paul celan

i've got a bit of a holiday coming up and i'm intending doing a bit of paul celan reading, conparing and contrasting the hamburger and felstiner translations with this. good interview with joris here

 

paul celan

what a grand thing it is when a new poetry book thumps thru the door. even better when two of them do this in close succession. course, then there's the problem of which one to read first. if i was to have done this chronologically then it'd be james dickey's selected poems - i can't get the heaven of animals out of my head and have been meaning to read more. flicking thru it tho i feel i'm going to save it for some sort of road trip. it has that feel about it.

given the choice the heart was always going to gravitate to john felstiner's translations of the selected poems and prose of paul celan. i've only ever had michael hamburger's versions and, while up to now they've always been sufficient, the notion of seeing something different was very appealing. and so it's proved. i'm sitting here with both of them in front, flicking back and forth. both mention the problems of translating clean but it's ferstiner's intro that's engaging me. not just because it's newer to me but because it contains things i hadn't seen before.

along with the discussion re translating celan there's a bit about celan's own translation practice. as ferstiner says, it'd be good to have a bunch of celan's translations but until the day i learn german there's no real way i could appreciate it. he has a lovely bit where he looks at emily dickinson

I reason, we could die -
The best Vitality
Cannot excel decay
But, what of that?

which celan translates as -

Ich denk: Sieh zu, man stirbt,
der Saft, der in dir wirkt,
auch ihm gilt dies: Verdirb -
ja und?

which felstiner (kindly, for the german deficient) translates back as -

I think: Look here, we die,
the sap that works in thee,
it too knows this: Decay -
so what?

all of which contains everything i like about translation! there's a wealth of detail in the introduction (meaning, doubtless, that i'll be getting felstiner's biography of celan at some point along the way) and there are some nice images of the pomes along with celan's own handwriting. (i don't know what it is but i really like to see a writer's handwriting!)

my favourite quote so far is this one -

A poem...can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the - not always greatly hopeful - belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps

that'll do for me!

paul celan

Mit wechselndem Schlüssel

Mit wechselndem Schlüssel
schliesst du das Haus auf, darin
der Schnee des Verschwiegenen treibt.
Je nach dem Blut, das dir quillt
aus Aug oder Mund oder Ohr,
wechselt dein Schlüssel.

Wechselt dein Schlüssel, wechselt das Wort,
das treiben darf mit den Flocken.
Je nach dem Wind, der dich fortstösst,
ballt um das Wort sich der Schnee.

With a variable key

With a variable key
you unlock the house in which
drifts the snow of that left unspoken.
Always that key you choose
depends on the blood that spurts
from your eye or your mouth or your ear.

You vary the key, you vary the word
that is free to drift with the flakes.
What snow ball will form round the word
depends on the wind that rebuffs you.

trans michael hamburger

for roxana, who has another version of this, along with yet more entrancing images, here

paul celan

You enquire into language, into thinking, into poetry. You put your question succintly. Allow me to be as succint in my answer.

I do not believe there is such a thing as bilingual poetry. Double-talk, yes, this you may find among our various contemporary arts and acrobatics of the word, especially those which manage to establish themselves in blissful harmony with each fashion of consumer culture, being as polyglot as they are polychrome.

Poetry is by necessity a unique instance of language. Hence never - forgive the truism, but poetry, like truth, goes all to often to the dogs - hence never what is double.

Reply to a Questionnaire from the Flinker Bookstore, Paris, 1961

The subject of the study was 'The Problem of the Bilingual'

trans rosemarie waldrop

paul celan

Wie du dich ausstirbirst in mir:

noch in letzten
zerschlissenen
Knoten Atems
steckst du mit einem
Splitter
Leben


How you die out in me:

down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you’re there, with a
splinter
of life

trans michael hamburger

paul celan

Alchemical

Silence, cooked like gold,
in charred
hands.

Great, grey
sisterly shape
near like all that is lost:

All the names, all those
names
burnt with the rest. So much
ash to be blessed. So much
land won
above
the weightless, so weightless
rings
of souls.

Great, grey one.cinder-
less.

You, then.
You with the pale
bit-open bud,
you in the wine-flood.

(Us too, don't you think,
this clock dismissed?
Good,
good how your word died past us here.)

Silence, cooked like gold, in
charred, charred
hands.
Insubstantial as smoke. Like crests, crests of air
around --

Great, grey one. Wake-
less.
Re-
gal one.


trans Michael Hamburger

john donne

it being the shortest day and all. not that st lucy is cheery story but it does mean the days are getting longer!

A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day

Being the shortest day

’Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,
The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
The worlds whole sap is sunke:
The generall balme th’ hydroptique earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the beds-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with mee, who am their Epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new Alchimie.
For his art did expresse
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse:
He ruin’d mee, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have;
I, by loves limbecke, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have wee two wept, and so
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two Chaosses, when we did show
Care to ought else; and often absences
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing, the Elixer grown;
Were I a man, that I were one,
I needs must know; I should preferre,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; All, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew.
You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne
At this time to the Goat is runne
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since shee enjoyes her long nights festivall,
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call
This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this
Both the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.

paul celan

Wie du dich ausstirbirst in mir:

noch in letzten
zerschlissenen
Knoten Atems
steckst du mit einem
Splitter
Leben


How you die out in me:

down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you’re there, with a
splinter
of life


translation (I think) is Michael Hamburger but if it's rubbsh and i'm doing a disservice to his memory then it's probably been me

Paul celan

Wie du dich ausstirbirst in mir:

noch in letzten
zerschlissenen
Knoten Atems
steckst du mit einem
Splitter
Leben

How you die out in me:

down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you’re there, with a
splinter
of life

(trans M. Hamburger?)