22
Nov
“You are the reason for living, not least because you are, and will remain, the justification for my speaking”
Excerpts from
Ingeborg Bachmann - Paul Celan: Correspondence
‘In Ägypten’
Für Ingeborg
Du sollst zum aug der Fremden sagen: Sei das Wasser!
Du sollst, die du im Wasser weißt, im Aug der Fremden suchen.
Du sollst sie rufen aus dem Wasser: Ruth! Noemi! Mirjam!
Du sollst sie schmücken mit dem Wolkenhaar der Fremden.
Du sollst zu Ruth, zu Mirjam und Noemi sagen:
Seht, ich schlaf bei ihr!
Du sollst die Fremde neben dir am schönsten schmücken,
Du sollst sie schmücken mit dem Schmerz um Ruth, um Mirjam und Noemi.
Du sollst zur Fremden sagen:
Sieh, ich schlief bei diesen!
‘In Egypt’
For Ingeborg
Thou shalt say to the strange woman’s eye: be the water!
Thou shalt seek in the stranger’s eye those whom thou knowest to be in the water.
Thou shalt call them from the water: Ruth! Noemi! Miriam!
Thou shalt adorn them when thou liest with the stranger.
Thou shalt adorn them with the cloud-hair of the stranger.
Thou shalt say to Ruth, to Miriam and Noemi:
behold, I sleep next to her!
Thou shalt adorn the stranger next to thee most beautiful of all.
Thou shalt adorn her with the pain over Ruth, over Miriam and Noemi.
Thou shalt say to the stranger:
Behold, I slept next to her!
Vienna, 23 May 1948
To the meticulous one,
22 years after her birthday,
From the unmeticulous one
Paris, 31 October 1957
Today. The day with the letter.
Destruction, Ingeborg? No, certainly not. rather: the truth. For this, here too, is surely the opposite principle: because it is the basic principle.
Passing over many things:
I will be coming to Munich in late November, around the 26th.
Returning to what was passed over:
I do not know what all this means, I do not know what I should call it—
destiny perhaps, fate and calling; searching for names is pointless, I know that is how it is, forever.
It is the same for me as for you: being allowed to speak and write down your name without struggling with the shudder that comes over me—for me, in spite of everything, that is joy.
You also know: when I met you, you were both for me: the sensual and the spiritual. The two can never separate, Ingeborg.
Think of ‘In Ägypten’. every time I read it, I see you step into this poem: you are the reason for living, not least because you are, and will remain, the justification for my speaking. (and I suppose this is what I was referring to that time in Hamburg, without quite realizing how true my words were.)
But that alone, my speaking, is not even the point; I wanted to be silent with you too.
A different area in the dark:
Waiting: I considered that too. But would that not also mean waiting for life to accommodate us in some way?
Life is not going to accommodate us, Ingeborg; waiting for that would
surely be the most unfitting way for us to be.
Be—yes, we can and are allowed to do so. To be—be there for another.
Even if it is only a few words, alla breve, one letter, once a month: the heart will know how to live.
Do you know that I can speak (and write) again now?
Oh, there is still so much I have to tell you, some of them things that even you would barely suspect.
Write to me.
Paul
P. S. Strangely enough, I had to buy the Frankfurter Zeitung on the way to the national library. and stumble across the poem you had sent me together with Die Gestundete Zeit, written on a strip of paper, by hand. I had always interpreted it for myself, and now I found it greeting me again—in such a context!
Forgive me, Ingeborg, forgive my stupid postscript of yesterday—perhaps I must never think or speak in such a way again.
Oh, I was so unjust towards you all these years, and the postscript was probably a relapse that was supposed to come to my aid in my helplessness. Is ‘Köln, Am Hof ’ not a beautiful poem? Höllerer, whom I recently gave it to print in Akzente (was I allowed to?), called it one of my most beautiful ones.
Through you, Ingeborg, through you. Would it ever have happened if you had not spoken of the ‘dreamt ones’? a single word from you—and I can live. And to think that I now have your voice in my ear again!