Long Sunday

Blessing and Partage: No Pasarán; On Celan and Derrida

"No, I will limit myself here to the aporia (to the barred passage, no pasarán:  this is what aporia means)."

"...A date is mad, that is the truth.
And we are mad for dates.
For the ashes that dates are.  Celan knew one may praise or bless ashes.  Religion is not necessary for that.  Perhaps because a religion begins there, before religion, in the blessing of dates, of names, and of ashes..."

"A date always remains a sort of hypothesis, the support for a by definition unlimited number of projections of memory."-JD

One wonders what Derrida might have thought and said these past few weeks, about the re-casting of a certain enigmatic slogan in the streets of France.  One he always heard, after, as coming through Celan; one so clearly dear to his own heart.  Who could forget those passages?   But also, who would dare to write on them?

When Giovanna Borradori asked Derrida about September 11, and though I wonder if she realized it, what must have come first to his mind was another September, that of Celan's "Huhediblu"..."date of Nevermansday in September." 

Another Long Sundayan has already remarked, in suitably derisive manner, on the subject of this slogan–itself a "veritable knot of radical associations"–being recently adopted on the interweb by a group of impressively soporific blowhards, so we needn't dwell especially there.  Mark commented on the poem "Shibboleth", and later, Amie and I discussed "In Eins," which as Derrida notes is in fact a poem inside a poem, containing "Shibboleth", as it were, within.

No Pasarán.  A slogan, a pebble, with unusual powers, or something of what Nancy calls "partage":   to be capable of dividing, and at the same time blessing waters ("partition" and "partaking"...how often Derrida remarked on the theme of this...disastrous movement).  Also Shibboleth, watchword, at once demarcating a certain line or border, and a community, one marked by an act of crossing over.  A word Derrida also connects to necessary departure–departure from belonging, and in order to address the other.   A word, a pebble, like a tombstone, seeking to mark a date...

The Last to Speak

Those that have been abandoned, have the right to a thought, to a word. The right to bear witness. Survival, in the wake of a disaster, is not just a matter of food and shelter, it is a matter of memory, it requires an act of memory.

Not long ago, one might remember, at the time of the "elections," there were names whose validity was questioned. They were erased from registers, their votes were cancelled. Names which ceased to exist.

Do they have something in common with those who were left to die a week ago? Can a system "save" those that it does not register or recognize as existing, the nameless existences, the inexistent names which it does not care to count or account for? Will they be recognized now, will they be saved by all the "representatives" that now claim to represent them, speak endlessly of them, for them, in their name? Will they be given the chance to bear witness, to their names, and to the names of the dead?

How to bear witness? In a very fine post here ( to which these very insufficient remarks do not add very much )  I read, "They must not realize their potential as last men. The world of elites cannot stand to bear witness to that."

So, I would like to try to translate a poem that, one could justifiably object, I am taking out of its singular context. Yet, it is a poem that is singularly addressed to the last one(s), and it bears the gift - as do all poems worthy of the name - of the right to bear witness. The poem, by Paul Celan, can be read here* ( please see below for this link.) My attempt to translate follows.