David Ting

on translating Paul Celan

A narrative binds these eight poems. Paul Celan’s lifelong subject: the presence of evil. The transitions between these poems are as important as what each poem contains. In order: a dead thing resurrects itself; a set of hands remembers its owner; a loved one vanishes; a sinister stranger appears; a skull is opened; a worksite remains haunted; someone is possessed; the reader is acquainted with grief. Allow the other voices to emerge.

I have carefully selected these poems from four of his later volumes (Fadensonnen, Lichtzwang, Schneepart, Zeitgehöft), and his uncollected work, which is rarely translated into English. His work is shot through with allusions, metaphors, distorted grammar, specialized vocabulary. His poems operate like Trojan horses. In English, I cautiously open the trapdoor.

“Augenblicke”/“Moments” — Invocation of the dead, but also of the self. The poem revolves around the word for “moments”: Augen + Blicke (“eye” + “glances”). Celan puns on the image of an eye with Winke (plural), which is not a “wink” but “a sign, a hint.” Augenblicke to Winke: for English, I reimagine this as the decay from “moments” to the word “omen” hidden within. I retain the assonance of schläft/steh in “eyes”/“rise.” Fadensonnen (1968).

“Deine Hände, die”/“Your hands, these” — The brief moment, during the creative act, when one forgets that they are writing anything. Uncollected (1958).

“In die Nacht gegangen”/“Into the night” — Records a deportation, and the ingratitude of the new generation. Punning on “leaf” as a page, as a missing part of a family tree. The mouth left behind: Celan’s. But what is wasted? Celan’s voice, or the person missing? Lichtzwang (1970).

“Ein Dritter steht neben uns”/“A third being stands near us” — An uncanny presence. Is it welcome? Uncollected (circa 1957).

“Komm”/“Come” — An autopsy. A telepathic excavation of the last experiences of the dead. Ten fingers dredging fibrous neurons out of a skull. Rauten-/grüben is the rhomboid fossa, a specific structure deep in the brainstem. Raute also refers to a bitter herb called rue, or ruewort. During the Renaissance it was believed to improve eyesight when consumed. See Paradise Lost (11.413–428) where the Archangel Michael “purged with euphrasy and rue / The visual nerve” of Adam; this divine concoction opens Adam’s eyes to the depths of his Original Sin, thoroughly clarifying his vision, “even to the inmost seat of mental sight.” Fadensonnen (1968).

“Schneepart”/“Snow. Insomnia.” — Another excavation: recapturing a forgotten dream. Strain of locating the words for it, after awakening. Schneepart (1971).

• Schnee + Part: Not a portion or piece, this “Snowpart,” but how one plays a part, a role — plays dead. Schnee, snow, white, resembles the whitest, purest crematorium ash.
• gebäumt: in a shape like a tree, the snowfall, falling ash: a family tree. In front of huts with broken windows. Houses with damaged eyes. Again, the scene of a deportation.
• “Snow. Insomnia.” to capture the mood. But I also pay homage to Osip Mandelstam’s “Schlaflosigkeit. Homer.” after Celan’s own German translation of his favorite poet. Nadezhda Mandelstam, Osip’s widow, upon reading Celan’s translations, indicated in a postcard to Celan dated July 12, 1962, that Celan had not performed this literally but had movingly transposed her husband’s Russian. In that faith, I transform Celan back into Mandelstam.
• Flachtraume schirken=“flat-dreams” skipping like stones over frozen water. My translation is a different moment. “Spindrift”: the trace of debris in the wind such skipping leaves behind.
• heraushauen: a verb for gathering firewood. The implication: words can be set alight.
• Kolk: a bog pond, but also a vortex. A synonym for Kolk (“bog pond”) is Moorauge: “moor” + “eye.” A complement to the shattered “eyes” of the huts. Abstracting all of these resonances, this version keeps a pronunciation: the long “o” sound found in both Kolk and echo. An “o”: a shape whose circle suggests an open mouth, as well as an open eye.

“Kleine Silbe”/“Small syllable” — What it can be like to read Celan: intense reflection on a single word, as if it were a crystal. The neologism Nachwahn (“ensuing madness”) shares the prefix Nach- (“to,” “after”) with Nachbar (“neighbor”). I keep the alliteration. Close to Nachwahn is Nachwahl: a postponed election. Uncollected (1969).

“Alle die Schlafgestalten, kristallin”/“All the shapes in sleep, crystalline” — Psychic intervention, or revenge. A translingual rhyme between lure and führ, root verb for Hitler’s title, der Führer (“the Leader”). I readjust bergen (“to rescue”) to “burgeon” (“to flourish”), as a play on their deceptive similarities in spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. In light of Celan’s lifelong guilt, and his eventual suicide in the knowledge that he had survived while his parents were murdered in the Holocaust: a person rescued does not necessarily flourish. Zeitgehöft (1975).