Breathturn into Timestead (42 page)

The “Jewess” is something quite different. Since the end of the eighteenth century, an erotically charged word with a meaning that depends on exclusion. It signaled a danger for the German man and threatened a “corruption of German culture”; it stood for the foreign, the ominous, the other. Celan's poem shatters this context. Ovaries have no erotic connotation. Ovaries designate the fecundity of women, and women were targeted by the National Socialist genocide because they could be mothers. They were sterilized—squirted in the ovaries—so that they could no longer hand on life. And they were murdered, so that never again would a Mother Rahel weep for her children.

The “Jewess Pallas Athena.” This shocking phrase demolishes an anchor of National Socialist ideology: the supposed contradiction between “Semitic” and “Indo-European”—what German philology calls “Indo-Germanic.” Beyond this opposition, something in common is asserted that encompasses both the culture of ancient Greece and the Jewish tradition. What appear to be entirely contrary meanings can suddenly be thought together, meanings that had been lost in the clichéd images of the “Jewess.” Two traditions interweave, and to monotheistic Judaism is joined a culture that understood Wisdom, Knowledge, Art, and Memory as feminine nouns. Sophia and Mnemosyne, the Muses and Theoria. A culture in which feminine words and female figures bear memories just as Rahel, Esther, and Sulamith recall the Jewish people for Celan. (pp. 5–6)

karpatisches | Carpathian: The Carpathian Mountains are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) long across central and eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe, stretching in an arc from the Czech Republic in the northwest to Serbia in the south. Celan's homeland, the Bukovina, now part of Ukraine, was part of the Carpathian stretch. Wiedemann adds that the Bukovina “ceased to exist after the resettlement of its German and the extermination of its Jewish inhabitants” (
BW
, p. 765).

Allemande: A popular instrumental dance form of baroque music and an element of a suite. The French word means literally “German,” interesting here for its linguistic triangulation between the German of the poem, the Hebrew word
ashrei
, and the French word for “German.” Hahn (pp. 4–5) notes an interesting coincidence with that linguistic triangle and the triangle formed by the “I, You, and He” of the poem.

sich übergebende | vomiting: The German verb has two meanings, a literal sense of
über-geben
, “to hand or give over,” and the figurative sense of “to vomit,” just as in the poem “Es kommt” / “There also” (p. 442) Celan uses the expression
erbricht
(“breached”), where the German verb also has two meanings, one describing an infraction, a breach.

“Eingewohnt-entwohnt” | “Acclimatized-disclimatized”

December 31, 1966, Paris. Compare Franz Wurm's letter of December 15, 1966, mentioning the publication of French translations of poems by Celan in the
Nouvelle Revue Française
: “There lay the December issue … and your name was as acclimatized [
eingewohnt
] on it as is possible for someone who was forced to take a long time to acclimatize himself [
lange hat einwohnen müssen
].” Celan answered his friend in a letter of December 21, 1966: “‘Acclimatized,' that's what you say. Maybe. Acclimatized-disclimatized, seems more like it to me” (
PC
/
FW
, letters #33 and #34).

-lötige | carat: The German
Lot
is an old measure expressing the purity of silver and equivalent to our “carat” (now used only for gold), before the use of the millesimal system.

“Riesiges” | “Giant”

January 1, 1967, Paris.

Quincunx | quincunx: This is the single occurrence of the word in Celan's oeuvre. Meaning literally “five-twelfths”—from the Latin
quinque
, “five,” and
uncia
, “twelfth part”—a quincunx is an arrangement of five things in a square or rectangle, with one at each corner and one in the middle. Originally a Roman coin whose value was five-twelfths of an as, a quincunx is a standard pattern for planting an orchard. The English physician Sir Thomas Browne, in his philosophical discourse
The Garden of Cyrus
(1658), elaborates upon evidence of the quincunx pattern in art and nature and mystically as evidence of “the wisdom of God.” Browne possessed several books by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), including his
Ad vitellionem paralipomena
(1604), which is credited as first introducing the pattern to astronomy and astrology in modern times (adapted from
Merriam-Webster
and
OED
).

“Gewieherte Tumbagebete” | “Neighed tombprayers”

January 4, 1967, Paris. The poem draws on a
FAZ
article of January 4, 1967, reporting on the funeral for the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer, someone early on much compromised by adherence to Nazi ideology. Celan owned his novel
Die Strudelhofstiege oder Melzer und die Tiefe der Jahre
, inscribed to him with the dedication: “For Paul Celan, cordially, Heimito von Doderer, Munich, December 1954.” In a letter to Gisèle of January 4, 1967, he notes: “I have written a new poem, hard and harsh.”

Tumbagebete | tombprayers:
Tumbagebete
are mentioned in the
FAZ
article, and the word had already been underlined by Celan in Heinrich Böll's
Haus ohne Hüter
(House without guardians) (
BW
, p. 766).

zerstrahlten | irradiated: Reading traces for this word in Celan's copy of Arno Schmidt's
The Egghead Republic
.

“Die Ewigkeiten tingeln” | “The eternities honkytonk”

January 18, 1967, Paris.

“Müllschlucker-Chöre” | “Trashswallower-choirs”

January 21, 1967.

Frieselfieber | Miliary fever: Wiedemann links this term to Mozart, who is said to have suffered toward the end of his life from a “fever accompanied by ‘Frieseln'” (
BW
, p. 766), that is, miliary fever—“miliary” referring to the appearance of millet-sized bumps on the skin.

Dezember | December: Mozart died on December 5, 1791.

III

“Entteufelter Nu” | “Dedeviled instant”

February 28, 1967. On January 30 Celan attempted suicide by stabbing himself with a letter opener, barely missing his heart. His wife saved him in extremis. Transported to Boucicaut hospital in the fifteenth arrondissement, he was immediately operated on, as the stab had punctured his left lung and gravely damaged it. On February 13 he was interned in the Sainte-Anne psychiatric clinic, in the care of Professor Delay, and though allowed outings starting at the end of April, he was confined to Sainte-Anne's until October 17. More than half of the poems in
Fadensonnen
|
Threadsuns
(starting with this, the third cycle), as well as a large part of
Lichtzwang
|
Lightduress
(the first four cycles and parts of the fifth), were composed during this stay.

Bocklemünd: The name of neighborhood of Cologne, which includes a large Jewish cemetery visited by Celan on October 9 or 19 while traveling in Germany to pay homage to his childhood friend Marcel Pohne, who died in an accident in December 1964.

“Hüllen” | “Shells”

March 1, 1967. The following poem was written on the same day.

Jeden Pfeil, den du losschickst | Each arrow you loose: The “you” here is the poet himself, using, as he often does, a reference to his astrological sign—Sagittarius, the archer.

“Die Liebe” | “Love”

March 1, 1967. The preceding poem was written on the same day.

zwangsjackenschön | straitjacket-pretty: When Celan had attempted to kill Gisèle in November 1965, he had been taken to the psychiatric hospital bundled in a straitjacket. Compare the poem “Schlafbrocken” | “Sleepmorsels” (p. 136).

Kranichpaar | pair of cranes … da er durchs Nichts fährt | drives through the void: Wiedemann (
BW
, p. 768) points to Bertolt Brecht's poem “Die Liebenden” | “The Lovers,” from
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
. Jenny says in the second act: “Sieh jene Kraniche im großen Bogen!” | “Look at those cranes sweeping wide!” … “So mag der Wind sie ins Nicht entführen / wenn sie nur nicht vergehen und sich bleiben.” | “So it matters not, if the wind should lead them off into the void, / as long as they don't perish and they have each other” (translation by Guy Stern). See also the “pair of cranes” in the poem “Herzschall-Fibeln” | “Heartsound-fibulas” (p. 274) and the crane in “Wenn du im Bett” | “When you lie” (p. 48).

“Du warst” | “You were”

March 10, 1967. On that day Celan received a letter from Gisèle that said: “I can no longer endure Paris, or this apartment with the telephones, and all that drama we are living through. I will not be able to come on Sunday,
I am leaving tomorrow evening
before I have a complete nervous breakdown, which wouldn't help anyone—” The underlining is in Celan's hand, who added in the left margin “Thursday!” (
PC
/
GCL
, #480).

“Zur Rechten” | “To the right”

March 16, 1967. On this day Celan sent a letter (
PC
/
GCL
, #483) to his wife to wish her well on her impending fortieth birthday.

Zur Rechten—wer? | To the right—who?: In the original volume this poem stood on the right side of the page with the previous poem, “Du warst” | “You were,” on the left side.

Tödin | Shedeath: This female form of the word
Tod
, “death,” occurs only once in German literature, according to the Grimms' dictionary, namely, in a text by Abraham a Sancta Clara, where it is used as a local dialectical expression connoting
nächtliche Wehklage
, “nightly lament.” One should, however, remember that in French the word death”—
la mort
—is feminine.

außer- / himmlische Ort | outer- / heavenly place: Celan had first written “am hyper-uranischen Ort” | “At the hyper-uranian place,” a reference to Plato's
Phaedrus
, line 247C, which speaks of a
tópon hyperouránion
, “the place beyond heaven—none of our earthly poets has ever sung or ever will sing its praises enough!” Plato's Greek word—
hyperouranos
—describes his realm of the pure forms, that is, Platonic ideas.

“Die abgewrackten Tabus” | “The dismantled taboos”

March 18, 1967.

Die abgewrackten Tabus | The dismantled taboos: Reading traces in Peter Chotjewitz's review of Konrad Bayer's
Der sechste Sinn
(
Literatur und Kritik
12 [March 1967]: 122–26) (
LPC
): “The writer in this situation for himself and as a dismantled [circled by Celan] institution just good enough to give proof of his own uselessness” (p. 122). And: “But each attack on and each victory, no matter how small, over a taboo is only an illusionary attack and an illusionary victory. The public success of books supposedly freed of taboos [circled by Celan] is only the expression of a widespread tendency for social ersatz-satisfaction” (p. 123).

Grenzgängerei | bordercrisscrossing: See Chotjewitz: “This attempt by a novel to be simultaneously an essay about the novel in the sense in which Heinrich Vornweg once described literary border-crossing [
Grenzgängerei
] [circled by Celan] as literary activity become autonomous, proposes a multitude of enigmas.” The word is used today mainly to describe workers crossing borders in the morning to work in one country and returning to their own country in the evening, that is, border crosser, border worker, cross-border commuter.

“Wutpilger-Streifzüge” | “Rage-pilgrim raids”

March 20, 1967.

“Stille” | “Silence”

March 30, 1967.

“Die Eine” | “The one”

March 31–April 1, 1967. A first draft of the poem was jotted down in Edmond Jabès's
Le Livre des Questions
III |
The Book of Questions
III.

eigen- / sternige / Nacht. // Aschendurchfadmet | self- / starred / night. // Threathed through by ashes: In the first draft, Celan had “von / Fäden durchwoben” | “by / threads woven through.” Compare also reading traces in Jabès: “C'est un homme de vérité, disait de Reb Massé, Reb Eloun;
il marche sur des tapis de cendres
” (He is a man of truth, Reb Eloun said of Reb Massé;
he walks on carpets of ashes
) (Celan's underlines; p. 40), and “Il a dit: Le mal est quelquefois l'habit du bien. Et il pensait: L'étoile est l'ornement et le bouton de l'ample manteau des nuits.” (He said: evil is sometimes the garment of the good. And he thought: The star is the adornment and the button of night's ample mantle.”) (marginal mark on p. 46;
BW
, p. 770).

“Bei Glüh- und Mühwein” | “Over mulled and toiled wine”

April 4, 1967. On this day, after several weeks without news, Celan received a letter from Gisèle informing him that she had returned to Paris, a letter he immediately answered, reaffirming, against Gisèle's doubt, his conviction that “there had to be a future, for us three, one way or another” (
PC
/
GCL
, #485).

Bei Glüh- und Mühwein | Over mulled and toiled wine: Compare the poem from
Die Niemandsrose
“Bei Wein und Verlorenheit” | “Over Wine and Lostness”).