Shakespeare into Celan: Sonnets 1,105 and 107

Sonnet 107 was the last Celan translated, ¹ and in the collection of twenty-one versions he published in 1967 ² it is one of the first in order of fascination, or so it seems to me. Given this predilection, it would be gratifying to write an essay as rigorous and persuasive as Peter Szondi’s comparison of Sonnet 105 and Celan’s rendering. ³ However, the structure of translation Szondi elicits in this case does not readily transfer on to Sonnet 107, and there seems every reason to accept his view that this structure is peculiar to the poetry of constancy. ⁴ A relatively brief reading of Sonnet 1 goes some way to supporting a still tentative thesis that Celan’s response to Shakespeare is by no means predictable, since to say that he translates through the medium of his own experience and poetic sensibility is not so much to predict as to say what goes without saying.