«Das Archetypische» der Sprache: V. Khlebnikov’s poetry in translations by P. Celan

Abstract

In 1969 P. Celan translated a number of V. Khlebnikov’s poems for a German edition of his works. In chronological terms, Khlebnikov’s translations bring Celan’s dialog with Russian poetry to completion. Meanwhile, they play a special role in the history of this dialog. Celan primarily took an interest in Khlebnikov as a philosopher of language who searches for the primary source (das Archetypische) of language in poetry.

In this article, we attempt to build a link between the tenets of Khlebnikov’s theory of abstruse language and German philosophers’ views of language as the ‘mother tongue of the human race’ (J. G. Hamann), the ‘energy of the spirit’ (W. v. Humboldt), the ‘house of being’ (M. Heidegger) and the idea of ‘pure language’ of W. Benjamin, who opened a new dimension in the translatability of lyric poetry. We believe that Khlebnikov’s philosophy of language and poetry confirm the hypothesis about the poetic origin and essence of language, which was developed in Germany by the hermeneutic tradition and shared by P. Celan. By bringing the translation of the poem ‘Luftiger Luftold’ into focus, we attempt to show the paths that Khlebnikov and Celan followed in revealing the poetic origin of language.

Forming the semantic basis of Khlebnikov’s poem is the technique of implementing a negative internal form, through which the poet creates a field of tension between the linguistic and the poetic meaning of the text. In his translation, P. Celan creates a semantic interplay of various historical layers and sociolects of the German language in a way similar to the Russian poet’s linguistic creativity.