from Neila, Evening Song

Yvan Goll



Unreal as mist in the silent machinery of night
Your face flies past with moon sails
O Neila, blue offering-smoke

The red songs of the father resound in your mouth
A golden animal horn of fervor
Announces you to fate

I hear rustling in your dark magic
The old seas of midnight
I know, you're no daughter of man

Unearthly you, beyond blood
Neila, the scent of jasmine signifies you
When it announces the spirits of the deep







Night sips her red blossom from your heart
It climbs back to the first kiss
With which memory we play

In my beating pulse I hold the thought firmly
It resists like a frightened bird
Stronger than love it never forgets

From your eye falls time like a green star
Daughter of the moon you illuminate for me
The ruins of the world





Death-chemistry

In the alembic of the dream
You turn yellow red yellow
Fever blossom
And belladonna of anxiety
On the slopes of darkness

Blood's night-chemistry
Reeling puss-cup
Dewy with tears
That drain her worn-out sleep

Breathe slowly you sick ones
At the wounded wall
Birds from ashes settle themselves on your hands
On your fragile fingers
The last day crumbles

Hours
Stern queens of an afternoon
Anointed with gold
How you laugh at me
Shame me with palms
Your son

So sorrow if I don't drag your wagon
into my nettles
Your eyes your wheels
Rattle me in dark dust
Hours
Worn-out wanderers near evening 


translated from the German by Donald Wellman

Read the original in German

Listen to the poems read in the original German by Donald Wellman:

Neila, Abendgesang (Neila, Evening Song, 1954) was composed as Yvan Goll lay suffering from leukemia. "Neila" is an anagram of "Liane," a reference to Claire Studer, his wife and most important collaborator. The text is frenetic and disjointed. During this difficult period, Paul Celan assisted Goll in translating his French-language lyric poetry into German. Unfortunately, and apparently driven by her own paranoid insecurities, Claire accused Celan of plagiarizing from her husband's last works. Celan, who had donated blood to Goll, never recovered from the shock of this malignant slur. I believe that while Neila, Abendgesang is motivated by Goll's passionate love for Claire, it also carries tones of apprehension and anxiety that derive from Goll's recognition of Claire's disquieting powers.

Yvan Goll was born Isaac Lang in 1891, in Saint-Dié in the Lorraine region of France. A poet, editor, and translator, his work contributed in multiple ways to major developments of modernism, including German expressionism and French surrealism. His collaborators included Antonin Artaud, Hermann Hesse, Hans Arp, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, and James Joyce. In 1924, Goll published the groundbreaking journal Surréalisme. Goll's conception of surrealism emphasized verbal constructions and avoided the Freudian play between language and the unconscious that is associated with surrealist practice as promulgated by André Breton. Living in exile in New York during WWII, Goll was the first to translate Aimé Cesaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal into English. Goll's epic poem Jean sans terre was translated into English by Kenneth Rexroth, Galway Kinnell, and William Carlos Williams, among many others. Goll's poetry in French and German fills four volumes, available from Argon Verlag (1996). Goll died in 1950, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Donald Wellman is a poet and translator. As editor of O.ARS, he produced a series of annual anthologies of experimental work, including Coherence (1981) and Translations: Experiments in Reading (1984). His poetry is projectivist and works with sources from several languages. His collections include Roman Exercises (Talisman House, 2015), The Cranberry Island Series (Dos Madres, 2013), A North Atlantic Wall (Dos Madres, 2010), Prolog Pages (Ahadada, 2009), and Fields (Light and Dust, 1995). He has translated books by Antonio Gamoneda, Emilio Prados, Yvan Goll, and Roberto Echavarren. Albiach / Celan: Reading Across Languages is forthcoming (2016).