PAUL CELAN by ANNA ARNO ~

 

R E A D   M E

    Belknap/Harvard

     2026

PIERRE JORIS ~

 

P I E R R E   J O R I S

July 14, 1946, in Strasbourg, France ~

February 27, 2025, Brooklyn, NY

      photo: Nicole Peyraffite

MEMORY ROSE INTO THRESHOLD SPEECH ~

 

What happened?  The stone stepped out of the mountain.

Who woke up?  You and I.

Language, language.  Co-star.  By-earth.

Poorer.  Open. At home.

Where did it lead? Toward unfaded.

With the stone it went, with us two.

Heart and heart.  Judged too heavy.

Become heavier.  Be lighter.

—————————————

PAUL CELAN, NoOnesRose  (1963)

Memory Rose into Threshold Speech

translated by Pierre Joris

Farrar, 2022

PAUL CELAN ~

 

WALKS w/PAUL CELAN & JEAN DAVIE ~

 

R E A D       M E

TOGETHER AGAIN ~

Paul Celan  —  walking with Nani Maier and Jean-Dominique Rey        

~

"In 1947, a young man called Paul Celan showed up in Vienna.
He came literally from nothingness."

M I L O    D O R

Together Again


It will rain tonight on the green, calcareous dunes.

The wine preserved until now in a dead man's mouth

will awaken the realm with its bridges

rebuilt into a bell.

A man's tongue will resound audaciously inside a helmet.



And so the trees will also rush, wait for

a leaf with a voice, brought in an urn, to deliver

a message from the shores of sleep to the tides of flags.

Let it drown in your eye

to make me believe that together we'll die.



Your hair, dripping from mirrors, will diffuse the air

in which, with frosty hand, I'll ignite an autumn.

From water drunk by the blind, my little laurel

will climb a tardy ladder to bite your forehead.


____________________

P A U L     C E L A N
translated by Nina Cassian
ROMANIAN POEMS
Sheep Meadow Press

HUGE LATER PAUL CELAN ~

 P A U L   C E L A N

Farrar, Straus 2014
 

P I E R R E   J O R I S

"Just read and keep reading!

Understanding will come by itself."

PAUL CELAN

CELAN ~

Paul Celan

"If there is a country named Celania — as Julia Kristeva once proposed — its holy texts are filled with doubt, and they overcome this doubt almost successfully, with words of wrenching, uncompromised beauty. . .The book in your hands is not intended to become one of those heavy scholarly tomes that serve as a "proof" of one's position in the literary/academic hierarchy. Rather, this is a collection of various works, directed at, or inspired by, the words of Paul Celan. What we wanted to make was a living anthology, in which authors observe the poet's work, read it deeply, penetrate and discuss it. but also play with it, remake it, and attempt to fit it into their own worldviews.

A great poet is not someone who speaks in stadiums to a thousand listeners. A great poet is a very private person. In his privacy this poet creates a language in which he is able to speak, privately, to many people at the same time."

Ilya Kaminsky, from the Introduction

______________________________

THERE WAS EARTH INSIDE THEM

There was earth inside them, and
they dug.



They dug and dug, and so
their day went past, their night. And they did not praise God,
who, so they heard, wanted all this,
who, so they heard, witnessed all this.



They dug and heard nothing more;
they did not grow wise, invented no song,
devised for themselves no sort of language.
They dug.



There came a stillness then, came also storm,
all of the oceans came.
I dig, you dig, and it, the worm, digs too,
and the singing there says: They dig.



O one, O none, O no one, O you:
Where did it go, then, making for nowhere?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig through to you,
and the ring on our finger awakens.

translated from the German by John Felstiner

Homage to Paul Celan
edited by Ilya Kaminsky & G.C. Waldrep
Marick Press, 2011
www.marickpress.com

"It has an inexorable logic about it. A poetry that seems — now that we have it — had to be. A six-pointed star etched into our minds — a splintered star.

How could it not "stand out"?"

~ Cid Corman

PAUL CELAN








Ash-Aura back of
your shock-knotted
hands at the three-corners.

Black Sea old times: here,
one drop,
on
the drowned oar blade,
deep
in the fossilized oath,
surf murmurs.

(up the precipitous
breath rope, in those days,
higher than high,
between two knots of pain—while
the brilliant
Tartar moon rose up to us,
I sunk and I sunk into you.)

Ash
aura back of
you three-corners
hands.

Come from the east, the way in front of you
a crap-shoot, terrifying.

No one
bears witness for
the witness.