The definition of genius

There was earth inside them, and they dug.
~Paul Celan

A prose poem by Claudia Rankine:



Don't Let Me Be Lonely [Mahalia Jackson is a genius.]
by Claudia Rankine

Mahalia Jackson is a genius. Or Mahalia Jackson has genius. The man I am with is trying to make a distinction. I am uncomfortable with his need to make this distinction because his inquiry begins to approach subtle shades of racism, classism, or sexism. It is hard to know which. Mahalia Jackson never finished the eighth grade, or Mahalia's genius is based on the collision of her voice with her spirituality. True spirituality is its own force. I am not sure how to respond to all this. I change the subject instead.

We have just seen George Wein's documentary, Louis Armstrong at Newport, 1971. In the auditorium a room full of strangers listened to Mahalia Jackson sing "Let There Be Peace on Earth" and stood up and gave a standing ovation to a movie screen. Her clarity of vision crosses thirty years to address intimately each of us. It is as if her voice has always been dormant within us, waiting to be awakened, even though "it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, (and) through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech."

Perhaps Mahalia, like Paul Celan, has already lived all our lives for us. Perhaps that is the definition of genius. Hegel says, "Each man hopes and believes he is better than the world which is his, but the man who is better merely expresses this same world better than the others." Mahalia Jackson sings as if it is the last thing she intends to do. And even though the lyrics of the song are, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me," I am hearing, Let it begin in me.

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Rankine makes a reference to Paul Celan, so I looked him up.
Celan, who was Jewish, was born in Romania in 1920.
On his way to France to study medicine, Celan was in Berlin during Kristallnacht.
Back in Romania, he was forced into labor during WWII (where, among other things, he was tasked with destroying Russian books).
His parents lost their lives in an internment camp.
He was a polyglot who translated literature from Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, and English into German.
Celan said, “There is nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German."

With a changing key,
You unlock the house where
The snow of what’s silenced drifts.
Just like the blood that bursts from
Your eye or mouth or ear,
So your key changes.

Changing your key changes the word
That may drift with flakes.
Just like the wind that rebuffs you,
Clenched round your word is the snow.
― Paul Celan

Two more quotes:

“Spring: trees flying up to their birds”
― Paul Celan

“you're rowing by wordlight”
― Paul Celan

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Pleasures from the Page has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Ramona!