Meridian Zero

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Notes

1. “Tatsächlich. Nichts. Nicht das geringste. Ich agiere im Leeren” (Celan, Mikrolithen 111).

2. Heidegger later added an afterword (1943) and an introduction (1949) to What is Metaphysics? The first German edition of On the Question of Being is Über “Die Linie,” the second edition is titled Zur Seinsfrage.

3. Albeit his major influence, Heidegger, was not the only inspiration to Celan's poetics of nothing. Another significant source for Celan's views of nothingness was Jewish mysticism, especially esoteric kabbalah (see Schulz 107; Felstiner 181–83). Celan's and Heidegger's sources may not be strictly distinct here: Johanna Junk (Junk) and Marlène Zarader (Zarader) have claimed that Heidegger drew many central ideas from the Jewish tradition, a source he never referred to in his texts.

4. “Wie steht es um das Nichts?” (Heidegger, Was ist? 29; see Felstiner 181).

5. Excluding the not yet completely published Nachlass. Poems naming nothing are: “Psalm,” “Aber, Mattiere de Bretagne,” “Engführung,” “Soviel Gestirne,” “Mandorla,” “Radix, Matrix,” “Einem, der vor der Tür stand,” “Eingewohnt-Entwohnt,” “Die Liebe,” “Erblindete,” “Die Sämlinge,” “Wirk nicht voraus,” “Merkblätter-Schmerz,” “Das Nichts,” “Gehässige Monde,” and “Von der sinkenden Walstirn.”

6. “DAS NICHTS, um unsrer / Namen willen / –sie sammeln uns ein –, / siegelt,” (translated by John Felstiner in Celan, Selected 371).

7. Michael Hamburger misses this pun in an otherwise definitive translation, where he derives from the verb meinen and ends up translating “pseudo- / poem, the noem” (Celan, Poems 215).

8. “Ich spreche ja von dem Gedicht, das es nicht gibt! Das absolute Gedicht – nein, das gibt es gewiss nicht, das kann es nicht geben! ” (GW III: 199; translated by Rosmarie Waldrop in Celan, Collected 51).

9. “Also / stehen noch Tempel. Ein / Stern / hat wohl noch Licht. / Nichts, / nichts ist verloren” (translated by Michael Hamburger in Celan, Poems 125; original in GW I: 195).

10. “Niemand knetet uns wieder aus Erde und Lehm, / niemand bespricht unseren Staub. / Niemand. // Gelobt seist du, Niemand” (GW I: 225).

11. See also Räsänen's thorough reading of the verb durchgründet in Celan and Heidegger (Räsänen 157–59)

12. Translated by Michael Hamburger in Celan, Poems 303.

13. Translated by Michael Hamburger in Celan, Poems 153.

14. “Metallwuchs, Seelenwuchs, Nichtswuchs” (Celan, Die Gedichte 325).

15. “Das Nichts selbst nichtet” (Heidegger, Was ist? 37).

16. In fact nichten also appears in the third person in the poem “Ein Wurfholz,” in Die Niemandsrose: “Lapilli, ver- / zwergt, verwinzigt, ver- / nichtet,”. Unfortunately, the poem is much too lengthy to discuss here in the manner it deserves.

17. Translated by Michael Hamburger in Celan, Poems 255.

18. The critical Tübinger edition reveals that Celan corrected “Him” to “him” and “He” to “he” just before going to press (Celan, Atemwende 187). Thus he hesitated about pointing directly at the godhead and the theme of creation.

19. Cf. Old English “aught” as “anything.”

20. Ichten may also refer to Franz Rosenzweig's concept “Icht,” which opposes his concept of nothing (see Samuelson 26). Celan owned and read Rosenzweig's book (Celan, La Bibliothèque 513, 766). Yet another source is Democrites’ concepts of nothingness and something, to which Celan referred as ichten (ibid. 19).

21. The famous lines of the Patmos hymn that Heidegger quotes again and again in his later works read: “Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch.”

22. Translated by Michael Hamburger in Celan, Poems 217.

23. Here Heidegger invents a neologism: “Seitdem haben wir Vieles einander zugeschwiegen.”

24. “und zuweilen wenn / nur das Nichts zwischen uns stand, fanden / wir ganz zueinander” (GW I: 217).

25. This passage is almost inaccessible to the translator as the original reads: “Gleichsinnige du, heidegängerisch Nahe: //” (GW II: 356).