Abstract
I argue from a hermeneutic point of view that formal elements of poetry can only be identified because poetry is based on both the phenomenon and the conception of poetry, both of which precede the attempt to identify formal elements as the defining moment of poetry. Furthermore, I argue with Gadamer that poetry is based on a rupture with and an epoche of our non-poetic use of language in such a way that it liberates “fixed” universal aspects of everyday language, and that through establishing itself in a new, self-referential and monologue unity, it individualizes speech. From the hermeneutic position, poetry is a form of speaking rather than a “fixed” object. As such, I will try to make sense of what Paul Celan said in his famous “Meridian” speech: namely, that the poem is “actualized language, set free under the sign of a radical individuation, which at the same time stays mindful of the limits drawn by language, the possibilities opened by language.”
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Notes
Sections of two earlier versions of this paper were presented in 2009 at Grand Valley State University and at the meeting of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy in London (Ontario). I would like to thank David Vessey of Grand Valley State University for making me aware of the problem of how to distinguish between poetry and poetry as art. However, I feel unable to address this problem in this paper appropriately, though I agree with Adorno (as well as with Hegel and Gadamer) that poems “become a matter of art only when they come to participate in something universal by virtue of the specificity they acquire in being given aesthetic form;” see Adorno (1991, p. 38). I would also thank the anonymous reviewers of this essay for their helpful comments.
Celan (2001a, p. 409). “Das Gedicht: ein Sichrealisieren der Sprache durch radikale Individuation, d.h. durch einmaliges, unwiederholbares Sprechen eines Einzelnen;”see Celan (1999, p. 117) (The poem: a self-actualization of language through radical individuation, i.e. through a singular and unrepeatable speaking of an individual”).
Stierle (1982, p. 276).
In addition, I am convinced that poetry cannot be understood if we start with fixed entities and results; rather, we must investigate the conditions under which these products are possible, which was the core of early romantic poetics, such as Schiller, Schelling, Schlegel, and Novalis. In this paper, however, I will not deal with the transcendental theory of poetry; rather, I would like to develop my thought in relation to the hermeneutic tradition, as we find it in Gadamer, Heidegger, Jauss, Blumenberg, and Stierle. For her discussion of why poetry was largely neglected in the analytic tradition see Ribeiro (2009, pp. 63–66).
“We, however, are searching for something truly essential, something that will force us to decide whether we shall take poetry at all seriously in the future;” see Heidegger (2000, p. 52).
Ribeiro (2007, p. 103).
Ribeiro (2007, p. 191).
Ribeiro (2007, p. 193).
Ribeiro (2007, p. 191).
Ribeiro (2009, p. 64).
What is at issue here is the concept of definition itself, or, in more phenomenological terms, the “essence” of poetry. The essence or eidos, according to the phenomenological tradition, is not identical with a definition, for essences are not based on empirical generalizations. Essences can also be found in individuals, as Husserl explains in the first sections of his Ideas I.
Stierle (1982, p. 276).
Ribeiro (2009, p. 64).
For this claim see Hegel (1988, pp. 972–974).
The abstract distinction between form and content, as well as between structure and thought, as Ribeiro proposes, does not make sense in those traditions: As Adorno puts it in his celebrated lecture on lyrical poetry and society in 1957:“Specification through thought is not some external reflection alien to art; on the contrary, all linguistic works of art demand it. The material proper to them, concepts, does not exhaust itself in mere contemplation. In order to be susceptible of aesthetic contemplation, works of art must always be thought through as well, and once thought has been called into play by the poem it does not let itself be stopped at the poem's behest;” see Adorno (1991, p. 39).
The contrast between everyday and poetic language is also discussed in Lawn (2001, pp. 116–118). Lawn, however, claims that the distinction can be explained by Gadamer’s concept of “play.” I do not think that the concept of play is sufficient for explaining the distinction, for the concept of play is also used for a hermeneutics of art, language, and festivals.
Though you now deal with a written text (and no longer with my lecture on which this text is based) you still must listen to my words and, as such, sound and meaning are not linked to each other.
According to Gadamer, all language is verbal—even written texts. Given the purpose of this essay, I am unable to discuss this background; for this see Gadamer (2003, pp. 384–395).
For this, see also Cesare (2004, p. 79). As Gadamer puts it, “poetry is the emergence of the appearance of language itself and not a mere passage to meaning;” see Gadamer (1993/1998, p. 267). It should be clear that at this point a confrontation between Gadamer and Adorno would be needed, for the self-constitution of poetic speech in contrast to everyday speech is in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory interpreted as negativity, through which poetry (and art in general) separates itself from the given society.
Heidegger (1967, p. 212).
Blumenberg (2001, p. 127).
It is precisely at this point that Derrida and Gadamer depart in their Celan interpretation. Gadamer presupposes the unity of sense, whereas Derrida presupposes the plurality of sense as the condition of the poem. Celan’s poetry seems to lean more towards a Derridian conception, especially given the later radicalization of his poetry in Lichtzwang. For the claim that poetry is necessarily ambiguous, see Jacobson (1979, p. 110).
Gadamer (1993/1998, p. 235).
For this, also see Blumenberg (2001, p. 128).
Blumenberg (2001, p. 129).
Gadamer (2003, p. 110).
Gadamer (2003, p. 116).
Stierle (2008, p. 134).
Celan: “the language of the poem hopes to be a different, more original language, than the one we usually live in;” see Celan (2005, p. 129). If Celan is right, then, indeed, poetry would be life changing.
I am indebted to the insights presented in Ivanovic (2002) (on voices), Lacoue-Labarthe (1999), and Derrida (2005). I am less impressed by Gadamer’s own volume on Celan; see Gadamer (1997). Especially helpful for approaching Celan’s Meridian speech is the extended volume of the “Tübinger Ausgabe,” which contains a volume with notes by Celan that he produced in preparation for his Meridian speech; see Celan (1999).
This is easier in German: in the longer version of Stimmen Celan uses the word “ritzen,” which can be used as a verb [einritzen] and refers to a physical type of scratching, drawing, and carving, such as in “to carve a name in wood” [einen Namen ins Holz einritzen]. Writing in danger and in situations in which no paper is available is a form of “ritzen.”
In Celan’s poetics this situation and syncope through which language as a voice has to go, appears as a wound and as something that is “ripped apart.” The word “sowing” that Celan uses in Voices refers in German to something that is “ripped apart” [zerrissen]. The poem Voices, the short form of which I discussed earlier, starts with the following lines: What sews/this voice? At what/sews this voice/in this world, beyond? “Was näht/An dieser Stimme? woran/näht diese Stimme/dieseits, jenseits?”; see Celan (2005, p. 317).
Celan (2001b, p. 395).
Topics, such as life, death, and breathing, would require a more careful elaboration in an essay on Celan. Here, however, I am only concerned with using this example for preparing the next part of my essay.
Celan (2001b, p. 412).
Moreover, in Celan the theme of the poem is itself language and cannot be formulated in prosaic and discursive terms.
Stierle (2008, p. 133).
Celan (1999, p. 222).
As Celan puts it, “poems try to speak for themselves, […] they exclude everything not of themselves;” see Celan (1999, p. 53).
I am following here a thesis presented in Peterson (1996).
Gadamer’s claim that the “I” in poetry is a universal “I;” see Gadamer (1997, p. 70), as he outlines it at the beginning of his Celan commentary, is misleading, for Celan would not have agreed with such a claim. Gadamer’s thesis is—given Gadamer’s superb knowledge of Celan—most likely intentionally directed against Celan’s own poetics. In this vein, one should note that Gadamer—to my knowledge—ignores Celan’s Meridian speech, which is rooted in his claim that poems want to be understood without external references to additional material.
Accordingly, the speech event and language as a system are not abstractly differentiated from each other; rather, the poem is the unity of both. It is precisely this subjective moment that remains neglected in Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s poetics—and it is precisely this point where Gadamer’s and Heidegger’s poetics depart from Celan’s. Here, I find myself much closer to Adorno’s position, viewing it, as I do, as a mediation between the subjective and objective moment in lyrical poetry; for this, see Adorno (1991).
Celan (2001a, p. 409).
See Heidegger (2001, p. 206): “Mortals speak insofar as they listen. They heed the bidding call of the stillness of the dif-ference even when they do not know that call. The listening draws from the command of the difference what it brings out as sounding word. This speaking that listens and accepts is responding [Entsprechung].” Poetic speech is a form of active creation through being receptive to language. We can see here, though, the difference between Heidegger and Gadamer, at least if we refer to Heidegger’s WWII writings on Hölderlin; for Heidegger takes the poetic word as the original force of language for opening up a world and establishing the relation between Being and beings; for this, see the end of his essay on the work of art, and the essay on Hölderlin entitled “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry” (Sect. 5), both of which are exemplary.
Celan (2005, p. 31; my translation).
Gadamer (2008, p. 14).
Gadamer (2008, p. 15).
For the purpose of this paper I do not want to further lay out what is meant by “the other.” In Celan’s Meridian speech three candidates are implicitly mentioned: (1) reality, (2) the other person, and (3) God; see Celan (2001b, p. 396 and p. 408).
Celan (1999, p. 147; my translation); this reminds us of the last verse of Celan’s poem which has been the subject of embattled commentaries by Derrida and Gadamer on Celan. It reads: Die Welt ist fort, ich muss Dich tragen. “The world is gone, I must carry you” Derrida comments on this sentence and discusses four possible ways to make sense of the word “tragen” [to carry]: birth, Freud’s theory of mourning, Husserl’s concept of the wordless ego, and Heidegger’s concept of world; see Derrida (2005, pp. 159–163). It seems to me that all of the aforementioned contexts are abstract and are a philosophical misreading of Celan’s line, except perhaps the first one. If we take the situation into account that I have outlined so far, then the line can be read rather as a self-reference to poetry. There are two other contexts that Derrida is not aware of in his commentary: “the world is gone” is a reference to the homelessness of human beings as being speechless and without world; see Celan (2005, p. 30), as well as a reference to the German tradition in poetry, especially the Romantic tradition, where we often find the image of a wanderer who is lost to the world and thereby loses her world. Also see Celan (1999, p. 125 and p. 147) [“Weltgewinnen” and “Weltfreiwerden”].
Syncope has several meanings. In medicine “syncope” means the temporary loss of consciousness and posture, described as “fainting.” It is related to temporary insufficient blood flow to the brain. In linguistics “syncope” refers to the loss of a vowel in a word, such as in “ich handle” instead of “ich handele.”
Lacoue-Labarthe (1999, p. 49).
Adorno (1991, p. 41).
Celan (2001a, p. 410).
Celan (1999, p. 215).
Celan (1999, p. 145).
Here we must look for a Heideggerian concept of truth as something that shows itself as itself from itself. Poetry is truth oriented because it points to and calls forth what is said.
Ribeiro (2007, p. 199).
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Lotz, C. Poetry as anti-discourse: formalism, hermeneutics, and the poetics of Paul Celan. Cont Philos Rev 44, 491–510 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9202-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-011-9202-9