{"id":14071,"date":"2016-01-22T10:50:03","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T14:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=14071"},"modified":"2016-01-22T10:50:03","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T14:50:03","slug":"celan-the-aphorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/celan-the-aphorist\/","title":{"rendered":"Celan the Aphorist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mikrolithen\"<\/a>Over the last two year it has been a great pleasure to work on & off at translating Paul Celan’s unpublished miscellaneous prose works that were gathered some\u00a0years ago by Barbara Wiedemann and Bertrand Badiou in the volume Mikrolithen sinds, Steinchen<\/em>\u00a0(Microliths these are, little Stones [Pebbles]<\/em>). Having put the work\u00a0on the proverbial backburner\u00a0for some six months, I am now in the process of pulling it out again & going over the texts to shape a final ms. to be published toward the end of the year by modem-verlag<\/a>. Except for two essays and one\u00a0prose piece (Conversation in the Mountain<\/em>), Celan did not publish anything beyond his poems and translations. But he did leave a rich trove of aphorisms, paradoxes, sketches, and short narrative & topical fragments (often returning, sometimes openly, sometimes in more veiled terms, to questions of Jewishness, of politics, of the\u00a0mistreatment that befell him via the Goll affair). All these are fascinating as they are not only a pleasure to read qua writing, but also because they help throw light on a complex, profoundly private & and often secretive man. Be that as it may, for me\u00a0maybe the most useful\u00a0of this work is\u00a0a range of reflections, just as short & pithy, on poetry & poetics.<\/p>\n

The brevity, terseness and\u00a0condensed power of these sayings\/writings, combined with their often playful punning language, and their difficult to assess status (are they finished, abandoned? Which version of those for which we have 3 or 4 tries, should one use? Would Celan have thrown them out? Or completed some of those that are obviously open-ended?)\u00a0make for marked difficulties in translation. I am thinking right now that it may be most helpful (should a translation be “helpful”? And if so for whom?) to leave as much of the meta-translation aspect (notes, multiple\u00a0word choices, etc.) in as needed. \u00a0Here are just a few from the early aphoristic gathering which he usually referred to as (or under the title of) Gegenlichter<\/em> \/\u00a0Counterlights<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

22 <\/span>Hermeticism<\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Certain \u201ccitizens\u201d and the poem: They buy the surprise bag; one knows vaguely what\u2019s in it, it won\u2019t be much, but then it doesn\u2019t cost much either, and if one already visits the fair and has enjoyed the lady without lower- but with upper body, one\u2019s amusement also demands that. And when what\u2019s in it turns out \u2014 but here too the buyer\u2019s superior humor can prove itself \u2014 to be even cheaper than cheap, there still remains the fun that all of that was \u201ctoo\u201d \/[\u201czu\u201d “closed”]<\/span><\/p>\n

35.2 There is (in small and smallest coinage) a koine of the lyric; and then there is the one singular language of poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

36 Comfortably at home in stylistically correct smart aleck\u2019ry, one will write obituaries for the great deceased and, while in selected company availing oneself of the memorial sites, one will not forget to take an elegant sideswipe at one\u2019s young neighbor on the occasion of the wreath laying; evenings one will pray briefly but substantially to the God one came to via several (up-to-date and high-profile) conversions,\u00a0 <\/span>and the next morning one will, while commenting the latest news with Bible-, Goethe- and self-citations, drink one\u2019s black coffee, with a mouthful of toast and commiseration.<\/span><\/p>\n

45.3\u00a0 <\/span>The League of the Homeland-evicted. The League of the World-evicted remains to be called into existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

46.2 The poem, where it truly <\/span>carries<\/span> over<\/span> (and in no way transposes): not metaphor, but metabasis<\/i> \u2014 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u1f04\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 into the Other\u2026 as into the Same.<\/span><\/p>\n

46.3 To him who yells at \u201cwords,\u201d language will refuse itself. He who yields to language, him\u2026 words will find.<\/span><\/p>\n

46.4 \u201cmy\u201d and \u201cmy\u201d and \u201cmy\u201d poem. \u2014 \u201cThese times\u201d and their mypoems. \u2014 Assaisonnons\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

46.5 Counterlights\u2014: To counter the lice.<\/span><\/p>\n

46.10 The human chance today: <\/span>Return to the Future!<\/span><\/p>\n

46.11 Space rockets, earth satellites, cosmodromes. Conscience, long ago flown ahead, stumbled ahead. The launchpad heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

46.12 Lies have\u2026 long legs.<\/span><\/p>\n

46.26 God needs the heretics\u2026<\/span>for this<\/span> he punishes them.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last two year it has been a great pleasure to work on & off at translating Paul Celan’s unpublished miscellaneous prose works that were gathered some\u00a0years ago by Barbara Wiedemann and Bertrand...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,103],"tags":[1730],"class_list":["post-14071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose","category-translation","tag-paul-celan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14071"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14077,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14071\/revisions\/14077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}