http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/todesfuge/ We believe Poetry is meant to be Read (aloud) | audiopoetry (poi-tre) is a digital audio poetry anthology site run by Black Mamba, with poems sent in by Falstaff and x other contributors. Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:54:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=MU http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/todesfuge/#comment-22339 vivek iyer Tue, 06 May 2008 10:59:56 +0000 http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/?p=362#comment-22339 Celan could be a model for the Indian English poet- his cultural heritage was literary German and, though employed as a translator in France, his knowledge of colloquial German was poor. On his infrequent trips to Germany he was constantly noting down idiomatic expressions and correcting his notion of what canonical works actually meant. Celan's tragedy was that the German language turned its back on its World Historical Mission of becoming the Universal Ontological language, and swiftly degenerated into what George Steiner called "the native language of Hell." Heidegger's complicity in all this is a tale oft told- but still the guy had sufficient nous to see Celan was mentally ill at their last meeting. Of course, the old fraud did nothing about it and Celan took his own life rather than remaining to us as the Holderlin of our times. Another aspect of Celan of interest to the Indglish poet- (in case you didn't get it, I was saying English abandoned its claim to be a literary language sometime in the twilight of the Nineteenth Century- they just didn't tell us till Mountbatten went bye bye-) is his take on the 'Jerusalem or Athens?' dilemma that bedeviled the work of Strauss, Levinas,et al. A Parthenon of gold or ashen hair & Job turns Faust- a grave in the air Come Orestes kill Aunty Om! Shanti, Shanti! Celan could be a model for the Indian English poet- his cultural heritage was literary German and, though employed as a translator in France, his knowledge of colloquial German was poor. On his infrequent trips to Germany he was constantly noting down idiomatic expressions and correcting his notion of what canonical works actually meant.
Celan’s tragedy was that the German language turned its back on its World Historical Mission of becoming the Universal Ontological language, and swiftly degenerated into what George Steiner called “the native language of Hell.”
Heidegger’s complicity in all this is a tale oft told- but still the guy had sufficient nous to see Celan was mentally ill at their last meeting. Of course, the old fraud did nothing about it and Celan took his own life rather than remaining to us as the Holderlin of our times.
Another aspect of Celan of interest to the Indglish poet- (in case you didn’t get it, I was saying English abandoned its claim to be a literary language sometime in the twilight of the Nineteenth Century- they just didn’t tell us till Mountbatten went bye bye-) is his take on the ‘Jerusalem or Athens?’ dilemma that bedeviled the work of Strauss, Levinas,et al.
A Parthenon of gold or ashen hair
& Job turns Faust- a grave in the air
Come Orestes kill Aunty
Om! Shanti, Shanti!

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