Peter Szondi The Poetry of Constancy: Paul Celan's Translation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 105 Translated by Harvey Mendelsohn - Классики о переводе - Каталог статей

Shakespeare's sonnet 105, a poem about the virtues of the author's young friend and, simultaneously, a poem about the poetic writing that extols them, ends with the couplet: Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone. Which three till now, never kept seat in one. Celan's translation of this sonnet concludes with the verses: "Schön, gut und treu" so oft getrennt, geschieden. In Einem will ich drei zusammenschmieden.1 Beauty, goodness, and fidelity are the three virtues that the poet ascribes to his friend in the preceding quatrains, and it is to their expression that he wishes to confine his writing, indeed, even its vocabulary. Whereas in these strophes Shakespeare speaks not only of his friend but also of his own love and of his own songs, the final couplet is devoted entirely to the three virtues, which are granted an independent life through the device of personification. Yet this independent life is accorded to beauty, goodness, and fidelity only so that the poet may affirm that their separation, which previously was the rule, is henceforth overcome. The "till now" of the dispersion of "fair, kind, and true" is the history of humanity until the appearance of that W H. who is celebrated in the majority of Shakespeare's sonnets. The last two verses of Celan's translation say something different. They do not contrast the long separation of the three "virtues" with the place in which they finally have all come together. The union of "fair, kind, and true" ("Schön, gut und treu") is due not to the appearance of the friend, but to a literary work, to the future work of the poet, who intends to "forge" the three "together" (zusammenschmieden will). If Shakespeare's concluding verses are silent about the friend, this is only in order to invoke him all the more strikingly through the negation "never" and above all, through the sonnet's inconspicuous last word, "one," which is a circumlocution for him in whom "fair, kind, and true" have taken up common residence. In contrast, Celan's in Einem ("in one"), in which the poet "intends to forge together fair, kind, and true" ("Schön, gut und treu" zusammenschmieden will), is not "the one person" (der Eine) extolled by the poem but "the one thing" (das Eine), most probably the one image that the poet sketches of him, if indeed it is not the unity of the poem, which has entirely absorbed its subject matter. To be sure, in the three quatrains of the Shakespearian sonnet the poet speaks so explicitly about his work ("my songs and praises," "my verse," "my invention"—in the third verse of each quatrain) that, despite the emphatic silence of the concluding couplet, we may interpret the "now," before which moment "fair," "kind," and "true" were separated, as being simultaneously the "now" of Shakespeare's composition of the poem. That the place where beauty, goodness, and fidelity unite could be the friend as well as the poem about him is an ingenious piece of ambiguity based on the relationship between friend and poem established by other poems in the sonnet cycle. In contrast, we may note the explicitness and pathos evident in Celan's translation, in which the poet, through the image of the "forging together," claims that what Shakespeare expresses in the form of a description—and what is linked with the act of its being described only inasmuch as it is a described reality—is the product solely of his own will, the result of his poetic activity alone. This same approach, which characterizes Celan's version of the final two verses, is a decisive element of his entire translation of Shakespeare's sonnet 105: Let not my love be called idolatry, Nor my beloved as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence, Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words, And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. Fair, kind, and true, have often Lived alone, Which three till now, never kept seat in one.2 Ihr sollt, den ich da lieb, nicht Abgott heissen, nicht Götzendienst, was ich da treib und trieb. All dieses Singen hier, all dieses Preisen: von ihm, an ihn und immer ihm zulieb. Gut ist mein Freund, ists heute und ists morgen, Und keiner ist bestandiger als er. In der Beständigkeit, da bleibt mein Vers gcborgen, spricht von dem Einen, schweift mir nicht umher. "Schön, gut und treu," das singe ich und singe. "Schön, gut und treu"—stets anders und stets das. Ich find, erfind—urn sie in eins zu bringen, sie einzubringen ohne Unterlass. "Schön, gut und treu" so oft getrennt, geschieden. In Einem will ich drei zusammenschmieden. In the first quatrain, Celan's use of the active voice leads to the introduction of the poet's own activity into the subject matter, even though the translation, too, appears to have only the friend in view. The substantival infinitive forms of the verbs (Singen, "singing," and Preisen, "praising, extolling") replace the corresponding substantives ("my songs and praises"). Where the passive form "be called" appears in the original, in Celan's version the poet speaks of what he himself is doing (the sequence of verses 1 and 2 is re versed). And this impression is strengthened by repetition, specifi cally by the preservation of lexical identity (treib/trieb, "do/did"), coexisting with morphological difference (present tense, imperfect tense), as well as by the rhyme on zulieb ("for the love of"). In the second quatrain, the poet's activity comes to the fore, since the translator, using both syntax and semantics to achieve his effect, assigns a more active function to a verse that is already personified in Shakespeare. In this way he also intensifies the personification of his own work, which increasingly takes the place of the person extolled by Shakespeare. Celan gives Da bleibt mein Vers ge-borgen ("there lies my verse sheltered") for my verse to constancy confined,; and he gives schweift mir nicht umher ("does not wander round about") for leaves out difference. Finally, in the third quatrain, the poet's more active role, the result of the specific accumulation of verbs referring to his own doings (Ich find, erfind—"I discover, invent" for "is my invention spent"; zu bringen, einzubringen—"to bring, to harvest") is supplemented by greater semantic specification. Thus, in place of "is all my argument," originally a standard rhetorical phrase, the translation gives das singe ich und singe ("that [is what] I sing and sing"), preparing the reader for the repetitions to come in verses 11 and 12. It may seem that the main point involved here is a shift in accent from the person who is being praised to the act of praising or composing. What we are actually dealing with, however, is more than merely the "bolder display" (as Holderlin expressed it in connection with his translations of Sophocles)3 of a theme already present in the original, in which, however, it is entirely subordinate to the themes of the "fair friend"4 and of the poet's love for him. The relationship of Celan's translation to the original can be appropriately described neither as a change in thematic interest or style, nor as the kind of change which, according to the tenets of traditional theories of translation, would be pertinent in judging the fidelity and success of the translation. Rather, the movement from original to translation is a change in what Walter Benjamin, in his essay on "The Task of the Translator," calls "intention toward language (Intention auf die Sprache).5 Where a translation not only may but should differ from the original is in its mode of signification (Art des Meinens).6 The concept of "significatio" pertains to the structure of language, to a relationship whose two members, however, should not be assigned fixed names, since such names always imply a specific relationship between the two, that is, a precise conception of the structure of signification in language. Michel Foucault calls the two elements of this relationship simply Words and Things—a formula that serves as the title of the book in which he interprets the historical change in this relationship as a change in the epistemological "conditions of possibility" governing the specific historical forms assumed by the various "human sciences."7 Any less general notion would hinder the discovery of the relevant mode of signification; and this would be a serious loss, since it is always this mode that constitutes the historicity of a given linguistic constellation and thus also the goal of philological understanding.8 Accordingly, a translation does not primarily indicate the his torical state of a language (indeed, primarily it does not indicate this at all); it gives evidence, rather, of the use of language. The translation points not so much to a definite linguistic state as to . definite conception of language. Thus Benjamin saw the legitimacy, indeed the necessity, of translating as lying in the different inten tions toward language and modes of signification displayed by an original text and its translation. This very difference, moreover, invalidates the premises underlying debates over the issue of fidelity versus freedom in translating. The way in which Celan's mode of signification differs from Shakespeare's can be gathered by comparing the concluding couplet of sonnet 105 as it stands in the original and in the translation: Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone. Which three till now, never kept seat in one. "Schön, gut und treu" so oft getrennt, geschieden. In Einem will ich drei zusammenschmieden. The theme in both versions is the separation of the three "virtues" and their unification, the two states being contrasted in the antithetical structure of the couplet. The difference in intention toward language at work in Celan's version and in Shakespeare's text can be inferred from the way Celan expresses the dispersion, as well as the contrast between this dispersion and the ensuing union. In translating "have often lived alone" by so oft getrennt, geschieden ("so often separated, divided"), he enriches the discursive mode of expression with another whose poetic energy overwhelms discursiveness. What traditional stylistic criticism would consider as a varied repetition used for emphasis—getrennt, geschieden—serves here to express the caesurae between "Schön, gut, und treu" in other than simply a lexical manner. Modern linguistics has conceptualized that which the reader of earlier times could have perceived in analyzing the impression made on him by a phrase like getrennt, geschieden, if—and that is the real question—such a turn of phrase and such an intention toward language appeared at all before the advent of modern literature. If it is true that the understanding of language consists primarily in making distinctions, in registering "distinctive features," then the phrase getrennt, geschieden, is not so much an instance of varied repetition as it is, when spoken aloud as ge-trennt, geschieden, the union of the common prefix ge with two different, although synonymous lexemes, trennt and schieden. Understanding, which depends upon distinctions, sees intended meaning less in the literal sense of separating and dividing than in the caesura, which splits the word geschieden into two parts, by virtue on the one hand, of the identity of the prefix, and, on the other, of the phonological quasi-identity (the paronomasia) of schieden and its rhyme word schmieden. This separation of ge and schieden may be seen as a metadiscursive representation of the separation of "Schön, gut und treu." The final rhymes of the English and German versions display a similar phenomenon. The opposition appearing in the original— "lived alone / kept seat in one"—is, of course, reproduced in the translation, namely, in the opposition of separating and dividing, on the one hand and forging together, on the other. Nevertheless, it is clear that in the German version the opposition is conveyed not only through lexical means but also through the difference between schieden ("divided") and schmieden ("forged"). Just as understanding, sensitive to distinctions, perceives geschieden coming after getrennt as geschieden, so, too, does it register the difference between geschieden and zusammenschmieden as the minimal consonantal variation of the rhymed syllables schieden and schmieden. The normative identity of the rhymed words, which in the German text starts from the last stressed vowel (-ieden), is reinforced by the sch-sound; yet this identity is disrupted by the variation arising from the m-sound in schmieden (inserted between the sch-sound and the rhymed syllable [-ieden] and anticipated by the separable prefix zu-sammen). Thus the metadiscursive realization of both the separation and union of the three "virtues" consists in this minimal variation, the near-identity of schieden and schmieden. In other words, the opposition is expressed by its own antithesis, paronomasia. This device, employed in the rhyme of the final couplet, enables the poem's language to go beyond the dimension of meaning and speak the opposition, instead of expressing it (which would represent a recourse to the literal sense); and it can do this all the more so since the only difference, except for the context (zusammen, "together"), between the paronomasia and total homonymy lies in the consonant. The mode of signification which is documented here, and which stamps Celan's translation throughout, may be contrasted with the mode found in Shakespeare, which likewise exploits the possibilities offered by rhyme, although in a different fashion. In Shakespeare, the opposition is already emphasized, not, however, by near-identity but by relation, namely, between "alone" (derived from "all one") and "one." Unlike Celan's, this contrastive technique, which is confined to the lexical and etymological realm, is incapable of generating a determinate negation of discursiveness, i.e., of recourse to literal sense. More important, however, is the fact that the etymological relationship between "alone" and "one" remains external to the opposition that the poem is meant to express and in fact does express on the discursive level. Thus the relationship is an abstract point of manneristic origin. The same may be said, with even greater justification, of the following paradox: separateness is evoked by the very word ("alone") that originally reinforced the word expressing union ("one"). These remarks are not meant as criticism,9 but simply as an indication of a particular mode of signification that may be seen as the basic premise of much of traditional rhetoric. Just as this intention toward language has changed since Mallarme', so the very principles of rhetoric employed in poetry since Mallarme' differ from those of traditional rhetoric. This fact, which has been noticed by only a few authors such as Derrida10 and Deguy,11 becomes evident in comparing Shakespeare's sonnet 105 with Celan's translation. From the point of view of traditional rhetoric, the sonnet's most ingenious verse is no doubt the fifth: Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind. This verse is constructed in the form of a chiasmus. The mirror symmetry directly opposes "to-day" and "to-morrow" around a central axis, thereby stressing the present-future antithesis.12 However, inasmuch as the chiastic sentence structure results, on the lex ical level, in the verse's beginning and ending with the same word, "kind," it enables the verse to stress the constancy that cannot be affected by the temporal opposition. The chiasmus in this Shakespearean verse is thus scarcely mere ornament; at the same time, however, it runs entirely counter to the specific relationship of language and "content" found in Celan's translation of this verse: Gut ist mein Freund, ists heute und ists morgen. The chiasmus can be rendered in German, as was shown by Stefan George, whose translation of the verse reads: Gut ist heut meine liebe-morgen gut.13 If Celan gives up the chiasmus, it is only so as to allow the sentence itself to speak directly that which the chiasmus can express only abstractly and mediated by reflection: constancy. Celan's verse flows easily onward, replacing the antithetically constructed verse, which can only express constancy when it reaches its end in the retrospective glance of synthesis.14 It is as if Celan's poem heedlessly followed the course of time, in which the friend's goodness persists as unchangingly as the one occurrence of the word ists follows die other, as obviously as morgen ("tomorrow") follows heute ("today"). The difference between Celan's translation and the original is not adequately grasped if one merely notes that the chiasmus is replaced by repetition, as can readily be seen from Celan's German version of the succeeding verse: und keiner ist beständiger als er. In Shakespeare this line reads: Still constant in a wondrous excellence. It appears, though, that Celan does wish to repeat the chiasmus when he follows up Gut ist mein Freund with keiner ist beständiger in the next verse. But Celan's chiasmus, distributed over two lines and affecting only parts of these two, lacks that antithesis which only becomes a sign of the intended meaning, i.e., of constancy, when it is surpassed qua antithesis through the repetition of the word "kind." In Celan's version, instead of concluding the first verse in a gnomic fashion ("kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind"), the chiasmus confirms the union of the first verse with the second, in which the impression of a constant onward-flowing motion is preserved by the use of the introductory word und ("and") and by the repetition of the word ist ("is"). What distinguishes Celan's translation from the original, therefore, is not a renunciation of traditional rhetorical figures but rather a change in basic presuppositions. In other words, his version displays a different mode of signification; and this mode underlies his use of language, both generally and, more particularly, with respect to rhetorical figures, although it can only be discovered by a consideration of the "performance," that is to say, the text itself. As a result, even that type of textual analysis which inquires into these presuppositions may no more dispense with stylistic criticism than it may rely exclusively on the latter. From this point of view, repetition appears as the most consistently employed stylistic device of Celan's translation. Naturally, the fact that in his own poetry Celan frequently repeats words and sentences lends weight to the thesis that Celan translated Shakespeare into his own language; in other words, Celan's translations are Celan poems. While both plausible and likely to find a ready welcome, not necessarily false on that account, such an approach tends to obscure the possible difference in the use of language, that is, in intention toward language, which, according to Benjamin's theory of translation, constitutes the difference between an original text and its translation.15 Hence we should pursue the comparison of the two poems further still in order to establish the specific mode of signification that informs Celan's language in his translation of the English sonnet. Shakespeare's own text contains a large number of repetitions, which Celan always retains, however freely he may proceed in other respects. Thus, in the two introductory verses he gives translations of the pairs of corresponding terms "love-beloved" and "idolatry-idol," although zulieb, which corresponds to lieb (v. 1), does not appear until the conclusion of the first quatrain, though it is anticipated by trieb as its rhyming word. This deviation from the parallelism of the two introductory verses is made for the sake of a varied repetition in verse 2 {was ich da treib und trieb—"what there I do and did"), which in both its form and underlying intention toward language recalls verse 5 {Gut ist mein Freund, ists heute und ists morgen—"kind is my friend, [he] is it today and [he] is it tomorrow"). Celan likewise keeps the slightly modified repetition in verses 6 and 7 ("constant-constancy," beständiger-Beständigkeit) as well as the strict repetition of "Fair, kind and true" in verses 9, 10, and 13. One last repetition in the original is made still more emphatic in Celan's version, namely, that found in the final verse of the first quatrain: To one, of one, still such, and ever so. The translation refers, however abstractly, to the "fair friend" a third time: von ihm, an ihn und immer ihm zulieb ("about him, to him, and always for love of him"). As in the succeeding verse, this type of repetition is qualitatively different from the type we find in Shakespeare; it also serves a different function. What Shakespeare, in the second half of the verse, expresses discursively with the words "still" and "ever" is spoken by Celan's verse as verse (with the exception of the word immer— "ever"). Unlike Shakespeare's verse 4 ("To one, of one / still such, and ever so"), Celan's is not divided into two parts, but rather proceeds in a continuous fashion, due to the lexical {ihm-ihn-ihm) as well as the vocalic periodicity (o-ī-a-ī-u-ī-e-i-u-ī). Here, as in verse 5, constancy is not merely the intended meaning; it characterizes the verse itself. To this extent, Celan's language does not speak about something but "speaks" itself. It speaks about things and about language through its very manner of speaking. In Celan's version, therefore, repetition—the syntagmatic realization of the constancy motif—is not restricted to those passages whose explicit theme is constancy, but stamps the sonnet as a whole. Behind the many expressions in the original referring only indi rectly to this theme, the translator discerns this same constancy and governs his language accordingly. This is evident from the way In translates my love in the first verse of the original: Let not my love be called idolatry, where he makes the constancy implied in "my love" speak through the identity of the lexeme treib ("do") in verse 2: nicht Götzendienst, was ich da treib und trieb ("not idolatry what I do and did"). Furthermore, Celan eliminates the discursive "all alike," which links together "songs" and "praises," and instead introduces these two words by the same phrase: All dieses Singen hier, all dieses Preisen ("All this singing here, all this praising"). Celan's intention toward language is no less clear when, in the third quatrain, after the identical first part of the two introductory verses, he repeats a word each time in the second part and also makes the sentence structure hinge on this word, as in verse 5 (Gut ist mein Freund, ists heute und ists morgen): Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words. "Schön, gut und treu," das singe ich und singe. "Schön, gut und treu"—stets anders und stets das. In place of the word "argument," which itself suggests discursive, rational language, and its no less logical qualifier "all," Celan offers the stubborn repetition of his own action. By setting the words und singe after das singe ich (three words that completely disregard the content of the English phrase "is all my argument") he creates a repetition that does not simply say what is expressed in the original by the word "all"; moreover, by reducing das singe ich to singe through the omission of both subject and object, he hypostatizes, as it were, the poet's action. And this is an action that coincides with the poem instead of being its subject matter, as is the case in Shakespeare. Even more characteristic is the rendering Celan gives of the phrase "varying to other words": stets anders und stets das ("always different and always that"). Varying means "diversifying by change,"16 "restating in different words."17 The expression, a rhetorical term, assumes that word and meaning are different and hence distinguishable. It is for this reason alone that the same thing can be designated by different words; it is for this reason alone that it is possible to vary the words without departing from the intended meaning. Celan's intention toward language, by contrast, may be viewed as the determinate negation of this theoretical linguistic premise. What was a stylistic device in traditional rhetoric, and may well have been employed by writers unaware of the conditions that make its use possible, is here recognized by Celan to be a paradox and inserted into the verse as such: stets anders und stets das. The continuity is conveyed not merely by the word stets itself, but even more by its repetition, while the difference is expressed by the fact that anders ("other") is followed by das ("that," i.e., that same thing). The paradox itself is maintained in two ways. First, the contradiction between stets, on the one hand, and anders and das, on the other, remains unresolved. Second, and no less important, where one expects to find an answer to the possible question of "anders als was?" ("different from what?") there appears a forceful das, which, although introduced by the same word, stets, is incompatible with anders. Celan's translation of the next verse evinces the same rejection of the traditional conception of language, according to which different signifiers can correspond to the same signified. Indeed, we can sense a desire to abolish the distinction between signifier and signified altogether. In this verse, Shakespeare explicitly mentions that change (i.e., the replacement of one word by another, while the intended meaning remains the same) whose premise is precisely this traditional conception of language: And in this change is my invention spent. Celan refuses to concede that words may be interchangeable in this way, just as he successfully avoids using a word derived from the familiar rhetorical term inventio to designate the poet's activity and capacity. Designation is replaced by speaking: Ich find, erfind. In linguistic terms, this is one of the boldest passages in Celan's version, surpassed perhaps only by the immediately following one. For here the repetition of the verb, that is, of the word for the activity, does more than simply convey the activity's constancy (which was its sole function in the case of the expressions Gut ist mein Freund, ists heute und ists morgen and das singe ich und singe). Furthermore, to understand the phrase Ich find, erfind, it is not sufficient to read the expansion of "find" in the repetition {erfind) as a delayed translation of "invention"; nor should it be viewed as a substitute for the dimension of "change" that Celan refuses to mention explicitly or even to accept as a possible means of expressing variation. To be sure, it is also all that. All the same time, however, with the phrase Ich find, erfind Celan pierces the facade of linguistic performance, that is, of parole (speech), making it possible to glimpse the inner workings of the linguistic system, of langue (language). (He already did this, although in an incomparably less bold fashion, in verse 2: was ich da treib und trieb.) What is thereby revealed are parts of the conjugation paradigm, once with respect to tense (was ich da treib und trieb) and once with respect to person: ich find, erfind (= er find). Admittedly, this reading is not compelling in the first case (the change of tense, accompanied by lexical constancy, has its own function, as was seen above); it becomes so only when the first case is considered together with the second (Ich find, erfind). Our interpretation of the second case presupposes that, in this position, the prefix er carries the connotation of the personal pronoun er ("he"). That it actually does so will perhaps be doubted. We may therefore draw attention to two points. Firstly, in the sequence Ich find, erfind (as in verse 13:getrennt, geschieden), understanding, which is concerned above all with "distinctive features" will depart from the usual pronunciation (erfind) to stress the prefix er and this is what makes it possible to defend the second meaning (i.e., of er as a personal pronoun). Secondly, it will be recalled that there are passages in Celan's own poems in which paradigmatic fragments of langue obviously mingle with parole, as in the introductory poem of the collection entitled Die Niemandsrose: I dig, you dig, and the worm, it digs too, And that singing over there says: They dig. Ich grabe, du grabst, und es grabt auch der Wurm und das Singende dott sagt: Sie graben.18 The meaning of this questioning of parole through the introduction of nonactualized or only partially actualized faits bruts of langue—a technique that is a constitutive element of the most recent, so-called concrete poetry—becomes evident as soon as we recognize the motivation behind Celan's specific intention toward language, which emerges ever more clearly from the examples analyzed. With this end in view, let us analyze one last instance of varied repetition. At the beginning of the third quatrain Shakespeare states that he wishes to express the theme of "Fair, kind, and true," which is to be the sole theme of his writing, exclusively by means of varying words; he then continues: And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. Celan translates these lines as: Ich find, erfind—urn sie in eins zu bringen, sie cinzubringen ohne Unterlass. The passage sie in eins zu bringen, I sie einzubringen is probably the one in which Celan's method of translating lies most open to criticism, the one in which it takes the most liberties. Here, more easily than anywhere else in his German version of Shakespeare's sonnet, we can perceive the specific intention toward language underlying this translation from beginning to end. Celan, as we have seen, does not allow the poet to speak of his own inventive gifts; similarly, he forbids the poet to mention the scope of his poetry writing or to call it "wondrous." These words are replaced by two half-verses: um sie in eins zu bringen and sie einzubringen. Each has its specific content, which can be expressed by other words. The first, the "bringing-into-one" (which translates Three themes in one), should be understood as the union of "Schön,gut und treu"— as the poetic mimesis of that union embodied in the friend. The "Three themes" are "One thing" (v. 8). Celan, to be sure, mentions only the unity, the uniting, and not the threefold nature of the manifest reality which, in Shakespeare, is taken for granted. And his sie ("they") refers to the group "Schön,gut und treu," which (in contrast to the practice of many critical editions) also appears each time in inverted commas in the English text printed along with Celan's version,19 with the result that this group is presented as a quotation, that is, as a verbal entity, not as something real. Thus the grouping of the virtues, which, in Shakespeare, serves, in however fictive and fictionalized a manner, as the point of departure of the poet's activity, disappears in Celan's text in two respects: it loses both its threefold nature and its existence as something real. The second half-verse sie einzubringen ("to bring them in," i.e., to harvest them) cannot be understood as a translation of a specific passage of the original. Once again, what is meant is the act of poetic composition. As metaphor, it would have to be linked with the imagery of a harvest or vintage. If one assumes that the term corresponding to the implicit "whither" of the "bringing in" or harvesting is the poem itself, then the resolution of the metaphor may be seen in the "putting in practice" [i.e., of something in a work of art = Ins Werk Setzen]. But such an analytic reading, dependent on "retranslation," is overwhelmed by the wave arising from the paronomasia of sie in tins zu bringen I sie einzubringen ("to bring them into one / to bring them in"). Unlike the case of the rhyming pair in the final couplet (schieden I schmieden), here the paronomasia is not confined to a portion of a word but encompasses an entire syntagma. The sequence sie in eins zu bringen, I sie einzubringen also differs from the other paronomasia by the fact that it does not stand in the end-rhyme position; the concordance of sounds is therefore not borne by any schema, but strikes the reader unprepared. These differences, however, constitute merely the preconditions for the really decisive difference; and it is the latter that allows us to grasp the specific character of the passage and thereby the particular motivation of Celan's intention toward language, a motivation that is manifest throughout his translation. By rhyming zusammenschmieden with geschieden, Celan brings together two signifiers which not only are different but which have opposite signifieds ("separate" / "join"). He expresses the opposition perhaps even more forcefully through the phonological near-identity, the paronomasia, than through the semantic opposition e contrario. In this way he subverts the normative conception of the correspondence, in every case, of the signifieds to the signifiers, the latter of which are assumed to mirror the diversity of the former. (Polysemy is equally the scandal of semiotics, as it is the fundamental fact of poetics.) Now, in contrast to the paronomasia of the final rhyme, the paronomasia of the two syntagmata sie in eins zu bringen and sie einzubringen is determined not simply by the partial difference between the signifiers eins ("one") and ein (=hinein, "in"), but also through the identity of the signifieds, insofar as Saussure's distinction is at all meaningful and appropriate in the context of Celan's use of language, which seems to be the same one that has been distinctive of modern poetry since Mallarmé.20 Ineinsbringen ("bringing into one," i.e., uniting) and Einbringen ("bringing in") do not normally mean the same thing, any more than do "joining" and "putting in practice"; yet, for Celan, to put in practice in a work of art is to unite. The paronomasia of the passage under discussion shows this, and the same is suggested by a reading of the German version of the sonnet as a whole. Here we can plainly see Celan's intention toward language and the poetics of his translation. Its program is formulated in that line which renders Shakespeare's verse Therefore my verse to constancy confined by In der Beständigkeit, da bleibt mein Vers geborgen. Constancy, the theme of Shakespeare's sonnet, becomes for Celan the medium in which his verse dwells and which impedes the flow of his verse,21 imposing constancy upon it. Constancy becomes the constituent element of his verse, in contrast to Shakespeare's original, in which constancy is sung about and described by means of a variety of expressions. Celan's intention toward language, in his version of Shakespeare's sonnet 105, is a realization of constancy in verse.22 We have already seen numerous examples of recurrence of the same elements and of creation of similarities that resist the changes wrought by the lapse of time, but the catalogue is not yet complete. Constancy is also conveyed on other linguistic levels than those considered so far. For example, Celan refrains from using enjamb-ment in his translation, whereas he does employ it in his own poetry and also in others of his translations of Shakespeare's sonnets (as does Shakespeare himself). Where this device appears in the original text: Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. verse: Celan inserts a colon in order to mark the limits of the All dieses Singen hier, all dieses Preisen: von ihm, an inn und immer ihm zulieb. In another instance he replaces a comma (or perhaps a dash)23 by a period, and thereby turns the anaphorically linked verses 9 and 10 into two that are merely juxtaposed: Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words, "Schön, gut und treu," das singe ich und singe. "Schön, gut und treu"—stets anders und stets das. Whereas in the original text this pair of verses ends with a comma, Celan interrupts this strophe with a period, as he already did in the first and second strophes and will do in the couplet as well. (None of Shakespeare's three quatrains consists of more than a single sentence.) It is only in those verses which follow the ones just quoted, and which form the most precarious passage of the entire translation, that one could speak of enjambment. This is with the appearance of the paronomastic sequence um sie in eins zu bringen, / sie einzubringen, which does not stop at the end of the verse, although, admittedly, the effect of the enjambment is essentially canceled due to internal repetition. The syntactic constancy, that is, the regular recurrence of the verses as individual sentences, goes still further: it represents a deviation from the original, indeed a determinate negation of the lat-ter's way of shaping language. The syntactic subordination, the hy-potaxis, of the original poem disappears, and along with it, the argumentative and logical style. At the turning points of the quatrains and the couplet, Shakespeare places either causal conjunctions (or adverbs): v. 3 Since all alike my songs and praises be v. 7 Therefore my verse to constancy confined; or the conjunction "and" used consecutively: v. 11 And in this change is my invention spent; or a relative pronoun: v. 14 Which three till now, never kept seat in one. Celan eliminates these connective words. His sentences are not constructed either to refer to each other or to be subordinate to one another. Celan's translation is profoundly marked by the principle of parataxis, in the literal sense as well as in a broader sense similar to the one Adorno introduced in connection with Holder-lin's later poetry.24 Furthermore, Celan reduces the sharpness of the division of the fourteen lines into three quatrains and a couplet, even though he does set off the quatrains typographically from each other (in accord with the Petrarchan sonnet form) as well as preserve the rhyme scheme.25 For, in contrast to Shakespeare's pro-cedure, Celan divides every quatrain into two in the middle, either by the sentence structure or by the punctuation. Consequently, in spite of the rhyme scheme, Celan's quatrains approximate a series of couplets, whereas his couplet is assimilated to the quatrain?-. through syntactic division into two equal parts. In the original we find dissimilar units (three quatrains and a couplet), and these, by virtue of the way the sentence-units are interrelated (causal connec-tion between the halves of strophes I and II and consecutive con-nection in strophe III) are hypotactically structured (even if, in the strict sense, there are no subordinate clauses in II and III); as a result they in turn imply inequality. In Celan's translation, on the other hand, the verses are simply set out one after the other; each is a unit, which, if it is not autonomous, is nevertheless much less heteronomous than the corresponding verse of the original. Just as, on the semantic and phonological levels, Celan's language tends to reduce change, difference, and variety to a minimum, so, too, does it strive for syntactic constance—in this translation more than in any other. Celan's intention toward language, as revealed by a study of his German version of Shakespeare's sonnet 105, ought not be prematurely generalized. Our investigation dealt with but one sonnet. Nevertheless, the realization of constancy in verse, which is the major finding of our analysis, is not merely a feature peculiar to this one translation. Indeed, it accords with Roman Jakobson's definition of the function of poetic language: "The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination. Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence."26 Jakobson's definition is not a de scription of a poem, but a statement of the principle governing the poetic use of language in the strict sense of the term. This principle Can never be fully realized on the linguistic level, if the poem is not to be tautological, in other words, if it is to say anything at all. \| Celan's translation of Shakespeare's sonnet 105 approaches more closely than any previous poem to the limiting value of a thoroughgoing realization of the principle of the equivalence in the syntag-matic sequence (if one leaves "concrete poetry" aside). This is so not because Celan's poem—and his translation is a poem—is more "poetic" than other poems by him or by others (to conclude this would be to misunderstand Jakobson), but because constancy is the theme of his poem, his translation. Of course, it is also the theme of Shakespeare's sonnet, to which, however, the preceding remarks in no way apply. This point brings us back one final time to the difference between the original and the translation, in other words, to the difference between Shakespeare's and Celan's respective intentions toward language. "Constancy" can be called the theme of Shakespeare's sonnet, insofar as it actually deals with that virtue. Shakespeare asserts and praises the constancy of his "fair friend," and he describes his own writing, whose subject matter is to be exclusively his friend's constancy and the poet's celebration of it. Constancy is, at the same time, conceived of as the means by which this virtue is to be celebrated: Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. But it is as a virtue of the poet's composition that "constancy" figures as the subject matter of the poem. Only in the anaphorical (and thus rhetorically consecrated) repetition of "Fair, kind, and true" does constancy enter the poem's very language. In Celan's version we find something very different. Consistent with his overall approach, Celan leaves untranslated those passages in which Shakespeare describes his own poem, his own style, and the goal of his writing: or else he translates them so "freely" that they no longer seem to deal with these topics: Since all alike my songs and praises be All dieses Singen hier, all dieses Preisen: Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. In der Beständigkeit, da bleibt mein Vers geborgen, Spricht von dem Einen, schweift mir nicht umher. Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words, And in this change is my invention spent Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. "Schön, gut und rreu", das singe ich und singe. "Schön, gut und treu"—stets anders und stets das. Ich find, erfind—urn sie in eins zu bringen, ■ sic einzubringen ohnc Unterlass. In Celan's version the poet does not speak of his "argument," his "invention," or his "scope," but instead the verse is arranged in accordance with the exigencies of this theme and of this objective aim. Nor does the poet affirm that this verse leaves out difference; rather he speaks in a language in which differences are simply left out. Celan, writing in the wake of the later Mallarmé and an attentive observer of modern linguistics, philosophy of language, and aesthetics drew the logical consequence from the symbolist conception of poetry, in which a poem is its own subject matter and both invokes and describes itself as a symbol. According to Jakobson there exists a certain kind of constancy which is projected from the paradigmatic axis (of which it is constitutive) into the syntagmatic axis and which distinguishes the poetic sequence from the prosaic in this latter axis. If we accept Jakobson's views, then we may say that in translating a poem whose subject matter is that very constancy, Celan, perhaps without knowing of Jakobson's theorem, replaced the traditional symbolist poem—which deals only with itself and which has itself as its subject matter—with a poem which does not deal with itself but which is itself! He thus produced a poem which no longer speaks about itself but whose language is sheltered in that very place that it assigns to its subject matter, which is none other than itself: it is sheltered "in constancy."27 27. The present essay is concerned with Celan's intention toward language. It should be completed by an analysis of his way of fashioning language. Such an analysis would have to devote particular attention to the expressive value and tone of turns of phrase like "den ich da lieb," "was ich da treib," and "all dieses Singen." It would show that with these linguistic means Celan expresses not only the contemplative distance of the melancholic to himself and to the object of his love—and the "I" who speaks in Shakespeare's sonnets may rightly be termed a melancholic; he also expresses the distance between himself and the subjective dimension as such, from which Celan turns away in favor of the objectivity of the poem, which is concerned only with itself. This objectivity is established by a language which, like the one examined here, no longer serves the function of representation. Yet, in the final verse (In Einem will ich drei zusammenschmieden) intense light falls on the "I" that sets itself this task, in opposition not only to the "I" standing behind the veil of melancholy, an "I" that lives there (da), but also to the programmatic objectivity of the poem.
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