An entire scripture, encapsulated an I and a Thou, Ich and Du, both in need of a witness. This tiny poem takes up enormous matters-knowing, witnessing, the real, the not-real, freedom, servitude, revelation, union-with the metaphor of an immanence that hovers and pierces, the image of a Word on fire. Four lines, four breaths: a poem that itself enacts a turning. The poem first appeared in 1967 in his book, Atemwende-“breathturn”, or “change of breath”-a word Celan coined for the turning or breaking point, the crisis in writing and life, which these poems recorded. I began with one short, circumscribed, parenthetical, untitled poem, in a language I didn’t know, a spark of encounter and revelation, purposely fragmentary, and from these four lines, Paul Celan’s poetry has grown outward for me and become immense.
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