1-Year Plan
Post 15: 6/1/05
Reading
Celan
in Costa Rica
5/25, 5 AM. But what is the howler monkey saying when it howls as it does? What would Paul Celan say to a howler monkey? How would he decode its sound, understand its syntax? The syntax of the monkey's howls are, of course, the most important aspect of his performance: starting with a low growl, gurgling, building up to a steady state of amplitude and hence, seeming displeasure, then release—followed by a pause, a slight spatial relocation, to begin again. The monkey's howls describe a track in space, where distance plays off against time. Then the sound, its quality, is like no other animal in the forest—except those around the pool speaking German or Dutch, who are guttural as well.
● ● ●
Brown
birds
at water level
are grackles.
Yellow
birds
on a high wire
are flycatchers.
●
State
of color
in Costa Rica—
anything stands out
against green.
● ● ●
The
escaped
gray parrots
say mass
in your mouth.
[Die
entsprungenen
Graupapageien
lesen die Messe
in deinem Mund.]
What did they escape? The environment? And now they are outside it, in your head? The environment is green, and they do not stand out in it. They are a gray subtraction from a wall of green. These are my values—gray against green, a subtraction. This is precisely where poetry rests. And when did they escape? Before the rain, or as a result of it? The sky is gray, overcast, over the wall of green. Bird noise is everywhere, coming from all sides. It is a well-known principle of birds to communicate, but these gray ones can only repeat what they know of the doxology. The others repeat what they feel; that's why they have color, are expressive—in the sense that red expresses a passion, blue an alarm, yellow an optimism. Gray birds are pessimists, and repeat it endlessly in the head of the poet who knows very well what they mean. I, for one, have been writing the same thing in notebooks, endlessly. I could either be writing it in my head or on a virtual screen and sending it out—without colors, only black, white, and gray—to the world at large. This is my answer to religious observance—I speak while writing in gray letters, antiexpressive against a missing background. No context—in this I have escaped myself and become speech!
You
hear the rain
and guess that this time too
it's God.
[Du
hörsts regnen
und meinst, auch diesmal
sei's Gott. {86–87}]
The rain's what falls on the walls of green, making sound that becomes a pattern, an abstract framework for bird calls and now truck noise as it shifts gears up the hill. Behind, the constant white noise of the sea. God is far, but this is precisely a result of the opium. Our senses can only be more or less clear, the light more or less bright, the heat more or less intense—as a differential.
● ● ●
Construction sites of the Third World—now there's a source of optimism! Always something further to be completed, though it's never finished. Always piles of building materials—wooden planks, cement and gravel, concrete prefab blocks—lying around, next to the inevitable, always churning, cement mixer. At 6 AM, the workers cheerfully arrive at the site and punctuate the day with hammering, sawing, backing up trucks, and dumping. At the end of the day, they put on their caps and walk happily down the road to the soccer field, where they play to their hearts' content—then to eat, and sleep. Wittgenstein would have envied them, particularly in that their tasks are never to be completed, always to be engaged. According to the rules, or to unwritten habits and norms—whatever effectively renews them and casts them into the present.
●
No
es possible pagar en colones?
Necessidad pagar en dollares?
● ● ●
The
eternities went
for his face and beyond
it,
[Die
Ewigkeiten fuhren
ihm ins Gesicht und drüber
hinaus,]
What is the location of Latin among the leaves, the relation of grammar to green profusion? Wallace Stevens would make much of their nonrelation as hallmark of the aesthetic that supplants and goes beyond our rage for order. For Celan, order is a rage that goes beyond relation, which merely rests in appearances—no sentimentalist, he. I hear Wallace Stevens being spanked somewhere back of the wall of green—"You sentimentalist of the green profusion or persuasion, your aesthetic is not enough." In the meantime, the Green Party has sprung up, inspiring Germans to quit Stuttgart and stake a claim in the forest, in order to get past their "face." And what does their face represent, once the green force of profusion or persuasion has driven past it? Their face expresses a force beyond appearance or accident. Let's end with a face, then—a face with gaps between the teeth, a ruin of a face, charming, solicitous of the law of the jungle. By that I mean only the force of a face that drives beyond it—
slowly
a blaze put out
everything candled,
[langsam
löschte ein Brand
alles Gekerzte,]
The dissociation of a face is the force that empties it into a mask beyond which the candles may either be lit or extinguished. Against the blaze of sun clearing through accumulated cloud layers, what can a candle do against it, except decide it pales in comparison and, for Christ's sake, stop taking it! Then the waiter clears the table, has cleared it, puts out the candle, but somehow we have avoided paying—this is our message to the dead! Only the poem—no, not that either. I was in the process of describing a relation, of one kind of light to another, whence arose the question of our "ultimate" illumination—whew!
a
green, not from here,
bedowned the chin of
the stone, which the orphans
buried and again
buried.
[ein
Grün, nicht von hier,
umflaumte das Kinn
des Steins, den die Waisen
begruben und wieder
begruben. {110–11}]
This is the green of the "not here," which is the same green as where we are—an alienating green of the Green Zone opposite the Zone of Habitation, the town or village set against the green, raided by parrots. Hence, the buildings are cast in surprising colors—deep yellows, oranges, pinks, and purples—like the ceremonial vestments of the flowers that stand out from the wall of green. Its profusion or persuasion, which is entirely its force, has outstripped the aesthetic as entirely around us as a mode of thinking! Or not—there is no thought of the green, or within it either. Hence, by reason of this fact, all faces are a mask but entirely adequate to their purposes—and all stones roll down a mountain covered with green, becoming green, tinged with the force of a ventriloquized message, standing out from the forest.
● ● ●
Ah!
the German says—
the Green Zone is the wall
opposite our habitation.
So! say it in French!
●
A
wish that the cloud cover
would evaporate and we
would come face to face
with our enemy, the sun!
The sun destroys everything
in giving us provisional life.
●
How
the decision is arrived at—
how the road gets built in the forest.
Then the maps and the roads begin
to have some coherence and force.
●
Reading
Celan in Costa Rica
is not a real reading—is
the only reading possible.
It is not possible to read Celan
in the North—en el Norte—
where he has been published.
Publication
ended Celan in
the North, allowing us to read him
in the South. This is the meeting
of Celan and Wallace Stevens.
●
The
single American tourist—a
middle-aged woman in a crisp
striped shirt, reading Elmore Leonard—
leaves the hotel for the beach.
● ● ●
Where
I forgot myself in you,
you became thought,
[Wo
ich mich in dir vergaß,
wardst du Gedanke,]
My extinction in you is the condition of possibility of thought, without which there would be no thought. I am so tired of these boring assertions that do not return to the condition of their birth in thought—at the moment of their extinction. Oh Señor, truly, you are going on too long in your virtual account of recurrence, iteration—we would like you to stay honest, to undo yourself, to allow you ever and only to become a part of our thought. We are taking you apart and putting your pretensions back together again in the blink of an eye, in the nonseeing moment of our refusal of recognition of your stupid inconsequentiality. As the real poet might have said, "Nothing will come of it"—so much the better for us, so much the worse for your droning program.
something
rushes through us both:
the first of the
world's last
wings,
[etwas
rauscht durch uns beide:
der Welt erste
der letzten
Schwingen,]
First and foremost, last things—the figure a speech makes that cancels speech through the figure of thought. And that is the condition of possibility of speech, as you have said, in its extinction. But you're not listening—you go on as if none of this had ever happened, which is precisely the use we make of you, and exactly your sad undoing. Hence, the dragonfly appears wearing a Peruvian hat and hovers over a dark pool filled with silent, moving bathers. Oropendulas inhabit the trees, and so forth—for theirs is only nature, and ours is to write about it.
the
hide
overgrows
my storm-riddled
mouth,
[mir
wãchst
das Fell zu überm
gewittrigen
Mund,]
Wildness of speech, gorgeousness of plumage, takes the dragonfly's wings and restores them to humanity—the insect's eyes swimming in its face focus on a single point in the distance for a millionth of a second, which is the point of inscription, quite naturally. Let me, then, inscribe this writing in/as the absence of some really wild speech. This writing is a placeholder for some really wild speech, akin to nature (A bird—a trogon?—flitting from wire to tree branch—dark small head, yellow underbody, black and white patterned tail, which ends in a kind of stubby point—now it's disappeared.)
you
come not
to
you.
[du
kommst nicht
zu
dir. {58–59}]
You are, therefore, the ever-withholding monstrosity I had always imagined you to be—with your fake plumage and capacity for destruction even beyond your own understanding. To align you/du with you/dir would therefore be, simply, destruction—light and heat of a thousand suns, not the single one we find shade in.
● ● ●
Confirmed sighting—a female slaty-headed trogon, identified. Over the bulldozed hill in back of the swimming pool, circling vultures. The bulldozer tilts over exposed earth; the cement mixer mixes. Workers take lunch under the trees.
● ● ●
Well-
like
depthed into the enchanted,
with double-hipped
daydreams above,
[Brunnen-
artig
ins Verwunschne getieft
mit doppelt gewalmten
Tagtrãumen drüber,]
There is a reaper death yclept, and all the little children run from it. Under the hill a mine tunnel spreads out under the town. Windmills turning. What is said spreads out under the trees, doesn't come back. What is said is said in accents. Each has a body. Birds punctuate the light breaking finally from rain clouds that are entirely redundant. Pictures under the trees.
ashlar-
rings
around each breath:
[Quader-
ringe
um jeden Hauch:]
It takes an association to prove an association, and without it we are condemned to silence. In this condition, the table is flat, the bench is flat, the sea is flat, the waves rise. Then nothing is the impetus through which something is said. Following all the names of the trees.
the
chamber, where I left you, crouching,
to keep you,
[die
Kammer, wo ich dich ließ, hockend,
dich zu behalten,]
Space presses in, images are thrown on the screen to the tune of a cash register. The most profane intentions seem normal just because there is no depth. There is no depth because we stare into the source from which it itself cancels out.
the
heart commands
the frost quietly fascinating us
at the separate
fronts.
[das
Herz befehligt
den uns leise bestrickenden Frost
an den geschiedenen
Fronten,]
Peons devolve into bandits who devolve in turn into abstract threats. Machines override their impotence. Glass everywhere—and sand. Iron railings. Sea breezes.
you'll
be no flower
in urn fields
and me, the scriptbearer, no
ore, no arch drags me from the round
wood-mud-hut, no
angel.
[du
wirst keine Blume sein
auf Urnenfeldern
und mich, den Schrifttrãger, holt
kein Erz aus der runden
Holz-Lehm-Hütte, kein
Engel. {146–47}]
Let's identify depth with refusal of essence, going beyond it to general properties of being that will not be held in place by a name. Then it makes sense that a structure appears as both form and deformation, otherwise known as a dwelling but one where we find no permanent habitation.
● ● ●
5/27 Friday, leaving Samara 8 AM.
A
you, cast in lost matter,
accurate to the mask,
[Ans
Verlornem Gegossene du,
maskengerecht,]
Substance splits not to accidents. The aggressive American tourists' phone use in a space of plastic chairs. Bulldozers climb the Third World mountain, or any mountain, seeking to expand. The Green Zone answers back in its several languages—or none. Only sound fills the horizon, simply. Individual eruptions are moments.
along
the lid-
crease with
one's own
lidcrease to be near you,
[die
Lid-
falte entlang
mit der eignen
Lidfalte dir nah sein,]
One thing folds into the next, being folded, at the crease or edge of the fold, distinguishes one thing from another, but dissolves into the same. The bus starts up down the road. Air moves. People look at the changing landscape, the same green. Air is everywhere surrounding. The difference is anything but expressive, as it is a difference of the same. The same differs, over and over, producing its own brand of poetry. A poem that moves from place to place, under the controlling gaze of the eye. Workers leave their huts at dawn to begin their jobs—to manufacture differences from the same substance as an appearance. Language is a factory.
the
trace and the trace
to strew it with gray,
final, deathly.
[die
Spur und die Spur
mit Grauem bestreun
endlich, tödlich. {44–45}]
Roads in Costa Rica radiate outward from a defunct central city, a network of points at which travelers to and from the capital enter and exit. These points exist in proximity to a series of memorial markers, green crosses made of structural steel and placed at intervals along the highway. These are anything but natural: markers of death from traffic accidents. They should therefore be not green but gray, a subtraction from all color. One pauses each time one sees them—pauses and thinks on their memorial. Passengers enter and exit the bus between these intervallic pauses; the careening bus will get them through it.
● ● ●
5/29. The immediate experience of dumbing down when entering American air space:
It pays
to control yourself.
—an ad for optimum pre-boarding behavior. An adjusted mindset will get you there faster, almost instantaneously. As much to say, you're in the same place (the usual complaint of intellectuals)—but you're not in the same place!
● ● ●
Do
not work ahead,
do not send out,
stand
inward:
[Wirk
nicht voraus
sende nicht aus,
steh
herein:]
What's "working" is effectively an interpellation taken inward from maintaining focus at the point where interpretation forms. Listen, therefore, into it and it declares itself—no need to appeal or ask—it will seek out and find you, effectively, so that you know it.
transgrounded
by the void,
free of all
prayer,
fine-fugued, according to
the pre-script,
unpassable,
[durchgründet
vom Nichts
ledig allen
Gebets,
feinfügig, nach
der Vor-Schrift,
unüberholbar,]
Wrapping their heads in the American flag, the physicians at Southern Methodist University Neurological Institute operate. They are driven by beliefs—or they are nihilists. Effectively, nothing distinguishes belief from a complete lack of it in the name of neuroscience. After the operation, the patient experienced a fugue state, surrounded by fortifications of his new belief, but he is now recovering and has forgotten it. The script simply vanishes into the thin air of unbelief, as if it had never existed.
I
take you in,
instead of
stillness.
[nehm
ich dich auf,
statt aller
Ruhe. {198–99}]
I affirm the human in conversation, versus the negativity of a prescripted belief. This is entirely a matter of potential, and thus akin to a belief. That will keep us going—until conversation fails, and all our fortifications become unstable. The violence of being ends in another and is grounded there.
● ● ●
You may now rejoin the prescripted narrative in progress.
[Text copyright © Barrett Watten 2005. Excerpts from Paul Celan, Lightduress, trans. Pierre Joris {Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2005}. Not to be reprinted without permission, except in short excerpts in electronic media.]