Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan

One purpose or function or value of poetry is that it works to say what is unsayable, to encapsulate in language what is beyond language. Love is one word that yawns beyond any dictionary definition. Horror is another.

How to say what is unsayable? How to speak of anything else? How, in the aftermath of horror, to say anything at all?

There are many worthy and important translations of Paul Celan’s poetry. Here I am recommending Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, translated by John Felstiner, because it is the first translation of Celan’s work that I remember reading. Even now, holding this book brings back that quiet click of teeth meeting their mirror in a dark keyway.

There are poems I have memorized so that I can carry them as long and as far as I can maintain my poor memory. Felstiner’s translation of “There was earth inside them,” from Celan’s 1961 collection Die Niemandsrose, is one. 

How to live, not just survive, in a world of increasing suffering, cruelty, and violence? How to write a poem about horror with love? I offer the last stanza of Celan’s poem, four lines that I carry with me, a key to open a door to whatever world comes next:

O one, o none, o no one, o you: 
Where did it go then, making for nowhere? 
O you dig and I dig, and I dig through to you, 
and the ring on our finger awakens.