My immersion into Paul Celan’s poems hasn’t been depressing; instead I’ve been following, with keen attention over the past weeks, a mind which has been where we are treading. Celan spoke of poems as being prophetic, that they “cast their shadow ahead of themselves: one must live after them. Life itself must pass through the poem.” Yes indeed!
I follow mindfully through his halting struggle to wrest language out of its abuse and false clarity. And darkness, I can’t help but feel the power of “living, creative darkness,” a human darkness which also seethes in poems. I’m thinking of Celan’s “From Darkness to Darkness.” Never would you find a deus ex machina, a miraculous light bursting into a scene in Celan. Instead a subtle light appears, throws shade ahead of the poet, onto a beloved, onto an empty field. There is trembling possibility – a breakthrough of recognition, across borders, time and self. (I’m drawing on a brilliant introduction by Susan Gillespie, who translated Corona, Selected Poems.) Through the obscurity, the poem carries forward, having been sparked with the light and coursing energy of human exchange.
I felt it when reading together with a group of smart folks who were listening as if a trumpet was sounding. And at the protest where a shared consciousness was erupting in the gray rain. It is a kind of faith, hope against hope in a dim world. A shared consciousness to observe the present and the unknowingness of the future. Rock on, Celan.