死亡赋格

by Paul Celan, 黄灿然 (Translator)

本书收录了黄灿然精选的策兰178首经典诗作，呈现了不同时期的策兰诗歌的面貌。

Genres: Poetry, German Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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

[H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

喜歡黃燦然形容的，Paul Celan是一個「希望渺茫的人，他的詩不假裝參與快樂過程和積極變化... 他建立一種專注的行為。」

有人狂熱地對後現代搖滾、極夜、有缺憾的神話、分手信、寺山修司的黑、和柏林牆瘋狂地著迷。正如Antonioni所說，沈默創造了說話的負空間。同樣，在Bruñel的電影裡，痛只發生在你笑的時刻。

在Celan的字裡行間，憂慮構成了狂喜的倒影，為了遇見光，你務必要比它更懂黑夜。

[Frido Alonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

toll...

[Ahn Hundt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first encountered Paul Celan, like most people, through his "Todesfuge"/"Death Fugue", quite possibly the most striking, intense, and compelling poem about the atrocities of the second World War. Theodor W. Adorno once famously said that there can't be any poetry after Auschwitz - Celan's poem should suffice to disproof that argument. Its structure, the raw and absurd imagery, the gut-punching emotion and the manic, almost paranoid repetition of phrases - it all culminates into something that I would consider to possibly be the greatest German-language poem of the 20th century. It's bleak, and dark, and utterly unforgettable; any poet who's able to write a masterpiece such as this shall get my attention towards the rest of his catalog.

Well, let's just say that it is at least equally confounding. Even the fugue took me many reads to fully figure out its bizarre form and repetitive language, until it truly clicked with me, I had at least read it half a dozen times, but the more often I read it, the more powerful its impact is. When it comes to his other poetry, it requires the same amount of thought and effort. Some of these poems in here are frankly impenetrable, and other's I was only able to decipher because of the historical background that the commentary of this edition offered. Reading his short verses, often consisting of only a handful of syllables, many of them being short in complete length as well, and taking up only about a quarter of the page, can be exhausting, because it feels like you're spending hours on the amount of words that you'd normally read in 5 minutes. His metaphors, symbols and his wording are extremely challenging, more challenging than any German poet that I've encountered so far, and he's almost comparable to someone like Ezra Pound when it comes to how confusing and cold the language is. It might be a bit distasteful to compare the two, considering that Pound was out here propagating fascist radio programs in Italy around the time Celan himself was a victim in concentration camps, but like Pound's innovative ideograms (that originated first from his imagism and then his vorticism), Celan almost creates this sparse collections of words that don't actually mean anything when you ponder them, but only through the historical echoes within the words and the implications surrounding them. This turns out to be genius sometimes, as in the cases of the aforementioned Fugue or in a couple of others in this collection, but it's also quite infuriating and going nowhere sometimes, and there's reasons for that.

He was famously mentally unwell, extremely unwell, constantly being in psychological distress, having been in psychiatric care after attempting to murder his own wife, so you know what type of mind you're dealing with here. The man was conflicted, and that's an understatement, but in cases of the Fugue, his scatterbrained, panicked, paranoid intensity works in his favor, and other times he sounds like a rambling lunatic that writes thing that lead to nothing but an "okay" after you dissected an 20 word poem for half an hour. I don't know if this is the fault of the publisher (an issue that I'll get into in a second), but the selection in here is very repetitive in terms of themes and often obsessive over very few themes. His Jewish heritage, his plagiarism scandal, and contemporary politics are at least half of the poems in here. This is front-loaded (in that most of the best material is in the early parts of the selection... possibly because it's chronologically before he lost his mind, I don't know), and the latter half consists of poems that I just couldn't care less about; they were confusing, abstract to the point of obscurity, and not rewarding once you got a grasp on the symbols. Some of them I couldn't figure out at all, honestly.

Now, let's get to the Suhrkamp edition that I read: I first have to commend it for including the Meridian-speech he held after winning a prize; if you read it as an essay, it's honestly some of the greatest writing about art and specifically poetry that I've ever read, and it's rare to see someone share insight into the art form in such a concise yet deep manner, and I commend him for that. However, the actual amount of Celan's writing within this book is less than 50%; it starts with about 70 pages of single poems (all of which, as I said, don't even take up half the page), then there's 20 pages of the speech, and the rest is added bonus material. I don't have an issue with a lot of material to help the reader (especially for such an incoherent author), but my point is that the material is sub-par. About 40 pages are spent on random things such as the timeline of his life, a collection of little reviews for ALL of the volumes of poetry released in his lifetime, how they were received, how this selection was picked, which pieces of literature were used to create the commentary, and so on, all of which is completely unnecessary for any reader that has a casual interest in the writer (and that's what these Basis-Bibliography books are for), and the commentary itself also feels misguided. It repeatedly adds context that was already established in the piece of commentary for the prior poem, so half the time it's just telling you something you already know but again because it's a new poem, and then 95% of the commentary is historical and biographical details that inform the pieces of literature he read that helped to create his images, so that you can see where is phrasing is coming from (he took lots and lots of words from random books and magazines he read and used them to express himself), but almost never something that actually helps deciphering or interpreting anything. So the really esoteric ones where you can only get a grasp on them once you get these personal details (which you otherwise never would've known) are easier to access through the commentary, but most poems just get explained away by side-tangents about one particular word that he got from some arbitrary medicine book he owned or something along those lines. It's completely pointless to know these things when you're actually trying to get to the core of his lyricism and attempt to gain meaning from it (as musicality or beauty is definitely not something that you get in his work).

So what I'm left with is a complex, abstract and at times inscrutable poet who gets no favor done in this below-average editorial work, both in commentary and selection, but one that wrote a handful of poems that I'd consider to be superb. I think he was a troubled mind that brought brilliance in little glimpses here and there, but if the rest of is oeuvre is well-represented in this selection, certainly one that was not very consistent at all. I love his highest moments, but his low points I don't care for much, and I don't really feel motivation to read much more of him; I'll cherish what I already love though.
Favorite poems: "Todesfuge"/"Death Fugue", "Zähle die Mandeln"/"Count the Almonds", "Vor einer Kerze"/"In Front of a Candle"

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Paul Celan in German presented quite a challenge. He is not an ordinary poet and not an easy poet to read, especially if you are learning German. His language is almost fantastical, full of vague imagery and dense metaphor. Grasping hold of an image is a thrilling task - some of Celan's descriptions are intensely powerful and very unique. He plays with language, mixes in English and French at times and rarely allows an easy sense of narrative to enter his poetry. Most are poems that capture a moment, a scene, an emotion, a sense of something. They are full of sounds, smells and tastes - just as they are full of joys and woes.

Celan digs deep and mercilessly into the simplest of imagery, tears apart the senses with physically brutal words. "Ein Auge, offen" with its "aching depth of eyeball" is a good example of the depths he delves. They are tactile and painful. "Todesfuge", his most well known poem, is a physical mantra, repeating its dark, vivid lines interspersed with flash imagery. The reader is left to piece together the whole picture.

Others that flashed by me and left traces - "Huhediblu" with its yodelling syllables, "Zähle die Mandeln" full of obscure bitterness, "Stehen", a powerful, short poem of light and shadow, of standing in silence, of being yourself, "Denk Dir", one of the easier poems to grasp, "Mapesbury Road", an aggressive encounter of a poem.

Paul Celan's work is serious poetry, not for the fainthearted or impatient. It is worth reading in translation as well to try and grasp an elusive image, and worth at least reading Death Fugue in English, a frighteningly fierce, memorable poem. 6

[Eduardo Ramos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scatholgical, sporadically moving, occasionally intriguing, mostly inescrutable poetry that requires abundant footnotes on Jewish mythology and even the writer´s personal history - who spent most of his adult life in and out of mental hospitals till he killed himself age 49 - to decypher.

The whole Mitteleuropa/Jewish/post WWII German guilt thing makes Celan (a German speaking Romanian Jew) a major figure of post WWII German poetry in the German-speaking world. Others may find it hard to follow.

[Nael_5 · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you analise the poem, you realise it is much more than what it looks like. Amazing.

[Hans]

SBB 59

[Ángela · Rating 5 out of 5]

he descubierto este poema hoy y no lo voy a olvidar nunca, recomiendo leerlo y escuchar una de las grabaciones de Paul Celan leyéndolo en alemán a la vez

con el corazón en la mano

[Jx · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5，“生命是我们唯一的庇护所，这是策兰能够为我们提供的，以及我们在最黑暗的时代所能够寄望的：不妨想象一下我们仍被我们所理解的生命的碎片看护着。”

[燕南 · Rating 5 out of 5]

儘管沒能完全讀懂，還是非常喜歡。他的詩和現實有語言的柵欄。

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, setting aside an eponymous protagonist in the poem, who is no heroine...

And, admitting, that I read German slowly, it's nonetheless beautiful lyric poetry. I'd intuitively thought German was one of the loveliest literary languages I'd ever encountered, but wondered how all the 19th century bombast would stand up to its 20th century legacy. And I think Celan's work illustrates what a powerful means it is for conveying that.

[Unbekannt · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2021)
Celan wusste mit Worten umzugehen. Das ist offensichtlich. Aber leider merke ich wieder, dass ich für Lyrik einfach nicht empfänglich bin. Manche Formulierungen fand ich großartig, aber insgesamt lösten die Gedichte (auch mit Hintergrundinformationen) nichts in mir aus. Das ist aber mein persönliches Problem.

[劉凍青 · Rating 4 out of 5]

购于行止。

听说过太多保罗·策兰的故事，钦佩他的为人多于欣赏他的诗。策兰的诗读起来实在是艰涩，有时宛如掐着脖子在断行。诗中的反复与双关也会在译本中泄了情绪，丢了味道。这一次出于对黄灿然译笔的信任而翻开这本诗集，依然有太多的诗难以理解、难以感受。译者注释是副很好的拐杖，极具辅助价值；但不可当作一副眼镜，不必从论诗人的眼中读诗。
在这一段个人生活变动很大的日子里，很感谢策兰能陪伴我、共用我的床铺、“俯身拾起光的碎屑”。

[Joaquim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um imprescindível da literatura alemã. Versos frios e duros que narram com extrema brutalidade um dos acontecimentos mais desprezíveis da história do ser humano.

[Darthavocado · Rating 4 out of 5]

从沈小姐的微信签名找到的这本书。翻译得不错，但是有更好的版本。