Kann man Celan übersetzen, ohne ihn (ganz) zu verstehen?

Die Basler Zeitung (26.6.) referiert in ihrer Zeitschriftenschau einen Artikel des südafrikanischen Autors J. M. Coetzee in The New York Review of Books, 5. 7. 2001 über die Schwierigkeiten beim Nachdichten von Paul Celan, in dem er die Frage stellt: „Ist es möglich, auf eine Lyrik wie die Celans anzusprechen, ja selbst sie zu übersetzen, ohne sie ganz zu verstehen?“ … Coetzees Resumé: Celan is the towering European poet of the middle decades of the twentieth century, one who, rather than transcending his times—he had no wish to transcend them—acted as a lightning rod for their most terrible discharges. His unremitting, intimate wrestlings with the German language, which form the substrate of all his later poetry, come across in translation as, at best, overheard rather than heard directly. In this sense translation of the later poetry must always fail. Nevertheless, two generations of translators have striven, with unexampled resourcefulness and devotion, to bring home in English what can be brought. For the work of the new generation we can only be grateful.