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approaching the inaccessible, and, necessarily, inaccessibility.
The poem returns to the experience itself – the
revelation in the clearing – not ‘the stuff of anecdotes’
but the etymological origin of ‘experience’: a crossing
through danger. It is a crossing resisted only in what the
poem lets us consume as readers: “a poem has nothing
to recount, nothing to say; what it recounts and says is
that from which it wrenches away as a poem.”
So what, exactly, remains before and after this
wrenching? Celan names it himself, in a speech upon
receiving the prestigious Büchner Prize: “the poem has
always hoped … to speak also on behalf of the strange
– no, I can no longer use this word here – on behalf of
the other, who knows, perhaps of an altogether other.”
(translated by Rosemary Waldrop)
Perhaps the ‘strange’ can be used no longer because
it is already too familiar, too homely. He had to seek
another word or phrase: “the altogether other”. His
speech, as much as his poetry, has to be attuned to the
demands of experience. Celan also refers to the attempt
to give each poem its own date, its own unique time, so
that it speaks with supreme accuracy.
Deep in Time’s crevasse
by the alveolate ice waits,
a crystal of breath,
your irreversible witness
(trans. Michael Hamburger)
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The difficulty is that language depends on generality;
the more specific a word the harder it is to reach across
time; we will not connect to the “altogether other”
trapped in time’s crevasse. In fact, it could not be language
anymore. Yet if it can connect despite risking such
isolation, it would be all the more richer. In this respect,
Celan requires a certain amount of patience on behalf of
his readers. For example, a late untitled poem in full:
Illegibility of this world.
All things twice over.
The strong clocks justify the splitting hour
hoarsely.
You, clamped into your deepest part, climb out
of yourself for ever.
(trans. Michael Hamburger)
This is puzzling, but such puzzlement does not matter
much once one sets the need for facts or conclusive
harmony aside. Less sympathetic critics dismiss his
work as ‘hermetic’, sealed from approach. They say
only the writer could know what such a poem is about.
Why is the world illegible? What is a strong clock?
I have no answers. Perhaps the lack of a title necessitates
a certain blankness in the initial response. The
moment one titles an experience the dangers lessen.
Would a biography help us understand this? Probably
not. Celan was adamant that his poetry was accessible:
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