Celan, Kafka & the Glottal Stop

Landis’ reading may possibly be teased from Celan’s own words, though at least to my ear, the German “laut” and “singt” suggest the transformation of the — silent, withheld — sound of the glottal stop into song over what is a smooth line-“break” that does not flaunt its “breaking” quality here. It may even be read as the rather joyousconstat that even the sound of such a heavy long German word as “Kehlkopfverschlusslaut” does end up as song, while the heavy-handed Popov/McHugh translation foregrounds something that is certainly not explicit in Celan’s own verse, if intended at all.

Concise analysis of the difficulties, pitfalls and challenges of sound inherent in translation by Pierre Joris.