{"id":3540,"date":"2025-06-16T15:25:29","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T15:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=3540"},"modified":"2025-06-16T15:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T15:25:29","slug":"celans-prophetic-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=3540","title":{"rendered":"Celan’s Prophetic Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My immersion into Paul Celan\u2019s poems hasn\u2019t been depressing; instead I\u2019ve been following, with keen attention over the past weeks, a mind which has been where we are treading.  Celan spoke of poems as being prophetic, that they \u201ccast their shadow ahead of themselves: one must live after them.  Life itself must pass through the poem.\u201d  Yes indeed!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I follow mindfully through his halting struggle to wrest language out of its abuse and false clarity.\u00a0\u00a0And darkness, I can\u2019t help but feel the power of \u201cliving, creative darkness,\u201d a human darkness which also seethes in poems.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m thinking of Celan\u2019s \u201cFrom Darkness to Darkness.\u201d Never would you find a deus ex machina, a miraculous light bursting into a scene in Celan.\u00a0\u00a0Instead a subtle light appears, throws shade ahead of the poet, onto a beloved, onto an empty field.\u00a0\u00a0There is trembling possibility \u2013 a breakthrough of recognition, across borders, time and self.\u00a0\u00a0(I\u2019m drawing on a brilliant introduction by Susan Gillespie, who translated Corona, <\/strong>Selected Poems.)\u00a0 Through the obscurity, the poem carries forward, having been sparked with the light and coursing energy of human exchange.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt it when reading together with a group of smart folks who were listening as if a trumpet was sounding.\u00a0\u00a0And at the protest where a shared consciousness was erupting in the gray rain.\u00a0\u00a0It is a kind of faith, hope against hope in a dim world.\u00a0\u00a0A shared consciousness to observe the present and the unknowingness of the future.\u00a0\u00a0Rock on, Celan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My immersion into Paul Celan\u2019s poems hasn\u2019t been depressing; instead I\u2019ve been following, with keen attention over the past weeks, a mind which has been where we are treading.  Celan spoke of poems as being prophetic, that they \u201ccast their shadow … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1633,1634,1133,1631,1635,326,1632],"class_list":["post-3540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adorno","tag-barbaric-after-auschwitz","tag-celan","tag-german-poetry","tag-love-poems","tag-paul-celan","tag-post-war-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-V6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3542,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions\/3542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}