before his death, in a discussion with a student, had indicated his German revision of the essay would take this type of mediation under consideration.] Cf. Dante, Inferno, canto V, I. 138: "quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante" Celan has repeatedly drawn attention to this as ("that day we read no further"). "we / read it in the book." the "source" for the line in "Engf0hrung": Diogenes Laertius, IX,44. St6phane Mallarme,"Crise de vers," Oeuvres completes (Paris, 1945), p. 306. ("igniting in reciprocal reflections like the possible trail of lights across jewels") Almanach de la LibrairieFlinker(Paris, 1958), p. 45. Cf. Jacques Derrida, "S6miologie et grammatologie," Information sur les sciences sociales, 7(3), 1968 (Recherches s6miotiques). One of the few examples provided by Grimm's lexicon is from the novelist Celander (1685-1735). [Theodor W. Adorno, "Kulturkritikund Gesellschaft" (written 1949); in Prismen-Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft Frankfurta.M. 1955), p. 31.] a.M. 1966), p. 353. See TheordorW. Adorno, Negativ Dialektik (Frankfurt
2 3 4
7 8
9 10 11 12 13
Translators' note: Michael Hamburger's translation of "Engfohrung," in Paul Celan: Poems. A Bilingual Edition (New York,1980),pp. 216-221, has been refered to and used in part.
264

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Reading "Engfhrung": An Essay on the Poetry of Paul Celan Author(s): Peter Szondi, D. Caldwell and S.

Reading "Engfuhrung": An Essay on the Poetryof Paul Celan'

into the present

as a "we" (" . . . we/ read it in the book, [

the moist one-

cludes a line and in one instance

Ascends and joins in-

by Adorno that "after Auschwitz

. Ho, ho-/ san-

Verbracht ins Gelande

mit der untr0glichen Spur: Gras, Gras, auseindergeschrieben,)

unity of that which only appeared to be difference. It serves precision. NOTES

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