ONCE,

I heard him,

he was washing the world,

unseen, nightlong,

real.

 

One and infinite,

annihilated,

I’ed.*

 

Light was. Salvation.

 

 

        —Paul Celan  (1920-1970) 
                   "Einmal,"  translated by Michael Hamburger

                             from   
                               Poems of Paul Celan: A Bilingual German/English Edition
                                    Persea Books (2002)

COMMENTARY

 

 

". . . [The] radicalism of philosophizing can never be gauged either by the results or the critical framework of a system but rather, in a more literal sense, by the radices of philosophizing in the biography of philosophizing consciousness, i.e., by the experiences that impel toward reflection and do so because they have excited conscious­ness to the "awe" of existence. The nature of the irrupting experiences and the excitations they induce, together with the result of an ‘attunement’ of consciousness to its ‘problems,’ seems to me to be the determinants on which depend the radicalism and the breadth of philosophical reflection.” Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis (vol 6, The Collected Works), 84.

 

* "I'ed" is a translation of the original German Ichten which has
been variously interpreted as one of Celan's fluid neologisms, or
a play on "vernichten" (annihilate) suggesting its opposite,
creation ex nihilo, or possibly the archaic German usage "to
declare oneself." Celan himself approved the English "I'ed."–Ed.

 

More Poetry....

 

 

 

Authors    First Lines     Titles

          Also see Poetry Index I