Breathturn into Timestead (45 page)

“Weil du den Notscherben fandst” | “Because you found the woe-shard”

May 12, 1969.

“Es ist gekommen die Zeit” | “It has come the time”

May 13, 1969. The next poem was also written on that day.

Es ist gekommen die Zeit | It has come the time: Compare Jer. 50:27 and 31: “Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe unto them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.” And: “Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.”

Also, Rev. 11:18: “And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged,” and other places in the Bible (
BW
, p. 784).

Hirnsichel | brainsickle: In anatomy, falx cerebri, also called cerebral falx, named because of its sicklelike form, is a strong, arched fold of dura mater descending vertically in the longitudinal fissure between the cerebral hemispheres. I am translating the German word literally so as to keep the sickle image, which Celan foregrounds, to create his double image of brain shape and sickle moon.

“Lippen, Schwellgewebe” | “Lips, erectile-tissue”

May 13, 1967.

Lippen, Schwellgewebe | Lips, erectile-tissue: Reading traces in Faller: “External female sexual organs: They are formed by the two large lips (labia majora), two cutaneous folds stuffed with fatty tissue, and the small lips (labia minora), that are well provided with nerves and contain erectile tissue” (
BW
, p. 784).

Kommissur | commissure: Faller: “At the front
commissure
of the small lips lies the clitoris, a small, single organ made of erectile tissue, richly provided with nerve endings” (
BW
, p. 784).

Otto Pöggeler, in his essay “‘Schwarzmaut': Bildende Kunst in der Lyrik Paul Celans,” sees the word
Kommissur
as referring to the anatomy of the brain only (p. 287). But there is also a rhyme on the French word
commissure (des lèvres)
, playing back to the first word in the poem, which can hold both kinds of lips, facial and sexual. Etymologically the word comes from the Latin
commissura
, “connection”; in English the word also has both denotations; see
The American Heritage Dictionary
, p. 381: “2.a. A tract of nerve fibers passing from one side to the other of the spinal cord or brain. b. The angle or corner of such structures as the lips, eyelids, or cardiac valves.”

Thus the word itself, whose etymology points toward “a place at which 2 things are joined, a seam, a juncture” (ibid.), presents a joining of at least three familiar Celan motives: brain anatomy (deep structure of human mind), surface anatomy (the lips, and here sexual union), and a buried reference to that most abiding of Celan's images, the eye.

Schwarzmaut | Blacktoll:
Maut
, obsolete for
Zoll
, “toll,” as in road toll. The word
Schwarzmaut
, constructed after the model of
Schwarzhandel
(black market), thus corresponds to a forbidden, illegal toll or tax. Celan will use the word as the title of a limited edition of an artist's book with eighteen poems and etchings by Gisèle Celan-Lestrange (see the introductory note to
Lightduress
, pp. 547–50).

Leuchtkäfer | glowworms: In French
vers luisants
, where
vers
means both “worm” and “verse”—as in a poem.

V

“Mächte, Gewalten” | “Principalities, powers”

May 13, 1967.

Mächte, Gewalten | Principalities, powers: A New Testament, often Pauline expression. Compare Eph. 6:12: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”; Col. 2:15: “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” The expression refers to satanic and demonic forces able to take over social or political institutions as well as individual humans.

Vincents verschenktes / Ohr | Vincent's offered / ear: When Van Gogh in an act of insanity cut off his ear, he offered it to a prostitute by the name of Rachel, whom he asked to take good care of it (report in the
Forum Républicain
newspaper of December 30, 1888) (
BW
, pp. 784–85).

“Tagbewurf” | “Daybombardment”

May 15, 1967. The two following poems were composed on the same day.

“Redewände” | “Speechwalls”

May 15, 1967.

“Verwaist” | “Orphaned”

May 15, 1967. This poem is clearly a reworking of a classical kabbalistic theme. The next day Celan finished his reading of Gershom Scholem's
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism
(
BW
, p. 785).

die vier Ellen Erde | the four ells of earth: In his essay on the golem (an important figure in Celan's volume
Die Niemandsrose
), Scholem writes the following: “We come across the story that God and Earth concluded a formal contract concerning the creation of Adam … God demands Adam for a thousand years as a loan from Earth, and gives her a formal receipt for ‘four ells of earth,' which is witnessed by the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and lies to this day in the archives of Metatron, the heavenly scribe” (
On the Kabbalah
, p. 165).

Hebe | share:
Hebe
literally means “leaven.” But compare Scholem: “Just as according to the Torah a portion of dough is removed from the rest to serve as the priest's share, so is Adam the best share that is taken from the dough of the earth” (
On the Kabbalah
, p. 160).

“Beider” | “Of both”

May 16, 1967.

beider Todesblatt über der Blöße | of both: the deathleaf over their nakedness: Scholem: “
The leaves of the Tree of Death, with which Adam veils his nakedness
, are the central symbol of true magical knowledge” (
On the Kabbalah
, p. 175; Celan's underlines).

“Fortgewälzter” | “Rolled-away”

May 20, 1967.

“Als Farben” | “As colors”

May 21, 1967.

“Die Rauchschwalbe” | “The chimney swallow”

May 24, 1967. Celan had started teaching again on the previous day, though returning to the clinic in the evening. He sent this poem to Gisèle on May 25, with beneath it the following line: “The times are hard. May Israel last and live!” (
PC
/
GCL
, p. 508).

The complex intertwined imagery here is difficult to sort out. (1) Barbara Wiedemann links the shark to the biblical big fish that spat out Jonah. (2) Though we have no information about Celan's sources, she connects the Inca figure to the Spaniard Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), a relative of the poet with the same name, who was the illegitimate son of a conquistador and an Inca noblewoman (thus his surname) and wrote a critical narrative on the conquest of the Inca territories (
Commentarios Reales de los Incas
) that was eventually banned and not republished in the Americas until 1918. (3) There is a reading trace for the term
Landnahme
in Hans Krahe's
Germanische Sprachwissenschaft I: Einleitung und Lautlehre
(Berlin, 1948), p. 25: “Because of political disagreements many Norwegian noblemen had felt forced to leave their homeland. They emigrated to Iceland, which they settled during the so-called landnāma-tÄ«d ‘Landnahmezeit' | ‘conquest-time' (about 872–930)” (
BW
, p. 787).

“Weiß” | “White”

May 25, 1967.

“Unbedeckte” | “Bare one”

May 25–June 2, 1967.

“Der Schweigestoß” | “The silence-butt”

May 27, 1967. The next poem was also written on that day.

“Haut Mal” | “Haut Mal”

May 27, 1967. It is impossible to translate this title, as it can be read both as a German and a French title: In German “Haut Mal” could be a variation on
Mutter-Mal
, a birthmark, or mole, where
Haut
means “skin.” Thus “skin-mark,” “skin-blemish.” But the title could more obviously be read in French as “Haut Mal,” literally “High Evil/Sickness,” and could be a citation of the title of one of Michel Leiris's books of poems. It would seem that Leiris's title plays against/with the more idiomatic term “grand mal,” which refers to the strong form of epilepsy. Barbara Wiedemann also reports that Celan kept a magazine page with a part translation of a Boris Pasternak poem by Pierre Pascal with the title “Haut Mal” in his Italian edition of Pasternak's poetry (
BW
, p. 788).

Concerning the medical images of the poem, Wiedemann locates most of these in Hippocrates's essays (
Fünf auserlesene Schriften
[Zurich: Fischer Bücherei, 1955]), although the presence of the book in Celan's library is not attested.

“Das taubeneigroße Gewächs” | “The pigeon-egg-size growth”

May 28, 1967. According to some sources, the philosopher Leibniz is said to have had a growth the size of a pigeon egg on his neck. Thus the “Denkspiel” | “thoughtgame” most likely refers to Leibniz's idea of a mathesis universalis.

“Angewintertes” | “Bewintered”

May 30, 1967.

“Draußen” | “Outside”

June 3, 1967. The following poem was written on the same day.

“Wer gab die Runde aus?” | “Who stood the round?”

June 3, 1967.

“Heddergemüt” | “Dysposition”

June 4, 1967. The following poem was written on the same day.

“Kein Name” | “No name”

June 4, 1967.

“Denk Dir” | “Imagine”

June 7–13, 1967. The Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors lasted from June 5 to June 10. Much of Celan's thinking and feeling during that week can be seen in the three letters to Franz Wurm of June 8, 12, and 13 (
PC
/
FW
, #47, #49, #50), as well as in his letter to Gisèle of June 6 (
PC
/
GCL
, #514), in which he tells her that “at noon there was a mimeo sheet in my mail slot [at the École Normale Superieure] that says: ‘That / Israel may live / Everyone to the / Concorde / Tuesday 6 June at 7 p.m.' I called Jean, whom I'll meet up with there at a quarter to seven behind Palais-Bourbon to take part in the demonstration (which, I believe, is organized by young people). / Israel will win and will live.” In a later letter (
PC
/
GCL
, #531) he calls this poem “an important poem,” which the position of the poem as the final one in the volume tends to bear out.

Moorsoldat | moorsoldier: From “Die Moorsoldaten,” title of a song (usually translated as “The Peat Bog Soldiers”) written by prisoners in Nazi moorland labor camps of Börgermoor, which held about one thousand socialist, anarchist, and communist internees. The words were written by Johann Esser (a miner) and Wolfgang Langhoff (an actor); the music was composed by Rudi Goguel and was later adapted by Hans Eisler and Ernst Busch. In his often cited memoir,
Es war ein langer Weg
(Düsseldorf: Mahn- und Gedenkstätte, 2007 [first published in 1947 by Komet-Verlag]), Goguel described the first performance: “The sixteen singers, mostly members of the Solinger workers choir, marched in holding spades over the shoulders of their green police uniforms (our prison uniforms at the time). I led the march, in blue overalls, with the handle of a broken spade for a conductor's baton. We sang, and by the end of the second verse nearly all of the thousands of prisoners present gave voice to the chorus. With each verse, the chorus became more powerful and, by the end, the SS—who had turned up with their officers—were also singing, apparently because they too thought themselves ‘peat bog soldiers.'”

Massada | Masada: ancient fortification on a isolated rock plateau on the eastern edge of the Judean desert overlooking the Dead Sea. The siege of Masada by troops of the Roman Empire toward the end of the First Jewish–Roman War ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Jewish rebels and their families holed up there, in 73
C.E.

vom Unbestattbaren her | from what cannot be buried: In the first three drafts the final line read: “vom Allverwandelnden her.” | “from the all-transforming.” In his letter to Franz Wurm of June 13, Celan explains the change: “You see it exactly, you hear it accurately, for example, the Allverwandelnden: this word from Hölderlin's Empedocles puts me in that state, which you know well, which ever more tautly toward the poem—every possible poem—tensing toward—and then, out of gratitude, returned in the text. Except that this gratitude, that is witnessed here, wanes in the face of the sudden, stronger call: now it says—rightly so, I believe—: vom Unbestattbaren her | from what cannot be buried” (
PC
/
FW
, #50).

EINGEDUNKELT | TENEBRAE'D

The eleven poems that make up this cycle, all written during the time of the composition of
Threadsuns
, and originally conceived as part of that volume, were composed between March 17 and April 19, 1966, thus falling chronologically between the first and second cycles of
Threadsuns
. During that period Celan was hospitalized in Paris in the psychiatric clinic Sainte-Anne. He chose these eleven from a folder of twenty-six poems, but here, rejecting the chronological arrangement he used for the late volumes, he organized the cycle on different principles. Wiedemann suggests that the selection “seems to have consciously avoided thematic overlaps.” In January 1968, Celan sent the cycle with the added title
Eingedunkelt
to Siegfried Unseld, the publisher of Suhrkamp Verlag, who had asked for a contribution to an anthology to be called
Aus aufgegebenen Werken
(From Abandoned Works).