The poetic-genetic parents
John Bjarne Grover
Why do I believe that Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan are my genetic parents? I could go over this once again. For once, there is this trivial theory (which remains an unconfirmed hypothesis only) of my genetic background being of the type PTRSIM PIK, which calls for jewish genetics in the Stammbaum. Secondly, there is the story of my two first childhood memories - which both of them seem to be very similar to the two first poems which Nelly Sachs sent to Paul Celan. It was only after I read their published correspondence in 2004 that I recognized these two first childhood memories of mine - which indeed must have been from around the same times as these letters of hers.
1) The first childhood memory is from a corridor - I stand on all four and look down on the floor, then I lift my head and look into the end wall of the corridor and therefrom I lift it to look up in the ceiling - the round plastic lampshade - and I think maybe I remember that there were some small black spots on the bright lampshade - could be from flies inside it. It was when I wrote the book "Submorphemic signification" in 1993-95 about early child signification that I recalled this memory of mine and believed it was from before I could walk. Since the language of the first year is of importance for the book, I was curious when it could have been. I went to the address register in Oslo and was told that from 26/9-1957 to the first half of april 1958 I was registered on the address Brinken 2, Kampen, Oslo. I then lived in Oslo, even on Kampen, so it was just a few hundred meters to walk. I found the door and the stairway up to the floor referred to in the registers and opened the door to the entrance corridor - it was even open - and saw exactly what I remembered. When I lay down on the floor I saw presicely my first childhood memory. A firehose had come up on the wall - otherwise it was the same, even the lampshade seemed to be the same.
The first poem that Nelly Sachs sent to Paul Celan was sent on 10 march 1958 - which is when I was still in Brinken 2 on Kampen and was able to crawl around on the floor but could not walk, so it is very likely to have been around the same time:
Leise gleiten wir diesen steilen Felsen des Entsetzens hinab
der blickt uns an mit sternbesetzten Toden
diesen stauberstarrten Nachgeburten
darin das Lied der Vögel verrann
die Lippe den Wein der Sprache einsargte.
O Strahl der uns geweckt:
wie nahmst du unser Müde-werden
in deine immer mehr Heimat dunkelnden Arme
und ließest dann allein uns in der Nacht -
2) We moved from Oslo to Hammerfest in april 1958. The second memory is from Hammerfest where we stayed untill the end of 1959. I was walking outdoors between the parents, it was dark night and hence the winter season north of the polar circle, and cold it was, and the two custody parents were holding my hands up in quasi crucifixion posture - the normal posture for a small child learning to walk. I was not a fast walker. Could be it was late 1958. Then suddenly somebody appears in front of me and looks at me, a little up and in front of me. The memory is the strange phenomenon that I cannot decide who it is - if it is myself or somebody else who looks at me. Was it my own self seeing me walking there between the two custody parents? The memory is likely to be connected with the letter Sachs sent to Celan on 11 September 1958 with the following poem:
Gegängelt
außerhalb
bin ich hinübergeneigt
durstend
das Ende der Fernen zu küssen.
Der Abend wirft das Sprungbrett
der Nacht über das Rot
verlängert deine Landzunge
und ich setze meinen Fuß zagend
auf die zitternde Saite
des schon begonnenen Todes -
Aber so ist die Liebe!
Here is the socalled Struve Geodetic Arc in Hammerfest - also called 'the Meridian pillar'. I have also another childhood memory from what must have been the summer 1959 - I was running towards this granite pillar and put my hands towards the cool red granite stone - which is on the 'Landzunge'. Could be I was helped up by a 'Sprungbrett' to reach the pillar itself - if it were not the footing I touched.
We lived at the hospital - which could mean very close to or even inside the hospital - the address register tells only 'sykehuset' = 'the hospital'. Here is Hammerfest center with the hospital and the 'Meridian' pillar (on the 'Landzunge') annotated:
13 august 2026: I add the following letter #26 from the published correspondence between Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan (pages 29-30) - since, as I read it, it is very possible that Celan simply means me with the expression "Und wir haben ein Kind, Nelly Sachs, ein Kind!" - otherwise it is of course possible that he refers to his own son with his wife in Paris, but on background of my two earliest childhood memories I would be inclined to believe that it is me he means:
16 august 2026: I should refine the account of my second childhood memory a little: I recall that it was dark and winter but around the place where we were walking there was light, and the darkness surrounded the place but in some metres' distance. It is perhaps not impossible that we were under a lantern, a streetlight of some sort. I recall also the white ground. When I now look over the letter exchange of Sachs and Celan I suddenly understand that this 'pocket of light' could have been their reference to the light over the water in Zürich and in the room in Paris when Sachs visited the Celans there in 1960. Sachs mentions 'Marc' - and the endnote to the Suhrkamp edition tells that it be about Marc Chagall's 'Le marchand de bestiaux' which was on the front page of the postcard which this communication #106 was written on. That is interesting since it contains two animals - one lying on all four like in my first childhood memory and the second having a 'handle' over the shoulders as in my second. Then the light up in the lefthand corner could resemble this impression I had from Hammerfest of a consciousness seeing me which perhaps even was myself. And then 'durchsichtig' could perhaps even have been the lampshade of the first memory. So maybe Sachs and Celan had understood these memories - to the extent that their reference to the golden light could have been about my 'spiritual presence'. She refers in the same letter #104 to 'Gisele' "wie stehst du auch sonst vor mir in meinem Augenlicht. Diese Tage bei euch waren damals die letzte Helle dann 3 Jahre Nacht". She spent some 3 years in psychiatric hospital in the first half of the 1960's. If she with letter #104 suggests a reference to the situation I recall from Hammerfest, it could perhaps even be taken to mean that this second childhood memory could have been just before the traumatic 'allergic attack' that is said to have nearly claimed my life.
Here are letters 104-106 in the Suhrkamp edition (pages 93-94) of the exchange of letters between Sachs and Celan - which I reproduce for the potential biographic interest this can have:
Source:
Celan, P. & Sachs, N.: Briefwechsel. Suhrkamp 1996.
© John Bjarne Grover
On the web 8 august 2026
Lat updated 16 august 2026