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Keeping Faith: Michael Hamburger's Translations of Paul Celan's Poetry
10.3726/82039_63 Keeping Faith: Michael Hamburger’s translations of Paul Celan’s poetry Von Charlotte Ryland, Oxford In a copy of his volume Die Niemandsrose (1963) given by Paul Celan to his English translator Michael Hamburger, Celan inscribed the words ‘ganz und gar nicht hermetisch’. As Hamburger explains in his edition of Celan transla- tions, this negation of hermeticism would seem to relate to Celan’s conviction, held until his death, that Hamburger had been the anonymous author of a review of Atemwende (1967) in the Times Literary Supplement, in which that poetry had been described as ‘hermetic’.1 This misunderstanding, which caused a schism between Celan and Hamburger that was never fully healed during Celan’s lifetime, has two implications for a consideration of Hamburger’s engagement with Celan’s poetry. On the one hand, according to Hamburger, it put a stop to any fruitful discussions about Celan’s poetry that Hamburger and Celan might have had during those final years of Celan’s life; discussions which might, writes Hamburger, have given him ‘pointers’ as to the ‘primary sense’ of some of the poem’s more obscure terms and allusions.2 On the other hand, it casts a certain light over all of Hamburger’s translations of Celan’s poems: imputing to them an urge to give the lie to that term ‘hermetic’, by rendering Celan’s poems accessible. Hamburger’s translations are therefore not Nachdichtungen, ‘free adaptations’ that lift off from the original poem’s ground; yet neither do they remain so close to the original text as to become attempts at wholly literal renderings, providing notes and glosses where the ‘primary sense’ of an image or term is elusive.3 Rather, Hamburger realised that to write after Celan meant to retain the same relationship between the reader and the text; and therefore to reproduce the complexity and ambiguity that is constitutive of Celan’s verses. -
The Sun of Words
The Sun of Words Excerpts from Aber ich lebe nur von den Zwischenräumen, an interview between Herbert Gamper and Peter Handke Wednesday April 9th to Saturday April 12th, 1986 On the morning of April 9th, 1986, it was an unusually warm day with the föhn wind blowing, and I met Peter Handke in front of the house where he was living on the Mönchsberg. He first lead me up to the tower, from where one can see down to the southern parts of Salzburg, over the plains and towards the mountains (the Untersberg and the Staufen). I asked him about the Morzger forest, whose southern extremities were visible, and about the nearby area where Loser, the protagonist of Across, lived. He asked whether these settings interested me, and this was what determined the first question I asked after we had gone down to sit at the small table by the well, in the tree-shadows, and I had taken the final, inevitable step, so that the game could begin, and switched on the tape recorder. We regretted that the singing of the chaffinches and the titmice would not be transcribed to paper; again and again it seemed to me ridiculous to pose a question in the middle of this concert. I told of a visit with Thomas Bernhard, many years ago, when, without my asking, he showed me the offices of the lawyer Moro (from the story Ungenach) in Gmunden, as well as the fallen trees infested with bark beetles at the edge of his land that had been reimagined as the General’s forest from the play Die Jagdgesellschaft. -
Tracing the Journey of Paul Celan's Poetry
Esther Cameron. Western Art and Jewish Presence in the Work of Paul Celan: Roots and Ramifications of the "Meridian" Speech. Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014. xv + 307 pp. $100.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-7391-8412-7. Reviewed by Jana Vytrhlik Published on H-Judaic (April, 2016) Commissioned by Matthew A. Kraus (University of Cincinnati) The standing of Paul Celan (1920-70) as one of Cameron has devoted her life to a study of Celan. the most significant and controversial German- The results of this compelling journey are at the language poets of the twentieth century has been core of the reviewed book. steadily rolling over into the new millennium. The As an introduction, Cameron opens the book enduring interest in his work and life among both with “The Landscape of Reading,” which sketches readers and academics generates a continuing Celan’s life. The surname Celan was a pseudonym stream of research, publishing, and online pres‐ of Paul Antschel, who, it becomes clear, was not ence. It is as if each new generation is compelled native to any of the traditional German cultural to discover “their own” Celan and to deconstruct centers, like Berlin, Vienna, or Bern. Instead, he and reinterpret what has been said before. There was born and grew up in Bukovina, more than a is a myriad of classics on Celan’s life, psyche, poet‐ thousand kilometers east, to a German-speaking ry, and letters. In the span of the last ffty years, Jewish family. Sharing a border in the north with standing out amongst them are critical works by East Galicia, the area was known for its pre-1938 authors, translators, and editors such as Michael thriving Hasidic community. -
Staging Memory: the Drama Inside the Language of Elfriede Jelinek
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature Volume 31 Issue 1 Austrian Literature: Gender, History, and Article 13 Memory 1-1-2007 Staging Memory: The Drama Inside the Language of Elfriede Jelinek Gita Honegger Arizona State University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, and the German Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Honegger, Gita (2007) "Staging Memory: The Drama Inside the Language of Elfriede Jelinek," Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: Vol. 31: Iss. 1, Article 13. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1653 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Staging Memory: The Drama Inside the Language of Elfriede Jelinek Abstract This essay focuses on Jelinek's problematic relationship to her native Austria, as it is reflected in some of her most recent plays: Ein Sportstück (A Piece About Sports), In den Alpen (In the Alps) and Das Werk (The Plant). Taking her acceptance speech for the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature as a starting point, my essay explores Jelinek's unique approach to her native language, which carries both the burden of historic guilt and the challenge of a distinguished, if tortured literary legacy. Furthermore, I examine the performative force of her language. Jelinek's "Dramas" do not unfold in action and dialogue, rather, they are embedded in the grammar itself. -
Literary History Places Elfriede Jelinek at the Head of a Generation Deemed
COMEDY, COLLUSION, AND EXCLUSION ELFRIEDE JELINEK AND FRANZ NOVOTNY’S DIE AUSGE- SPERRTEN Literary history places Elfriede Jelinek at the head of a generation deemed to have made the transition from ‘High Priests to Desecrators’,1 reigning as the ‘Nestbeschmutzer’ par excellence. Along with Peter Handke and Thomas Bernhard, she is considered to have introduced an element of dissent into Austrian public discourse, ‘stubbornly occupying a position of difference from within a largely homogeneous cultural sphere’.2 Dagmar Lorenz argues that this level of political engagement is a phenomenon specific to German- language writers and appears inconceivable to an Anglo-American audience. In a special issue of New German Critique on the socio-political role of Aus- trian authors, she notes that ‘their opinions are heard and taken seriously, and they take part in shaping public opinion and politics’.3 The writers’ sphere of influence far exceeds their (often limited) readership, and column inches dedicated to controversial Austrian intellectuals stretch beyond the confines of the ‘Feuilleton’.4 The very public oppositional role of authors such as Jelinek, Robert Me- nasse and Doron Rabinovici reached fever pitch in 1999/2000 following the establishment of the ‘schwarz-blaue Koalition’, which enabled Jörg Haider’s populist right-wing ‘Freedom Party’ (FPÖ) to form a government with the centre-right ÖVP. In the months following the election, large groups of pro- testers took to the streets of Vienna as part of the so-called ‘Thursday dem- onstrations’. Austrian intellectuals played a prominent role in these protests, standing visibly at the head of the demonstrations and giving expression to wider discontent in a series of public readings and speeches, including Jelinek’s ‘Haider-monologue’, Das Lebewohl, which was first performed out- side the Viennese Burgtheater on 22nd June 2000.5 The play’s emphasis on 1 Ricarda Schmidt and Moray McGowan (eds), From High Priests to Desecrators: Contempo- rary Austrian Writers (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993). -
Uyghur Dispossession, Culture Work and Terror Capitalism in a Chinese Global City Darren T. Byler a Dissertati
Spirit Breaking: Uyghur Dispossession, Culture Work and Terror Capitalism in a Chinese Global City Darren T. Byler A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2018 Reading Committee: Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Chair Ann Anagnost Stevan Harrell Danny Hoffman Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Anthropology ©Copyright 2018 Darren T. Byler University of Washington Abstract Spirit Breaking: Uyghur Dispossession, Culture Work and Terror Capitalism in a Chinese Global City Darren T. Byler Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies This study argues that Uyghurs, a Turkic-Muslim group in contemporary Northwest China, and the city of Ürümchi have become the object of what the study names “terror capitalism.” This argument is supported by evidence of both the way state-directed economic investment and security infrastructures (pass-book systems, webs of technological surveillance, urban cleansing processes and mass internment camps) have shaped self-representation among Uyghur migrants and Han settlers in the city. It analyzes these human engineering and urban planning projects and the way their effects are contested in new media, film, television, photography and literature. It finds that this form of capitalist production utilizes the discourse of terror to justify state investment in a wide array of policing and social engineering systems that employs millions of state security workers. The project also presents a theoretical model for understanding how Uyghurs use cultural production to both build and refuse the development of this new economic formation and accompanying forms of gendered, ethno-racial violence. -
Revising the World with Speech in Franz Kafka, Robert Walser and Thomas Bernhard
Monologue Overgrown: Revising the world with speech in Franz Kafka, Robert Walser and Thomas Bernhard by Paul Joseph Buchholz This thesis/dissertation document has been electronically approved by the following individuals: Schwarz,Anette (Chairperson) Gilgen,Peter (Minor Member) McBride,Patrizia C. (Minor Member) MONOLOGUE OVERGROWN: REVISING THE WORLD WITH SPEECH IN FRANZ KAFKA, ROBERT WALSER AND THOMAS BERNHARD A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Paul Joseph Buchholz August 2010 © 2010 Paul Joseph Buchholz MONOLOGUE OVERGROWN: REVISING THE WORLD WITH SPEECH IN FRANZ KAFKA, ROBERT WALSER AND THOMAS BERNHARD Paul Joseph Buchholz, Ph. D. Cornell University 2010 My dissertation focuses on unstable, chronically unpublished prose texts by three key 20th century prose writers, quasi-novelistic texts whose material instability indicates a deep discomfort with the establishment of narrative authority qua narrative violence. I argue that Franz Kafka, Robert Walser and Thomas Bernhard, radically refunctionalized the device of interpolated “character monologue,” turning characters' speech from a narrative function, into a site where a text can be rewritten from within. In the Bildungsroman tradition, extended oral interpolations serve as an engine for the expansion and exposition of the plotted work, deepening the epic narrative world and exhaustively presenting a perspective that will be incorporated into biographical trajectory. I locate an estrangement of this practice: moments when oral monologues of fictional interlocutors “overgrow,” becoming an interventionary force that doubles, disrupts and re-frames the narrative discourse out of which it first sprouted. In showing how the labor of ‘world-making’ is split and spread across different competing layers of these texts, my dissertation contributes to the study of the narrative phenomenon of metalepsis. -
Professor Marjorie Perloff the Vienna Paradox: a View from America
The American Corner Innsbruck, the Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde für Tirol und Vorarlberg cordially invite you to a talk by Professor Marjorie Perloff Stanford University, CA, U.S.A. The Vienna Paradox: A View from America Monday, July 6, 2015, 7pm Location: Israelitische Kultusgemeinde für Tirol und Vorarlberg Sillgasse 15, 6020 Innsbruck Marjorie Perloff will address the "paradox" of her transplantation to the United States from Vienna as a child and then will speak further about her new book Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire, whose focus is the brilliant writing of the interwar period in Vienna - from Freud and Wittgenstein to Karl Kraus, and especially those writers of the distant provinces of the empire, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, and Elias Canetti, culminating in Paul Celan, whom she calls "the last Habsburg Poet." Before her retirement, Marjorie Perloff was Sadie D. Patek Professor of Humanities at Stanford University. She has taught courses and writes on twentieth—and now twenty-first—century poetry and poetics, both Anglo-American and from a comparatist perspective, as well as on intermedia and the visual arts. Her first three books dealt with individual poets—Yeats, Robert Lowell, and Frank O’Hara; she then published The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage (1981), a book that led to her extensive exploration of avant-garde art movements in The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (1986) and her recent book Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century (2011). -
Heinrich Von Kleist
Heinrich von Kleist: Das gescheiterte Genie (Paper VIII, Paper X) Tue 2-3 (wks: 5-8), Taylor Institution Rm 2 This four-week lecture will cover the life and selected writings of Heinrich von Kleist. Besides the prescribed text for paper X, the play ‘Prinz Friedrich von Homburg’, the course will focus on the modernity and openness of Kleist’s work, making him up until the present day one of the most eminent authors in German language. His reputation becomes apparent in the continuous presence of his plays on German stages. While none of his works is autobiographic in a narrow sense, his narrative prose and his plays in many ways reflect the author’s personal struggle with emotions, sexuality and his failure ever to pursue a satisfactory career. To a certain extent, Kleist can be regarded as the contemporary counterpart to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the omnipotent embodiment of artistic genius. Finally, the lecture will address Kleist’s unabated relevance, exploring the ambiguities of justice and violence in texts like ‘Michael Kohlhaas’ and ‘die Hermannsschlacht’. This course will be held in German, which makes it particularly suitable for 2nd year students intending to spend their year abroad at a German university and for finalists who would like to improve their German language skills, in particular with relation to literature. To support language learning alongside the lecture’s literary subject matter, specific vocabulary will be addressed and the content will be recapitulated regularly throughout the lecture. Lecture plan: Week 5: Kleist: Leben – Themen – Rezeption Week 6: Widersprüche der Lektüre: Das Erdbeben in Chili Week 7: Die Geburt des Partisanen aus dem Geist der Poesie: Michael Kohlhaas / Die Hermannsschlacht Week 8: Traum und Wirklichkeit: Prinz Friedrich von Homburg Letters in German Literature: From Goethe's ‚’Werther’ to Kafka's 'Brief an den Vater' (Paper VIII, Paper X) Tue 9-10 (wks:1-8), 47 Wellington Square, Grnd Flr Lec Rm 1 This seminar will address the role of the letter in the history of German literature through selected examples. -
Temporality, Subjectivity and Postcommunism in Contemporary German Literature by Herta Müller, Zsuzsa Bánk and Terézia Mora
PASTS WITH FUTURES: TEMPORALITY, SUBJECTIVITY AND POSTCOMMUNISM IN CONTEMPORARY GERMAN LITERATURE BY HERTA MÜLLER, ZSUZSA BÁNK AND TERÉZIA MORA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Katrina Louise Nousek May 2015 © 2015 Katrina Louise Nousek PASTS WITH FUTURES: TEMPORALITY, SUBJECTIVITY AND POSTCOMMUNISM IN CONTEMPORARY GERMAN LITERATURE BY HERTA MÜLLER, ZSUZSA BÁNK AND TERÉZIA MORA Katrina Louise Nousek, Ph. D. Cornell University 2015 This dissertation analyzes future-oriented narrative features distinguishing German literature about European communism and its legacies. Set against landscapes marked by Soviet occupation and Ceauşescu’s communist dictatorship in Romania (Müller) and against the 1956 Hungarian revolution, eastern European border openings, and post-Wende Berlin (Mora, Bánk), works by these transnational authors engage social legacies that other discourses relegate to an inert past after the historic rupture of 1989. Dominant scholarship reads this literature either through trauma theory or according to autobiography, privileging national histories and static cultural identities determined by the past. Shifting attention to complex temporal structures used to narrate literary subjectivities, I show how these works construct European futures that are neither subsumed into a homogeneous present, nor trapped in traumatic repetition, nostalgic longing, or psychic disavowal. My analysis extends and contributes to debates in politics and the arts about the status of utopia after communism and the role of society in political entities no longer divided in Cold War terms of East/West, three worlds, or discrete national cultures. By focusing on Müller, Mora and Bánk, I widen the purview of FRG-GDR discussions about communism to include transnational, temporal and narrative perspectives that scholarship on these authors often overlooks. -
**********************It************************** Reproductions Supplied by EDRS Are the Best That Can Be Made from the Original Document
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 314 944 FL 018 291 AUTHOR Duncan, Annelise M. TITLE The Camera Angles Film as a First Exposure to Literataure. PUB DATE 89 NOTE 10p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Teachers of German (Boston, MA, November 17-19, 1989). PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070) -- Viewpoints (120) -- Speeches /Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Classroom Techniques; *Films; *German; *Instructional Materials; *Literature Appreciation; Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Student Motivation ABSTRACT While students are struggling with the basic concepts of learning a second language, they are not likely to be intrigued by the language as the key to literature. In the first two years of language study, the amount of material being studied and the focus on language acquisition are such that film can be accommodated as an outside activity carrying credit. A German series of literature on film, designed for television, and literature interpreted for the cinema by film authors offer diversity in the language classroom, are well suited for classroom use, and are readily available. A brief in-class introduction of the author, the period, and the film establishes the literary context before viewing. A discussion of students' written critiques after viewing the film serve to clarify any questions students might have. Use of English in students' critical commentary is permissible only in the first semester. Students eventually recognize that subtitles are actually a hindrance, and they soon notice the inaccuracies in them. If appropriately used at each level, film will support literature before and when it can be read, while adding its own dimension to and interpretation of the written work. -
Susanne Goldfarb: Oral History Transcript
Susanne Goldfarb: Oral History Transcript www.wisconsinhistory.org/HolocaustSurvivors/Goldfarb.asp Name: Susanne Hafner Goldfarb (1933–1987) Birth Place: Vienna, Austria Arrived in Wisconsin: 1969, Madison Project Name: Oral Histories: Wisconsin Survivors Susanne Goldfarb of the Holocaust Biography: Susanne Hafner Goldfarb was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 17, 1933. She was the only child of a middle-class Jewish family. Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. Rising anti-Semitism and the threat of war prompted her family to flee their homeland in early 1939. Six-year-old Susanne and her family left Europe on a luxury liner bound for Shanghai, China. They found refuge with more than 20,000 other European Jewish exiles in the Japanese-occupied sector of that city. The refugees were able to create a multifaceted Jewish community in Shanghai. It included commercial, religious, cultural, and educational institutions. Susanne attended synagogue, studied in Jewish schools, and belonged to a Zionist social club. The Hafners eked out a living by delivering bread in their neighborhood, the Hongkew district. In May 1943, Japanese authorities introduced anti-Semitic measures. The Hongkew district turned into a Jewish ghetto and all Shanghai Jews were restricted to this area. As World War II unfolded, Shanghai came under increased assault from U.S. warplanes. Susanne's family worked as air raid wardens and suffered the terror of heavy bombing attacks. In August 1945, the U.S. liberated the Hongkew Ghetto. Soon after, China descended into civil war. In 1949 the Chinese Communists came to power. The Hafners, fearing persecution under the communist regime, immigrated to Israel in January 1949.