Without Lifting A Finger

Googled around before bed and ended up at a link I'd posted over a year ago on a commentary re Celan's "Todtnauberg": Forgotten (I don't believe I ever read it all the way through), or never knew?, it was by Pierre Joris. Though we can talk about "over-translating" (Joris typically picks through the universe of possibilities), I think that poem is certainly one of Celan's best "buried treasures." Seemingly not even Heidegger--the Thinker himself--fully understood all the poem's dark plantings. Anyway, though there's tons I could relay, in reading Joris' commentaries on Celan's late poems, I've become enamored with the verb  ichten :      ichten / I'ed: Several interpretations -- per direct indication by the poet -- point to the verb ichten (in the Grimms's Worterbuch , an important helper of Celan's compositional process), used here in the preterit and defined as "ich' sagen, eine frage mit ich ...

Sometimes it's just a word or phrase that catches. Takes you somewhere. Off the page. Back. Forward. Nowhere. Doesn't mean you've even come close to "capturing Celan." * From SNOWPART ( SCHNEEPART) TO SPEAK WITH the blind          alleys of the opposite, of its expatriated meaning --: to chew this bread, with writing-teeth MIT DEN SACKGASSEN        sprechen vom Gegenüber, von seiner expatriierten Bedeutung --:   dieses Brot kauen, mit Schreibzähnen. [Translation by Pierre Joris]  

Bouncing between Sylvia and "late" Celan ( Breathturn and beyond, translations by Pierre Joris), leaning more toward Celan to help me through the week. Many of his poems are short and can be read in snatches. Grasped is another question. This is the last one in Breathturn . * Celan's German: EINMAL, da hörte ich ihn, da wusch er die Welt, ungesehen, nachtlang, wirklich. Eins und Unendlich, vernichtet, ichten,   Licht war. Rettung.     *   Pierre Joris' Translation:   ONCE,   I did hear him, he did wash the world, unseen, nightlong, real.   One and unending, annihilated, I'ed.   Light was. Salvation.