Western Art and Jewish Presence in the Work of Paul Celan by Esther Cameron

Author:Esther Cameron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

Rebleute graben

die dunkelstündige Uhr um,

Tiefe um Tiefe,

du liest,

es fordert

der Unsichtbare den Wind

in die Schranken,

du liest,

die Offenen tragen

den Stein hinterm Aug,

der erkennt dich,

am Sabbath.

(Vineyardmen are redigging / the dark-houred clock, / depth upon depth, / you are reading, / the Invisible / summons the wind / into bounds, // you are reading, // the open ones carry / behind the eye the stone / that recognizes you / on the Sabbath.) (3:123)

This poem, dated April 13, 1970, seems to be associated with Celan’s one visit to Israel in the preceding autumn; as late as a few weeks before his death, he had written to friends of the hope of settling there. Vineyards are a feature of the Israeli landscape, and the “dark-houred clock” could stand for Jewish history, whose traumas are being “worked through” in contemporary Israeli life. There is a well-known story by S.Y. Agnon—”From Foe to Friend”—this writer encountered it in a Hebrew language class for new immigrants—in which the forces hostile to Jewish settlement are represented by the wind, which keeps knocking the narrator’s house down until he builds it strong enough. Lines 5-8 express belief in a Providence (“the Invisible” translates der Unsichtbare, a masculine form) which could wrestle with and restrain these forces (the idiom or possibly neologism in die Schranken fordern suggests both challenge and restraint). The Sabbath itself is a day of restraint and limitation, on which many activities are forbidden. The “open ones” with the stone behind the eye are those whose insight has been sharpened by suffering, so that they can recognize the “you.” Of this “you” we know nothing except that it is engaged in the act of reading. And this is enough. For to be recognized as a reader—as one who has read with understanding—would be a very different thing from being recognized as a writer or as a “literary critic”; it would imply recognition not just of one’s prowess but of the truths one had discerned, which would thus become common property. Celan seems to have thought, at the last, that there was more chance of such understanding in the Jewish homeland than elsewhere. Perhaps, too, as in “Just Think (Denk Dir)” (2:227), the last poem in Thread-Suns, he wanted finally to associate the hope of his poetry with the Jewish homeland, as the one contribution he could make to Israeli security. In any case it is possible to read Celan’s last poem as a Zionist statement, a new version of the prophecy that “out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of God from Jerusalem.” The last word of this poem and of Celan’s poetry—Sabbath—names the time of peace, the time when work and conflict cease and community is realized.

We have been “running on ahead” of Celan in his progress through “The Meridian,” arriving already, in the middle of the speech, at the final topic of “Utopia.” This is because we chose to notice and follow an associative trail leading to certain recognitions which could

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