“You gave me my tongue,” this poet born in Bosnia-Herzegovina and now living in America tells us. Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2020 ($18.00)
Before we part I shall give it to you.’” This reviewer appreciates literary kink as much as the next reviewer, but, Jean Daive, what has this golden rake have to do with Celan, or translation, or the price of a baguette in China?
And you eat it anyway?” But what is up with this anecdote? Daive, “in a Southern city,” writes about a woman he encounters who tells him: “‘Before we part, I want to comb with my golden rake, in front of you watching, the hair on my vulva, my pubic triangle, the model of democracy. Celan is distant, moody, enigmatic: “The world is of glass,” “Being universal, a paving stone can multiply even into hell,” and, charmingly, “My omelet is burned.” Daive engages in dutiful responses and observations: “Your omelet is burned. Yet no draft of a translated poem appears in the book, and no in-depth discussion of a poem by Celan or Daive ever occurs. Celan is allegedly translating Daive’s poetry into German. In this rather opaque (despite Waldrop’s best efforts) collection of anecdotal jottings, Daive is allegedly translating Celan’s poetry into French. Think of Gustav Janouch’s Conversations with Kafka, only written by someone with a shower curtain wrapped around his head.
Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan by Jean Daive, tr. It’s a dangerous thing to say about any work, but this volume (549 pages) along with Joris’ Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry (736 pages) offer a high tide mark that forthcoming Celan translators will find difficult to match. His work shows us that “Everything, / even the heaviest, was / fledged, nothing / held back.” Joris’ translations of Celan bring such a depth of knowledge of Celan’s opus and casts such illumination on his allusions that one can only hope that this book will bring new readers to Celan, as well as attract those who have read Celan in other translations. Noone.” This volume, with translations of Poppy and Memory, Threshold to Threshold, and Speechgrille, confirms that Celan without doubt was one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. As Celan says in “Psalm,” “NoOne kneads us again of earth and clay, / no one conjures our dust.
It’s hard to find words to describe the power of Paul Celan’s poetry, its ability to turn language-shards into a kind of prayer for a world that has and continues to tolerate war and genocide. Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry by Paul Celan, tr.
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