Where to start with Celan? A Holocaust survivor whose pulverising poetry stretched the oppressor's language into transcendental shapes, Celan killed himself in the year of my birth. Translating him is a feat. He uses neologisms in German that intensify common words in weird ways: "zer-" (a prefix that implies intensity to the point of destruction) and "schweigen" (which means to fall silent) giving us "zerschwiegenem Schwur". Which feels potent to say out loud.
Michael Hamburger goes for latinate words which give the oddness ("seminated", "nocturnal", "eclipsed") but lose the compact, stone-like quality of the German compounds.
Was hab ich
getan?
Die Nacht besamt, als könnt es
noch andere geben, nächtiger als
diese.
Vogelflug, Steinflug,
tausend beschriebene Bahnen. Blicke,
geraubt und gepflückt. Das Meer,
gekostet, vertrunken, verträumt. Eine Stunde,
seelenverfinstert. Die nächste, ein Herbstlicht,
dargebracht einem blinden Gefühl, das des Wegs kam. Andere, viele,
ortlos und schwer aus sich selbst: erblickt und umgangen.
Findlinge, Sterne,
schwarz und voll Sprache: benannt
nach zerschwiegenem Schwur.
Und einmal (wann? auch dies ist vergessen):
den Widerhaken gefühlt,
wo der Puls den Gegentakt wagte.
ALL SOULS
What did I
do?
Seminated the night, as though
there could be others, more nocturnal than
this one.
Bird flight, stone flight, a thousand
described routes. Glances,
purloined and plucked. The sea,
tasted, drunk away, dreamed away. An hour
soul-eclipsed. The next, an autumn light,
offered up to a blind
feeling which came that way. Others, many,
with no place but their own heavy centres: glimpsed and avoided.
Foundlings, stars,
black, full of language: named
after an oath which silence annulled.
And once (when? that too is forgotten):
felt the barb
where my pulse dared the counter-beat.
trans. Michael Hamburger