On December 6, 2019, the anniversary of the Babri Mosque’s demolition, I posted an old photograph of the mosque on Facebook alongside the following lines by Paul Celan, in Pierre Joris’s English translation:
“To stand, in the shadow
of the stigma in the air.
Standing-for-no-one-and-nothing.
Unrecognized,
for you
alone.”
I wanted to remember the now-absent mosque, indelible in a generation’s memory and dedicate these lines to the Muslims of India who continue to stand with dignity despite the routine humiliations of life, intensified since the BJP returned to power, in a Hindu-majority nation. That year, the BJP was reelected after five years in office and during those five years, I had been reading Celan, thanks to Pierre Joris.
In the fall of 2023, as a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Brown University, I had the good fortune to invite Pierre to my department to speak about his work as Celan’s translator for the last fifty years and to read from his recently published collection, Interglacial Narrows. I found myself returning to Celan once again, not only because of Pierre’s visit but also because, in the wake of October 7, as Israel began its genocidal assault on Gaza, I kept wondering what Celan might have said, how that profound Jewish poet might have responded to such mindless violence.
Pierre opened his reading with a dedication to Hisham Awartani, a Palestinian-American Brown student who had been shot and paralyzed from the chest down in a hate crime in Burlington, Vermont, on November 25, 2023. Through that dedication, it was as though Celan, whose voice had reached me through Pierre, his ethical mediator, had finally answered me. I stopped wondering.
Travel well, Pierre. I imagine your dream coming true finally: an endless drive with Celan, sharing the chocolates he once bought you.
Sneha Chowdhury is finishing a PhD in Comparative Literature at Brown University.