PAUL CELAN: THE METAPHOR OF ETERNITY
Poem “MIDDAY” (MITTAGS)
From the bag “BREATHTURN” (ATEMWENDE)
by Maria Do Sameiro Barroso
Sarcophagus of the spouses, Via Guilia, Rome, sixth century BC. National Etruscan Museum (Image in the public domain).
|
Paul Celan
|
MITTAGS, bei
Sekundengeflirr,
im Rundgräberschatten, in meinen
gekammerten Schmerz
-mit dir, Herbei-
geschwiegene, lebt ich
zwei Tage in Rom
von Ocker und Rot –
kommst du, ich liege schon da,
hell durch die Türen gelitten, waagrecht -:
es werden die Arme sichtbar, die dich umsclingen, nur sie. So-
viel
Geheimnis
bot ich noch auf, trozt allem.
(Celan, 1975, II, 48)
MIDDAY, with
secons’ flurry,
in the roundgraveshadow, into my
chambered pain
—with you, hither-
silenced, I lived
two days in Rome
on oche rand red--
you come, I already lie there,
gliding light through the doors, horizontal—:
the arms holding you become visible, only they. That much
secrecy
I still summoned, in spite of all.
(Joris, 2014, 37)
Born within a family of influential German Jews in Czernowitz in Bukovina, present-day Ukraine, then part of Roumania, Paul Pessakh Antschel Celan (1920-1970) later adopted the name, Paul Celan. His poetry triggers a powerful fascination in the generations that followed him. His poetics, characterized by extreme, clear and precise conciseness, has been regarded as difficult decode and understand even for German native speakers. His vast culture and diversity of interests led him to use an enormous lexicon of scientific areas, such as geology, botany, mineralogy, or, in the case of this poem, Ancient History and Archeology. His interest in ancient divination practices and his mystical-Jewish religious tradition also toughens the access to the possibly most correct explanation of his poetry.
Each poem by Paul Celan is a challenge, but also a human, painful and transfiguring experience. Love is evident in his work, mainly the conjugal love for his wife, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. The poem “Midday” (Mittags) is an example of this, projecting the loving experience recreated in a surprising scenario from the past.
The starting point of the poem was a journey. On 4/17/1964, Celan delivered a lecture at the Goethe–Institut of Rome. During his stay in Rome, he visited the Etruscan necropolis of Cerveteri, whose tombs date from the 9th to the 1st century BC. The necropolis is impressively arranged with streets like in a city. Many are round. One of the most emblematic pieces of the necropolis is a sarcophagus from about 560 B.C. on which a couple, tenderly entwined, reclining on a divan, at a banquet, is represented. Another similar sarcophagus, but in which the painting still lasts, presents the female face painted in white, and the male face in red.
This type of representations belongs to the tradition of the funerary banquet in which the deceased is represented at a banquet, projecting an image of happy bliss to eternity. This tradition goes back to the Middle East in scenes depicted mostly in funerary stelae and sarcophagi from the third millennium BC. A male figure is usually represented comfortably reclining, accompanied by a woman seated in front of him, along with a cup-bearer and a table with victuals. The man is a monarch. The banquet expresses real power, being equivalent to hunting scenes. This tradition extended to the Greek world (Denzer, 1982, 152-153).
The Etruscan funerary banquet has different characteristics. It presents the woman, not sitting in front, but side by side as the companion with whom the man shared the joys of life and with whom he celebrates for eternity.
The sight of this tomb impressed Celan profoundly. He wished he could enter eternity in this way, accompanied by his wife. Gisèle. In a letter written in Rome, on January 19, 1965, he mentions this sarcophagus: “J'ai surtout retenu un très beau sarcogo degli sposi, attendrisant de serenité, de charme, d'amour, qui m'a fait prier d'être ainsi avec toi pour l’éternité, savoir que cela pourrait être ainsi est un aide merveilleuse.” (“I especially remembered a very beautiful sarcogo degli sposi of touching serenity, of charm, of love, which made me pray to be like this with you for eternity, to know that things could be like this with you for eternity would be a wonderful help. ”) (Celan / Celan-Lestrange, 2001, 203).
Another aspect that attracted his attention was the couple's face painting. In the first version of the poem, he wrote the following, marking the first three words to delete: “zwei Tage lang in Rom / der Hügelstadt von Ocker und Rot” (for two days in Rome / the city of ocher and red hills). In the same letter, Celan mentioned his visit to the Etruscan Museum: “trop riche pour ma capacité d'assimiler et d'enregistrer qui est três faible”. (“Too rich for my ability to assimilate and record which is very weak.”) (Wertherheimer, 2000, 76).
Celan captured the use of representing the female face in white and the male face in red Etruscan art, also common to Minoan art (Crete-2500-1500 B.C.) and Greek art during the archaic and classical periods, between 700 and 300 BC (Scheffer, 1996, Vol VI, 62-65).
He associated the happiness and harmony emanating from the Etruscan couple with him and Gisèle. It is midday, in the middle of the eternal night. Gisèle is already there. And Celan slides over to her and spends two days there, the two days he spent in Rome, or, more precisely, in Cerveteri, in the life-bearing necropolis which, in the tombs of the deceased, lets us envision the luminous door opening the path to all the mysteries.
References:
-Celan, Paul, Gedichte in zwei Bänden, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1975.
-Celan, Paul & Celan-Lestrange, Gisèle, Correspondance. (2001) Editée et commentée par Bertrand Radiou avec le concurs d’Eric Celan. 2 vols, Paris. Éditions du Seuil.
-Denzer, Jean-Marie, Le motif du banquet couché dans le proche-orient et le monde grec du VIIe au IVe siècle avant J.-C, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, 1982.
-Joris, Pierre, Paul Celan. The Collescted later Poetry. Bilingual edition. Translated from the German and with commentary by Joris, Pierre, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2014.
-Scheffer, Charlotte, Morte na Etrúria. In: Gören Burenhult (Org.) Enciclopédia Ilustrada da Humanidade (The illustrated History of Humankind), Estados e Civilizações, Civilizações da Europa e da África. (1996) Preâmbulo de Barry Cunlife, X Vol., Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores.
-Wertherheimer, Jürgen (Hrsg.), Paul Celan Atemwende. (2000) Vorstufen, Textgenese, Endfassung. Tübinger Ausgabe, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.
Sekundengeflirr,
im Rundgräberschatten, in meinen
gekammerten Schmerz
-mit dir, Herbei-
geschwiegene, lebt ich
zwei Tage in Rom
von Ocker und Rot –
kommst du, ich liege schon da,
hell durch die Türen gelitten, waagrecht -:
es werden die Arme sichtbar, die dich umsclingen, nur sie. So-
viel
Geheimnis
bot ich noch auf, trozt allem.
(Celan, 1975, II, 48)
MIDDAY, with
secons’ flurry,
in the roundgraveshadow, into my
chambered pain
—with you, hither-
silenced, I lived
two days in Rome
on oche rand red--
you come, I already lie there,
gliding light through the doors, horizontal—:
the arms holding you become visible, only they. That much
secrecy
I still summoned, in spite of all.
(Joris, 2014, 37)
Born within a family of influential German Jews in Czernowitz in Bukovina, present-day Ukraine, then part of Roumania, Paul Pessakh Antschel Celan (1920-1970) later adopted the name, Paul Celan. His poetry triggers a powerful fascination in the generations that followed him. His poetics, characterized by extreme, clear and precise conciseness, has been regarded as difficult decode and understand even for German native speakers. His vast culture and diversity of interests led him to use an enormous lexicon of scientific areas, such as geology, botany, mineralogy, or, in the case of this poem, Ancient History and Archeology. His interest in ancient divination practices and his mystical-Jewish religious tradition also toughens the access to the possibly most correct explanation of his poetry.
Each poem by Paul Celan is a challenge, but also a human, painful and transfiguring experience. Love is evident in his work, mainly the conjugal love for his wife, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. The poem “Midday” (Mittags) is an example of this, projecting the loving experience recreated in a surprising scenario from the past.
The starting point of the poem was a journey. On 4/17/1964, Celan delivered a lecture at the Goethe–Institut of Rome. During his stay in Rome, he visited the Etruscan necropolis of Cerveteri, whose tombs date from the 9th to the 1st century BC. The necropolis is impressively arranged with streets like in a city. Many are round. One of the most emblematic pieces of the necropolis is a sarcophagus from about 560 B.C. on which a couple, tenderly entwined, reclining on a divan, at a banquet, is represented. Another similar sarcophagus, but in which the painting still lasts, presents the female face painted in white, and the male face in red.
This type of representations belongs to the tradition of the funerary banquet in which the deceased is represented at a banquet, projecting an image of happy bliss to eternity. This tradition goes back to the Middle East in scenes depicted mostly in funerary stelae and sarcophagi from the third millennium BC. A male figure is usually represented comfortably reclining, accompanied by a woman seated in front of him, along with a cup-bearer and a table with victuals. The man is a monarch. The banquet expresses real power, being equivalent to hunting scenes. This tradition extended to the Greek world (Denzer, 1982, 152-153).
The Etruscan funerary banquet has different characteristics. It presents the woman, not sitting in front, but side by side as the companion with whom the man shared the joys of life and with whom he celebrates for eternity.
The sight of this tomb impressed Celan profoundly. He wished he could enter eternity in this way, accompanied by his wife. Gisèle. In a letter written in Rome, on January 19, 1965, he mentions this sarcophagus: “J'ai surtout retenu un très beau sarcogo degli sposi, attendrisant de serenité, de charme, d'amour, qui m'a fait prier d'être ainsi avec toi pour l’éternité, savoir que cela pourrait être ainsi est un aide merveilleuse.” (“I especially remembered a very beautiful sarcogo degli sposi of touching serenity, of charm, of love, which made me pray to be like this with you for eternity, to know that things could be like this with you for eternity would be a wonderful help. ”) (Celan / Celan-Lestrange, 2001, 203).
Another aspect that attracted his attention was the couple's face painting. In the first version of the poem, he wrote the following, marking the first three words to delete: “zwei Tage lang in Rom / der Hügelstadt von Ocker und Rot” (for two days in Rome / the city of ocher and red hills). In the same letter, Celan mentioned his visit to the Etruscan Museum: “trop riche pour ma capacité d'assimiler et d'enregistrer qui est três faible”. (“Too rich for my ability to assimilate and record which is very weak.”) (Wertherheimer, 2000, 76).
Celan captured the use of representing the female face in white and the male face in red Etruscan art, also common to Minoan art (Crete-2500-1500 B.C.) and Greek art during the archaic and classical periods, between 700 and 300 BC (Scheffer, 1996, Vol VI, 62-65).
He associated the happiness and harmony emanating from the Etruscan couple with him and Gisèle. It is midday, in the middle of the eternal night. Gisèle is already there. And Celan slides over to her and spends two days there, the two days he spent in Rome, or, more precisely, in Cerveteri, in the life-bearing necropolis which, in the tombs of the deceased, lets us envision the luminous door opening the path to all the mysteries.
References:
-Celan, Paul, Gedichte in zwei Bänden, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1975.
-Celan, Paul & Celan-Lestrange, Gisèle, Correspondance. (2001) Editée et commentée par Bertrand Radiou avec le concurs d’Eric Celan. 2 vols, Paris. Éditions du Seuil.
-Denzer, Jean-Marie, Le motif du banquet couché dans le proche-orient et le monde grec du VIIe au IVe siècle avant J.-C, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, 1982.
-Joris, Pierre, Paul Celan. The Collescted later Poetry. Bilingual edition. Translated from the German and with commentary by Joris, Pierre, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2014.
-Scheffer, Charlotte, Morte na Etrúria. In: Gören Burenhult (Org.) Enciclopédia Ilustrada da Humanidade (The illustrated History of Humankind), Estados e Civilizações, Civilizações da Europa e da África. (1996) Preâmbulo de Barry Cunlife, X Vol., Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores.
-Wertherheimer, Jürgen (Hrsg.), Paul Celan Atemwende. (2000) Vorstufen, Textgenese, Endfassung. Tübinger Ausgabe, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag.
Maria do Sameiro Barroso (Portugal) is a medical doctor and a multilingual poet, translator, essayist and researcher in Portuguese and German Literature, translations studies and History of Medicine. She has authored over 40 books of poetry, published in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, France, Serbia, Belgium, Albany, USA, and translations and essays. Her poems are translated into over twenty languages. She was awarded the Prize of the Académie Européene des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres (AESAL) 2020.
