{"id":725,"date":"2009-01-30T22:12:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T06:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=725"},"modified":"2009-01-30T22:12:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T06:12:00","slug":"celan-kafka-the-glottal-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/celan-kafka-the-glottal-stop\/","title":{"rendered":"Celan, Kafka & the Glottal Stop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Kavka, jackdaw, (corvus monedula)<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

I just read an essay by Matthew Landis on the connection of certain themes in Paul Celan\u2019s poetry & Jacques Derrida\u2019s writings, especially those of the trace, the breach, the break. A fascinating essay indeed, the reading of which I recommend \u2014 it\u2019s here<\/a>. I would like, however, to suggest that when thinking through Celan (or any other foreign-language poet) via his poems it is essential to rely not only on one translation & its accompanying introduction, but to go to the original and quote it too, to allow for a more comparative approach that cannot but enhance the reading and interpretation of the poems. A shame in this case, because Landis\u2019 reading is otherwise very convincing.<\/p>\n

But when, for example, Landis speaks of the poem FRANKFURT, SEPTEMBER, he quotes the last stanza in the Popov\/McHugh translation:<\/p>\n

The glottal stop is breaking
into song.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This allows for the beginning of an interesting meditation on the effect of the glottal stop, based on the line break after \u201cbreaking\u201d \u2014 a reading made possible by performing it on the translation. Celan\u2019s original reads:<\/p>\n

Der Kehlkopfverschlu\u00dflaut
singt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

in my \u2014 certainly more literal \u2014 translation:<\/p>\n

The glottal stop
sings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Landis\u2019 reading may possibly be teased from Celan\u2019s own words, though at least to my ear, the German \u201claut\u201d and \u201csingt\u201d suggest the transformation of the \u2014 silent, withheld \u2014 sound of the glottal stop into song over what is a smooth line-\u201cbreak\u201d that does not flaunt its \u201cbreaking\u201d quality here. It may even be read as the rather joyous constat<\/span> that even the sound of such a heavy long German word as \u201cKehlkopfverschlusslaut\u201d does end up as song, while the heavy-handed Popov\/McHugh translation foregrounds something that is certainly not explicit in Celan\u2019s own verse, if intended at all.<\/p>\n

A bit further in the essay, Landis goes for the throat, I mean, the importance of the glottal stop, by trying to connect that linguistic instance to the life of the poet. He writes:<\/p>\n

Celan\u2019s life story is marked by one particularly tragic example which places the metonymic device of the \u201cglottal stop\u201d in a particular perspective. While a boy he was sent to a work camp and his family (Romanian Jews living in Germany) were sent to Auschwitz. While in Auschwitz, Celan\u2019s mother died from a wound to the throat. The singularity of one\u2019s death, that death is one\u2019s \u201cownmost possibility\u201d as Heidegger repeatedly claims in Being and Time<\/span> is marked by the wound which erased the voice of Celan\u2019s mother.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Note: Celan and his parents did not live in Germany, but in Czernowitz, then part of Rumania, today part of the Ukraine. They were not sent to Auschwitz, but to work camps along the Bug river, on the Romanian\/Ukrainian border].<\/p>\n

Landis gets his information via the Popov\/McHugh\u2019s introduction where they center on that glottal stop (also the title of their book) by connecting it to the manner in which Celan\u2019s mother is supposed to have died: \u201cfrom a wound in the throat.\u201d It makes for a nice & tidy connection, but in 40 years of reading Celan and the vast Sekund\u00e4rliteratur<\/span> on his work, I have never come across this bit of information. From all we actually know (check, among many others, Israel Chalfen\u2019s biography of the young Celan, or the appendix to the Celan\/Celan-Lestrange correspondance, or Walter Emmerich\u2019s book), she died by the traditional Nazi execution technique: the \u201cGenickschuss\u201d \u2014 or shot in the nape of the neck or back of the head, i.e. a bullet from behind (even the Nazis didn\u2019t much care to look their victims in the face), and not from the front, as \u201ca wound in the throat\u201d (and thus possibly in the \u201cKehlkopf\u201d) wants us to believe. An unnecessary little bit of stretching the known facts to prove the theory and justify the importance of the title seems to be going on in that intro.<\/p>\n

Not that Landis\u2019 meditation on the glottal stop itself isn\u2019t valuable and accurate, and important in both Celan and Derrida. It is. And his considerations of breach and interruption are much to the point \u2014 it\u2019s just a shame that it relies for his information on one flawed translation and that book\u2019s introduction, at a time when more than 6000 pieces of Celan Sekund\u00e4rliteratur are available.<\/p>\n

Another little thing: the Popov\/McHugh translation also heavy-handedly mistranslates a stanza by adding a line so as to point to what Celan leaves elegantly & tightly implicit yet visible, namely the Kafka reference in that poem. In Celan\u2019s German:<\/p>\n

Die Simili-
Dohle
fr\u00fchst\u00fcckt.<\/p>\n

(My translation:<\/p>\n

The imitation
jackdaw
breakfasts.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

in theirs:<\/p>\n

The pseudo-jackdaw
(cough-caw\u2019s double)
is breakfasting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed the \u201cDohle,\u201d our jackdaw, in Czech is \u201ckavka\u201d and Celan wanted that reference to a writer who was very important to him, but I don\u2019t think translators should explain such references by adding a line of their own making that is simply not in the poem. Kafka too was conscious of the derivation of his name from that bird, and his father had the bird inserted into the family crest. Kafka is present in Celan\u2019s work in many other places & the Dohle-reference is thus visible for any careful reader of those poems. For any such reader of Celan & Kafka the poem contains other Kafka references, such as the word \u201cfr\u00fchst\u00fcckt\u201d \u2013 breakfast \u2014 which links it to a line in K\u2019s story \u201cThe Hunger Artist,\u201d and the fact that Kafka died from a \u201cKehlkopftuberkulose.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the manuscripts of the Celan poem, the title was given as \u201cFrankfurt, \u05e2, September\u201d and alternatively as \u201cFrankfurt, Ayin, September\u201d \u2014 i.e. it included the glottal stop in the title readable as referring to the interruption \/ breach \/ letter, thus the glottal stop, and possibly to what is also in our alphabet often pronounced as a sort of glottal stop, i.e. the initial \u201cK\u201d of Kafka\u2019s name. (cf. the commentaries to this poem in the “Gesamtausgabe in einem Band” Paul Celan: Die Gedichte<\/span>, edited by Barbara Wiedemann \u2014 Suhrkamp 2003).<\/p>\n

It is, finally my contention, that an over-psychologizing reading of Celan will almost always get to a kind of existential despair that is indeed present in Celan, but often misses the light-side of that darkness: Celan’s desire & will (not only for witnessing) but for the creation of an art that speaks of possibilities of openness, of light, of air to breathe, despite all. There can be song (the poem\u2019s last statement) despite death, here the death referenced is Kafka\u2019s by tuberculosis of the throat \u2014 no need in this case to bring in Celan\u2019s mother\u2019s, a death present only in the sense that his whole life is lived under that shadow, with no need for it to be fore grounded by the poet in each & every poem.<\/p>\n

Here, the poem\u2019s end-word says that there can be singing, despite death and even in or despite of the weird surroundings of the Frankfurt
\nbook fair (the setting of the poem), because (Kafka\u2019s) words have survived, are still singing. It is, I believe, a more optimistic poem than psychologizing interpretations (and\/or the Freud & his cockchafer dream in the poem) makes it out to be. As Celan demands in the poem: “For the last \/ time psycho-\/ logy.” Or as Celan says in another poem: \u201ces sind \/ noch Lieder zu singen jenseits \/ der Menschen\u201d in my translation: \u201cThere still \/ are songs to sing beyond \/ mankind.\u201d Trace-songs, maybe, but songs.<\/p>\n

Ps. Permit me to reproduce the poem discussed above \u2014 its is the opening poem of the volume Fadensonnen \/ Threadsuns<\/span> in its entirety, in both the original and in my translation:<\/p>\n

FRANKFURT, SEPTEMBER<\/p>\n

Blinde, licht-
b\u00e4rtige Stellwand.
Ein Maik\u00e4fertraum
leuchtet sie aus.<\/p>\n

Dahinter, klagegerastert,
tut sich Freud’s Stirn auf,<\/p>\n

die drau\u00dfen
hartgeschwiegene Tr\u00e4ne
schie\u00dft an mit dem Satz:
“Zum letzten-
mal Psycho-
logie.”<\/p>\n

Die Simili-
Dohle
fr\u00fchst\u00fcckt.<\/p>\n

Der Kehlkopfverschlu\u00dflaut
singt.<\/p>\n

FRANKFURT, SEPTEMBER<\/p>\n

Blind, light-
bearded partition.
A cockchaferdream
floodlights it.<\/p>\n

Behind it, complaint-rastered,
Freud\u2019s forehead opens up,<\/p>\n

the tear, hard-
silenced outside,
links on with the sentence:
\u201cFor the last
time psycho-
logy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The imitation
jackdaw
breakfasts.<\/p>\n

The glottal stop
sings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n

\"Reblog<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kavka, jackdaw, (corvus monedula) I just read an essay by Matthew Landis on the connection of certain themes in Paul Celan\u2019s poetry & Jacques Derrida\u2019s writings, especially those of the trace, the breach, the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paul-celan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","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=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13903,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/13903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}