Highgate
An angel has walked through the room --:
you, near the unopened book,
acquit
me once more.
Twice the heather finds nourishment.
Twice it fades.
—Paul Celan (1920-1970)
trans. by Michael Hamburger
from Poems of Paul Celan (2002)
(Persea Books)
COMMENTARY
"At more than one American university I had an occasion to observe that for a good many students the imitation of Camus's meditations has shown the way to catharsis. They felt this was the key to the liberation from the intellectual pressures exerted, according to their respective backgrounds, by leftist ideologues, or the Neo-Thomists, or existential theologians. The impact of Camus's work seems to stem from the inexorability of his endeavor to achieve purity by purging himself of substitute realities." Anamnesis, 371.
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