Der Meridian und andere Prosa (Bibliothek Suhrkamp)

by Paul Celan

German

Genres: Poetry, German Literature, Essays, Fiction

68 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Poet, translator, essayist, and lecturer, influenced by French Surrealism and Symbolism. Celan was born in Cernăuţi, at the time Romania, now Ukraine, he lived in France, and wrote in German. His parents were killed in the Holocaust; the author himself escaped death by working in a Nazi labor camp. "Death is a Master from Germany", Celan's most quoted words, translated into English in different ways, are from the poem 'Todesfuge' (Death Fugue). Celan's body was found in the Seine river in late April 1970, he had committed suicide.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosto de pintura abstrata. Não percebo o que o que artista quis, na realidade, representar, mas invento. Por exemplo, Jackson Pollock. Num primeiro olhar (na internet, porque ao vivo não tive essa sorte), nalguns quadros, só vejo rabiscos mas, depois, concentro-me, deixo-me hipnotizar pelas cores e traços e, por vezes, até descubro imagens (que provavelmente não estão lá). É também assim quando leio a poesia de Paul Celan. Não o entendo mas crio a minha própria interpretação e através da harmonia das palavras imagino significados.

Neste pequeno livro, porque se trata de textos em prosa, depositei alguma esperança de conseguir entender Paul Celan. Mas, como diz João Barrento, "Celan é poeta até aos ossos e à dor. A interpretação dos textos em prosa será como a da sua poesia, sempre problemática, árdua e aberta."
Esta antologia contém textos variados que vão desde a análise de quadros do pintor Edgar Jené, a discursos, cartas e respostas a inquéritos. Tudo hermeticamente "cerrado" e sem um ponto onde me apoiar para inventar. Não consegui entrar —> não entendi —> aborreci-me —> não gostei.

=================================

Missão Um De Cada Nação*

"Não te iludas: não é esta última candeia que dá mais luz — foi a escuridão em redor que se aprofundou mais em si mesma."
— Paul Celan



Paul Celan nasceu em Chernivtsi, Roménia (actualmente Chernivtsi pertence à Ucrânia) no dia 23 de Novembro de 1920 e morreu em Paris, França no dia 20 de Abril de 1970. Foi poeta, ensaísta e tradutor. De origem judaica, Celan foi sobrevivente do Holocausto. Suicidou-se, no rio Sena, aos 49 anos.

=================================

*Nota: Numa resolução de ano novo (sem passa, para que se cumpra) propus-me ler, em cada uma das 52 semanas de 2018, um livro de um autor de diferentes nacionalidades.
Este objectivo tem três funcionalidades:
1) facilitar-me a escolha do que ler a seguir (é mentira porque "suei as estopinhas" para escolher - da lista previamente elaborada - o da primeira semana);
2) salvar algumas obras da pilha dos esquecidos;
3) pesquisar um pouco sobre o autor escolhido e lido no âmbito da tarefa a que me sujeitei.
Este meu "projecto" não é assunto que interesse, a não ser a mim (e também não muito), mas... é só para escrever coisas...

[Matthieu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Celan, as prolific as he was, only wrote around eighty pages of prose. Early essays, a few aphorisms, responses to several questionnaires, and a couple of speeches (one of them being the magisterial Meridian). It's important to note that one of his most beautiful, most lyrical essays, was written in 1948, a period in which he was still searching for his poetic voice. His crude Char-like Romanian prose poems showed little of the clipped, clockwork verse of the post-wende texts. But here, in an essay on the painter Edgar Jené, he found that voice:

I realized that man was not only languishing in the chains of external life, but was also gagged and unable to speak—and by speaking I mean the entire sphere of human expression—because his words (gestures, movements) groaned under an age-old load of false and distorted sincerity.

An essay about a few paintings on display in a small Viennese gallery becomes a primal scream against the use and misuse of language. The modern word had become impure. The German language had to become neutral again, greyer. In order for it to exist, it must be cleansed of the sinister events in its memory. Transfiguring language, almost-words (verklären):

How could something new and pure issue from this? It may be from the remotest regions of the spirit that words and figures will come, images and gestures, veiled and unveiled as in a dream. When they meet in their heady course, and the spark of the wonderful is born from the marriage of strange and most strange, then I will know I am facing the new radiance. It will give me a dubious look because, even though I have conjured it up, it exists beyond the concepts of my wakeful thinking; its light is not daylight; it is inhabited by figures which I do not recognize, but know at first sight. Its weight has a different heaviness; its colour speaks to the new eyes which my closed lids have given one another; my hearing has wandered into my fingertips and learns to see; my heart, now that it lives behind my forehead, tastes the laws of a new, unceasing, free motion.

This new, unceasing, free motion was Celan's poetic ideal—it was this very motion that Celan would again allude to in his Meridian speech. The agonizing search for a word against the grain.

Perhaps—I am only speculating—perhaps poetry, like art, moves with the oblivious self into the uncanny and strange to free itself. Though where? in which place? how? as what? This would mean that art is the distance poetry must cover, no less and no more. I know there are other, shorter routes. But poetry, too, can be ahead.

Celan was well aware of the other, shorter routes. He didn't believe in them. The last sentence of the Jené essay: I have tried to report some of what I saw in the deep sea of a soul. Words, transcendent words, a word-alkahest—dispatches from another world. A world of new, unceasing, free motion. Words as catalysts, words as elements, words as directions.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short collection of thoughtful, highly condensed pieces that mostly deal with the nature of language and Celan's approach to poetry. Probably only of interest to Celan aficianados.

[metempsicoso]

C'è una soglia, con Celan.
Al di là di questa prospera il regno della sua poesia, al di qua è la realtà.
Io sono in grado di arrivare fin sulla soglia, chiusa, e di spiare dallo serratura. Del mondo che c'è dietro quell'uscio, ho un'idea: sommaria, sfocata, limitata. Strizzo un occhio, mi avvicino, ripeto a voce alta quello che vedo. Qualcosa mi resta impresso ma principalmente mi impregno della consapevolezza del mio limite. Odio questa sensazione, odio questa luce puntata con forza sul mio confine.
Sono consapevole che l'oscurità lirica è ricercata - e reclamata - da Celan, come evidenzia proprio ne "Il meridiano", eppure mi sembra di peccare di quella colpa che egli stesso recrimina: leggendolo ho l'impressione di passargli attraverso senza attrito. Non con la poesia, né con questa raccolta di prose sporadiche.
Credo di averlo percorso, finora, con lo stesso spirito con cui attraverso un banco di nebbia la mattina per andare al lavoro: chino sul volante, sospeso e ansioso, senza arrivare a sperare che questo disagio finisca presto solo perché sono fin troppo consapevole della realtà triste che mi attende alla sua fine.
Per ora, del suo codice ho accoppiato solo un paio di assonanze, nelle sue protuberanze più periferiche. L'ho fatto grazie alle lettere, che continuerò a leggere mentre mi scontro contro le liriche. Nulla più che un paio di associazioni per somiglianza o contrasto, però.

Non vorrei neppure possedere l'intera chiave crittografica necessaria per svelare Celan - credo anzi che questa potesse vivere solamente nelle curve strette e rivoltate del suo cervello - ma vorrei non deluderlo.
Mi basterebbe, insomma, essere intelligente abbastanza da traghettarlo. Dove, come e perché lo lascio stabilire a lui. Magari, un giorno.

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve set a goal to understand some of Celan’s work. He is probably the most significant writer to come out of the Bukovina region – even if he is on the Ukrainian side of the border rather then the Romanian side where many of my ancestors lived – and I wonder if he might be able to speak to some of what I want to know about how it felt to be a part of that now-vanished community.

As I am coming to see, Celan may be the perfect poet – or, perversely, the least appropriate lens – for getting a sense of that time and place, of getting a glimpse at those people.

Above all, Celan doesn’t seem to trust language or even the possibility of real connection between people. Instead, he seems to have an impulse to doubt an understanding of the other at all times. His work here (and in some of the poems I’ve tried to wrestle with) makes clear that he questions what poetry can accomplish. As he says at one point, “I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.” I take that to mean that he sees the written word as a greeting, an acknowledgement of the other, but necessarily no more than superficial.

Or, as he puts it later, “When there is talk of art, there’s often somebody who does not really listen.”

And, again, still later, “[Poetry] is not homage to any monarchy, to any yesterday worth preserving. It is homage to the majesty of the absurd which bespeaks the presence of human beings.”

As that near-repetition makes clear, he seems torn about that sense of limitation. He wants such connection, or at least he cannot stop himself from attempting it. If madness is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result, then Celan seems alert to his own madness. He sees the impossibility of accomplishing the sense of know another, yet he makes the effort time and again in his poetry. A few years after Samuel Beckett had a character declare, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on,” Celan seems to have said, “There’s nothing I can say. I’ll say it.”

Celan’s mixed sense of possibility, his foundation of despair topped with a feather’s weight of hope, makes sense for him as a Holocaust survivor. He seems to want to bear witness to the world that horror erased, but he’s aware of how little he can do toward that end. If his poems never seem to find their audience – if his writing always shows him more about how he is estranged from others rather than connected to them – he seems largely unsuited to be the bearer of memory.

I suppose it’s the fragility of that contradiction that makes him compelling. I am working hard to reach him, and it’s only now – after beginning to reflect on how I feel about his prose – that I feel I’m making any progress. He’s reaching out to his readers – reaching out, in a way that I take personally, to people who can never quite touch him back. He’s of a world I want to understand, and he is, if not quite shaking my hand, at least waving in my general direction.

I am drawn, then, to his particular reflections on the Jewish experience. He has a claim on the Bukovina Jewish experience because that was the world of his childhood. By the time he writes, it’s a damaged, diminished, virtually vanished world, though. As he puts it near the start of his striking speech after accepting an award in Bremen – the most compelling prose piece in this painfully short volume – “The region from which I come to you – with what detours! But then, is there such a thing as a detour? – Will be unfamiliar to most of you. It is the home of many of the Hasidic stories which Martin Buber has re-told in German.… There, in this former province of the Habsburg monarchy, now dropped from history… only one thing remains reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language.”

As I read this, it strikes me as in the spirit of what I know of Norman Manea, another Jewish Bukovina writer and someone doing his most important work a solid generation later. Manea writes of wanting to return to a Romania – to the small city of Suceava where many of my own distant relatives lived – that no longer exists. To the extent any of it remains, it’s in story and word. We “live” – “you call that living?” deadpans/howls some Jewish comic long dead but with resonating words – in the space our writers have created.

Merle Bachman calls that – in her study on yet an earlier generation of Yiddish writers – “Yiddishland.” Celan writes in German, and Manea in English. Still, I believe that each is exploring the contours of that (imaginary?) world of broken letters.

I’m here, passport in hand, trying to get there. Celan isn’t one to extend an invitation. But I wonder, maybe, if there is a handshake in his work for those of us who manage to get across the border.

[José Simões · Rating 5 out of 5]

Depois de lermos a poesia de Celan (e, neste caso, também a sua prosa), tornamo-nos mais exigentes. Não podemos aceitar o intolerável. Não aceitamos, não podemos aceitar já, o reles, o medíocre, o fácil.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Só mãos verdadeiras escrevem poemas verdadeiros. Não vejo nenhuma diferença de princípio entre um aperto de mão e um poema"

[salva · Rating 4 out of 5]

//all hail the internet archive.

…and who speaks does not talk to anyone, cousin, he speaks because nobody hears him, nobody and Nobody, and then he says, himself, not his mouth or his tongue, he, and only he, says: “Do you hear me?”

[Mandel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slim but difficult volume is essential reading for fans of Celan, and of 20th century modernist literature more generally. Here, though, is some advice for folks who want to read it. The longest and most important piece in this collection is by far "The Meridian", the most in-depth statement of his poetics that Celan ever produced. However, since he originally gave it as his acceptance speech upon being awarded the Büchner Prize, it makes a lot of reference to Büchner's works. In fact, the essay is well-nigh unintelligible without familiarity with Büchner. For Germans, who typically read Büchner in high school, this isn't much of a problem, but I would guess that most English-language readers have never even heard of Büchner, it's a barrier to understanding. Fortunately, Büchner's body of work is quite small - three plays, two of them quite short, and an unfinished novella - so the price of admission here isn't all that high. I would highly recommend you read these four texts before embarking on "The Meridian", and to a lesser extent before reading "Conversation in the Mountains" (which makes only passing reference to Büchner's Lenz, but is most definitely in conversation with Büchner's novella.

As for the other texts in this volume, some less time-consuming background-building will definitely help. For example, for Celan's essay on Edgar Jené, a quick internet perusal of his paintings will help. Or, when reading "Address to the Hebrew Writers' Association", knowing that Celan gave this speech during his one and only visit to Israel only a few months before his suicide gives poignant context for it.

Extra efforts of these kinds are well worth the effort. Celan's Holocaust era experiences took an already brilliant mind and made it capable of giving singularly insightful expression to how and why poetry matters in human life.

[Gabrielle Danoux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Et si la lecture des proses de Celan nous permettait de mieux comprendre sa poésie ?
Il s'agit ici du discours prononcé à l'occasion de la remise à Paul Celan du prix Georg Büchner, le 22 octobre 1960 à Darmstadt.
Cette édition de 2008 qui « se limite à cinq cents exemplaires sur vélin ivoire », propose une traduction d'André du Bouchet accompagnée de deux dessins de Jean Cpadeville.
Le poète affirme (p. 15) avoir « grandi avec les écrits de Pierre Kropotkine et de Gustav Landauer ».
Le titre du texte, le Méridien, renvoie au retour sur soi du poème - un retour sur soi qui est retour sur l'autre - ou, peut-être, sur le tout autre (p. 30), car le poème « est souvent dialogue éperdu » (p. 35). « Le poème est tendu vers un autre, éprouve la nécessité d'un autre, une nécessité du vis-à-vis » (p. 33).
Paul Celan parvient à la conclusion qu'il faut se dégager de soi par l'art (essentiellement la poésie ?) : « Porte-toi, plutôt, avec l'art, au plus serré de toi-même. Puis dégage-toi. » (p. 38) S'opère ainsi une sorte de « retour à l'endroit natal » (p. 41) et c'est la la voie du méridien.
« La poésie - : conversion en infini de la mortalité pure et la lettre morte ! » (p. 39).

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A critic has referred to the "slimness" of the book as a reflection of Celan's "mistrust of the medium of language" . One needs only quote Celan himself to prove this presumption wrong, "Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language." In my opinion, the economy with words reflects a condensed and intense passion for words rather than "a love affair with silence".

[Richárd Janczer · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stelle per rispetto all'autore. Non ci ho capito una fava. Urge lettura di saggi al riguardo per metabolizzarlo

[Giovanne]

O poema não é intemporal. É certo que proclama uma pretensão de infinito, procura actuar através dos tempos - através deles, mas não para além deles.
O poema, sendo como é uma forma de manifestação da linguagem e, por conseguinte, na sua essência dialógico, pode ser uma mensagem na garrafa, lançada ao mar na convicção - decerto nem sempre muito esperançada - de um dia ir da a alguma praia, talvez uma praia do coração. Também nesse sentido os poemas estão a caminho - têm rumo.

O poema é solitário. É solitário e vai a caminho.



Carta a Hans Bender (1960)

Meu caro Hans Bender,

 

Agradeço-lhe a sua carta de 15 de Maio e o amável convite para colaborar  na sua antologia Mein Gedicht ist mein Messer (O meu poema é a minha faca).

 

Lembro-me de há tempos lhe ter dito que assim que o poema verdadeiramente está aí, o poeta volta a libertar-se da sua cumplicidade original. Hoje formularia esta opinião de maneira completamente diferente, ou então tentaria diferenciá-la; mas no fundo continuo a ter esta - velha - opinião. É claro que existe também o que hoje, tão fácil e despreocupadamente, se designa de ofício. Mas - permita-me esta redução do pensamento e da experiência - o ofício é, como a correcção em geral, condição de toda a poesia. Este ofício não se faz, com certeza, sobre um chão dourado.  -  quem sabe até se ele assenta sobre algum chão. Tem os seus abismos e profundezas, e alguns - ah, mas eu não faço parte deles - têm até um nome para isso.

 

Ofício - é coisa das  mãos. E estas mãos, por outro lado, só pertencem a um indivíduo, isto é, a um único ser mortal que com a sua voz e o seu silêncio busca um caminho.

Só mãos verdadeiras escrevem poemas verdadeiros. Não vejo nenhuma diferença de princípio entre um aperto de mão e um poema. E não nos venham com o "poieín" e coisas assim. Isso significava, juntamente com as suas proximidades e distâncias, sem dúvida qualquer coisa totalmente diferente do que no seu contexto actual.

 

Existem, com certeza, exercícios - no sentido espiritual, caro Hans Bender! E para além disso há também, a cada esquina lírica, toda a espécie de experiências com o chamado material verbal. Poemas são também oferendas - oferendas àqueles que são atentos.  Oferendas que transportam um destino.

 

"Como se fazem poemas?"

 

Há anos atrás pude, por algum tempo, ver e, mais tarde, a partir de uma certa experiência, observar atentamente  como o "fazer" se vai transformando, através da factura em contra-facção. Sim, isto também existe, como deve saber... Não acontece por acaso.

 

Vivemos sob céus sombrios e... existem poucos seres humanos. Talvez por isso existam também tão poucos poemas. As esperanças que ainda me restam não são grandes; tento conservar aquilo que me restou.

 

Com os melhores votos, para si e para o seu trabalho.

 

Paul Celan

Paris, 18 de Maio de 1960

[lizxxi · Rating 3 out of 5]

my first impression of reading paul celan is that it's all very confusing, nonsensical (maybe only to me)- akin to poetry in prose form and riddles in one. in that sense, his style reminds me of lispector's: river streams that will mercilessly plunge you to their icy hell bt at least w/ the latter, you rock along with it. this one, you rock against it. there's a rhythmical quality to it- a little duh, duh, badump, badump- that feels pleasant to the ears, even if some of that quality is lost when translated.

[Epifras]

”Sådana verkligheter, tänker jag, rör det sig om i dikten… med sin existens går till språket, sårad av verklighet och sökande verklighet”

Medusahuvudet och de två flickorna i finkläder på vägkanten, konsten som gör dem till sten, förstummar dem och gör liv till livlös

Automaten som slutar fungera och göra det den skulle göra, kuslig livlöshet

Andetagets andningsvändning som inte är någonting, inget ut eller in

Gå genom diktningen och genom diktningen kasta av sig konsten

”Utvidga konsten?
Nej. Utan gå med konsten in i din allra egnaste trånghet. Och gör dig fri.
Jag har också här, i er närvaro, gått denna väg. Det var en cirkel.
Konsten, alltså också medusahuvudet, mekanismen, automaterna, det kusliga och så svårt urskiljbara, i sista hand kanske bara ett främmande - konsten lever vidare.”

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"La Poesia, Signore e Signori: questa patente d'infinito data a quanto è pura mortalità e vanità!" (Il meridiano, p. 18)

"Non illuderti: non è che questa lampada emetta più luce – è l'oscurità intorno che s'è sprofondata in se stessa." (Controluce, p. 33)

"La poesia […] può essere un messaggio nella bottiglia, gettato a mare nella convinzione – certo non sempre sorretta da grande speranza – che esso possa un qualche giorno e da qualche parte essere sospinto a una spiaggia, alla spiaggia del cuore, magari." (Allocuzione in occasione del conferimento del Premio letterario della Libera Città Anseatica di Brema, p. 35)

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felstiner's volume contains Celan's most important prose works as well, including the "Meridian" and Bremen speeches and "Conversation in the Mountains," but this book also presents several short occasional pieces, such as the 1958 reply to Flinker Bookstore's questionnaire, that shed vital light on Celan's larger project.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Celan was wary of the 'noise of prose'. These delicate circumspections peer out over the hubbub. Nervously.

[g]

http://proustitute.tumblr.com/post/10...

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A estreiteza de se saber quem se é, com muito pouco.

[Mattia Agnelli]

“Laddove l’uomo intirizzisce incatenato nelle foreste nevose della sua disperazione”

[Khonsu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il mondo non si merita Paul Celan

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

only a poet like Celan could write so sparsely and still strike a blow

[Moran Likely · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much here...stick to the poetry.