f7d9395c_atings_and_reviews___Gwern_net__Review
[Title] Selected Poems [Author] Paul Celan [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1972 [Read] 2014/06/01 [Review] 
Modern verse is always difficult to read, and I expect little from it since the freedom gives people far too much rope to hang themselves (“you need an infallible ear, like D. H. Lawrence, to determine where the lines should end”); Paul Celan is no exception in that most of his poems leave me simply baffled. Part of the problem is the shadow of the Holocaust lingering over many of the poems: an event too awesome and sublime to reduce to words, seemingly reducing Celan to slapping down words and fractured lines in frustration and despair, and not a little guilt, circling around the themes again and again (reminding me of Wittgenstein’s famous introduction to Philosophical Investigations). That said, a few of the poems or parts of the poems worked for me - not just the famous “Fugue of Death” (WP) but several of the others. In poetry, a few gems is enough, because they stay with one in a way that prose rarely does, and so I forgive Celan for the poems I did not like and myself for the poems I did not get. Some excerpts: “Aspen Tree…”, pg24: “Aspen tree, your leaves glance white into the dark. / My mother’s hair was never white. / Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine. / My yellow-haired mother did not come home. / Rain cloud, above the well do you hover? / My quiet mother weeps for everyone. / Round star, you wind the golden loop. / My mother’s heart was ripped by lead. / Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges? / My gentle mother cannot return.” “Corona”, p32: “Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends. / From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk: / then time returns to the shell.” “…We stand by the window embracing, and people look / up from the street: / it is time they knew! / It is time the stone made an effort to flower, / time unrest had a beating heart. / It is time it were time. / It is time.” “Fugue of Death”, pg33: “Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall / we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night / drink it and drink it / we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there / A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes / he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden / hair Margarete / he writes it and walks from the house the stars glitter / he whistles his dogs up / he whistles his Jews out and orders a grave to be dug in / the earth / he commands us strike up for the dance / Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night / we drink in the mornings at noon we drink you at / nightfall / drink you and drink you / A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes / he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden / hair Margarete / Your ashen hair Shulamith we are digging a grave in the / sky it is ample to lie there…” “Thread Suns”, pg83: “…there are / still songs to be sung on the other side / of mankind.” “I Hear that the Axe has Flowered”, pg106: “I hear that the axe has flowered, / I hear that the place can’t be named, / I hear that the bread which looks at him / heals the hanged man, / the bread baked for him by his wife, / I hear that they call life / our only refuge.” Ironically, the reason I looked up Celan in the first place was a Japanese novella (a doujin for Touhou), Iyokan & Surrounded By Enemies’s Dream and Reality, included as a running theme quotes from Celan’s From Threshold to Threshold (perhaps because Celan’s poems in Japanese bring out the repeated themes of gates/thresholds/transitions, which complements the plot of the novella & a key character). I had been particularly struck by the poem “The Guest” from Threshold: “Long before nightfall / someone who exchanged greetings with darkness / comes to spend the night with you. / Long before daylight / he wakes / and, before leaving, kindles a sleep, / a sleep echoing with footsteps: / you hear him going off, measuring distances, / and you throw your soul / after him.” And since Selected Poems was available but Threshold was not, I downloaded it to read… and “The Guest” was not in it.
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