Paul Celan's Encounters with Surrealism

Trauma, Translation and Shared Poetic Space

Charlotte Ryland

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351193535
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

"Paul Celan (1920-1970), one of the most important and challenging poets in post-war Europe, was also a prolific and highly idiosyncratic translator. His post-Holocaust writing is inextricably linked to the specific experiences that have shaped contemporary European and American identity, and at the same time has its roots in literary, philosophical and scientific traditions that range across continents and centuries surrealism being a key example. Celan's early works emerge from a fruitful period for surrealism, and they bear the marks of that style, not least because of the deep affinity he felt with the need to extend the boundaries of expression. In this comparative and intertextual study, Charlotte Ryland shows that this interaction continued throughout Celans lifetime, largely through translation of French surrealist poems, and that Celans great oeuvre can thus be understood fully only in the light of its interaction with surrealist texts and artworks, which finally gives rise to a wholly new poetics of translation. Charlotte Ryland is Lecturer in German at St Hughs College and The Queens College, Oxford."

CHAPTER 1
‘Ich werde ziemlich oft des Surrealismus bezichtigt — das ist natürlich Unsinn!’: Paul Celan and Surrealism

Defining Surrealism

André Breton, the founder of the surrealist movement, first defined surrealism in 1924 in his first ‘Manifeste du surréalisme’:

SURRÉALISME, n. m. Automatisme psychique pur par lequel on se propose d’exprimer, soit verbalement, soit par écrit, soit de toute autre manière, le fonctionnement réel de la pensée. Dictée de la pensée, en l’absence de tout contrôle exercé par la raison, en dehors de toute préoccupation esthétique ou morale.

(1924; AB I, 309–46 (p. 328))

[SURREALISM, n. m. Pure psychic automatism through which one intends to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any number of means, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought, without any rational control, beyond all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.]

However, Breton continued to modify his definition throughout the ensuing decades, and an appreciation of the resulting diversity of the surrealist movement is essential background to a consideration of the relationship between Paul Celan’s oeuvre and the surrealist aesthetic.¹ Indeed, an understanding of that diversity highlights part of the difficulty in evaluating the surrealist qualities of Celan’s oeuvre. This chapter begins by outlining the development of the surrealist aesthetic, from the so-called intuitive phase, in which the powers of the Unconscious were privileged, to what is known as the reasoning phase, when reason and material reality came to the fore. Breton himself defined these two phases in a speech to the Belgian surrealists, entitled ‘Qu’est-ce que le surréalisme?’ (1934; AB II, 223–62).

The particular elements of the surrealist movement that are significant for Celan’s engagement with that aesthetic are highlighted in the following discussion: namely, the dialectical nature of the aesthetic, the notion of permanent renewal, and the idea of the inherent connection between dream and waking reality. Subsequently, an appreciation of the diversity of the surrealist movement is established through a survey of the surrealist groups in Bucharest and Vienna. These groups are of particular interest in view of Celan’s encounter with surrealism, since the poet came into close contact with both of them.

The intuitive phase

Surrealism developed in part out of Dada, an anti-rationalist literary and artistic movement launched in Zurich during the First World War, whose most prominent member was the Romanian poet and essayist Tristan Tzara. Dada was founded on the notion of absolute protest, principally against those conventions that were thought to have allowed Europe to drift into war in 1914. Breton’s retrospective description of Dada, in 1934, aptly summarizes it as an anarchic and destructive approach to the status quo, based on a refusal to make judgements (AB II, 236). Tzara corresponded with several French writers, including Breton, and on moving to Paris in 1919 he engaged in literary activities with Breton, Paul Éluard and Philippe Soupault. These writers collaborated on a number of texts that were then published in the journal Littérature (1919–24), to which the future founders of the surrealist movement were regular contributors.

As the vigour of Dada faded, owing partly to a rift between Breton and Tzara in 1922, the movement that would be known as surrealism began to develop. Alongside Breton, the founding members of surrealism included the poets Louis Aragon, Éluard, Benjamin Péret and Soupault. Like Dada, this movement aimed for the destruction of conventional modes of perception and representation. However, the surrealists rejected Dada’s nihilism, seeking instead to replace these devalued conventions with new forms of perception and representation.

Breton later dated the beginning of the surrealist movement to 1919 (AB II, 231), although in formal terms it was founded in 1924 with the publication of his ‘Manifeste du surréalisme’. The first issue of the journal La Révolution surréaliste was also published towards the end of the same year. This retrospective redefinition of the parameters of the surrealist movement is typical of Breton’s writings on surrealism. During the second half of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s Breton repeatedly defined and redefined the limits and aims of the surrealist movement, which is one of the reasons why it is impossible to speak of a consistent, monolithic surrealist aesthetic. Breton’s redefinition of the movement in ‘Qu’est-ce que le surréalisme?’, in particular, constitutes a detailed re-evaluation of the aims and results of the movement, in particular regarding the relationship between the imagination and reality. Focusing in his first manifesto on the unconscious mind, by the early 1930s Breton’s attention had shifted to a privileging of material reality. This gradual change is examined in the following analysis of key theoretical texts, beginning with his ‘Manifeste du surréalisme’.

The development of surrealist theory was greatly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. Yet unlike Freud, who examined unconscious drives in order to remedy flaws in the conscious mind, thus permitting the individual to lead a healthy life in tune with prevailing social conditions, the surrealists celebrated the irrational nature of the Unconscious, and rejected the status quo. The potential for access to this hidden layer of the mind seemed to suggest the possibility of overcoming the conventions that the surrealists perceived as stifling. Thus, in contrast to the Freudian intention of preventing unconscious drives from interfering with the patient’s conscious life, the surrealists sought to overcome the conscious mind, which they perceived as inauthentic, by way of these unconscious processes. Breton expressed this perceived conflict between the unconscious and conscious mind in his first manifesto:

L’imagination est peut-être sur le point de reprendre ses droits. Si les profondeurs de notre esprit recèlent d’étranges forces capables d’augmenter celles de la surface, ou de lutter victorieusement contre elles, il y a tout intérêt à les capter.

(AB I, 316)

[The imagination is perhaps about to resume its rights. If the depths of our spirits harbour strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of conquering them, it is in our interests to harness them.]

By thus privileging unconscious processes over the workings of the conscious mind, the surrealists hoped to liberate the subject from the utilitarian forces of logic, reason and communicability, which they believed limited its capacity to perceive the full breadth of reality.

The states of infancy, insanity and dream, viewed by Freud as examples of the partial surrender of the conscious mind to unconscious drives, were celebrated by the surrealists during the 1920s. The surrealist poets attempted to attain similar levels of access to the Unconscious by artificial means such as automatic writing, games, collage and dream reports. All of these activities constituted attempts to write without any pre-formed intention, without any aim of communicating a particular message. Automatic writing was usually performed when the poets were in a supposedly hypnotic trance, and this early period of surrealism has therefore often been referred to both by surrealists and scholars of surrealism as the ‘époque des sommeils’ [era of sleeps]. Surrealist writers also tended to record their dreams, creating récits de rêves such as those published by Robert Desnos in 1922 (RD, 125–28). This practice reflects the difference between the surrealists’ and Freud’s approaches to the Unconscious. While, for Freud, dream narratives were a mode of seeking out and healing fissures in the patient’s Unconscious, the surrealists celebrated them as boundless sources of creativity.

In his ‘Manifeste du surréalisme’, Breton takes issue not with reality itself, but with the modes of expression available to perceive and express that reality. His argument is based on the assumption that reality is too complex and multi-faceted to be expressed adequately using the conventional language available. Thus, rather than subordinating reality to the word, he argues that the word should be opened up to encompass all the possibilities of reality. He thereby emphasizes the image rather than the word, since the former is considered capable of reflecting the complex nature of reality in a way that verbal expression cannot. Breton attempts to release the potential for new perception and expression by championing the random juxtaposition of images that do not rationally belong together. He maintains that chance and spontaneity are key to the success of these pairings, and he quotes examples from the writings of fellow poet Pierre Reverdy, such as: ‘Dans le ruisseau il y a une chanson qui coule’ [In the stream there is a song that flows] (AB I, 337). Breton uses electrical imagery to explain the effect of these juxtapositions. He states that a spark is created by the clash of images, igniting a ‘lumière de l’image’ [light of the image], and that the greater the difference of potential between the two elements, the brighter the spark. He describes the result as: ‘la plus belle des nuits, la nuit des éclairs: le jour, auprès d’elle, est la nuit’ [the most beautiful night, the night of brightness: next to her, day is as night] (AB I, 338; Breton’s emphasis). Accordingly, surrealist poetry, of the 1920s and early 1930s in particular, abounds with images of night, light, sparks and stars. These images may be associated with the emphasis in surrealist theory on dream (and therefore on the night); on the plumbing of the depths of reality; and on the spark of new creativity, as elaborated in Breton’s thought.

The focus on the image of light can also be aligned with the surrealist emphasis on new vision, for the aim of surrealism was not to create a new reality, but to cast a new light on the external world by perceiving those elements inaccessible to the eye that is ruled by reason and convention. Aragon succinctly expresses the capacity of the surrealist image to precipitate a new understanding of reality in his novel Le Paysan de Paris (1926): ‘Chaque image à chaque coup vous force à réviser tout l’Univers’ [Every image at every moment forces you to look again at the whole universe].² This statement suggests that the subject’s conception of the universe must change with the reception of each new image. Such an idea of permanent renewal is central to the surrealist aesthetic, in particular that propagated by Éluard. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, one of the key elements of Éluard’s poetics is the recognition of similarities between objects otherwise considered alien to one another. The identification of unexpected resemblances between images suggests that one image may represent a multitude of other images, and means that relations between images are in constant flux. As such, the notion of permanent renewal evident in Aragon’s quotation is also central to Éluard’s aesthetics. Moreover, the concept of permanent renewal highlights the significance of the future in the surrealist aesthetic, since the unique nature of the surrealist image posits the possibility of endless new configurations. Such a focus on novelty and the orientation towards the future is not an attempt to change reality, but to broaden and deepen one’s perception of existing reality, in order to establish a more authentic relationship between the speaker and the external world.

The reasoning phase

Breton’s first manifesto focuses on the perception of reality, but as he himself later noted, the term ‘surrealism’ itself suggests an attempt at transcendence, at an escape from existing reality (AB II, 230–31). Indeed, Breton’s early writings often seem to privilege the Unconscious and reject reality, such as when he refers to the waking state as a mere interference in comparison to dream: ‘Je prends, encore une fois, l’état de veille. Je suis obligé de le tenir pour un phénomène d’interférence’ [I examine, once more, the waking state. I am obliged to regard it as an interference] (AB I, 318). Yet in Breton’s theoretical texts of the late 1920s and 1930s, material reality comes increasingly to the fore, until it becomes as significant as the Unconscious. This focus on the material conditions of social reality may be attributed to the intensification of Breton’s Marxist convictions, in particular from 1927 onwards, when he joined the French Communist Party. Indeed, the increasing commitment to Communism is indicated by the titles of the French surrealist journals. The first journal was entitled ‘La Révolution surréaliste’ (1924–29), whereby the term ‘Révolution’ evokes, inter alia, Communist revolution, but simultaneously posits a specifically surrealist vision of revolt. By contrast, from 1929 until 1933 (when Breton was ejected from the French Communist Party), the surrealist group published a journal entitled ‘Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution’, suggesting that surrealism had been subsumed into that political revolution. The following examination of Breton’s theoretical texts after 1927 reveals this new emphasis on material reality and social revolution.

In his ‘Second manifeste du surréalisme’ (1930), Breton insists that surrealists must not isolate themselves, but act as if they are ‘au monde’ [of the world], which includes considering ‘la question du régime social sous lequel nous vivons’ [the question of the social regime under which we live] (AB I, 791–93). He claims that surrealism is currently in its preparatory state, which consists of artistic tasks, but that ultimately revolutionary ideas and acts will come to the fore (AB I, 820).³ By the time of his s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 'Ich werde ziemlich oft des Surrealismus bezichtigt — das ist natürlich Unsinn!': Paul Celan and Surrealism
• 2 Translation as Homage: Celan and Éluard's Capitale de la douleur
• 3 Communicating Vessels: 'Edgar Jené und der Traum vom Traume'
• 4 Writing after the Disaster: Surrealistische Publikationen
• 5 'Der Schatten Schatten sein': Celan's Encounter with Robert Desnos
• 6 'Anders von Mal zu Mal': Celan's Encounter with Paul Éluard
• 7 'In Eins': Shared Poetic Space
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index