Remembrance Undisciplined: Reading Paul Celan with Max Czollek

Abstract

AbstractTaking Walter Benjamin’s critique of history’s “disciplining” nature as a starting point, this article reads Paul Celan in dialogue with the contemporary German-Jewish poet, playwright, and essayist Max Czollek to consider the undisciplining of remembrance in both their poetry. The article highlights two sites where poetry makes an undisciplined sense of the past felt: language and historical perception. Readings of Celan’s “Lila Luft” and “Mapesbury Road” and Czollek’s “von der wiederkehr” and “nachrichten aus marathon” show how both poets draw on the resources of poetry to produce perceptual openings toward the pervasive reverberations of the national socialist past in the present. In doing so, they convey a sense of time in the aftermath of National Socialism that recent debates around memory in Germany—drawing on theoretical accounts of postcolonial aftermaths—described as “post-national socialist.” Reading Celan with Czollek renders visible to what extent Celan resonates with this contemporary discourse, while also highlighting the historical specificity of remembering in the wake of the Nazi genocide.Keywords: CelanCzollekairremembranceundisciplinedpost-national socialist Notes1 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2002), 631 [W 7,4]; see also Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, “Translator’s Foreword,” in The Arcades Project, by Walter Benjamin (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2002), xi. The epigraph is taken from: Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 545 [S1a, 3]; The German reads “Die Konstruktionen der Geschichte sind militärischen Ordres vergleichbar, die das wahre Leben kuranzen und kasernieren.” An early note uses the phrasing “kommandieren und kasernieren.” Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften VI, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 677, 1014.2 Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Selected Writings 4, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006), 395.3 Benjamin, “Concept of History,” 390.4 Tobias Menely, “Antropocene Air,” Minnesota Review 83 (2014): 93.5 Sanders Isaac Bernstein, “Shall We Not Revenge?,” JewishCurrents (blog), March 3, 2023, https://jewishcurrents.org/shall-we-not-revenge.6 Max Czollek, “5 Fragen an…Max Czollek,” 2023, https://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/versoehnungstheater/978-3-446-27609-3/.7 https://www.gorki.de/en/celan-mit-der-axt/2018-01-26-2000.8 Bernstein, “Shall We Not Revenge?”9 Max Czollek, De-Integrate: A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century, trans. Jon Cho-Polizzi (Brooklyn, NY: Restless Books, 2023), 132.10 Marjorie Perloff, “‘Sound Scraps, Vision Scraps’: Paul Celan’s Poetic Practice,” in Reading for Form, ed. Susan J. Wolfson and Marshall Brown (Seattle: Univ. of Washington, 2006), 177; Marjorie Perloff, “A Poet’s Hope,” Boston Review (blog), November 1, 2005, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/marjorie-perloff-paul-celan-a-poets-hope/.11 Perloff, “Sound Scraps, Vision Scraps,” 177–78.12 Charles Bernstein, “Celan’s Folds and Veils,” Textual Practice 18, no. 2 (2004): 200–201; See also Cherilyn Elston, “‘Almost/You Would/Have Lived’: Reading Paul Celan in Colombia,” in Paul Celan Today: A Companion, ed. Michael Eskin, Karen Leeder, and Marko Pajević, vol. 10, Companions to Contemporary German Culture (De Gruyter, 2021), 243.13 Marina Chernivsky, Hannah Peaceman, and Lea Wohl von Haselberg, “Vergegenwärtigungen,” Jalta. Positionen Zur Jüdischen Gegenwart 4 (February 2018): 4–7. See the issue description https://neofelis-verlag.de/verlagsprogramm/zeitschriften/jalta/954/gegenwartsbewaeltigung (accessed February 24, 2022). Translation mine.14 Ibid.15 Max Czollek, Versöhnungstheater (Munich: Hanser, 2023), 156. Translation mine.16 Max Czollek, Desintegriert Euch! (Munich: Hanser, 2018), 107–8.17 Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 13.18 Sharpe, In the Wake, 22.19 Max Czollek, “Gegenwartsbewältigung [Overcoming the Present],” trans. Jon Cho-Polizzi, Transit 12, no. 2 (2020): 144–51.20 Max Czollek, “Dealing with the Present,” Samplekanon (blog), April 24, 2013, https://samplekanon.com/max-czollek-dealing-with-the-present/ (accessed February 24, 2022).21 Czollek himself affirms this here: Max Czollek, “Die Doppelt belichtete Sprache: Paul Celan und das deutsche Vergessen,” in Deutsch-Ukrainische Anthologie ‘Paul Celan 100‘, ed. Evgenia Lopota (Czernowitz: Meridian, 2021), 185–6.22 Viktor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten: Tagebücher 1933-1945 (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2015); Dolf Sternberger, Gerhard Storz, and Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind, Aus dem Wörterbuch des Unmenschen (München: dtv, 1962).23 Paul Celan, “Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen,” in Collected Prose, trans. Rosemarie Waldrop (Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1986), 34; Paul Celan, “Bremer Literaturpreisrede,” in Gesammelte Werke in fünf Bänden. Gedichte III, Prosa, Reden (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 185.24 Jason Groves, “‘The Stone in the Air’: Paul Celan’s Other Terrain,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2011): 482.25 Paul Celan, Der Meridian: Endfassung, Entwürfe, Materialien (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), 173; Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version-Drafts-Materials, trans. Pierre Joris (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 173. The pagination of the English translation follows the German.26 His English translator Pierre Joris addresses this in an interview here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/under-the-language-a-conversation-with-pierre-joris-on-paul-celan/. As Amir Eshel relates, Celan knew of the speech’s audience “that many of the attending dignitaries had participated knowingly or involuntarily in the Nazi endeavor.” Eshel, “Paul Celan’s Other,” 59.27 Stefanie Heine, Poetics of Breathing: Modern Literature’s Syncope (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021), 248. On the notion of “pneuma” and “breath” in Celan see also Lydia Koelle, Paul Celans pneumatisches Judentum: Gott-Rede und menschliche Existenz nach der Shoah (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1997); Antti Salminen, “On Breathroutes: Paul Celan’s Poetics of Breathing,” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 12, no. 1 (January 20, 2014): 107–26.28 Max Czollek, “Of Return,” trans. Jon Cho-Polizzi, Jewish Currents, April 10, 2020, https://jewishcurrents.org/of-return/.29 Max Czollek, “Vom Spreizen der Finger”: Interview mit Max Czollek auf der Leipziger Buchmesse 2015, interview by Ruprecht Volz, Signaturen. Forum für Autonome Poesie, 2015, https://signaturen-magazin.de/gespraech-mit-max-czollek.html. Translation mine.30 Perhaps the most known example is Celan’s poem “Todtnauberg.” See Barbara Wiedemann’s commentary in Paul Celan, Die Gedichte: Neue Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe, ed. Wiedemann, Barbara (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2020), 993; see also Czollek, “Die Doppelt Belichtete Sprache.”31 Celan, Die Gedichte, 486. For the biographical and contextual details, see 1135–36. Translation in Paul Celan, Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry. A Bilingual Edition, trans. Pierre Joris (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2014), 323, 325.32 Marlies Janz, “‘…Noch Nichts Interkurrierendes’: Paul Celan in Berlin Im Dezember 1967,” Celan Jahrbuch 8 (2003): 341.33 See Peter Szondi, “Eden,” in Celan-Studien (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 113–25.34 Paul Celan, Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry. A Bilingual Edition, trans. Pierre Joris (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2020), 347.35 Celan, Die Gedichte, 1144.36 Celan’s relation to Dutschke and the student movement was conflicted as his concerns over antisemitism on the left increased. As Barbara Wiedemann shows, shortly after writing “Mapesbury Road,” Celan noted his “disappointment and deep discomfort” with Dutschke’s essay “Antisemitism and Anticommunism.” Barbara Wiedemann, “‘vom Unbestattbaren her.’ Die Auseinandersetzung mit linkem Antisemitismus in Paul Celans Spätwerk,” in Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 40 (2015), 85–90. Paul Celan and Gisela Dischner, Wie aus weiter Ferne zu Dir: Briefwechsel Paul Celan – Gisela Dischner, ed. Barbara Wiedemann and Gisela Dischner (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2012), 89.37 Virginia Hamill, “Rudi Dutschke, 39, Led German Student Revolt,” The Washington Post, December 26, 1979, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1979/12/26/rudi-dutschke-39-led-german-student-revolt/fbab8efd-cbe4-4ef4-af0d-d2c2c2d93158/ (accessed February 24, 2022).38 Max Czollek, Gegenwartsbewältigung (München: Hanser, 2020), 22.39 Paul Celan and Franz Wurm, Paul Celan – Franz Wurm: Briefwechsel, ed. Barbara Wiedemann and Franz Wurm (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), 140; Celan, Die Gedichte, 1144.40 Celan and Wurm, Briefwechsel, 138; Celan, Die Gedichte, 495; translation in Celan, Breathturn into Timestead, 349, 351.41 Paul Celan and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, Paul Celan – Gisèle Celan-Lestrange: Briefwechsel, ed. Bertrand Badiou and Eric Celan, trans. Eugen Helmlé and Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 603; cited in Celan, Die Gedichte, 1144. Translation mine.42 Celan and Wurm, Briefwechsel, 138.43 Celan and Wurm, Briefwechsel, 139, 149.44 https://hanskundnani.com/2010/10/23/celan-in-nw2/ (accessed November 20, 2022).45 Celan, Die Gedichte, 485–6.46 Peter Szondi, Celan Studies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 92.47 Celan, Memory Rose, 145–7.48 Isac Chiva, “Lettres Inédites de Paul Celan,” Les Cahiers de Judaïsme 4 (2001): 135; Celan, Die Gedichte, 727–8. Translation mine.49 The following studies approach the topic from different angles: Aris Fioretos, “Nothing: Reading Paul Celan’s ‘Engführung’,” Comparative Literature Studies 27, no. 2 (1990): 158–68; Shira Wolosky, Language Mysticism: The Negative Way of Language in Eliot, Beckett, and Celan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995); Natalie Lozinski-Veach, “Embodied Nothings: Paul Celan’s Creaturely Inclinations,” MLN 131.3, (April 2016): 791–816.50 Jacques Derrida, “Shibboleth: For Paul Celan,” in Sovereignties In Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan (New York: Fordham Univ Press, 2005), 1–64.51 Derrida, “Shibboleth,” 21.52 Celan and Dischner, Briefwechsel, 85f.53 I discuss the figure of the timehalo in relation to Celan’s poem “Engführung” in more detail here: Simone Stirner, “A Different Withness: Being with the Past in Paul Celan’s ‘Engführung,’” in Thresholds, Encounters: Paul Celan and the Claim of Philology, ed. Kristina Mendicino and Dominik Zechner (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2023), 35–57.54 Celan, The Meridian, 110.55 Edmund Husserl, Collected Works, Vol. 4: On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917), trans. John Barnett Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 111.56 See also Dorothee Gelhard, “Singbarer Rest: Celans Phänomenologische Poetologie,” Arcadia 47, no. 1 (2012): 78–107.57 Max Czollek, Grenzwerte (Berlin: Verlagshaus Berlin, 2019).58 Czollek, Grenzwerte, 19–26.59 Czollek, Grenzwerte, 24. Translation Jon Cho-Polizzi.60 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).61 Rothberg, “Multidirectional Memory,” 176.62 Attia and Rothberg, “Multidirectional Memory and Verwobene Geschichte(n),” 50.63 Czollek, “Gegenwartsbewältigung [Overcoming the Present].”64 Astrid Messerschmidt, “Selbstbilder in der Post- Nationalsozialistischen Gegenwart,” Jalta. Positionen Zur Jüdischen Gegenwart 4 (February 2018): 39. Translation mine.65 Messerschmidt, “Selbstbilder,” 39.66 Ann Laura Stoler, Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); Sharpe, In the Wake; Alia Al-Saji, “Durée,” in 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, ed. Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy, and Gayle Salamon (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020), 99–106.67 Sharpe, In the Wake, 9; Ann Laura Stoler, “Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination,” Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 2 (May 2008): 192.68 Al-Saji, “Durée,” 102.69 Al-Saji, “Durée,” 100.70 Alia Al-Saji, “Life as Vision: Bergson and the Future of Seeing Differently,” in Bergson and Phenomenology, ed. Michael R. Kelly (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 102.71 These figures are specific but not exclusive. Both Celan and Czollek also render the relation to the past through images of earth and soil; Sharpe speaks of the “weather” of slavery’s aftermath and of “aspiration” as a way of living, breathing, and being in the wake.72 Czollek, “Gegenwartsbewältigung [Overcoming the Present].”73 Celan, The Meridian, 169.Additional informationNotes on contributorsSimone StirnerSimone Stirner is assistant professor of German studies and affiliate faculty in Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, memory studies and queer memory, and critical theory.