Paul Celan's Aphorisms/Counterlights

At Nomadics, Pierre Joris writes about Paul Celan as aphorist: "Except for two essays and one prose piece (Conversation in the Mountain), Celan did not publish anything beyond his poems and translations. But he did leave a rich trove of aphorisms, paradoxes, sketches, and short narrative & topical fragments (often returning, sometimes openly, sometimes in more veiled terms, to questions of Jewishness, of politics, of the mistreatment that befell him via the Goll affair)."

Joris is working with the material, to be published toward the end of the year by modem-verlag. In the meantime, he lets us in on some of the process:

I am thinking right now that it may be most helpful (should a translation be “helpful”? And if so for whom?) to leave as much of the meta-translation aspect (notes, multiple word choices, etc.) in as needed. Here are just a few from the early aphoristic gathering which he usually referred to as (or under the title of) Gegenlichter / Counterlights:

22 Hermeticism—

Certain “citizens” and the poem: They buy the surprise bag; one knows vaguely what’s in it, it won’t be much, but then it doesn’t cost much either, and if one already visits the fair and has enjoyed the lady without lower- but with upper body, one’s amusement also demands that. And when what’s in it turns out — but here too the buyer’s superior humor can prove itself — to be even cheaper than cheap, there still remains the fun that all of that was “too” /[“zu” “closed”]

35.2 There is (in small and smallest coinage) a koine of the lyric; and then there is the one singular language of poetry.

36 Comfortably at home in stylistically correct smart aleck’ry, one will write obituaries for the great deceased and, while in selected company availing oneself of the memorial sites, one will not forget to take an elegant sideswipe at one’s young neighbor on the occasion of the wreath laying; evenings one will pray briefly but substantially to the God one came to via several (up-to-date and high-profile) conversions, and the next morning one will, while commenting the latest news with Bible-, Goethe- and self-citations, drink one’s black coffee, with a mouthful of toast and commiseration.

Read it all at Nomadics.