tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post469087294068295402..comments2024-03-29T14:45:32.326+13:00Comments on The Imaginary Museum: Meeting Paul CelanDr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-55019039511446042082007-04-06T23:20:00.000+12:002007-04-06T23:20:00.000+12:00I that doesn't get to it I can email it to anyone ...I that doesn't get to it I can email it to anyone who wants it.<BR/><BR/>Kake - a good post by you - I noticed the sly Rossian use of Manukau and the Star of David also!<BR/><BR/>I imagine translating Celan is as difficult as getting a handle on his poems (which of course are "about" much more than the Holocaust) - Pierre Joris has done some good work on this and there is a lot of German and other literary exegesis but I cant read German either - I suppose we all have to do a lot more digging into Celan if we want to get more from his work. <BR/><BR/>One comparison via Scott Hamilton was to: "Cryptic and tortuous messages in bottles sent hundreds of years ago..."<BR/><BR/>Even for fluent German speakers reading Celan would itself be a work of translation.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-42538897256749051652007-04-06T23:07:00.001+12:002007-04-06T23:07:00.001+12:00http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/joris/todtnau...http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/joris/todtnauberg.htmlRichardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-73012062517458359482007-04-06T23:07:00.000+12:002007-04-06T23:07:00.000+12:00Here is the link I referred to:http://wings.buffal...Here is the link I referred to:<BR/><BR/>http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/<BR/>authors/joris/todtnauberg.htmlRichardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-82147682402938559492007-04-06T22:50:00.000+12:002007-04-06T22:50:00.000+12:00Pierre. Hi! (Richard Taylor.) I was about to give...Pierre. Hi! (Richard Taylor.) I was about to give Jack the link to your translation (or the discussion of your translation versus -another translator ...) Jack probably has it.<BR/><BR/>But I will post (link to discussion a translation of Pierre's) it on here in commemnts shortly in case you dont have it; and or for others inteested.<BR/><BR/>I recall a comment about someone re the poetry of Allan Curnow -"He fucks with my head". Sometimes I feel that way about him myself, other times I get right into his work; it is not good stuff to read if one is a bit sad. Another young poet I know responded: "Good job!" (Hamish Dewe.) <BR/><BR/>Jack is, like Curnow and Celan and the modern culture he refers to: "fucking with our heads" (but not too viciously I hope!), and perhaps in all his works. I also sometimes shudder** at the Britney Spears of this world or the world of their world but as Jack says it is the world. I haven't heard one of her songs as far as I know. She is obviously a good singer, but she looks very ordinary to me.<BR/><BR/>I like the idea of the conjunction of the three "avatars" (Spears, Celan and Nu, which use of such is the or an idea of Alan Sondheim, and many others e.g. Berryman.. (in his (Sondheim's) huge Meditation on the Internet Project); clearly it is not an entirely new idea but it is interesting. It is good that Pierre shudders.<BR/><BR/>Silence, yes, I am just reading through and about Susan Howe's "Pythagorean Silence": a great work. I can understand Celan's position, he was exiled as a poet and a non-German and as a Jew and his mother and his father's murder by the German Nazis; his soul, his heart, were in agony. Hence his suicide. <BR/><BR/>Susan Sontag referred to the Holocaust, or in fact to "The problem of Hilter" as _the_ problem of the 20th century. It continues to strongly haunt us. It is still unresoovled. <BR/><BR/>Britney Spears (or the 'world' she is a part of) is also of the culture we now have: the same culture that produced her and Michael Jackson and any numbers of psychopaths (or perhaps very maladjusted people, however we define that) throughout the world (and I am not just talking about "The West");Nazi Germanys can happen again and again and they can happen anywhere;any where in the world or in anytime. There are no guarantees. <BR/><BR/>Celan needed to talk a lot about his feelings, poetry wasn't enough as it wasn't for Berryman or Plath or Levi; or many others; the Holocaust affected not just those directly involved. It stains our whole culture, our psyche's. And language is the terrible accomplice of this horror.<BR/><BR/>**But we have to get away from this dark eventually. The world of pop etc is not an 'evil' world per se.<BR/>Music of all kind gives joy to so many people, its value is a counterweight to that dark..that "celandark". Jack is like Ashbery and O'Hara et al in bringing the various 'worlds' (cultures and histories) together.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-3897618781007743662007-03-25T11:15:00.000+12:002007-03-25T11:15:00.000+12:00This is interesting. I don’t know anything about G...This is interesting. I don’t know anything about German or Paul Celan, but these versions obviously breathe without life-support and "Meeting Paul Celan" is a really useful introduction to them.<BR/><BR/>If Celan’s poetry articulates linguistic exile, then translation could be its ideal manifestation. Relying on a non-existent equivalence, translation tends to generate its own incidental ‘acts of non-communication’. Translating Celan must be like walking on a tightrope when you are constantly swatting the wire with your own balancing pole. Example: the word 'both-handed' only works because it sounds incompletely rendered into English. ‘Ambidextrous’ would have set completely the wrong tone and (I imagine) would have been incorrect anyway because some level of dissonance/ambiguity is the point. <BR/><BR/>I particularly like choice of ‘Manukau’ for ‘Moldau’ – the geographical swap simultaneously directs and disorients the reader, and draws attention to the translation as an alteration.<BR/><BR/>Only just noticed the Star of David around Britney’s neck in the keith partridge y yo post.Katherine Dolanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01831799082347506550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-77238134452928044112007-03-24T08:46:00.000+12:002007-03-24T08:46:00.000+12:00I guess, in a way, that was the point I was trying...I guess, in a way, that was the point I was trying to make. What ontological manoeuvrings could ever reconcile the universe of Celan with that of Britney Spears?<BR/><BR/>It would be a completely idle question if it didn't happen to be the universe I find myself living in every time I turn on the television or the computer ... I know it seems almost blasphemous to those who revere the memory of Celan -- an attitude I sympathise with very much -- but, as a writer, I guess I also have a duty to report the world I see around me. If it weren't jarring, it wouldn't make its point.Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-76714033304117351962007-03-23T22:44:00.000+12:002007-03-23T22:44:00.000+12:00my previosu comment should have started: "asked to...my previosu comment should have started: "asked to contribute..."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-64566182168631799022007-03-23T22:43:00.000+12:002007-03-23T22:43:00.000+12:00to contribute to an anthology called "My poem is m...to contribute to an anthology called "My poem is my knife," Celan wrote back to the editor suggesting that for him, Celan, the poem "was a handshake" — i.e. an encounter. Which buttresses your sense of the importance of the encounter in Celan's work. <BR/><BR/>Maybe I have spent too much time these last 40 years thinking about Celan & translating his work, & maybe Celan's work has been too essential for my own writing for me to have a detached view on this, but the association of PC with Britney Spears makes me shudder...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com