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macaronic: a genre of polylingual verse

that arose throughout Europe in the

late Middle Ages that was continued

in the German tradition by writers

such as Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball.

Gernot Wei notes that in such poetry

a hierarchy of perceptions does not

exist; even the competing languages

are of same value; in other words,

the macaronic poem makes equal

what we might think are disparate

languages, with their own political,

social, and cultural valences.6Wei

describes this squaring, with reference

to the polyglot poetry of Hugo Ball,

as transcendental; his approach to

language is mystical.7And, literally, it

is mysticism and the mystical utterance

that unites the languages of DU SEI

WIE DU: the quotation of Isaiah 60:1;

of both Eckharts text and kumi ori; the

speech, silence, and mud swallowing;

the ambiguity of the I-you relation; and

the alterity of the languages themselves

gesture toward an interpretation of the

poem in terms of its mystical elements.

There exists a variety of

religious, and therefore also mystical,

experiences, but the denition ofmysticism oered by Ninian Smart,

inuential twentieth-century Scottish

religious philosopher, is use

mysticism is an interior or in

quest, culminating in certain

experiences which are not d

in terms of sense-experience

images.8For Eckhart, this e

concludes with the seeker in

with God. However, there ar

fundamental problems atten

any attempt to express such

experience. In A Philosophi

of Mystical Utterances, Rich

Jones denes the problem o

mystical insight:9

One moves away from

normal cognitive situat

of a subject knowing

mental or physical obj

set o from the subject

some sense. More exa

the result is a state of

consciousness without

object of consciousnes

other words, such a sta

totally other than that w

constitutes normal sen

conceptual activity.

The diculty, then, is t

description of mystical expeis inscribed in a languagea

languagethat operates wit

Gedichten Celans hat viele angezogen,

that many have been attracted to the

diculty and darkness of his poems.

Yet, such a general statement about

its diculty oers little explanation of

the poets use of Old High German

in this particular work.4However, that

Celan lifts directly from the sermon

of a medieval mystic suggests an

interpretation of DU SEI WIE DU that

is otherwise ignored; mysticism, in this

poem, serves as an ordering principle,

and constitutes both what and how the

poem signies. Futhermore, Celans

incorporation of Eckhart illuminates his

particular perception of history.

DU SEI WIE DUwas rst

published in Lichtzwang, a collection of

poems prepared by Celan but published

posthumously in 1970. Celan composed

the poem for a friend while on his rst

journey to Israel in 1969. He learned

Middle High German, however, much

earlier, after returning from a forced

labor camp early in 1944to a home,

as Felstiner notes, under Romanian

police supervision, suspended between

Nazi and Soviet occupation.5As a

German Jew, both of whose parentshad been executed in concentration

camps, Celans endeavor to write in

the German language, and his success

in resuscitating it from the idiom of its

Nazi tormentors, is well documented by

Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthes, Gadamer,

and other major theorists of recent

decades. In DU SEI WIE DU, we

experience clearly the gure of Celan as

a poet writing in the German language,

as a Jew, and, moreover, as someone

interested in Germanys past. If only

by including Modern German, Middle

High German, and Hebrew, Celan

positions the poem within a specic

historical contextthat which prompted

Adorno to write, Nach Auschwitz, ein

Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch.

For this reason, this poem directly

addresses how it is that a German Jew

might create after Auschwitz, while

historicizing this assertion.

To write this post-Shoah poem,

Celan quotes from the ancient, sacred

language of Hebrew, and the vernacular

language of Middle High German,

unread outside circles of scholarship.

In quoting these words they become

his ownindeed they areand in

so doing Celan makes relevant and

contemporary both of these languagesof alterity. In its variation of language,

the poem is much like a medieval


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realm of normal sense experience.

Language requires the separation of

subject and object in order to make

distinctionsalways agreed upon by

the community of speakersand for

this reason is antithetical to the parleur

of the introvertive quest for interior

experience or, for Eckhart, union

with God. Grammatical relationships

determine the relationships of their

referents, and since language

by its very nature bifurcates into

categories, and since the mystical is

undierentiated. . . language cannot

apply to it, as Jones writes.10The

diculty, then, is that the description of

mystical experience must be expressed

in language, and languages operate

within the realm of normal sense

experience.

The obvious solution to

the fundamental impossibility of

communicating mystical experience

is complete silence. Yet, as Eckhart

writes, if anyone has understood this

sermon, I wish him well! If no one had

come to listen, I should have had to

preach it to the oering box.11The

impulse against silence, the urgencyof communicating the experience,

is such that one must speak. Jones

looks at two methods employed by

mystics to overcome the limitations of

communicating experience: negation

and paradox. Negation is that for

which Eckhart is most famous: his

negative theology posits that man can

only know what God is not. In saying,

as Eckhart does, that God is neither

this, nor that, or that we should love

God as he is, a not-God, a not-Ghost,

apersonal, formless, all attributes

of God are stripped away, leaving a

positive, real remainder. The risk in

dening negatively, though, is that

even describing experience as what it

is not leads to a conceptualization of

objects as separated, and the subjects

relation to these as the same. Paradox,

the second strategy Jones describes,

is the use of what is contradictoryfor

example, Eckharts line no man can

see God except he be blind, nor know

him except through ignorance, nor

understand him except through folly.12

Mystical experiences, Jones writes,

like all experiences, are themselves

nonrationalonly claims about the

mystical experience can be consistentor inconsistent with each other or with

other claims.13The mystical experience

is hermetic: each experience denes

its own coherence; the use of paradox

in mystical tracts points to ontological

referents outside ordinary language for

which the terms of the paradox may

in fact be knowable, just in another

sense. The use of such paradoxical and

negated language is to gesture toward

the mystical experience, rather than

directly describe it. These are symbolic

uses of language that ultimately give

meaning to mystical experience by the

use of language that is foreign to it. If

this strategy for mystical experience will

not lead all there, the possibility for the

hearer to understand at least exists.

The passage that Celan quotes

from Eckhart in DU SEI WIE DU

is from his sermon on Isaiah 60:1,

Surge, illuminare, Jerusalem.14An

exegetical description of the biblical

line, the sermon describes the path to

habitual union with God. In enjoining

Jerusalem to be lifted and enlightened,

in enjoining the city, the community

to rise up, Eckhart gives what is

nonetheless an interpretation of this

passage in terms of the individual byredening Jerusalem as the pinnacle

of union with God: Jerusale

a height.15He explains: If y

yourself, God comes down f

and comes into youa God

brought down, not complete

within, that we may be raised

This is a description of myst

with God that, if not ecstatic

singularyou humble, com

you. It is this individual expe

that aects the collective (th

be raised up). Jerusalem he

abstractionthe height to w

soul may be raised in union

For Eckhart, a medieval Chr

city is associated with the ho

as the distant origin of Chris

Celan and countless other J

generation, Jerusalem had b

once again a location in real

one with which Celan, in par

identied.17Where Eckhart s

imagined, allegorical Jerusa

Celan speaks of a specic, k

locationthe one from whic

Du Sei Wie Du.

In quoting Eckharts se

Isaiah 60:1, Celan does not

Eckharts description of the of mystical experience, but r


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because of the inclusion of I later, the

speaker in soliloquy. To insist upon a

separation in the way that the title line

doesYOU BE LIKE YOU, alwaysis

to reveal how close this you is to the

speakerso close that to arm the

separation language needs to be used.

Yet, the ambiguity of the pronouns

referred to undermines the call for

eternal separation and individuation.

Unresolved, the separation recounted

in the following lines culminates in a

bond knotted new, and so does not

establish any clear relation between

distinct objects either. Thus, while not

writing who the speaker or addressee

are (or are not), Celan frustrates the

conceptualization of each as separated

objects, and thus avoids the risk that

attends negation as a descriptive

strategy. Likewise, the paradox of

insisting upon a you in static partition,

while referring to the same you with

bond woven new, is resolved in the

coherence, the hermetic nature of

interpretation that the poem demands.

Also characteristic of mystical

experience, Celan circumscribes

no temporal or physical locationbesides the height of the tower. The

undierentiated communicat

which Celan strives is that w

would make Middle German

German, and Hebrew conte

The poem includes present

as well as past and present

tenses, but it is as impossibl

locate the temporal relation o

pasts to the command prese

to determine the identity of a

pronouns. Whether the mea

the tense in Eckharts Middle

Germaninde wirt / erluch

becum / yllumynedis pres

future is ambiguous, and, be

is a quotation of a dead lang

question remains whether w

interpret these lines as a rem

from past.18The poem consi

sentencesthe two that follo

in separate languages are in

line by line, and all end in k

While weaving the syntax of

languages, Celan equivocat

grammatical impact, as well

temporal aspect: both are m

present due to the repetition

ori, arise, / shine. At the sa

the macaronic quality of this lacing three languages, diu

the preachers guidance of the parish

to such experiencethe imperative

for such experience. In choosing

so, Celan does not merely adopt

and endorse Eckharts theology,

but revises it within the metaphysic

of his own poem. By scribing the

imperatives ryse up, rowse thyself,

and becum / yllumyned, he does

not himself just insist on illumination

so much as express his desire for

that heightJerusalemthat Eckhart

argues individually may be achieved

by all. Desire, because the possibility

of reaching this height, for Celan, is

not assumed. Celans incorporation of

Eckharts imperatives demonstrates

that a desire for that height is a

desire for the metaphysical speech

that denes it. Speech, ultimately, is

the last referent for arise, / shine:

Schlammbrocken schluckt ich, im

Turm, / Sprache, Finster-Lisene.

Commonplace speech, that grim, dark

pilaster, in lineation looks like a cli after

which one scans to kumi, meaning

to arise. This is what, as a German

Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor,

Celan must transcend. To ingest theearth of the everyday, to do so as

close as possible to the sky, high in the

tower, is the extent of his despair and

humility to achieve the unionthough

not necessarily with Godthat leads to

undierentiated communication.

DU SEI WIE DU, characteristic

of mystic utterance, is dened by what

it does not deneby its possible

negatives. This is no more conspicuous

than in the relation of the speaker to

the you addressed in the poem. The

echo to Bubers Ich und Duin the title

line is obvious; however, the you

or one is never named, and it is

unclear whether those in the rst line

are identical. Hebrew verbs contain

gender markers, but this information is

lost in Eckharts translation of Isaiah.

Grammatically, Jerusalem would seem

a likely referent for the you of the rst

line, yet the alterity of the quotation from

Middle German suggests otherwise,

as does the reference to wer in line

four. In this line (And he who slashed

the bond to you there), it is unclear

who he or you are, and that the

thought continues weaved it new, in the

memory / pieces of mud I swallowed

suggests that you could be either God(in line with Buber), the addressee, or,


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ENDNOTES

1 This is John Felstiners translation.

Felstiner translates Eckhart using the

English of John Wyclies 1382 Bible

from the Vulgate for the passage from

Isaiah.

2 Pggeler, Otto. Mystical Elements

in Heideggers Thought and CelansPoetry. Word Traces: Readings of Paul

Celan.Ed. Aris Fioretos (Baltimore: The

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994),

75109.

3 Felstiner, John. Translating Paul

Celans Du Sei Wie Du. Prooftexts.3

(1983): 91108.

4 Weber, like Felstiner, ultimately

argues that Celan identied himself

with the fate of Israel. Weber, Werner.

Du Sei Wie Du: Zum Tode VOU Paul

Celan. Die Zeit. (1970): 17. .


Celans Du Sei Wie Du. Prooftexts. 3

(1983): 97.

6 Wei, Gernot. The Foreign and

the Own: Polylingual Literature and the

Problem of Identity. Transforming the

Center, Eroding the Margins: Essayson Ethnic and Cultural Boundaries in

German-Speaking Countries.

Lorenz, Dagmar C. G. and Po

Renate S. (Columbia, S.C.: C

House, 1998), 260.

7 Ibid, 264.

8 Smart, Ninian. Interpreta

Mystical Experience, Religiou

(1965): 75.9 Jones, Richard Hubert. A

Philosophical Analysis of Mys

Utterances.Philosophy East

29.3 (1979): 255.

10 Ibid, 259.

11 Ibid, 266.

12 Ibid, 265.

13 Ibid, 265.

14 Clark, James N. Meiste

An Introduction to the Study o

with an Anthology of His Serm

(Edinburgh: Nelson, 1957), 24

15 Ibid, 247.

16 Ibid, 247-8.

17 Weber, like Felstiner, ul

argues that Celan identied h

the fate of Israel. Weber, Wer

Wie Du: Zum Tode VOU Pau

Die Zeit(1970): 17.


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translated as present passive, and not

future tense. The translation above

does not translate as future.


Celans Du Sei Wie Du. Prooftexts. 3

(1983): 97.

20 Weber, Werner. Du Sei Wie Du:

Zum Tode VOU Paul Celan. Die Zeit.(1970): 17. .

21 Deathbringing, as a single word,

is Felstiners innovation. Celan, Paul.

Der Meridian: Rede anlsslich der

Verleihung des Georg-Bchner-Preises

(1961). Selected Poems and Prose of

Paul Celan.Trans. John Felstiner. (New

York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001),

401413.

Ang Ca Limbs by Cara Jud

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