MERID I A N

Cross;'lg Aesthetics

Werner Hamacher

& David E. Wellbcry

Edito1"f

Translated by

Andrea Tarnowski

Stanford

U"jwniry

fun

Sta ll ford

California

1999

POETRY AS

EXPERIENCE

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Porlry dJ &pmrllU was originally published in French in [986 undN [he tide La pohir rI1mmr rxphirllu

@1986byChrinian Bourgois Editeur.

i\s$is[~nce for the translation was provided by Ihe

French Minisrry of Culture.

\

9904 345

SI~nford Univeniry Pr=; Stanford, Californ ia

Chm by [he Bo.Jrd of Trusll'eS ofJhe Leland Stanford Junior University

I'rim<"d in [he Uni[cd SEales of America

C [ P d~ta al)pc~ r at [he end of [he book

Contents

A Nou 01/ Ciltlrioll " PART I: TWO PO E/l,tS BY PAUL CELAN

PART II: REMEMBERING DATES 39

§ , Catasu ophe 4 '

§ , Prayer 7'

§3 Sublime 87

§4 Hagiography 9'

§ 5 The Power of Naming 95

§6 Pain 98

§7 Ecstasy '0'

§8 Vertigo ' 04

§9 Blindness .06

viii

§ 10 Lird

§ II Sky

§ /2 The Unforgivable

Not~

WOrks Ciud

COllums

.07

'"

"7

A Note on Citation

The abbn .. 'Viation GW designates Paul Celan's Gnammrlu Werke; SW designatcs Friedrich Holderli n's Siimrliche Werkt'.

"

POETRY AS

EXPERIENCE

PART ON E

Two Poem, by Palll Celan

ExlUond an! No. BUI accollllUony an imo )'Our own unique

place or no !'SCIpe. And ~ yoursdrfra:.

MOIne McridianM,

Here are rwo poems by Paul Cclan:

TOSINGEN, JANNER

Zur Blindheil ubcr­redete Augen. Ihre-~ein

Ratsel ist Rein­emsprungencs" -, ihre Erinnerung an schwimmende Holderiimurme, mowen­umschwirn:.

Besuehe enrunkener Schreiner bei diesen tauchenden Wonen:

Kame, kame ein Mensch. kame tin Mensch Iur Welt, heme, mit dem Lichtban der Patriarchen: er durfle. sprach er von dieser Zeil, er durfle

J

4 7;1'0 Poml! by POIII C~"", Two Pomu by Palll U"1Il 5

Ilur fa llen und lallen. die in <las Such immcr-, immcr- -wessell Namen nahms auf J;II ZU. vor dem mcincn?-

(~ Pallaksch, PaJJ aksch. ~) die in dies Such gcschricbcnc Zcilc von

TOB INCIlN, JANUARY einer Hoffnung, helUe, auf cines Dcnkenden

Eyes l:llked imo kommendcs blindness. Won Thei r- "an cnigm:l is im Hcncn. the purely

Waldwascn. uncingccbnct, originaled"-, [heir O rchis und Orchis. einzdn, memory of

Holderli n lowers aRoal, circled Krudcs, spau~r, illl Fahren, by whirring gulls. dcudich,

Visits of drowned joiners 10 def uns f:ihrt , def Mensch, these der's mil anhart, submerging words:

die halb-Should, bcschriuc: nc:n Knl.ippel-should :l man, p&dc im Hochmoor, should a man come: into the world, today, wi,h

Feuchtcs. [he: shining ~2fd of the viel. patriarchs: he could,

jfhc spoke of this lime, he TO DTNAU8£RG

could Arnica, eyebright, the only babble and babble draft fro m the well with the over, over starred die above it, againagain .

in the (" Pallaksh. J>allaksh .ft)~ hut ,

the line TODT NAU8£RC

- whose name did the book Arnika, Augemrost, der register befo re mine?-Trunk aus dem Bmnnen mit dem the li ne inscribed Su:rnwlirfcl dt:luf, in that book abom

in (ler a hope, today.

Hii IlC, of a thinking man's

6 Ji4t(} PomlS by Paul C~km

COnlins word in the hc:l.fI,

woodland sw:a.rd, unlevelled, orchid and orchid, single.

coarse stufT, l:ucr, clear

In passing,

he who drives us, the man, who listens in,

the half-trodden wretched tracks through the high moors.

dampness, much.'

These rwo poems are well known; each of them has been trans­lated into French at least rwice. The fim, which is pan of the Ni~ mandsrou collection (1963), was initially translated by Andr~ du Bouche! (appearing in L'Ephtmm7. and then in Smru, published by Mercure de France in (971) before figuri ng in the completc ed i­tion of Ln T()U tk ~rsoml~, edited by Martine Broda (I.e Nouveau Com merce, 1979). The second. issued on its own in 1968 and then republished in LichrzWflllg in July '970, two or duet months after Celan's death. was translated by Jean Daive as early as 1970, and then , several years latcr, by And re du Boucher (Po~mt:J d~ Palll C~/al1, C livages, 1978). O rher published vcrsions of these poems may ex is t .~

II is obvious that the tidcs of bmh arc placcs: Tlibingen, Todt­nauberg. The poems seem, in each case, to commemorate a visi !. BlIt it is also obvious that these place names can additionally, even primarily, be names of JX:ople. Whatever trope we usc, the indica­tions. Ihe quotations, the allusions are all perfectly clear; and in any case. we already know that Tlibingen is H6JderJi n. and Todt ­nauberg, Heideggcr. I don't imagine it would be very useful to stress the reasons that prompt us today (hmtr. each poem includes

Two Pomu by Paul C~/1t1l 7

the word) 10 associate the two poems. For everyone who is. as we say. "concerned about our times" and ~mindful of history~ (Euro­pt.'an history), the two names, HQ,lderl in and Heidcgger, arc now indissolubly linked. T hey ~ice to...wbaLis..aLstake in our era (dit:ur ait). A world age-perhaps the world 's old age-is ap­pr03ching its end, for we are reaching a completion , closing the ci rcle of what the philosoph ical West has called. since Grecian times and in multiple ways, "knowledge. ~ T hat is, U(·/me. What has not bttn deployed. what has been forgon cn or rejected in the midst of this completion-and no doubt from the very begin­ning-must now dear itself a path to a possible future. let us agltt to say [hat this pertains. as Heidegger says himself, to the "task of thought." Such thought must re- inaugurate history. reopen the possibil iry of a world, and pave the way fo r the im probable, un­

/foreseeable advent of a god. Only this might "save" us. For this I task. art (again. uchlle). and in art. poetry. are perhaps able to pro­vide some signs. At least. that is the hope, fragile. tenuous. and

meager as it is. While it may nm be useful to suess. it is no doubt helpful at

least to remark the following: I. ~inkiog_oLHistory. is..cssemial l~ German.

It is nOt exclusively so, but since [he end of the eighteenth century. Germans have brought it a dimension never attained before or else­where; one reason for this, among others, is that the question of ,he rcladon berween Modern and Ancient, and of the possibiliry of uniqueness or idemiry for a whole people. has never been so much a qll~stioll as it has been in Germany. T hat is. first and fore­most. a quest ion for the "nation" - [he people-and in the lan­gU3ge, a latecomer to the world after the sumptuous. "ren~nt~ display of European unin ity. German has never ceased asplTln~, on pretense of its strange similarity 10 Greek (the "language of Ori ­

gin"). to the unique relation it has believed it could establish to everything most authemically Greek about Greece.

2 . Paul Celan (Ancel) was born in Czernowirl, Bu kovina. of German Jewish parents. Whatever the fine of Bukovina in the years that marked the end of Cclan's adolescence {he was born in

8 1;00 PomlJ by Paul Celnn

192.0)- il was, sliccessively, annexed by the U.S.S. R. in 1940, oc· cupied by Germany and Romania in 1941, and reconquered by the Red Army in 194J-Celan was not jUst a l the extreme fringes of Milu/l'/Iropa; he was of German binh, born into that language. In a mit: :Uld understandably forgonen sense, his nl1tio""liry was Ger· man. Th is did nO( in any way preclude his having a completely dif­fcrclH origin, or to be more precise, a completely different herimge. Thus, his language always remained that of the Other, an Other

I language without an "olher language," previously rather than lat-erally acquir«f, agai nst which to measure itsdf. All OIher languages were necessarily lateral for Celan; he was a gre.:.l.1 translator.

J. Paul Celan knew, as everything he wrote attests (and first and foremost, his acceptance of German as his working language), that today ("~ut~) it is with Germany that we must clarifY things.5 Not o nly because Cdan suffered as the victim of Germany's " HclJen i c.~ "Hyperborean" utopia, but because he knew it was impossible 10

el ude the question that the m opia's atrocity had transformed into an answer, a "solution." He embodied an exu eme, eternaJly insol. uble paradox in Germany as one o f the few people, aJmost the only person, to have borne wi tness ro the truth of the question that re­mains, as ever: (But) who are we (still , IOday, hmu)?

4· The extermination gave rise, in itS impossible possibility, in itS immense and intolerable banality, to the post·Auschwio. era (i n Adorno's sense). Celan said: "Death is a master who comes from Germany. "6 It is the impossible possibility, the immense and intol. crable banality of our time, of this time (diNa ait). It is always easy to mock ~distress," bm we arc its contemporaries; we arc at the endpoint of what Nom, ratio and Logos, still today (hellu) the

IffamcwOrk for what we are, cannot have tailed to show: that mur. de~ is th~ fi rs t thing to COUnt on, and eliminatio n the surest means of Identification. Today, everywhere, against this black but "en­lightened~ backgrou nd , remai ning reali ty is disappearing in the mire of a "globalized" world . Nothing, nOI even the most obvious phenomena, nOI even the purest, most wrenching love, can escape th is era's ~h:ldow: a cancer of the subject, whether in the ego or in the masses. To deny this on pretcxt of avoiding the pull of pathos is

Two Pomu by Paul ulan 9

{O behave like a sleepwalker. To transform it into pathos, so as 10

be able "stiW 10 produce art (.sentiment, etc,), is unacceptable. I want to ask the most brutal quest io n possible, at rhe risk of

being obnoxious: Was Celan able to situate not h imself, bu t us

v i s-~-v i s " it"? Was poetry still able to? If so, wh ich poetry, and what , in fact , of poetry? Mine is a distant way (distant now by many degrees, heavily layered over the very man who first asked) of repeating Holderlin's question: WOZfl Dichurf What for. indeed?

Here is how the twO poems I believe carry all [he weight of this q uestion have been translated into French:

TQ8INGI!N, J ANV I ER

(And" du Boudm)

A c6:itt' meme mucs, pupillcs. Leur-'cnigme cd a, qui cs[ pur jaiUissc:mem'-, leur me! moirt de [ours Holderl in nage;mt, d'un baltemem de moueefes scrties.

Visitcs de menuisiers engloutis par lelles paroles plongcam:

S'il venail, venait un homme. homme venai t au monde, aujourd'hui avec dan e! et barhe des patriarc.hes: illui faudrail, dut-il parler de tdle e!poque, illui fa udrait babiller uniquemem. babiller toujours el loujours ba-bi ller iller.

CPalb.ksch. Pallaksch. ~)

'0 Till{) Po~ms by Palll Cr/1I11

(Mflr/illt' Broda)

DI.'S )"<:U;II: $Ous les paroles uvcugl6 . Lcur-~enign1e

cc qui nail de source pur~-, leur souvenir de [Ours Holderlin nageam, tournoyecs de mouC:ltcs.

Visites de menuisiers noyes . '" mots qui plongent:

S' il YC llait,

vcnait un homme, vcnait un homrnc au monde, aujourd 'hui, avec la barbc de dane des pat riarches: it devrail, s' i1 pariah de: cc temps, iI devrait begayc:r sculemcm. begaycr fOutoulOujours

bCgaycr.

r PaJJaksch. Paliaksch. H

)

TODTNAUBERG

(jl'flfl Dair~)

Arnika, ccm2ur&:, [a boisson du puil.S avec, au--<!.essus. l'asHc.dt'.

danslc refuge.

ecritc dans Ie livre «IIIe! nom ponair-it aV:l.1l1 Ie rnicn?).

Two Iwm! by Palll C,.iall

«rite dans cc livre 1a lignc, aujourd'hui, J 'unc mente: de qui pense parole il, venir au coeur,

de la mousse des bois, non aplanie, orchis ct o rchis. cbirscmc.

de 13 vcrocur, plus tard , en voyage. distincte,

qui now conduit , I'homme, qui, ~ eela, lend l'oreille,

Ics chemins de rondins ~ demi parcourw dans la fange,

de I'humide, u ..

(Andr! du Boudm)

Arnika, lum inel, cene gorg~ du pUilS au cube etoile plus h3U1 du de,

dans la hune,

I~ , dans un livre - Ics noms, de qui, rdeva. avant Ie mien?-la. dans un livre, lignes qui inscrivent une 3I1ent(, aujourd'hui.

de qui m&liteta (~ venir, in-ccssammcll1 veni r)

un mot du coeur

"

IiI)() Poems by Paui Celan

hUlIlus des bois, jamais aplani,

orchis, orchis, un ique,

chose crue, plus [ard, chemin faisam, clai re,

qui nous voitura, I'homme, lui-meme a son 6.::oute,

it moitie fraye Ie layon de rondins la-haut dans Ie marais,

humide, OU I.

(At rhe end of Andre du Bouchet's slim volume, we read the fol­lowing note: '''Todtnaubcrg' was translated using the ini tial version of the poem, dated 'Frankfurt am Main, 2 August 1967.' From a word-for-word translation suggested by Paul Celan , I have kept the French 'qui nous voitura' fo r 'der uns fahrt .' A.d.B.")

I am nor juxtaposing these rranslations here in order to compare or commem on them. It is nor my inrenrion [Q "cri tique" them. At most, I thi nk it necessary [Q remark that what we might call rhe uMallarmean" style of Andre du Bouchet's n anslarions, their effete or precious quali ty, does not do justice [Q the lapidary hardness, the abruptness oflanguage as handled by Celano O r mher, the lan­guage that held him, ran through him. Especially in his late work, prosody and synrax do violence [Q language: they chop, dislocate. truncate or Cut it. Something in this certainly bears comparison [Q

what occurs in Holderlin's last, "paratactic" efforts. as Adorno calls them: condensat ion and juxtaposition, a strangling of language. But no lexical "refinemelll ," or very little; even when he Opts for a SOrt or ~surreal " handling of metaphor or "image," he does not de­part from essentially simple, naked language. For exa mple, the "such" ( It''I~) used twice as a demonstrative in the "Mallarmean"

Two Ponm by Paui C~lan ' 3

translation of "Tubingen, January" is a turn of phrase totally for­eign [Q Celan's style. Even more so the "A ccci[t~ mcme I mue, pupiJles" CTo blindness itsel f I moved , pupils") that begins the same poem in what is indeed the most obscure way possible. But I do not wish to rcopen rhe polemic initiated a decade or so ago by Meschonn ic. '

No, though I recall these rranslations, and though I will even, in turn , try my hand at translating, I do not wish to play at compar­ison- a game oflimited interest. Nor do I cite them as an obliga­tory preamble to commentary. I give the translations only so we can see where we stand. I believe these poems to be completely un­translatable, includ ing within their own language, and indeed, for this reason, invulnerable to com mentary. T hey lucmarily escape imerpretation; they forbid it. One could even say they are written to fo rbid it. This is why the sole question carrying them, as it car­ried all Celan's poetry, is that of meaning, the possibili ty of mean­ing. A transcendental question, one might say. wh ich does to some extent inscribe Celan in Holderlin's lineage or wake: rhat of "po­etry's poetry" (without, of course, the least concession to any SOrt of "formalism") . And a question that inevitably takes away, as Hei­degger fo und with both Holderlin and TrakI , all fo rms of her me­neutie power, even at one remove: fo r example, envisioning a "her­meneutics of hermeneurics." For in any case, sooner or later one finds oneself back at "wanting to say nothing," which exceeds (or j..­falls shorr of) all "wanting to say," all intention of signifYing, since it is always caughr in advance in an archetypal double bind of the "Don't read me" sort; in this instance, something like, "Don't be­li t.'"Ve in meaning anymore." Since Rimbaud's time, ler's say, this has always amounred to saying "Believe m~, don't believe in meaning anymore, " wh ich at once raises and demotes, pathetically, risibly, or fraudu lently, the "I" that thus projects itself to (and from) the fUllction of incarnati ng meaning.

The question I ask myself is indeed that of the subject, that can­cer of the subject, both the ego's and the masses'. Because it is fi rst the question of whoever today (hntte) might speak a language other than the subject's, and attest or respond to the unprecedented ig-

'4 T/uo P()~ms by Pall! C~lall

I nominy thac the "age of the subjed' rendered itself-and re­mains- guilty of. At least since Schlegel and Hegel, it is also, in­dissocial>ly. the question of rhe lyric: is lyric a "subjective" genre? In S UIll , it is the question of the banished singularity of rhe subject or. wh:u amoun ts to the sa me thing, rhe queslion of idiom, of "pure idiom," if that can exisr. Is it possible, and necessary. ro wrench oneself Oll( of the language of the age? To say what? Or rather, to speak what?

Such a question, as you perceive-and here 1 am barely shifting angles-is no different from that of rhe relation between "poetry and thought," Dichtm IIlId Denkm, a question indeed speci fi cally asked in German. What is a work of poetry that. forswea ring the repetition of the disastrous, deadly, already-said, makes itself ab­solutely singular? What should we th ink of poetry (o r what of thought is left in poetry) thar must refuse, sometimes wi th great

¥ ~tu~~rnness, (O.sign.iff.? Or, simply, what is a poem ~hose "cod-109 IS such that If fo ds 10 advance all arremprs to decipher it?

I have been aski ng myself this question, which I gram is nai"ve, for a long rime, and especially since reading Peter Szondi 's analysis of"Ou liegst ... ,"8 the poem on Berlin written in 1967 and pub­lished in Sclm«fNlrt in 1971; it is, along with twO essays by B!anchor and by Uvinas published in 1972 in the &IJU~ d~s b~11n kttm ("Le demier a parler" and "Dc I'etre a l'autre"9), amo ng the very few il­luminating commemaries on Celan. But whereas Blanchor's and LCvinas's readings remain "gnomic," to recall Adorno's objection to

Heidegger's illlerprctation ofHoldcri in lO-that is, they found their arguments on phrases lifted from Cclan's poems (his verse contains many such isolatable bits, as does all "thinking poetry")-Szondi 's analysis is (0 my knowledge rhe on ly one il to completely decipher a poem, down to irs most resistant opacities, because jt is rhe only one to know what "material" gave rise to the work: the circum­stances remembered, the places traveled to, the words exchanged, the siglHS glimpsed or contemplated, and so on. Szondi SCOuts OUt the least allusion, the slightest evocation. The result is a translation in which almost nothing is left over; almost, because we must srill explain, beyond Szondi's delight ar having been present in the right

Two POnlU by Palll Ctlnll "

place at the right time, a poetry based o n the exploitation of such "singularity," and thus (i.e., in this respect) forever inaccessible to

those who did not initially witness what the poetry transformed into a very laconic "Story" or a very allusive "cvocatio n."

The question I have called that of idiom is therefore more ex­actly rhat of singulariry. We must avoid confusing th is with an­mher, relatively secondary or derivative question, that of the "read­able" and the "unreadable." My question asks not just abou t the "texr," but about the singu lar txperimu comi ng inro writi ng; it asks if, being singular, experience can be written, or iffrom the mo- \ ment of writing its very singularir: .is not forever lost an~ b~rne away in one way or another, at o nglll or en route to destl natlon, by the very fact of language. This could be d ue to language's im­possible inrransitiviry, or to the desire for meaning, fo r universal­ity, that animates voices divided by the constrain t of a language that is itself, in turn, only o ne of many. Is there, can there be, a sj n~

gular experience? A silen t experience, absolutely untouched by lan~ guage, unprompted by even the most slightly art iculated discourse? If, impossibly, we can say ~yes," if singularity exists or subsists de~

spi te all odds (and beyond all empi rical considerations, the pres­e nce of a witness such as Peter Szondi, for example, or of someone else who knows), can language possibly take o n its burden? And would idiom suffice for the purpose-idiom of course different fro m the facile "crypting" or refusal to reveal one's point so terri­bly endemic to the "modern"? These questions pose neither the problem of solipsism nor that of autism, but very probably that of solitude, wh ich Celan experienced [Q what we must justly call the utmost degree.

J retead "Tubingen, January" (a poem with an old~fashioned date, Jiilm~r for jallllar, as if in all usion to H olderli n's disconcert ~

ing manner of dati ng poems during h is "mad~ period); J reread it as J read it, as I understand it, as J th us can nor but translate it. This effort is pardy unnecessary because of Marrine Broda's beau­riful French translation, which to my mind can hardly be im­proved upon , and from which I will at least borrow the unsurpas-

\ 16 Ttl/O Pomu by Paul C~lrm

sable phr.uc ~wll(:ded with gulls" rrour I noy~ de moucttes"),12 But I cannol help translating here. So I reru m , with emendations, to a rendering I anempted a few years ago whi le working on Holdcrlin:

T OBINCEN, JANV I ER

Sous un ROl d'cloquence avcugl6. Jt'S yeux. Uur-"unc

cnigme est Je pur jaill t -, [cur mcmoirc:dc tOurs Holdcrl in nagcam, IOUf­noy~s de moucttes.

Visites de menuis iers submerges sous co, paroles plongeam :

Viendrait, vicndrait un homme vicndrait un homme au monde, aujourd'hui.:lV« la barbc de [umiere des Pauiarches: il n'aurait , parlerait-i l de cc tcmps, il n'aurai! qu'a bCgaycr. bCgayer sans sans sans cesse.

(" Pallaksch. PalJaksch. ~)

TOOINCEN, JANUARY

Beneath a Row of eloquence blinded. the eyes. Thcir-"an cnigma is the pure Sprung forth~ -, their memory of

Two Pomu by PauL C~lnll

Holderl in lowers swimming, wheeled wi th gulls.

Joincrs' visits submcrged bene:lth

""" diving words:

If thcre C:;Lme if mcre C:;Lmc a man if therc C:;Lmc a man inlO Ihc world today, wi,h thc beard oflighl of thc Pat riarchs: he would net=d only. if he spokc of Ihis time, hc would net=d only 10 stuller, stuncr without, without wilhom cease.

("Pallaksh. Pallaksh. ~)13

17

What these few, barely phrased phrases say. in their extenuated. infirm discourse. stuttering on the edge of silence or the incom­prehensible (gibberish, idiomatic language: uPallaksh"), is not a "srory"; they do nor recount anYlhing. and most certainly not a visit to the HJJldnlillturm in Tubingen. They undoubtedly mean something; a "message," as it were, is del ivered. They present, in any case. an intelligible unerance: if a man, a Jewish man-a Sage, a Prophet, or one of the Righteous, "with I the beard of light of I the Pauiarchs,"-wanted today to speak fon h about the age as Holderl in did in his time, he would be condemned to stammer, in the manner, let us say, of Beckett's "mclaphysical tramps. " He would sink into aphasia (or "pure idiom"), as we are told Holdcrlin did; in any case, Holderl in's ~madnc.ss" came to define the aphasic myth:

MNEMOSVNE ( II )

Ein Zcichen sind wir, deutungslos SchmerLlos sind wir und haben F.iSt

Die Sprache in der Frtmdc verloren, '·

18 7illo Poems by Palll ulan

1\ sign we :HC, meaningless Pai nl CS11 we are and ha\'c nearly Losl our language in foreign places.

More pre<:isely, we might $,;Iy thaI to speak the age, it would be e nough :or such a rna," to stammer-stun cr; the age belongs 10

srammcnng. to stuUcn ng. Or rather, stutlcring is th(' only " lan­guage" o,r the age. The end of meaning- hiccuping, hailing.

Yct {his message comes second in the poem; it is a lin le like thc "lesson" or the "moral" of a classic fable; itS presence makes cxplicil , wilhi n though slightly detached from the poem (see the colon 3 1

the end of the second stanza), what the poem says before- what it » says (lSa poem. It is a translation . The idiomatic poem contains its

own translation, which is a justification of the idiomalic. Or 31

least, we can form ulate it this way; the problem then becomes knowing what it explicitly translates.

I propose to call what it translates "experience," provided that we both .undemand the word in its strict sense-the Lati n tx-pttriri, a ~ro~lng through danger-and especially that we avoid associati ng II wuh what is "lived," the stuff of anecdotes. Erfolmmg, then, rather than E,kbniJ. I

) I say "experience" because what the poem "springs forth" from here- the memory of bedazzlement, which is also the pure dizziness of memory-is precisely that which d id nm take place. d id not happen or occur during the singular cvent that the ~m relates to without relating: the visit, after so many oth­ers since the joiner Zim me r's time. to the tOwcr on rhe Neckar ":he~e Holderlin lived without livi ng for the last thirty-six years of hIS life - half of his lifc. A visit in memory of that experience, which is also in the non-form of pure non-cvcnt.

I shall try to explai n. \Vhat the poem ind icates and shows what it movcs toward , is irs source. A poem is always ~en route,~ wun_ dcrway. " as "'~he Merid ian" recalls. 16 Thc path the poe m S<.'"Cks to

?pen up here IS. that of its own source. And making its way thus to

ItS own so~rce, It seeks to reach the gcneral source of poetry. It says, tI ~~n, or tfl C~ 10 say. the "springing forth" of the poem in its possi­bility, that IS. in its "cnigma. " "An en igma is the pure sprung

Two POttms by Pnul (Linn 19

fo rth ;"17 so speaks thc first verse to the fou rth stall7.a of the hymn ''The Rhine," wh ich in a way is the source here. Holderlin adds: "Even I T he song may hardly reveal it. " But if the poem says o r trics to say the source in th is manner, it says it as inaccessible, o r in any case unrevealed "cven [by] the song," because in p!ace of the source, and in a way which is itself enigmatic, there is d i7.ziness, the instant of blindness or b«Iazziement before the sparkling waters of the Neckar, the fragmenting glitter. the image of the visi tors swal­lowed up. Or because therc is also the stark reminder (hat precisely ill this piau, it was revealed 10 so many visitOrs that the source (of the poem , rhe song) had dried up. And that prcviously it had in­

deed been an enigma that sprang fOrl h. Dizziness can co me upon one; it does not simply occur. oTl

rather, in it, nothi ng occurs. It is the pure suspension of occur­rence: a caesura or a syncope. T his is what "drawing a b lank~ means. 'What is suspended, arrested, ripping suddenly intO strange­ness, is the presence of the present (rhe being-present of the pre­sent). And what then occurs without occurring (for ir is by defini­lion what cannot occur) is-without being- nothi ngness, [he "nothing of being" (ntt-rns). Di7.zines.s is an txpmt'nct' of nothing­ness, of what is, as H eidegger says, "properly" non-occurrence, nothingness. Nothing in it is "lived," as in all experience. because all experience is the experience of nothingness: the experience 0[; diuiness here, as much as the anguish Heidegger describes, or as much as laughter in Bataille. O r the lightn ing recognition oflove. As much as all the infin itely paradoxical, " impossible" experiences of death, of disappearance in the present. How poignant and d iffi­cult to think that Celan chose his own death (the most fin ite infi­nite choice). throwing himself into the waters of the Seine.

10 say this agai n in another way: there is no "poetic experience" in the sense of a "lived moment" or a poetic "state. " If such a thi ng exists, o r thinks it does- fo r afte r all it is the power, o r impotence, of lirer.lfufC to believe and make others believe this-it can not give rise to a poem. To a story, ycs, or to discourse, whether in verse or prose. To "literature," perhaps, at least in the sense we understand il IOday. But not to a poem. A poem has noth ing to recount, noth-

'0 Tiw Poom by Pnul c~!tw

ing to say; what it rCCOUll lS and says is that from which it wrenches away as a poem. If we speak of "poetic emotion," we must think of its cognate bnoi,I8 whose etymology indicne5 the absence o r de-­privadon of strength. "A une passante" is nor rhe nostalgic story of an cncoumer, bUi the entreaty (hat arises from collapse, the pure echo of such an imoi, a song o r a prayer. Benjamin hardly dared S.1Y. though he knew pcrfecrly well, that this is perhaps (2nd I stress the "perhaps") what ProUSt did not undersrand in understanding Baudelai re, and probably also what rhe overly nostalgic Baudelaire sometimes did not undersrand in understanding himself (though he did write the prose poems, which redeem all).I'

BUI the poem's "wanring~not.to.say" does not want not to say. A poem wams to saYi indeed , it is nothi ng but pu re wanting- to­say. But pure wanti ng-to-say nothing, nmhingness, that against which and th rough which there is presence, what is. And because nothingness is inaccessible to wanting, the poem's wanting col­lapses as such (a poem is always involunrary, like anguish, love, and even self-chosen death); then nothing lets itself be said , the thing itSelf, and letS itself be said in and by the man who goes to it de­spite himself, receives it as what cannm be received, and submits to it. He accepts it. trembling that it should refusc; such a strange, Aeeting, elusive "being" as me meaning of what is.

In th e end , if there is no such thi ng as "poetic experience" it is si mply because experience marks the absence of what is " lived ." This is why, stricdy speaking, we can talk of a poetic aiJullu, as­suming existence is what at times PUtS ho l~ in life, rending it to PUt us beside ourselves. It is also why, given that existence is furti ve

~ and discontinuous, poems are rare and necessarily brief, even when they expand to try to stay the loss or deny the evanescence of what compelled them into being. Further. this is why there is nothing necessa rily grandiose about the poetic, and why it is generally wrong to confuse poetry with celebration ; one ca n find , in the most extreme triviality, in insigni fi cance, perhaps even in fri voli ty (where Mallarm e occasionally lost himself), pure, never-pure strangeness: the gift of not bing or pT~s~m ofllorhillg comparable to the linle token one describes. saying: " Jr 's nothing." Indeed. it is

Tioo Poems by Paul C~"III " never noth ing, it is lIo th;'Ig; it can as well be pitiable or totally without grandeur. terrifying or overwhelmi ngly joyous.

We are tOld that when Holderlin went "mad," he constantly repeated, " Nothing is happening to me, nothing is happening to me."

The dimness of existence is what the poem "Tubingen, January" says. It says it inasmuch as it says itselfas a poem. inasmuch as it says what arose from, or remains of, the non-occurred in the singu­lar event it commemorates. " In_occurrence" is what wrenches the "" event from its singularity, so that at the height of singularity. singu­lari ty itSelf vanishes and saying suddenly appears-the poem is pos­sible. Singba," Rm: a singable remainder, as Cclan says elsewhere.20

This is why the poem commemorates. Its experience is an expe­rience of memory. The poem speaks of Erhmertmg, but also se­cretly calls upon the Andmkm of Holderli n's poem o n Bordeaux, and the Gediichtnis where H61derlin fo und Mnemosyne's reso­nance. The poem was not born in the moment of the Hjjld~Tlill­tIInll visit. Properly speaking, it was not born in any moment. Not only because dizziness or bedazzlement by defi nitio n never consti­tutes a moment. bur becausc what brings on the dizziness and re­calls me waters of the Neckar is not those waters. bur another river: the Holderlin ian river itsclf. A double meaning here: first me river. or rivers. lhat Holderlin sings (the Rhine, the Ister. the source of the Danube, etc.). and then the river of Holderlin's poetry. Or, as I've said. the "Rood of eloquence. n

In "Tubingen, January." the eyes are not in fact blinded; no be­dazzlement rakes place. They are Zltr BlilldJuit jiba"du~, per­suaded to blindness. BlIt to translate jib~"tdm by "persuade," or "convince," does not convey the full sense of jiher and all it con­tains as a signifier of overflow. To be iiber"det- I take this on Michel Deursch's autho rity-is si mply "to be taken in ," "run eir­cles around ," overwhelmed by a tide of eloquence. Less "taken for a ride" than "submerged ," "drowned ," or, mOSt accurately, " to be had." The eyes-the eyes that see Holderlin's tower, the waters of the Neckar, the wheeling gulls-are bli nded by a Rood of words

21 Two Pom-u by Palll C~lIln

or eloquence; the eyes are taken in, and the memory of the river poem "The Rhine" recalls and calls forth the memory of the dizzi. ness, the engulfing bedazzlement: that is, as with all "involuntary memory. ~ the memory of "what was neither purposely nor con. sciously 'lived ' by the subject," as Benjamin perfectly demon­slr:lIcd for Baudelaire using Freud's argument agai nst Ikrgson.21

Thus dizziness here indicates the in-occum:nce of which mem­

ory-and not merely recollection-is the paradoxical restitution. T he dizziness is memory because all real memory is veniginous, offering the very atopia of existence. what takes plaa: without tak­ing place; giving a gift that forces the poem into thanking. into ec­stasy. This is why the poem is obliged into thoughl: "To think and thank," says the Bremen speech. "dmkm Iwd dankm. have the same root in our language. If we follow it [0 g~dmkm. ~i"g~dmk

s~i1l. A"denktn and Audlle"t we enter the semantic fields of mem. ory and devotion. "21

Thus. "TUbingen , January" does nO[ say any state of the psyche. any lived experience of the subject. any ErI~b1li$. Nor is it- this fo llows logically-a celebration of Holderlin (it comes closer to saying how Holderlin disappoints). It is definitely 1Iot a "senti. mental" poem, whether in Schiller's o r the com mon sense. The poem says "drowning" in Holderlin's verse. It says it as its "possi. bility," a possi bility infi nitely and interminably paradoxical, be. cause it is the possibi li ty of the poem inasmuch as, possible-im. possible. it says, if not the pure impossibility, then atlcast the scam possibili ty of poetry.

Here. according to standard procedure, I should begi n my com. mentary. Bm I have said I will refrain-not to reject commentary in and of itself, but lx.'Cluse such commentary, which in any case would be impossible to complete, would require fur toO much in the present context. Among other things, one would have to read ''The Rhine," return generally [0 the HoJderiinian themaries of {he rivcr./dcmi.god. and ask what links the entirety of such thematics to the possibility of poetry (an), the opening of a sacred space (and the expectation of a god), the appropriation of the own (and the

Two Poems by Paul Celall 2J

birth of a homeland). This would not only require raking Heideg­gerian commentary inro account- both the one Cclan knew and the one of which he was ncussarily ignOrantilJ one would still have to measure, and measure accurately, the myth this commentary created of Holderlin, tin Die"t" tin Die"hmg, for thought and p0-

etry within and outside Germany. The extraordinary magnirude of his task, me immeasurable occurrence he hoped for from poetry, reduced him to silence, to babbling and stuttering, subject to rhal harshest constraint of in-occurrence. Subject to its law.

I can only mention all this as the underpin ning ofCelan's poemi but also, I mUSt immediately add . as that from which, against all odds, it lifts away, succeeds in lifting. For in the end there is a poemi in the end there is art, as "The Meridian" says, borrowing a theme from Buchner: Acb, die K,UlJt!

That is why I will limit mysclfhere to examining this "success." I will ask only this simple question-the question, as it were, of the si1lgbam- Rest, the singable residue: whar saves this poem from . wreckage in, and the wreckage of. poetry? How does it happen that ., in poetry, Out of poetry, all is not lost, that a possibility of articu· lating something still remains, if only in stuttering, if o nly in an incomprehensible and incommunicable language, an idiolect or id· iom? (The whole poem, insofar as it succeeds in springing back from poetic engulfing, is drawn as ifby magnet to the double "Pal· labeh," which, in parentheses, punctuates it definitively, and punc· lUates it thus on H olderlin's ruined words: in this case, a "Swabian" Greek which evinced, for those who witnessed his reclusion, what Schelling called the "dilapidation of his mind," and which , along with (he thirty-odd poems saved fro m this period , attests-no matter how we m ight propose, like Bertaux, all possible em pirical decipherings-to the drying up of the poetic source and idiomatic babbling. Not th at this proh ibirs the poems from remaining po­ems. Such, precisely, is the enigma.) -

A moment ago I said "the wreckage in and of poetry." To be en· gulfed in a flood of poetry means [hat poetry itself sinks, drowns, that irs own overflow dries in it irs very possibility-a source sub·

1"illO Poems by Palll Celtlll

merged in Ihe flood ,hal it brought fonh itself, as Holderlin 100

perhaps w:lOted to say when he spoke of the rivers (hat flow back

d I . .Z. IOwar I lelr sou rce.

[)EK ISTER

... Dcr scheinet abcr fitsl Rlikwam zu gehen und !eh mein, er miissc kommen Von Osten. Viek'S ware Zu sagen davon.

Umsonst nichl gehn 1m Troknen die Strome. Abcr wie? Ein Zeichen brauchl (,s ..

... Yet almosl this rh'er seems To Irdvd backwards and I think it must come from The East. Much could Be said about this ....

Not for nothing rivers flow Through dry land. Slit how? A sign is needed ... n

What poetry sinks into, what drowns poetry, is an eloquence. But we must make no mistake about eloquence; a "saying tOO much" is of course at issue, but the "100 much" docs nOI mean o nly abundance or overabundance ("overflow"); ir means, also, or fi rsl, eXCeSs ("sayi ng 100 much abolll someth ing"). It is nOt Ihe word that divulges a secret, but rather, the one that transgresses an interdict.

In Hfilderlinian themacics, such a word is mainly tragic, Ihe word of dbnmm; for example, Anrigone vying and identifying with the divine. It is the word of infinite desire, desire of the in-fi­nite and of the One-and-all; it is the word of furor and fusion, so native and natural to rhe Greeks, those men of the E.1St possessed by Ihe d ivine, that all the formal rigor and sobriety of their an was

Two Pomls by Palll Celnll " required to "purify" and contain it; o nly th us could they avoid burning Ihemsclvcs with "heaven's fire, '" or dizzily losing Ihemsclvcs in enrhusiasm. Hfilderlin's definition of ,ragedy:

The presentation of Ihe , ragic reslS primarily on the nemendous (das Ul1g~h~un)-how Ihe god and man mate and how nalUral force and man's innermost boundlessly unite in wrath-conceiving of it­self; (rests] on rhe boundless union purifying itself through boundless separadon.16

But according 10 a logic I cannot derail here,» i[ is precisely Ihis word that Westerners, Hesperians-that is, first of all, Germans­must find , or rediscover. They who arc naturally sober, o r, as Hfildcrlin says of Oedipus, the hero with a Western destiny, natu­rally flt"~oi, lacking a god, without furo r or desire, "wandering be­neath the unthin kable." They mUSt rediscover this word, the "sa­cred pathos," even at [he risk of sinking, of lening themselves go. Even at the risk of losi ng their innate "clarity of presentation (Dars/ellrlng)," their sense of proportion-of "neglecting the na­tive," as the Greeks d id in the opposite direction when they insti­tuted the "empire of arr."2S This was Holderlin's folie abroad, in France, in Greece, according [0 the myth he himself had forged of his existence (and of rhe Wesl'S fa te): " I can say what Ihey say of heroes: I have been muck by Apollo. " It was the fate of Oedipus, blind for having "an eye tOO many." Both were struck in the ex­tremity of their eloquence, in their sacred word ("May the sacred be my word!"), Iheir "too infinite" interpretation of the oracle or divine signs. In their "madness. "

Madness is, indeed, Ihe absence of artistic production. In turn­ing away from madness, the Greeks lost themselves in works, in arriSlic virtuosif)'. If Ihey undergo the trial of madness, Westerners or moderns risk Ihe inabiliry ro accede ro work, ro artistic sobriety; and yet in rhis sobriery resides [har which is their own. Proportion is thus needed, as Holderli n's poems ceaselessly repeal because Hfilderi in, pressed by madness, knew his poems drew their fragile possibiliry from this source. Limits are needed: rhe law. The accep­tance, even rhe aggravation, of finitude. What Holderi in calls loy-

I

1iuo Po~ms by Paul C~/all

airy. And first. loyalry to the God's "categorical turning away," [0

his withdrawal, that is, [0 his very obviousness in eternal in­appcar.lIlcc, the pure appearance of nothing.

IN I.TEBUCHER BLXUE •••

... So lange die Freundlichkeit noch am Henen, die Reine, dauert, missel nicht unglliklich der Mensch sich mil der Gonheil. 1st un­bckannt Con? 1st er offenbar wie der Himmel? dieses glaub' ich eher. Des Menschen Maass ists. Voll Verdiensl, doch dich lerisch, wohnel der Mensch auf dieser Erde.

IN LOVELY BLUENESS •.•

. . . As long as kindliness, which is pure, remains in his heart not unhappily a man may compare himself with the divinity. Is Cod un­known? Is He manifest as the sky? This ralher I believe. II is Ihe mea­sure of man. Full of acquirements, but poetically, man dwells on this earth.Z9

The poem that precedes "Tiibingen, January" in the Nimlilmis­rose collection, and whose motif gives the collection its lide, is called "Psalm":

PSALM

Niemand knetet uns wieder aus Erde und Lehm, niemand bespricht unsern St2ub. Niemand.

Gelobt seisl du, Niemand. Oir 'lulieb wollen wir bliihn. Oir entgegen.

Ein Nichls waren wir. sind wi r, werden wir bleibcn, bliihend: die Nichts-. d ie Niemandsrose.

Two Pomu by Paul C~lall

Mit dem G rifTel seelenhell , dem Staubfaden himmelswilst, der Krone rot yom Purpurwort, das wit sangen tiber, a liber dem Oorn.

PSALM

No one moulds us again out of tarth 2nd clay, no one conjures our dust. No one.

Praised be yout name, no one. For your sake we shall flower. Towards you.

A noming we were. are, shall remain, flowering: the noming-. the no one's rose.

With our pistil soul-bright , wim our stamen heaven-ravaged, our corolla red with the crimson word which we sang over, 0 over the thorn.,}O

'7

As o ne of [hose who have undergone the trial of dlmNllff and risked being engulfed. as o ne of the heroes and (ncar) demi-gods of H esperia. "The Rhine" names Rousseau: the Rousseau of the R~vuj~J, we suppose, in a pure poem of contained flooding elo­quence, of 'urittm drowning in en thusiasm. The poem inaugurates

modern lyricism.

7illo Potms by Pllul Ctlllll

DIlIl IlIIEIS

... Halbgotter denk'ich jent Und kennen muss ich die Teuern , Wei I ofl ihr Leben so Die schnend!.' Brust mir bewegel. Wem aber, wie. Rousseau, dir, Unubcrwindlich die 5«le Die starkausdauernde ward, Und sieherer Sinn Und sil.sse Gabe"tu horen. Zu reden so, dass er aus heiliger Folic Wie der Weingou, lorig goulich Und gesenlos sic die Sprache der Rei ncslen gibt Verstandlieh den Guten, abcr mit Recht Die Achtungsloscn mil Blindheil schlagl Die elltweihenden Knechte, wie nenn ieh den Frcmdcn?

TilE RH I NE

... Of demigods now I think And I must know these dear ones Because of len their lives Move me and fi ll me with longing. BUI he whose soul, like yours, Rousseau. ever strong and patient, Ikcame invincible, Endowed with sleadfasl purpose And a SWCCI gift of heari ng, Of speaking, so that from holy profusion Like the wine~god fool ishly, divinely And lawlessly he gives it away, The language of the purest, comprehensible to the good, But rightly strikes with blindness the irreverent, The profaning rabble, what shall I call thai manger?J!

Rousseau, the "Sage," the "noble spiri t" - to whose tomb, says one of Holderlin's earliest poems, "the child hurries ... seized by a great shivcr"-imercedcs; he was the first of his era who understood how to grasp a "sign. " the sign from G reece, land of Dionysus: the dj~

Two PomlS by PIlIlI Ctlllll '9

viners) sign'. It was therefore he who opened up ,he possibil ity of poetry, that is. its prophtticpossibility. The ode entitled "Rousseau" says so thus:

Und Strahlen 2US der schonern Zeit. Es Haben die Boten dein Hen. gefunden.

Vernommen hast du sie, ve!Sl2nden die Sprache der Fremdlinge,

Gedeutet ihre Sccle! Oem Schnenden war Der Wink genug, und Winke sind

Von Allers her die Spr;l.che der Goner.

Und wunderbar, als harte von Anbeginn Des Menschen Geist das Werden und Wirken all,

Des Lcbcns aile Weise schon c: rfahren

Kenm er im eTSu:n Zeichen Vollcndeles schon. Und fliegl , der kuhne Geist, wie Adler den

Gewitlern, weissagend seinen Kommenden Goncm, VO r;l.US.

The radiance of a bener age. The Heralds who looked for your heart have found it.

You've heard and comp~hended lhe slrangeTS' tongue, Interp~ted rheir soul! For rhe yearning man

The him sufficed, because in hinu from Time immemorial the gods have spoken.

And marvellous, as though from lhe very first The human mind had known all that grows and move,

Foreknown life's melody and rhythm,

In sc..-ed grai ns he can measure the full ~grown plant; And Aies, bold spirit. Aies as the c2gles do

Ahead of thunderstorms, preceding Gods, his own gods, to announce their coming.Jl

Such is eloquence: rhe "prophetic tone," or what H olderlin also calls "eccemric enthusiasm , ~ (another name for "sacred padlos"). In rhe :'time of distress" and the "wo rld's night ," between, as Hei~

30 Tiro Pot:lm by Paul CelAn

deggcr says, "the 'no more' of gods who have Red and the 'not yet' of the god to come." the possibi lity of poetry, and with it that of a world. is ecstasy. And risk; onc may be bested , may sink or "[Ouch OOlfol11," as Niensche says, "by way of rhe truth," Si nce rhe fifth "Promenade," whose place in (he exact center of the RnNritJ was determined by Rousseau's death , water has been precisely the "reveric" of the dizziness that comes, nm from the subject's cxaha­

lion, as rhe reductive intcrpretadon of lyricism always maintains, but from its loss. or rather from the "forgetting of the self. " 'The Meridian" again: "Whoever has art before his eyes and on his mind ... has forgoncn himsel( An produces a distance from the I. Art demands here a certain distance, a certain path, in a certain direction. "33

He re, among all possible examples, are the last twO sta nzas of Rimbaud's poem "Mcmoire," on nostalgia and desire, ~hich opens with "L'eau claire; comme Ie sel des larmes d 'enfance, I L'assaut au soleil des blancheurs des corps de fem mes" ("Clear water; like the salt of chi ldhood tears; I T he assault on the sun by the whiteness of women's bod ies");

Jouet de cer oeil d'cau morne, je n'y puis prendre, 6 ClnOI immobile! oh! bras nop coum! ni I'une ni I'aulre fleur; ni la jaune qui m'imporrune, l~; ni la bleue, amie ~ I'cau cou/eur de ccndre.

Ah! la poudre des saules qu'une aile secoue! Les roses des roseaux des longtemps devortcs.! Mon ClnOl, roujour "lie; et sa chaine tiree Au fond de cet ocil d'cau sans bords,-;\ queUe boue?

Toy of this sad eye of water, I cannot pluck, o mOlionle.s.s boat! 0 arms tOO short, either Ihis Or the other flower; ncirher the yellow one which bothers me There, nor the friendly blue one in the ash-colored water.

Ali! dust of the willows shaken by a wing! The roses of the reeds devoured long ago! My boat still stationary, and its chain caught In the bOllom of this rimless t'}'e of water-in whll mud?.M

Two PomlS by Paul Celnll 3'

Bm Celan's d izziness has a completd y different meaning. if only because it is d iz.z.iness at the sight of the diz.z.incss just dcscribed­a diz.z.iness all suond degrt, as it were. BUI that does not mean it is lesser, or simulated.

Celan, like Oedipus-the blind man, the "poor stranger" in Greece-is athtos. This certainly does nO( mean "atheist"; "Praise be 10 you, no one" is a true prayer. Oedipus-bm Oedipus without the slightest hope of reruming 10 Colonus, of the Eumenides's sa­cred wood, of a call originating elsewhere, among the bushes or in the earth, to respond ro the prayer and grant it. To signal "all is done," the sin (without sin) is expiated, the suffering is d rawing to a dose, persecmion can no longer take place. For Celan. an exile, per~ sccution was without possible remission-and what persecution, compared [0 that of the royal phnrmakos. It was unforgettable and indelible; Auschwin, the purely uunthinkable," had ushered in for all time a "time of d istress" that no hope of a god could still buttress.

The time of d istress is the time- now our history-of what Holderlin also called pain (both Schm~rz and Leidm), the word that runs through both " In Lovely Blueness" and modern lyricism, from Baudelaire to Trakl and Mandelstam. Pain, which is nOt ex~ acdy suffering, affects and {ouches man's "hean"; it is what is most

intimate in him; the extreme interior where, in his almost absolute singulariry (his ab-solutcness), man-and not the subject-is pure wai[ing~for-an-other; he is hope of .. dialogue, of a way out of soli~ tude. I again cite 'The Meridian";

But I think- ... I think rhat it has always belonged to the expecta­tions of rhe poem in precisely this manner to speak in the cause of the strange-no, I can no longer use this word-in precisely this manner to speak in tlu caUJ~ of an O,lur-who knows, perhaps in the cause of a wholly 0,/)"".

This "who knows," at which I see I have arrived, is the only thing I can add- on my own, here, tOday- tO the old expectations.

Perhaps, I must now say 10 myself-and at Ihis point I am making use of a well-known term-perhaps it is now possible to conceive a meeting of Ihis ~wholly Other" and an ~O l her" which is not f.u re~ moved, which is very near.

J' Two Poems by Prill! Celnn

The poem tarries. StopS to catch a scent-like a crealUre when Con­fromed wilh such thoughts.

No Olle C',lJl say how long the pause in breath- the thought and the slOpping 10 catch the seem-will ian ....

The poem is alone. h is alone and underway. Whoever writes it Illust rem;!.in in ilS company.

But doesn't the pctI!m, for precisely thai reason, ;1.[ this point panic­ipatc in an encounter-in tiN mJlury o/an mcoullur?

The poem wanlS to reach the Other, it needs the Other. it needs a vis ~ vis. h ~rches it oU[ and addres.se!l it.

II becomes dialogue- it is often despairing d ialogue. lS

From that place, thaI sol irude-pain-Celan speaks. It is the same solilUde and pain {hat Holderlin fe lt ill [he end , when he had succumbed to the excess of eloquence and been submerged, reduced to silence, by sacred pathos. "T iihi ngen, Jan uary" is a poem to this pain and soli tude beeause it is the poem of th is pai n and ofrhis so[i rude; that of always being th rown back from the di­alogue one had thought possible and then, in withdrawal, "hud­dling, " as Heidegger says of H 6lderlin , no lo nger able to speak; stuttering, swallowed up in idiom. Or fa ll ing silent. In a world with nothing and 110 Ollno authorize or even "guarantee" the least dialogue, the slightest rd ation to anomer, however or whoever he may be, how to wre nch away fro m aphasia, from silence? T he poem, says Celan, once again in "The Merid ian," "today ... shows a strong incl ination tOwards falling silent. ... It takes its position ... at the edge of itself; in order to be able to exist, it without interruption calls and fe tches itself from its now-no­longer hack illlo its as-always. "..16

The question of poetry's poss ib il ity-and Celan never asked another- is the q uestion of the possibiliry of such a wrenchi ng. The question of the possibiliry of going Ollt oftlu ulf This also means, as "The Meridian" again recalls, goi ng "outside the hu­man," in the sense, for example (but is this still just OfU exam ple?) that rhe (fi nit e) n anscen dcnce of Daseill in the experience of nothingness, in ek-sistcnce, is a going outside the human: " Here we have stepped beyond hu man nature, gone o utwards, and en-

Tll/o Pomu by Pmt! Celn1l JJ

tercd a mysterious realm, yet o ne tu rned towards Ihat wh ich is human."J7

It would be an understatement to say Cdan had read Heideg­ger. Celan's poetry goes beyond even an unreserved rt."COgnition of Heidegger; I think o ne can assen that it is, in its entirery, a dia­logue with Heidegger's thought. And essentially with the part of this thought that was a dialogue with H6lderlin's poetry. Withour Hcidegger's commcmary on Holderlin, "Tilbingen, January" would have been impossible; such a poem could simply never have been written. And it would certainly remain incomprehensible if one did not detect in il a Ttsponu to this commentary. Indeed , the dizziness on the edge of Holderl inian pathos is JUSt as much dizziness vis-a­vis its amplification by Heidcggcr; vis-a-vis [he beliefin which Hei­degger persisted, whatever his sense of "sobriety" in other matters. A belief, not o nly in the possibili ty that the word H61derlin "kept in reserve" might still be heard (by Germany, by us), but also, and perhaps especially, in the possibility that the god this word an­nounced or prophesied might come. T his, even though Heidegger maintained until the end, up th rough the last interviews granted to D" Spi~~l. that it was also necessary to o:pcct, and prepare fo r, the defin itive decline or in-advent of the god. "Praise be to you, no one."

(In me same way, "Psalm" is indecipherable without Heidegger's meditations o n nothingness; it is the prayer horn of them. It is in­decipherable without the pages of Priflcipk of Reasoll, Sl1tz vom Crt/lid, prompted by Leibniz's question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" These are pages belli on saying the abyss of being o r presence: the Ab-grlwd and VII-grund, the without­grounds and the non-ground; they recall Angel us Silesius's famous phrase: "The rose is without a why. blooms because it blooms.")}8

A d ialogue like this in no way requires an encounter- an "effec­rive" encounter, as we say. Probably the opposite. The encounter is also that which can prohibit or break off dialogue. Dialogue, in this ,;.­

sense, is fragi liry itself.

liuo Ponm by Paul Critm

Yet belWcen C clan and Heidegger, an eDcou mcuook place. It happened in 1967. probably dI ring the summer. Celan went to visil I-Ieidc."gger in Todt naubeI'F. in the Black Forest chalet (Hiiflr) Ihat was his refuge, the place w.ere he wrote. From [his mec:ting­to which I know there were wimesses. direct or indirect-there re­mains a poem: a second versicn of which . in conclusion . 1 invite you to read.

Here is how I hear it:

TODTNA U BElC

Arnica. baull'X: des yeux, [a gorgee a Ia fOHaine avec [e jet d'clOi[oau-dessus.

dans [e chalet,

la, dans Ie livJe --de qui, les lams qu'i l ponait avant Ie mien'-. dans ce livre la ligne ttritesur un espoir, aupurd'hui, dans Ie mot a venir d'un penseur, au coeur.

humus des bcis, non ap[ani, orchis et ordis, epars,

erudite, plus rard, en voiture, disti ncte,

qui nous conduit, I'homme, a son Ccoute ~uss i ,

ademi frayees Ics sen:es de rondins d:m la fange ,

humidilt!, beaucoup.

Ttuo Pomu by Paul CrimI

TODTNAU BI:!RC

Arnica, eye balm, the d~ughl at the fountain with the sp~y of stars above. .

in the hut,

there. in the book -whose. the names it bore before mind-in that book the [inc wrincn about a hope. today, in the coming word of a thinker, in the heart .

woodland humus. unlevelled, orchis and orchis, scattered,

crudeness, later, in the car. distinct ,

he who drives us, the man, listening 100,

h~f-

dea.red the paths of logs in the mire,

dampness. much.

"

My uanslation is very rough; wimess or not. who can know what the allusions refer to? "Todtnaubcrg" is really barely a poem; a sin­gle nominal phrase, choppy, distended and elliptical, unwilling to

take shape, it is nm the outline but the remainder- me residue­of an aborted narrative. It consists of brief nOtes or nO[3(ions, seem­ingly jotted in haste with a hope for a future poem, comprehensible only to the one who wrol'e them. h is an extenuated poem, or, to

36 7i(JO PO{'IJIS by Paul CrulII

pm it belief. :l disaPl!!!.illlrd one. It is the poem of a disappoim~ ... mem; as such. il is. and it says, rhe disappointment of poetry.

One could of course supply a gloss, try 10 decipher or translate. '111crc is no lack of readable allusions. The HolzlU~gl', for example; here they are no longer ways through the fo rcst tOward a possible clearing, a LidJhmg, but ~cluJos[ in a marsh where the poem itsd.(. gets lost.(watcr again. bur without a source-nor even; dampness­no morc ahom the dizzying Neckar. the "spirit of the river," the beda7.z.1emem.cngulfmem. Only an uneasi ness). Another example: onc could pick, or cast, as it were, the image of the spray of stars above the man drinking from the fountain, throwing back his head to the sky: dice (hrown like the "golden sickle" abandoned by Hugo's "harvester of eternal summer." And this could be a gcsture tOward

I Buchner's Lenz, the figure of me poet, of whom "The Meridian" re­calls, "Now and then he experienced a sense of uneasiness bec.1use he was not able to walk on his head,"39 only to add, "Whoever walks on his head, ladies and gentlemen, whoever walks on his head has

\ heaven beneath him as an abyss. "'0 An echo, perhaps, of Holderlin's mange proposition: .. Man kann auch in die Hohe folk", so wie in die Tiefe ("One em as well aU in eightJlUn.(Q.depth").~' One could surely go very fitr in this direction, as in many another.

But that is not what the poem says, if indeed it is still a poem. What the poem says is, first, a language: words. German, with

Greek and Lati n woven in. "Common" language: AlIgmfTOJI, \'(11/d. waU1J, HochmooT, and so on. "Lcarned" language: Amika, Orchis. Bur still sim ple, ordinary words. The kind of words in another of Cclan's few explanatory prose texts, "Conversation in the Moun­rains" (a son of tale, halfway between Lmz and HtlJJidic Tnln, where two JL"WS d iscuss language); words like "turk's--cap lily," "corn-salad," and "diallllmJ J/lp~rbuJ, the maiden-pi nk," that bespeak a native re­l:uion to nature (o r to the eanh , as Heidegger would have said):

So it was quiet, quiet up [here in the mounrains. BUI il was not quiel for long, bcrause when a Jew comes along and nK"Cts another, si­lence cannot lasl , even in the mountains. Because Ihe Jew and natUre :Ire strangers 10 each olher, have always been and st ill are, even today, even here.

"j;uo Ponm by Paul Ctlnll 37

So there they are. the cousins. On the left, the tUrk's-cap lily blooms, blooms wild, blooms like nowhere else. And on the right. corn-salad, and dianthus lup"bus, the maiden-pink , not far ofT. But they, those cOllsins, have no eyes, alas. Or, more exactly: they have, even they have eyes, but with a veil hanging in frOIll of them, no nOI in frolll , behind them, a mov~ble veil. No sooner does an image en­ler than it gets aught in the web ....

Poor lily, poor corn-salad. There they stand, the cousins, on a road in the mountains, the n ick silent , the stones silem, and the silence no silence at aU. No word has come to an end and no phrase, it is nothing but a pause, an empl}' space between the words, a blank ... ~l

Once again, a matter of blindness or half-blindness (" they ... have no eyes, alas"). But because blindness, blinding-we under­stand now-is Ih~ ~mpry space bmuren the words (and doubtless also (/ blank): nm having the words to say what is. Words are not in­nate; language is nOt altogether a mother tongue (or a fa ther tongue-it hardly matters) . There is difficulty with it (there is also perhaps a question of plnce in language).

This difficulry-tht' d ifficulty-is named in the Bremen address when it evokes. as Blanchot says, "t he language through which death came upon him, those near to him, and mill ions of Jews and non-Jews. an ~m wilhoul aTIJ~r" (my emphas is):~J

Only one thing remained reachable, dose and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spire of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terri­fying silence. through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening. but went through it. Went through and could resurface, 'enriched' by it all.

In this language I tried, during those y~rs and the years aner, to

write poems: in order to speak, to orielll myself, to find out where I was, where I was going, to chart my realil)'.

It meam movement, you see, something happening, being m roMe,

an attempt to find a direction.'"

W hat "Todmauberg" speaks about, then. is this: the language in which AuschwirL was pro nounced , and which pronounced Auschwin.

Two Porms by Palll CrimI

That is why the poem also says, and says simply, rhe meaning of the encou nter with Heidegger- that is, its disappointment. I sus­pected as much, bm I confess that I was told [his, by a friend who had it on rhe best au mority.

To Heidcggcr the thinker- the Gcrman thinker-Cdan me poet-the Jewish poet-came with a single yet precise entreaty: th.u the thinker who listened to poetry; the same th inker who had compromised himself. however briefly and even if in the least shameful way, with JUSt what would result in Auschwin; the thinker who. however abundant his discussion with National S0-cialism, had observed total silence on AuschwirL. as histOry will re­call ; that he say JUSt a single word: a word about pain. From there. perhaps, all might still be possible. Not "life, n which is always pos. sible, which remained possible. as we know. even in Auschwin, but existence, poetry, speech. Language. T hat is, relation to others.

Could such a word be wn:nchrd? In the summer of 1967 Celan writes in the guestbook of the

Hiiru in Todtnauberg. He no longer knows who signed before him; signatures- proper names, as it happens-maner little. At is. sue was a word, juSt a word. He writes- what? A line, or a verse. Hc asks only for the word, and the word, of course, is not spoken. Nmhing; silence; no one. The in-advent of me word ("the event without answer").

I do not know what word Celan could have expected. What word he felt would have had enough force to wrench him from the threat of aphasia and idiom (in-advent of the wo rd). imo which this poem. mumbled against the silence, could only sink as if into a bog. What word could suddenly have constitutcd an nJrm.

I do not know. Yet something tells me it is at once the humblcst and most difficult word to say, me one [hat requires, precisely, "a goi ng our of the self. " The word that the WCSt, in irs pathos of re. dcm pt ion, has never been able to say. The word it remains fo r us to learn 10 speak, lest we should sink ourselves. The word pardoll.

Cdan has placed us before this word. A sign?

PART TWO

Remembering Dates

Ptrh:lps Oil(' can say tlu t ('Very poem h:l.S its -10th of J:lnu:lry-? l'rrh:lps tht novc:lty of poems th:ll :lre written to(by is to Ix found in precisdy this point; th31 here the attempt is most clearly

madt to rem:lin mindful of such dates.

-The Meridi:ln"

§ I Catastrophe

"Tiibi ngen, Janua ry": the Palriarchs' bea rd of ligh t. the stam­mering. Might it not be, asks A. R., an allusion to Moses?1

Not fo r a momem had I thought of this. But rereading pages de­voted as if despi te themselves to me oedi pal motif of blinding, as I had to today, I became aware [hat rhey may indeed secretly have only one object: dlC interdiction against representation; or rather, they are haunred solely by the unfigurable or unpresentable. T hey are fundamentally overwhelmed. more or less unwittingly, by me destruction of metaphor or image that seems to draw in Celan's po­Clry as its final conquest. "TUbingen, January" shatters an image {the refl ection}; "Todtnauberg," a p<Kffi about the disappointment of poetry. no longer contains any image, unless it is-this should be checked. supposi ng it could be- th e:: "starred die::," the:: "Srern­wiirfel" of the third stanza. The:: extenuation, one might say, of the

tropic. "The Me::ridian," appropriately, provides some explanation of

Ih is. Appropriately, because the ti rle itself, o r more precisely, the

word, when it make::s its appearance in the course of the speech, does not do so wi thout crossing or intersecting, withom "encoun­tcring" a cenain Wire on trOpcs and (the) tropics. On the plural of "Trope" : " Tropf!II. " Virtually the last words arc:

4'

42 Rnllembering Dales

wdics and gcndcmcn. I find something which offers me some conso­I:llioll for havi ng mvefed Ihe impossible path , this path of the impos­sible. in yOll r presence. I lind something which binds and which, like Ihe poem. leads to an enCOUnicr. I find something. like language, abo nrJCI. yel e:lrlhly. terresuial, something c ircular, which Inverses both poles :md returns fO itsdf, thereby-I am happy to report-even crossing the tropics and HOpes. I find ... a mrridian.1

The "tropic." (hen. On the "dialogue" Ihat is the poem, a dialogue with bei ngs bUI also with things, we can read:

When we speak with things in this manner we always find ourselves faced with the question of thei r whence and whither: a question which Mremai ns open" and ~doe$ nO! come to an end," which poinr.s into openness, emptiness, freedom- we are outside, al a comiderable distance.

The poem, I believe, also seeks this place. T he poem?

The poem with its images and tropes? Ladies and gentlemen, what am I really speaking or. when, from IhiJ

direction, in IhiJdircaion, with tht'St"words, I speak of the poem-no, of t"~ poem?

I am speaking of the poem which does not exist! The absolute poem-no, it does not exist, it cannot exist. But each real poem, even the least pretentious, contains this in­

escapable question, this incredible demand. And what , then, would the images be?

That which is perceived and [0 be perceived one time, one time over and over again , and only now and only here. And the poem would then be the place where all HOpes and metaphors arc developed ad absurdum. (199; 37- )8; 78-79)

How should we undemand this?

To even begin to see our way clear, we m ust consider thi ngs fro m a greater distance.

Tht' poe m , Ccla n had said earli er- this is my point of depa r­

ture- the poem is alone: "Das Ged ich t is t einsam" (198; 87; 78).

GlIllJtropb~ 43

"Alone" is a word that says singularity_or al leasl, il makes n~ sense here except in reference to singulariry, to the si ngu lar expen­

c:ncc. "The poem is alone" means a poem is o nly efficliwly a poem

insoF.u as it is absolutely singular. This is undoubtedly a definitio n

of poetry's essence (which by itself is not at all "poctic") : there is

no poctry, poetry does n O[ occu r or rake place. and is therefore not ft'peatedly q uestio ned . except as the event of singularity.

In a way. the eff'on to say th is singularity, or at least designate it. underlies the whole " Meridian" speech-and is always o n me verge

of breaking th ro u gh. Circumstances d ictated t hat this effort .be directed to a debate or discussion. an Ausei1lnlldenetzu"g with

Buchner:' T he locus of the discussion is the question of art. More p recisely,

the q uestio n of art in relation to l>OCtry. Jean Launay circumscribes

Ihe issue in these terms:

Art is a stranger to poetry- thai is, al first, at the time to which the poet'S mood always returns when he despairs or hopes tOO m~ch: And then an is poetry's stranger; an is ~cinating for j>lXtry. It mdlcates the possibility of sp~tacl e; it indicates a window; it invites one t? jump. This is also why, in art, there is always the hubbub ~f a carni­val, the d rumroll pr~eding an artist's jXrformancc, that IS: alwa~s more or Ir:ss that "death-defying leap~ which, barring a foolish accI­

dent. always ends well. The artist lands on his feet . That is what makes him an artist. 4

T his is certainly nOt incorrect, in any case fro m the point of view

of "theme," as Launay says when justifYing compariso ns of Celan

with Kafka and Egon FriedelJ.' BUI one sees it is also a complete.

preorganized response: the question Celan bears wi th hi m and tries

to art icu late, literally o ut of b reath , no longer resonates. T hus Lau­

nay does not entirely d o justice to the way Celan pr~ceds, t.o t~e road followed , to the d iffi cult (if not completely Impossible)

journey; nor [0 Celan's precise but complex stra tegy vis-a-vis Buch­

nct. And above all. dinkcticnlly re-treati ng the oppositio n berween

art and poetry, reducing the strange [0 the fascinati ng by means of

a gcn itive and ap propriating it as such (an is poetry's stranger),

.. Remembering DnuI

rakes into :JCCOtiOi neither singulariry itself. nor poetry as Celan desperafely seeks to understand it .

What docs 'The Meridian" actually say? Not. exactly, that art is a stranger ro poetry, but that yes, poetry

is the interruption of art. Something, if you will, that "taka art 's breath away" (I am thinking of the motif of Atmlt«llde, of tum­of-breath ,' wh ich makes its first appearance in Celan here). O r, to rt"C..Il another of Celan's words, me "$lep" (Srbritl) outside art; in French one could say. closely following Derrida's read ing of Blan­chot, k pm-dan or k PIlI- "de I'an."" The event of poetry (and as such, poeuy isevcnI, and there is poetry) is thus a "setting free," a "FnisetzulIg" (194; 34; 75)· It is a liberation, nm in the sense, com­mon in German, of dismissal, bur in the sense of deliverance. And, as we shall see, in the sense of free action. This is perhaps, in a phrase I leave to i{s own am bigui ty, an liberation. And very prob. ably, a certain kind of "cnd of an."

But the idea that poetry occurs in this manner, when art gives way, and that the poem is said to be "itselr when it is "an-less" or "an·frcc" (196; )5; 76), docs nm mean merely that for poetry, art is a form of supervision or oppression. Nor even that an is, st rictly speaking, the alienation of poetry. Certainly, art is "strange" (fomd). One can thus caU it "other, " but Celan prefers to say that it is elsewhere or distant, {hat it is th~ distant and t"~ elsewhere (195; 35; 75)· Yet in reaJity, an is only so because it is fi rst uncanny, Imh(!;m/ich: strangely fami liar, or, in other words, disorienting, un. usual. disquiet ing. Art is even the Disquieting, as such: dlls VII­h~;m/iche. its strangeness or alterity is thus not a pure alterity. Nor is it a "determinate" aherity in the sense that Hegel speaks of "de­terminate negation. " In relation to a "same" or to a "self," to a

/

"ncar" or to an "own , "8 an exists in a strangeness which is itself strange, anmher alterity. The d ifference it makes differs from itself; it is unassignable. For this reason it is disquieting rather than "fas. cinal ing." It could not be fasci nating unless it occupied its own place. excrcised attraction in a panicular direction. But that is just Ihe point: art has no place of its own. Indeed , there is nothi ng one can ca ll art proper, properly itself. Without a stable idellliry, pre-

CAlaJtroph(! 45

sen t everywhere but always elsewhere (<:elan says that "it possesses, :Iside fro m its ability to uansform, the gift of ubiquity" (190; 31;

-tl), it is not "poetry's stranger." Moreover, this is why. if the task or deslination of poetry is to lib<:rate itself from art, this task or destination is nearly impossible. O ne is never done with art.

h is clear ulan's discourse on an has to do with mimesis. This much should be nmOO. So should the choice of ulIluimUcll (or its equivalent: ung~Il~uT), the word used by HBlderlin , then Heideg. ger, to translate the Greek d~illoswith which Sophocles names the essence of uchn(! in Antigolle. For Heidegger, art and the work of art are equally ulIluimUch. Celan was no doubt fully aware of this-one respect (though certainly not the only one) in which "The Merid ian" is a response to Heidegger. Yet I think it would be more enlightening for a readi ng of the speech (and for the question I am asking) to focus o n art in the explicit debate with Biichner.

Thus defined as Imluim/ich, art is indeed, in itially, art as Buch· ncr understands it, or rather as he contests it: artifice and the ani· ficial. It is the marionette o r puppet Camille Desmoul ins de· nounces in DIl1/tollS Tod: ~ You can Stt the rope hanging down that jerks it, and ... the joints creak in five· footed iambics at every step"; it is the monkey in Woyuck, dressed in coat and trousers, or the robots in UOllCt! ,wd Ul111, announced "i n a pompous tone" as MnOlhing but art and mechanism, nothing bm cardboard and watch springs" (188; 30; 69). In this sense, Launay is right to evoke barkers, circuses, and carnivals. But with literature and poetry, with the DichNlIIg that is Buchner's business, art is really also ... elo· quence, once again. Yet this rime it is bombast and tu rgidity: gra ndiloquence, with its inevitable effects of dlja-mtmdll and a repetitive. wearisome aspect. An , says Celan, is an old problem ("hardy, longl ived ... that is to say, eternal"), a "problem which al­lows a monal, Camille, and a person who can be understood only in the context o f his deat h, Danton, to string words together at great length. It is easy enough to talk about art" (188; 30; 69)·

Yer this kind of determination is not enough: it assigns art toO

easi ly, appropriates {he V1IIl~im/ichrtoo rapidly (and in an entirely

Ri'ffl~mb~rillg Onus

classical mode. with marionenes, robots, and an ificial bombast). This is why, for Celan, an remains what Buchner himself opposes [Q an thus understood, Namely-according [Q that most ancient, indeslructible model-the natural. C reation, as Camille says in his great speech on art: "[The people] forge r God himself, they prefer his bad imita[Qf$,"" So art is simply nature once o ne rakes pains to imitate it. That is, once nature presents a spectacle. enters the realm of representation-in shon , when it aligns itself wi th an. Thus the tableau of the (WO girls in the valley that Lenz evokes when he speaks of art and defines his (or ramer Buchner's) poetics: "At times one would like to be the Medusa's head so as to be able [Q trans­form such a group infO stone, and call out to the people so that mey might see" (191-92; 32; 69). Celan com ments on these lines in me following terms: "Ladies and gentlemen, please take note: 'One would like [Q be the Medusa's head,' in order to comprehend that which is natural as that which is namral, by means of art!" (192, 32; 72). And he adds, a li tde further on, "As you can sec, whencver art makes an appearance ... [the] pompous rone cannot be ignored" ('92 ; 33; 73)·

Beh ind Buchner's Len2 stands Buchner himself. But behind Buchner. there is me historical (li terary hisrorical) Lenl., "Reinhold Lenz, the author of the 'Notes on the Theater. '" Behind him, in rum. the Abbe Mercier, with his phrase" Elargissnlim." That this was naturalism's mOt d'ordn and contains "me social and political roots of Buchner's thought" (191; 32; 71), is scarcely importam here. BUI in its most general sense, torn from historical inscription and COllleXt, Elargissnl'art tells the very secret of art; it indicates art's movement-and the obscure will presiding over th is movement, or animati ng it from within. Art wants to expand irself; it clamors to be expanded. It walliS its difference from the things and beings of nature effaced. In a way, rhat which is art's own, "proper" to art

I (to the Ullluimlic/u), is the tendency to mitigate differcntiation, and in so doing invade and contami nate everythi ng. Or mediate everythi ng, acco rding to Lell2· Buchner's dialectical fo rm ulation (nature is only nature by means of art). Thus, to "dis-own" cvery­thing. Art is, if the word can be risked, generalized, never-ending

Call1Stroph~ 47

~estrangement"-(he Medusa's head , the robots, the specches­without end.

When he brings up this theme, Ce.lan knows he is echoing very ancient "rumors" about an. So ancient that they precede even the (platonic) philosophical designation of mimnu. and its execution or appropriation as representation, reproduction, semblance, or sim ulation. As imitation. And Ce:lan not o nly acts as an echo, say­ing he "listens to the noise persistently" (192; )); 73). bur seems to lend it a favorable ear, bringing back, along with the rumors, the old fea r and condemnation of the mimetic (which can be, and has been, conjoined with the interdiction against representation). All Heideggcr's strength is required-and even that may not suffice­to dissipate the evil aura of the U"Juimlic/u, to lift the harmful and demonic to th.e level of the "dacmonic."'o Not simply to succumb, opposing it-in the end, dialectically-to the Hl!imiJchl!-H~imlichl!, the Zuhausl!, even the Hl!imkl!hr, to all the figures and values of the own, the fa miliat, the "at home," me native land, and so on-the way Celan seems to do when, near the end of "The Meridian." he marks the close of the poetic journey as "EiluArt H~imkl!hr," "A kind of homecoming" (201; )9; 81).11

And it is true that for poetry, what Ce.lan opposes or seems to oppose to the Ullh~imlich~, to art (at least "at first," as Launay would say), is. under various names, the own-me own-being: the ~sel f" or "I," even the "he" of singulari ty (he, Lenz, Lenz himself, and nOt "Buchner's Len2'"), the "person" Ce:lan also curiously calls the "figure" ("Gmalt") (194; 14; 74)· O r, to use a word which, though borrowed from Buchner, does not lack religious resonance, the "creature" (197; 36; 77). Nevertheless, despite appearances, it is not simply the subject in the metaphysical sense that is at issue. One word condenses all these names: rhe human, dllJ MmschlicJu. The human , not man. And nOt the humanity of man. But the hu­ma n as what allows rhere to be one man or another-that man there, si ngula r- in the here and now, says Celan . T he human, then, as the singular essence (a pure oxymoron, philosophically un­tenable), the singularity of man or of being-man. It is Camille in

Rnnembering Dm rs

Tbe Drl1lb of DII/IIOn, as Lucile perceives him when he discoursa on afl and she docs not listen (Q what he says, bUi hears him. him panicularly. for "language is something personal. something ~r­ccptible" (189; 31; 70) . O r rather. we suspeCt, it is Lucile herself, "1Iv;: one who is blind to an" (189; 31; 70) but who still "perceives" (I wjlJ return to this word).

T he Ullbrimlicbr, estrangement, is estrangemcm of the human taken in this sensc. It affectS existence, undoes its reality. T he Un­brimlicbr. despite what Ctlan's fo rm ulations imply, does not open up an otlur dom ai n. It takes us "oUiside rhe human" (192; 31.; 72), but opens up a domain "rurned toward that which is human." Ex­istence itself, but "made strange": "the human feels o ut of place [llllbeimlicbJ" (192; 32; 72). Life in an or in light of an , life in the preoccupation with an - even more simply, li fe benum bed and carried off by an , what I would call life in mimesis or rcprcselHa­tion, is the life in which olle "forgets onesel f" (193; 33 ; 73) . T he re­sult is that Lenz gets lost in his speeches (on literature) . that Camille and Damon "SpoUi grand phrases" all the way (Q the scaf­fold . And that the Revolution is theater. Again, the motif of elo­quence. And dramatizat ion.

But in reality. eloquence precedes dramatization and provides a reason for it: theater and theatricalized existence only flre because there is discourse. O r rather, diuOIming. This means lhat the Un­brimlichr is essentially a matter oflanguage. O r that language is the locus of the UIIJJrimlichr, if indeed such a locus exisu. In other words. language is what "estranges" rhe human. Not becausc it is rhe loss or forgetting of the singular, since by definition language embraces general ity (this is a frequenr refrain , and an old motif de­rived from so-called philosophies of existence); but because to speak. to tet o neself be caught up and swept away by speech, to Irust language. or even, perhaps, to be content to borrow it or sub­mit to it , is to "forget o nesel f. " Language is not the UIIJuimliclJr. though only language contains the possibili ty of the Ullbrimlic!J~. But the UllluimlidJr appears, or rather, sets in {and no doubt it is always. already there)-something turns in man and d isplaces the hu man, something in man even ovenurns,l l perhaps, or turns

C(1t,utropb~

.I round, expulsing him from the human- along with a certain pos­lUre in language: the "artistic" poSture, if you will . or the mimetic. That is, the most "natural" posture in language, as long as one thi nks or pre- u.ndersrands language as a mimeme. In the in finite cross-purposes of the "artistic" and rhe "natural," in linguist ic mis­prision, the Unh~imliclu is, f-i naUy. forgetfulness: forgening who speaks when I speak, which clearly goes with forgetting to whom I speak when I speak. and who listens when I am spoken to. And, .llways thus prompted, forgetting what is spoken of.

T he motif of forgetfulness and tu rnaround (reversal) indicates I here that the Unlu imlic/u, because of language, is the catastrophe of the human. 13 And this explains that poetry- what Celan calls poetry or tr ies to save with the name of poetry. removing and pre­serving it from art- is, "every t ime." the interruption oflanguage: Lucile's absurd "Long live the King!" (189i 31i 70) cried out in de­spair over Ca mille's death. and above all Lenz's "terrible silence" (193; 3S; 76). T he silence that fragments Buchner's narrative, StOpS it (and StopS art, includ ing naturalism), but wh ich already enig­matically signaled its presence in a phrase (without grandilo­quence) that says the cataStrophe's most secret essence: "now and then he experienced a sense of uneasiness because he was nO[ able 10 walk on his head" (195; 34i 75).

T he interrup tion of language, the suspension of language. the caesura r counter-rhyrhmic rupture,~ said Holdcrlin)14-that is p<>­ct ry, then. "I Robbed) . .. of breath and speech," the "turn" of breath. the "ru m at the end of inspiration" (195i 33i 76). Poetry oc­curs where language. con trary to all expectations, gives way. Pre­ciselyat inspiration's fa iling-and th is can be understood in at least two senses. O r, even more precisely, at retai ned expiratio n, the breath-hold ing: when speaking (discoursing) is about to contin ue, -It'

and somrollr, sudden ly free. forbids what was to be said. When a wo rd occurs in the pure sllspension of speech. Poetry is the spasm or syncope of la nguage . ' ~ Holderlin called the caesura "the pure wo rd. "'6

Would il see m, then, that poetry is appropriat ion. of speech, and, ind issociably. of the human? Yes, in a sense. And would this

~o

mean that poetry is properly speech, because speech attes[S to the "presence of tile human"? Yes, again; this is indeed what ~Ian sa~ when he com ments o n Lucile's "Long live [he King!" which he calls- not without philosophical and political risk-a "counter_ word" (Gegmwort ):

After all the words spoken on the platfo rm (the scafTold)- what a word!

It is a counter-word, a word thai severs the "w i rc.~ thai refuses 10

bow before the "loiterers and parade horses of history. ~ It is 2n act of frttdom. It is a Stcp.

To be sure, it sounds like an expression of allegiance to the ancien rigimc- and that might not be a coincidence, in view of what I am venturing to say about the subject now, today. B UI these words­please allow one who also grew up wi th the writings of Pelt:r KropOikin and GUStav Landauer expressly to emphasize the point­these words are nOi a celebration of the monarchy and a past which should be preserved.

They are a tribUie to the majesty of the absurd, which bears witness to mankind's here and now.

That, ladies and gentlemen. has no universally recognized name. but it is, I believe ... poetry. (189-90; }I ; 70)

We should not be too quick- let us use Celan's own political clarification as a model-to suess the undeniable philosophical overdetermination of these remarks. This would be fai ling them.l think. It would almost be committing them an injustice.

What Celan calls Lucile's "counter*word" does not properly op­pose anything, not even the speeches delivered beforehand (Camille and Danton's "grand phrases" at (he foot of the scaffold). Not even discourse in general. The coumer*word approves noth· ing either: it says nothing in favor of me monarchy. is not a politi· cal word- or even an anarchic one. It is "absurd"; it does nOf mean anything. But this does not make it "ncutral," or if so we would have to agree on the meaning of th e term . It is a gesture. It is a counter-word only to the extent it is such a gesture and proceeds, as Biichner says, from a "decision": the gestu re of dying or decision to die. By shouting "Long live the King!" Lucile kills herself. Here,

,\ j ..

, .,. Catastroplu 5l

the word is suicidal; it is, as Holderlin said of Greck tragic speech , "deadly-factual ... [it] truly kills."" As pure provocation, it signi­fies (the decision to die), but in a mode othcr than signification. It signifies without signifYing: it is an act. an evcnt (though I would hc::sirate somewhat to use me word "performative") .

Here is the scene:

(A PATROL emers)

A C ITI ZEN. 'Xfho's there? l.UCIl.E. Long live the King! C IT I Z EN. In the name of the Republic.

She is surrounded by the WATC H and led away. II

If Luci lc's cry- poerry-properly says what is proper to the hu­man, we must understand the proper here as being like the own of "own death." In the coumer-word . or rather through the "counter" of the counter*word , the possibility of death "resolutely" opens up, as does something like what Heidegger calls, with respect to Da­U;ll. its "ownmost possibility." And from that point on exist- mese arc Celan's words-"fate" and "direction" (188; 30; 69). That is. lib­erty. Exactly like the sky opening "as an abyss" beneath Lenz.

In dfict, men. poetry says existence: the human. It says :,Ystence. not because it takes me opposing course ro discourse or because it UI>SCts the un"~im/ic" rurnaround, the catastrophe of language (me catastrophe [hat is language); poetry is nOt a catastrophe of cata­strophe. But , because it aggravates the catasuophe itself, it is, one might say, its liuraliZllrio1l.I

' This is what the "figure" of Lenz sig­nifies: existence suddenly "released" at the height of catast rophe, [he "mortal's" sudden revelation of himself as the o ne whose exis­tence rests on the abyss-the bottomlessness-of thc heavens.

T his is why _poet ry does not take place outside art, in some else* where supposed to be the other of art or of its strangcness. It takes pbce in the "strange placc" itself. And if Cclan 5.1YS of this place that it is "thc place where a person [succC<.xlsJ in sCll ing himself free, as an-estranged- I" (195; 34; 75), we IllUSt not lose sight of the fact, whan:ver the dialectical cast of such a remark (very dose, as it hap-

Remembering Dflus

pens. TO H old('rlinian fo rmula(ions), (hal the I which thus releases and frees itself. which "comes home," which perhaps even hopes 10 have reached the "occupiable realm, "lO this I is in [he vicinity of deat h, silence, and insanity. It fal ls, it frees ilselfin [he void. If theT(: is appropriation, it is, as in Holderlin, abysmal. One could almost say that il does nOl rake place as such-and thai poelry does not occur, unless il is by def.l.Uh as dte pas~dim in art 's grcaicsi imimacy,

in the very d ifference of art from itself or in Ihe strangeness to self of strangeness. AI the unassignable hean of [he Ul1JNimlkIJe.

This explains why Blichner- (he poel. not [he poetician-can occasion, can even be the obviously paradoxical opportunity for the a[[empt to say the essence of poetry, and thus call art into question:

And I must now ask if the works of Georg Buchner, die poet of all liv­ing bei ngs, do not contain a perhaps muted, perhaps only half con­scious, bur on that account no less radical- or for precisely that rt'3S0n in the most basic sense a radjcal-calling~into-ques tjon of an ? ... A ca lli ng~into-quest ion , to which all contemporary poetry must return jf it is to continue posing qucstions? To rephrase and antici pate my~ self somewhat: may we proceed from art as something given, some~ thing to be raken for granted, as is now oft-en done; should we, in con­cTt'te terms, above all- let us say-follow Mallarme to his logical con­clusion? (192-9); )0; 7)

This also explains. but in reverse, why Celan, faced with what is U so difficult" (-2.00; )8; 80)-nOl ro say impossible-to dislinguish (i n (he last pages he speaks of the " impossible path ," the "path of (he impossible"), is forced to use a double language. Now (he language of simple opposition , which is- though ironically-rhe language of hope (poerry undersrood as freeing art, being rhe end of art):

Perhaps ... perhaps poetry, in the company of the I which has for­gOllcn itself, travels the same path as an. toward th:lt which is myste­rious [Illl/'rimlic/'J and alien [frrmd). And once again- but where? hut in what place? but how? but as what?_ it sets itself free?

In lilal casc art would be the path travelled by poetry-nothing morc and nothing less. (t9}-94; 33-)4; 74)

CUaJtropht

Now, in the midst of difficulry, the language of the impossible: the language of difference, which is not. iron ically. the language of despair (poetry underSlOod as the liberation of art; art never done with):

Poctry: it can signify a turn-of-breath. Who knows, perhaps poetry travels its path-which is also me path of art-for the sake of such a breath turning? Perhaps it succeeds, since strangeness {das Fmlldt)' that is, the abyss and the Medusa's head, the abyss and the robots, seem to lie in the same direction- perhaps it succeeds here in d istin­guishing between strangeness and Strangeness, perhaps at precisely this point the Medusa's head shrivels, perhaps the robots cease to func­tion- for this unique, Reeting moment? Is perhaps at this point, along with me I- with the estranged I. set free at this point and in It similar manntr-is perhaps at this point an Other SCt free?

Perhaps the poem assumcs its own identi ty as a rcsult ... and is ac­cordingly able to travel other paths, (hat is, the paths of art, again and again- in this art-Icss, art-frt'C' manner?

Perhaps. (t95- 6; )5; 76)

Or yet , and this time in the most demandi ng. (hat is to say. the most desperate fashion possible (but always wirh suitable irony):

Ladies and gentlemen, I have reached the conclusion- I have returned to the beginning.

EkJrgi;sez li1rt! This question comes to us with its mysteries [Un­JNimiichJuirl . new and old. I approached Buchner in its company-I believed I would once again nnd it there.

I also had an answer ready, a " Luci lean~ counter-word ; I wanted to establish something in opposition, I wanted to be there with my contradiction.

Expand art? No. But acco mpany an into your own unique place of no escape.

And sct yourself free. Here, too. in your presence, I have travelled th is path. It was a

circle. Art- and one must also include the Medusa's head, mechani7.3t ion,

robots; the mysterious. indistinguishable, and in the end perhaps the only strangeness inur tint f"rrmdrl-art lives on. (100; 38; 79-80)

5 Remembering Datn

If thc difft" rcllcc ca n ever be made, if there exislS the slightest possibility of a separation of poetry, then we must think of this dif­ference and this separation as internal to an itself. Inside art, pa­etry would succecd-perhaps-in withdrawing from art; it would exit art withi n an. Thus we must think, in an's greatest intimacy and as this intimacy itself, of a sort of spacing or hiatus. A secret gapi ng. Perhaps intimacy-the "heart" of the same-is always such a gapi ng, as lhe possibiliry for the same (Q be itself and to join within itself to itself; the pure-empry-aniculation of the same. And perhaps for art (the Unh"imliC/u), this intimate gaping would be precisely what ceaselessly "estranges" the strangeness of art (of

the strange): precisely the caesura of art, the spasm- furtive,

! hardly felt-of the strange. In which case poelfy would not be, in arr-ourside-of-art, the Raw or failing of art, oflanguage: let liS say, silence. Bur rather the pain of art (of language). Hence the aggra­vation of the catastrophe. which is, strictly speaking, a revolt (Lu­cile, Lcnz).

This is why poetry, if it ever occurs, occurs as the brutal revela­tion of the abyss that contains art (language) and nevenheless con­st irutes it, as such, in its strangeness. Poetry takes place, a ln take place, in an . But this place is not anyplace. The place of poetry, the place where poetry takes place, every time, is the place without place of the intimate gapi ng-something we must cenain ly con­ceive o f as the pure spacing which places (do not) sup-pose and which upholds them, with no hold.

No doubt this is whar Cdan rigorously calls u-ropia:

Topos smdy? Certainly! But in light of that which is to be studied: in light of

u-lOpia. And human beings? And all living Crl'a lUrcs? In this light. (199: 38: 79)

Poetry. by this aCCOUIlI, can be called the abyss of art (language): it makcs art (language) abysmal. In all senscs. This mode of occur­rence, advent, is "proper" to it.

But it docs nO{ occur, if ever it does occur, as Poet ry, even if af-

CntaJtropb~

terward it can with difficulty be:: recognized as such. "The absolute poem- no , it does not exist , it cannot exist" (199; 38; 79). It oc­curs, then, every time, in the time or be::tw~ntime of the caesura, in a syncope, as a poem, that is to say as a word-singular, unique. h occurs in "this unique. Reeting moment" (196; 35; 76), in the "in­stant" (Augmblick) , the wink of an eye or the head 's inclination (Celan speaks of "the angle of inclination of ... existence" 1197; 36; 77]), in the blink of"rdeasc:," of the "free act": in the instanr of the catastrophe, the revolt-the conversion of the I that opens to ex­istence and allows the human to rake "place" within it.

This instant makes a date each time-it is date-making. The poem remains mindful of dates:

Perhaps one can say that every poem has its "20th ofJanuary"~ Per­haps ,he novelry of poems that are wriucn loday is 10 be found in prc­cisely ,his poim ,hat here the auempl is most dearly made 10 remain mindful of such dates?

BUI are we all not descended from such dales? And 10 which dates do \\-'C anribUic ourselves? (196; 35; 76)

In a way that differs altogether from the standard expression. and thus in its strongest sense, poetry is OCCaJionll/ pO~try. 21 It is on this account that it keeps, if you will , a dates register, or that it is the search , poem after poem, for the dates an I can ascribe to itself (Cdan plays on Jcb"ibm, "to write," and ZUJcIJ"ibm. whose pri­mary meaning is "to note on an account"). Jt is thus me memory of evenrs, that is, each dme, of rhe singular though certainly not unique advenr into existence. Yel this memory is not pure. Like­wise, there are probably neirher pure evenrs nor pure advents: they arc numerous, repeatable. prompted in advance by language. Thus the singular, unique word is, precisely. nor unique: the po~m is al­ways already carried away in the pom/J. which is to say in the infi­nite approximation of existence rhat is an, and language. Whatever task or absolute vocation it assigns or accords irself as regards exis­tence (rhe human). poetry is language. It speaks: "But the poem," says Celan , "does speak! It remains mindful of its dales, but- it speaks" (196; 35; 76). Poet ry is thus the memory of dates JUSt

)

Remembaing Dmes

suictly insofur as il is mnemoucJme: an art, after all-of memory. And lilliS, an an, after aU-ofianguage: logot«lme.

Ccrlainly- wc must nOI be afraid of always having to travel the same circle-memory here is, irreducibly, the memory of a single person. As soon as it speaks and must speak (for this is also its im. perative, the "you musr" that commands it), the poem can do so only in "its own, its own, individual cause": ill Jeinn eigmm, a/k.

"iguwm Sache, in what properly concerns it (196; 35; 76). This is why, at the limit of its own possibility, "at the edge of itself," wrenching itself from its "now.na.-longer," toward its "as.a1ways"

1(197; 36; 77), the poem must dear a way between silence and djs· course, between mutism's JIlying nothing and the Jllying too milch of eloquence. It is the poem's narrow path, the strlliunillg: the path that is "most narrowly" that of the I (200; 38; 80). But this path does not lead 10 speech or language. It leads 10 only one word, to a "language berome reality, language set free under the sign of an in· dividuatioll which is radical" (197-98; 36; 77) . Irreducibly, to the language of a single person: "Then the poem would be-even more clearly than before-me language of an individual which has taken on form; and, in keeping with its innermost nature (Jeinem imunfm \Vtoultj it would also be the present, the here and now" (197-98; )6; 77).

Such is, in sum, the "solitude" of the poem, and what obliges it, with as rigorous an obligation as the obligation ro speak, not to "invent" a singular language or build an idiolect from Start to fin· ish, but to undo language (semantically and syntactically); disar. riculate and rarefy it; cut ir up according 10 a prosody which is nei­ther that of spoken language nor that of earlier poetry; to condense it until one comes to the hard center, the muted resistance where one recognizes a voice that is singular, that is ro say, separ:l.ted from language, as is a tone o r a style.

Herc, clearly, resides what I have called, for lack of a more judi. ciolls term , the "idiomatic" threat: the rhrear of hermeticism and obscurity. Celan has, if! may put it thus, a very dear awareness of this. He even demands the risk. What is surprising. though, is not lila! he demands iL The surprise is that this demand is in faCt, once

UttllStroplu 57

again, absolutely paradoxical; for if it is indeed made, as one might expeCt, in the name of catastrophe itself (in the name of abysmal conversion, or even revolt), lhat is, in the name of existence, it is rightfully justified or authorized by onJy o ne thing: the hope of whal Celan calls me "encounter," die !kgegrlU1Ig (198; 37; 78).

JUSt after evo king the one who "walks on his head," and the abyss of the heavens beneath him, Celan says, without ado:

Ladies and gentlemen. nowadays it is f.ashionable to reproach p0-

etry with itS "obscurity." Permit me now, 3bruptly- bul has not some­thing suddenly 3ppcared on the hori1.On~-permit me now to quote 3 maxim by rasa !. 3 maxim th3t I re3d some time 3g0 in Leo Schos­lOw: Nr nous reprochrz ptlJ Ie manqllr tk dart! pllisqur nom en foisom proftsJion! Tha t is, I believe, if not the inhercm obscurity of poetry, the obscurity amibuted 10 it for the sake of an encounter-from a great dist3nce or sense of strangeness possibly of its own making. (195; }5; 75)

Obscurity is thus not at all native to poelry; it does not belong to

its essence. But it comes upon poetry; it is or can be conjoined wi th it. That it can thus come upon poetry is precisely only, Celan says, "fo r the sake or (um . .. wi/kn) the encounter, in me name of and for the love of an encounter, which itself befalls "from a great distance or a sense of strangeness." The paradox here is that obscurity originates in taking the encounter into consideration , and not in the demand for solitude. Celan does not say obscurity is destined to prepare or provoke the encounter, that it is a call to the encountet, or that the encounter is its final aim. He says obscurity is, on the contrary, a mark of attention-even respecr-with re· gard [0 the encounter. This means the encounter is the occasion, or rather the very cirmmstllnu of the poem: only once there is an encounter is there the poem's "soli tudc," and thus obscurity. And ill fact:

The poem is alone. It is alone and underway. Whoever writes it must remain in its company.

But does not the poem, for precisely that reason. at this point par­ticipate in the encoumer- in tlx mJlltry of 1111 mroumrr? (198; 37; 78)

Rmmnbt'rillg Dnft's

II is difficult to conceive rhe encounter, irs secret or mystery (Gt'iJt'imnis; a word in which rhe Ht'im of the near and the own, of the fu miliar and intimate, still resonates).

In what is perhaps the most striking twist of "The Meridian" (the moment when Celan recognizes that, after aU, the poem "does speak," even if"i n its own ... individual cause"), rhe 011,", indeed, the IUholly ollur, abrupdy appears to replace the elsewhere and the alien , which umil (his point had been the only terms in question. It is here (hat the encounter is decided in its essence and possibili ty;

But I think-and this thought can scarcely come as a surpri~ to you- I think that it has always belonged 10 the expectations of the poem in preci~ly this manner 10 speak in Ihe cause of the strange_ no, I can no longer use this word- in precisely Ihis manner- to speak ill the caliit' of an Olht'r-who knows, perhaps in the cause of a wholLy Olllt'r.

This "who knows," at which I see I have arrived, is the only thing I can add-on my own, here, today-ro the old expectations.

Perhaps, I must now say ro myself- and a( this point I am making usC' of a well-known term-perhaps il is now possible to conceive a mC'ering of this "wholly Other" and an "mhd' which is not far re­movC'd, which is very near. The poem tarries, StOpS 10 catch a sccnt­like a cre:l.Iure when confronted with such thoughts. (196-97; }S-}6; 76-77)

This is not , cont rary [Q what one might think, a "forced pas­sage." At most, on me "parh" that never StOPS dosing off, coming to nothing or leading back to the same poim. ir is an altempt ar a new dearing. We already know that at any rare there will be no "passage" in "The Meridian. "

Nor is this a simple "profession of faith"; the "who knows," which is itself dllft'd("at wh ich I see I have now arrived"), suspends what precedes it. In any case it leaves open the question of cxis~ tence, or of the possibi liry of the "wholly other" thus designated. Moreover, rhe justification for recourse to such an expression is i[~

self parlicularly discreet and reserved; there is nor a word too many, and nothing to flatter the "old expectations" tOO much.

CatllIlTOpht 59

Yet this said, how is the encounter decided in the substinttion of aherity for strangeness? And how is such a subsritution possible?

The logic we have already seen at work is still the same; cata­strophic and paradoxical. Speaking in its own name or its own in~

dividual cause, speaking the language of singularity, of "an indi­viduation which is radical." the poem hopes, has always hoped, precisely in this manner. in this language (though it is so difficult to reach), to speak "in the cause of the Strange," in the name of rhe strange and the alien. That is, to use, in and as o ne's own, proper language, the alien language, the language of estrangement. Cclan's b rutal reversal here of the movement which up to this point has srraitened his gait is simply the sign that between proper and nor­proper, near and far. fam iliar and strange, the exchange is always reversible. and for this reason never StopS; it is nor fi xed and has no determined direcrion. At the very heart of estrangement or dis~ r appropriation, by way of an en igmatic trope or turn , appropria­tio n occurs. Bur this also means that such an appropriation takes place ~ourside the self. " The appropriation, the singular appropri~ ation, is nOt the appropriation of the self within irself. The self­or the singular I- reaches itself within irsclf only "outside." Reap­plying one of Heidegger's formulas, we can say rhat the "outside self" is the self's origin. It is thus, for exam ple. that in rhe last poem of Di~ Nimuwdsrolt', "In der Luft" ("In the Air"), "die Entt­weiren" (the disunited) are described : "heimgekehn in I den un~ heimlichen Bannstrahl l def die Verstreuten versammclt" (" re~ turned home into' the un-homely banishment I which gathers up the scattered ones" I GW ,; 290)).L!

And in faCt, !he volte or revolt of appropriation does not rake PUtCt'. The "here and now" of singular existence is immediately an elsewhere and another time (a date whose memory must be kept). If appropriation occurs, we know it is in u-topia itself. This is why we mUSt substitute for the topological division of here and strange, nea r and far- which inevitably assigns places-the unlocatable di­\'i sion...o(diffC[e~ aheriry. In rhe place (without place) of the elsewhere, an "other" occurs. that is. a singular existent in whose

60 Rnll~mbmng DatN

name- and (his time, the expression is apt- the poem maintains the hope of speaking. Estrangement yields ground to the encoumg.

But the encounter is no less abysmal than csuangemcnt. As SOOn as other occurs, as such , there is the threat of an absolute aherity: ab*solutc. which forbids or renders im possible all relation. The olher. if it is indeed other, is immediately the wholly mher. But at the same ti me, the other. even if wholly other, is. insofar as it is OI her, unthinkable without relation to the same: as soon as other appears, detaching itself from rhe same, the same, in advance. has already recovered it and brought it back. It is impossible to think a total unbinding.

Alterity is contradictory in its essence. From precisely this para· dox, Western onto-theology up to Hegel and beyond-one might as well say, all our thought- has developed. Here it underpins Cela n's em ire discourse. Bm with a very particular accent, once agai n close to Heidegger's, which ai ms to remove it from all struc· turing of a dialectical type, to suspend in it the movement of res0-

lution, ro maintain it as pu re paradox. For the same, in turn, is irself only in relation to the other; the

begi nning of D;~ W;Jl~mclJnfi d~r Logik says in substance that the si mple and immediate posi tion of the same (of Being) is pure no· thingness or empty nothingness. Between the same and the other there is necessarily a relation, a reciprocal relation, o r rather, as Holderli n said, an exchange. One could say that this double rela· tion, which simultaneously divides the same and the other to pUt them, chiasmatically, in relation to other than what they are, stems ~qlln'ly from the sameness of [he same and the alterity of the other. But this is not at all so. In the "relating to," it is by defin ition the movement of alteration that predominates. Or if one prefers, dif· ference is always more primitive. So that in the relation of the same and the other (here is an imbalance. This means that it is the alrer· ifY of (he other, the being-wholly-other of the other or a certain "duplicityn in the other that insti tutes the same as a relation to {he other, and thus always differentiates it. The same is Heraclitus's "one differentiated in itself" - a phrase moreover "rcdiscovercd~ by Holderlin at {he dawn of speculat ive idealism:u This is why the

Call1StroplJ~ 6 ,

wholly other-whcther or nOt the word, for Celan, designates God-de-parts the other, that is, approaches it: re·latcs it to the same, which receives it in, or rather IlJ its most imimatc difference. The wholly other is the gift of the other as thc possibility of the same, that is, as the possibili ty fo r the same of establishing itself as "differancc" (I use Derrida's spelling here for what it indicates as to temporali ty and the origin of time). The same (lhc SubjC1:t) does not, as speculative logic believes. go outside the self and pass into its other, with a view to turning and relating back to the self so as to establish itself as such. But under the (original) gift of the other to which it already always relates itself, the same is the pure move· mem that allows the intimate gaping-which is, within the self. its "original outside scl fn {time)-to hollow itself out. to open and

spread. I may be wrong, but in the firs t pan of Dit Nimlilfldsrost there

arc twO poems, "Dein Hin Ubersein" (~Your Being Beyond") and ~ Zu heiden Handen" ("On Either Hand")-they in faCt appear one right after the other-that seem to me to speak not of this (t hey in no way say this very thing), but from this. In the fi rst, one

rcads:

GOll , das lasen wiT, is! ein Teil und ein zweiter, zerstTtuter: imTod all der Gem;thten wiichst er sich zu:

Donhin flihn uns deT Blick, mit dieser H;tlfte habcn wir Umgang.

God. so we read, is a pan and a second, a scattered one: in the death of all those mown down he grows himself whole.

Remembering Dl1lt's

There our looking leads us, with this h~r we keep up rela t ions. l~

And in the second :

... ich nnde hinaus.

o dicsc wandernde leere gastliche Mitte. Getrenm, fa ll ich d ir zu, fallst du mir zu, ei nander emfullen, schn wir hindurch:

On Sdb< hat uns verloren, das Sdb< hat uns vergc:sscn, das

Sdb< hat uns-

... 1 find my way out.

o this wandering emp£}' hospirable midst. Apan , 1 fall to you, you full to me, fallen away from each other, we see through:

One and the same

h" lost us, one

CntllJlrophe

and the same hn forgotten us, one and the SlIme has_ls

The substirution of the other and the wholly other fo r the strange and the elsewhere thus produces an ocueme thought of d ifference . And this thought in turn permits one to think of singularity as the secret- we cou ld also say the imimacy-of the encoumer. What Celan calls the cncounter is thus first the hollowing out, the inti­mate gae ing of si ngularity. The encounter is thc o riginal intimate ecstasy according to which singular being exists. This is why one can say of the poem which is "alone" that it also takes place "in the mys­

tcry of an encounter." II is also why Celan can say the fo llowing whcn hc evokes near the end of "T he Meridian" the two texts in

wh ich he "staned to writc from a '20th of January'" - the "cata­strophic" quatrain I have already ci ted ("come on your hands to us") and the "Gesprach im Gebirg" ("Conversation in the Mountai ns"):

" In each instance I started to write from a '2mh of January,' from my ' 20th of January.' I encountered ... myself" (201; 39; 81).

It is true that in the encounter (!hgtg11Ullg), the value of "against" (gt'gm) of "across fro m" or "vis-}-vis," seems to predominate. A

value of opposition. This certainly seems to be the way Celan un­de(Slands it when he defines the poetic act as "an ention," "percep­

tion," and "diaJogue":

The poem wants to reach the Other, it needs this Other, it needs a vis-a-vis. It searchcs it out and addresses il.

Each thing, each person is a form of Ihe Other for the poem, as it makes for this O ther.

The poem anemplS 10 pay areful attention to everythi ng it en­counters: it has a finer ~n~ of detail. of oudine, of Slfuctu re, of color, and also of the ~movemems~ and the Msuggestions." These are, 1 be­li('Ve, not qualities gained by an eye competing (or cooperati ng) with mechanical devices which arc contin ually bei ng brought to a higher degree of perfection. No. it is a concentration which remains aware of

all of our datcs ....

Rmumb~r;ng Darn

'111e poem becomes-and under whae condieions!-a poc:m of one who- as before-perceives, who fitees that which appears. Who qucs­dons Ihis appearing and addresses it. It becomes dialogue-it is often dl.'Spairing dialogue. (198; 37; 78)

BUI Ole the same time, the value of opposition is d early not the determining value here. It is inevitably attached to the motif of aI­lerity. Yet nothing indicates that it constitutes the concept.

What these lines really seck ro say is the poetic act as an act of though t. It is no accidem that Celan's definition of anention is. via Benjamin , that of Malebranche: "'Attemion'-permit me at this point to quote a maxim of Malebranche which occurs in Walter Benjamin's essay on Kafka: 'Anemion is the natural prayer of the sou l ~' (198; 37; 78). Again, it is no accident that the encounter is defi ned as a "perceiving" and a "questioning." T he "perceiving" (wllhnuhmen)- and once more we must consider Heidcgger, who here, as it happens, is both very far fro m and near to Benjamin- is the Greek 1I0~in, though t, the very essence of reason (Verll/mft); as for the questioning- but here, the proximity is very strange-we well know that Heidegger, in a F.unous text, said it was nothing less than the "Fromm igkeit des Denkens."26

Yet thought supposes what I am calling, of course for lack of a bener term , intimacy o r the int imate difference. It supposes, or more precisely, it originates in inti macy as the possibiliry of "lnring /0 in general. It is in this sense thai the poem thi nks o r is a d ia­logue. The dialogue is a speaking and a naming (which one would have to call "pure" if echoing Benjamin , "essential" if thinking of Heidegger). But speaking and nami ng are, in turn, a "Ierring speak." To speak to the other being or thing- ro address him or it.

I is (Q let what speaks in him or it occur, and accept this word in the very heart of the poem (i n irs "immediacy and proximity") as the gift of the other. It is to prepare, ecstatically, fo r the "presence" of Ihe other withi n oneself; ro let intimacy open up.

Only in [he realm of Ihis dialogue does thai which is addressed rake for m and galher around the I who is addressing and naming it. BUI [he one who has been addressed and who, by vin ue of having been

UUflstropJU 6,

named, has, as il were, become a thou, also brings its olherncss along into [he presenl, into Ihis pre:sent.-In Ihe hcre and now of the poem ' il is still possible""":the poem iuelf, after al l. has only Ihis one, unique, limiled present- only in Ihis immediacy and proximity does it allow Ihe mosl idiosyncratic quality of Ihe Olher, its time, 10 participate in (he dialogue. (198-99; m 78) -

The "counter" of the encounter o r the against is thus not sim­ply the "counter" of oppositio n. Rather, in the very vis-a~vis that is [he encounter, it is what rids itSelf of opposition. It is the ~coumer" of proximity, that is. of dc-parting. The other de-parts, dose against a proxim ity such that it makes the very space of inri­rnacy which renders possible thought and word. that is. dialogue. For [his reason the poem turns, within itself, to the~ppearin&.JQ yvhat is "in the p rocess of ap~aring"; it questions the very coming

into presence. T he poem (the poetic act) , in this mode proper ro \ it (dialogue), is the thought of the present's presence, or of the other of what is present: the_th2Yght of no-thingness (of Being), that is 10 say, the thought of time. "Soviel Gest irne" ("So Many

Constellations"):

... in den Schluchten, dOl. wo's vergliillle. stand zlttcnprachlig die Zei t, an def schon empor- und hinab­und hinwegwuchs, was is[ oder war oder sci n wird-,

ieh weiss, ieh weiss und du weissl. wir wussten, wir wuSSlcn nichl . wir waren ja dOl und nichl doC!. und 1.uweilen, wenn nur d3S Nichts zwischcn uns Siand , fitnden wir ganz zueinandcr .

. . . in chasms, and where Ihey had burm OUl,

splendid wilh leatS, stood Time,

66 Rmlt!mb~rillg Dnu!

011 which already grew up and down and away all thai is or was or will bc-.

I know,

I know and you know, we knew, we did not know, we

were there. after al l, and nor there and at times when only the void stood bcrwccn us we gOi att the way lO each m her.17

Of course, Cclan is not saying time itself, but rather, speaking of the other who i s~ in eve'}' instance, a Rarticular other, hi! tin.!£.. The

\

poetiC act (the poem) is a singular experience, the dialogue is a sin~ gular dialogue. And this is of course what distinguishes poetry from thought proper, from [he exercise of thought. even (and es~ pecially) if poetry thinks. But I do nor thi nk one call make th is an argument, as Uvinas does a bit hastily, in favor of who knows what improbable "beyond" of "ontology"; in favo r of a pathos (here, mictly conceived), of the "otherwise [han Being."18 Ccrrainly pow cric questioning begins with a singular address: to the mher, in faCt ml/isng~d as a "you. " But this address to the you is an address to the al tcrity of the you-of this other; it is the address, obscurely arisen from intimacy (from the intimate diffe rence), to the being of the other, which always "is" and can only "be" Being. I-Iow could one speak at all if Being was not involved? There is no "otherwise than Bei ng," unless, once again, one understands Be ing as being, and misses, in the other, precisely its altcrity. Poetry's "you-saying," irs llaming. is.!! way of "Being-saying" other than that which proru; rI

belongs to thought, but still a way of " Being-saying." It is possible ,har another space opens up from sllch a naming, or ,hat naming

shcds a diffcrent light o n the space opencd up by any saying. To cxpress this, H eidegger uscs Holderlin's word: "the holy" (dllS H~i­

lige). nut the other space or rhc space on which a diffc rcnt liglll is shcd is 110! "beyond" Bcing. The experiencc of the You, thc el1 -COUllter, opens o nto nothing other than thc experience of Being:

CnlnstropJu

of the no- thing of being-which C elan design;lI es, precisely in Holderlin's (erms (not Rilke's), as "openncss," "empt iness," "free­dom." I again qume the decisive passage:

When \'o'e speak with things in this manner "'ot always find ourselves faced with the qUCition of tht ir whtnce and whither [naeh ihrtm W1:I/"" und Wohin]: a qucstion which "remains open~ and "docs not come (0 an end," which pointS into openness, emptiness, frcedom­we are outside, at a considerablt distance.

The poem, I believe, also Sttk.ol this place. (199; J7; 78-79)

In other words, poetry's questioning is mela-physical questioning itself, in the sense that ir is the repetition of rhe meta-physica1 as Hcidegger undersrands it. It questions in the direction of being as "transcendence as such" (das tritmulldens SChlLcJJthhl).19 JUSt such a "transcendent" is sought in [he singular thing or being it is incum­bent upon poetry- the poem- to perceive (think): it is the "wholly "... other," [he nrch~ and rhe uUJs of the other, and nothing here permitS us [ 0 simply identify this wholly other with God . That is why Celan can say of poetic questioning, of the demand or pre~

tension (Ampmch) in all poems, even the least pretentious ( all ~ spmchsUJsnu) [hat it is at once " inescapable" and " incredible." The qucstion the poem carries is, as Launay correctly translates, "exor~

bitam" (199; 38; 79)· In this sense, the poetic act is ecstatic. The exorbitant is the pure I

transcendence of being. It follows that the poem, as a questioning,

is [limed toward [he open, offered up to it. And rhe open is itself/ open, after a fashion , to u-topia, to the pl~ce wi~hoUl place ~f the advent. To put it in other terms, rhe poeliC act IS catastrophIC: an

upsctting relation to what is an upset, in being, in rhe direction 01 no-thingness (the abyss).

T his is just what justifies the idea that poetry is the interruption of art, that is, the interruption of mimesis. Poetic an consists of pe rceiving, nor represe nti ng. Representing, at least according to

some of the "ancienr TUmors," can o nly be said of the already-pre­sent. W hat is "in rhe process of appearing~ can not be represented, o r if so, we must give a completely different meaning to represen-

68 Rnnemb(!rillg DIlIt's

ra tion. For pacify. represemation is organized starting with what onc might call omic comparison (the comparison of the already­prcscm with the a l ~dy-presen[), from which arise figures or im­ages, "metaphors and mher £ropes," all the turns of ph rase that al­Iowa ccrrain use of language to Ix defined as "poet ic." Measured against the requirements of questioning tOward Being or presence, the amic comparison , and therefo re me "poetic," have to do with what Heidcggcr denounced as "idols" (Giitun) and problcmatized as "thi nking in models" (Dmkm in Modelkn). j(J There is nothing _to which onc can compare Being: Being is, purely and simpl~

~nrc=presentable.

Poetry as Celan understands it is thus in this sense the imcrrup­tion of rhe "poetic." At least , it is defined as a banle against idola­try. All "real" poems, all that are effectively poems, seem to aim at nothing other than being the place where the "poeric" collapses and becomes abysmal. The taSk of poetry seems to be ti relessly undoing the "poetic"; nor by "purring an end" to figures and tropes, bur by pushing them ad ab1t4rtill1n, as Lucile's "Long live the Kingl" in the sharp light o f death suddenly makes absurd the thearricali ty and grandiloquence of "historic" discourses. In the highly rigorous sense the term has in Heidegger, poetry would thus be the "decon­struction" of the poetic, that is to say, both of what is recognized as such (here there is a closely fought confrontation with the p<>­etic tradition) and of the spontaneous "poeticity" of language (wh ich supposes the strictest possible language work).

Such a task. which amounts to extenuating the "poetic," is per­haps impossible-Celan is the first to say so. Nevertheless, it is what his poetry strives to do. It strives as "poetry of poet ry." But it also strives inasm uch as it seeks to reduce the image to pure per­ception, that is, seeks to empty o r hollow out the image. To the question "And what, then, would the images be?" once the poem condenses in "exorbitant" questioni ng, the respo nse is: "That which is perceived and to be perceived one time, one time over and

lover again, and ollly now and only here" (199; 38: 79). Poetry would thus measure itself against the impossibility of a language

CntllJtToplu

wi thout images or the impossibility of what Benjamin calls "pure language," that is, the language of names.}l

Two remarks [ 0 close: I. In its impossible, exhausting combat with an (the mot if of

panting, babbling, or stammering), ~ha~try wants to rid itsel f of is the beautiful. The poem's threat is the Ixautiful, and all p0-

ems are always (00 beautiful, even Celan's. The beautiful is obviously closely linked to mimesis. This is par­

ticularly visible in Benjamin , who defines the beautiful "as the ob­ject of experience in t he state of resemblance." He quotes Valery on this: "Beauty may require the servile imitation of what is inde­fi nable in objecrs."H If one went so fa r as to say "the servile imita­t ion of that which is inimitllble in things," one would reach what makes poetry's essence fo r Cclan, that is. what does not destine it fo r the beautiful- o r fo r mimesis. But at the same time this pure

oxymoron , ~he imitation of theinimitable. marks the impossibil­ity of poetry. This is where Celan locates the tragic.

2 . I do nOt know, finally. if "Tilbingen, Janner" contains t he slightest allusion to Moses and the interdiction against representa­tion. AlII know is mat Holderlin, more than has 1>«n Ixli~ and more than Heid eggerian commentary leads us to think. evoked the Patriarchs. "Am Quell der Donau" ("At the Source of the Dan­

ube"), for example, says this:

And think of you, a valleys of the Kaulwos. Whatever your antiquity, paradises far, And your patriarchs and prophets,

a Mother Asia , and your heroes Without fea r for the signs of the world, Heaven and fate upon their shoulders, Rooted. on mounlaintops days on end , Were the first to understand Speaking to God Alonc.J3

70 Rmumwring Vain

Patriarchs and prophets arc named here: those who have known an CIlCO Uluer- :1. dialogue-with God. Celan would perhaps have s;tid: wit h Ihe wholly other. And perhaps he would have conceived such a d ialogue as poetry itself. Perhaps. AnOlher poem from Dj~ NinnmuiJrou, "Sci Wein und Vcrlorenhcit" ("Over Wine and Lost­ness"), speaks in this direction . It says:

ieh ritt dUTch den Schnee, horst du, ieh rill Gon in die Fernc--dic N:thc. cr sang, cs war unseT tettte r Rift il~r die Mcnschcn-H fi rdcn.

Sic ducktcn sich, ~nn

sic.: uns tiber sich horten, sic schricbcn, sic logen unseT Gcwichcr urn in cine ihrer bebildcm:.n Sprachcn.

I rode through the snow, do you hear, I rode God into fu rness-nearness, he sang, II was

our last ride over the human hurdles.

They ducked when they heard us above Iheir heads. Iht')' wrote, they lied ?ur whinnyi ng Int o one of their be-imaged languagcs.~

§2 Prayer

Novtmb~r 10-15, 1983 (B~rk~/ry)

I said of "Psalm ," in Di~ Nimlafldsrou, (hal it is a ureal prayer."

Just what did I mean? Three things, it .seems to me (I had d ifficul ty art iculating them

while improvising a response. And even now, what I propose is

hardly bener than a sketch).

I. First of al l, I meant simply that "Psalm," at least in its second

stanza , is in standard prayer fo rm:

Gelobt scisl du, Niemand. Dir rulieb wollen wir bluhn. Dir elllgcgen.

Praised be your name, no one. For your sake we shall flowe r. Towards you.1

The standard fo rm of prayer happens 10 be invocation and ad ­dress-laudatory address. Unlike what happens in Trakl 's Famous poem , for example, the tide " Psalm" is not fo rmally denied ; th is is indeed a song or a hymn in ho no r of ... No o ne. Moreover, it is

7 '

R~mnllb"ing Daus

a ncar '1l1ote. through wh ich it becomes clear that No one is named in place of the biblical God , the God invoked in Hebrew (thcn Christian) liturgy. In place of the creawr God to whom the first SllJl7.ll alludes:

Niemand knelel uns wieder aus Erde und u-hm niemand bcspricht unsern Staub. ' Niemand.

No one moulds us again ou( of earth and day, no one conjures our dun. Noone.

That is why, for the love of such a "God," man (the "we" who proffers the prayer) sees and designates himself as a creature: the no onc's rose.

One can of course think that the substitution of "No one~ for God, and the transformation of the substantive (the "common noun") into a proper noun, art" ironical-that this is a SOrt of sar­casm bordering on blasphemous parody ... No....o.nc .. has nevcr been a n:une. except in the wily Witz U!xsses used to escape the Cyclops, or In Pessoa. But nothing in the tone of the poem indicates such an irony. Unless, that is, one understands irony as itself the figure of despair, a despair here absolute:

Ein Nichts waren wir, sind wir, werden wir bleiben, hlilhend ...

A nothing we were, are, shall remain. Rowcring ...

Whence a second possible objection: this poem may be an anti­or cou llIer-prayer, a SOrt of"ncgative" prayer; a prayer whose aim is 10 show prayer's inanity. But the prayer form, the invocation, does J~OL~W mc..inanity of the prayer itself. The praycLSeems to nu[­~ I fy ItSelf as ~n address because it nullifies its addressee by present-1Ilg. or nanung..him as No one. But "No one" only ever means rhe

73

absence or lion-existence of the addressee, not that there is no ad­drCSSt."1:. There is no absurdity in such a proposition. It means sim-ply that by not invoking anJonr,l jhe prayer is indeed empty or> __ vain~ but that by invoking No one it remains a prayer. To put it an­other way, the paradoxical naming of irs address« makes it at once (formally) possib[e, and impossible. It is no less a prayer for that , in its very impossibility; a prayer and, "who knows," perhaps a "at prayer. The paradox here is just the one that ceaselcssly creatcs the tension in Cclan's poetry and thought.

2. To substimte No one for God is (0 reveal in a daz.z.l.ing way ~ that "God" is not, or was not, a name. This poem has an apoca­

lyptic quality. To say that "God" was not a name amounts (0 saying that

"God," long thought the name of all names, ~e name of me name' l desiS!!ated no one to whom to direct an apdress; iuv.as a word or a. c~cept signifying that whic.h_was":'wholl~theiJhan..man, but neither more nor less 2 name than "man" is (one can address some­one by calling out "Man!" but only when one does not know the person's name, or when, dependi ng on circumstances, one can not or will not say it). As HeideggeL.Says, in substance, before such a (concept of) God, one can neither kneel, nor offer sacrifices. nor pray. And if people believed they could address God. call him by the "name" God. this was no less paradoxical than invoking No one (the divi ne. on (he other hand, is always named and renamed: Apollo, Jesus, the oblique "Christ." T he biblica[ god is known by several names, or an unpronounceable, written one).

T hat God is nOt a name, that one can be aware of this even when invoking him with this name, can of course also mean that God has no name, or that God, the name of the name, is beyond all names. We kno; at least rhis minimum of negative theology: God exceeds through infinite power (i.e., by his infinite presence) any kind of assigning. Finite language cannot rake the measure of his infi nity. That is, the [anguag~ofhere cannot say what is wholly other. But that is nor what Cdan's poem_prayer_ reveals. The poem reveals simply that GPd, because he is God, i.\..:no one."

74 Remembering Dates

( rhat ~od as such d~oU!!lst. j{is ~Ilamc:mcans..::.no...onc," .hit "uamc" is no one's name. If underlying this revelation there is a son of accusation- which I th ink rhere is; I would say, even, a desper­au: accusation- it is clearly against theology, which is to say against philosophy. PlatO d id not only "d ispose people tOward Ch ristian­

, ity"; in Plato'S language, our language, all that is d ivine came, irre­versibly, to be said (Bm if an accusation of this son is indeed pre­sent here, it in no way prohibits the strange elation, the liberty, that traverses the poem).

"God does not exist~ is not a declaration of atheism. At most, it would be only if "God does not exist" meant "God has never ex­

p sred. " "Psalm" suggestS nothing of the SOrt; rather, it intimates that , God has revealed himself to be "no one."3 Indeed, the wieder of the first verse, side by side with knett'n, is striking:

Niemand knetet uns wieder aus Erde und Lehm.

No one moulds us again OUI of earth and day.

This clearly means that someone d id so in the past; someone, a god, (he god of creation, molded us out of eanh and day and con­ju red our d ust. Or at least, we humans believed so; we believed that we were creatures and that someone, the god of this creation, com­fo rted us even in death. T hus defi ned as mortal creatu res, it was possible for us to address the god who de-termi ned our existence in this manner. But once we no lo nger define oursclves as mon a! creatu res,jt is revealed_(h~JJlo o ne created us, that we' are noth­ing- o r rather that we are "a nothi ng." (eill Nicbts), a m:-t'ns ~ in the sense of nIS crMtum- and that the only prayer it is still in our power to pro ffer, in echo of the o ld prayer, is a prayer to No one. It is revealed that Revelation has come to an end. Since th is end we can say, in prayer, not th at God has never existed, but that we hu­mans have never been, a[ld will never be, anythi ng but "no things."

T he possibili ty of the Revelation is closely linked- and this has always, necessarily been the case-(Q rhe q uestion of man, the essence o f man. fu soon as man in his essence is no-th ing, as soon as the being he is can be defi ned- in recollection of Angelus

Prayer 7'

SilesLus's abysmal rose, the "rose o f n.9thi ng" o r o f nothingness (admirable still, like everythi ng that is}- what has been calledl), ... "God, H the ~m mmmll1l/, is revealed no longer [Q exist. And this, I~tence is attested to in its becom ing anO!lymous: the word "God" did not name anyone, or in any case no being in the mode of a being,5 even one of incomparably more than human being­infin ite, supreme, and so on.

We still need to know, however, if "to exist" is the same thing as "to be." I mean simply that the question of God depends on the q uestion of man. Yet the questio n of man or his essence is not ~ What is man ?H bur rather, "W ho is man?" H eidegger took it in this form fro m H olderlin in an a[(empt ro p ry it away fro m Kant- ro the detriment of a program matic philosophical anthro­pology. The same goes for God; the question "What is God?" will \~ never reach G od hi mself, in h is existence or non~exis tence. If God • is man's o ther, o nly one q uestion about h im is possible. T hat is: +

"W ho is G od?" Mo reover, ro the q uestion "What is man?" the an­swer, today, is always already that man is the subject. T his indicates

simply rhat man is God, o r the converse. Celan's extraordinary, "exorbi tant" effort consists of keeping

ope n the questio n "Who?" even with respect to God and even if, as Heidegger says, the q uestion ("Who is the God?") is "perhaps .. . t OO d ifficu lt for man, and asked tOO early." One hears it resonate, I th ink, in another poem fr;;;-Die Ni~mmldsrou in wh ich, after a

fash ion , the Alliance is affi rmed:

Es war Erde in ihnen, und sic gruben.

Sie gruben und gruben, so ging ihrTag dahi n, ihre Naehe Und sic [oblen nichl Galt, det, so horten sic, alles dies wa llie, der,.so hortcn sic, alles dies wusstc.

Sie gruben und honen nichts mchr; sic wurdcn nicht weise, erfanden kei n Lied, erdachten sich keincrlei Spl"Jehe. Sic gruben.

Rl'I,,~mb~ri"g Dau!

F_~ kam ei ne SlmC, es kam aueh ein Sturm, e$ kamen die Mccre allc. !eh grabe, du griibst, und es grjbt aueh de! Wurm, und das Singende don sagt: Sic graben.

o einer, 0 keincr. a niemand, 0 du: Wohin gings. da's nirgcndhin ging~ o du grjbst und ieh grab, und ich grab mich dir lU,

und am Finger erwachl um der Ring.

There was canh inside them, and they dug.

They dug and they dug, so thcir day went by for thcm, thci r night. And they did not praise God, who, so they heard, wanted all this, who, so rhey heard. kncw all this.

They dug and heard nothing more; they did not grow wise:, invented no song, thought up for themse:h'es no language. Thcr dug.

There camc a stillness, and therc came a storm and all the occans came. ' I dig, you dig, and the worm digs tOO, and chat singing out thcre sa)'3: They dig.

o onc, a none, 0 no one, 0 you: Where did th e: way Icad when it led nowhe: rc? o you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you. and on our finger the ring awakcs.6

Cclan's questioning thus considers the possibility that God-Y t?rough the "name" "God" - has become anonymous. The revela­

tion of God's anonymity is a historical event (li ke the Revelation itsel~). It is perhaps the very event, or advent, of his lOry. God's..be­~1~g. anoll¥Jl1~ (as, I think it probable, the Revelation itself) is_ blStonclty; that is, the dislocation of the religious. We are very d ose here to the mean ing of Holderl in's "retreat" and "return-turning away," or to NietzSChe's "God is dead."

77

Nie~he'~ "God is dead" (let us nor fo rget that weare the oncSj J

who killed hIm) produces. however, man's extreme sclf_assumption1Df" as a subject-the subjcct of the Will to Power. This culminatcs in an entirely necessary way in what I have found it accura te to call "the subject 's plunge into insanity":' I am God- Dionysus; Qr, pre­cisely in thcJoss of the name, I am all names (the names of his­lOry). For behind NietzSChe's "God is dead," there is the (specula~ tive) death of the Luthero~Hegelian God; that is, the absolute, unto-death fi nitization of God, his absolute becoming man . And this is his resurrection as the Absolure. the subject itself. Celan dis­tances himself from both these ideas-if indeed they are lWO-of the cnd of the divine.

On the other hand , t@."withd rawal" of the divine in Holderiin, the "categorical turning away" of me god (the Father, who is the "mther of ti me") that draws on the essence of Creek tragedy. is in no way related [0 any of the figures of Cod's death. "Reueat" is nQJj death ; i.0s, on the contrary. r eves the god and..Kp~tes I to an from the divine. what (C:ttaq,ubOimi~of..6n.it_ude, for "the immediate, rigorously considered, is impossible for mortals and immortals alike. '" Which means at least that the immediacy of the god, his pure and simple epiphany,,is-as tragedy attests­man's death, or plunge into turmoil. It is the monStrous (ulIge­heun) coupling in which the god, tOO, is lost in man's excess, his enthusiasm. Retreat is thw necessary to preseeve the god's "holi,) ness," in the same way that the law commands man to endure the god's "Raw"-bccause only the Raw helps or saves. Eauhe man re.­q.t rned to earth (carastrophized), such "wlfitithfulncss" is the height o "piety." This supposes that epiphany always be conceived as the initial moment of retreat, or the initial tCSt of finit ude; man's fi nite bei ng is his being a-tlleo!. Bm it also supposes that the divine be subject to the very history its epiphany-or retre3t-sets into mo~ tion: the gods have rurned away from [he world; perhaps a god is ....

still to come. Celan is closer to this idea. Obviously, he cannOt de~lore thC I

"lack of sacred or holy names." The god he is thinking of is the ...,. '.' Jewish god , and he knows with overwhelming cen ainty where the

Rrmrmbrrillg Data

rU0smigia fo r ,,/IItbOI, and the frenzied attempt at remYlhologiza~ tion (which Holderl in escaped , but wirh which Heidegger com~

promist:ti himself well beyond 1933's proclamations) led Germany (Europe). Nevertheless, be shanxlwith Holderl in, in direct desttnt fro m the motif of the "time of distrcss,~ thc..hopc of a religion to come. Implicitly, at leas!. Near the end of "The Merid ian," we

read:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am approaching the conclusion ... . 1 2m 2pproaehing the conclusion of ... "u-once and Lena. ~

And here, with the nnal twO words of the dt3ma,' 1 mwt pay arc~ /jJ1 attention, lest, like Karl Emil Fra.nzos. the editor of that KFirst Complete CritiC:l1 Edition of Grorg BUchner's Collected Works and Posthumous P2PCrs," which the SauerHinder Press published in Frank­fUT! am Main eigilly-one years ago-I must pay careful attention, lcst, like my rOUlItT'J111411 KArl Emil FmIlZI)J, /Uhom I haw htTt foll lld 4gaill, I Tad Kroming" for Kcomfortable, ~ which is now the accepted variant. IO

But on second thought: aren't there quof3tion marks present in "Leonce and Lena," quotation marks with an invisible: smile: in the di­rection of the words? And perhaps these 2ft to be understood nOi as mere punctuation scra. tches, but rather as rabbit cars, listening in, son1ewhat timidly, on themselves and the words?

Celan of course chooses "comfortable." But he chooses it with its quotation marks. It is, moreover, "with that as a starting point"­"but also in the light of utopia" - that he an empts, he says, a "lOpo~raphy," ~ea rching fo r Lenz's and Franzos's place of origin; searchlllg for hiS own. None of these places can be fou nd ; instead, one encounters the meridian, that is, the vcry line that conducts the poem towards the encounter.

So there will have been at least ,his possibilj'ty suspended before ..-! us; a way of saying "who knows?" A religion to come. And even if,

after Di~ Ninnnndsros~ and then the expl icit turning point of Amn­~umd~. th~ reference to God is, as it were, rarefied; even jf a poem Ill. Du Numal/dJr~u speaks of the god who "comes /lot , "I I Cclan wL~1 never pa~e sa id what, in reading him . I am tempted 10 say (wllhout wanting to put the words in his mouth); namely, fhat it is

Pray" 79

all over; God's becoming-anonymous is irreversible. Cclan will have maimained the possibili ty of prayer.

3. I was thinking, too, of this: mightn't it be that a poem which thus maintains the possibi lity of prayer- at its oU[er limit , [0 be sure-is the sign [hat a link. and perhaps a necessary link, exists betwccn ptayer and poetry? That poetry in its essence is prayer, and conversely, that every prayer is a poem?

The second proposition apparcmly poses little difficulty; after all . the sole archives 0( 1I1e divine are poems, and an address to rhe god, more than ~y othcr kind, requires :i conversion in language or an entirely diffcrent attitude within it. When, in view of the en­counter, u lan dedicates the poem to attention , he does not take lightly Malcbranche's defi ni tion: attention is "the soul's natural prayer." If the idea of prayer magnetizes the poem's search, it is d early because ~ocation is here conceived as the original fo rm of 3.ddress. And prayer is conceived, in a way, as the clcment of the poetic. But that amounts to saying that in its essence, poetry is

prayer. How to undersrand this? ..... I think that it has always belonged to the expectations of

the poem ... to speak in (h~ eallst of an Otlur-who knows, per­haps in the cause of a who/ely Olh~T;"12 one cannot long pretend not to know that [his phrase from "The Meridian" appeals 10 God. And that it appeals specifically to God so as to say the original hope. and thus the first aim, of poetry. This amounts to Structuri ng the phrase to God, or assign ing it, in its essence, to be the word ut­tered in God's name, for his cause. And finally, to be prayer.

We must not be tOO quick to believe, however, that such assign­ment is simply tantamount to rencwing olllo-theological confu­sion. T hus invoking the wholly other is obviously risky. But nowhere in "The Meridian" docs one find the slightest proposition that would authorize d osi ng the wholly other down 0 1110 Being­bei ng which is, moreover, never designated as such, even if it is Strictly conceived as no-thingness (that which is open, empty, free), perhaps beyond what Heideggcr's statements on poetry as a "topol-

80 Rmmnbmllg Dales

ogy of bcing~ suggesl. 13 T he reference 10 the wholly other, in its suspensive mode (" ... who knows, perhaps ... ") is, on the con. lrary. a question asked, toward God, to the dcrcimcm of onto-the­ology. It is precisdy bttause the being reveals judf as nmhingness, no Ihing, [hat the God (someone, ~jnt:r) reveals himsdf as "not onc" o r "nonc" (krin"). and nom there as "no onc" (Niml/md). A no one whom it is (nill) possible to address (you. du):

o dner, 0 keiner. 0 Nicmand, 0 duo

The movcmcni from nothingness ro you indissociably links (he movement of Ihe "encounter" and the movement of God's becom­ing-anonymous. But one must also understand [hat it is the God, and he alone, who makes possible the address or appeal. That is. he prayer. ~ God wilhout a name is needed in order to name, in

order to say ~you ," to..in.voke, and.pcrhaps..thus to savc names. Two poems evoke this movemem if one attempts (0 n:.id"rhem

together. The poem ~50x!EL Gestirne" ("50 many constellations"), that I have already quoted in part but whose last stanza I would like to cite again:

ich weiss,

ich weiss und du .... OCiSSI, wir WUSSlen, wit wussten nichl, wit waren ja da und nichl don, und tuweilen. wenn nur das Niches zwischen uns sl2nd, f.mden wir ganz zueinander.

I know,

I know and you know, we knew, we did nOI know, we were there, wer:.tll, and nOI there and at limes when only the void stood between us we gOt alJ the way to each othcr. 14

And Ihe very difficult poem "Radix, Matrix":

Wie man tum Stein sprichl, wie

d" mir vom Abgrund her, von ciner Heimat her Ver­schwisterte, Zu­gcschleudene, du, du mir vorLCiren, du mir im Nichts eincr Nacht. du in der Abcr-Nacht Be­gegnCle. du Aber-Du-:

Damals, da ich nicht da war, damals, da du den Acker abschritfst, allein:

Wer, wet wars, jenes Gescble<:hl, jcnes gemordere, jenes schwan. in den Himmel stehende: RUle und Hode-?

( Wund. Wund Abrahams. Wun.c:l Jesse. Niem2ndcs Wun.d-o unser.)

j" wie man zum Stein spricht, wie d, mil meinen H anden donhin und ins Nichls greifst, so ist, was hier ist:

auch dies<: r Fruchtboden klafTI, dieses Hinab ist die cine der wild· blUhendcn Kronen.

8,

Rnllmlber;lIg Dnus

As ol1e spe:lkl [0 SlOne, like you, from Ihe chasm, from a home become a sister 10 me, hurled towards me, you, you that long ago. you in the nothingness of a night, you in the multi-night en­countered, you multi-you- :

At that time, when I was nOi there, at that lime when you paced the ploughed field, alone:

Who. who was ii, that lineage, the murdered, [hat looms black into the sky: rod and bulb-?

(Root .. Abraham's rool. Jesse's root. No one's rOOI-O ours.)

Va. as one speaks 10 stone, as yO" with my hands grope into there, and illlo nothi ng, such is what is here:

this fertile soil 100 gapes, this going down is one of the crests growing wild. 11

Pmyer

Among many o lher things this at least is disclosed: the poem melds wi th the address ilself; there exists only a SOrt of nomina­tion without a name, a "saying-you." The address here-at leasl

th is is one of the poem's possibilities-is the very gestu re of love. II does nOt say, it is. as such , rhe "encounter," starting from the abyss or noth ingness. That is, starting fro m death itself; not only the death -capabili ty of finirude, but, aggravat ing or having perma­nently aggravated th is, [he historically occurred death , the exter­mi nation . Start ing from annihilation (behind the mo tif of noth­

ing o r nothingness, that particular nothingness is always prCSCllt. It will have imposed a wholly other fo rm of the memorable, the un­forge ttable; another fo rmulation o f the question in general; an­other partition of the thinkable and the unthinkable. It will have altered thought). But to address someone else, {Q love him. is nec­

essarily to address in h im the wholly other, in the very recogn ition of aheri ty and always under the th real Ihat the aherity might take refuge in irs ab-soluteness. The "you" is divided, and it is nOt only in God that one half doses in on itself. The you is also an "Against you" or a "Not-you" (Aber-dll), a name-incidentally, untranslat­able-that o ne fi nds again in "Zurich, Zum Storchen" ("Zilrich ,

the Stork Inn"), a poem written in memory of an encounter with

Nelly Sachs:

Vom Zuvicl war die Rc.-de, vom Zuwenig. Von 011 und Aber-Du. von der T riibung durch Hclles, von Judischem, von dcinem Gon.

Of tOO much was our talk, of 100 li ttle. Of the You and Not-You, of how clarity troubles, of Jcwishncss, of your God. lt.

Calling the You NOI·You says: if I call you, ir is ,he other in you that I call in call ing you "you"; i, is the wholly other, il is God. It is "no one," which remains your place of origin; you whom I call and can c .. ll1 (and il is indeed love, or probably was). From nm hingness, C.1.J1ing the wholly other. even if he is "no one," is the very possibil­iry of address, o f "speaki ng to," of "sayi ng-you"; the possibiliry of Ihe poem as Ihe possibiliry of"re-lating to" in general. And it is in this sense thai every poem is a prayer.

At least lImil Cclan writes the last poem in Lichtzwang:

Wirk nicht voraus, sende nieht aus, steh herein:

durch grilndet vom Nichts, ledig al len Gebets, feinfugig, nach der Vor-Schrin, unuberholbar,

nehm ich dich auf, sian aller Ruhe.

Do nOI work ahead, do not send fonh , stand into it, enter:

lransfounded by nothingness, unburdened of all prayer, microstruetured in heeding Ihe pre-script, unoverlakable,

I make you at home, instead of all rdt.11

8,

But il is also true that "unburdened of all prayer" remai ns a prayer, or the cilation of one. As re-called in "Trcckschmenzcit" (" Hour of ') the Barge"), anmher poem from LichrzWfll1g, it is MeiSler &:khan 's: "Let us pray (0 God to keep us fret and dear of God. " Re-cited by Celan, the prayer is addressed to God for him to stop the pain , the pure pain that he is in us and between us. Or even, 10 SlOp the agony that he is, Ihe agony of death:

. .. def Enthohle, geinnigt, spricht umer den Stimen am Vfer:

Todts quill , Goues quitt.

... caSt from the throne, he turned inwards, speaks among brows on the shore:

dear of death, d ear of God. I'

O ne could probably say Eckhart's prayer condenses, (0 the great· CSI possible degree, all spttUlalive omo--theology. Bernard Boschen­siein imerpretS Cclan's re-use of it thus:

The pott ... then uners the words of liberation: dear of death, dear I of God. With these words, men would be freed of lheir burden; they could consciously achieve double death: God's, and thai of death it­sel( For these deaths are linked. Death in Celan is a modern form of Ihe divine presence. His poems receive from death their center of grav­ity, their sense and their legibility. As the words' magnel, death is their Structuring pole. With the death of death , a turning point is reached that ordains a new ~ti fIOCation. The last poem in !ithtzwant. yields the formul a: ~transfounded by nothingness, I unburdened of all I prayer."I' 1I is incumbent upon Ihe pott to accept this new founda­tion and not 10 Ace into a distant world. lO

But we should not necessarily understand it this way, if only be­cause Eckhart's formulatio n, here truncated, modified o r diverted, is removed from Ihe prope rly dialectical syntaJI it origi nally pos­sessed: let us pray to God to keep us dear of God. Thus. Cela n's

86

imroduclion or "dear of death" can nOl mean ''rhe death of death, " which is really the Hegelian notion of God's death (,he resurrcc­tion) and rhus the correct, speculative way to understand Eckhart's phrase. Rather. Cc1a o's..furmulauon means; C iven thaLwe no longer owe anything to dq rh, that we have no debt to jt or have already paid it everything (rhe allusion is d ear), we are in cfreel­and without asking God, "who ... walHcd all that I who ... knew all that" -dear of God. The citation of the prayer is "unburdened of all prayer, " The poem arrives in the prayer's stead and in its place; rhe poem as it is henceforth uttered by the "deposed" or "fallen ," the desubJimed (d" Emhobu, who no longer inhabits the heights), revealing precisely through this [hat "there is no longer a God, n rather than Ihar "there is no God."

Celan's poelry would then perhaps also be the place where the ~nce of poetry ceases to be prayer. Or more accurarely, where ir renounces prayer.

§ 3 Sublime

Nov~mber 2 1, 1983 (Berktlry)

In J.- F. L.'s lecture on Barnett Newman, "T he Sublime and the Avant-garde," I fou nd a passage on Burke particularly striking. J.-F. L.later gave me a copy of his text:

However much K:!.m rejecu Burke's thesis as empiricism and phys­iologism, however much he borrows, on the other hand, Burke's analy­sis of the comradiction characterizing the .sentiment of the sublime. he strips Burke's esthetic of what I think is its greatest value. which is to show that the subl ime is provoked by tlu (hriarrhat nothing will happrn allymorr. The beautiful gives positive pleasure. But there is an­ot her son of pleasure, linked to a passion stronger than satisfaction, which is pain and the approach of death. In pain the body affects the soul . But the soul can also affect the body as if it felt pain of external origin, just by means of representations unconsciously associated with painful situations. This wholly spi ritual passion is called terror in Burke's lexicon. But terrors are linked to being deprived: deprived of lighl' terror of darkness; deprived of others, terror of solitude; deprived of language. terror of silence; deprived of objects. terror of the void; deprived of life, terror of dC';lth. What terrifies is that the possibility of the phrase " It hap~ns that~ does nOi happen: il ceases to happen.

In order for terror to commingle with pleasure and thus create the sentiment of the sublime, it is also necessary. writes Burke, for the threat that produces terror to be suspended, held at a distance, re­strained. This sus~nsc, the lessening of a threat or d:l.nger, provokes :I. son of pleasure which is certainly nOI that of positive satisfaction.

88 &m~mbmfJg DaUs

but nnhn of rdief. It is still privation, but once removed: the soul is deprived of the threat ofbcing deprived of light, langu2gc:, life, Burke: dininguishes the pleasure of second-degree priv:uion from posilive pklSurc. chriucning it "ddight."

Here, then, is how the sublime semimem is analyzed: an imposing, powerful object, threatening to deprive the soul of any "II happens," "aslOnishcs" the soul (at lesser degrees of intensity, the soul is seized with admiration, veneration, respecd. The soul is made stupid. im­mobilized: il Sttms dead . In distancing this threat , :m procures the pleasure of rel ief. delight. T hl nks 10 an, the soul is reslOred to the ag­itation between life and death, and this agitat ion is its heahh and its life. The sublime for Burke is no longer a question of dcvadon (which is the cu egory by which Aristotle diS[inguished tragedy), it is a qUe$* tion ofintensihcalion.

This analysis describes what can be strictly called the uOllOmyof the sublime: the "threat that nothing will happen anymore" (which creates terror), once suspended, still produces pleasure. The pain, at least, is relit."Ved. But it is an that suspends the threat and, in fact, converts the pain into pleasure (or procures the "masochisric" 5at* isfaction that Freud connects to tragedy and relates to the para* doxial tension constitutive of "preliminary pleasure"). With this in mind, J suddenly understand eelan's m UTed, obstimtte rage against art. At base it is quite similar to Baraille's, st range as that may seem. Was Bataille more radical? I'm not sure; less ironic and playful, more emphatic, and not without- I think it was Barrhes who noted this-a certain preciousness, encompassed in his "ha* rred" of what Celan tries to save: poetry.

But this IOIge, tOO, responsible for the grandeur of modern an, its hosti li ty toward the beautiful, its obsession with truth-which, in a world without God, in the absence of a world, gives it all its "metaphysical" tension- this rage, too, is perhaps vain . True, "economy'" (of art, of poetry, of the beauti fu l) is appalling in view of ths: "realiry of the real," that is, death and pain. But here is an old a rgument that Bataille himself recognized as he sought to throw a wrench into the perfect dialectical machi nery: what else ca n one do with death except "simu late" it ? Again , he himself

Sublime 89

called such simulation "experience" (in a scnsc not dissimilar to mine), provided that rhe simulation was pushed to the limit of the possible. He thereby indicared what Celan, tOO, indica~~ ~ n his own way: that mimesis is the condition for the poSSibili ty of thought. An ancient indication {it appears already in Aristotle's PMtia), but one that, unbeknownst to him, Kant can perhaps take credit for having mapped Out in all its consequences; Heidegger knew this without wanting to admit it, while NietzSChe had lucidly intuited itS truth.

What we must think out is indeed the It IJappem that. But from where do we begin to think if nor rhe starting point of "terror," the threat that "It happens that" will Stop happening? In other words, fro m where can we begin to thi nk, we to whom birth has been "given," if not from rhe starting point of death ? Death, that other gift- or more exactly, the pro*spect of the fi ~st and only one (th~ enigma of our birth is before us). The question torme~ts Celans poetry. In this sense his poetry is sublime, though there I~ no ques* tion of either ~devationn or "intensification." Celan's sublime could be defined, rather, as the sublime of dmirurion.

W ithal], does it produce pleasure? Yes, since pleasure is nccessar* ily linked to mimesis (Aristotle again). Yet pleasure in Celan is of a very particular namre. One could qualify it as the pleasure of thought. In fact, it would probably be more acculOlte to speak of the ~motion of thought: a contradictory emotion, owing more to Kant's description than to Burke's. and which is basically compa* rable to the sort of "syncopated" emorion that tragedy provokes (but it is tragedy, the representation of the tragic contradinion, Ihat provides the model for the sublime). O ne can say ofCelan, :u of Holderi in, that he is a tragic poet; perhaps even the last tragic poct- the last "possible"; and one can mock this, as I have often seen done, because on ly poetry is at stake. (I've also heard the re* sponse to this att itude: "It killed him." But that i~ not a~ argu* menl. O r if so, it pleads on ly in favor of the despair of facmg art and the impossibiliry of interrupting it. 111e argumc~t I wot.tldyn;* fe r would be this: one could mock such poet ry and ItS subhml ty If it were "earnest" verse, somethi ng that st ill exists in large quanti*

90 Remembering Dntl'S

tics. Bm Celan, in a cenai n, secret way one might call elusive. seems sublime despite hi mself We mUSt n Ol defl ect Onto Cclan the pathos of some of his readers. And we must not fo rget, even in Cdan's own pathos- for it is rhere, despite his lapidary formula­tion and rcsu ictcd phrasing- the sort of "Jcwish joy" [Freudt'], the light. almost silent laugh, perhaps the counterpart to what saves Holderl in from wallowing in the tragic: another joy, or rather a serenity. in the seriousness of his thought,)

From Kant and the Kantian theory of the subli me, J.-F. L. re­tains the concept of "negative presentation" (of the Idea), On the basis of this concept, his formula for the subli me is: preseming that the un-presentable exists.

I am not sure this fo rmula is righ t, and the way I think Celan deals with the question of the representable and the unrepre­sentable confirms my uncertainry.

Blundy PUt, this formula has two Raws: it separates out the un­presentable (positing its existence somewhere beyond presentation) and in so doing, it substantiaiizes or hypostatizes it. By definition, only the presentable is presented. Therefore the un presentable, if such a thing exists, cannot present itself. O r if it does, it is like the Jewish God in the Hegelian analysis of sublimiry, breaking through presentation itself, annih ilating it for its greater (dialectical) glory. We would thus need to th ink, according (Q the (onto-theological) ourline of negative presentation, that there is presentation, not of what is beyo nd presentaion, bur thnt there is something beyond presenta tion. In which case the presentation would indicate, in what is present or insofar as it does present, its beyond.

But th is beyond is nothing, it is not a part ofrhe unpresen table. At most one can say, naturally enough, that presentation is trans­ferred from the un presented. But the unpresented does not equal the un presentable. Here is what happens when presentation at­tempts to ind icate its beyond, or rather the (baseless) base, pu re nmhingness or pure open ness, from which it detaches itself as pre­sentation: in or level with presentation, the diffe rence of the pre­sented from presentation presents itself. Difference docs not mean

Sublime 9'

inadequation , as a la rge pan of modern art perhaps inevitably holds, for modern art cultivates what is «not beautiful ," that is, the simple opposite of the beautiful according to its classical definition: the adequation of form to content. Nor does it mean the reduction of presentation to the puriry inherent in the ph rase "There is pre­sentation": the white square of the "minimal" that is the end point of negative theology. But it do~ mean the disappointment of pre­sentation, or, more broadly. the disappointment that the presmtabk n.:im. T he baseless base of presentation is indicated in the very dif­ficu lty of presentation; it does not "come naturally." It is indicated in a sort of internal diffe rentiation of presentation, or, I venture to

say, at the heart of the very faCt of presenting; indicated in a man­ner (for it is indeed a maner of style) of making apparent the non­appearing that underpi ns or, more exactly, withdraws and encloses itself in the midst of presentation. In a manner of making appar­ent the hiatus of presentation, of retracing the retreat that it is, of

rttreating it. Modern art , "sublime" art, the ar t after "the end of an," shows

the pain of presentation; it is, or could be, joy itself-or serenity.

§ 4 Hagiography

Deumber 7. 1983 (Strasbourg)

I page through the cnbi" de L'Hemevolume on Heideggcr that Michel Haar scnt me. Gadamer's text-a series of "memories"­ends in the following way:

9'

Among the many pilgrims who wen! up 10 Todlnauberg. Paul Celan. tOO, paid a visit one day 10 the thinker; from their encounter, a poem was born. Food for thought: a persecuted Jew, a poet who lived not in Germany but in P;a ris, but a German poet nonetheless, risks such a visil, nor wi thout some anxiety. He must have been greeted by that ~balm for the era" (Augtntrou) that was the little coumry property (AnWffl'1l) with ilS foumain (~toppcd by a starred wooden die"), and the liule man, with his rustic appearance and twinkling gaze. He left his name: in me: chalet's gucslbook as many had before him, with a few lines ancsting to a hope he carried in his heart . He lOok a walk with the thinker in soft moumain pastures, each of the men turned inward, in his own isolation , like an isola(ed Rower ("orchis and orchi s~). Only later. once he had returned home, did he sec clearly what had seemed tOO appalling in the words Heidegger murmured while walking; hc be­Vn to understand. He understood the audacity of a thought that an­other ("the man") can hear without capturing itS meaning, the risk of a step that moves forward on shifting terrain, like on the logging paths one cannm follow to an end.

Here is [he poem:

Hagiography

TODTNAUII ERG

Arnica. lillie-light balm , the dixir of the fountain tOpped by the starred wooden die;

in the chalet,

the lines on the book - whose, the name named before mine~-inscribed in this book me lines hoping, today. for the word to come fro m a thinker, at heart

Sylvan prairies of uneven earth, orchis and orchis, isoiatedly,

Appalling, what later, en rome, became clear He who guides us, this man listens to us tOO, on the path of logs

half covered in mire,

damp,

many.1

One could emitle this piece "birth of a hagiography."

93

My initial anger having passed. Marc B. de Launay's French translation nevertheless holds my anemion. h is certainly more "ac­curatc" than all the o thers, but it explicates the poem strangely, at

least o n two points. First, the Surnwiirftlofthe third verse:

94 Rnnt:mb~ring Dlltn

def Trunk aus dem Bmnncn mit dem Sternwti rfel drauf

is rendered as: "the elixir of the founta in lopped by the I starred wooden d ie." "Elixir" is clearly a result of Gadamer's edifying fa­ble: "He ICelan l must have been greeled by the 'balm fo r the ~es' (A llgmtroJl) [hal was the linle COUntry property (AIIWt'Jt'n) with irs foumain ('lOpped by a starred wooden die'), and the litt le man, with his rustic appearance and twinkling gaze, " Dri nking a draught of water at said foumain seems nearly like imbibing a miraculous elix ir .... BUI the "srarrcd wooden die" is only possible i f olle is fam iliar with the Anwtlnl in question-and if one translates, even in German, the fo rmation Stemwiirftl Such a "I ralls[ation~ is plau­sible. and eliminates the sole image ,hat this poem without images might sti ll have contained. It should perhaps be given cred it fo r its prosaic quality.

The second point concerns the verses:

Krudcs, sparer, in Fabren, deudich

which are explicated in the fo llowing manner: ~Appal1ing, what later, en route, I became dear." Marc B. de Launay could not have translated otherwise; after all, he had to transcribe Gadamer's in­terpretation. ("Only later, once he had rerurned home, did he see dearly what had seemed tOO appalling in the words Heidegger murmured while walking; he began to understand. ") I have been tOld more than once-and not only by D.C.-that Celan had re­turned from the encounter in a state of despair. The expression B.B. used was even: "I saw him when he returned to Fr:lIlkfurt; he was sick about it. ~ Yes, the birth of a hagiography.

§ 5 The Power of Naming

"(he..question impliesi byJb~apP9-lto the wholly o.ther-again I come back to this-is d uble: it concerns the existence of rhe wholly other, but also, at the same time, the possibility of.speak­ing in hjs name (or in his abscnce-of-name). Inasmuch as J( con­cerns the existence of the wholly other, it implies another, under­lying question, perhaps the only question of "The Meridian": is to

exist simply to be? To attempt to formulate it once again: it goes without saying mat only what is, exists-in the mode ofbclng. But does that really mean that exiStence consists solely of "being (.?m) in the mode ofbcing (itam)"? The question applies first to man, the only creature who, as Rousseau says, "feels hi~ e.xistenc~. " ~is feeli ng as Celan's writing allows us to approach It IS contained In

three "abili ties": the ability to die, the abil ity to receive (relate to), and the abili ty to th ink (perceive). ThL'S( three arc united in the ability to speak, through which the fact of presence is generally at­tcsted, and also through which man, attesting that he is (present), attests who he is: the one who exists as thc bei ng capablc of an est­ing presence and absence in general.

Existence would thus be language, or more precisely, the facu lty oflanguage. which, in the bei ng (tlmll) that is man, docs uot come undcr the headi ng ofbcing-so that man "is" not on ly the bci ng that he is. The facul ry of language, the abili ty to name. is in reality

95

Rnn~mb~ri"g DaIN

intimacy irself, the imimare differentiation of the being. Through this differentiation, man , beyond what he is, corresponds to a be­ing (I';,") by naming what is, by naming himself, by naming who he is nor (God). For this reason language is nor, in ilS essence, purely and simply being (tfflnt); yet there is language, or language exists-like the possi bility of relating ro (addressing), which is closer ro our origins than any form of "communication. " Language is the other in man; it constitutes him as man hims~1f Man does nOt hall(! language in the sense of possession or property; "language is what is proper to man" means that man is constituted beginning with language; he is not its masrer (on the COntrary; language op­erates a strange dispossession, attracting man-wimin himself­outside of himself). This is the mOlif of "pre-scription" (Vor-Schrift). Language is the essence, the inhuman essence, of man ; it is his (in)humanity.

Thus, language can be considered man's origin. Not as God is, according to me olllo-theological structure established in the first lines of the founh gospel 'Eu Qpxii iiu Q Mry~ .Bur as mat by which man is necessarily related to the other, and thence to [he wholly other, so that God is not language, but its supposition, or at least whar irresistibly draws it. It is perhaps what has been called ~ux.~ , anima, the soul, provided these words c2rry no echo of any sub­Stance, that is, of any subject. 1nrima~ ia.its...XCI)'_di.£f~ana:, ~

tJ ~~d"t;~·lLis_notb.ing.but the &2ping of me subjw. c..g.aping is bngu.age. Language in the intmor inrimo m~o

that onto-theology confused with God. From that might fo llow this: when pocu:y accomplishes its task,

which is to push itself to the origin oflanguage (a rask that is by defi nition impossible); when it strains to "dig" right to language's possibility; i.uncDUOlttS, at me edg~of me inaccessible and for­eva-concealed gaping, the nako:i-possibility of address.

And from that would [hen follow this: if God exists, he exists as a speaking being, and is thus himself subjcct to language. The fact

I that he is now silellt, lhal he has ceased to speak, perhaps delivers us from rhe irresistible magnetization he creates in language; it de-

71" Po~ of Naming 97

livers us fro m prayer. One might [hen catch sight of a wholly other poetry, which is perhaps what Celan did glimpse in the end, and what made him despair.

§6 rain

Perhaps all I've ever done is move back and forth, more or less unwittingly. between two or three passages of Heideggcr's Unt~r­wq,r z.ur Sprodu (O!llh~ Way to Langutlg~), which I recen tly reread after an abundance of Olhcr reading:

Experience means lundo asstqui, 10 obtain something along Ihe way. [0 :lfIllin something by going on a way. I

To undergo an expcricnct wi,h something--be il a thing, a person, or a god-means thai this something bef.tlls us, strikes us, comes ~r us, overwhelms and uansforms us. When we talk of "undergoing" an 0;.

perience, we mean specifically ,hal the experience is nOi of OUT own making; [0 undergo here means thai we endure ii, suffer it, reedY(' it as it suikes us and submit to il.1

BUI the more joyful the joy. (he more pure the sadness slumbering within it. The dccper the sadness, the more summoning the joy rcsting within il. Sadness and joy play into each other. The play itself which anuncs the two by letting ,he remOte be near and the near be remote is pain. 11lis is why both , highest joy and deepest sadness, are painful

I each in its way. But pain so touches the spirit of mortals that theipirit ~ilS gravity fmm.pain. That gravity keeps monals with all thcir wavering at rest in Iheir being. The.spirit which_a.lliiwers {O pain. the spirit auuncd by pain and 10.pain • .is.melancholy.3

But what is pain ~ Pain rends. II is the rift. But il docs not lear apart

Pain 99

into dispersive fragments. Pain indeed tears asunder, it separalcs. yet 50 that at the same time: it draws everything to ilSClf, g:lIhers il to it­sdf. Its rending, as a sep.trating that galhers. is It the sa.me lime ,hat drawing which, like the pen-drawing of a plln or sketch, draws and joins together what is held apan in separation. Pain is the joining agent in the rending th.tl divides and gathers. Pain is the joining of the rift .... Pain joins the: rifl of the difference. Pain is the dif-ference itself.·

In connecting these: texu, I think of the passage from the letter 10 Ju nger, Zur S~i1lSfragt, which happens to deal with lines and meridians (Junger's expression is ~ the zc ro meridian," by which he means the boundary of nih il ism, considered by Heidegger to be an insurmountable barrier). I think of the passage in which Heideg­ger, speaki ng of his work on the negative and its pain in the Hegelian dialectic, suggests that d;\y<x; and A6yoC; have a common root. It hardly matters whether this is true or not. T he idea is that a consrraint more ancient than philosophy made the height of phi­losophy "logic," that is. the thought of pain . T hat Heideggds ceaseless return to the motif of pain in his readings of Holderlin , Trakl . George-of poetry-is a sure indication that in his eyes. it is urgent to pry the essence of pain. and thus of language. away from its negative. laborious and servile definition . O r that it is urgent to think of difference as orner than negative. Had I been capable of it, I would have shown that in this sense, Celan's poetry is a poetry of pain; I would have shown that that is lyricism .

There is another passage in UllurwtgJ zltr Spracht; it concerns solitude (and this one, when I read it, rang no bell , however faint . in my memory):

Only he can be lonesome who is not alone, if "not alont''' means nOt apar(, singular, without any rappons. But it is precisely the absence in the lonesome of something in common which persists as the most binding bond //Jith il. The ~some" in lonesome is the Gothic Sl1mll, ,he Grt:ek llama, and the English Silmt. "Lonesome" means: Ihe same in wJm unites that which belongs together.s

' 00 Rmlr mbmllg Dlltn

Could this be rhe staning poi nt fo r trying to understand the prob­lem of what Celan calls ''the encounter"? Bu t to what com mun ity could (the poem's) solitude, rhe lack of community, be related in the most sociable manner? Perhaps me one that incarnates not the lack, bur the d~srruction of all communiry. Such a designation goes, not exclusIvely hut first, to rhe Jewish ~ople. Dir Ninll(111m. rose is ded icated ro Osip Mandelstam.

PostScript: a few days later, ) . Le R. ~nds me a translation of "Tiihingen, j anncr" by Jean-Pierre Lefebvre. It follows:

H is eyes worn down unto blindness by discourse, Their- ~an enigma is pure gushing (orlh"-, their memory of Holdcrlin rowers encircled with seagulls' cries. His drowned joiners' visits to ,h= diving words:

If there came. if there came a man. if a there arne a man into the .... 1)rld, today, wim Ihe beard oflighl of the Patriarchs: he could, if he spoke of this rime. he could only mumble, and mumble still. mu-mumble all-ways. ways. (" Pallak.sch. Pallak.sch. R)'

Earlier J. Le R. had drawn my anemion [0 ,he motif of blind­ness "as lucidity." H e cited as suppon for his claim these verses from Di~ NimlOndsrost:

Pain

W" sagt, dass uns aJJcs erstarb. da uns das Aug br3ch? Alles erwachte, alles hob an.

Who says th:1t everything died for us when our eyes broke? Everything awakened, everything began?

' 00

I was reminded of a passage in Blanchm's L~ d"ni~r a parur ( 71J~ lAst to S~ale):

Perhaps the recourse-is it a recourse. an ap~?-is 10 give one­self over, beyond the language mesh ("Eye's roundness betwttn the bars. R)I to wailing fo r a wider gaze, for the possibility of seeing. of see­ing without me very words that signifY sight:

Do nOt rt'ad any more-look! Do nOt look any more- go!'

Sight, (hen (perhaps), but always in vi~w o/movement, associated with movemem. As if [he idea was to go loward (he appeal of eyes that see beyond what there is to see: "eyes world-blind,"'o "eyes submerged by words, umoblindness";11 eyes ,h:oI.{ look (or have Iheir place) "in me fissure of dying."1l

Eyes world-blind, eyes in the fissure of dying, eyes, eyes ... Do not read any more-look! Do not look any more- goPJ

In H olderlin, the most lucid blindmen are Ti~ias and especially Oedipus (a surfeit of eyes). II was [0 this motif I sought to relate the "eyes submerged by words. UllIO blindness," as BlanchOl trans­lates. The gaze beyond the gaze, the view of beyond-viewing, would be spa". But in "Tiibingen, Janncr," the spareness becomes, in Ihe absence of eloquence, pitiful stammcring.

§7 Ecstasy

March 5. 1984 (Strasbourg)

The model for ecstasy in the R~v~ri~J is the rapture that seizes Rousseau when he regains co nsciousness after an accident that 0(.

curs as he descends the hi ll from Menilmo ntam to Paris ("Second Walk"),

Night ~ coming on. I saw the sky, some Stars, and a few leaves. This first sensation was a moment of delight. I was conscious of noth­ing clse. In this insta ll! I was being born again , and il seemed as if all I perceived was filled with my frail existence. Emirely rakcn up by the prt'SCm , I could remember nothing; I had no d is rinC( notion of my­self as a person, nor had I the least idea of wh,l! had just happened 10

me. I d id not know who I was, nor wh('~ I was; I felt neither pain, fear, nor anxiety. I WlI tched my blood Rowing as J might have watched a SHearn, without even th inki ng that the blood had anyth ing !O do with me. I felt throughout my whole being such a wonderful calm , that whenever I recall this feeling I can fi nd nothing ro compare with it in all the pleasures that nir our lives. I

It is O(naordinary here that ecsrasy is not presemed as a "going Out of the self," as it is always tOO quic.kJy and simplistically put. O n the com rary, it is expressed fi rs t as night 's advance and arrival ("Nigh t was com ing on"), and thell as the reception- before the auil)Or gets hold of himself o r rerurns (0 hi mself, before even rhe appearance of the perceivi ng "[n_of this ad vance, which happens

'0'

' OJ

by itself, and in which no "subject ," in any case, has the least re~ sponsibiliry. And it is exactly such an ad vance and reception that give the feeli ng of ex isting, a feeling that is itself an terio r 10 any fo rm of self-consciousness, and so liule connected with a subject that it simultaneously reaches all earthly objects (" It seemed as if ali I perceived was fi ll t-d with my frail existence"); the result , con­versely, is that even the "body itsclr (blood) is perceived as some­thing belonging to the earth (a stream), and is d rawn into the same fecling of " it exists. n

Rousseau's ecstasy here takes the fo rm of what I have called , fo r lack of a ben er word, the paradoxic:a.l experience of death ; that is, its simulation. It is why Rousseau can say "In this instant I was be~ ing born again ," if, as I have arrempted (0 articulate, death is the pro-speet o f the gift of birth . It is thus a paradoxical experience of birth (intO the world)-perhaps even o f the b irth of me world . In the firmest possible manner, u lan calls th is b irth "pcrceiving," o r

thinking, and assigns its task to poetry.

§ 8 Vertigo

Marc" 25, 1984 ( Tiibingm)

With R.L on {he banks of the Neckar. near the rower. Some time ago, Ren~ Bonargem, an engraver who produces lux·

ury roitions of books, published a collection of "quotations" from Suiu,' accompanied by etchings and entided Tournoy~r (Whirl ). But beyond . or rather, before anecdote, I thi nk here of Celan's dizziness (J would learn morc about this in Nice in February 1985, during a conversnion with Ikrnard Boschenstcin), I n=read:

The prisoner of a dosed but unbordered space. I am sucked in by an eddy; and thw. owing (0 (he swirling, I am brought back to a IOnul'e

from which I have tried. in vai n, ( 0 move aw:ay: resembling, even in my own eyes, a rambling, repetirive old man incap3ble of silence, and incapable myself of either raking off this mask or identifying with its chanCIer.

There is a sentence In "The Meridian" that 1 haven't dared touch. II says:

Die DiehlUng, mci ne Damen und Herren- : dies<: Unendlieh­sprechung von lau[er S[erbliehkei t und Umsonst!l

Blanchot translates:

Poetry, Ladies and Gentlemen: the word of the infinite, {he word of vain death and of sole Nothing.

Vt'rtigo '0'

Ou Bouchet:

l'oc:IrY-: a conversion into the infinite: of pure monality and the dead leller.'

(Why did du Bouchet systematically el iminate "Ladies and Gen­tlemen" from "The Meridian"?)

Jean Launay:

Poetry, Ladies and Gentlemen-: those infinite words thoU t!Cat only what is mOftal and uscless.4

And if I venture to translate:

Poetry, Ladies and Gentlemen-: thaI infinite speaking of pure mor­

tality and the in-vain.

§ 9 Blindness

April I). 1984 (Barcelona)

Blindness:

In den vcrfuhrencn Augen- lies da:

In ,he eyes all awry-read there: '

This is {he first verse of (he poem ~Les globes," in Die Niema"ds­roll'. The poem ends thus:

h defines love.

. 06

Alles, das Schwerste noch, war flugge, njehu hid, zuriick.

AJJ things. even ,he hoviesl, were fled ged, nothing held back.

§ IO Lied

April21, 1984 ( Todmallberg)

Hcidcgger:

The dcfallh of God.ADd .be ,Ij\(inities.il-absc:na. But abseo.ce is not

nOlhing; rather it is p.!eciscly Wc.prc.sence, which must first be appro­priated, of the hidden fullness :.l.nd wealth of what has been and wh:.u, thus gathered, is presencing. of the divine in the world of the Grttks, in prophetic Judaism, in the preaching of Jesus. This no-longer is in itself a not-yet of the veiled arrival of ilS inexh:.l.USlible n:llure.1

Celao:

Von deinem Got! war die Rede, ich sprach

~en ihn, ich liess das Hen, das ich hanc~,

hoffen: ,uf scin h&hsICS, umrOchehcs, scin haderndes Won-

Dein Aug sah mir ZIJ. sah h inwt.'g,

dein Mund sprach sich dem Aug 7.U, ich hone:

Wir wissen ja nicht , weiSSI du ,

.07

~, ~ , , , -..

1\

108 Rt'11It'mbning Darn

wir wissen ja niche,

'"'" gilt.

Of your God was our talk, I spoke againsl him, I lCI the heart that I had hope: fOl

his highcst. dealh-ranlcd, his quarrelling word-

Your eye looked on, looked away, your mouth spoke its way 10 the eye, and I heard:

w, don't know, you know, w, don't know, do we? what counts.z

The path indeed bears his name: ~l:Ie.ideggcr Weg (but af­Terward, to get to the chalet, we still have to walk across fields in the snow. The noise of the mechanical ski lift doesn't SlOp umil about five o'clock).

There has been much ironic commentary on the path motif: Fr/dweg, Hoizwege, Umerwegs. Wrgmarkm. and so on. So much fo r rustic charm. Bur where in philosophy, and even outside philoso­phy (in Eastern thought, fo r example), have people picrurcd thought as other than a path? From Parmenides and Lao~Tzu to

./ l::lcidcgger. (I don't remember who £old me that J.D. did a seminar on this subject, using the short text I had more or less "establ ished" and translated with Roger Munier: "The Flaw In Sacred Nawes."

li n it, Hcidegge.t3n.vents" an aphorism on Creck..thought: "A p;u.!1 .n~Jlc.vcr. a"method jJ.E~. ")

Celan could nO[ fail to th ink of Heidegger and the path motif

Lied 109

when writing "The Meridian," and even "The Bremen Speech." Not only poetry itself (all poems), but also the thought of poetry appear there as paths. Some people have of course objected to me tlta! this morifis related to Benjamin's "itineraries," to his praise of Ihefld"eurand the Baudelairian "encounrer." But I do not think Ihis connection is correct. If Benjamin is to be fou nd in Celan­and he is-we should nO[ look for him here. I remain convi nced that the "dialogue" with Heidegger is critical, at least for the issue of poetry's essence. That is why the encounter of 1967, in this very place, took on such importance in Celan's eyes.

From the beginning, I made a rule for myself that I would not [eeounr rhe story of this encoumer and its aftermath. Or [hat I would divulge only things that Celan himself had said, and [hat had been recorded in various places. h is nor for me to say more. But I can at least report on a text that WHo passed along to me: an article that appeared- WHo does not know when; what he gave me was a copy of the manuscript-in rhe Liechtensteinisches Volks­blatt.3 T he author is Robert Ahmann. an editor friendly with Celan. Prompted to write by a series of articles published in the biridler ZLittmg in honor of Heidegger, and in parricular by an ar~ tide by Beda Allemann on Heidegger's relation to poetry. Altmann simply presents the facts:

~T<xItnaubsJg, n whose tide comes from the place in the Black Forest whe-;;"Heidegger played host 10 the poet in the spring of 1967. ap~ pcared in print in 1968. Earlier, I had published the Attmkristaff col­lection with engravings by Gisele Cclan, and Celan expressed Ihe wish to sec his poem published in a small, separate edition. We chose the same format as that of the previous edition, and we had fifty num­bered copies of the bound poem printed on the hand presses at Fcquet et Baudier in Paris. In August 1968. the edition was exhibited at the Radu7. Icchnical school, along with all [he works published by Editions Brunidor. Cdan came in person and gave, one evening, a reading of his poems. It was one of his last readings, as he look his life several rnomhs laler.

MTodmaubcrgH is, strictly speaking, nothing other than a deserip­lion of the journey 10 the philosopher's hOllse: flowers, landscape,

" 0 Rmumbfrillg Daw

fountain, 3 trip in :. Clr. But as always with Celan, e:.Ich word hides a world of images and ideas. ~ArniCl , balm fo r the cyes~ is :'11 once an clrly summer field Rower and a medicinal plant. the sick man's hope

of cure and consolation. Wau~r drawn from the star-crownoo foumain. which is similar, we might say. to a miraculous source. BUI then comes the poem's central point, that Beda A1lemann interprets as the expec­tation of the poet 10 come, in the sense of Kltiu's pot"t of the future:. I believe, however. that this viewpoint does nOi enconlpass Celan's in­tention, which was to ask, and impose, the question of thc philoso­pher's position vis-a-vis his Hitler-era declarations. Cetan writcs some­

thing in the guest book aboul the hope that Hcidcgger will explicitly disrance himself from his earlicr mitude. ThaI a doubt should surfatt following this question connected with hofK' is evident in the poem's description, in a sudden change orl:andscape: the marsh, the uneven fields, the damp and muddy paths succeed and undo the image of springtime and hope. The dialogue witnessed by the anonymous chauffeur is then transformed inlO a monologue, as always in Celan; he was able to c!'Cate a solirary and grandiose work from the tragic im­b;alantt of his elllire life.

Heidegger's let terA indeed avoided the crucial quest ion. The re­deeming mponse fai led 10 come. Nevertheless, for the poet this en­counter was an interior eXfK'rience of gre;al importance. Poet ;and philosopher both Strove to grasp the meaning of Ihe total;artist ;and rotal language. <:elan's suffering and struggle for absolute expression led him, from that time on, 10 increasingly interiorized forms of writing ....

The poet closely oversaw the production of the ~Todtn;auberg."

Now the poem, born of an intensely topical question, remains itself, indefK'ndem of temporal circumstances. From the small bibliophile's edition, copies weill only to fri ends and a few libraries. None was sold. It was certainly CeI,ms wish to CUI off any kind of discussio n with Heidcgger. This explains, 100, why nothing became public later on, as Beda Allemann notes. The theme had been transformed into a purely pocticone.s

Altmann's very simple description suggests thai "Todlmlllb~rg" is pe rhaps a pure Lird. The last?

§ II Sky

I necessarily scruple [Q speak about Judaism . Yel wi th Celan, o ne InUS£. But I cannOI. Not o nly my ignorance is at issue. It is ma rc a question of propriery.

Thus, I can approach only negatively the element of Celan's po­el ry thai clearly proceeds from the Jewish tradition, the essence that is probably o nly readable with an understanding of that tradi­tion. For example, everything I have painfully tried to articulate o n poetry as prayer aims solely to ml.'asure the distance bcrween the (so-called, dearly no n-existent) "theology" H e: idcgger asks of H ol­derl in, and rhe question of God that haunls Celan's poetry, perhaps to the very end .

Perhaps to the: ve:ry end; Il hink of [he poem in the final collce· lion, Zeitg~JJijfi (Fnnnsuad ofTinu), thai 50 dearly responds, stili and again, to Holderlin:

lch Irink Wein aus zwei Glasern lind 7.3ckere an wie Jener am Pind:lr,

Gon gibl die St immgabcl :lb :lIs einer der klei nen Gcrechten,

'"

&m~mb~ring Dnus

aos der Losuommd fa ll! unser Dcul.

I drink wine from twO glasses and comb through Ihe Icing's cacsura like lila[ onc with Pindar,

God turns over the tuning-fork alone of the small juSl ones,

from the fare-engine falls our measure. I

I tried [0 translate the poem several years ago. I gave up, not knowing how to render D~ut, offered in the English as ~measure." D~ttl, wh ich survives only in fixed expressions (for example, 11m k~;llm D~lIt bnser, "nor o ne whit bettern

), means something in. significant or rriAing: a near nothing. The poem rakes up the H olderlinian question of measure and the law, rhe questio n of the poem " 'n Lovely Blueness": Is there a measure on earth ? Or the one Ho lderlin illuminates in the fragment of Pindar entitled "Das H&hste" ("The H ighest") , which he rcstitutes thus:

Das Gesc:z, Von al len de! Konig. Sterblichcn und Unucrblichcn; das tuhfl eben Darum gcwahig Das gercchlcsle Recht mit aJlcrh& hsler Hand.1

The law, King of all , mortals and Immortals: it indeed drives Powerfull y, for that reason, Juslicc most JUSt with the highest hand.

The "response" to Holderlin is that of Jewish messianism. Was it in Buber, Scholem, or Benjamin (hat I read, a long while back, [his

"3

parable of the Messiah ? He is [here, always, at every instant: o r ra ther, he ~ always there JUSt an instam ago: the beggar who jusl left Ihe room o r the little man who jusr rurned the sn eer corner. Measure, what sets the tone, is nOl Pindar's 6iXIl, bUI the just man, lhe JUSt little man. God is still the o ne who metes measure out, but al most in the way o ne might get rid of something. And what raIls in the way o f destiny is insign ificant. But that is JUSt the poi nt ...

Where can the distance between the twO poets best be measured? ri rst, of course, in Celan's elimination o f all reference to the sacred. Everything Heidegger was able to construcr from two verses of ~ Wie Wenn Am Feiertage" ("As On A Holiday"),

Jent aber tagts! Ich ham und sah C$ komm~n ,

Und was ich sah, das Heili g~ sci mein Won.

But now day breaks! I waited and saw it come, And what I saw, the hallowed, my word shall convey.'

is fo reign- though not abJoluuly foreign- tO Celan . Not ab~ solut~1y foreign is Ihe designation of the "sacred" (a word which to my knowledge he never used) as lhe Open (chaos, gaping, wild vastness). Celan , tOO, speaks in this direction. The allusion to Pin~

dar's ~ king's caesura" is q ui te clear: an allusio n to the impossible immediacy, or mo re exactly the impossible immediate atrainment of immediacy (the Open), which is nevenheless the very med ia­tion in , and o rigin of, any kind of relation.· But fo r Celan, the O pen is not the sacred , and poetry's task is not ~tO name the sa~ cred." First, no doubt , because me sacred is not "the clemem of the divine."5 In this sense the experience of [he sacred is absolutely for· cign to Celan.

But that is relatively secondary. Someth ing much more crucial is at issue, or al least, somcthing that does not simply parricipa[e in thc facile (and easily util ized) opposition between Greek "pa­gan ism" - polytheism- and Jewish mo notheism . (r Ot conceivi ng the divine, Ihe God or God, the opposi[io n is perhaps without co nsequence. And for belief and fa ith, J wonder jf [he same isn'[

"4 R~m~mbmng Dntn

true; I wonder 100 if C hristianity, bccau~ if is csscmially founded on Ihis opposition, is nOi ultimately responsible for our ~atheism. ")

Could anything lx: mo re crucial? The question, perhaps ronywh~ present, of man's resemblanct

to (the) God. Heidcgger makes this , he lOpic of a long commentary thai forms

the Ie<:turc "d ichtcrisch wohner der Mensch" (" Poetically Man Dwclls")6- a Iccture, as it happens, o n " In Liehlicher Blauc" (" In Lovely Blueness") and on the q uestio n, as it happens, of measure. The verses Hcidegger analyzes are the fo llowing:

Darf. wenn !:J.uler Milhe das Leben, do Mensch aufschauen lind sagen: so will ich 3uch scyn? Ja. Sohnge die Frcundlichkcit noch 3m

Htncn, die Reine, daucn, misse! nich! ungluklich der Mensch sich mil deT Gonhcit. lsi unbckannt Gott? [51 er offcnbar wic dcr Him­mel? Diescs glaub' ich eher. Des Menschen Ma;;lSS ist's. Voll Verdienst, doch dichterisch, wohnet der Mensch auf dies<: r Erdc. Doch rciner ist nicht der $chauen der Nacht mit den Stemen , wenn ich so S3gen kon­me. als der Mensch, der heiSS(" t ein Bild der GO!thcil. Giebt es auf Er­den ein Maass? Es giebt keines.

May, when life is all trouble, maya man Look upwards and say: I Also would like to be thus? Yes. As long As kindness? which is pure. lasts in hi~ hean, Man nOl unhappily can measure himself Wi,h the divine. I~ God unknown? I~ He vi~ible as the sky? This I rather believe. It's the measure of men. Full of meri t' but poetically man Lives on this earth. But ,he shadow Of night with the stars is not purer, If I could put it like that, than Man , who is called the image of God. Is there a measure on earth? There is None.'

Radically reducing Heidegger's "demonstration" to its struclll ral impeTUS esrablishes that:

Sky "5

I. In lifting his gaze roward the sky and its inhabitants. man­whose life, mherwise, is "all trouble" and in that sense "full of meri," -"measures all the distance that separates us from the sky," that is, "all that is between sky and earth. " The distance, the space 1>Clween, is what Heidegger calls the Dimension, which he con­siders the origin of the very relation between sky and earth, and thus, the o rigin of space as such and o f human habitatio n. Man's term on eanh starts with the Dimensio n. (Of course. that is not where the difference lies. I mean that th is other opposition , be­tween habitat ion on one hand-Greek. German, and so o n- and wandering and no madism on the other- Jt:ws, and others-is also weak. Dwelling, being zuhatlu. is, for exam ple, e clan's p rimary preoccupatio n.)

2. The pre-eminent means of taking the measure- according [0 " his own f.lEtpou" and "thus also his own metrics"- is poetry. It opens man's term on earth as inhabiting, or living, ~as a poet." But for poetry, taking the measure is always ~ rclating to something cc­lestial" and measuring oneself with it : "Man not unhappily can measure himself f With the divine." Man takes the measure, not from the ea rth iuelf (" Is there a measure on earth? T here is f None. "), but, inasmuch as this gives his measure as a mortal being (able to die), from the Divinity. The measure is "the Divinity with wh ich man measures himself."

J. The Divinity. o r rather God, is the mca5ure in that he is un­known. Here Heidegger analyzes the central passage o f the verses he extracted from the poem;

The question begins in line 19 with the words: ~ Is God unknown?" Manifestly nOl . For if he were unknown. how could he, being un­known. ever be the measure? Yet-and this is what we mWiI now listen 10 and keep in mind- for Holderlin God. as Ihe one who he is, is un· known and it is JUSt as this Unknown Onl Ihal he i~ Ihe measure for the poet. This is also why Holderlin is perplexed by the exciting ques­tion: how can that which by ilS very nature remains unknown ever be­come a mt'3SUre? For solllething Ih:ll man measures himself by IllUSt

after all impan itself, must appear. SUI ifi, appears. it is known. Th(' god, however. is unknown . :lnd he is the measure nonetheless. NOI

,, 6 &mnllbaillg Dares

only Ihis, but the god who remains unknown, must by showing him­stlJas the one he is, appear as the one who remains unknown. God's manijNtness-nol only he hi mself- is mysterious. Therefore the poet im mediately asks the ncxt question: ~ I s he manifest like the sky?~ Holderl in answers: ~ I 'd sooner I Bel ieve the l atte r.~l o

Why-so wt now ask- is the poet'S surmise inclined in that way? The very next words give the answer. They say tersely: " It 's the mea­sure of man .~ What is the measure for human measuring? God? No. The sky? No. The manifesmess of the sky? No. The measure consists in the way in which the god who remains unknown, is revwed as such by the sky. God's appearance through the sky consists in a disclosing that lets us see what conceals irself, hut lets us see it n OI by seeking ro wrest what is concealed out of its concealedness. but only by guarding (he concealed in its self-co ncealment. T hus the unknown god appears as the unknown by way of the sky's manifesmess. This appearance is the measure against which man measures himself.11

Th is analysis is surprising. Surprising. because on one hand it recognizes the absolute para­

dox of God's manifestation, or more exactly his revelation (Offin­baTkeit, Holderlin's question being "1st er offenbar wie der Him­mel?"): "At m e same time he shows himself as the one He is," God appears "as the one who remains unknown ." God thus reveals him­self as not revealing himself in appearing or manifes tation. The rev­elation is nor an appearance. If Heidegger's reading is co rrect, if Holderlin's "rarher"-"This I ra ther believe"-is not a restriction as to the unknown being of G od , it means: God. the unknown, shows himself as the sky docs; he is as manifes t as the sky. But it is the (sky's) manifestation that is enigmatic. For how is rhe sky man­ifest, if not here-"In Lovely Blueness" -as the pure void of bot­tomless light . the pure spacing, above our heads. of air and light (Ether); the spacing that outlines, rather than bei ng outli ned by. the eanh ; the spacing, our of which the earth's space spreads and all things become visible, articulate themselves? God shows or re­veals himself in the same way as the sky's pure opening-the "abyss," as Celan would say; as the ceaseless ebb, on and right against the whole surface of the visible, the invisible from which

Sky " 7

the visible streams. And even when the sky shows itself in its "qual­ities," as Holderli n says in another poem ,' 2 Iight's luminosity con­ti nues ro withdraw to it as its very appearance.

Bur if Heidegger reads something of th is order in Holderlin­which is probable, given the conn ection he makes to the poem "What is God?"'J-then it is impossible to say rhat for Holderiin, "the measure consists in the way in which the god who remains un­known, is revealed as such. by the sky (durch dm Himmel)." H ol­derlin does not say that God shows himself" by way of the sky," but rather, to express it a bit differently, that he is evident as the invis­ible is evident. withdrawn into the visible as its visibility. H older­lin's thought is here unrelated to, say. Hegel's: Das Offinbarle iSI

IIftr dass Gott deT Offinbare isl. This does not mean , as people are in the habit o f translating, "The revealed is sim ply that God can be revealed," bur instead, ~The revealed (that which is revealed) is si mply that God is the revealed (the manifest). " Whereas H egel conceives revelation's perfect being-in-evidence, Holderlin thinks of its abyss. T his, in fact, is why the logic animating the verses-

What sends irsdf into strangeness Is alilhe more invisible

- is completely unconnected to dialectics. Despite all appearances to the contrary. Unlike the H egel ian Absolute, God, for H older­lin , does nOt want "to be at our side." But the more he sends him­self into "the sky's aspect," which is unknown to him, the more he ~ revea l s" himself as invisible. Thus Heidegger can say: "T he poet calls, in rhe sights o f the sky, that which in its very self­d isclosure causes the appearance of that which conceals itself, and indeed as that which conceals itself. In [he familiar appearance, the poet calls the alien as that to which the invisible impartS itself in o rder to remain what it is-unknown. "'" But [hen it suddenly be­comes d ear, and makes Heidegger's analysis surprising fo r a second time, that the structu re of the revelation is none other than [hat of aletheia itself; hence, in a mode doubtless no longer metaphysi­cal, the o lllo-theological risk is still preselll , and all the more so

u8 Remember;ng DIUes

when God is conceived from the initial question "whm is G od1 " It is perhaps this oll[o~(heological horiw n that forces Hcidegger, in the very gesture he uses (Q remove the whole problematic of imi­tation from his commemary (a problemalic which is, however, ex­plicit in rhe poem) (Q define taki ng the measure not as the imita­tion of "reserve" or divine ren eat, but as the image- rich language of poetry that "makes us see the Invisible":

The poet makes poetry only when he takes the measure, by saying the

sights ofheavcn in such a way thai he submits!O its appearances as to the alien dement to which the unknown god has "yielded. n Our CUT­

rent name for the sight and appearance of something is "imagen (Bild ). The nature of the image is to lei somclhing be seen. By connaSt, copies and imitations arc already mere variations on the genuine image which, as a sight or spectacle, lets the invisible be seen and so imagines the in­visible in something alien to it. Because poetry takes that mysterious measure, 10 wit, in the face of the sky, therefore it speaks in ~images . ~

This is why poetic images are imaginings (Ein-bildllng(1l) in a distinc­tive sense: not mere fa ncies and illusions but imaginings that are visible inclusions of the alien in the sight of the familiar. IS

I am not saying that " In Lovely Blueness" is not haunted by im­ages.16 I would say, rather, (hat we should try to think about the relationship-dear in both French and English th rough Lati n­berween im age and imitation. And especially that we should un­derstand what H oIderlin envisions when he thinks of man as "an image of Cod ." The lines Heideggcr extracts immed iately follow this passage:

Reinheit aber ist auch 5chonheil. Innen aus Verschiedenem entsleht ein ernster Geist. 50 sehr einfaltig die Bilder, so schr.

Heilig sind die, dass man wirklich oft fiirchte l, die IU beschreiben. Die Himmlischen aber, die immer gUl sind , alles 'mmal, wie Reiche. haben diese Tugend lind Freude. Ocr Mensch darf das nachahmen. Darf. wenll !auler Muhe das Leben. ei n Mensch ...

8m Pureness is also beauty.

Sky

Within. divergence creates a serious spirit. But pictures are so simple. so holy Arc these that really one is Often afraid to describe them. But the heavenly, Who arc always good, all at once. like the rich. Have Ihis virtue and pleasure. Man May imitate that. May, when life is all trouble. maya man. 17

This is also the measure for H olderlin : kindness, Fretmdlichkeit, as the im itation of divine goodness-virtue and pleasure; it shows it­self as [he sky, that is, as light 's modesty-in its very nudity-and as th e jubi lation of reserving the visible in the self. What is lacking is the "source": grace-as kindness is reserved. God is not (absent). He goes away. He lets man d ie, lets him be human , leaves hi m kindness in the capacity 10 die. Something like love, then; what God gives in withdrawing fro m mortals' desire (will) , which is al­ways to be immortal (but th is should again be understood in the context o f Holderli n's "atheism," and in any case wi thout reference to who knows what kind of "Swab ian piety").

Imitati ng [he d ivine means rwo things: wanting to be God (the Greek n agic experience), and "humbly" keeping God's retreat as a model (the "Western" experience-just as tragic, but in another

sellse). The distance berween them is measured here. A poem in

Spmcbgittersays th is (changing the direction of prayer in rhe name of a carnal proximity between the God and man, in order to sig­nify that God's image is man's blood shed: God present, which is 10 say withdrawn, nor in "the figure of death," but in the face of the dead-the exterminated):

T ENEB RAE

Nah sind wir, Herr, nahe und greifbar.

"0 Rrm~mbmllg Daln

Gegriffen schon, Herr, inein:mder verkralh, als war deT Lcib dnes jeden von \Ins dein Leib, Herr.

Belt, Herr, belt 1;U uns,

wir sind nah.

Windschcif gingen wir hin, gingen Wi T hin, uns zu bilckcn nach Mulde und Mur.

Zur T rankc gingen wir, Herr.

Es Won Blut, es war, was du vergossen, Herr.

Es gl:inzte.

Es warf uns dein Bild in die Augen , Herr. Augen und Mund nthn so offen und leer, Herr. WiT halxn geuunken, Herr. Das Blm und das Bild, <las im Blut war, Herr.

Bele, Herr.

Wir sind nah.

We art ncar, Lord. ncar and at hand.

Handled already. Lord, clawed and clawing as though the body of each of us were your body. Lord.

Pray. Lord, pray to us. we are near.

Wi nd-2wry we went there, went there to bend over hollow and ditch.

To be watered we went there. Lord.

,

It was blood, il was

what you shed, Lord.

I! gleamed.

It cast your image into our eyes, Lord. Our eyes and our mouths arc so open and empty, Lord. We have drunk. Lord. The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.

Pray, Lord. We are n('2t,l '

'"

§ 12 The Unforgivable

c. F. says he was lold- by a French intellectual. I think- that French intellectuals harp roo much on the pathos of Auschwin (Auschwitz as understood by Adorno. George Steiner, and several others who can hardly be classifi ed as French intellectuals), If we start to forget this, the umhinkablc-rhar it happened here, rhat our brorhers (our fellow men) let it happen , thai they said noth· ing. were afra id, felt some degree of enjoyment, and that it was pure monntosil)'- if we stan no longer to understand in what ways it was pure monstrosity, then I hold Out little hope for the fU­lUre of thought, o r, in any case, for those who imagine themselves " inlclligclIl" in saying such things. The most one can wish them is to avoid "palhos" on lesser "subjecu, "

H erein lies Heidcggcr's irreparable offense: not in his dedar:a­lions of 1933-}4, which we can understand without approving, but in his silence on the cxtermination. He should have been thc first 10 say somcthing. And I was wrong to thi nk in itially Ihat il was enough to ask forgiveness. It is absolutely tmforgiv(lbl~. That is what he should have said. In any case, there is a risk that though t will never recover from such silence:

Too lIa6£t ~aao~ To learn fO know through pain.

(ANrhylll" Ago.mcmnon)

Tlu Unforgivllb/~

No, it is nOi I, it is someone dK who suffers. I, I could not h:lve suffered thus.

(An"" AM ..... ,." ... Rcquitm)

Reference Matter

Notes

Part I

I. [~ Der Mcridiall~ is in volume J oreclan's five-volume GrsammrJu

\\'ll"rkr, cd. Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert, in collaboration with Rolf BUcher (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 1983). This passage. p. 200. Unless othuwisc noted, all English 1r.l.llshuions from ~Der Meridi:an" art fro m Jerry G lenn's "The Meridian." in OJimgo Rn,;~ 29. no. } (1978): 19-40.

This passage. p. }8.-Trans.) 1. . IGWI: 2.26. English translations of Cd an's poems will be Michael

Hamburger's unless otherwise noted. ~Ti.ibingcn , Janner" is in Paul Crkm: Porms (New York: Pcrsca, [988), In·-Trans.]

}. IGW2: 2S; H amburger. Ctlllfl,293·-Trans.] 4. [Apart from Michael Hamburger's lTanslations of both poems,

there is an English version of TUbing"', jiinn" in Joachim Ncugroschel, I'aul Crum, SpucJ,-Grilk (N~ York: E. P. Dunon, 1971), 18s·- Tr:ms.1

5, [Lacoue-Labarthe's phrase is "c'est avec 1'A1lemagne qu' jI faut ... s'expliquer. ~ S'txpliqurr in this context means primarily "to discuss, ~ "to cb.rify maners," even " to ha\'1:' il OUt with someonc.~ Yel the \'I:' rb could also funa ion as a simple reflcxive; this would render the sense, "WI:' must explain ourult-t1 with Germany." The import of such ambigui ty for re­flections on the Holocaust is self-cvident.- Trans.J

6. [From ~Todesfugc": "der l od ist ein Meister aus Deutschland." GW t: 42; "Death Fugue," Hamburger, C,InIl,6J,-Trans,1

7, Henri Mesehonnic, "O n appdle cela traduirc Celan," in POllr III

pohiqu, // (Paris: G:lllin13fd, 1980) .

,,' Nom

8. GWz: }J4. Peler Swndi, "Eden," in Pu!s;t'S~t poltiqut'S tU kz modn­nirl{Lillc: Presses univcrsitaires de Lille, 1981).

9. Issu<.'S 2 and j, 1972. Blanchot, U d~nli~r ii parl~r, was reissued by fiua mOTg.lna in Paris in 1984.

10. Thcodor Adorno, "Parataxe," in NOll'S to LiumNlrr, vol. 2, trans. Shicrry Weber Nicholson (New York: Columbia Univcrsiry Press, 1991),

II. Along with. in an entirely diffcrcm vein, Werner Hamacher, "The Second of Inversion: Movements of a Figure Through Celan's Poetry," lrans. Peler Fenvcs, in Word TractS: &.ulingf o/Paul Olan, ed. Aris Fiorc­(Os (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 219-63.

12 •• [The French "tour I norm" plays on a double meaning: the verb tOllnlOJ" can be translalcd as "10 wheel around, whirl, swirl," while di­vidi ng the pasl parliciplc of the verb into two pans evokes "tower I drowned. M - Trans.}

13· [h is worth stressing that this English version translates Lacoue­Labarthe's French nanslation, rather than Celan's German.-Trans.}

14. Friedrich Holderiin, Siimrficlu Wrrkr, vol. 2.1 (Stuttgart: Kohlham­mer, 1951), 195·

15· I refer the reader to Roger Munier (responding to an inquiry on experience in MiS( (f/ pagr I [May 1972]): "First there is etymology. Ex­prrimer comes from the Latin rxprriri, to test, try, prove. T he radical is fUriri, which one also finds in pl!riculum, peril, danger. The Indo-Euro­pean root is pa, to which arc attached the ideas of cTOssingand, secon­darily, of trial., USt. In Greek, numerous derivat ions evoke a crossing or passage: pt ira, to cross; prm, beyond; ptmo, to pass through; prraino, to go to the end; prras, end , limit. For Germanic languages, Old High Ger­man fomn has given us fohrrn, to transport, and fohrrn, to drive. Should we attribme Erfohrung to this origin as well, or should it be linked to the second mean ing of prr, trial , in Old High German fora, danger, which became Grfohr, danger, and grfiihrdm, to endanger? The bound­aries between one meaning and the other are imprecise. The same is true for the Latin ptriri, to try, and pairoium, which originally means trial , test, then risk, danger. The idea of experience as a crossing is etymolog­ically and semantically difficult to separate from thai of risk. From the beginning and no doubt in a fundamental sense, txptrimer means to

endanger. M

16. The French translation I will refer to is not Andre du Bouchct's in Strtttt (Paris: Mercure de I:rance, 1971), but Jean Launay's (Poenir 9

Notl!s

[1 979]). I make slight modificadons when Ihe argument warrallts.[For this passage, see Glenn, }7: "The poem is ... underway." - Trans.}

17. [In the original, th is line ream "Ein Rathscl ist Reinentsprunge­nes. H In English, Michael Hamburger renders it ~An enigma are things of pure sourceM

; see Ho!dt rlin: Hil Porms (New York: Pantheon, 1952), 199. I have modifit'<i the English translation because ofLacoue-Labarthe's repeated use of jailli and jlliliissrmrnt.-Trans.]

18. [I n English, agitation or excitement.-Trans.] 19. Waher Benjamin, Charfrs Baudtwirr, Ein LJrilttr im hila"a drs

Hochltapilalismus, in Grsammriu Scbriftrn, vol. 1.2, cd. Rolflledemann and Hermann Schweppenhauscr (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974)· English references: ClJllrits Baudrwirr: A LJric Poct in the Era of High C4pild/ilm, trans. Harry Zohn (London: NLB, 1973).

20. [GW2: 36.-Trans.] 21. Benjamin, "Uber einige Motive bei Baudelaire," Schriftrn, 1.2:

605~53: KSome Motifs in Baudelaire," Charlrs Bautkwirr, 107-54· 22. [Ce!an's Bremen address is published in the GW3: 186. The En­

glish translation dted here is by Rosmarie Waldrop, in PaulOwll: Col­itcud Prose (Manchester, England: Carcanet Press, 1986), 33.-Trans.]

2}. The lectures on Hotderlin, now published by Klostermann in Hei­degger's Gtsamtausgabe. The bener pan of Heidegger's essays or papers on Holderlin presuppose knowledge of these lectures.

2.4. Sec Bcda Allemann's commentary in Ho!derlill it Hridcgga (Paris:

PU.E,1959)· 25. [Holderiin, SW2.I: 190-92. Trans. Michael Hamburger, Frirdrich

Ho!drrfin: POtms and Fragmrnu (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1980), 495.- Trans.] 26. "Anmerkungen zum 'Odipus'H in SWS; 196: "Remarks on 'Oedi­

pUS,'H in fnedrich Ho!drrlin: Essays lind Lctun on Throry, trans. Thomas

PfJu (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), 107· 27. I have attempted this analysis in " La c6ure du speeula ti f~ (in

Holderiin, L'Antigonr tb Sophoclc [Paris: Bourgois, 1978]) and in "Holder­

lin ct les Greet (Po/tiqllr 4o [1979])· 28. Jean Bcaufrct, "Holderlin et Sophocle,H in Holderiin, Rrmarqurs

mr Oedipe-Rrmarqllrs sur Antigollr (Paris: U.G.E., 1965). 29. [Hamburger, Hii!dtrlin, 601.-Trans.] 30. [Hamburger, Crwll. 175·-Trans.] 31. [Holderlin, SW2.t: 146; Hamburger, Hii!daiin. 417·-Trans.] 32. [Holderiin, SW2.1: 13: Hamburger, Ho!derfifl, I}L- Trans.}

33- [Glenn, 33·~Trans.] 34. [Arthur Rimbaud, Of /(/I"S 11: Vnr /JOII/l~(Iu.x, UlI~ lIliSOIl til tIIfa

(Paris: Garnier- Flammarion, 1989), 57; Rimbaud: Complftt Works, 5f­I~cttd Lfllm, Hans. Wallace Fowlie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 125.- Trans. !

35· [Glenn. 35-37.-Trans.] 36. [Ibid .. 36.-Trans.] 37. [Ibid .• 32.; GW3: 192.-TranS.] 38. "Die Ros' ist ohne wamm; sic blUhet, weil sic bllihet; I Sic acht'

nicht ihrer sdbst, (ragt nichl, ob man sie s iehel ~: ~The rose is without a why, blooms because it blooms; I Has no care for itself. nor desires to be seen.~ Sec Heidcgger, 511fz vom Grund (Pfu ll ingen : Neske. 1957), and Thf Prillcip/~OfRtdsQ1I, trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana Univer­sity Press,1991).

39· ]Glenn, 34; GWj: 195·- Trans.] 40. [G lenn, 35: GW3: 195.-Trans.] 41. 5W 4.1: 233. 42. [Paul vla1l, trans. Waldrop, 18-19.-Trans.] 43· Blanchot, u Danian parla, 45. 44· GW 3: 185-6; Paul Vla,t, Waldrop, 34.

ClltlUtrophe

1. ["StammcringH translates the French blgai~mml, which corresponds to Celan's lallm in "Tlibingen, Janner~ (GWI: 2.26) . Michael Hamburger translales lallm as "babble" (etlall, 177).-Trans.]

2 . [GW 3: 202; Glenn, 40. In this section, page references to "T he Meridian ~ will be given in the main body of Ihe text: first to the Ger­man, then to Glenn's English translalion, and lasl to the French rransla­lion by Jean Launay used by Lacoue-Labarthe ('''Lc Meridien.' Discours prononce ~ l'occasion de la remise du prix Georg BUchner," POCnif 9 (t979): 68-82. Al l imes, the English translalion has been modified, in particular to coincide with Lacoue-Labanhe's use of Launay's French ver­sion of Cd an's lext,- Trans.]

3· The acceptance spt.'t.'Ch for the Georg BUchner Prize customarily ad­dresses BUchner's work.

4, "Une lecture de Paul Celan," Poenif9 (1979): 7. 5. In the urne issue of PoCnit, Launay includes, along with his l rans­

lations of ~The Meridian~ and Ihe scenes from DIl1/t01lS 70dit refers to.

Now 'J'

lranslations of Kafka's "Ein Bericht fUr cine Akademie,~ Gnammrlu W~rk<";'1 sj~bm Biil/dm (Frankfurt: Hanser, 1983). and Egon Friedell's Tn/nIlS zur Wtlhrhdt (1910), in order to clarify the tone proper 10 ~The Meridian."

6. [Glenn's translation of "The Meridian" gives thn:e different versions of AU11lwmtb: "reversal of brealh," Kturn of hrealh," and ~breath turn­ing."-Trans.}

7. "Pas (pr61mbule)." in Grammn 3- 4 {t976).[This text is reprinted in Jacques Derrida, Paragn (Paris: Galilee, 1986), 19-116. Pas in French means both "step" and "not." - Trans. !

8. [This is Lacoue-Labarthe's first mention of proP", a word to which he will frequemly return. I have given it in English as Kown," or, when possible, as "proper.~-Trans.]

9. [Dmllons Tod, in Georg BUchner's W"k<" ulld Bri'.fi. cd. Fri£"L Berge­mann (Wiesbaden: Inse!, (949), 41; TlJ<" D<"ath ofDnllloll, trans. Howard Brenton and Jane Fry, in Georg BUchner, Th<" Compln<" Plays, ed. Michael Patterson (London: Methuen, 1987), 4o.-Trans,]

10. Connections should be made here between the commentary on Sophocles in Martin Heidegger, £infohrtmg in dif Mnaphysik (TUbin­gen: Niemeyer, 1953), and the 1942. lectures on "Ocr !ster," in Martin Heidegger, Ho/dvlim Hym1lf "Dn lsur»(Frankfun: Klostermann, 1984); ~Dcr Ursprung des Kunstwerkes," in Marrin Heid(:gger, HO/zWtgf (Frank­furt: Klostermann, 1950), 7-68; and the "Brief uber den Humanismus," in Martin Heidcgger, W<"gmarkm (Frankfurt: Klostermann, (967), 145-94 (the passage on the translation of Heraclitus's maxim, nhor anthropt dai-111011 [185-94]),

II. O r when, on the comrary-but it amounts 10 exactly the same thing- he seems to appropriate the UIlJuimiiduas the "realm in which the monkey, the robots, and accordingly . . . alas, art, tOO, seem 10 be al home" (192; 32.; 72).

12. [Lacoue-Labanhe's words are "quelque chose ... se renverse, ~ with "1IlJ<"rsnas the echo of "catas[rophe~ (from the Greek knrast"phtill, "to turn down,~ "overturn"). Altbough I have uS(..J "overturn" here, the lhn:e other instances in which a form of "nlJ<"rUroccurs seem 10 require "up­sel,"-Trans.]

13. Once again we are very close 10 Holderlin-"language, that mOSI dangcrous of possessions," and even 10 the Heidcggerian imerprctation of this phrase. S(''C "Holderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung," in Martin Heidegger, ErliillUrtmgtl1 zu Ho/dalim DiclJIIlllg (Frankfurt: Klostcr-

13' Now

mann, 19111). }3-45. Hcidegger thinks of danger as that which threatens Being rather {han the human. But H olderlin's phrase derives from a fragmen! {hat seeks 10 respond to the question: ~Who is man?~ AI; for Cclan's determination of the human, what would it be without relation 10 Being. that is-I will come to this-to time? Even if~The Meridian" is, as we may plausibly allow, partially addressed to Hcideggcr. thai is not sufficiem reason to hastily read into it an ~cthical" response to "on­tology." The human is in no wayan "ethical" category. and moreover, no category of this kind can resist the quest ion of Being. (Lacouc­Labarthe qUotes Holdcrlin from the fragme nt "1m Walde," in SW 2.1 :

325- Cf. "In the Forest," in Friedrich Holdcrlin, Hymns and Fragmmts, nans. Richard Sicburth (PrincelOn , N.J.: PrincelOn University Press, 1984), S7.-Trans.]

[4. ~Anmerkungen zum 'Odipus,'" in SWS: 196; ~Remarks on 'Oedi­pus,'~ in Thomas Pfau, trans" Essnys lind utun on Throry, 102.

[5. Jean-Luc Nancy's term. See u discoun tk Ia syncopr (Paris: Aubier­Flammarion, 1976).

16. [Holderiin, ~Anmerkungen 2um 'Odipus:~ 196; Pf.m, ~Remarks

on 'Oedipus,'" !02.- Trans.] 17. [MAnmerkungen Iur 'Amigona,'" in SWS: 269; ~Remarks on 'An­

tigone.'" in Pfau. Essays and Lmrrs on Throry. IIJ.- Trans.] [8. BUchner, Dantons Tod, 86; Bremon and Fry. Tht Drath of Dan­

ton, 80. [9. This is the case in [he quatrain Celan quOies at the end of "The

Meridian":

Voices from [he p:uh of Ihl' nl'lill'S Com' on your hands 10 us. WhOl'Ver is alone wilh Ihe lamp has only his palm 10 read from.

{GW 1: >0' )

20. Celan's words are: " . .. when I anemplcd to make fo r that distant but occupiable realm which became visible only in the form of Lucile" (200; 38; 80).

2[. [In French, poisit d, circonstanct. There is further reference to ci r­cumstance later on.- Trans.]

22. [The translation is taken from Brian Lynch and Peter Jankowsky, Paul Ctum: 65 Poems. (Dublin: Raven ArtS, 1985). 41.- Trans.]

23. [The phrase is Jun diapJJfron tallto. Sec Hyptrioll, pt. I, bk. 2, in

Now IJJ

SW3: 81. C( Heraclitus. fragmen! 51, in Dit Fragm(1lud,r Vonokratikff, trans. Hermann Dicls. cd. Walther Kranz. 5th cd. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1934),1: 162.-Trans.]

24. leWI: 218; Hamburger. Ctlan, 161.-Trans.] 25. [ew l: 219; H amburger, etlan, [63.-Trans.] 26. These arc the last words of "Die Frage der Technik,~ in Vortrag,

und Aufiiiru (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), }6. Heidcgger defines this piety as "Weise, in der das Denken dem Zu-Denkenden r1ltrpricht. ~ In Ihis way. it is itself a product of dialogue (Gaprach) as the essence of language (of thought) . See "Holderlin und das Weren der Dichtung," J8- 40. Cclan himself thinks of perception and questioning as dialogue.

27. [GW t: 217; Hamburger. Ctlan, 159·-Trans.] 28. [A play on the dde of Emmanuel LCvinas's Alltrrmrnt qUttrt 014

Illl-dtiit tk l'turner (Haag: Nijhoff. 1974) .- Trans.] 29. Still und u ir, mh ed. (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1967), 38. 30. The denunciation concludes "Was ist Meraphysik?," in W'g­

markrn, 19. The problematiution is in ~ Protokoll zu einem Seminar Uber den Vomag 'Zeit und Sein,'" in Marlin Hcidcgger. Zur Sacht drs

Drnkrns (T Ubingen: Niemeyer, 1969), 54· }1. Cf. ~Ober Sprache uberhaupt und uber die Sprache des Men­

sehen," in Gtsammtltt Schriftm (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 1977), 2.1: 140-57; "On Language as Such and on me Language of Man. ~ in Walter Ben­jamin, &jkctions, ed. Peter Demett. trans. Edmund Jcphcotl (New York:

Schocken. 1986), }14-32. }2. Walter Benjamin, "Ober einige Motive bei Baudelaire,ft Gtsam­

mtltt Schriftrn, 1.2: 639; "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, ft in Walter Ben­jamin, Illuminations, cd. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969). 199. The quotat ion from Valc!ry is from Autrts Rhumbs.

}3. IHolderlin. SW 2.1: 126- 29; Holderlin, "AI the Source of lhe Danube,ft in Sieburth. Hymns and Fragmmts, 57.- Trans.]

14. GWI: 213; Hamburger. Ctlan, 155·

Prayer

I. [eW" 225; Hamburger. Ct lan, In·- Trans.] 2. [Lacoue-Labarthe's phrase is "cn n' invoquam pcrsonne~ ; he thus

stresses thai ptnonn, in French means both "no oneft and "anyone.~ Mln_ voquer personne~ would mean 10 invoke no one, with "no one~ func-

' 34 Now

rioning as if it were a name; ~N'invoquer pcrsonne~ means nOI 10 invoke.­anyone.-Tr.ms.J

J. IL. L. writes: MDieu S'CSt fevcle (n')euc personne. M See note ~ above on possible meanings for kpcrsonne."_Trans.]

4. (The Latin connectS 10 the French word nlam. or -nothingness."­Trans.]

s· fL.·L 's to:t ftaW ":lUcun hrrcn tOUl cas qui f ... u sllr Ie mode d'un Iram" (emphasis addcd).-Tr.ms.]

6. GWI: 211; Hamburger, Glall,I5). 7. "Typogrophie" in Mim6is dlsn,.,jcuMrio1lS (Paris: Aubicr-Flammar­

iOIl, 1975). English references: "Typography," in 1jpography: Mimnil. Philolop"y_ Politics. cd. ChrislOphcr Fynsk (Cambridge: Harvard Univer­sity Press. 1989).

8. Fmgmt!1lts d~ Pi"dnrr, "Das HOchstc." SW s: 285. 9· ( In English. the play ends thus: ..... we'll ... ask God fo r maca­

roni, melons. and figs. for musical voices, classical bodies. and a con1 -fonable rcligion!~ Georg BUchner, L~oncr and una, in Compllff Works and Lmm, lrans. Henry J. Schmidt (New York: Con tinuum, 1986), 192.-Trans.]

10. ICclan's texi reads M ••• ich muss mich hUten, wie mtin hirr witdngrfimdmrr LnntiJtrlitnll KArl Emil Frallzol, das 'Commode', das nun gebraucht wird, als e in 'Kommend($' 1:U lesen!" (GW}: 202). Glenn rranslaI($ "Commode" as "accommodating" (Glenn, }9), but I have modified this to "comfort<Ible," in deference 10 the English translation of Bilchner (sec note 9).-Tr:ms.1

II . IBrian Lynch and Peter Jankowsky translate the poem thus:

lWO-HOUSEO, ETERNAL ONE,)"ou are, un­inhabir:.lbk. Therefore we build and we: build. Therefore il staods, Ihis pitiful bcdst~d,-io the rain, there it S[;lnds.

Come, lovn. That we lie here, Ihat is the partition-: He then is 5ufficielll UIIIO Himsdf. twice.

Lei Him, He may have HimMClf wholly, as the half anll once again the half. We,

NoUl

we: are the rain-hcd, may He: come: and rendc:r us dry.

He: comes nO!, He docs nOI rende:r U$ dry.

Paul Olan: 65 Pomu (Dublin: R.:aven Arts, 1985), )6.-T r:ms.]

12. Glenn, 3S-}6.

'J5

I }. AI leasl, if the "place" ofbcing and the On of Das,ill arc substan­lia(i"ot:oo, or sacraiizcd, as has indeed been the cast". In 771t Exprrimu of Thought Hcidcgger writes: "BUI Ihinking poetry is in trulh the topology of Being. l it says to Being the place where it unfolds." Gnamtdusgdbr, vol. I}, Dil ErfohruIIg dn Drnlw/S (Fra nkfurl: Klosterman, 198}), 84· Cclan's u-lOpia responds 10 Heidegger's topology, pushing it 10 its limits.

14. IGW t: 217; Hamburger, Cllan, IS9·-Trans.] IS. \GWI: 2}9-40; H amburger, C,Ia", t87-89·-Trans.] 16. [GW I: 214. The English version oflhe poem is H amburger's, p.

IS7. However, I have had to modify Ihe third verse of H amburger's trans­lation in Ihe interest of Lacouc-Labanhe's argument. In the French trans­lation of ~ZUrich, Zum Storch en" that L.-L. prints. the Abrr-Du of the thi rd verse has been rendered as NOIl- To;; Hamburger gives it in English as ~You-Again." I have replaced "You-Again" with ~N01-You" so as 10

keep me filiation from the French clear for L -L's subscquelll remarks.­

Trans.] 17. [GW2: )18: Hamburger, }Is.-Trans.] 18. (GW2: }26.1 have modified the English tran.slalion found .in W:'

forms: Paul Olan, lrans. Katharine Washburn and Margret GUlllemm

(San Francisco: Norlh Point, 1986), 101. Washburn and GUille.m!n gi,: ~rid of death, rid I of God" for Cclan's ~Todes quitt, Goues I qULn ; their

adjcctive perhaps lends a different tone to Ihe verses from Iha.t of the French venion Lacoue-Labarthc: uses: ~quitte de la mort , qUlne I de Dieu." I have used "clear" 10 remain in line with Lacouc:- Labarthe's read­

ing.-Trans.] 19. [Hamburger, }Is.-Tt:l.ns.] 20. Boschenstein, "Destitutions," in Ln mnll til blllt1 Imm 2 (t972),

187.

Hagiography

I. I I have followed de Launay's I;rcnch version as closely as possible

for this English rendering. It is thus a tf'Jnslalioll of a translation, rather

than a translation ofCclan.-Trans.]

Nous

R ,i"

I . [Germa n: ~ Das W~n der Sprache" in Heidcgger, Umnwq,s Ul r

Spmchr. vol. 12 of GnAmrllusgllbr (Frankfun: Kloslermann. 1985), 159. English translation by Peler D. HertZ. in Ihe essay ~Thc Nature of Lan­guage.~ in On UK W1ty to Lmgwzgr(San Francisco: Harper & Row, (971). 66.- Trans.)

2. [Heidcgger, Umnu~ 149; HertZ. On 1m way 10 ungullgr, 57.­Trans.1

j. [Hcidcggcr. Um"wtgJ. 222, HertZ, On Iht way to u nguagt, 151.­Trans.J

4. (" Die Sprachc," in Heidcgger. UnttrWef.So 24, "Language. ft in Hei­dcgger, Portry. u nguagr, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 204.-Trans.}

5· [Heidegger, "Ocr Wcg wr Sprachc. ~ Ummwgs. 244; Hem. "The Way 10 Language," 0" Ihr way to Lmgwzgr, 134.- Trans.J

6. [Again, I have remained closer to Lefebvre's French than 10 Celan's German.-Tr.ms.J

7· [From the poem "Mit allen Gedanken,ft GWI : 221; "Wirh all my thoughts,~ Hamburger, Gum,167.-Trans.]

8. [Celan, "Sprachgi tter," GWI: 167; Hamburger, "Language Mesh: Crlml, 119·-Trans.J

9· [Celan, ~ Engftihrung, ~ GWI: ' 95; Hamburger, "The Straitening," etllln. 137.-Trans.1

10. lCelan, "Schncebelt," GWI: 168, Hamburger. "Snow-bed," Crill", 121.-Trans.]

II . I'TUbingcn , Jan ncr~: Blanchor's French translation is "yew que la parole submerge jusqu'a la eCciH~."-Trans.]

12. (Celan, "Schnccbeu," GWI: 168; Hamburger, "Snow-bed," Crlnn, n.1.- Trans.)

13. [From ibid.:

Augen wd tblind, Augen im Sterixgekluft, Augen Augen , ..

From "F..ngf'uhrung" (note 9, above):

Lies nicht mchr-sch~u!

Schau nieht mehr-geh!

Nom

Lacoue- Labanhe ciles the French tr.lnslat ion by Maurice Blanehot, "Le demier a parler." 15.-Trans.)

w t"'Y

I. lJe;m-Jacques RouSSt'Olu, Orulfft1comp/}rtl, vol. 1 (Pa.ris: Gallimard, Biblioth«lue de la Pl6ade, 1959), 1005; Rrwrit1 oft"r Solilary walkt'r, t rans. Peter France (Harmondsworth, England: P~nguin , 1979), }9.­Trans.]

Vertigo

I. Paris: Hachcue/PO L, 1979, 2. (GW}: :wo.-Trans.] 3. [Du Bouchet, Strrttt.- Trans.] 4. [Jean Launay," Le Mtridien.~ POc7Jir9 (1979): 80.-Trans.]

Blindness

I. IGWI: 274: Hamburger, Ctlnn, 2.II.-Trans.J

Utd

I. (This passage can be found in the afterword to the essay "Das Ding," Vormtgr und Aufiiitzt. 183; trans. Hofstadter, Pon?> unguagr, Thought, 164·-Trans.]

L. (Celan, "Zurich, Zum SlOrchen," GWI: 114: Hamburger, "ZUrich, th~SlOrk Inn," CrIll", 157.-Trans.]

}. The manuscript is daled April 17. t977. 4, Heidcgger's response to Celan o n receipt of "Todtnauberg." Ah­

mann mentions at the beginning of his article that this le tler. along with the poem itsclf, had been exhibited in 1970 at Radu2 in the exh ibit ion on Celan.

5, T he French lranslation of this text is in large part due to Jean-Luc Na ncy, the intermediary between \'Q.H . and me. [The English version has been Ir.lI1slated from the French,- Tr:UlS.]

Nola

Sky

I. IGW}: 108; Washburn and Guillcmin. lAst forms. 189.-Trans.] I. I HiildcrJin, SWs: I8S.-Trans.] }. [SIVI. I: 118; Hamburger. Fridrich Hiildnlifl, Pomua'ld Fragmt'flts.

}7}·- Trans.] 4· Martin Hcidcgger. ~Wie Wenn am Feienagc .... " in ErliiUlt'I'Ungm

zu Hiildmins Diduuflg, 61. 5. Hcidcgger. ~ Das Gedicht," Erliiutt'I'Uflgm, 187. 6. I Heidegget, \.11rtragt und Aufiiitu, 187-204; Hofmdter, Pott",

umgllligt. Thought.21}-z9 .- Trans.] 7. ~ Kindncss" translatcs Frrufldlirhktit, which Heidegger interprets as

the Greek xapu;: grace. 8. [This line in German is ~ Voll Verdienst," which Michael Ham­

burger translatcs as ~ Full of profit." The French version L.-L. discusses uSC$ ~ Plein de mcritcs"; I have modified Ihe English to enhance the sense of L.-L. 's subsequent remuks.- Trans.]

9· [SI\72.1: 372; Hamburger, Hiildtrlifl, 261- 6s.-Trans.] 10. [HofStadter translatcs: MIs he manifcstlike the sky?" Hiilderii n an­

swers: ~ I'd sooner belic\'e the latter. " The translation here has been mod­ified in accordance with Hofstadter's.-Trans.]

It. [Hc:ideggcr, ~ ... dichterisch wohnet der Mensch ... ," Vormigt und Aufiilru, 197; Hofsradter, .. . .. Poetically Man Dwells ... ," Pot"" IAngungt'. Thought. In-lJ.- Trans.]

12. In "In Lovely Blueness," these ~qualitics" .'Ire the night stars. About ~the shade of the night ," Hcide:gger says: .. ... the night itself is the shade. th2t darkness which can never become a mere blackness bec.ause as shade it is wedded to tight and remains casl by it (Heidegger, " ... dich­terisch wohnel der Mensch .... " 201; Hofstadlcr, " , .. Poetically Man Dwells .... " 216.)

I}. Hii lderlin's poem says:

W:.I.S ist GOII? unbcbnlll, dennoch Voll Eigtnschancn ist du AngC$icht Dcs Himmds von ihm. Dic Blim namlieh Der Zorn sind cines GOICCS. Jcmehr ist eins Umiehtbar, schickct es sich in Frcmdcs.

What is God~ Unknown, YCt I:ull of hili qualities is thc

(SW ... : ~H»)

Nom

nce: of the sky. For the lightnings Are the wr.nh of a god. The more somcthing Is invisiblc, the more it yields 10 what's ali('n.

(I101".t.d.n. nil

'39

Heidegger's commentary: "The sight of Ihe skY-lhis is what is fami liar 10 man. And whal is that ? Everything that shimmers and blooms in Ihe sky 2nd thus under the sky 2nd thus on c;,mh. everylhing that sounds and is fragrant. rises and comcs-bUI also ('\·erything thaI goes and Slum­bles, moans and falls si lenl, pales and darkens. Into Ihis, which is inli­matc to man but alicn 10 the god. the unknown impuu himself, in order [0 remain guarded within it as the unknown" (~dichlcrisch wohnel der Mensch ... ," 200; Hofstadte r, .. ... Poelically Man Dwells ... ," 2.2.S).

'4. (Heidcgger, ~ ... dichrerisch wohnei der Mensch .... " 200; Hof­stadler, ..... Poelically Man Dwells .... " 22s.-Trans.1

15. Heidegger. " ... dichtcrisch wohnel der Mensch .... ~ ZOO- WI;

Hofsladrer, ..... Poetically Man Dwells ... ," 225- 26. 16. See Jean-Luc Marion's reading of the poem in L'i,wu t't la distnnct

(Paris: Grassel, 1978). 17. [SW; 2.1: 372; Hamburger, Hiifdtrlin, 261.- Trans.1 18. IGW ,: 16J; Hamburger, Olan, ItJ.-Trans.]

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Univcrsitaires de Lille. 1981.

MER I D I AN

Crossing Aesthetics

Deborah Esch, In tIlt Event: Rinding jouma/jlm, Rtading Theory

Winfried Menninghaus, In Praist of NOllmur: Kant and Bfutbtard

Giorgio Agamben. Th, Man Without C01llmt

Giorgio Agamben. TIN End of,h,. Au",: Essap in PortiN

Throdor W. Adorno, Sound Figurrs

Louis Marin, Sublim~ Poussin

Philippe Lacoue-ubanhc, PotITylU Expmma

Jacques Derrida, Rnistllnus of PsychoalUllpis

Ernst Bloch, Liura'] Es.s4J1 Marc Fromcm-Meuricc, That 11 to Say: Hridtfgrri PHtics

Francis Ponge, Soap

Philippe ucoue-ubarthe, Typography: MimrIil, PhifoSfJphy, Politics

Giorgio Agambcn, Homo Saar: Sovrrrign Powrr and Barr Lift

Emmanucll.evinas, Of God Who Comrs to Mind

Bcrnard Stiegler, Ttd",i(I and 7imr, I: 'l7N 1,'tlIllt of Epimrthrus

Werncr Hamacher, pl~roma-Rradillg in lIrerl

Serge Leclaire, Psychoanalyzillg: 0" thr Om" of thr Ullcomciom and tiN Prttrtia of thr Lrtur

Serge Leclaire, A Child Is &ing KiI/uJ: On Prima'} NaTTissism alld II" JAat/, Drivr

Sigmund Freud, Writinfl on An and Litmtturr

Cornelius CaslOriadis, World in FragmmtJ: Writinfl on Politics. So.itty. Psy(/x}(ulII/ysis. and "" Imagination

Thomas Keenan, Fabln of RtSponsibi/iry: AbffT'atiollS alld Prrdicllfnt'flts in /;i},i(1 Imd Politi(J

Emmanuel uvi nas, Proptr Nll/lltS

Alexa nder Garda Duu mann, At Odds with AIDS: Thinking IIlId Talking About II VirllJ

Maurice Blanchot. Frimdship

Jean-Luc Nancy. Tht Must'l

Massimo Cacciari. POllhumous Ptopu: Yimnll at tk 7itrning Poi",

David E. Wdlbcry. TIlt Sptrnlar Momt'fll: Gonllti EIIrly LJrit' and tIlt &ginninfl of fWmalltirinn

Edmond Jabes. 71lt Link Book o[Unsusptcud Subvrrsion

Hans-Jost Frey. Srudin in Ponic DisrourM: Ma/lannl, &utblairr. Rimbllud, Ho/&rlin

Pierre Bourdicu. TI" Rum of Art: Gmts;s alld Structurr of tIlt Litt",'} Fitld

Nicolas Abraham. RhJlhms: On lIlt WOrk, T,multlfio", IIl1d PSY(/}()(lIl1tlysis

JlC(IUCS Dcrrid:l., all tht Namt

David Wills, Prosrlmil

Maurice Blanchm, 'I1lt WorkofFirr

Jacques Dcrrida, Poi/lls . .. : Illunlitws, 1974 -1994

J. Hill is Miller, Topographin

Philippe Lacoue-Laban he, MusiClI Firtll (Figum of U'1lgllt rJ

Jacques Derrida, Aporias

Emmanuel Levinas, Outsidt tIlt Subjm

Jcan-Frano;:ois Lromrd, LroorlS 011 Iht Anarytic of rI" SUb/;I1t(

Peter Fenves. HChatur H

: umguagrllnd History ill Ki"lugllard

Jean-Luc Nancy, TIlt Exptrit'flt'l' of Frrtdom

Jean-Joseph Gou", Otdip'lJ. Philosoplltr

Haun Saussy, TIlt Prob/em of a Chillnt Am/mit'

Jean-Luc Nancy, 71lt Birth 10 PrrSt'flrt