Abend Der Worte

“Abend der Worte”/ “Evening of the Words” is a metaphorical journey of searching for words, the process that a writer goes through when composing a new work. In the poem, this seemingly intellectual task cannot help but rip open the poet’s deep-seated psychological wounds and expose to him the darkest aspects of human nature.

The poem opens with an evening quest for “words” (Line 1), but this at first charming task turns darker as evening turns into “Wordnight” (Line 8), a compound word that tries to get across in translation Celan’s original German coinage. This night, which has come before the writer has found the words he is looking for, is when “shadow[s]” (Line 4) get longer, and the search for words must occur in growing darkness, in the unilluminated space behind closed eyes. The danger of the Wordnight is ripping open of “Time’s scar” (Line 5) and the intrusion into the body of uncontrollable, voracious mastiffs.

In the final stanza, the diction and light changes. There is “one last moon” (Line 13) that offers a type of light—light that is reflected. Complementing this is how the diction of ‘words/word’ disappears and is replaced by images. Writers, in the process of finding the words for their poems, come upon images to describe.