Paul Celan 2000

The year 2000 marked the eightieth anniversary of the birth of Paul Celan and the thirtieth of his death. Numerous symposia and publications marked the anniversaries. Among the books by and about this great and tragic Jewish poet that were published throughout the world are the four works being reviewed here. In each of these cases, however, the timing seems accidental. All three translations have been works in progress for some time, and the scholarly work, a revision of a Yale dissertation (1995), probably just chanced to be published in the anniversary year. Be that as it may, all four are useful additions to the corpus of literature, primary and secondary, that enables English-speaking readers to gain access to Celan’s world.

The consensus choice for the most significant German-language lyric poet born in the twentieth century, and in the opinion of many the greatest European poet of the last half of the century, Celan is notoriously difficult to read, and difficult to translate. Literary critics are at long last beginning to make headway in interpreting his works, although the areas of disagreement remain immense. The importance of his Jewish heritage is now universally recognized, although there is no unanimity among interpreters on exactly how this is manifested in his poetry. This much is certain: he lost both parents in the Holocaust, and Jewish themes appear in his works with some regularity. Beyond that, little can be said that is not open to dispute.

I will turn first to Baer. The first few pages of his introduction were unsettling—and not in the sense that Holocaust literature is unsettling—beginning with the first sentence: “This is a book about the first poet, and the last poet, of our modernity . . .” (p. 1). It is taken as axiomatic that this statement is accurate (the two parts of the book bear the titles “The First Modern Poet: Charles Baudelaire” and “The Last Modern Poet: Paul Celan”), without any attention to other candidates for the positions in question. As the reader soon sees, Baer’s approach is in many ways that of a philosopher (or psychologist), and indeed, references in the copious notes to philosophers and psychologists (or psychiatrists, from Freud on) far outnumber those to literary critics. Celan is called a poet, and not only in the section titles, but the context typically stresses ideas, not poetic formulation. Even more unsettling is the statement: “Celan declares his poetic mission to be the task of ‘thinking Mallarmé through to the end [Mallarmé konsequent zu Ende zu denken]’” (p. 6). What Celan actually says, or asks, is: “should we . . . be thinking Mallarmé through to the end?” (Felstiner’s translation, p. 405). The Meridian, in which this question is posed, is enormously complicated, and it is by no means clear that Celan intends an affirmative, let alone a simple, unambiguous answer to question. Where mere art is concerned, perhaps; where poetry is concerned, no.

On the other hand, Baer has much to offer. He concentrates on a few key poems by each author, subjecting them to intensely close readings: Baudelaire’s “L’Étranger,” “Paysage,” and “Les Aveugles,” and Celan’s “Weggebeizt,” “Entwurf einer Landschaft,” “. . . Auch keinerlei,” and “Allerseelen.” Celan’s French epigram “La poésie ne s’impose plus, elle s’expose” is given an especially careful and thoughtful commentary. Other poems are discussed in less detail, most notably “Die zweite,” “Welchen der Steine du hebst,” “Engführung,” and “Todtnauberg.” As the book’s subtitle suggests, Baer approaches Celan from...