Breathturn into Timestead (35 page)

“Singbarer Rest” | “Singable remnant”

January 29, 1964. Also published in the Susman Festschrift, and thus also readable as a conversation with her and her work, the poem is a poetological statement speaking of those remains that can be sung, which are a human figure—possibly the ghost shape of the exterminated—that yet manages to break through at a place associated with death—the snowplace—and witness, even if with “disenfranchised lip,” announcing that “something happens, still.”

“Flutender” | “Flowing”

January 30, 1969.

“Zwanzig für immer” | “Twenty forever”

End-of-year 1962 into 1963; finished February 5, 1964. Early note in
Die Niemandsrose
folder: “Zwanzig Schlüsselburgblumen und / zwanzig Gesänge dazu.” (Twenty key-castle-flowers and / twenty songs too.)

Schlüsselburg-Blumen | Schlüsselburg-primroses: A complex pun combining the name Schlüsselburg (an infamous Russian prison castle in Petrokrepost, a town on an island of the river Neva, where during the days of the czar many revolutionaries were imprisoned and/or executed) and
Schlüsselblumen
(primroses or cowslips), a traditional symbol of spring.
Schlüssel
means “key,” and
Burg
, “castle.” The town's coat of arms included a golden key. The Russian revolutionary and writer Wera Figner (1852–1942), who was imprisoned there for twenty years, writes in her autobiography,
Nacht über Russland
(Night over Russia) (Berlin, 1928): “20 years in casemates. When the clock of life stopped.” (quoted by Wiedemann in
BW
, p. 728). Renate Böschenstein-Schäfer suggests that the number twenty may point to the twenty-one members of the Narodnaya Volya movement who were imprisoned in Petrokrepost in 1884 and nearly all died.

“Keine Sandkunst mehr” | “No sandart anymore”

February 10, 1964. The single draft shows that Celan made no emendations or changes to this poem, except for a pencil mark indicating a larger break between the last two lines.

Sandkunst | sandart: Badiou has pointed to reading traces in Eis, elaborated on in Barbara Wiedemann's commentary (
BW
, p. 728): “‘Geomancy or sandart (in Arabic, ilm
al-raml “Sand science
”) is an ancient method of exploring the future' and ‘most German
sandbooks
of the 14th to 16th centuries cannot be ascribed to a specific author' (pp. 7 and 8).” She goes on: “Further on the process, which elsewhere is also called the ‘sandscience of the sixteen masters' (p. 12), is explained: Through quadruple marking of a random number of points in the sand or by throwing the dice one of sixteen fixed figures is determined via fixed rules. The soothsaying text contains sixteen answers to sixteen fixed questions concerning the future directed to the ‘judges,' who have Hebrew names (p. 9). The sandbook may only be used where no noise may disturn the operation (p. 8). The procedure spread throughout Europe through the agency of Jews, among others (p. 8).”

“Helligkeitshunger” | “Brightnesshunger”

February 15, 1964. The following poem was also written on that day.

“Als uns das Weiße anfiel” | “When whiteness assailed us”

February 15, 1964. Celan had written a poem on December 15, 1962, that started with the lines “als aus dem Spendekrug mehr / kam als Wasser” | “when from the libation-ewer more | than water came,” taken up here again. Here, that poem (note that Celan's play on the homophonic words
mehr
, “more,” and
Meer
, “sea,” is lost in translation):

When from the libation-ewer more

than water came. When

pus came after the more.

And more than pus. When

the sea also

had come, then

a breath braided a face that was

sharp as the newly

born keel, standing upward, travelready, into

the other sea—the one

with the splinter and signs

and the signsplinters.

Don't say there was

no lid

above the pair of eyes in

that face.

                 There were flightlids, lashed, the gazes

had their tent.

Opferglocke | sacrificebell: In all drafts, except the final print proof, the word is given as
Opferlocke
(Sacrifice-[hair]lock). We cannot be sure if Celan missed the typo or let it consciously stand as a meaningful “error,” in the way Robert Duncan was wont to speak—and make use—of such occurrences.

“Hohles Lebensgehöft” | “Hollow lifehomestead”

February 20, 1964.

Lebensgehöft | lifehomestead: The German noun Gehöft translates into our “farmstead,” which Merriam-Webster defines as “the buildings and adjacent service areas of a farm; broadly: a farm with its buildings,” or “homestead,” defined as the home and adjoining land occupied by a family. Celan will make use of the word—and even more so of its core seme, Hof (farm, space, courtyard, etc.)—on a number of occasions. Gehöft most visibly enters into the composition of the title of his last (posthumous volume) Zeitgehöft, which I translated as “Timestead.” These terms, as well as Zeithof (timehalo), also interest Celan because of the use to which they are put by the philosopher Edmund Husserl. For more details on this, see the commentary for the poem “Schwimmhäute” | “Webbing” (p. 566).

Schlafkorn | sleepcorn: Celan came across this term for a soporific grain in Jean Paul's
Hesperus
. In the same sentence Jean Paul uses the word
weggebeizt
, “eroded,” which becomes the title of another Celan poem (see p. 18).

“Über drei” | “Over three”

February 26, 1964. Eve of Purim.

Braunalgenblut | brownalgae-blood: Reading traces indicated by Wiedemann (
BW
, p. 730) in Roland Brinkman's
Abriß der Geologie
(p. 84): “On the oceanfloor the seaweeds belonging to the brown algae take root, as do the geologically important chalk-algae, that are composed of the lime-producing forms of the blue, red, and green algae.”

Brust- / warzensteine | breast- / nipplestones: Celan combines two words: the word
Brustwarze
refers to the nipple or teat of the breast.
A Warzenstein
, according to the Grimms'
Deutsches Wörterbuch
, is “ein versteinerter seeigel oder theil davon, mit erhöhungen an den stellen, wo stacheln gestanden haben” (a petrified sea urchin or a part thereof, with tubercles where the spines stood). Celan may have come across the latter term in Jean Paul's
Das Kampaner Thal
.

“Am weißen Gebetriemen” | “On the white philactery”

March 5, 1964.

Gebetriemen | phylactery: Literally translated, Gebetriemen means “prayer-belt”; the term is, however, a specific object in Judaism (called “phylactery” in English), where it refers to either of two small leather boxes, each containing strips of parchment inscribed with quotations from the Hebrew scriptures. One is strapped to the forehead, the other to the left arm by observant Jewish men during morning worship, except on Sabbath and holidays.

A second, archaic meaning of “philactery” is “amulet, reminder.” Although the technical, Greek-derived term “phylactery” may seem odd or to even overdetermine the German compound, the context here clearly points to the Jewish cult object, something an English neologism such as “prayer belt” would not.

“Erblinde” | “Go blind”

March 13, 1964.

“Engholztag” | “Latewoodday”

March 15, 1964.

Engholztag | Latewoodday:
Engholz
, literally “narrow wood,” is rarer than its synonym
Spätholz
, literally “late wood.” The words come from botany and describe the yearly growth of trees: thus the inner portion of a tree's growth ring, formed early in the growing season, when growth is comparatively rapid (hence the wood is less dense), is known as “early wood” or “spring wood” or “late-spring wood,”
Frühholz
in German.
Engholz
refers to the outer portion and is “late wood” (or “summer wood”) and is denser, as
eng
(narrow, tight, dense) indicates.

Tierblütige | Animal-bloodsoming:
Blütig
is a neologism that mixes
blutig
(bloody, bleeding, etc.) with
blühen
,
blüte
, etc.—that is, the word convolutes around flower/flowering/blossom. The translator's neologism “bloodsoming” tries, however clumsily, to render this double load.

“Heute” | “Today”

April 6, 1964, Moisville (for place, see commentary for “Du darfst“/ “You may,” p. 461).

Nacktpflanzenreigen | naked-plants-dance:
Nacktpflanze
is a botanical term (present in Celan's Brockhaus dictionary of geology) for a kind of plant also called a psilophite, which literally means “naked plant.” These are simple dichotomously branched plants that first appeared during the Late Silurian, are now limited to two extant genera, lack true leaves and roots, and include the oldest known land plants with vascular tissue.

Halb- und Viertel-verbündete | Half- and quarter-allies: A number of references in this poem could point to Celan thinking about the Goll affair, during which people he thought were allies seemed often not to back him as much as he expected. Another possible reference to this could be the term “owl-pebble” above, which Lefebvre tentatively links to “the publishing house Ullstein (which had an owl as its emblem), expropriated by the Nazi regime and bought back by Axel Springer in the sixties” (
RDS
, p. 225).

Reichtümer an / verloren-vergällter / Sprache | Riches of / lost-soured / language: See certain formulation's in Celan's Bremen speech: “Only one thing remained reachable, close, and secure amid all the losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silences, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and would resurface, ‘enriched' by it all” (
PCCP
, p. 34).

“Mittags” | “Midday”

April 30, 1964.

zwei Tage in Rom | two days in Rome: Celan traveled in Italy, first Rome, then Milan, from April 16 to April 21. From Rome, he visited Cerveteri, the largest extant Etruscan necropolis. Compare also the poem “Die Ewigkeit” | “Eternity” from the volume
Fadensonnen
|
Threadsuns
(p. 176).

“Unter die Haut” | “Sown under”

June 3, 1964.

“Das Stundenglas” | “The hourglass”

June 4, 1964, Moisville. Compare two earlier versions in the letters to his wife (
PC
/
GCL
, #184).

Päonienschatten | paeony shadow: The flower is named after Paeon—the name means “she who heals”—a student of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. It was traditionally used in medicine to treat epilepsy, convulsions, and nervous troubles (
RDS
, p. 227). In German it is also called a
Pfingstrose
, or “Pentecost rose.”

wo du versandend verhoffst | where you, mired, test the wind: This last line poses difficulties for the translation.
Versandend
has the sense of being progressively mired in sand, to “silt up”;
Verhoffst
, repeating the
ver
- particle in a typical Celanian way, seems at first semantically to reduplicate the meaning of
versandend
, suggesting the progressive loss of hope. But the
verb verhoffen
—in which one could hear
hoffen
, “to hope”—is, in fact, a technical hunting term usually used in reference to deer and meaning “to stand quietly and scent the wind.” This double meaning of loss of hope and yet of a still active listening to the world in literal translation loses the repetition (sameness in difference) and ambiguity of the German particle
ver
-. In previous versions, given the negative connotation of “bogged down” (now changed to “mired”), I tried to translate the active, hunting sense of “verhoffst” with “scent” (as in “to scent danger”), but now prefer to go with “test the wind”—longer but more accurate. It is also how I translated the “verhoffen” that Celan uses in the Meridian speech, where it occurs in the following sentence, which also uses a double “ver-,” though with a difference: “The poem tarries [
verweilt
] or tests the wind [
verhofft
]—a word related to the creaturely—through such thoughts … Nobody can tell how long the breath pause—the testing [
das Verhoffen
] and the thought—will last” (
MFV
, p. 8).

“Hafen | “Harbor”

June 24–25, 1964—Moisville, August 2, 1964. First notes (nautical vocabulary) toward the poem date to a stay in Hamburg for two readings on June 24 and 25 (
TA,
Atemwende
, p. 82) and were possibly made on the occasion of a tour of the harbor, suggests Wiedemann (
BW
, p. 732).

Mutter Clausen | Mother Clausen:
Mutter Paulsen
in one of the early drafts, though no bar with either name can be verified as actually existing in Hamburg at that time. Mutter Paulsen is a figure in Theodor Storm's
Pole Poppenspäler
.

zeitgrünen Uhrturm | timegreen clocktower: The word “clocktower” occurs in Celan's Hamburg notes and refers to a clocktower on the jetties that besides the time also indicates the water level; its copper roof was discolored by verdigris (
BW
, p. 733).