Coyle, Derek (2002) 'Out to an other side':the poetry of Paul Celan and Seamus Heaney and the poetic challenge to post-modern discussions of absence and presence in the context of theological and philosophical conceptions of language and artistic production. PhD thesis.
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Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Thesis:
"Out to an Other Sideý- The poetry of Paul Celan and Seamus Heaney and the poetic, challenge to post-modem discussions of absence and presence in the context of theological and philosophical conceptions of language and artistic production
Derek CoYle For the Ph. D Degree University of Glasgow Faculty of Divinity July 2002 Abstract
Martin Heideggerin 'The Origin of the Work of Art' seeksto approachthe self- subsistentnature of art. The Greek Temple opensup a spacewithin which our Being may dwell. It is the site of human civilization and religion, and of our capacityto dwell within abstractionslike peace,justice, truth and representation.Art breaksopen a new place and presentsthings in a fresh light. Languageis the primary model for this activity.
Paul Celan in his poetry offers a challengeto Heideggerianabstraction. Both poetand philosopher were intimately familiar with eachother's work, yet thereis no essayon Celan,or evena reference,in the entireHeideggerian corpus. Celan's poem 'The Straitening'conveys the breakdownof meaningthat hasoccurred after the holocaust.In form andcontent it challengesany Heideggerian notion of the higher univocityachieved by greatpoetry.
We will explorerecent examples of how poetshave examined the ideaof culturalbelonging and exclusion. We presenta distillation of this ideain the writingsof PaulCelan, particularly his presentationof the momentof 'Shibboleth'.We explorethe biblical origin of the term 'Shibboleth'in a conflict betweenthe armyof Jephtahand the Ephraimites.We look at a contemporarypoem with shibboleth'as its theme,Seamus Heaney's'Broagh.
A consistenttheme of Maurice Blanchot's critical reflection from The Work of Fire in 1949 up to and including YheSpace ofLiterature in 1955, is the mannerin which our being creaturesunto death allows us to createart, and to think and write in the abstractionthat is language.Life enduresdeath and maintains itself in it. For BlanchotRainer Maria Rilke is oneof the mostsignificant modem poets in the way in which he haspresented and explored this theme.We challengeBlanchot's inadequate readingof Rilke in TheSpace ofLiteature asan instanceof his own pre-conceived philosophicalnihilism.
We presentJacques Derrida's essay On theName, along with a readingof SeamusHeaney's poetry in the light of this essay,as an attemptto keepopen a modem philosophicalhorizon to the invitationof the transcendentalOther. We present ImmanuelLevinas' thought in Totalityand Infinity, aswell asDerrida's critique of Levinas in Writing and Difference, as an attempt to preservea post-modem, intellectually credible, metaphysicalexpression f6r thought. Acknowledgments
The first personI am deeplygrateful to for bringingthis thesisinto the world, with his vastmidwifery experiencein all thingsacademic, is my supervisorthe Rev.
Prof David Jasper.Thank you David for your insightful thoughts,for being a paragon of patienceand for possessingsuch a well read mind. Many thanks for guiding me throughall stagesof the Ph.D process.In your capacityas founder of the Centrefor the Study of Literature, Theology and the Arts at the University of Glasgow,I thank you for your vision and persistencein running a creative, progressiveand satisfying intellectual environment.My best wishes to your lovely wife Alison and all the lamily.
conveyalso my appreciationto otherCentre personnel: to Dr. Kiyoshi
Tsuchiyafor the manyprovocative and heated seminar papers that kept us arguingfor threeyears, to the Rev.Prof GeorgeNewlands for so ably takingcontrol of the helm andto all the variousPh. D andNLTh. students who passedthrough the Centrein my time there,along with all othervisiting lecturersand researchers. A particularthank you to Dr. David Klemm from the Universityof Iowa for his term asa visiting researcher.Words fail to expressmy gratitudeto you for your morethan generous hospitalityin Iowa in my time there.
In particulara big expressionof gratitudeto fellow studentsover the years:
RaphaelSys, Thorsten Leisser, Trygve Stabrun, Nick Thompson.To the staff in the office who enduredmuch blarney: Margaret, Jean, Marion andMarie. To all the staff of the GFF,truly oneof the highlightsof my stayin bonnieAlba, andwho also happenedto keepme financially andgood humouredly afloat in my lastyear there. Specialthanks and buckets of creativityto that great,neglected poet of Dundee,my goodfriend Pete Faulkner, his lovely wife Ruth andall their beautifulchildren, especiallyCaitlin. To SuzanneScott and all poetseverywhere. An especialthank you to old friendsin Ireland:Aoife Kerriganfor beingsuch an aceproof-reader and great pal. A great big thanks to Paul Nestor, friend and confidante for many years:that was a great trip to the Highlands wasn't it? To Helena Donnelly and Deirdre McCabe for that last minutevisit. To CarolineGavin and Brian Higgins.To PadraigKenny and
Caroline: get that stageplay written boy! And last but by no meansleast, thank you to that most wonderful of women Dorothy Kenny.
A big hug and kiss to all my wonderful fellow LGBT friends at the University of Glasgowwho, what canI say?kept me sanefor so long andso well, with whomI boogiedand occasionally cried, shared so muchwith, to friendshiplifelong anddeep:
Dan andSharon, thanks for that unforgettablethirtieth birthdayparty, now whatam I to do at forty?,especially that GreekApollo amongstApollos Menelas Siafakas, to
Brian Matthews,David Hay,David Grant,Graham Ramsey, Kenny Duffus, Sean
Nye, Laura Howell and Maggie Currie, Ruth and Jo, Bob Softley, Pam and Jo,
Andrew Kane, and lain Bull. Salutations:to Craig I and 11,to Nick, to Kiel, Paul
Brown, Ian, RossFeilen, StephenKeltie, Sarah,Ray and John, Lindsey and Abe. For the many great late Thursday nights at Karen Dunbar's karaokenight in SadieFrost's underQueen Street Station and into the weehours at Bennett's,Glasgow's trashiest club. And the manySaturday nights begun in Delmonica'sand well andtruly concludedin that mosttasteful of venuesThe Polo Lounge.Thanks to DonaldReid. I acknowledgethe creativeverve of StuartHammond and all at the PoetryWorkshop in the LGBT Centre on Dixon Street. Thanksto all the baristasof the coffeeshops of the WestEnd. Especially the staff in Costason GreatWestern Road, and one of my favourites,the onewith the motorbike in the window,on ByresRoad, and whose name I cannotremember right now! Ah, I rememberit now, Tinderbox.
A special thanks to Prof Brian Cosgroveat the Departmentof English,
NationalUniversity of Ireland,Maynooth for his closeand thorough reading of this thesis.
And finally a big thank you to all my family, to Dad and Mum, to Anthony,
Alan, Roisin and Liam. I bet you're glad this is over, finally! for my
Father and Mother Contents
ThesisTitle
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Contents
Introduction:
Unemployed and Homeless: Theology in a Post-Modern Space,p. 1- 18
ChapterOne:
On the Path to Post-Modernity: Clearances and Presences,a Poetic Challenge to
Martin Heidggerls 'The Origin of the Work of Art', p. 19 - 70
ChapterTwo
Remembering the Word after the Shoah in the poemsof Paul Celan: A
Challenge to Heidegger, p. 71 - 116
ChapterThree
Through the Eye of the Shoah: The Shibboleth in Paul Celan and Seamus
Heaney, p. 117 - 172
ChapterFour
'Out to an other side' -.Poetry as a Way to the Transcendental Other, p. 173 - 207 ChapterFive
Un-Solid Foundations: The Aporetic, Philosophical Faith and the Plight of
Metaphysicstoday, p. 208- 271
Conclusion
The State of Play: SomeUseful Tips from Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul
Ricoeur, with illustrations from SeamusHeaney and Michael Longley, p. 272 -
297
Bibliography Introduction: Unemployed and Homeless, Theology in a Post-Modem Space
Rhere doesthoughtfind itself today?
Is it too big a questionto ask:where in termsof intellectualenterprise does humanity standtoday? How do we understandourselves, the world we live in, the shapeof human destiny, the purposeof existence?What answersto thesequestions are givenin the currentsociological and political matrix; how arethese questions answeredin the universities,in schoolsaround the world, on televisionand radio?
Doestheology or religion play a role todayin addressingthese questions? To beginto
addresssome of thesequestions we will commencewith contemporaryacademic philosopherSimon Critchley, geographer David Harveyand finally theologianJean-
Luc Marion.
In a recentpublication Simon Critchley states the problemof post-modernity quitebluntly: 'the task ofphilosophicalmodernity, at leastin its peakexperiences- in Hegel,Nietzsche, Heidegger - is a thinking throughof the deathof God termsof the problemof finitude". This hasradical implications, for not only arewe consideringthe deathof the God of Judaeo-Christiantradition, but alsothe disappearanceof manyof the idealsthat havegiven to humanitya purpose,goal and meaningin life. We are witnessingthe deathof all altruisticprinciple, ideal or rule for
Simon Critchley: Very Little-Almost Nothing. Death, Philosophy, Literature: Routledge:London: 2000, p. 2 2 governinghuman affairs; we haveseen the deathof all that hasgiven humanity directionand which hasexisted as a font of humanaspiration for millennia.Critchley writes:'those familiar with the landscapeof philosophicalmodernity will recognize
description Whatis It is the this situationas a of the problemof nihilism'2. nihilism? breakdownwe have described;where all of our systemsof meaningcollapse, where all which once was seenas a transcendent(meaning above and beyond our world to which we shoulddirect ourselves)source of valueis denigratedand nullified.
In terms of philosophy Critchley tracks down the wellsprings of this expressionof thought. He seesit emerging first in the Enlightenment, spreadinginto modernity, eventually finding its current form in a distinctive post-modemnihilism.
For Critchley it is broachedfirst in the writings of Immanuel Kant? We re-call Kant's critique of metaphysics.Kant denied human beings cognitive accessto the speculative
objectsof classicalmetaphysics, realities like God andthe soul,and removed the possibilityof knowingthings-in-themselves and the groundof the self. Kant's goal wasto achieveepistemological certainty through a limitation of the achievements actuallypossible or attainableby humancognition. Friedrich Nietzsche took this positionfurther in his assembledmiscellany The Will to Power,where he wrotethat:
'the highestvalues devalue themselves. The aim is lacking; "why' finds no answer'.
For Martin Heideggerwhen we beginto contemplateand think aboutthe essenceof nihilism we arebrought into the thoughtof Beingas that unthoughtground
of all metaphysicalthinking. We cannotovercome nihilism aslong aswe speakthe
2 Critchley: 2000, p. 3 3 David Harvey writes: 'the moral crisis of our time is a crisis of Enlighterunentthought': 77'e OxfO Condition of Postmodernity. - An Enquiry into the Or; gins of Cult ural Change: Blackwell: rd 2000, p. 41 4 Critchley: 2000, p. 7 3 samemetaphysical language of nihilism, and,for Heidegger,we canonly hopeto overcomethis problemby a radicaltransformation of language.Theodor Adorno writes:'the only philosophywhich canbe responsiblypractised in faceof despairis the attemptto contemplateall thingsas they would presentthemselves from the standpointof redemption'.5 For Adomo the intellectual task is to fashion perspectives that reveal the world as it will appearin the messianiclight, as needy and deformed andin needof transformation,and pointing towards what that changewould look like, if realisableor realised.We mustachieve this goal without violence.We cansay, at the very least, that this perspectivehas the merit of keeping open the horizon of future action.
For Martin Heidegger,especially the youngHeidegger, death is somethingto be achievedand it is the fundamentalpossibility that permitsus to graspthe totality of existence;it is the closurethat makessense of the openpossibility of Being.For
MauriceBlanchot death is somethingthat we are unableto lay hold of The eventof our deathis alwaystoo late for us.We will examineBlanchot's thought in greater detail in ChapterFour of this thesis.For him deathis radicallyresistant to the orderof representation.We will questionthis closelyafter a readingof the poemsSeamus
Heaneyhas written aboutthe deathof his parents.In a senserepresentations of death arealways misrepresentations or representationsof an absence.Poets like Heaney who wish to speakof deathuse a trope like prosopopeia,the tropeby which an imaginaryperson, or an absentone, is presentedas speaking or acting.We will
5 Critchley: 2000, p. 18 4 examinewhat happens in this act of the creativeimagination. Is it 'the failure of
6 presence'Simon Critchley arguesit iS?
How do we charactedsepost-modernity?
We have usedthe tenn post-modernityin this introduction. What do we understandby this term?David Harveyin his academicbestseller The Condition of
Postmodernity.An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Changeprovides us with a lucid analysisof the phenomenonTefeffed to aspost-modemity7. What cbamcteTises the post-modem?For Harvey a mark of the post-modemis the acceptanceas inevitableof ephemerality,fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic;the post- modemsubject swims within this cultural dislocationas if that is all thereis. Within post-modemart formsdifferent realities coexist, collide, andinterpenetrate. For example,in SalmanRushdie's recent novel TheGround Beneath Her Feet thereis a constantshifting of narrativeworlds, summed up in the abidingmetaphor of the novel of the constantseismic activity below the earth'ssurface; we movefrom the quiet low-key, pre-colonial preoccupationsof a family in Bombay, to the modem urban city of London, England, to a rock band performing in a football stadium,just one product
US. 8 of contempormybohemian cultwe in the
Anotherexample will serveto illustrate;it is CiaranCarson's Shamrock Tea, a book aboutwhich we may ask:is it a novel,or a text, a surrealistmemoir, or a fantasy?The centralconceit of the work featuresThe Arnooni Portrait by JanVan
6 Critchley: 2000, p. 26 7 David Harvey: The Conifition of Postmodernity.- An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change: BlackweU:Oxford: 2000, ChapterThree 8 SalmanRushdie: The Ground Beneath Her Feet. BCA: London: 1999 5
Eyck. The coreprotagonists are invited to enterinto this paintingrather like the charactersin Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland,or thosein C.S. Lewis's TheLion, the Witchand the Wardrobeas they enter into their respectivefantasy realms. The seconddevice is the magicalconcoction labelled Shamrock Tea, an inventionof the imagination of Carson.When consumedthis magical substanceallows the participant to enter into any time or dimension, to seereality with a divine perspective,and so we enterinto a narrativewhere a Wittgenstein(yes, the philosopher)converses with contemporariesof a young boy called Carsonwho might be a version of the author, and where Oscar Wilde, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Arthur ConanDoyle mingle with folk of manycenturies and locations, as real or authorialpresences, with the distinctionbetween the two erasedas a logical irrelevancewithin the framework establishedby the work.
In ShamrockTea what oftenprovides the only narrativelogic is a particular
Saintbeing a patronof an art practicedwell by a protagonist.Their Saint'sday happensto fall on the daythat OscarWilde wastriedý and this associationprovides the only link andlogic connectingthe next eventthat is aboutto occurwithin the book with that which hasproceeded it. Thereare no weaklinks in this chainand this is an integralpart of its point: the mystical,almost medieval notion of the interconnectednessof all reality asseen from God's perspective.Carson does pull in post-Modem,post-Enlightenment, tricks like wormholesand space-time continuums, drawnas much from the world of Sci-Fiand Star Trekas from StephenHawking.
Carsonmimics or simulatesmany voices, from mock seriousnessto profound reflectionson obtusetopics, to the lilted perambulationsof a peasantIrish religious brotherserving Shamrock Tea to GerardManley Hopkins in the groundsof a 6 fictitious Loyola House in the rolling hills of the Mourne Mountains.9 As should be evident from this example a characteristicof post-modernity,as we have seen,is its foregroundingof the situationwhere different realities co-exist, collide and interpenetrate.
The post-modemcity consistsof an emporium of styles.We have a maniacal scrapbookfilled with colourful entries.An examplefrom closeto hand,in orderto illustrate, is the Clydesdalebank plaza in Edinburgh. Here we have a typical clash of modernity and post-modemity; on the one hand we have the brash,glass-fronted abstractdesigns of modemityand, on the other,these sit sideby sidewith the neo- classical,grand styles of post-modernitywhich simulatea pastworld andits attendant glories.The communicationof knowledgeis a significantfactor here. For through films, television,books and radio, history and the experienceof the pastis turnedinto a seeminglyvast archive that is instantlyretrievable and capable of beingconsumed endlesslyat the pushof a button.Harvey writes: 'the post-modempenchant for jumbling togetherall mannerof referencesto paststyles is oneof its mostpervasive 10 characteristics.Reality, it seems,is beingshaped to mimic mediaimages'.
Harveyidentifies mass television ownership, satellite, radio andother electronicmedia as a key factor influencingthe contemporarymindset or sensibility.
The world"sdifferent times and spaceshave been collapsed onto the depthlesssurface of the televisionscreen. The world canwatch as they happenand observe where they happeneverything from the OlympicGames, the World Cup,to a deadlytragedy and the rise andfall of political dictatorships,from the comfort of their armchairs,while
9 Ciaran Carson:Shanwock Tea: GrantaBooks: London: 2001 10 David Harvey: 2000, p. 85 7 films madein spectacularlocations and mass tourism have made available to many vicariousor simulatedexperiences of differentcultures, histories and locations.
We seesomething of the effectsof suchstimulus in the poetryof Matthew
Sweeney,a poet whose original imaginative and real location was County Donegal on
Ireland'snorthwest coastline, but who haslived in Londoncity's cosmopolitanmilieu for manyyears now. In the world of the poemall timesand places can co-exist in a simultaneousinstance of imagining, form, line and word. Post-modemart forms might well just be the achievementsof the human imagination in specific fonns, and yet, oneswhose realisation have only beentechnologically achievable in recent decadesbut whosepotential have always been latent. In Sweeney'spoem 'In the Ice', itself a versionof thirteenthcentury Italian poetDante's Inferno, XXXH, 16- 1392 oneof the protagonistsswears in idiomaticHiberno-English: 'Fuck off anddon't annoyme finther'. 11One is certaina vital advocateof the Tuscandialect would appreciatesuch vernacular genius. 'The Tunnel' presentsthe youngerpoet's imaginaryjourney downa tunnelrunning underneath the islandof Irelandin his homemade dinghy, having entered via a manhole near his family home in Donegal, emerging eventually as if in Atlantis, Mars or Florida to view the strange (accents of
Cork fishermen/ who stood and watched me emerge'. 12There is a disruption in the concrete locale of the poem; it moves easily between these locations within its world; as opposed to the early poems of Seamus Heaney, work that is characteristically strongly rooted in its sense of place, Sweeny's recent work as an aura of the virtual about it. 13
11 Matthew Sweeney:A Smell of Fish: JonathanCape: London: 2000, p. 45 - 47 12Matthew Sweeney:2000, p. 5 13See poems Eke 'Digging' and 'Follower' in SeamusHeaney's Death of aN aturalist: Faber& Faber: London: 1966 8
Sweeneyfrequently deploys such imaginative strategies to evokein his reader a senseof the brillianceof our beingin the world, the spontaneityof the sensesas theycomprehend the presenceof the world to themin a momentof radicalencounter.
This is oftencoupled with a confrontationthat forcesus to facethe radical contingencyof our being,often in momentsof dangerthat borderon exhilaration.
'The Volcano' could be a news reel or a snippet from a disastermovie in its recountingof the fleeingof a couplewith their bestsari, Armani suit andmonkey from the areaof natural disaster.David Harvey might read this poem with a commentarylike 'a typical middle-class couple with their eclectic but cool commodities identifying their buying power and class status,a collage of random fashionitems deconstructive of overarchingnarratives of meaning,inter-relatedness or connection;and Sweeney's ending about how the chairsin their housewill, by the lava,be eventuallyturned 'into sculptures/that oneday we'd comeback and see' is typical of this group'sattraction to provocativespectacle lacking in ethicaland emotionalsubstance or depth.14
Another contemporarypoet, originally hailing from New York's Irish community,but living in Londonfor manyyears, Michael Donaghy's work exhibits similar post-modemfacets and exploits comparable tactics. In 'CruisingByzantium' thereis the deliberateecho of William Butler Yeats's'The CircusAnimals'
Desertion'(and we re-call alsohis 'Sailing to Byzantium'and 'Byzantium')in the 15. line 'and not such lives as theseare emblem of We witness post-modemquotation andparasitism, although Donaghy's poem adopts a somewhatsexier take on things thanthe Sligo bardmight everhave conceived even in a CrazyJane moment (and this
14 Sweeney:2000, p. 10 15 Michael Donaghy:Dances Learned Last Night.- Poem 197S-199S: Picador: London: 2000, p. 68 9 is altogetherin keepingwith a post-modempenchant forjouissance or pleasure).
Surroundedby middle-classcommodities: 'cash, cashmere coat nor cat', Donaghy's narratoris still in searchfor love. The poemdoes explore a post-modemdilemma with its presentationof the photosof the holidaywith his lover in Byzantiumand how the electronicmemory or preservationof the eventis/was as important as the event itself, fore-groundedwithin the choiceof idiom in the poem:'You havebecome the fetishthat you wear.
The problem of reference,association and meaning is explored explicitly in
'City of God'. Augustine's influential work City ofGod is there of course,and
Augustinian despairat the fallennessof the world of men. The poem tells the story of the seminarianwhom the poet knew from the back pews of his local church and his method of associatingone thing with another in order to learn for exams,how the interior of a church can be read as a manual of theology. The poet imaginesthe neighbourhoodtransformed by this student's concern with salvation and damnation.
By implication, the poem argues,the Christian mindset of previous centuriesintrudes into presentconsciousness and can bear an oppressiveweight.
Herewas Bruno Streetwhere Bernadette
collapsed,bleeding through her skirt
anddied, he hadheard, in a stateof mortal sin;
here,the site of the bakeryfire wherePeter stood
screamingon the red-hotfire escape,
his barefeet blisteringbefore he jumped;
andhere the storefrontvoodoo church beneath the el 10
wherethe Cubanbruja boughtblack candles,
its window strangewith plastersaints and seashells. 16
Fromthe sublimeconcerns of theologyand redemption, the next poemin his volume
'Liverpool' concernsitself with tattooson the body.17 And sothe poeticlandscape of
Donaghy's work resemblesthe pasticheor kitsch of a contemporarycityscape where onemight find a classicalchurch beside a bizarremarket pedalling all formsof apparentlyirredeemable clutter.
There is a particular aptnessto Michael Donaghy's choice of title for his 18 collection Conjure. In the poems "My Flu' and 'Haunts' memoriesof childhood, incidentswith his fatherrecently deceased, are re-calledftom memoryby the Poet.
Whathappened and what didn't? The poetrefers to film asa meansof preservingthe pastauthentically and questions that proposition.If he hada camerarecording would that tell or hold the truth of the experience,how it wasto be there?Would it really containthe experienceof what it waslike to be sick in bedwith the flu andcomforted by his father way back in 1962. 'Haunts' in its title alone suggeststhe territory of ghostliness,presence, revenants and literary quotationand life, readingHamlet into an encounterwith his own ghostlyfather and his telling his fathernot to be afraid in the dark asa child, in a deliberatereversal of roles.What is the properperspective from which to approachthe world or reality?Such are the characteristicpre-occupations of the post-modemartwork.
16 Donaghy:Dances Learned Last Night.- Poems 19 75 1995, p. 69 70 17 - - Donaghy:Dances Learned Last Night.- Poems 19 75 - 1995, p. 71 18Michael Donaghy: Conjure: Picador: London: 2000 11
TheologicalIcons and idols
What is the theologianto makeof all this?How canwe beginto critiqueit?
Doesit havea positiveside, and do we necessarilyhave to shout'NoV, conservativelyassuming that suchchange is a badthing, that we are on a pathbound for moral and cultural ruination in the end?What is the proper task of the theologian, if any,in this presentage? Philosopher and theologian Jean-Luc Marion hasspoken of the 'I' of our time as 'a modem of the age of distress'19.To help us formulate a way of approachingpost-modem phenomena critically and intelligently we turn to his slim but thoughtfuland provocative book God WithoutBeing.
In the first chapterof God WithoutBeing Marion developsa distinction betweenthe idol andthe icon.Both icon andidol indicatea mannerof beingfor beirigs.With regardto aestheticproduction they indicateworks of art that are so workedthat they no longerrestrict their visibility to themselves.However, through remainingabsolutely immanent to themselvesthey signalindissolubly towards another,still undeterminedterm. What distinguishesthem eventually? The idol is characterisedby the fact that we can 'seeit so visibly that the very fact of seeingit
to know it, 20And 'in to suffices . so: this stop,the gazeceases overshootand transpierceitself, henceit ceasesto transpiercevisible things,in orderto pausein the
them'21What happens idol is that the lets itself be splendourof oneof . with the gaze filled, andinstead of outflankingthe visible, of not seeingit andrendering it invisible, the gazediscovers itself ascontained and held backby the visible.The idol becomes
19 Jean-LucMarion: God Without Being.- Hors-Texte: Univ. of ChicagoPress: Chicago: 1995,P. 15, Trans. by ThomasA. Carlson 20Jean-Luc Marion: 1995,p. 9 21Jean-Luc Marion: 1995,p. II 12 like a miffor, a miffor reflectingthe gaze'simage, in fact, the gaze'saim andthe scopeof its aim. And so 'with the idol, the invisiblemiffor admitsno beyond,because the the its gazecannot raise sightof aim'22.
What doesMarion do with the foregoing reflection? fie utilises it to critique the methodologyof philosophical thought. He developshis notion of the conceptual idol. He arguesthat in conceptsthought can fteeze, or stopat a particularplace as much as the imagination can within the medium of poetry or in artistic, visual representation.Philosophy itself producesidols: 'when philosophical thought expressesa conceptof what it then names"God", this conceptfunctions exactly as an idol. It givesitself to be seen,but thusall the betterconceals itself asthe miffor where,thought, invisibly, hasits forwardpoint fixed, so that the invisiblefinds itself, with an aim suspendedby the fixed concept,disqualified and abandoned, thought freezes,and the idolatrousconcept of "God" appears,where, more than God, thought judgesitself23. Marion is thenin a positionto speakof Nietzscheas a breakerof idols, conceptually,and not necessarilyan irreligiousthinker. His assaulton Godwas uponthe Godof the philosopherswhom he exposedas an emptyidol, worthy of worshipno longer.He may well havedone thereby some good service to religious thought.
What hasMarion to sayof the icon?He writes: 'the icon doesnot resultfrom
but What icon is to be a vision provokesone'24 . the achieves to allow the visible saturatedlittle by little with the invisible,and thereby summons sight. He speaksof.
'the invisiblebestowing the visible, in orderthus to deducethe visible from itself and
22Jean-Luc Marion: 1995,p. 13 23Jean-Luc Marion: 1995,p. 16 24Jean-Luc Marion: 1995,p. 17 13 to allow itself to appearthere 25.A featurewill alwaysbe its renderingthis visiblethis invisibleas such - the unenvisageable.As suchthe visible will alwaysrefer to somethingother than itself; without howeverrendering or reproducingit in the visible.He writes:'the gazecan never rest or settleif it looksat an icon; it always mustrebound upon the visible, in orderto go backin it up the infinite streamof the invisible. In this sense,the icon makesvisible only by giving rise to an infinite
t26And he 'an finish gaze . so canspeak of abyssthat the eyesof mennever probing'27
Enough then of fine theological conceptualisation;can we find any examples, in the concrete,as it were,of whatMarion is hinting at?One is drawnto a bookby
SeamusHeaney provocatively titled SeeingThings (1991). Therein we find the following poem:
Field of Vision
I rememberthe womanwho satfor years
In a wheelchair,looking straightahead
Out the window at sycamoretrees unleafing
And leafingat the far endof the lane.
Straightout pastthe TV in the comer,
The stunted,agitated hawthorn bush,
The samesmall calveswith their backsto wind andrain,
The sameacre of ragwort,the samemountain.
25Jean-Luc Marion: 1995,p. 17 26Jean-Luc Marion: 1995,p. 18 27Jean-Luc Marion: 1995, p. 21 14
Shewas steadfast as the big windowitself
Her brow wasclear as the chromebits of the chair.
Shenever lamented once and she never
Carrieda spareounce of emotionalweight.
Face to face with her was an education
Of the sortyou got acrossa well-bracedgate-
Oneof thoselean, clean, iron, roadsideones
Between two whitewashedpillars, where you could see
Deeperinto the countrythan you expected
And discoveredthat the field behindthe hedge
Grewmore distinctly strange as you kept standing 28 Focusedand drawn in by what barredthe way.
Thereis a noteof the permanentnature of the vision contemplatedand seen by the womanfrom within the stasisof her life. Sheis fixed like the gatewaydescribed, andis a gatewayof sortsherself It is with her that Heaneyhas to contendas a poet, with her steadfastness.She has been there and endured; this is the hint of the items , indicativeof her existenceprovided by the poem.She bypasses the mediumof the modem(dare one say post-modem) world by ignoringher TV in the comer.She is almostat onewith her environment.What differentiatesher is her momentof vision or insight.So sheis both at onewith her surroundingsand different at the sametime.
In natureand her Heaneycan encounter the visionary.The poem'sconclusion
29 SeamusHeaney: Seeing Things: Faber& Faber:London: 1991,p. 22 15 suggeststhe necessityof perspective,of a framework;otherwise, we wouldnot know whatwe are lookingat, it would not makesense, and at the sametime we haveto allow the visionaryits own claim, its own momentof difference,that takesus 'deeper into the countythan you expected'and to allow accessto the 'more distinctly strange'. The merit of Heaney's poem is how it groundsthe visionary within the world of the tangible, the accessible,the everydayand the real. In tenns of the frameworkelaborated by Jean-LucMarion Heaney'spoem does not presentthe vision as such and really just leavesopen the possibility of illumination from unexpectedand strangeplaces; so rather than being an instanceof the religious vision, and risking the possibilityof presentingus with a momentof artistic idolisation,it leavesopen rather, or createsan aporia,that allowsfor the movementof the visionary,or religiousicon.
In this thesiswe will examinepoetry as a modeof accessingthe distinctly strange,as retaining a capacityto forceopen our conceptualidols whenthey settle downin eitherof the discursivemodes of philosophyand theological thought. One of our major concernswill be with the poetryof SeamusHeaney. Why the poetryof
SeamusHeaney and not that of his major contemporarieswriting in the English language:Derek Walcott, Les Murray, or JohnAshbery? Any of the abovepoets couldhave been used in the presentstudy. A concernfor the religiousas a possibility or impossibilityfor the critically reflectivehuman being today is foundin all of their work. In Caribbeanpoet Derek Walcott we find the following reflectionin a poem aboutthe prematuredeath of his daughter: 16
As for you, little star,
my lost daughter,you are
bent in the shapeforever
of a curledseed sailing the earth,
in the shapeof onequestion, a comma
that knows before us whether death
29 is anotherbirth.
Walcott's most recent ambitious long poem Depolo's Hound is a poetic analysisof the drift into whatwe haveidentified as cultural nihilism, throughan examinationof
Impressionistpainting and the major currentsof Europeancivilisation in the late
Enlightemnent 30Australian Les Murray hasbeen the period. preoccupiedwith belief his New YorkerJohn questionof religion and throughout writing career.31 Ashberysounds in 'The Godsof Fairness'as if he hasread Jean-Luc Marion's God
WithoutBeing with its argumentfor charityas the greatestmoment between God and humanitywhen he writes:
The failure to seeGod is not a problem
Godhas a problemwith. Sure,he could seeus
if he had a hankeringto do so,but that's
not the point. The point is his concern
for us andfor biscuits.For the loaf
29 Derek Walcott: CollectedPoems 1948 - 1984: Faber:London: 1992,p. 450 " Derek Walcott: 771epolo'sHound. Faber:London: 2000 31Up to and including one of his best recentcollections: Subhuman RedneckPoems: Carcanet: Manchester:1996, and poemslike 'The Say-but-the-wordCenturion Attempts a SumnlarY',P. 14 17
of breadthat turnsin the night sky over StockholM.32
So,any one of thesecontemporary, living poetscould have been a focusfor this study.We optedfor SeamusHeaney because, apart from his beingone of the most significantpoets writing today,we notethat unlike Walcott'sdeclared disappearance of faith in late adolescence,and yet, his persistentexamination of this issue,and unlike the openlyaccepted and traditional religious faith of LesMurray, Heaney has sought out and occupied a more ambivalent position, not overtly religious, and yet not sceptical or dismissive of it either. Most pressingly though his work pursues,in 4, volumes like Seeing Things, The Spirit Levet33and Electric Ligh? a fascinating path of exposingcontemporary poetry to the contest and necessityof keeping open horizonsof vision within art, thoughtand culture that challenge,provoke and unearth us from easilyaccepted orthodoxies of anyilk. 11isachievements in this respectare intriguingand will be examinedclosely later. We will readHeaney's work within the contextof contemporaryIrish poetryand culture, utilising the work of his fellow poets,especially his mostsignificant predecessor, John Montague. Another major poet who will feature significantly in this thesis is the Romanian/Germanpoet Paul
Celanwhom many have written of asthe mostsignificant post war Europeanpoet.
We will placeour thoughtswithin the frameworkof post-modemphilosophy, 35. startingfirst with Martin Heidegger'sessay 'The Origin of the Work of Art e will do this in ChapterOne. This essaydefines the agenda,asking first, in its way,
32John Ashbery: Your Name Here: Carcanet:Manchester: 2000 33Seamus Heaney: The Spirit Level:Faber & Faber:London: 1996 34Seamus Heaney: Electric Light: Faber& Faber:London: 2001 35 Krell MartinHeidegger: Basic Wtifings:Routledge: London: 1999, p. 139- 212,(ed. ) David 18 manyof the questionspursued by subsequentthought, particularly that of Maurice
Blanchot. We will examine in Chapter Two the poetry of Paul Celan as it stagesa revolt againstHeideggerian totalitarian philosophical domination and we will readhis work asan exemplaryinstance of poetry'scapacity to resistthought, idolisation and as an effective way to force open alternative horizons for contemplation and
engagementwith reality. In ChapterThree we will examine Cel& s work as a way of
retainingthe strangeand the Other,of creatinga languageresistant to all attemptsto
domesticateand homogenise it, a strategythat may well be vital in an eraof post-
modemutilitarianism and commercial exploitation. In ChapterFour we will engage
with the nihilism of MauriceBlanchot and suggest avenues of challengeto his
position.In ChapterFive we will examineparticular outstanding issues, and will
confrontunresolved questions about the placeof art within andwithout civilisation
andbarbarism, and the implicationsthat this might havefor theology,as well as
exploringthe possibilitiesof a t3rpeof post-modemfaith; both excavationswill occur
throughengaging with the writings of JacquesDerrida. 19
Chapter One: On the Path to Post-Modemity: Clearances and Presences, a Poetic Chaflenge for Martin Heidegger's 'The Ofigin of the Work of Art'
In a humblegesture Derek Walcott (unusual for this poetwith his typically grand pronouncementsand tropes) venturesto ask in an elegiac poem 'The Bounty'
(for his deceasedmother Alix) whetherhis poeticre-creation of the seaand its echoof
Ovid speakstruly of continuity,human endurance beyond pain anddeath, against mortality and decay.He then writes: 'I hope this settlesthe matter // of presences".
Belfastpoet Derek Mahon begins 'A DisusedShed in Co. Wexford' with the 2. statement:"Even now thereare places where a thoughtmight grow And he suggests
Peruvianmines, Indian compounds and disused sheds in Co. Wexford.All areplaces wherea poem,a reflection,a freshstart or reconsiderationmight begin.What is the natureof theseworlds imagined within the real?The considerationof this questionis a central starting point in much contemporaryreflection on art and literature. Does art touchthe transcendentalin someway or is it touchedby it? Is the world of the imaginationan illusory pursuitof the diminishedand evasive transcendent God, who wasonly a miragein the very first instance?Such reflections have pre-occupied many contemporarytheorists of art, a fact revealedby only a cursoryglance at book titles.
GeorgeSteiner published Real Presences: Is thereanything in what we say?" in
19893French thinker Jean-Luc Nancy TheBirth to . publisheda seriesof reflections
1Derek Walcott: The Bounty: Faber:London: 1997,p. 11 2 Derek Mahon: CollectedPoena: Gallery: Meath: 1999,p. 89 3 GeorgeSteiner: Red Presences:Faber: London: 1991 20
Presencein 19934. And French deconstructionist(so-called) JacquesDerrida set the cat amongstthe critical pigeonsearly on with his challengeto the transcendental signified in his magnum opus of the 1960sQfGrammatoloe. We wish to proposean earlier starting point to this debate,an origin indeed; we will begin with the much- discussedessay of Germanphilosopher Martin Heidegger'On the Origin of the Work of AA-)6.
However, before moving on to look at Heideggerclosely we will have a brief look at what Derrida has to say in OfGrammatology. JacquesDerrida writes about the traditional associationof signified and signifier, of writing's intimate connectionwith
sense,in that the written word, traditionally understood,captured the immediacy of
the spokenword and indeed, of the world. He writes: 'the age of the sign is essentially
theological In the Middle Ages it was understoodthat a sign signified 'an eternal
verity, eternally thought and spokenin the proximity of a presentlogos's. However
the consciousnessrevealed in Nietzche's writing signifies a break with this
understanding,in that he understoodhis writing to be 'originary' operationsin that he
has written what he has written and it is not in any senseoriginally subordinateto the
4 Jean-LucNancy: The Birth to Presence:Stanford Univ. Press:California: 1993, (Trans. ) Brian Holmesand Others. 5Jacques Derrida: QjrGrantmatology: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press:Baltimore: 1998, (Trans. ) Gayatri ChakravortySpivak 6 In 1935,the yearin whichMartin Heideggergave his lecturecourse, 'Introduction to Metaphysics', he presenteda lecturein Freiburgto the Societyof Art Sciencesentitled 'Concerning the Originof the Work of Art'. Whenasked by the studentsof the Universityin Zurichto givea talk therehe gavethe samelecture again. That was in January1936. A shorttime thereafter he expanded this lectureand gave it asthree lectures in 1936in Frankfurt.These three lectures were published in Holzwegein 1950under the title, 'The Originof the Work of Art', with the additionof an Afterword,written in part after 1936. In 1956Heidegger wrote an Addendumthat soughtto clarifysome aspects of the essay.The version I will work from is the final editionpublished by DavidKrell in his anthologyof Heidegger'swork by entitledBasic Writings:Routledge: London: 1999, p. 140 - 203.Although the versionreferred to the critic FranWiseDastur, whom I quotein my chapter,is the first draft,Dastur refers to it asthe Freiburg version(FV) andit waspublished first in 1987.
7 Of Grammatology:1998, p. 14 8 QjrGrantmatology:1998, p. 15 21 logosand to truth.After this realisationwe enterinto the realmof play,with Derrida writing, 'one'could call play the absenceof the transcendentalsignified as limitlessnessof play,that is to sayas the destructionof onto-theologyand the metaphysicsof presence'9.For Derrida,this is where we are now in terms of theology and philosophy of language,writing and their comprehension,and in many ways, then, the philosophical disciplines of epistemologyand hermeneuticsremain challengedby this radicalunderstanding with relationto the connectionbetween thought and language,writing and presence,and the origin of all meaning. We considerMartin Heidegger's The Origin ofthe Work qfArt as a key moment in the developmentof this trendof intellectualargument and understanding.
Martin Heideggerbegins his essayYhe Origin ofthe WorkofArt with the seeminglyobvious position that: 'Origin heremeans that from which andby which somethingis what it is and as it is"O. Heideggerstates that 'the artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist'. And in a moreprimary sense: "art is the origin of both artist andwork"'. Whenone uses the languageof origin in relationto art one is already hinting that one intends to speakabout somethingthat is fundamental.We might expectHeidegger to ventureinto developingideas concerning the relatedissues of truth andessence, and it no surpriseto seehim do so.
9 Of Grammatology: 1998,p. 5o ") Basic Writings: 1999:p. 143 22
"at about Things and the Nature of their Work?
fleideggerstates early on that all workshave a 'thingly' character'2.In fact theywould be preciouslittle without it. Yet we alwaysclaim somethingmore for the work of art. We do not let it reside in its thingliness (sic! ) alone. For example,we commonly assumethat there is somethingthat separatesthe vacuum cleanerand the familiar hairdryerfrom a sculptureby Rodin. Thereis somethingdifferent about the shoesof a peasantas wom in the fields of Flanders,on the hills of Tuscanyor on a bog in Connemara,compared to thosepainted by VincentVan Gogh.We oftenassert that it is this somethingelse that constitutesthe artisticnature of the work. The artworkis a craftedobject, is madeof fabricsand such like, yet we sayit says somethingother and more than what the merething itself is. The bestway to speakof this aspectof the work might well be to describethe work asintrinsically allegorical, alwaysdestined to manifestsomething wholly otherthan itself The work brings togethersomething different with what is madeand thus is, in the original Greek sense,symballein a work of the symbolic.
Hleideggerstates that his objectivein this essayis to approach'the immediate
full the We first in the and actualityof work of art'13. must view the thingly element artworkfor it is in it that the symbolicis madeto do its work. The thingly elementis the foundation,means, medium by which the other,proper element is put to work.
We needto be clearabout the natureof the thing beforewe proceedto elaboratingthe natureof art. We mustknow what a thing is beforewe canknow what the artworkis, as somethingthat adheresto, dwellswithin, is locatedin, the thing. it is only after we
11P. 143 12Baie Wlilings: 1999,P. 146 23 havegrasped this point that we canbegin to determinewith confidenceand clarity whetherthe work is in the endsomething else and not a thing at all.
For Heideggereverything that is, is a thing.From the spoonin the drawer,to the fiddle on the wall, the tree in the field to the cow in the byre; all of theseare things in themselves,in short, everything that we can say is about, are things. At the same time we do not normallyconsider people to be things,or God,even though we presumes/he is, a thing. In common parlancewe speakof things as a basic component,or self-containedunit, a commondenominator, such as a clod of turf or a block of wood.A thing heremeans that which is nothingmore than a merething and that which is only a thing.
Heideggerdescribes the block of granite,its bulky shape,its odd colourand its roughtexture. Thus we approachits thingliness.However, we arerarely content to leaveit at that. We often speakof the thing asthat aroundwhich the propertieshave assembled.And thuswe beginto speakof the coreof things,what the Greeksspoke of asto hypokeimenon,the corethat lay at the groundof the thing, what is already there.And the characteristicsare describedas la symbebekota,as that which has , turnedup alreadywith the givencore and occurs along with it.
The centralityof language,translation, metaphor and poetry to all thoughtis highlightedby Heidegger?s concern over the translationof thesetenns from Greekto
Latin thought.He expressesthe concernthat we havetranslated the wordsWithout havingexperienced the primaryevent that forgedthe Greekconcepts in the first
13p. 146 24 instance.The word hypokeimenonbecomes subiectum; hypostasis becomes substantia;symbebekos becomes accidens. For Heideggerthis translationmarks the rootlessnessof Westernthought. Somethingquirky creepsin dueto the syntactical structuresof Latin. We combinethe subjectof the sentencewith what is statedof it in the predicate,through words, and assumeblindly that this is a given of actuality.
Heideggerasks: 'Who would have the temerity to assail thesesimple fundamental relationsbetween thing andstatement, between sentence structure and thing- structureT14 Heidegger asks what will later becomean abidingquestion: What is the primary thing, what emergesfirst, reality, or the languagethrough which we structure it?
Heideggerproposes that the truth might be far morecomplicated than we have previouslyconceived it to be. He proposesthat the sentenceand thing-structure derive,in their typical form andin their possiblemutual relationship, from a far more original source.First Heideggerquestions the assumptionthat the thing-conceptthat seesthe thing primarily asthe bearerof its characteristicsis the truth of things,can be assumedto be true,that it lies at a momentprior to all questionsand exists before all radicalthought. Heidegger argues that an act of ancientviolence of thoughtand on thoughthas occurred here. When we seekfor the irrational,as an otherto the rational, asthe abortiveoffipring of the unthoughtrational, a curiousby-product we discover, andHeidegger lays claim to it, is that the cuffentthing-concept does not lay a hold on what is essentialto the thing asit is in its own being,and thus does not assaultit.
1413aSie Wrilings: 1999,P. 149 25
How canwe avoid suchan act of verbalor intellectualassault? To jump slightly aheadof Heideggerat this point we suggesttrying to createan opening throughlanguage itself Throughlanguage we cancreate a free field within which the thing may displayits thingly characterdirectly. Our aim at this stage,as Heidegger perceivesit, is to dwell before the ummediatedpresencing of the thing. Heideggersays wc cannot pcrccivc the abstractsound of noisc, but can only perccivc the concrctc smashingof pottery,the throb of a dieselengine over the drive andaggression of a petrol one, the sound of a guitar as opposedto the notes and tones of an abstract music. We cannot listen abstractly. If we are to rely on our sensesto bring the thinglinessof thingsto us it seemsto disappearfurther out of view. We muststrive to allow the thing to remain in its own steaffastnessand its self-containment.
Heideggerproposes another traditional option aboutwhich he hassome reservations.He considersthe matterof thingswithin which the form is already alwayspresent, coextensive and coexists within it. The thing is formedmatter. This view hasequal application to natureand the utensilsdrawn upon by the intellectual capacityof humanity.The conceptsof form andmatter have been used extensively in the domainof aestheticsand beyond for manya long year,to the point of beinglazily assumedto be true,to beinga clichd of thought.The resultof this is that various subsequentoppositions are conjoined without anyreal thought.Form, it is assumed,is relatedto the rationaland matter to the irrational;the rationalis understoodto be logical andthe irrational illogical; andthen the final sin andaberration of original thought,the subject-objectrelation is coupledwith the conceptualpair of form-matter.
Heideggeris keento tracedown the origin of the conceptualframework of form and 26 matter doesit emergefrom the thingly characterof the thing or in the workly characterof the artwork?
We areaware of the form of a block of granite.It is a materialin a definiteif unshapelyform, chiseled out from the mountainsideby man, woman, machineor dynamite before it is altered or worked to servea definite function. We are aware also of the formstaken by a cup,boots, or an umbrella.The form determinesthe distribution of the matter in thesecases and is determinedagain by the function which theseobjects have been createdto serve.Usefulness is a key factor in considering theseobjects and, in fact, groundstheir matterand form. However,a beingthat is useful is nearly always the product of a processof making destinedfor a particular end.So then, as determinations of beings,matter and form assumetheir properplace underthe rubric of equipment.So, matter and form do not relatein anyessential way to the thingnessof the merething.
Heideggeradmits that the pieceof equipment,like the pair of shoes,does have a self-containedcharacter like the merestof objects.However, it doesnot havethe characterof possessingthis innately,of havingtaken shape of its own accord,like the graniteboulder lying at the foot of the mountainside.The shoesthough, like the .7-- artworkthat preoccupiesHeidegger, are madeobjects, the productof humanactivity.
Yet, by its self-sufficientpresencing the work of art is somewhatcloser to the mere thing that hasgiven birth to its own forni andis self-contained.And yet we still say that the work of art is separatefrom thesemere things. Is it becauseof the middle groundthat equipmentoccupies between the merething andthe artwork,a fact we determineby meansof the matter-formformulation, that temptsus into takingthis 27 fonnulationas the pathwayinto our discussionof the uniqueproperties of the work of art, asopposed to the merething? The biblical traditiongives a furtherimpetus to this tendencyby its supportfor the view that Godhas made everything, and in somesense form hasbeen pre-ordained within matter.We aretempted to seeGod as the primary and original, originary craftsman.According to Heideggerthis view borrowed from
Scholasticphilosophy still remains in operation in Kantian transcendentalismand can hinderour approachto the thing-beingof the thing. Thesethree views that approach the thing as a bearerof traits, a unity of manifold sensationsand as formed matter actually concealthe thingliness of the thing and do not allow us to approachit in its nakedstate, in its thing-beingand its own self The mostsalient lesson that is to be gatheredfrom the aboveeffort, the examinationof misleadingmodes of thoughtand the failure to describeor approachthe thinglinessof things,is that obviouslythis is a moredifficult taskthan we might haveimagined. As Heideggerwrites: 'The unpretentiousthing evadesthought most stubbornly"'. We havemade mistakes, and
Heideggerdecides to take up the mostmisleading and widely evidenterror, the issue of matterand form andequipmental being in the searchfor why this misadventurehas becomeso prominent, for this might lie quite close to the true nature of things.,
Heideggerpresents us thenwith the infamousexample of the peasant'ssboes, a pieceof equipmentthat recommendsitself for our considerationon the groundsof simplicity andcommonness. 16Heidegger speaks of Van Gogh'sseveral paintings of peasant'sshoes. He proceedsto arguethat the equipmentalnature of thingsis best locatedwhen we observethem being used. The bestplace to observethe peasant
15 Basic Writings: 1999,P. 157 16A latter day examplemight be Nike runners,but they are somewhatmore expensiveand fashionable, symbolsof status,than anythingHeidegger had in mind. Dependingon how they are to be used,for dancingor for working in, or for just hangingout and looking good in, form.will alter the matter. 28 woman'sshoes, doing that for which theyreceived their form, is to seethem working in the field wherethey disappear into their functionand are hardly considered in themselvesat all. It is only whensuch objects fail in their properfunction that we give themany deliberation at all. Van Gogh'spainting offers us no cluesthat tell us exactly what job theseshoes do.
Heideggerproceeds from the entranceinto the shoesfor one'sfoot to a meditation on the toilsome labours and conditions of the peasantwoman. Heidegger, andthis is a key point, readsinto the shoesevidence of their earthlycharacter and thusaccesses the world of the peasantwoman, as he imaginesit, a world within which the shoesare protectedand where they most truly rest within themselves.Heidegger drawsattention, after the fact, to his own lyricism, suggestingthat it is only within the world of the picturethat we canread such imaginings unfettered and free. The peasant woman,in herself,only wearsthe shoes.Once her shoesare reliable, once they still function,they will not be a sourcefor reflectionor contemplationto her.This reliability is her stability andguarantees her relationto the earthand her world that grows from that or is securein that, is groundedby it. World and earth come together in the equipmentand guarantee her modeof being.
However,as Heidegger notes without a noteof sentimentality,usefulness wearsout. Shoesdeteriorate, become unreliable and are used up andthrown away.
The shoerecedes into the backgroundas mere stuff. And this dwindlingaway highlightsthe essentialcharacter, the original essenceof equipmentalbeing. The form imposedon this matter,we havethe impression,is just a merefabrication that eventuallybreaks down andfades away. Yet Heideggerpersists that in its genuinely 29 equipmentalbeing, eqwpment stems from a distantsource. The distinctionof matter andform arisesfrom a deeperorigin.
Thereliability of which we havespoken speaks nothing of the thingly characterof things, as well as failing to move us any closer to apprehendingthe workly characterof the work, particularly the work of art. Heideggersays that our processesof inqwry hithertohave not beenwasted for we realizethat it wasVan
Gogh's painting of the peasant'sshoes that permitted us to seethem. They did not jump up and do a jig of their own accord to draw our attention to them, nor did they sing a song or call out to us and thereby allow us to seeor hear them, and thus contemplatethem in themselves.As Heideggerwrites of Van Gogh's painting: 'In the 17 nearnessof the work we weresuddenly somewhere else than we usuallytend to
It is the work of art he arguesthat allowsus to know whatthe shoesare in truth.
Heideggerstates that it is not his readinginto the work that allowsthe shoesto emergein all their thingliness;instead it is true to saythat 'the equipmentalityof equipmentfirst expresslycomes to the fore throughthe work andonly in the work"g.
How doesHeidegger describe this process?What happens there? He argues that Van Gogh'spainting offers a disclosureof the truth of the pair of shoes.In the work of art, hereVan Gogh'spainting of the peasant'sshoes, the beingof the shoes emergesinto the unconcealmentof its Being.The ancientGreeks called such unconcealmentof beingsaletheia. Heidegger speaks of it asa disclosureof a particularbeing, disclosing what andhow it is. If thereis suchan occurrencewithin a work thena happeningof truth occurs.And it appearsalso that it is a work of art.
17 Basic Writings: 1999,p. 161 18P. 161 30
Heideggerwrites: 'in the work of art the truth of beingshas set itself to work.
'To set' meanshere 'to bring to stand'.Some particular being, a pair of peasantshoes, comesin the work to standin the light of its Being.The Being of beingscomes into the steadinessof its shining"'. And so the essenceof art, for Heidegger,is the instancewhen the truth of beingssets itself to work. This hasthe air of a new departureabout it, Heideggernotes, in that traditionally aestheticsconcerned itself with beauty,while logic concerneditself with truth. Howeverhe is keento distance himself from any facile mimetic theory. Traditionally agreementwith what is has been seento be the essenceof truth. Heideggeris after a more elusive idea. He says the work of art doesnot seeka purely external resemblanceto things but wishesto capturethings in termsof their generalessence. What is the truth of a temple?What arewe the viewersand critics to checkthe artist's representationagainst? If we considerHolderlin's poem The Rhine, what is pre-givento the poet,and how, so that the poetmay re-give it againin the poem?Can truth appearin a work that hasbeen createdin a historicalinstance, when we havetraditionally conceived of truth as somethingatemporal and outside history?
A PoeticInterlude., The Poem asks its Question
ThePeninsula
Whenyou havenothing more to say,just drive
For a day all roundthe peninsula.
The sky is tall asover a runway,
The land without marksso you will not arrive
I' Bmic Milings: 1999,p. 162 31
But passthrough, though always skirting landfall,
At dusk,horizons drink downsea and hill,
The ploughedfield swallowsthe whitewashedgable
And you're in the dark again.Now recall
The glazed foreshoreand silhouettedlog,
That rock wherebreakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselvesout into the fog
And drive backhome, still with nothingto say
Exceptthat now you will uncodeall landscapes
By this: thingsfounded clean on their own shapes,
20 Waterand ground in their extreMity.
SeamusHeaney
SeamusHeaney provides us in this poem 'The Peninsula' with an illustration of the problemposed by Martin Heidegger.How doesan abstractpoetic form, the four quatrainsof this poem,come to containsomething as tangible as a peninsula?
Whathappens here and how canwe speakof it in intelligible, conceptualterms?
In this poemSeamus Heaney stresses the oppositionof speechand writing.
The poemis a meditationupon the necessaryspace of the artworkand recounts a journey into the dark night of silencewhere the poetis blind to the remarkable 32 present.Writing is seenhere to be a naturalcomplement to the facultyof speechand not asan unnecessaryappendage or asspeech's repressed Other. Initially the landscapeis presentedas a text that hasbeen erased of all traceof speechand writing.
This kenosishas the statusof a necessarybeginning. A new spaceis therebycreated wherebya new annunciationoccurs in the influx of freshimages and new words.
Reality undergoesa necessarydisplacement prior to being re-called, re-membered,re- constitutedin the poemby the artistic mind or imagination.
The islands and the birds of the poem become emblemsof the poet who is doubledback on himself He offersthe readera meditationon the writer's imaginationby meansof the writer's imagination.(What else could he use?). After the eventof the poemthings may be graspedin whatAquinas and Joyce would identify astheir quidditas,their unique'thingness,, defined radiantly and clearly.
While thingshad previously been unfocused and lacking in clarity, now theypresent themselvesin sucha mannerthat the landscapehas been uncoded and can be translatedinto writing.
Heaney's use of the self-reflexive image provides imagesof the self-conscious poet.They dramatize the paradoxof creation,a creationthat is partly controlledand partly uncontrollable.The poemaims for a poeticre-creation, a re-birthand renewal.
It is deeplyrooted in the materialworld andthe materialityof languageitself. Heaney travelsthrough linguistic indifferences,that of the unmarkedlandscape and his own silence,hoping to uncodedistinct shapesthrough his own artistic means.
20 SeamusHeaney: Opened Ground. - Poems 1966 - 1996: Faber:London: p. 21 33
Helen Vendler notes another quality of this poem. Shewrites of 'peninsular remoteness,where water and ground meet in their outennostreach, without distraction'21She how Heaney . observes essentiallyre-writes this poemmany years after,with 'Postscript',the final poemof his collectionThe Spirit Level (Faber:
London:1996). She writes: 'Heaneyhere gratefully pays homage to the sheerpower of perceptionitself - how much it seesin a glimpse, in a glance- how many objects andshades it absorbsat once,how breathtakingthe conjunctionof world andsenses
be,breaking the door the heart'22It is that herethe can open shut of . worth observing self is 'a hurry through which... things pass', nothing more. The self itself is unfoundedand thus can hardly hope to 'found things' in the way his younger self
do. possiblyhoped to
The Workand the Nature of its Truth
'The origin of the artwork is art' writesHeidegger". This seemson the surface at leastto be a paradox,or an oxymoronof thought.Is Heideggerjustbeing perverse?
Not really, insofaras Heidegger wants to arguefor the thesisthat the work of art possessesa self-subsistence unique to its being:'Nothing canbe discoveredabout the thingly aspectof the work so long asthe pureself-subsistence of the work hasnot 24. distinctlydisplayed itself
Heideggerrealizes that thereis thena problemabout our accessto the artwork.
Canwe everaccess it in its true self if it is caughtup in its own uniqueself-subsisting world?The logic of his positionwould pushhim to the conclusionthat to approach
21 Helen Vendler: SeamusHeaney: Harper Collins: London: 1998, p. 25 22Vendler: 1998,p. 25 23BaSiC WjitingS: 1999,P. 165 34
thework of art we would haveto createthe unlikely, unsustainableand artificial
situationwhere it relatedto absolutelynothing other than itself, standingpurely on its
own for itself alone.The artist attemptsto pushthe artworkin this direction.In truly
thereis no relationshipstill pertainingbetween the artist who createdthe greatV-- art work andthe work itself, the work exists,subsists and consists of andin splendid
isolation. The artist is similar to an opening in the fabric of reality that allows the
artwork to emergeby passingthrough her or him and then they must erasethemselves
at the endof the processof becoming.This shouldoccur once the work of art has
fully emergedand is capableof standing on its own.
Heideggernotes the difficulty of approachingthe artworkon its own,in the
world of its own self-subsistence.In the gallerythe paintingis surroundedby other
artworks.In the gallerythe artworkis surroundedand grounded by certainagendas,
presumptionsand premises. If we attemptto approachthe Van Goghpainting today,
the signaturein the comeris ladenwith manyconnotations that exist asa pre- judgementand which presumean approachto the world containedwithin the painting.
The Cathedralin the town or city squareis a focusfor the tourist.The world of the
work hasdecayed and they are ruins of themselves,given over to a realmof tradition
anddecay. The instanceof their self-subsistencehas fled. A key distinctionemerges
for Heideggerhere. Those who work in the world of art conservationand preservation
only dealwith the object-beingof the worksand do not approachthe world of the
work-beingof the work. As RobertBernasconi writes: 'Even if a work remainsin its
original location,as usually happens with architecturalworks, once the world of the
work hasperished, nothing can be doneto restoreit. As a resultof the withdrawaland
24 P. 165 35 decay its the longer 1.25And 'no textual of world, worksare no works . again: amountof emendation,no extensivecritical apparatus,can restore Sophocles' text to its own
let it be We the world andso a work oncemore'26 . might well experienceand enjoy splendourof the Vatican,the Cathedralat Cologneand the Castleperched atop the
RoyalMile in Edinburgh;these may well attestto the previousartistic aspirations, wealth, pomp and power of their respectiveby-gone eras,and are expressionsof such, but noneof thembecause of the very demiseof their time areworks in the sensethat
Heideggeris attempting to elucidate.
Heideggeris urged on by a key question:can we really conceive of a work of art that existsoutside of all relationsat all? Is it not of the essenceof the work of art that it existin relationship?Heidegger will sayof courseit does,but we must determinewhat the natureof that relationshipis. Heideggerplays a trumpcard with the assertion:'the work belongs,as work, uniquelywithin the realmthat is openedup by itself For the work-beingof the work occursessentially and only in suchopening
Upt27.
We havean interestingexample of this processat work in JohnMontague's poem'Windharp'28. It providesus with a synthesisof 'natural' andhistorical elementsthat areculturally specific.The wind is the movementof becomingof nature,against the harp,a man-madesymbol of Irelandand its nationalculture. What
25Robert Bernasconi:'The Greatnessof the Work of Art', from Heidegger Toward the Turn: (ed.) JamesRiser: SUNY Press:New York: 1999,p. 103 26Bernasconi: 1999, p. 103 27BaSiC WlitingS: 1999,p. 167 28John Montague: Seleded Poena: Penguin:London: p. 108. John Montague is the major Northern Irish poet of the generationpreceding Seamus Heaney. Born in 1929 he is stiUwriting. 36 is producedare 'the soundsof Ireland'. The soundemerges from 'low bushesand grass','heatherbells and fern' and 'wrinkling bog pools'.Light andsound come togetherto producea vision of a handcombing and stroking the landscapeuntil
the valley gleams
like the pile upon
a mountain pony's coat.
We witnessMontague createa spacethat is utterly a pure creation and exists only in the world of art.
Heideggerwrites that it is necessaryfor usto approachthe truth questionin
relationto the work of art, onceagain. He selectsa work of art that doesnot come
from the realmof representationalart. This is why he optsfor the exampleof the
GreekTemple. The Templeexists in a valley andhouses the god.The presenceof the
god is an extensionand delimitation of the precinctas a holYplace. However, this templeand the precinctit constructsand contains does not fadeaway into the
indefinite,and here we reacha centralcore in Heidegger'sessay. He writes:'it is the temple-workthat first fits togetherand at the sametime gathersaround itself the unity
of thosepaths and relations in which birth and death,disaster and blessing, victory
anddisgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shapeof destinyfor humanbeing.
The all-governingexpanse of this openrelational context is the world of this historical
people.Only from and in this expansedoes the nationfirst returnto itself for the
fulfillment of its vocation'29.We recall here the involvement of Heidegger with Nazi
29Basic Writings: 1999,P. 167 37 socialismin the nineteen-thirtiesand are attentive to the political overtonesof his statementshere. In earlierdrafts, Robert Bernasconi notes, in the Holzwegeedition especially,Heidegger hints that great art not only is an origin but also destroys.It destroysthe public in orderto form a people.As RobertBernasconi writes: 'in
Germanyin 1930s havebeen 00 We the nothingcould morepolitically charged . note, in the passagequoted from Heidegger above,a residue of such sentiment.
The Templeis seton solid groundfrom which it drawssupport and stands firm againstthe storm raging above it. It is the presenceof the temple that makes manifest the capacity of the ground itself to lend support and to illustrate the violent natureof the ragingstorm. The gleamingof the light is illustratedby the temple,the natureof the surgingsea, the tree,its fruit andflower aredefined, enter into their
distinctiveshapes, and come into what they are,by the presenceof the Temple.The
Greeks,Heidegger writes, called this processof emergenceand becoming, of things
comingto residein their true essence,physis. All of this happensby andin the
presenceof the temple,on that which andin which manbases his dwelling,the earth.
Heideggerdoes not havea materialsubstance in mind here,the geologist'spre-
occupation with a physical presence,but rather a more abstract,maybe metaphysical
idea,of the earthas that which is broughtback by the temple'sarising and which
shelterseverytMng that arisesas such. In all raisedthings the earthoccurs essentially
asthe shelteringagent.
30Bemasconi: 1999,p. 106 38
Marc Froment-Meuriceillustrates a key issuehere about Heidegger's formulation.He writes:'the temple,as its Greekname indicates, is the cut, the enclosurethat is sacredbecause it is withdrawnfrom the profane.At the sametime, the paradoxof this delimitationis that it exposesnothing but purefagade, a purein front of, before.The behind,the inside,remains empty. There is nothingbut the purelyphenomenal, nothing that would remainbehind and of which it would be but
, 31 the appearanceor representation .
The Temple first gives to things their look and to humanity our outlook on ourselves.This view is always open once the work is a work and the god has not fled.
The statueof the godis not thereto makeit easierto visualizethe godbut ratherto makethe godpresent, and is the godin that sense.It is the samein the theatre.Here the battleof old andnew godsis continuallybeing waged, but they arealways there, really, fighting a duel to the bitter end.The theatricalor poeticwork transformsthe speechof the people.In that transfonnationevery living word is drawninto the battle andis involvedin decidingwhat is in or out asholy andunholy, what is nobleand what is lowly, what is dignified andwhat is cowardly,and finally who is the master andwho is the slave.
Again JohnMontague's poem 'Like DolmensRound My Childhood,The Old
People' example this For, it is providesus with an of processat Work32. only against art andits hint of pennanencethat our transientlives receiveany definition. Montague
31Marc Froment-Meurice:7lat Is To Say.- Heidegger's Poetics: (Trans.) Jan Plug: StanfordUniv. Press:Cafifornia: 1998,p. 158 3'Montague: 200 1, p. 10 -II 39 definesthe spaceswithin which his old peoplelived. JamieMacCrystal lived in an old cottage,Maggie Owens surrounded by 'a mongrelbitch andshivering pups', the
Nialls alonga mountainlane, and Mary Moore in 'a crumblinggatehouse'. Within the
Templeof Montague'sart their lives are finally defined,receive their ultimate meaning,suggested by the ritual lost andassociated with the Dolmen,burial mounds of a forgotten people.
For yearsthey trespassedon my dreams,
Until once, in a standing circle of stones,
I felt their shadowspass
Into that dark permanenceof ancientforms.
Whathappens when the work of art is 'set up'? For Heidegger,at this point, it is difficult to separatethe work of art from what is holy, for to dedicatemeans to consecmte.When one sets up the work thenthe holy is openedas holy andthe god is invokedinto the opennessof his presence.The godbrings forth throughhimself what is dignified andwhat is fabulous,and what Heidegger calls 'the world' is reflected from this splendour.So the world emergesfrom the radiance of the god and achieves clarity. Heideggerargues that the work opensitself up andthe world with it, andas suchis an essentialform that givesguidance. Is the work alwaysassociated with consecrationand praise? A key questionHeidegger answers by sayingit is of the essenceof the work-beingof the work to be such.In its work-beingit is orientated, directedtowards this openingup, openinga world andkeeping it abidinglyin force. 40
Heideggerwrites that the reasonfor beingof the work is to world worlds.It is to standin directrelation to being.-The world of which he writesis not an objectin the world like a screwdriver,car or bed.It doesnot standbefore us for contemplationand viewing.We aresubject to this non-objectiveworld as long aswe arehuman beings travellingalong the pathsopened up by birth anddeath, blessing and curse, as long as thesepaths transport us into Being. The work of art emergesfrom a spacewhere essentialdecisions of our humanbeing are made, where we takeup thesequestions, abandonthem, where they go unrecognizedfor a while andneed to be takenup again, and it is from and within this spacethat the world worlds. The opening of the world definesour relationshipto stones;for they are in our broaderworld, fall underour perspective.The openingof the world definesall thingsand their relationshipto us.It is herethat the remotenessor nearnessof thingsto us is defined,as well astheir scope andlimits, andwhether these objects are lingering in our world or hasteningout of it.
The spaceis openedby which the godmay graceour existenceby the world of the work, andeven in the doomof the godremaining absent can be foundan inverseway of the work worlding worlds.
The work, asa work, makesthe spacefor this spaciousness.The work liberatesthe free spaceof the openregion and establishes it in its structure.As
Heideggerwrites, 'the work aswork setsup a world. The work holdsopen the open
s33Is this SeamusHeaney has in his 'The regionof the world . what achieved poem Peninsula'?
33 13aSiC Wtifings: 1999,p. 41
Heideggernotes how a setting-up and a setting-forth of the work are necessary.A pieceof equipmentaims to be usefuland serviceable, and so the stone usedin a hammeris usedand used up. The stonedisappears into its usefulness.
However,in Heidegger'sconception of thingsthe Templeis quite different.When the
Templesets up a world it doesnot causeit to disappear,but rathercauses it to come forth for the first time and causesthe material to come up, forth and into the open regionof the work's world. This comesforth asthe work restsin uponthe material from which it emerges.The earthis that on which the work rests,which comesforth in the work and which sheltersit. When the work setsup a world, it succeedsin setting forth the earth. Heideggerwrites: 'this setting forth must be thought here in the strict senseof the word. The work movesthe earthitself into the openregion of a 34 world andkeeps it there.The work lets the earth be an earthv.
Heideggernotes the essentiallymysterious nature of the earth.We canweigh the earth,measure it, analyzeit, but it remainsother to us in its manifestdifference.
The earthonly really opensto us whenwe recognizethat it is essentially undisclosable.He meditateson the dividing line that separatesall thingsalso. How do we understandthis figure of the 'earth' in Heidegger's essay?Earth is a pseudonym for the 'without name'.It correspondsneither to the materialnor the sensible,nor eventhe elementary,and resists all appropriationby meaning.Earth wants to sayor meansthe unsayable.It is the unsayablethat will nonethelessbe saidthrough the work. As Marc Froment- Meuricewrites: 'the unsayable,as Heidegger puts it clearly,is - Nothing,or is the Origin itself asthe leap into what comesbefore everAing, includingevery work. What foundsthe work "of' the origin andmakes it
3413aSie WrijingS: 1999, P. 172 42
is leapinto before 35Heidegger here the original this what comes everything, . prepares way for otherthinkers after him, primarily JacquesDerrida, when he speaksof 'the bordering that 'delimits in its Tlere is stream' everythingpresent presencing'36. an essentialdifference of non-understanding,separation, alienation, otherness highlightedhere. So the separationand self-seclusion of the earthis highlighted through the work of art. Have we arrived at a core limit for thought?In fact, is the limit itself the properplace for thought?Is it that from which it beginsto think, what givesthought its identity andthe thoughtof identity,and first of all, of the identity of
Being and thought?We witness a central conflict at the heart of Being, a conflict similar to the onereigning in art betweenearth and world.
For Heideggerthe earthis not uniform, a givenof limited form andcapacity.
'Heargues that the earthunfolds itself in an infinite mannerand by inexhaustible means.The sculptor,unlike the mason,does not usestone up, nor the painter, pigments,but ratherboth allow the material'to shineforth'. The samemay alsobe saidfor the poet. Sheor he doesnot usewords up but allowsthe word to becomeand remainonly andtruly a word. Heideggerargues that the world is the 'self-opening opennessof the broadpaths of the simpleand essential decisions in the destinyof a He thenthat 'is forthcoming historicalpeople'37 . writes the earth the spontaneous of that which is continuallyself-secluding and to that extentsheltering and concealing"38
An essentialdifference is articulatedalthough he goesto a bit of troubleto highlight their inter-relatedness.The world is alwaysand can only be groundedon the earthand the earthalways emerges in the world,juts throughit. They do not float awayinto
35Froment-Meurice: 1998, p. 154 36Basic WlilingS: 1999, p. 172 37Basic Writings: 1999, P. 174 38P. 174 43 their separatespheres unconcerned with oneanother, for the world, althoughresting on the earth,strives to dominateit. As an openingit cannotbear what is closed.The earthas something sheltered and unconcealed cannot bear what is not andalways tendstowards the world, drawingit into itself andstriving to keepit there.We arein therealm of a classictension or dependentpolarity.
Thereare key questionswe canask of Heideggerhere. Marc Froment-Meurice asksthe mostpressing one: 'What Heideggerdoes not determineis the ontological statusof this statuethat "is" the god himself We cannot understandthis as a pure and simpleidentification. The god is not stone,and yet he "is" the statuein the senseof an analogywith Beingitself. Justas the god manifestshimself, makes a remarkable modalityof presence(visibility, eidos)that hasentered into presence,so too the statue bringsthe truth of appearinginto presence.In its brilliance,what appearseffaces all differencebetween the presentand presence, what appearsand appearing. The work asbringing into the openof presence"is" presence,difference that hasbeen effaced becausereturned into the work. But the effacementof differencetakes place in the nameof an analogywith Being,a metaphoricity,a transferabout which Heidegger doesnot speak.The work has the divine quality of bringing the god into presence,
39 becausepresence itself is quasi-divine, or better, becauseAletheia is a goddesss'
Aletheia procuresvisibility, being the sourceof all and every image, but is not itself an image.Therein lies the whole aporia.
FrangoiseDastur writes: 'if the metaphysicalessence of art consistsin the conceptionof art as(re) presentationof somethingsuprasensible in a sensiblematter
39Marc Froment-Meurice:1998, p. 157 - 158 44 submittedto a form (FV 45), it means,following the etymology of the Dar-stellen, that,accordingly to the metaphysicalconception of art, art "places"(stellen) somethingthere (dar), andas such is a presentationor an exhibition-I just wantto recallhere that Kant translatesthe Latin =hibitio by Darstellung.In contrastto this,
Heideggerproposes to think of art asa positio, a thesis,in the senseof an institution
(stiflung) of the 'Ibere. Heidegger's definition of art is das Ins-Werke-setzender
Wahrheit,the seffing-into-work-oftruth, andwe shouldnot forgetthat the verbsetzen is strongerthan the verbstellen (which cannotbe markedin the Englishtranslation).
The emphasison the institutional and positional value of art brings forth a total reversalof what seemsto be the "normal situation"of first natureand then art which finds in natureits location.It is the work of art that primarily givesto naturalbeings their visibility, so now naturecomes after art. This is not only the casewith architecture,but alsowith sculptureand poetry. The statueof the god is not a picture madeafter him, but is the godhimself, that is to say,his cominginto presenceand not the reproductionof an absentor remotebeing. Tragedy is not the telling of a storyand doesnot speakabout the battleof the gods,but in it the battle is beingfought. The work of art initiatespresence rather than being a (re)presentationor exhibitionof somethingabsent'40 .
At this point Heideggerreaches out for oneof his typical tems: strife. This is his term for the oppositionthat existsbetween world and earth.For Heideggerthis term doesnot bearnegative charges of discord,disharmony, and destruction. In a classicinstance of strife what happensis that: 'the Opponentsraise each other into the
40Francoise Dastur: 'Heidegger's Freiburg Version of the Originof theWork of Art': in Heidegger Turn ) Risser:SUNY Towardthe (ed. James Press:New York: 1999,p. 126- 127 45
their What is hereis self-assertionof essentialnatures"I . asserted not somecontingent externalfactor that is defendedor foughtfor in a fetishizedway, but rather,a surrenderor recognitionof the fconcealedoriginality of the provenanceof one'sown
42 Being' In the instance beyonditself There . of strife eachopponent carries the other is a continualcycle of opening,grounding, sustaining and defining that Heidegger conceivesof asexisting between the earthand the world. The centralrole of the work of art is to bring the world into beingand into relationto the earthand to instigatethe moment of strife betweenthem. FrancoiseDastur writes: 'it is now possibleto conceivethat the essenceof truth understoodin this manner can only result from a
43 And 'the happen the confliCt, . again: work of art as such can only on the ground of primal conflict which is not to be identified with the essenceof art alone'44.
Heideggerbegins to approachhis notion of the truth by an argumentbased on the ideaof being.In the pastwe havespoken of the essentialessence of thingsas their truth. We canonly be in truth whenwe arewhat we are in truth, that is, whenan entity is itself in truth, is true to itself, to what it is. So the truth of an entity is determinedby way of its true Being.However he shifts the angleof the questionby askingwhat is the essenceof truth, ratherthan the truth of essence?With incredible confidenceHeidegger asserts that the essenceof truth lies in the ideaof aletheia,in the unconcealmentof beings.He arguesthat Greekthought has been sent in the wrong directionin its pursuitof what is the truth: 'unconcealmentis, for thought,the most concealedthing in Greekexistence, although from earlytimes it determinesthe
41Bmic Wtitings: 1999, p. 174 42p. 174 43Dastur: 1999,p. 133 44Dastur: 1999,p. 133 46 presencingof everythingpresent'45 .
We havefor a long time Presumedthat the essenceof truth lies in its conformitywith matter.If mattercannot reveal itself thenhow arewe to know whetherour languageor logic hasproperly approached it? Matter canonly showitself if it can step out of the closet of its own concealment.From Descarteson we have understoodtruth to mean,or understandthe definition of truth to lie in, an ideaof correctness.As Heideggernotes: 'the essenceof truth which is familiar to us - correctnessin representation- standsand falls with truth as unconcealmentof
46 beings' .
Heideggernotes how it is no surprisethat we havemade some obvious errors in our approachto the truth. For too long havewe restedeasily and lazily on - unquestionedpresuppositions. With typical Heideggerianlogic he assertsthat there mustbe an obviousand simple reason why this is so.We areclose to the truth but yet standsome distance from it also.Again, Heidegger: 'it is not we who presupposethe unconcealmentof beings;rather, the unconcealmentof beings(Being) puts us into sucha conditionof beingthat in our representationwe alwaysremain installed within in This and attendanceupon concealment'47 . conformingto somethingmust already occurin the unconcealed:'with all our correctrepresentations we would get nowhere, we could not evenpresuppose that therealready is manifestsomething to which we canconform ourselves, unless the unconcealmentof beingshad already exposed us to,
45BaSiC Writings: 1999,p. 176 46P. 177 47BoiC Writings:1999, p. 177 47 placedus in that clearedrealm in which everybeing stands for us andfrom which it
WithdMWSv48.
A key questionremains as to how all this happens.How do we approachthis truth that occursas a type of unconcealment?Heidegger steps forward with a statementof his credo: what he believes things to be. This is a significant passagein the essay.He notesin a ratherobvious way that thereare many different realities that exist, many objects,persons, things possessbeing in one shapeor another.Our universeconsists of human beings, gifts and sacrifices, animals and plants, equipment and works. The particular always standsin the larger framework of things, the concretebeing stands within the largerBeing. We havethe mystic-likesentence:
'ThroughBeing there passes a veiled fatality that is ordainedbetween the godlyand 49. the countergodly The inadequacyof our intellect andsenses is all too apparent.
Thereis muchin reality that we seedimly andcan only inadequatelygrasp. We are not the origin point of our own being,this is unquestionableand inalterable:
,And yet - beyondbeings, not awayfrom thembut beforethem, there is still somethingelse that happens.In the midst of beingsas a whole an openplace occurs.
There is a clearing. Thought of in referenceto beings, this clearing is more in being thanare beings. This opencentre is thereforenot surroundedby beings;rather, the clearingcentre itself encirclesall that is, asdoes the nothing,which we scarcely know'50.
FrangoiseDastur writes: 'settingup as an essentialfeature of the work of art is differentfrom the bareplacing of art worksin a museumor exhibition.It hasthe -
48p. 177 49p. 178 48 senseof dedicationand praise so that in settingup the work the holy is openedup as holy.And the openingof the dimensionof holinessis at the sametime the settingup of a world. The work of art is thereforenot setup (aqýg'estellt),but it is essentiallyin itself a settingup (Das Werkist in sich seinemWesen nach aufstellend) in the sense
51 it (FV 28), that opensa world .
Heideggernotes that beingscan only be asbeings, if they simultaneously standwithin andstand without what is clearedin this clearing.We haveto shareit and we have to be deprived of it in order to know what it is. We have to be shadowedby what it is not in order to know what it is; we assumeto read Heideggerin this way. As we will seelater in this thesisBeing can only be knownthrough the possibilityof its non-being;this is how MauriceBlanchot reads Heidegger in his work TheSpace of
Literature. As Heideggerwrites: 'Only this clearing grants and guaranteesto us humansa passageto thosebeings that we ourselvesare not, andaccess to the being
It is this beings be that we ourselvesare'52 . clearingthat allows to unconcealedto varyingdegrees. We canonly speakof the unconcealedin the contextof this clearing within being.In the momentof encounterwith anotherbeing we are involvedin an instanceof clearingthat is alsoa concealment.It is a strangecounter-dynamic that is continuouslymoving.
As Marc Froment-Meuricewrites: 'How could a temple(or a painting)speak if speechis refusedto stone?If the templespeaks, it is not for havinga mouth(even an oracularone) and a tongue.Besides, that is not what speakingis: the voice of
Being is voiceless.If the templespeaks, it is in the samesense that languagespeaks. It
51Basic Wtilings: 1999,p. 178 31Dastur: 1999:p. 127 49 says,shows, or ratherlets itself be (re)said.To speakis to show,and if the temple shows,it is becauseit is this showingwithout intennediariessuch as words. It shows beforeall speech,in the Openof this essentiallyvoiceless milieu that is the disclosure of Being,before language as a meansof expressionand communication of a sense
53 (through We the distinctiveness Heidegger's Temple words)' . note of choiceof a as an illustration of his argument.
We arenot just talking aboutthe limits of knowledge,about running into the furthest frontier of what can be known. We are encounteringthe edgeof what is cleared.Beings block other beings, simulate other beings, in this space,and beings appearsometimes to be otherthan what they are.Errors occur therefore. We canbe deceived.This suggeststhat the openclearance is not a permanentopening with rigidly definededges or frontiers.It is not a given,a stateor stagethat is an existent but ratherexists as a happening.Heidegger's thought is ratherfluid andpoetic at this point, non-dogmaticand non-systematic. The implicationthereby is that unconcealmentor the momentof truth is not an attributeof matteror oneof proposi ions.
Thingsare always shadowed by their opposite.What seemsordinary is in fact extraordinary.The essenceof truth, understoodby Heideggeras articulated in what haspreceded, as unconcealment, is dominatedby the ideaof a denial.He doesnot see this denialas somethingdefective in our approachto the essenceof the truth, for 'this denial, in theform ofa doubleconcealment, belongs to the essenceoftruth as
52 Bgasic Wtilings: 1999,p. 178 53Marc Froment-Meurice:1998, p. 153 so unconcealment'".(Italics areHeidegger's). There is alwaysan elementof un-truthto truth.As he writes:'the proposition"the essenceof truth is un-truth"is not, however, intendedto statethat truth is at bottomfalsehood. Nor doesit meanthat truth is never itself but, vieweddialectically, is also its opposite55
When Heideggertalks about concealing denial he wishes to indicate, or preserve,hint at, denotethe fact that oppositionin the essenceof truth subsists betweenclearing and concealing.We are dealing with the opposition of the original strife spokenof earlier. Truth and its essencein itself is the primal strife in which that opencentre is won within which beingsstand and from which they setthemselves backinto themselves.This openregion always and only occurswithin the midst of beings.To the openregion there belongs a world andthe earth.However, we arenot to makesome easy connection between the world asthe openregion that corresponds to the clearingand then the earthas its opposite,the closedregion that correspondsto concealment.Rather, he writes, 'the world is the clearingof the pathsof the essential
directionswith which all decisioncomplies'm. Every decision inescapably guiding4W-- restson somethingnot fully comprehended,on what hasnot beenfully mastered,on somethingthat is concealedand confusing. The earthis not intrinsicallyand inescapablyclosed but risesup asthat which is self-closing.And so the belligerence of earthand world emergesand is inescapable.They exist in conflict and 'only as 7 do they into the strife of clearing such enter and concealing'5 .
54Basic WlitingS: 1999, p. 179 55Basic Writings: 1999, p. 180 56Basic WlitingS: 1999, p. 180 57Basic WifingS: 1999, p. 180 51
As soonas one sets up the work of art, a world andearth are setforth andthe work existsas the instigationof the strife in which the unconcealmentof beingsas a whole,or truth, is won. Truth is the instanceof unconcealment.When the Temple standswhere it is a momentof truth happens.Heidegger is not concernedabout an adequateor correctrepresentation. Rather beings are brought into unconcealment through this processand are thereby held therein. We witness an instanceof truth in
Van Gogh'spainting of the peasantshoes. That is not to saythat he hasportrayed the shoescorrectly. Rather the equipmentalnature of their beingis highlighted.The beings of things as a whole are thereby highlighted and the world and earth in their counter-playare illustrated and exist in a momentof unconcealment.When the shoes existsin closerelation to their essencethen this is valuablefor the overalltruth of beingsat large.And thereforewe touchon the beautifulbecause: 'beauty is oneway in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealment58.(Italics are Heidegger's).
Heideggerfeels he hasnot approachedthe thingly characterof the work adequately.We haveignored the issuethat the work is exactlythat, a work, andis therebysomething that hasbeen created. As a createdobject it sharesin the medium out of which andin which it hasbeen created; as suchthen the thingly elementhas enteredinto the work. Is therea differencein beingmade and created, from creation andmaking? Can we approachthe innermostessence of the work andthereby gauge the degreeto which creatednessbelongs to the work andaffects its work-being?Does it lie within the essenceof truth to movetowards the work of art, to exist within that work?What is truth that it canonly exist if it is setto work within the work?What is truth that it canhappen as art andwhy arethere art objectsat all?
58Basic Writings: 1999,P. IS I 52
In this sectionwe haveseen Heidegger struggle with the conceptof art as origin on the onehand, and on the otheran art asmere supplement on the other.Art as supplementis art asa routinecultural phenomenon.As RobertBernasconi writes:
'what hasto be decided,according to Heidegger,is whetherart is to remain somethingsecondary, as happens when it is conceivedin termsof expressionand elucidatedfurther in termsof suchconcepts as embellishment, entertainment, recreationand edification, or whether art is to be an instigator of our history'59.And our historyhere has overt connections to the directionof the Gennanpeoples under
Nazi socialism. It is impossible to avoid this conclusion. When Heideggerpursues the questionof whether or not we are in the vicinity of art as origin, the 'we' that he has in mind is the Germanpeople. He is keento clarify whetherthe Germanpeople are a public or a people.Are the Germanpeople purely a passiveaudience waiting to be entertainedby this intellectualor anyother artistic jester, or arethey a peoplewith a historicaldestiny and direction? Such is the issuehe is pursuingwhen he seeksfor clarity aboutwho we areand who we arenot whenin the vicinity of the origin. As
Bcmasconiwrites: so long asart wasrestricted to beinga fonn of expression,the public might be inspiredfor exampleby a Germancathedral, but a peoplewould nevercome to be founded'60.
"at about Truth andArt?
Between
That deep,dark pool. To comeupon it,
after driving acrossthe Gapin midsummer,
59Bemasconi: 1999, p. 106 60Bemasconi: 1999, p. 107 53 the hedgesfreighted with fuchsia,hawthom, blood-redand white undershining veils of rain.
A wind flurry finecombingthe growinggrain asa full-udderedcow precedesus alongthe lane, a curious calf poking its lubberly head over stone while the countryroad winds betwixt andbetween.
Sudden,at the summit of the Knockmealdowns, a chill black lake, a glacial corrie or tam, somelarge absence, hacked, torn from the far sideof the dreamingcliff.
A broodingsilence, a hoardedfont of nothing, lightless, still, opaque... severelyalone. Exceptwhen a shiver,a skirl of wind makesthe waterstremble, mild asthat field of grain.
But on the shornflank of the mountain, a flowering,flaring bank of rhododendron, exaltedas somepagan wedding procession.
Fathomlessdarkness, silent ragingcolour:
A contrastto makeyour secretself tremor, like a child cradledin this quarry'smurmur, 54
delightedbut lost betweenthe dark,the blossoming,
On oneside, a moorland'sbareness, rufous heather
Shelteringa long-nebbedcurlew, bog asphodelor lobelia
and,on the other,that terracedorchestra of colour,
avenuesof lavish amethystblossom.
Chill of winter. full warmthof summer,
colliding headon in stillness,and a heavyaroma. 61
John Montague
We noteJohn Montague's initial statement'we comeupon it'. Sothe scenario presentedin the poemoccurs naturally, it happenswithin natureas such.He premises the momentcentral to the poem,its instantof revelation,by a journeying betwixt and between'.We re-callthe title of the poem'Between'. The poemelaborates a contrast.
The glacialcorrie standsas a momentof emptinessin starkcontrast and opposition to a sceneof plenitude.Yet the poeminsists that theybelong to eachother, one is the inverseof the other.It would appearthat eachneeds its oppositein orderto be:
'Fathomlessdarkness, silent raging colour'. The poem'simplicit argumentis that poetryexists in the momentof the caesura,where one rolls into the other,or in the instanceof union.Montague links this differenceto the country'sseasons, for in this scenethere is a tracestill of the 'chill of winter; full warmthof summer'.We will exploreMontague's argument further with the aid of Heidegger'sreflections on the
61Montague: 2001, p. 210 - 211 55 centralityof the primal rift, or the necessityfor oppositionin the creationof the work of art.
Heideggerbegins this third andfinal part of his essaywith a meditationon the
workly characterof the work of art. The similarity betweenthe craftsmanand the
artist exists in the fact that they both work their respectivematerials. Heidegger
writes:'it is asdifficult to track downthe essentialfeatures of the creationof works
andthe makingof equipmentas it is easyto distinguishverbally between the two
bringing forth62 Heideggerintroduces key the modesof . the term techne,a word Greeksused to referboth to craft andart.
WhenHeidegger uses the term technehe hasin mind a modeof knowing
ratherthan a kind of practicalperformance. It appearsto be a type of vision,the
apprehensionof what is present.He links this with the Greekconcept of aletheiathat
he developedearlier. For aletheiainvolves the essenceof knowing,in that it is
concernedwith the revealingof the truth of beings.Techne is the bringingforth of
beingsin that it bringsforth what is presentas such out of concealmentinto the
unconcealmentof its appearance.Thus the word lechneas used here by Heideggeris a
moresophisticated term thanthe modemderivative technique might suggest.
The artist andcraftsman are peoplewho utilize technebecause they arepeople
involvedin the settingforth of works andequipment that permit both to comeforward
andbe presentin an outwardand external manner. If we cannotapproach the creation
of the work from the point of view of craft then,a betterapproach might be foundin
62j3aSiC WyifingS: 1999, p. 183 56 the workly characterof the work. It is within what is createdthat we find evidenceof its creation.When we speakof creationwe arereferring to that processby which somethingemerges as a thing that hasbeen brought forth. It is in the work's becoming a work that truth comesinto beingand happens. Again Heideggerapproaches an essentialquestion: what is truth that it shouldchoose to residein a work, in something that hasbeen created?
Heideggerspeaks of truth asalso being un-truth to the degreethat it always holds somethingin reserve.It retains within itself the reservoir of the not-yet- revealed,what is un-coveredin the senseof still to be revealed.There is a type of doublerefusal here. As Heideggerwrites: 'truth essentiallyoccurs as such in the oppositionof clearingand double concealing. Truth is the primal strife in which, alwaysin someparticular way, the openregion is won within which everyffiingstands andfrom which everythingwithholds itself that showsitself andwithdraws itself asa being.Whenever and however this strife breaksout andhappens, the opponents, clearingand concealing, move apart because of it. Thusthe openregion of the place of strife is won. The opennessof this open region, that is, truth, can be what it is, namely, this openness,only if and as long as it establishesitself within its open region.Hence there must always be somebeing in this openregion in which the opennesstakes its standand attains its constancy.In thustaking possessionof the
holdsit it'63 openregion, openness openand sustains .
As Heideggernotes this might be the uniquerole Being playsin things.If the
unconcealmentof beingsbelongs in anyway to Being itself, thenBeing, by way of its
63BMiC Milings: 1999,p. 185- 186 57 own essence,lets the free spaceof opennesshappen, and introduces this spaceas a placeof the sort in which eachbeing emerges in its own way.It is at this point and placethat truth is established.It is only whenbeings open up in this regionor space that a placefor truth emerges.It doesnot existout therefloating freebut alwaysexists within a particularcontext. Truth canonly happenwithin a site wherean openness happens,where an open region has been established.As Heideggerwrites: 'becauseit is in the essenceof truth to establishitself within beings,in orderthus first to become truth,the impulsetoward the work lies in the essenceof truth, asone of truth's 64 distinctive by it itself being in beings' possibilities, which can occur as the midst of .
Heideggerat this point beginsto unite the elementsor termshe hasworked out progressivelyin his essay.Thus he writes: 'truth essentiallyoccurs only asthe between in v65Truth strife clearingand concealing the oppositionof world andearth . aimsto exist,to be establishedin the work asthe very strife of world andearth. The strife is startedby it anddoes not just find a placethere to dwell. This beingwill alwaystherefore bear within itself the essentialtraits of the strife.It is throughthe strife that the unity of world andearth is won. Onceagain we find Heideggerin a lyrical frameof mind: 'as a world opensitself, it submitsto the decisionof a historical humanitythe questionof victory anddefeat, blessing and curse, mastery and slavery.
The dawningworld bringsout what is asyet undecidedand measureless, and thus disclosesthe hiddennecessity of measure decisiveness'66 and .
Heideggerattempts to outline further,and clarify what he meansby strife. He revertsto his termsearth and world. As the world movestowards opening the earth
64Basic Wtilings: 1999,p. 187 61Basic Wtitings: 1999,p. 187 58
comesinto oppositionwith it. The earthseeks to retaineverything within it according
to its own laws.The world movesin oppositionto this. World seeksfor beingsto
reachtheir own openregion and all of this againstthe resistanceof the earth.The
strife Heideggerhas in mind is not the rift of completeseparation, of complete
alienationfrom andto eachother, of earthand world. Ratherit marksout the common
ground that lies betweenthem as opponents.This rift carries them towards a point of
unity, dueto this groundthat they sharein common.
Heideggeruses for the first time another concept, what he refers to as the figUre. Thefigure is the namefor the strife that hasbeen brought into the rift andset
back into earthand is thusfixed in place.The work is a createdthing. Thereforewe
canspeak of truth's beingExed in place.This happensin thefigure. Thefigure is the
structure(maybe matrix) in whoseshape the rift composesitself It is from this point
that truth shinesforth. Whenwe speakof the work it is as somethingthat providesan
enframingand placing and the namingof this nodalpoint is identifiedby Heidegger
with his tennfigure. As Marc Froment-Meuricewrites: 'the properwill enterinto
presenceonly underthe figure of the Figure,and even if it calls for the statusof the
proper, in the statueof the god, "for example", this figure will never be able to efface
its improperorigin, its properstatus as figure. To enterinto presencewill alwaysbe to
enterinto the spaceof (re)presentation.To take on a figure will be to enterinto
(dis)figuration'67 .
What distinguishesthe work of art for Heideggeris that its creAtednessis part
of its existence.This separatesit from the pieceof equipment.Of courseHeidegger
66 Basic Writings: 1999, p. 187 - 188 67Marc Froment-Meurice:1998, p. 157 59
admitsthat all thingshave been created, the pair of shoesas much as the paintingof thoseshoes by VincentVan Gogh.However Heidegger argues that the fact of its beingcreated stands out from the work of art in a highly particularway. Whatis highlightedis not the originality or geniusof the artist.For Heideggerwhat is
significantis that we areaware that a genuineunconcealment of beinghas happened here. We must ask the question of Heideggerhere: What are the critical criteria by which we determinethis? What is vital is to recognizethat somethingexists, is, before us thatjust aseasily may not havebeen. (Maurice Blanchot will developthis strainin
Heidegger'sthought as we shall seein Chapter Four). The self-subsistenceof the work of art is to be locatedin this remarkablefact that it just is. We canapproach this moreclearly where relatively few factsabout the artist who producedthe work are known.We areconfronted thereby with just the plain fact of its existence.We know relativelylittle of Sapphoor Hesiodbut we arefamiliar with the poemsthat give currencyto theseproper names. The samecan also be saidof Homerand, to a lesser degree,Shakespeare.
Heideggeris keento drive his point home,to the point almostof repetition, anddevotes quite a bit of spaceand thought to the uniquenature of the existenceof the work of art. All thingsare, from the hammerto the nail, andfrom the stockingto the shoe.However the work of art is singularin the attentionit drawsto the fact that it is asa work. The work is createdand always holds before it for inescapable observationthat it hasbeen created. When the work opensitself up what is illustrated is the uniquefact of its existenceat all. Whenthis is highlightedin the openregion it highlightsthe strangenessof the work of art aswell as its solitude. 60
What is seenas the unique workly characterof the work, for Heidegger,is inescapablybound up with its createdness.When we examinedit closelywe perceivedthat creatednessis revealedas the strife that is fixed in placein the figure by meansof the rift. The work cannotescape its createdness.It is the work's creatednessthat is thrustinto the openregion of the 'that'. Howeverthe work is never exhaustedin the createdness.
For Heideggerthere is an elementof alienationin the work of art. The strangenessof its being cuts us off and forces us to contemplatethe familiarity of our surroundingsby pushing us into a position of estrangementor alienation. It doesthis throughits self-subsistencein andthrough the figure andits distancefrom human bcings.It just is. The extraordinarystands before us while the intimatelyfamiliar is placedat a removefrom us.As Heideggerwrites: 'To submitto this displacement meansto transformour accustomedties to world andearth and henceforth to restrain all usualdoing and prizing, knowing and looking, in orderto staywithin the truth that is happeningin the -)68 work .
This is intimately tied up with Heidegger's notion of Origin. The art of the
Origin for Heideggeris Greek.The beginningin the senseof the originaljump that jumps out in front of everythingthat is goingto come,that precedeseverything and thusalready contains it, this beginningtakes place when beings in their totality andas suchwant to be carriedout into the open.For Heideggerthis occursfor the first time in the Occidentwithin the Greekworld. It washere that what wassubsequently
68Basic Writings: 1999,p. 191 61
knownas Being was put to work. Evenwith freshdepartures like the Cartesiancogito
we arestill determinedby the first movement.And the original work doesnot wantto
emergefrom the sourcebut to returnto it. And asHeidegger conceives it, to returnto the sourceis not to returnto something,especially not a pastmodel. For it is
continuallyto confrontthe absenceof modelsand precedents, to confrontthe without-
origin and without-senseat the origin of presenceitself It is to face the original lack
of a foundation,this foundinglack that is the secretof the purelyspringing-forth.
However the work of art has to be preservedin its place as a work and thus requirespreservers. What is createdcannot come into beingwithout thosewho preserveit. The settingof truth to work in the work requirespreservers. The work cannotbe a work without them.This alsohappens while the work is waiting for them to arriveon the sceneof its unveilingof truth.
We mustbe willing to sharein knowledge.Through this willingnessand the knowledgeit strivesafter we enterinto the unconcealmentof Being.Human being, althoughcaptive, reaches towards the opennessfound in Being.Heidegger knows thoughthat we cannotmove from someinside to someoutside and reside there completelyand abide within the outsideand openness as if it wereour true andproper element.The truth of our existencesuggests that we can standout while standing within the clearingof beingsthat opensup. Knowledgethat is basedon the having seenof the unconcealmentof truth within the work mustbe alwaysresolved.
Heideggerwrites that we canonly approachthe truth of the beingof the work of art throughthe work itself andnot sometheory, or historicalscholarship, for 'the work is 62 preservedin the truth that happensthrough the work itselr69.That is the work's own peculiaractuality.
Heideggerresolves his questionabout the thingly characterof the work under the symbolof the earth.The thingly characterof the work of art is its earthlyquality jutting throughthe work. Howeverthis canonlY be revealedwhen it intersectswith a world. The senseof the earthas that which is self-secluding,and as that which bears patiently,can only be revealedby the oppositionof earthto world. The strife between them is fixed in place in the figure of the work and is made manifest by it.
Heideggerasks an astutequestion of his own schema.How doesthe rift emergeoriginally? As he asksit: 'How canthe rift be drawnout if it is not brought into the openregion by the creativeprojection as a rift, which is to say,brought out beforehandas strife of measureand unmeasure? 70 He justifies his positionon the groundsthat natureitself possessesa rift desigmHow doesHeideggerjustify this? Is hejust looking for an easyescape? Linked to this is a capacityfor bringingforth.
Naturehas a tendencytowards the productionof art. Again we haveto askof
Heideggerhow canwe validatethis? Paradoxically though 'this art hiddenin nature becomesmanifest only throughthe work, becauseit lies originally in the work"71.We canillustrate this point furtherby returningto Heidegger'simage of the Temple.The
Templerepresents nothing, but it presentsthe scene.We mustthink of it asthe image of nothing.This is not easy.To aid us we draw on the analogyof the trait. For sheor he who drawsa line retracesthe tearing,the re-trait,or retreatof, the withdrawal,of the Earththat doesnot wantto be exposed.Art hidesitself asnature does, in that it
69Basic Wtitings: 1999,p. 193 70Basic Wridngs: 1999,p. 195 63 encryptsitself And the retreating,or withdrawalinto nature,cannot be extracted exceptin beingre-traced in art, andas the art of the origin. Everywork is only an extract,an excerptof the origin in withdrawing,a tracethat makesa signtowards its whiteness.
There is an essentialplace for those who preservethe work. We cannot dismissthe preserversas ranking lower thanthe creatoror creators.They belong to the work's creatednessin an essentialway. The work insistson them.The essenceof the work is to crave for preservation.The work allows those who essentiallybelong together at work, the creator and the preserver,originate, each in his own essence.
What is peculiarto art that it canfunction as a placeof suchorigin Heideggerasks?
Art is a becomingand happening of truth. The art objectsets truth to work.
This processinvolves bringing the work-beingof the objectinto movementand happening.Does this truth initially emergefrom nothing?We movein two directions asalways with Heidegger.Yes, it emergesfrom nothingin that it doesnot rely on what is givenalready. It alsochallenges the ephemeralcharacter of beings.It emerges from the nothingnessthat precedesthem and which will swallowthem up. Is this John
Montague's'hoarded font of nothing2? 72 At the sametime beingsare movingtowards their annihilationas beings and it is the aporiathat allowsthis movingforward that allowstruth to emerge.When one is an objectthrown in the world thenthe possibility of the emergenceof truth throughopenings in the fabric of beingis plausible.As
FrangoiseDastur has written: 'becausetruth hasto establishitself (sich enrichten) within that which is in orderfirst to becometruth (truth doesnot exist in itself before
71Basic Writings: 1999,p. 195 72Montague: 2001, p. 2 10 64 hand),the impulsetoward the work lies in the essenceof truth sothat art is a distinguished by truth happen'73 possibility which can .
Truth occursin the momentof composition.The truth that concernsHeidegger hereis the clearingand concealing of the beingof things.The essenceof art for
Heideggeris poetic. The poetic centre of all art is capableof breaking open into an openplace, and this new spaceis a placewherein everything is presentedin a new light, or is deprivedof its everydaymundane reality andfamiliarity. We arealerted to the unbeing of the world through the work of art. It doesthis by its capacity to highlightor setinto the work the unconcealmentof beings.This unconcealment movestowards us andchallenges everything that is ordinaryand familiar. Thatwe are not talking aboutsome causal or physicalalteration here Heidegger is at painsto makeclear. The changehappens within the world of the work itself, from out of the work in truth, andhas to do with the unconcealmentof beings,and therefore of Being itself Poetryclears the ground.It doesthis throughthe openregion. Simultaneous with that the openregion allows poetry to happen.Through this processbeings are allowedto shineand ring out.
Hcidcggcrseeks to continuean ancienttradition that privilegespoetry as the mostprimary form of the expressivearts. He arguesthat sucha positionis justified by the mediumutilized by poeticexpression. Language has unique characteristics that areprimary to any discussionof the distinctivenessof artistic Production.We view that languagetoo narrowlyif we only conceiveof it on the basisof a meansof communication.Heidegger writes: 'languagealone brings beings as beings into the
73Dastur: 1999,p. 134 65
74 for first Stones, do language open the time' . plantsand animals not possessa and thuscannot enter into the opennessof beings,and cannot experience non-being and the empty.
Languagenames beings. Thereby it bringsbeings to the word andinto appearance.It is this processof naming that nominatesbeings to their Being from out of their Being.When we utter andsay we projecta clearingin which an announcementis madeof what it is that beingscome into the openas. Heidegger namesthis projective saying as poetry. Such a saying is a speakingof the world and the earth,the sayingof the arenaof their strife andis the placeof the nearnessand remotenessof the gods.In this sayingthe conceptsof a historicalpeople's essence are performedfor that people.The sayableand unsayable are both broughtinto the world simultaneously.
Languageitself is the original poesybecause it is the happeningin which beingsfirst disclosethemselves to humanityas beings. Language always preserves the original senseand essence of poetry.Architecture and painting already occur after languagein the open region of saying and naming. 'They are an ever speci poetizing
beings has happened in language05 within the clearingof which already unnoticed -
Heideggerwrites that 'the essenceof art is poetry.The essenceof poetry,in
is the founding truthv76 The founding Heideggerhas in herehas turn, of . that mind a tripartite function.It is foundingunderstood as bestowing, as grounding and as beginning.This founding,however, only becomesactual in preserving.And it
74Basic Writings: 1999,p. 198 75Basic Writings: 1999,p. 199 66 illustratesa uniqueactuality also. Every work of art refuteswhat hascome before.
Foundingis alwaysan overflowin this sense,a bestowal.
Art hasa directionalso. It doesnot aim to speakinto the indeterminatevoid. It pointsout to, movestowards, its preservers.It seeksout a specific,historical people to address.As Heideggerwrites: 'trulY poetic projection is the opening up of that into which humanbeing as historical is alreadycast. This is the earthand, for a historical people, its earth, the self-secludingground on which it rests together with everything that it already is, though still hidden from itself But this is also its world, which prevails in virtue of the relation of human being to the unconcealmentof Being. For this reason,everything with which manis endowedmust, in the projection,be drawn up from the closedground and expressly set upon this ground.In this way the ground
77 is first the beatring groundedas ground' .
Heideggerargues that this bestowingand grounding have an unmediated characterthat we identify by speakingof themas a beginning.This unmediated characterincludes the fact that the beginningprepares itself for the longesttime and wholly inconspicuously.A real beginningis alwaysahead, a leapbeyond, in which everythingthat is still to comehas been leapt over, even when it, or they,are/is still veiled.The beginningcontains the endlatently within itself This genuinebeginning containsalways the undisclosedabundance of the awesome.Therefore it contains strife with the familiar andordinary.
76Basic Wtifings: 1999,p. 109 77 Basic Mitings: 1999,p. 200 67
Wheneverart happens- that is, whena beginningoccurs -a thrust,a new impetus occurs in history. History will begin for the first time or will start over again.
Heidegger is not speakingof history here in the narrow senseof a sequenceof events that occurin time. He understandshistory in the senseof the writing of a peopleand their destiny; history as the transportingof a people into their appointedtask and entry into their own particular endowmentas a people.Heidegger writes: 'art is history in the essentialsense that it groundshistory"'.
And so we find Heideggerreturn to his starting point or source.The idea of art as a point of origin. Art is the place where truth originates.Art is a leap and as such, as founder and preserver,is a point of origin. This is what to be an origin means.Art, poetry, brings somethinginto being from out of its essentialsource in a founding leap.
And soHeidegger writes paradoxically, but clearly:'The origin of the work of art - that is, the origin of both the creatorsand the preservers,which is to sayof a people's
09 historicalexistence - is art .
Heidgger draws his meditation to a close with the powerful question: 'Are we in our existencehistorically at the origin? Do we know, which meansdo we give heed to, the essenceof the origin?Or, in our relationto art, do we still merelymake appeal to a cultivated acquaintancewith the past?'80
Martin Heideggerfinally concludesThe Origin ofthe WorkofArt with a quote from Holderlin:
78Basic Wtitings: 1999,p. 202 79Basic Wiidngs: 1999,p. 202 68
Reluctantly
that which dwellsnear its origin abandonsthe site.
'The Joumey', verses 18 - 1981
As should be clear from our analysisHeidegger's essay constitutes a break with
the metaphysicaltradition of understandingart. In that tradition art has been
understoodright from the start as a fabricated thing. We have thought of the work of
art as somethingelse, somethingmore than a mere product. We have conceivedof it
as a bringing togetherunder the rubrics of allegory and symbol. We have worked with
the dualism of a material content and then a spiritual meaningadded on, or seenas an
additionto the materialdimensions of the artwork.Art underthis logic is definedas
the (re)presentationof the suprasensibleinto the sensible.We have a metaphysical
logic of additionat work here.In termsof language,the phoneticalmaterial to which
is addedmeaning, animal body to which is addedsoul, and thus the leadingidea
behindthe metaphysicalconception of thingsis that the spiritualelement can be
representedin the material.Heidegger marks a distinctbreak from this tradition.As
FrangoiseDastur writes, for Heidegger:'the work of art doesnot (re)presentanything:
it is neither representationof somethingelse nor presentationof somethingabsent. It
hasin fact no relationshipat all to presence,but, on the contrary,it hasa relationship
to the becomingor happeningof truth, to the cominginto presenceof everything.
That is why Heideggerputs the stresson the initiality of art: the work is a
(Anfang), institution(Stiftung), (schaffen))82 commencement an a creation -
soBasic Wridngs: 1999,p. 203 81Basic Wfilings: 1999,p. 203 82Dastur: 1999,p, 138 69
The templewould no longerbe a templeif it resembledanything. It resembles
nothing in a similar mannerto the way in which the mountain resemblesnothing. The
mountainappears as an apriori. It appearsto be institutedor installed.The
installmentof the templeis similar to that of the mountain;on the earth,or after it? It
emergesfrom the earth and is made of the stuff of earth. Materially it is no different,
except it exists as Temple. This is the sourceof its radical othemess.We have here the
installation of the There. And as Marc Froment-Meuricewrites: 'which precisely is not there, not available, but which always arrives, suddenly,takes place in giving place. The There, first namedDasein, then Aletheia, is Heidegger's major, and 83-) perhapseven only, discovery. What remainsto be discoveredbeyond the Open?
Marc Froment-Meuriceargues for another implication of Heidegger's thinking on art. He arguesthat one of the implications of Heidegger's thought is that 'senseor meaningwould neverbe whole,present to itself in presence,but alwaysself-affected with a "without sense".But it would alsoimply that the without is alsonot whole,put differently,that thereis no purenon-sense, or that the without-senseis not non-sense, and thus that the without is not reducedto a negation or to a nihilism that is always the weapon senseuses to reduce the other to its mercy. This also meansthat at the same time the work is not the final instanceand remains what cannotbe passedover, not becausethere would be nothingelse, but preciselybecause by its very breakingit testifiesfor the otherto whom it refers,without, however, this referencemaking
e84 sen .
83Marc Froment-Meurice:1998, p. 176 84Marc Froment-Meurice:1998, p. 171 70
Chapter Two: Remembering the Word after the Shoah in the poems of Paul Celan: A Challenge to Heidegger
George Steiner has written that one of the implications of the Shoah
experienceof the death of millions of Jews in Nazi death-campshas been the
deathof humanityas rational, 'forward-dreaming' speech-organisms. When we
contemplatehow the death campswere organized,and attempt to approacha hypothesisfor their motivation, and when we discover the deathly efficiency with which they wererun, we areleft with profoundquestions about the natureof human logic as it has been and is orderedin relation to social and psychological circumstance.We areleft with no otherconclusion to drawbut that the Shoahis a travestyenacted upon meaningfulness and can be legitimatelytermed a 'cancerof reason'.The Shoahleaves us with profoundquestions about some of whathad beenhitherto the deepestphilosophical and theological positions achieved in
Western thought. For theology after the Shoahwe are forced with brutal honesty to speakof the exit of God from the boundsof human experience.
If thereis to be a recoveryof languageand reason it mustbegin within
Geman, the languageof deathitself If languageis to be re-humanized,if we areto restoreits capacityto addressGod and to speakto andabout humanity, we mustbegin in the placein which all of thesepotentialities were challenged and eventually eradicated.Steiner has written: 'reparationand restoration can come only from within 71 the death-idiomitself 1
The Challengeto Theology
GeorgeSteiner addressesthe question of the uniquenesssof the Shoah.There has been a long history of anti-Semitism in Westernhistory that has been well documented.
However,aside from anti-Jewishnessrecent history has seen the deathof millions of
Russiansin the gulags. We have had many massacreson the continent of Africa by various political dictatorships.Minorities have been assaultedand attemptsat their annihilation made at variousjunctures of human history.
And so Steinerconcludes: 'ifthere arequalitative differences between the
Shoahand the innumerableexamples of mass-murderwhich punctuatehistory both beforeand since, they must lie very deep:in that symbolicand metaphysical-
I to towards'2 theologicalrealm which want point .
Steiner begins with St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans9- 12 as a starting point for the frameworkhe wishesto suggest.Christ wasthe Messiahlong awaitedby the Jewishpeople. He wasthe Davidic liberatorand saviour prefigured in the Psalmsand Isaiah's vision of the SufferingServant. This Messiahthe Jews hadforetold in their own Torah,prayers and prophecy and yet they werethe ones to handhim over to abominablesuffering that resultedin his death.Understood from this perspective,developed in later Christianity,Judaism eradicated from within itself the act of divine election.This is the mostplausible of Steiner's
' George Steiner: 'Me Long Life ofMelaphor. An Approach to the Shoah': Encounter: 1987,p. 56 72
scenarios.
Steiner's secondproposal is somewhatless reasonable.By their refusal to recognizeJesus of Nazarethas the Messiahforetold by their own scripturesthe Jews have postponedthe day of humanities' salvation. By refusing Christ the Jews have condemnedhumanity to the treadmill of history. We will not be liberated from our historicalbondage, our enslavementto the agonies,bloodshed and injustice of history until the Jewish people recognizethe messianictruth of Jesus'sministry and incamation.
Another version of this scenarioruns: the messianicpurposes of Christ the Son of Godwere not accomplishedeither in His earthlysojourn or in His resurrection.
They are incomplete,a continuousprocess which will find fulfillment only when
Judaismenters freely into the Ecclesiaof the ChristianChurches. They will be consummatedwhen synagogue and Church are unitedin a commontabernacle. Until that dayChristianity itself is a fragmentary,often self-contradictoryand culpable institution. We respectthe Jew as sacredbecause the potentiality of the truly ecumenicalcontains within itself the only accessto the genuinerealisation of God's promisein andthrough Christ. Steinerdetects this strainof argumentin the late writings of Karl Barth andmore explicitly in the writings of JurgenMoltmann.
Steinerhas only beenstaking out the groundfor his coreargument. The attack uponthe Jewishpeople has not beenfor their role in crucifyingGod in the form of
JesusChrist. They have not beenloathed as deicides but, moreradically, 'as inventor
' Steiner: 1987: p. 57 73 of God;it is asspokesman for andremembrancer of an almighty,all-seeing, all- demandingDeity. It is becauseJudaism has kept manawake, as do the Prophetsin the sleepingcity". For Steiner Judaismhas done this at three key junctures in Western history;firstly, in its inventionor discoveryof monotheism,secondly in the message of the religiousradical known as Jesus Christ and, thirdly, in Marxismand messianic- socialism. In all three momentsJudaism has askedof ordinary women and men more than human nature ordinarily wishes to give. And in fact, possibly more than organically and psychically it is able to give. We have come to despisethose who have askedof us a self-transcendencegreater than our natural or common limits of being. Steiner writes: 'our bate and fear are the more intenseprecisely becausewe know the absoluterightness, the ultimatedesirability of the demand.In failing to respondadequately, we fail ourselves.And it is of deep-lyingself-hatreds that hatreds spring'4.
And it is only sucha deeppsychological, metaphysical-theological framework that Steinerfeels can persuade us to the depthof loathingand hatred that underlaythe
Nazi drive to eliminate the Jew from history through the death-camps.And:
It is, therefore,no accidentthat the theological-metaphysicallevels of languageof metaphor,of symbolismshould be the foundationand constant resourceof the onewriter who, to my knowledge,has not only takenus to the difficult unspeakablecentre of the Shoah-experience,but - andthis is far more andimportant- has located the senseof that experiencewithin the definition of history, human That PaulCelan is the man,of andof speech.... alsoamong greatestpoets in the Germantongue, indeed in modemEuropean literature (being,perhaps, an evenmore necessary poet than was Rilke); that Celan alonecan stand beside Holderlin in both his poetryand his prose-is almostan extraneouswonder. The necessaryand sufficient condition for Celan'spoems is the situationof all humansaying after the Shoah,a situationwhich Celan lived andarticulated in the absentface of God.In this onesupreme
3 Steiner: 1987,p. 59 Steiner: 1987,p. 59 74
the fate the Jew, German witness... of the night-chargedgenius of the language,of the idiom of Auschwitz and Belsen, a profound intimacy with the Hebraic and the Yiddish legacy, coalesced;and they coalescedaround the central criteria of the theological and the metaphysicalorders of 5 questioning...
Celan's Winess through the Word
Paul Celan was born to a family of German-speakingJews in 1920 in
Czernowitz, capital of the Bukovina region, which passedto Romaniajust before his birth. After Soviet, then German occupation in 1940 and 1941,after forced labour, his parents' deportationand subsequentdisappearance, and the Russians'return in
1944,Celan departedfor Bucharestfirst, then Vienna, before finally settling in Paris in 1948.In Paris he wrote a body of poetry that questionedthe possibility of meaning, commemoration,personal and interpersonalcommunion open to a languagesoiled by
hiStorY6. the travestiesof
The classicexpression of suchconcerns in Celan'sbody of work is the poem
'Psalm'.A cursoryglance at this poemindicates its radicallytheological and metaphysicalfield of refeffal.
No-onekneads us againout of earthand loam,
No-onebespeaks our dust.
No-one.
Praise unto thee, No-one.
For love of you will
I Steiner: 1987:p. 60. 75
we bloom.
Toward/against
You.
A nothing
were we, are we, will
we remain, blooming:
No-one's rose.
With
the stylus soul-bright
the dust-threadsky-waste,
the crown reddened
by the purple word, which we sang
above,o above
7 the thoM.
As John Felstiner writes: 'The psalm, benediction, doxology, and prayer which this poemsounds like are undercutin breath-turnings,abysses opened beneath those
ritual forms.Throughout the ChristianWest, words for "psalm" arealike. Identicalin
Germanand English, they needno translating- whencethe snareof Celan'stitle. As
with his "Tenebrae",we assumewe know what is meant.But "Psalm" cannever, for this poet,purely and simply line up with the hymnsof lamentand praise that have
Israel Chalfen'sPaul Celan: A Biography ofHis Youth: PerseaBooks: New York: 1991 I use Steiner'stranslation. From Steiner: 1987,p. 60. 76
,8 comforted generationunto generation .
Firstly, let us look at someof the influences behind Celan's poem in order to attaina firmer graspof its field of allusion.Celan's threefold conjugation of time will evoke for somethe Christian doxology. There is also though the echo of a more ancient hymn, the Hebrew liturgy contains the phrase:'Adon Olam'(Lord of the
World): 'For He hasbeen, for He is now, for he shall,in radiance,For He is One,no
Other is'. The rose's soul-bright 'pistil', besidesbeing a flower's seed-bearingorgan,
Griffel also meansa stylus and thereby suggeststhat the rose blossomswith the energyof writing. 'The dust-threadsky-waste' replacesthe earth of Genesis- 'waste andvoid' - with a wastedheaven and this suggeststhe deepintent of Celan'spoem.
The 'crown' or 'corolla' with its associationwith the 'purple' word conjuresthe bleedingKing of the Jewsin his purplerobe, tying Christ's agonyback into Jewish suffering.
'Psalm' is indebtedto Heidegger'smeditations on nothingness.It is indecipherablewithout the pagesof Principle ofReason, Satz vom Grund, prompted by Leibniz's question: 'Why is there somethingrather than nothing?' Here Lei niz is benton sayingthe abyssof beingor presence:the A b-grundand the Un-grund,the without-groundsand the non-ground.Celan's poem also recalls Angelus Silesius's phrase:'The roseis without a why, bloomsbecause it blooms'.
Thereis, also,a long tradition of kabbalisticspeculation and ascetic piety behindCelan's choice of phrasefor his address:'No-one'. It re-callsa tradition of
' JohnFelstiner: Paul Celan: Poe4 Survivor, Jew: Yale Univ. Press:New Haven: 1995,p. 167 - 168 77 witness to the inconceivable,unimaginable, unspeakable, anti-metaphoric tenor of the god of Israel. Celan's biographernotes that Celan was reading works of Jewish mysticism at this point in his life. He had bought writings by GershomScholem in
1957 and was studying him by 19609. There is an ancient echo in the fonnulaic liturgical phrase'Praise unto thee, No-One'. It suggestpiety, resignationand rebellion
both signaled in the phrase'blooms' towards God - in that place, at that hour - and a blooms 'against' God. The word Entgegensignifies a towards and an opposition.
As Celan attemptsto articulate the nothingnessof the Jew in Auschwitz he suggeststhe nothingnessof man prior to God's creating him. This nothingnessechoes with andre-calls the nothingnesswhich constitutesevery individual extinction. And it is the very specific nothingnessof the Jewish personand people before their killers in the death-campsof recenthistory. However Celan loads this nothingnesswith the issueof contradiction,of a nothingnessironically 'in bloom', a terrible flowering towardsand against the 'Nothingness'of God's absence.And asPhilippe Lacoue-
Labarthenotes there is an irony in a poet'sconcern with suchnothingness, for 'a poem wants to say; indeed, it is nothing but pure wanting to say.But pure wanting-to- say nothing, nothingness,that againstwhich and through which there is presence, what isi'10.
Thereis the powerfulphrase chosen by Celanin his secondline. Herehe suggeststhere will be no bespeakingof their dust,of thoseannihilated in the Shoah:
6niemandbespricht unsem Staub'. This echoeswith the storyof God'sbreathing life into the clay of Adam,to God'ssaying ofbeing in the Hebrewscriptures:
9 SeeFelstiner: 1995,p. 235 11Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe:Poehy as Experience: StanfordUniv. Press:California: 1999,p. 20. 78
'Besprechen'also carries the senseof 'to talk about' or 'to talk to' (asone addresses oneselfto a topic). And so the sensebecomes: no one- not, aboveall, GodHimself - will speakto the condition of Auschwitz, will speakabout it in adequatewitness or commemoration.The absenceof God from the Shoahis his silencein the faceof the unremembereddead, a lack of remembrancewhich makesof their deathsa double annihilation.
And this leadsto the stunning reversal of perspectivein Celan's poem.For it is only the victims themselves,in the red flowering of their anonymous,unspeakable deaths,who can rescueGod from the void of His silence. Theirs is 'the purple word', blood-soakedand royal, theirsis the songover the thorn,the living mysteryof the
Niemandsroseabove the laceratingmurderousness of 'the thorn'. Celanwrites a psalmthat is alsoan anti-Psalm.The Jewin the Shoahspeaks to andagainst the non- speaking,the unspeakingof God.So long asthe Jew addressesGod, God must listen.
The reversalin Celanis incredible.For, if in the Christ-passionit is understoodthat a divine being,a Sonof God andof Man, is held to havedied for man,so in the Shoah, the Jewish people, that 'Root of Abraham, root of Jesse,No- one's' ('Radix,
Matrix')l I is seen,or understood,to havedied for God,to havetaken upon itself the inconceivableguilt of God's indifference,or absence,or impotence.And this is the very small miracleof PaulCelan's poetry. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe asks: 'How does it happenthat in poetry, out of poetry, all is not lost, that a possibility of articulating somethingstill remains, if only in stuttering, if only in an incomprehensibleand incommunicablelanguage, an idiolect or idiom?' 12
Trans. by Andrea TarnowsId. II Paul Celan:Selected Poems: Penguin: London: 1990,p. 187, Trans. by Michael Hainburger 79
The Poet I'sChallenge To Philosophy
The Germanphilosopher Martin Heidegger,whose essayThe Origin ofthe
WorkofArt wasthe centralpreoccupation of our first chapter,was no strangerto the writings of Paul Celan and, for years,Paul Celan had read Heideggerclosely. Philippe
Lacoue-Labarthehas written: 'It would be an understatementto say Celan has read
Heidegger.Celan's poetry goesbeyond even an unreservedrecognition of Heidegger.
I think, one can assertthat it is, in its entirety, a dialogue with Heidegger'sthought.
And essentiallywith the part of this thought that was a dialogue with Holderlin's
13 poetry'
Paul Celan's copy of Being and Time contained extensivenotes; he was familiar with Heidegger'sinterpretations of Holderlin,Trakl andRilke. His poems shownumerous Heideggerian traces. His Bremenand Meridian speechesfind in poetrythe truestpath toward Being - thoughonly underhistory's acute pressure.
Heidegger,for his part,had sent his booksto Celanand had wanted to meethim. 'I know his', he in 196714 Celan's biographer in English John everything of said . major Felstiner has written of Celan's first meeting with Martin Heidegger: 'if even some journalist's insensitivereview could disturbCelan, it is clearthat an encounterwith the manwho underHitter wasRector at Freiburgin 1933- 34, who in 1935declared
Nazism's"inner truth andgreatness", who in 1936still signedhis lettersHeil Hiller!, hadhis classesgive the salute,and sported a swastikapin, andwho paid partydues until 1945- an encounterwith this manhas to be fraught,especially given
12Lacoue-Labarthe: 1999, p. 23 13Lacoue-Labarthe: 1999, p. 33 14Felstiner: 1995,p. 245 80
Heidegger'ssilence about it all sincethe war'15.
Rudiger Safranksi,Heidegger's biographer,records the fraught air that surroundedthis first meeting.He detailsthe reluctanceof Celanto be photographed alongsideHeidegger. He writes of Celan: 'He was impressedby Heidegger's work and personality.He felt himself attractedand, at the sametime, blamed himself for it.
it, 16. He soughthis presence,yet he forbadehimself to seek
Despite this deep personalinterest of the two men in each other's personality and writing Paul Celan is a strangeabsence in the writings of Heidegger.There is no trace of Celan in the writings of Heideggerconcerning poetry and poetics. We recall that Celanwas emerging and being recognized as one of the foremostpoets of the
Germanlanguage in the periodthat Heideggerand Celan were in correspondence.
Heidegger's silence is more astonishinggiven Celan's consciousattempt to carry forward,examine and explore the legacyof Holderlin, Trakl andRilke. As we have noted,a traditionof poetryHeidegger devoted much attentionto.
We turn to Celan's well-known poem about his first meeting with Heidegger,
Todtnauberg.
Amica, eyebright,the
draft from the well with the
staffeddie aboveit,
Felstiner: 1995, p. 245 Rudiger Safranski: Martin Heidegger., Between Good and Evil: Harvard Univ. Press: Cambridge, 81
in the
hut,
the line
-whosename did the book
registerbefore mine?
the line inscribed
in that book about
a hope,today,
of a thinkingman's
coming
word
in the heart,
woodlandsward, unlevelled,
orchidand orchid, single,
coarsestuff, later, clear
in passing,
he who drivesus, the man,
who listensin,
the half-
Mass.: 1999,p. 423 82
troddenwretched
tracks through the high moors,
dampness,
17 much.
The poem re-calls Heidegger's rural retreat where he completed most of his writing and thinking. It was an enabling place of rural simplicity and solitude. The poet conveyssomething of this through his presentationof the essentialsof a plain homestead,the fountain and stars,the mountain floors, the visitor's book and the moor. The tranquility of this agrarian-intellectual idyll is menacedby the intrusion of historyat the outset.This intrusioninto the world of naturealso affects the very articulationof languageand thereby the modalitiesof manifestation.The star-die uponthe waterbrings to mind the starof David. In TodtnaubergCelan had taken a drink from Heidegger'smuch-photographed well with its star-shapedwooden cube on top, andsigned the guestbook 'with a hopefor a comingword in the heart'.
The homesteadis a shack.Does it echo with the memory of army-barracks?
This survivorPaul Celan inscribes his namein a book.It is not a book of life, but rathercontains, in all probability,names of manywho, directly or indirectly,are complicit with thosewho committedhorrendous crimes and murder against Jews like
Celanand his family. The traditionalimage of life-sustainingand cleansing water from the fountainsis heretransformed into somethingsuggestive of weeping.We note the disablingpervasiveness of the moist in Celan'spoem.
"Selected Poena: 1990,P. 293 83
During the war in Czernowitz Paul Celan had astonishedfriends by using botanical terms in severallanguages. Now, like Jew Klein in Celan's prosepiece
'Conversationin the Mountains'18 he . namesthe naturalworld, andthe particular flowersnamed signify healing- arnicafor bruises,and eyebright is a balm he re- calledfrom childhood.Arnica is a medicinalherb and might be a curefor the
wounding with which the poem closes.There is a circularity within the poem in terms
of form andcontent. There might well be an echoof the deathcamps in the language
of the poem chosento suggestthe 'woodland swards'. They are not a typically leveled
phenomenon.Celan's choice of an unusualterm might suggestthe naturally rolling
ground around Auschwitz that was leveled with the ash of the dead.
The word 'coming' matteredto philosopherand -poet alike. In a 1936essay
lleideggerdescribed Holderlin's senseof a 'new time': 'It is the time of the fled gods
and of the coming God'19.Holderlin's hope still awaits a heartfelt word, Celan
implies.Again his poemchallenges Heidegger noting the 'half-/ trod log- / paths'of
their abortedwalk. Heidegger's'Woodland Paths', showing poetry 'under way'
toward truth in languageconvinced Celan. Yet, in a deft wordplay, Celan's tenn for
, log' echoeswith the term 'bludgeon'. Translating his own Night and Fog he had used
that word for deathcamp prisoners 'bludgeoned awake' at 5 a.m. Along the pathsof
the Germanlanguage Celan could only go halfwaywith Heidegger.
With this poem,Celan's biographer John Felstiner notes, he madean unusual
20He hadhis Paris do bibliophile he first to step . printer a edition and sentthe copy Heidegger.The responsewas a letter emptyof anythingbut conventionalthanks. How
Is SelectedPoentsandProse ofPaul Celan: Norton: New York: 2001, Trans.by JohnFelstiner, p. 397 19Felstiner: 1995,p. 246 84
could the seventy-eight-year-oldphilosopher respond? When Celan readied
'Todtnauberg'for his next book,he madeone change, taking out 'un - /delayed'.He wasstill waiting for the comingword. For PhilippeLacoue- Labarthe this word was vital. For: 'What "Todtnaubere'speaks about, then, is this: the languagein which
Auschwitzwas pronounced, and which pronouncedAuschwitZ, 21. And again,the
importance of having this word uttered lay in its being not about 'life, which is always
possible,which remainedpossible, as we know, evenin Auschwitz,but existence,
Language.That is, to 22 And finally: 'the that poetry,speech. relation others . word the West,in its pathosof redemption,has never been able to say.The word it remains
for learn lest The us to to speak, we shouldsink ourselves. wordpardon'23 .
Heideggerhas written of his experienceof a unity with naturein his rural
retreat:it 'has the peculiarand original powerof not isolatingus but of projectingour
whole existenceout into the vastnearness of the presenceof all beings'. For Celan
howeverthere is an experienceof fragmentationand isolation. The orchidis
replicatedin the landscapebut ultimatelystands alone, 'orchid andorchid, single'.
Speechis crudeand meaning only dawnson oneafter the momenthas passed. And
oneis left unfulfilled, for the hopethat growsin the heartis not fed by the
'coming/word'that would or shouldspring from the sameplace. Celan owes a debtto
Heidegger'sthought for this reference.For the 'coming/word'is a line that responds
to Heidegger'smetaphysical adventism, to his 'coming God', to his On the Wayto
24 Language,which canbring abouta Turn. Celan'slanguage is fragmentedand
halting.He seeksout the thinker andis unsureof what he finds. Celanstands before
20Felstiner: 1995,p. 247 21Phflippe Lacoue-Labarthe: 1999, p. 37 22phifippe Lacoue-Labarthe:1999, p. 38 23phifippe Lacoue-Labarthe:1999, p. 38 85
the living personof the Other.Both the thinker andthe poetmust respond to the same
historicalconfiguration. They are both calledto responsibility.What is interestingis
the figure of the anonymous'man' who is thoughtfullylistening. He is
undistinguished.His technologicalvocation is driving. Doesthe poetsuggest he is
most 'with it'?
Celan Is Thought on Poetry in the "Meddian -'
One understandingof Art conceivesof it as somethingthat seeksto expand
itsclf; that clamoursto bc expandcd.Art aimsto cffaceits differcnccfrom the things
andbeings of nature.In a way that which is art's own, what is 'proper' to art (to the
Unheimlich),is the tendencyto mitigatedifferentiation, and in so doinginvade and
contaminateeverything. Or mediateeverything. We recall aestheticformulations that
natureis only naturebecause of art. Celanthrows down a seriouschallenge to this
notion of art andwhat it implies,as can be gatheredfrom a closereading of his
thoughtfulreflection on poetry'Meridian'.
Whatcan we useto bolsterus againstthe estrangementimplied in the
aforementionedconception of Art? Celan's'Meridian' suggestsa humblereply to that
ancientquestion about art. What Celanwill sayopposes the Unheimlich,the estrangementof art, is undervarious names the own - the own-being:the 'self or T,
eventhe 'he' of singularity.We shouldstrive to protectthe creatureand the
creaturely.Poetry should aim to shelterthe human.Not oneman or another- but that manthere, here and now, in the singular.This is the drift of Celan'sreflections in
24Rudiger Safransld:1999, p. 424 86
'Meridian1,25 The humanitythat in through . estrangementof occurs and art occurs becauseof language.We forgetourselves when we speakin words.Poetry, as understoodin Celan'ssense, is 'everytime' the interruptionof language.Something removedfrom, or preservedfrom the realmof 'art'. Poetryis really the suspensionof language.Poetry occurs when a word appearsin the pure suspensionof speech.T'his is what Holderlin meansby speakingof the caesuraas 'the pure word'. Poetry, then, saysthe human,it speaksof our suspensionover the abyss.And so,Philippe Lacoue-
Labarthe will write: 'the place of poetry, the place where poetry takes place, every time, is the place without place of the intimate gaping - somethingwe must certainly conceive of as the pure spacingwhich places (do not) sup-poseand which upholds them,with no hold'. Poetrythen is the properabyss of art. It occursin the between time of the caesuraand is alwayssingular, unique.
Celanwrites in the 'Meridian': 'Perhaps,I musttell myselfnow - perhaps evena meetingbetween this "wholly Other"- I'm usinga familiar term here- anda not all that distant,a quite near"other" becomesthinkable - thinkableagain and 26 As its in its individual in again . it speaks own name, or speaks own cause,speaks the languageof singularity,of an individuationthat is radical,the poemhopes in is languageto speak'in the causeof the strange'.It will usethe languageof estrangement.However, the self - or the singularI- reachesitself within itself only via an 'outside'.For the hereand now of singularexistence is immediatelyan elsewhereand another time (a datewhose memory must be kept). We mustsubstitute for the topologicaldivision of hereand strange, near and far - which inevitably
23 SelectedPoems and Prose: 200 1, p. 401 - 413 26Selected Poems and Prose: 2001, p. 408 87 assignsplaces - the unlocatabledivision of differenceor alterity.As PhilippeLacoue-
Labarthewrites: 'In the place(without place)of the elsewhere,an "other" occurs,that is, a singularexistent in whosename - andthis time, the expressionis apt - the poem the hope Estrangement maintains of speaking. yields groundto the encounter'27.
However, as soon as other occurs there is the threat of an absolutealterity, ab- solute,which forbidsor rendersimpossible all relation.The otheris immediatelythe wholly other.Paradoxically, the otheris unthinkablewithout relationto the same.As 0 soon as other appears,detaching itself from the same,the same,in advance,has alreadyrecovered it andbrought it back.It is impossibleto think a total unbinding.
The sameis itself in relationto the Other.Between the sameand the other thereis necessarilya relation.As Lacoue-Labarthewrites: 'in the "relatingto", it is by definition the movementof alterationthat predominates.Or if oneprefers, difference is alwaysmore primitive. So that in the relationof the sameand the otherthere is an imbalance.This meansthat it is the alterity of the other,the being-wholly-otherof the otheror a certain"duplicity" in the otherthat institutesthe sameas a relationto the 28. other,and thus always differentiates it, The wholly otherde-parts the other,that is approachesit: re-latesit to the same,which receivesit in, or ratheras its mostintimate difference.So that the wholly otheris the gift of the otheras the possibilityof the same,that is, asthe possibilityfor the sameof establishingitself as 'differance'.The same(the Subject)does not go outsidethe self andpass into its other,with a view to turningand relating back to the self so asto establishitself assuch. But underthe original gift of the otherto which it alreadyalways relates itself, the sameis the pure
27 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe:1999, p. 59 - 60 2" PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe: 1999, p. 60 88 movementthat allowsthe 'intimate gaping'(Lacoue-Labarthe's phrase) - which is, within the self, its 'original outsideself (time)- to hollow itself out, to openand spread.
We read Celan's poem 'Your Being Beyond':
God,so we read,is
a part anda second,a scatteredone:
in the death
of all thosemown down
he growshimself whole.
There
our looking leadsus,
with this
half
29 we keepup relations.
And thenwe have'On Either Hand':
find my way out.
0 this wanderingempty
hospitablemidst. Apart,
29Selected Poena: 1990,p. 161 89
I fall to you, you
fall to me, fallen away
from each other, we see
through:
One
and the same
has
lost us, one
and the same
has
forgotten us, one
and the same
has _ _30
And thusit would seemthat what Celancalls the encounteris thus first the hollowing out, the intimate gaping of the singularity. The encounteris the original intimate ecstasyaccording to which singular being exists. This is why one can say of the poemthat is 'alone' that it alsotakes place 'in the mysteryof an encounter.
To speakto the otherbeing or thing - to addresshim or it, is to let whatspeaks in him or it occur,and accept this word in the very heartof the poem(in its immediacyand proximity) asthe gift of the other.It is to prepare,ecstatically, for the
'presence'of the otherwithin oneself.to allow this intimacyto openup. The otherde-
"Selected Poems:1990, p. 163 90 parts,and yet remainsclose to us in a mannersuch that it makesthe very spacean intimacythat renderspossible thought and word, that is, dialogue.And soLacoue-
Labarthewrites: 'For this reasonthe poemturns within itself, to the appearing,to what is "in the processof appearing";it questionsthe very cominginto presence.The poem(the poeticact), in this modeproper to it (dialogue),is the thoughtof the present'spresence, or of the other of what is present:the thought of no-thingness(of
Being),that is to say,the thoughtof time0 1.The experienceof the You, the encounter,opens onto nothing other than the experienceof Being,of the no-thingof being - which Celan designatesas 'openness', 'emptiness', 'freedom'.
The poeticact thenis alwaysecstatic in the original senseof that tenn asa steppingoutside of oneself.The exorbitantis the puretranscendence of being.The poemis turnedtowards the open,offered up to it. And the openis opento u-topia,to the placewithout placeof the advent.The poeticact is in PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe's 32 word 'catastrophiC, : an upsetting relation to what is an upset, in being, in the directionof no-thingness(the abyss).And so, after Heidegger,there is a challengeto the art of representation.For true poeticart, in theseterms, is aboutperceiving rather thanre-presenting.
TheInterlocution with Heidegger
Heideggerargues in On the Wayto Languagethat the essentialplace of a
is 'at the tip This poct's poeticsaying a point of convergence of the spcar'33. placeor
PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe: 1999, p. 65 PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe: 1999, p. 67 VeroniqueM. Foti: Heidegger and the Poets: Paiesis, Sophia, Techne: HumanitiesPress: New Jersey:1992, p. 81 91 point indicatesthe 'highestand utmost' inner necessityof the saying.This extreme
4;gathering responds to or convergeswith the hiddensource or origin of the saying which for Heideggeris dislocatedinto the 'unsaid'. Heideggeris insistentthat the waveof poeticsaying as it rhythmicaflysurges forth, doesnot abandonthe source,but rather'lets all the movementof the sayingflow backinto the evermore concealed origin'. This origin and gatheringpoint concealedin the 'unsaid' becomesthe locus of the interlocutionbetween the poetand the thinker.Heidegger is in searchof a differential unification. A post-metaphysicalmoment, but a post-Hegelianone that no longer functions within the closed economy of the self-unfolding of the Absolute.
Heideggeris in searchof a placeof unity but onewhich within itself containsthe powerof transitionand of transformation.
Celanhad his own relationshipwith Holderlin. It is articulatedin a poemfrom a posthumouscollection.
I drink wine from two glasses
andplough away on
the king's caesura
like that one
on Pindar,
Godturns in his tuning fork
asone among the least
of the Just,
the lottery drm spills 92
34 our two bits.
Holderlin hada particularunderstanding of the poeticcaesura. It was formulatedon the basisof his work on Pindarand Greek tragedy. He conceivedof it asa 'counter-rhythmicinterruption' by the 'pure word' which at the heightof poetic transport,allows representationto show itself as such, in its law. The division effected by the caesurafrustrates both dialecticalunification and decisive orientation. For
Holderlinthis hasa catharticfunction. It purifies a tendencyto limitlessunification by limitless separation.The gap createdby the caesurafalls outside of the philosophical economy.
The division of the caesurais intensifiedby Celan'sexplicit negationof any unified sourceof poeticinspiration - the 'draughtof vintage' of traceableprovenance.
Celanis caughtbetween two glasses.He is displacedfrom the Westernclassical inheritance.Holderlin's God hasgiven over the 'tuning fork' to the inconspicuous smalljust onesof Jewishmysticism. Poetic meaning no longerallows itself to be collectedat the acmeof convergenceprepared for by the craftsmanshipof
Heideggerianpoetizing and thinking. It falls, instead,to the dictatesof chance,out of the spinningdrum that allots destiny- not becauseof the poet'scarelessness but becausethe possibilityof the convergencein the 'unsaid' hasbecome superseded. By what?Celan writes in 'A la pointeaceree' of 'unwritten things' that in the cataclysms
historyhave 'hardened into language35 The languageis that it is of recent . effect on no longersupple and capable of the movementof surgingforth andrecollective confluenceso typical of Heideggerianthought, let alonethe poet's or thinker's
34Selected Poems and Prose: 2001, p. 367 35Selected poems: 1990,p. 193 93 prescriptivecollecting of meaning.
In virtue of an historicalupheaval, the hiddenthings of the earth,'the ores the crystalsj the geodes',are cast out andlie bare,'crossways', shamelessly exposed in disorder.Their exposure'lay[s] barea sky'. This sky is insecure.It may with the turning of the breath becomean abyssbefore one's feet. For Celan, there is no univocalreading either of the symbolsof history(the 'killed/chalk star') or of its orientation. No saying or collecting can preparefor a Heideggerianturning 'from out of the abyss'. We are tied to reading nonetheless.It traces its 'spluttering tracks' (to the site of the deathcamp) in the quiet of the 'forest hour', andquestions with the
touch 'finger thoughts', is 36 searching of what unrepeatable.
Thereis an embeddedchallenge to Heideggerhere. For Heideggerthe disclosivepower of poeticlanguage, together with its ability to openup the dimension of humandwelling and to give it a layout,remains essentially unaffected by history.
So,from the poetsof classicalGreece, to his contemporaryGermany, down to our own time, poets say essentiallythe 'same' thing without historical difference.
However,for Celan,the point of the metaphoricsof home,dwelling, root, or groundis to describethe natureof the self in a disruptionfor which the only obliqueanalogue in the traditionof modernityis found in Holderlin's late poetics.It stemsftom. the
Shoah'sbeing a systematicdestruction of the resourcesand integrity of the self asthe sourceof poiesis,the instilling, in the survivors,of 'the shameof Being' and,for poetslike Celan,the uselessresidue of the Westemidea of art. However,Celan's poetryand poetics, one that finds itself dislocatedto the zeropoint of this devastation,
31Selected Poems: 1990,P. 195 94 strivesnevertheless to reconfigureitself in responseto the urgencyof another mandate.
We will look moreclosely at the poem'Engfuhrung'. Celan composed this poembetween February and May 1958.Celan's biographer argues that Celanwrote this seriesof poemswhen he thought his earlier poem 'Todesfuge' was being 37 appropriatedtoo readilyand easily by critics andreaders. He neededto comeup with somethingthat would resist and defY any appropriation. This was part of the problem as Celan conceivedof it, our incapacity to respectthe singularity and uniqueness,the un-repeatabilityof things. This poem consistsof nine sections.It is inter-linkedby a repriseof textualfragments. It suggeststhe musicalform of the stretta.The strettais the third andlast part of the structureof the fugue.Amidst the interlacingvoices of the poemCelan creates a certainpoetic 'constancy': what
Martin Heideggercalls a samenesswithout identity.However, Celan's plurivocity repudiatesthe accordof the 'higher univocity' Heideggerdiscerned in Trakl. The effect of Celan'stechnique is to avoid discursivespeech, closure and a focuson textual function rather than meaning. And so Veronique Foti can write: Telan's
38 poetic diction implacably frustratesunifying and crypto-eschatological.moves'
We cometo the first sectionof 'The Straitening09 :
Driven into the
teffain
with the urunistakabletrack:
37See Felstiner: 1995, p. 118- 119 38Foti: 1992,p. 85 95
grass,written asunder.The stone,white,
with the shadowsof grassblades:
Do not readany more - look!
Do not look any more - go!
Go,your hour
has no sisters,you are -
are at home. A wheel, slow
rolls out of itself, the spokes
climb,
climb on a blackishfield, the night
needsno stars,nowhere
doesanyone ask after you.
In this poemwe aredeported into a strangeterrain. John Felstiner writes: 'we are led into straitsof languagethat will constitutethe reality to be explored
"Engfuhrung"displaces reality into a text, makingthe poeminto real time, placeand
40Through the is transportedinto landscape is in event, . poemone a that notone which humansdwell but ratheris that of the trace.We are in a textuallandscape. The first verseends in a colon,and opens on a descriptivespecification of terrainand trace.This blank terrainreveals the traceof 'grass,written asunder'.This grasshas no traceof rural innocence.Felstiner argues that the grassreferred to is that of the death- camps.He notessuch imagery in the film Night and Fog that Celanhad translated
19Selected Poena: 1990:P. 137- 149 ' Felstiner: 1995,p. 119 - 120 96 into Germaný'.In beingwritten asunderthe grasstraces its shadowwriting on the white stones.
Thereis a direct address.The implied 'you' is singularand familiar. It is given not a promisebut a command.It mustno longer'read' anddecipher but 'look' upon what is inescapable.HOWeVer, it Must go into the textual terrain that does not allow itself to be read.This imperativeis not the Holderlin oneof go andgreet so asto achieverecollection in a sisterly hour. Rather the hour and time-spaceinto which it drives the one who is addressedis cut off and unrepeatable.As Foti writes: 'if what is commandedto go forth is (also) the poem (Celan's poetry throughout is self-reflective andself-problematizing), the time-spaceof origin in which it is at homeis a point of effacement'42.
Celan'spoem seems to be at homein andmust go forth from a destinaltime andspace of refasal.The referenceto the hour hasno referenceto the calendarand the clock,to the laying out of times andseasons, but is insteadrolling blindly 'out of itself. As the spokesclimb, revealingand inscribing, they conveya 'blackishfield' insteadof a play of light. The night herehas no starsby which onemight find orientation.And the poetor poemof this destitutetime is not askedfor.
Nowhere
doesanyone ask after you -
The placewhere they lay, it has
41Felstiner: 1995,p. 119 42Foti: 1992,p. 86 97
a name- it has
none.They did not lie there.Something
lay betweenthem. They
did not seethrough it.
Did not see,no
spokeof
words.None
awoke,
sleep
43 cameover them.
The fact that the poemis nowhereasked for appearsto be linked to a failure of poeticnaming, an erasureof nameand place. By meansof the poemCelan paradoxicallyraises questions about the representationalcharacter and the disclosive powerof language.Celan challenges the assumedreciprocity between word andthing.
His poemsuggests that thosewho lay or did not lie in a namelessplace in the textual terrain of the trace experiencedlanguage as opacity rather than as granting disclosure.
Whenthey spokeit was 'of/ words' only. Not oneof themawoke to the powerof the logos.All that cameto themwas sleep. Which shutthem out from any sort of temporalecstasy.
Came,came. Nowhere
anyoneasks -
"'Selected Poena: 1990: p. 137 - 139 98
it is1,1,
I lay betweenyou, I was
open,was
audible,ticked at you, your breathing
obeyed,it is
I still, but then
you areasleep. 44
Among the echoesof sleep's coming and of being nowhere askedfor, another coming announcesitself with the insistenceof repetition and the directnessof the first personsingular and the presenttense -a coming whose essenceis arrival. That which, in its coming,reveals its opennessand the constancyof its Beingis what already'lay betweenyou'. It is unrecognizedbut sustainstemporality and interconnection. Even asthey sleptand experienced oblivion this ticking remainedaudible. It hadan awakeningtouch. For the breathof the sleepersresponded. Was it their life force, spirit, or speaking?However, as of now, the sleepersappear to be lifeless,beyond recall,and debarred from the opening.
It is I still -
years.
Years,years, a finger
feelsdown andup, feels
around:
seams,palpable, here
44Selected Poents: 1990,p. 139 99
it is split wide open,here
it grew together again - who
coveredit up?"
Whatis the call that assertsitself throughyears of darkness?It is a call to remembrance.A call to bear witness. The finger, in a very personaland intimate image,searches around, feels its own way into the terrainof memoryand explores the gapingwound. Does it touchon scartissue? We havethe senseof a woundthat has been covered over and coveredup. The gestureappears to be ambiguous.It is both compassionateand concealing.
Coveredit
up - who?
Came,came.
Camea word,came,
camethrough the night,
wantedto shine,wanted to shine.
Ash.
Ash, ash.
Night.
Night-and-night.- Go 46 to the eye,the moist one.
45Selected Poem 1990,p. 139 46Selected Poena: 1990,P. 141 100
What 'cmne' irrepressibly,at last,was a 'word'. A word that dispelledsleep.
A word that penetratedthe darkness.A word that renderedmanifest what the
searchingfinger discoveredin the dark.Felstiner writes: 'It maybe Christthe light /or language that the Jewsrejected and a that passedthrough darkness - thesetwo histories Some for converge'47. commentatorsargue the central significance of this
sectionof the poem.Seeing the sequencein the fonnat of 4+I+4 we reacha vital transition betweenthe two strophesof this poem. We are at the poem's and the sequence'sexact centre. The word, which in its coming soughtto shine, is suffocated by ashesand by night closingin uponitself, which repudiatesall illumination.At its nadirthe poemhas no T, 'you', 'they', or 'we' but a singleword 'Ashes'.The poem hadset out on a questfor remembranceand witness and does not simply leavethe presentas it approachedit. Rather,still following the commandto 'look' and'go', it now bearswitness in a new way,by goingto the moist eye,which, in its weeping,is incapableof luminosityand panoramic vision.
Oncewe haveabandoned any notion of harmony,and accept that meaninghas withdrawnitself, we witnesshow the poeticword is releasedfrom its taskof illumination.When it entersinto the depthsof mourningit abandonsthe fiery element of illuminationand enters into the dark,turbulent waters of a primal sea.It encounters stormsand whirlwinds. Within the poemthe word beginsto disseminateitself with a bewilderingprolixity. And thusthe sixth sectionof this poemis the longestand hence we will discussit in two parts:
47Felstiner: 1995,p. 121 101
Go
to the eye,
the moist one- Gales.
Gales,from the beginning of time, whirl of particles, the other, you know it, though, we read it in the book, was opinion.
Was,was opinion.How did we touch eachother - eachother with these
hands?
Therewas written too, that.
Where?We
put a silenceover it,
stilled with poison,great,
a
green
silence,a sepal,an 102
ideaof vegetationattached to it -
green,yes,
attached,yes,
undera crafty
sky.
Of, yes,
vegetation. 48
What emergesfrom the word asit issuesout of mourning?There is a total breakdownof languageand its drive to articulacy.We are presentedwith a textuality devoidof sense.Celan denies fonn, andindirectly anyHeideggerian essencing, the fit orderof anycosmos. Although Celan introduces a 'you' andpoignantly addresses them,we canspeak of the constitutionof a new 'we'. And so,the personof the other andthe possibilityof communionwith themis severelyproblematized.
The 'we' of the third stropheindicates no communitybut ratherthe speaker's implicationin a culturalwork of dissemblingand silencing.What this silencingand concealingrefused to recognizewas the terror of the nihilistic vision. The 'poison- stilled' silencingcalls to mind suchHeideggerian tropes as the resoundingof stillness, the stilling of pain, or the stilling of man'sunprotectedness. Celan's thematic of the cgreen"and 'plantlike' alludepossibly to the Heideggerianinterpretation ofphysis as &W- a word for Being,for the very happeningof manifestation,to the mythologyof soil
48SeleCied poena: 1990,p. 141- 143 103 androotedness. These are seen to be compellingcultural and intellectual constructs.
The speakerdoes not entirelydissociate himself from them,but seesthem still as formsof denial:
Yes.
Gales,whirl of part-
icles, there was
time left, time
it to try out with the stone- it
was hospitable,it
did not cut in. How
lucky we were:
Grainy,
grainy and stringy. Stalky,
dense;
gray and radiant; kidneyish,
flattish and
lumpy; loose, tang-
it led -: he,
did not cut in, it
spoke,
willingly spoketo dry eyes,before closing them.
Spoke,spoke
Was,was. 104
We
would not let go, stood
in the midst,a
porous edifice, and
it came.
Cameat us, came
throughus, patched
invisibly, patched
awayat the last membrane
and
the world, a millicrystal,
49 shotup, shotUP.
Beforethe terrifying vision onerealizes that the pathwhich leadsto the moist eye is a path without issue.We have time, the whirl rush and fissioning of particles andthe fissioningof language.The only way left now for the poeticword is 'to try it out with the stone'.The stoneis not plantlike.Its hardness,resistance, and opacity recall the earliercharacterization of languagein its resistanceto diaphonous prescricingand the continualeffort to speak'through' it, or' across'it.
The speakingwhich' leaves behind the moist, quasi-vegetativerealm of remembranceand mourning, achieves a synchroniccrystallization, a spatialization
41Seleeted Poena: 1990,P. 143 - 145 105 andsolidification of time itself, canbe interpretedas a Mallarmeanpure poetry. This stone-speaking,as presentedin the sixth strophe,consists of strings of adjectives which conjoinforms of both organicand inorganic nature without anygrowth principle,narrative order, or otherevidence of historicity,without the metaphysical subject-predicatestructure, and without subjectivity.The erasureof subjectivityis indicated by the shift from the genderedpronoun er (referring to the stone) to the ungrammaticalneuter pronoun es in the seventhverse.
What is the price for continuing to speakand to affirm Being, of reconstituting the cosmosas a 'thousand-crystal' out of poetic language?It is a distancing from ordinarylife involvements.The hospitablestone thus 'did not interrupt':no mourning or metaphysicalanguish disrupts the serenityof its speaking'to dry eyes'that, however,it eventuallycloses to the concernsof the times.In the seventhpart of 'The
Straitening'Celan voices dissatisfaction with the crystallinepurity andconsummate formal play of purepoetry:
Shotup, shotup.
Then- Nights,dernixed. Circles,
greenor blue, scarlet
squares:the
world putsits inmostreserves
into the gamewith the new
hours. Circles, z - 106
red or black,bright
squares,no
flight shadow,
no
measuringtable, no
smokesoul ascends orjoins in.50
The emphatic 'then' in the reprise of the seventhsection allows the crystalline world to appearthat has,per impossibile, separatedout the very darknessinto a prism of spectralcolours. The world which crystallized and displays its consummateformal structurenow 'pledgesits inmost' in play with the 'new hours'.The form of the poem is dependenton shifting constantlythe balancebetween sense and sound. This poetry aimsto restorethe ordinaryword backto its powerfor naming.Is this the powerthat releasesthe 'new hours' (hoursno longer'without sisters), andthus initiate a new temporalorder?
Whatthis crystallinecosmos excludes, however, is shadowand smoke, as well asany possibility of meaningfulhuman encounter. The absenceof a flighty shadow bringshome the ghostlyinsubstantiality of this poetic 'mobile' of geometricsimples andpure colours (and does so in paradox,since shadow itself is insubstantial),but it alsosets off the importanceof shadow-writingand tracc-writing in the constitutionof the poetictext. The planetable allows for the chartingof the meridiansof interconnection.There is the obviousreference to the crematoria,but alsoperhaps to
50Selected Poents: 1990,p. 145 107
ExOdus17.21-22, and again to certainHeraclitean fragments (137, B98) concerning the needof the psycheto orientitself by smell in a smoke-worldwhere vision fails. It is clearthat shadowand smoke are not to displacethe lucid articulationof the world constitutedout of language,but to takepart in it, to 'play along'.
Ascendsor
joins in -
At owl's flight, near
the petrifiedscabs,
near
our fled hands,in
the latestrejection,
above
the rifle-rangenear
the buriedwall:
visible, once
more:the
grooves,the
choirsat that time, the
psalms.Ho, ho-
sanna.
So 108
thereare temples yet. A
star
probablystill haslight.
Nothing,
nothing is lost.
Ho-
II sanna.
At owl's flight, here,
the conversations,day-grey, I' 51 of the water-level traces.
As the smoke-soulmounts and plays along, one finds oneselfreturned to the terrainof the tracein the twilight hour of the owls' (not the gods)fleeing and flight.
Fled alsoare 'our hands'(with which 'we/ graspedeach other'); andthe crystalworld hasbecome the mineralrealm of a petrified leprosy/outcasting.What becomes visible in andby the place/timeof outcasting,however, is 'above' the buttsfor targetpractice on the buriedwall, surmountingthe closureof the deathcamp. Resnais' Night and
Fog showedthe yard of Block Elevenat Auschwitzwith its infamousblack wall
'shieldedagainst the ricochetof bullets'52.The naffow channelsthat showthemselves aneware opened by 'the/ choirsat that time', the intoningof psalms,the stammering
responseto the brutal 'ho, ho' as 'ho-siannah',a cry for divine salvationand mercy.
411110sanna"shouts welcome and praise, like the gloriousOsanna in excelsisin Bach's
51Selected Poem: 1990,p. 147 52Felstiner: 1995,p. 123 109
B Minor Mass. But in Psalms,the Hebrew term means'Save [us] pleasel' (118: 25).
Celan's'Ho, ho-/ sanna'reduces to a stammeror derisivelaughter, with echoesof the
Germanmarching song 'For we areHitler's brown-cladhost - Huzza,ho-ho! '
What is interesting is that neither the poisonedsilencing nor the terrifying nihilistic vision is reinstated.If, then, perhapstemples still stand or a (one) star still 'nothing is lost' for has light - if in this sense - this suffices the repudiation of nothingness,of nihilistic negation. Celan, however, is not voicing any simplistic acquiesenceand hope. It is, after all, the frail word of the deported,condemned, and in Other dying - the word spoken extremity as prayer and cry, seekingan - which etched open the channelswithout, for all that, accomplishing any Heideggerian institutingand founding. This powerof the word, at onceslight andawesome, is preservedby a poetizingthat insistson being'here', whosehighest lucidity is the iffecusable'gray' of the day,and which doesnot takepart in anyexalted and propheticinterlocution but ratherin a conversationof traces,of remembranceand is life-sustaining. witness- the traces,nevertheless, of what
(-- day-grey,
of
the water-leveltraces -
Driven into the
teffain
with
the umnistakable
track: 110
1 Grass.
Grass.
written asunder.)53
This last section, entirely in parentheses,is itself a reprise of the opening -a repetitionthat cannotclose the circle but insteadsubjects the openingverses to greater fragmentationand attrition. It servesto call into questionthe achievementof the whole straiteningduction traced in andas the poem.This calling into questiondoes not comeabout through any correction as to form, content,or vision, but throughthe haltingreiteration of the situationaldetenninates, resulting in a retracingof the trace which resistsall appropriation.In manyways 'The Straitening'responds to Rilke's tenthDuino elegy,which 'singsjubilance and praise' and traffics with 'the endlessly dead',especially 'the Mothers'.Celan's elegy has none of the Orpheanpower so characteristicof Rilke. Much hashappened in-between.
The ductionled first from a time/spaceof refusaland from the needto casta counter-lighton the linguisticbasis of memoryand myth, from which the self of atrocitywas fonned, to the fissioningdisarticulation, of languageand to the brink of nihilism. Fromthis failure of any coherencethere was a movetoward pure formal creation,the re-creationof the cosmosout of languagethat avoidsany rhetoric of tradition,prophecy, nature or renewalas modalities of a 'poisonedsilencing'. As Foti writes: Telan continues,as he notesin conversationin 1966,to seekto present
"excerptsof a spectrum-analysisof things",showing them in the multiplicity of their
53Selected Poena: 1990,p. 149 III aspects,showing also how onefacet veers to releaseanother, in quasi-dialectical permutation.However this formal play, this poeticmathematics, must be restoredto the obscureterrain of the trace;geometry of itself (evenin its Platonicversion) is not ethical.It mustrespond to the heightand the daringof the word of thosewho in their extremity, transmutedthe very languageof brutalization into one of prayer and invocation'54In the hearing their (, Celanhimself indicatedin his . of word they, - as late poetry- are not limited to the victims of the Holocaust),Heidegger's position, that the destitutionof the ageremains withheld and has not, assuch, come to experienceand language, is untenable.And so,by this means,we havean ethical correctiveto Heidegger'sphilosophical position. In utmostabandomment and through the matrix of languagethere arises the mandateof extendingoneself toward the Other, dstudying' the Otherin his or her otherness.
JohnFelstiner has written about'The Straitening':'by far Celan'smost demandingpoem, [it] camejust after the Bremenspeech, which endswith the poet
"strickenby andseeking reality". He told an interviewerin Bremen:"In my first book
wasstill transfiguringthings - I'll neverdo that again!" "Engfuhrung"reconceives the mannerand matter of "Todesfuge",going beyond the pathosof black milk, exploringmemory itself asa dimensionof the original trauma.The poem'sclose meldsinto its opening,the way memoryalmost coincides with reality. And thereis somethingelse here, easy to miss.Not only doesan asteriskcome after eachsection, is between but there alsoan asterisk the title andthe first line -a mark devoidof purposeunless we areto link "Stretto's" [Felstiner'stranslation of Celan'stitle] last line to its first andset out again,da capo.Repeat this to the six-millionth degree,and
54Foti. 1992,p. 96 112
"Nothing is losf'. '55
A Summary:
Our questioningmust return to the breakbetween this 'spiritual' poeticsand that of Heidegger.For Heidegger,a major poet's poetic saying remains obedientto its own 'highestand utmost' innernecessity - an essentialnecessity to which thinking responds.What reasondoes Heidegger offer for the necessityof approachingthe
&unsaid'and why might therebe a necessaryinterlocution between the poetand thinker?Something of Heidegger'sthinking on this canbe graspedby Robert
Bernasconi'scomments concerning the 'experiencewith language'that Heidegger seeksto makepossible in his meditationon George'spoem Tas Wort':
The experienceof the nothing[which 'points to Being'] arisesin the anxietyin deprived Nothingis for Being The which we are of speech. not a word ... nothingcorresponds to the thinker's experienceof the lack of a word for Being.This speechlessness,this breakingof the sequenceof wordsfor Being, comesto be understoodhistorically as marking the endof the successionof 56 wordsfor Beingwithin metaphysics.
An essentialculmination and transformation is thusannounced in what has failed to evercome to languagebut hasbetrayed itself throughthe rupture,the caesura.One of the circumlocutionsthrough which Heideggerapproaches this essentialunsaid is 'the word for the word'. The word ('saying') lacksBeing; it is not a beingto which a word canbe affixed, andhence it is not its essenceas Being which hasbeen withheld. The word is a markerof Difference,of the donationof Beingout of emptiness;it bringsto passthe esgibt, which, asHeidegger is carefulto note,is
55Felstiner: 1995,p. 125 56Foti: 1992,p. 96 113
'the the it (es)957 divestedof wholespook about .
Since,on Heidegger'sunderstanding, language or 'saying' alonecan accomplishthe donationof Being,of the Open,and can also, in its very breakageand failure, let this donation appearas such, poetizing and thinking, as privileged fonns of saying, standin proximity. The challengepresented to the thinker by rupture or by the caesurais, then,as Heidegger understands it, the taskof differentialor polemic unification- be it of art andthe technical,of Earth andWorld, of poetizingand thinking, or of the unconsummatedpast with the withheld promise of the future. This avoidanceof ellipsisby differentialintegration is, for him, the properlyspiritual task.
However,Celan's own prominentthematization of rupture,of the possible
taskswhich remainfor poetizingand thinking, and even of the spiritual,is at odds
with Heidegger's.Celan's work doesnot offer the thinker pointsof engagementon
his own terms.As Foti writes: 'For Celan,the rupturethat definesthe contemporary
situationis not essentialbut historicalin provenance.It subjectsthe intellectualand
culturalconstructs of the Westerntradition, in which, of course,poetizing and
thinkingremain implicated, to what might be calleda hermeneuticsof suspicion.It
refuses,furthermore, to leavelanguage inviolate, for the word which bestowsBeing
canveer almost imperceptibly to bestowdevastation. Poet and thinker aredislodged
from their normativepreeminence; for this preeminencehas not beenethical"".
What canwe expectfrom the poet?We do not expecta wanderingstep and a
word which definesa trail of transitionfrom out of the darkness.Rather, we aregiven
57Foti: 1992,p. 97 5gFoti: 1992,p. 97 114 the 'finger-thoughts'that explorethe terrainof the traceto bearwitness, to persevere in remembrance,and to respondto the creativeword of thosewho daredto namewhat
Heideggermight call the god(s)or the holy in the situationof desolation.Through the screenand crystalline matrix of languageCelan's poetry seeks to extenditself to the othernessof the Other, while repudiating 'all oracles' and any essentialunification.
Violenceand Poetryfrom Northern Ireland:
We will now placesome of the abovereflections within a contemporary contextin orderto illustratetheir possiblerelevance. We will look closelyat a poem of SeamusHeaney's from his 1979volume Field Work. It is called 'The Toome
Roýd'. It begins:
Onemorning early I met armouredcars
in convoy,warbling along on powerfultyres,
all camouflagedwith brokenalder branches,
and headphonedsoldiers standing up in turrets.59
Herethere is a presentationof the visible consequencesof violencewith the presence
of an alien forceupon the known landscape.The poemdwells uponthe detailsof the
instrusionso that the intrusivedimension is exactlywhat standsout. The poetasks:
'How long werethey approachingdown my roads/ As if they ownedthem? ' The
voicebehind this questionsuggests a fixity, a rootednesswithin its naffativevoice and
locationthat standsagainst the observed,intruding force. The poetenumerates a list
51Seamus Heaney: Opened Ground. - Poenu 1966 - 1996: Faber:London: 1998,p. 150 115 of solid possessionsthat suggestintimate local knowledge:
I hadrights-of-way, fields, cattle in my keeping,
tractorshitched to buckrakesin opensheds,
silos,chill gates,wet slates,the greensand reds
of outhouseroofs.
Given the poet's emphasisupon the local and familiar we are struck by the poem's ending. The poet refers to 'the invisible, untoppled omphalos'. We note this significant poetic turn, this strangeGreek word, omphalos,which brings a note of by othernessagain, and is set againstthe local and the intrusive alien suggested the armoured car. What the poem stagesis an assertionof possessionand permanence, throughwhich the individuality,the specificnature of the omphalosstands as a momentof resistanceagainst all narrativesof usurpation.The ancientassociations of the word omphalossuggest a pennanencebeyond the cuffent conflict, yet it is preciselylocated within it. Sowe havean excellentmovement between the specific both andthe general,with the word omphaloscarrying the burdensuccessfully of poeticdemands-60
60For a moredetailed discussion of this issuewithin contemporaryNorthern Irish poetrysee Peter MacDonald'sMistaken Identities: Poehy and NorthernIreland-. Clarendon Press: Oxford: 1997, p. 58 -72 116
Chapter Three: Through the Eye of the Shoah: The Shibboleth in Paul Celan and Seamus, Heaney
Shibboleth
Onedidn't know the nameof Tarzan'smonkey.
Anothercouldn't strip the cellophane
Froma GI's packof cigarettes.
By suchminutiae were the infiltrators detected.
By the secondweek of battle
We'd becomeobsessed with trivia.
At a sentrypoint, at midnight,in the rain,
An ignoranceof baseballcould be lethal.
The morning of the first snowfall, I was shaving,
Staring into a miffor nailed to a tree,
Intoning the Christian namesof the Andrews Sisters.
'Maxine, Laverne,Patty'.
Michael Donaghy
'Mchael Donaghy:Dances LearnedLastNight. Poems 1975-1995: Picador:London: 2000, p. 19 117
ContemporaryNew York poetMichael Donaghy, now living in London, althoughhailing originally from an Irish-Americancultural background is well placed to exploreand examine the natureof c'ulturalbelonging, and its opposite,exclusion.
'Shibboleth'with its biblical title from his collectionof the samename explores in a situation of life and deathhow discrimination operatesin separatingout an 'in' group from an 'out' group. The poem suggestshow this can occur at various levels of culture.As his poempresents the scenethe groupexcluded by the empoweredgroup did not know the name of Tarzan's monkey; a shallow cultural signifier indeed,but enoughto define one as not a member of twentieth-century popular American culture.
This exampleillustrates how what oneknows, one's inside knowledge expressed in the languageof a culture,communicates your familiarity with its dimensions,or not.
Thenthere is the secondarylanguage of the body; one'sway of actingor carrying oneself Donaghyconveys this in his poemthrough the actionof openinga packetof cigarettesin a certainway. This might be enoughto give the gameaway, and signify onetsoutsider status.
Again, somethingas culturally specificas baseball, and a knowledgeof its rules,players and history can operate as a magicalhorizon, or a barrier,as a border crossingeven, signifying who the initiated are,as opposed to the alien,the strange, the foreignand those who standoutside. Something of the anxietythat lies at the base of this needto defineoneself as belonging on the insideis communicatedin the final verse.The poem'sfirst two versespresent the actionsof the empoweredgroup. In the
final versewe meetfor the first time the voice of the solitarynarrator. He is anxiously rehearsinghis knowledgeof popularculture in orderto be at the readywhen he is tested.By this meansthe authorsubtly suggests that it may not be too long beforethe 118 groupmakes a mistake,or turnson oneof its own members.How long will it be beforewe are all subjectto a scrutinythat may provefatal?
The thematicof the shibbolethin contemporarypoetry receives its impetus from the corpus bequeathedto us by the life and writing of one Paul Celan through poems like 'Shibboleth' and others. One of the best commentatorson the significance of the shibboleth in Paul Celan's body of work has been French writer, thinker and 2 JacquesDerrida in his 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan' philosopher major essayentitled .
Before we move on to an extendedanalysis of Derrida's essaywe will look at one example of a shibboleth from the poetry of SeamusHeaney. The poem is the first from a sequenceHeaney published in North (1975)called 'Singing School'. The title of the specificpoem, the first in the sequence,is 'The Ministry of Fear'.It is dedicatedto fellow poet,critic andold schoolfriend SeamusDeane.
The Ministty of Fear for SeamusDeane
Well, asKavanagh said, we havelived
In importantplaces. The lonely scarp
Of St. Columb'sCollege, where I billeted
For six yearsoverlooked your Bogside.
I gazedinto new worlds:the inflamedthroat
Of Brandywell,its floodlit dogtrack,
The throttle of the hare.In the first week
2 JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan, Trans.by JoshuaWillner, WordTraces: Readings of paul Celan:(ed. ) Aris Fioretos,John Hopkins Univ. Press:Baltimore: 1994, p. 3- 72 119
I wasso homesickI couldn't eveneat
The biscuits left to sweetenmy exile.
I threwthem over the fenceone night
In September1951
When the lights of housesin the Lecky Road
Were amber in the fog. It was an act
Of stealth.
Then Belfast, and then Berkeley.
Here's two on's are sophisticated,
Dabblingin versestill they havebecome
A life: from bulky envelopesarriving in vacationtime to slim volumes
Despatched'with the author'scompliments'.
Thosepoems in longhand,ripped from the wire spine
Of your exercisebook, bewildered me -
Vowelsand ideas bandied free
As the seed-podsblowing off our sycamores.
I tried to write aboutthe sycamores
And innovateda SouthDerry rhyme
With hushedand lulled full chimesforpushed andpulled.
Thosehobnailed boots from beyondthe mountain
Werewalking, by God,all over the fine
Lawnsof elocution.
Haveour accents
Changed?'Catholics, in general,don't speak 120
As well asstudents from the Protestantschools'.
Rememberthat stuM Inferiority
Complexes,stuff that dreamswere made on.
'What's your narne,Heaney? '
,6TJ, a ' Ileaney, Father. 'Fair
Enough.'
On my first day, the leather strap
Went epileptic in the Big Study,
Its echoesplashing over our bowedheads,
But I still wrote homethat a boarder'slife
Wasnot so bad,shying as usual.
On long vacations,then, I cameto life
In the kissing seatof an Austin Sixteen
Parkedat a gable,the enginerunning,
My fingerstight asivy on her shoulders,
A light left burningfor her in the kitchen.
And headingback for home,the summer's
Freedomdwindling night by night, the air
All moonlightand a scentof hay, policemen
Swungtheir crimsonflashlamps, crowding round
The car like black cattle,snuffing and pointing
The muzzleof a sten-gunin my eye:
'What's your name,driverT
'Seamus...' 121
Seamus?
Theyonce read my lettersat a roadblock
And shonetheir torcheson your hieroglyphics,
'Sveltedictions' in a very florid hand.
Ulsterwas British, but with no rights on
The English lyric: all around us, though
We hadn't namedit, the ministry of fear.3
Seamus Heaney
Thoughthey haven'tnamed it, symbolicfor their not havinggrasped its violent essence,the youngHeaney and Deane are being initiated into the moresof their community.They are being sent to schoolto learnthe languageof a society.In this schoolthey mustbehave and study hard, or pay the price for it. Sometimes violenceis metedout regardlessof its havingbeen deserved or not. Thereare at least two violent dimensionsto the communitythat Heaneyand Deane are being schooled in. Thereis the violenceof the religiouseducation they both received.It is an almost military regime.The authoruses the term 'billeted'. Thereis the beatingin the Big
Study.There is alsoan implicit suggestionof the driving undergroundby the religious authoritiesof the naturalexpression of sexualurge. The illicit natureof sexuality makesHeaney's intimacy in the Austin Sixteenan 'act of stealth'also. And thenthere is the violenceof the state.Its representativesman sentryposts with sten-guns.
Violenceis endemic.This is suggestedby the throttling of the hareat the dog-track; its blood-lettingis part of an animalnature.
3 SearnusHeaney: Opened Ground. Poems 1966 - - 1996: Faber: London: 1998,p. 134 - 136 122
What is almostas striking is the linguistic dimensionto the schoolingprocess.
How Heaneyemphasizes in the poem the vital role languageplayed in defining arenas of conflict, of belongingand struggle within the domainof culture.His 'hobnailed boots' area symbolfor his fanningbackground. The bootssymbolize what is rough and ready, and thereby lacking the refinement of the town, city and attendantnotions of importance and supremacy.He is from 'beyond the mountain, a potent signifier of his strangerstatus, his outsiderness.He is outsidethe pale.This mountaincontrasts with the 'fine lawns of elocution'. This is a poient image for the cultivation required of civilization. it suggestsa site where everything has its place and is tamed.
Socialdivision is signifiedthrough the languageand speech of the individuals andtheir respectivecommunities. Heaney hints at the socialsnobbery that saw
Protestantslooking down snootilyupon their lesswell-spoken Catholic neighbours.
He usesdirect speech,and this is appropriategiven that the focusis uponspeech and languageand how they signify socialdivision andsustain them. This is pickedup on two fronts.The priestsin the schoolare happy with the fact that his nameis Heaney, for this signifiesgood Catholic stock to them.The reverseis exploredwhen he is confrontedby the soldiersat the roadblock. The name'Seamus' is a potent shibboleth,now defininghim asan enemyin their eyes,for it signifiespapist, republican,foreignness and strangeness,, a fact emphasizedby Heaney'sitalicizing their pronouncingof 'Seamus'at the frontier. It is the Gaelicterm or translationfor the English'James'. What is interestingto noteis the author'ssetting of this incident.
Justprior to the confrontationwe arein an almostidyllic pastoralsetting. There is a descriptionof a quiet late summerýsevening with Heaneyreturning home after meetinghis lover. Onefeels that the intrusiveaction of the state'sforces is all the 123 morepotent for this. Thereis thena strongcontrast drawn between the world of natureand the world of culture.
Thereis an irony in the descriptionof the soldier'sbeing unable to readthe poem's Deane sent to Heaney,for to this soldier they are 'hieroglyphics'. They define a linguistic community once again, in that an arenaof belonging sharedbetween
Heaneyand Deane is determinedover andagainst that of the soldier.The irony in this is one that the poet is not slow to draw out, which is that the languageHeaney and
Deane are using has been taught to them by the occupier. Ulster might be British but somein her territorieshave invaded her languageand made it their own in an act of subversionwithin the paradigmof the dominantforce.
Derridabegins his essayShibbolethfor Paul Celanby emphasizingthe uniquenessof circumcision.It is somethingthat canonly happenonce. Through this meansDerrida sounds the notethat conveyshis preoccupationin this essaywith the natureof singularity,the uniqueand the unrepeatable.He will examinethe anti-
Semitism.that emergedbefore the SecondWorld War that resultedin the deathsof many,as well as,specifically, the deathof German-speakingpoet Paul Celan's parents.Particularly Derrida will concernhimself with the resistanceto that war. This will force him into a considerationof boundaries,for the last world war challenged manyboundaries and sought to imposeothers. In the light of recenthistory and atrocityDerrida is forcedto contemplatelines of demarcationand discrimination. He is interestedin passportsand passwords. By this meanshe will beginto approachthe
Shibboleth.Language itself possessesshibboleths, hidden codes that allow us passageway.Through language we belong,or do not. For as soonas we speakwe 124 utter what is common.When we learnto talk we haveaccess to a communityand the languagethat it speaks.
The Origin of the Shibboleth
JacquesDerrida in his essay'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan' will consider first the calendardate, for examplethe 13'hof February.In its outwardappearance it appears to be distinct from the actual writing of a poem. It has a metonymic character, designatingpart of an event or a sequenceof eventsby way of recalling the whole.
Whenwe speakof the 13thofFebruary we arereferring to a part of what happenedon that day, a part though that standsfor the whole in a given context.
An exampleis givenfrom Celan'spoem 'In One'. The openingline of this poemis 'Thirteenthof February'.The 'in one', 'all at once', severaltimes at once,all seemto constellatein the uniquenessof this date.However in beingall alone,the only one,is this dateone? Is theremore than one thirteenth of February?For, the thirteenth of Februaryrecurs every year, becoming thereby, each year, its very own revenant.
Couldit be alsothat thereis a multiplicity of events,dispersed at differentperiods, in foreignidioms, that conjoinat the heartof the sameanniversary?
IN ONE
Thirteenthof February.Shibboleth
Rousedin the heart'smouth. With you,
peuple 125
de Paris.No pasaran. 4
Derridaconsiders the openingof this poemto be ciphered.Thirteen we know hasan idiomaticreference to fate or chance:what falls - for goodor for ill - together.
The poem announcesthe desire to con-sign and co-sign a multiple singularity. The title moves into the date of its first line. All this is incorporatedinto the poem. They give accessto the poemthat they are,although it is a cipheredaccess.
There is a sensein which all of Paul Celan's poetry is untranslatable.This becomesapparent as soon as we considerthe aporiain Celan.An aporia.is a barred passage.It is suggestedin this poemthrough the phrase'No Pasaran'.Quite quickly
Celanconfronts us by meansof this poemwith four languages.In a singlepoem, all at once,these four languagesmove like a seriesof propernames or signatures,or even like the faceof a seal.
The title, the dateand the first line are in Gennan.The secondline confronts us with a secondlanguage, the apparentlyHebrew word, onethat arisesin the 'heart's mouth': shibboleth.
This secondlanguage could well be a first language,the languageof the morning,the languageof origin speakingfrom andof the heart.The word Shibboleth is foundin a whole family of languages:Phoenician, Judeo-Aramaic, Syriac. It hasa multiplicity of meaningsby which it is traversed:river, stream,ear of grain, olive- twig. Beyond all thesemeanings however it has acquired the value of a password.It
4 Paul Celan:Selected Poenn: Penguin: 1990,Trans. by Michael Hamburger,p. 207 126 wasused during and after war at the crossingof a borderunder watch. The meaning of the word did not matteras much as the way it waspronounced. The relationto the meaningor to the thing wassuspended or neutralized.The armyof Jephtahdefeated the Ephraimitesand, in orderto keepthe soldiersfrom escapingacross the river, each personwas required to sayshibboleth. Why? Becausethe Ephraimites were known for their inability to pronouncecorrectly the shi of shibboleth, which becamefor them,in consequence,an "unpronounceablenmne'; they saidsihholeth, and, at that invisibleborder between shi andsi, theybetrayed themselves to the sentinelat the risk of death.They could not re-marka mark thuscoded. These events occurred at the borderof the river Jordan.
With the fourth languageof Celan'sstrophe, after the Frenchof 'Peopleof
Paris', we areplaced at anotherborder. The phraseis No pasaran.The dateis
February1936 and the electoralvictory of the FrentePopular. We are on the eveof civil war.No pasaran:la Pasionaria,the no to Franco,to the Phalangesupported by
MussoliniIs troopsand Hitler's Condorlegion. This Phrasebecame a rallying cry and signduring the siegeof Madrid threeyears later. No pasaranbecame a shibbolethfor the Republicanpeople, for their allies,for the InternationalBrigades. And yet, what passedthis cry, what passeddespite it, wasthe SecondWorld War, the war of extermination.The SpanishCivil War wasthe dressrehearsal. The Spanishphrase becomesa rallying sign,a type of handclasp,a sign of membershipand political watchword.
into our hands
he spokethe word that we needed,it was 127
shepherd-Spanish,...
in icelight of the cruiser 'Aurom'... 5
We havethe Germanlanguage, the Hebrewword andthe Spanishphrase.
Among them we have the People of Paris:
With you,
peuple
de Paris. No pasaran.
The multiplicity of languagesmay concelebrate,all at once,at the samedate, the poeticand political anniversaryof singularevents, spread like starsover the map of Europe,and henceforth conjoined by a secretaffinity: the fall of Viennaand the fall of Madrid, for both cities areassociated in the sameline by anotherpoem,
'Shibboleth';and still othermemories of February,the beginningsof the October
Revolutionwith the incidentstied not only to the cruiserAurora and to Petrograd,but also to the Peter and Paul Fortress.The last stanzaof 'In One' recalls other unforgettablesingularities:
'Aurora':
the brotherlyhand, waving with
the blindfold removedfrom
his word-wideeyes - Petropolis,the
roving city of thoseunforgotten,
5Selected Poems: 1990: p. 207 128
was Tuscanly close to your heart also.
Peaceto the cottages!6
Even within the habitation of a single language,French for example, a discontinuousswarm of eventsare commemorated all at once,at thesamedate. This consequentlytakes on the strangecharacter of a type of unheimlich,or the dimensions of a cryptic predestination.The date itself comesto resemblea shibboleth, for the date gives a ciphered accessto the collocation, to this configuration of placesfor memory.
if wejust focuson Celan'suse of 'February'we canmake some connections with France,Deffida suggests.On the twelfth of February1934, after the failure of the attemptto form a CommonFront of the Right, with Doriot, after the riot of February
6, a hugemarch took placein Paristhat spontaneouslyregrouped the massesand the leadershipof the partiesof the left. This wasthe origin of the PopularFront.
However, Celan does specify the thirteenth of February.We think of February
13th,1962 and Celan was in Paris.This is the dayof the funeralfor the Metro
Charonnemassacre victims, an anti-OASdemonstration at the endof the Algerian war. Severalhundred thousand Parisians, the peopleof Paris,are marching. Two days afterthe meetingsbegin which leadto the Evian accords.These people of Parisare still the peopleof the Commune,the peoplewith whom onemust band together. In the sameevent, at the samedate, national and civil war, the endof one andthe beginning- as the beginningof the other.
6 SelectedPoena: 1990:P. 207 129
The poemnames the rallying cry that bringstogether all the political situations along the historical bordersthat are brought together in the poem's configuration. We aretalking abouta visathat is the shibboleth,the theme,meaning and content of the poem.Shibboleth also spells the anniversarydate's singular power of gathering together.This anniversarygrants accessto the date's memory, its future, but also to the poem itself Derrida writes: 'Shibboleth is the shibboleth for the right to the poem which calls itself a shibboleth,its own shibbolethat the very momentthat it 7. commemoratesothers For Celan the signifying conjunction of all thesedramas and historical actors constitutesthe dated signature,the dating of the poem. When we recognizehow the shihboleth functions in the poem we are not at the moment at which it ceasesto be cryptic.Rather the shibbolethremains secret, the passage uncertainand, as Derrida writes: 'the poemonly unveilsthis secretto confirm that thereis somethingsecret there, withdrawn, forever beyond the reachof hermeneutic exhaustion'8.It remainsheterogeneous to all interpretative totalization, eradicatingthe hermeneuticprinciple. Derrida writes: 'thereis no onemeaning, from the momentthat
is date longer there andshibboleth, no a soleoriginary meaning'9 .
At this point Derrida.reaches the crux of his meditationon the word shibboleth andhow it functions:'a shibboleth,the word shibboleth,if it is one,names, in the broadestextension of its generalityor its usage,every insignificant arbitrary mark, for examplethe phonemicdifference between shi andsi, asthat differencebecomes discriminative,decisive, and divisive"O. The differencehas no meaningin andof itself However,this differencebecomes what onemust know how to recognizeand
7 JacquesDerrida: 'Shibboklhfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 28 8 JacquesDerrida: 1994:p. 28 9 JacquesDerrida: 1994,p. 28 10Jacques Derrida: 1994,p. 28 130 aboveall to mark if oneis to get on, to get overthe borderof a placeor the threshold of a poem, to seeoneself grantedasylum or the legitimate habitation of a language.
Deffida writes: 'to inhabita language,one must already have a shihbolethat one's disposal:not simplyknow this meaningor know how a word shouldbe pronounced
(the differenceof h betweenshi andsi: this the Ephraimitesknew), but be able to say it as one ought, as one ought to be able to say it"'. So it has an unavoidable perfonnativedimension.
We are dealing with a type of marking. The difference betweenshi and si has no meaning.Yet it is the ciphered mark which one must be able topartake ofwith the other,and this differentialpower must be inscribedin oneself,that is, in one'sown body,just asmuch as in the bodyof one'sown language,and the oneto the same extentas the other.There is nothing'natural' aboutthis. As Derridanotes: 'its very origin presupposesparticipation in a cultural and linguistic community, in a milieu of
12Then does but apprenticeship,in shortan alliance' . shibboleth not ciphersomething, emergingfrom that non-meaningwhere it keepsitself in reserve,becomes the cipher of the cipher.
PaulCelan's work, like that of JamesJoyce, indicates a multiplicity and migrationof languageswithin the languagepresented, the examplehere being the presenceof four languageswithin the onepoem. His poemsare a poeticversion of the tower of Babel.In the poem'CROWNED OUT' with the referenceto the 'ghetto-
Rose'and that phallic figure knottedin the heartof the poem('bound phallic to you") that is alsoits last word, its addressand envoy:
JacquesDerrida: 1994,p. 28 JacquesDenida: 1994,p. 29 131
And an eartharises, ours,
this one.
And we send
noneof oursdownward
to you, 13 Babel.
The poem's addressand envoy certainly, but what appearsto be said to Babel is that nothingwill be addressedto it.
We aredealing with a multiplicity of languagesand their migration;and, as languagesshift andmove, so too canthe definedboundaries of a country,for countries'borders often shift, change,migrate, transfer and are transported. As
Derridawrites: 'it displacesitself like thosenames and those stones which onegives asa pledge,from handto hand,and the handis given,too, andwhat getsdetached, sundered,tom away,can gather itself togetheranew in the symbol,the pledge,the 14 promise,the alliance,the impartedword, the migrationof the impartedword'
- what rippedapart, grows back together-
you've got themnow, so takethem now, so now you've got
themboth,
the nwne,the name,the hand,the hand,
sotake them and this pledgewill stand,
he takesit too andyou've got back
13Selected Poems and Prose ofPaul Celan: Norton: New York: 2001, Trans. by JohnFelstiner, p. 193 14Jacques Derrida: 1994,p. 30 132
what'syours, what washis,
windmills
drive air into your lungs, you're rowing
We are struckby the imageof the windmill. The windmill might symbolize chanceand risk. Languageitself holds as much of wind and illusion as it draws from breath and spirit, from the breathing bestowed.This is illustrated within the body of this poem through its many references.There are referencesto the Russia of Osip
Mandelshtarnand to Moraviaand the Praguecemetery. With the referenceto
'Normandy-Niemen'there is a referenceto the emigrationof the countryitself andof its name.Like language:
what is it called,your land
backof the mountain,back of the year?
I know what it's called.
it wanderseverywhere, like language,
throw it away,throw it away,
then you'll have it again,
the pebblefrom
the MoravianBasin
your thoughtcarried to Prague.15
15Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan: 2001, p. 203 - 204 133
Derridanotes that the multiplicity andmigration of languagesoccurs within languageitself We can speakof the Babel within a single language.Shibboleth marks for Derridathe multiplicity within languageand insignificant difference as the conditionof meaning.However, language can only takeon meaningin relationto a place. By place we mean the relation to a border, country, house,or threshold, as any site, any situation in generalfrom within which, practically and pragmatically, alliancesare fonned,contracts, codes and conventions are established which give meaningto the insignificant, institute passwords,bend languageto what exceedsit, make of it a moment of gestureand step.
Derridaemphasizes the heterogeneityof languagehere. Untranslatability is connectedwith the difficult passagesuggested by nopasaran, the aporiaor the impassethat isolatesone poetic language from another.Babel, though, is alsothe impossiblepossible step, beyond hope of transaction,tied to the multiplicity of languageswithin the uniquenessof the poeticinscription: several times in one,several languagesin a singlepoetic act. The poemis unique,in itself anotherdate and shibboleth, it forges and sealsin a single idiom, 'in one', the poetic events,a multiplicity of languagesand of equally singular dates.
Whatwill alwaysremain untranslatable within this poemare the marked differencesof languageswithin the poem.There is a doingthat cannotbe reducedto knowing.Celan's marking is a settinginto motion of the differences.As Derrida writes:'the shibboleth,here again, does not resisttranslation by reasonof some semanticsecret, but by virtue of that in it which formsthe cut of a nonsignifying differencein the bodyof the written or oral mark,written in speechas a markwithin a 134 mark, an incisionmarking the very mark itself,16. On both sidesof the historical, political, andlinguistic border (a borderis nevernatural), the meaning,the different meaningsof the wordshibboleth are known: as river, earof grainand olive twig. One canknow how it shouldbe pronounced.Yet a singletrial will determinethat some cannot,while otherscan, pronounce it with the heart'smouth. Some will not pass, while others will passthe line - of the place, of the country, of the community, of whattakes place in a language,in languagesas poems.
For Derrida every poem has its own language.Every poem is one time alone its own language,even when, and maybe especially when, severallanguages are able to crossthere. There are no guaranteeshowever. The poemmay become a watchtower,one may be endowedthrough the poemwith the vigilanceof a sentinel, onemay seewell. However,the valueof the shibbolethmay always,tragically, be inverted.The goodwill of menmay sometimescount for naught.As Derridanotes:
'Watchwordor passwordin the struggleagainst oppression, exclusion, fascism, and racism,it mayalso corrupt its differentialvalue, which is the conditionof allianceand of the poem, making of it a discriminatory limit, the grillwork of policing, of
17What is is how Celan, normalization,and of methodicalsubjugation' . striking aswe shallsee, will work throughthis to developa way of speakingto the Other,to the strange,the differentand the opposite.
16Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994:p. 32 "Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbokthfor Paul Celan': 1994:p. 32 - 33 135
The Centralityof Dates
The word 'Shibboleth'speaks in effect of the threshold,of the crossingof the threshold,of that which permitsone to passor to cross,to transferfrom onethreshold to another:to translate.We find this word in the secondline of 'In eins'. We recall the earlier poem that took the word 'Shibboleth' as its title also. In both poemsthere is a similar configuration of events.They are sealedby the Februaryanniversary, and in boththere is a linking of capitals,Vienna and Madrid, andof Paris,Madrid and
Petropolis.No pasaran already figures in close conjunction with shibboleth. We are dealing with the memory of February 1936- 1939, although neither date nor year appear.
Heart:
heretoo revealwhat you are,
here,in the midst of the market.
Call the shibboleth,call it out
into your alien homeland:
February.Nopasaran. 's
Celanseems to be speakingof an essentialstrangeness, of an estrangementin onetsown home,of not beingat home.There is a suggestionalso of beingcalled awayfrom one'shomeland or awayfrom homein one'shomeland, the 'shall not' pass,which securesand threatens every border crossing in andout of oneself This momentof the shibbolethis re-markedin the date,in the monthof, andin the word,
February.
18Selected Poem: 1990,p. 97 136
The two poemsbeckon to oneanother, kindred, complicitous, allies, but as differentas they can possibly be. Theybear and do not bearthe samedate. A shibbolethsecures the passagefrom oneto the otherin the difference,within sameness,of the samedate, between Februar and Feber. They speak, in the same language,two different languages.They partakeof it.
Let us pausefor a momentwith the word 'partaking'.We aresuggesting a word that namesdifference. It is a line of demarcation,the parting of the waters, scission,caesura as well as participation, that which is divided becauseit is sharedor held in common, imparted and partakenof Derrida will speakof the imparted or partakenas shihholeth and symbolon. In both casesof S-B-L,a pledgeis transmitted to another,'he spoke/ the word in our hand'.A word or a pieceof a word, the complementarypart of an objectdivided in two to sealan alliance,a tessera.This is the momentof engagementof signing,of the pact or contract,of the promise,of the ring.
What is important here is the role the signatureof the date plays. Beyond the singularevent which it marksand of which it would be the detachableproper name, capableof outliving andthus of calling, of recalling,the vanishedas vanished, its very ash,it gatherstogether, like a title, a moreor lessapparent and secret conjunction of singularitieswhich partakeof, andin the futurewill continueto partakeof, the same date.We cannotassign a limit to sucha conjunction.It is determinedby the futureto which a fracturepromises it. No testimonyor knowledgecould by definition exhaust its deciphering. 137
For Celanthe dateis a witness,but onethat maybless it vAthoutknowing all of that for which andof thosefor whomit bearswitness. It is possiblethat theremay no longerbe anywitnesses for this witness.The last wordsof 'Aschenglorie':
No one
bearswitness for the
19 witness.
Folded or refolded in the simplicity of the singular, a certain repetition Derrida arguesassures the minimal and 'internal' readabilityof the poem,even in the absence of a witness,of a signatoryor of anyonewho might havesome knowledge concerning the historicalreference of the poeticlegacy. The word shibboleth,for Celan,seems not to havethis or that meaningderived from its languageof origin: river, earof grain,olive-twig, or indeedthe othermeanings that it takeson in the two poems.It signifies:there is shibboleth,there is somethingof a crypt; it remainsincalcuable, it doesnot conceala singledeterminate secret, a semanticcontent waiting for the one who holdsa key behindthe door.What the poemmarks, what entersand incises languagesin the fonn of a date,is that thereis a partakingof the shibboleth,a partakingat onceopen and closed. The date(signature, moment, place, gathering of singularmarks) always functions as a shibboleth.It showsthat thereis somethingnot shown,that thereis a cipheredsingularity: irreducible to anyconcept, to any knowledge,even to a historyor tradition,be it of a religiouskind. The poemspeaks, evenshould none of its referencesbe intelligible, noneother than the Other,the oneto
19Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan: 2001, p. 261 138 whomit addressesitself andto whom it speaksin sayingthat it speaksto him. Evenif it doesnot reachand leave its mark on, at leastit calls to, the Other.Address takes place.
Within a language,in the poetic writing of a language,there is nothing but shibboleth. Like the date and the name it pennits anniversaries,alliances, returns and commemorations- even if thereis no trace,the subsistentpresence of a remainder.
'Tubingen, Janner' is at once a poem, a date and a signature.Like a shibboleth, it takes into its consignmentenigma and memory, citing the enigma:
Their - 'a
Riddle,what is pure-
ly arisen'-, their
memoryof
floatingHolderlintowers, gull
enswirled.20
in Ta Contrescarpe' '(Quatorze1juillets )'21.We have parentheses, writes ... the Frenchlanguage, and hence, what is untranslatable.July 141celebrates a political andrevolutionary anniversary. Maybe anniversaries in general.The anniversary marksthe return,and by revolution,of the revolutionary.
We how '(Quatorzeljuillets)' is In its dis- notealso the ... writtenwith ans. orthographythis inaudiblemark of the plural insistson the plurality of rings.The
20Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan: 2001, p. 159 139 anniversariesdo not signalonly, necessarily,the returnof the sameoriginal July 14th
Othermore or lesssecret events, other rings, anniversaries, and alliances, other partakingspartake perhaps of the samedate. A parenthesissets alongside: aside. The sameparenthesis sets aside, in reserve,other 'quatorze j uillet': '(QuatorzeIjuillets. Et plus de neufautres.)' The poem opensitself to many other anniversaries.However the
'I don't know' it forcesus into beforeall the possibilitiesindicates a situation.Ile poemspeaks beyond knowledge. As Derridawrites: 'it writes,and what it writesis, first of all, this very fact, that it is addressedand destinedbeyond knowledge, inscribing datesand signatureswhich one may encounterand bless, without knowing
they date What dealing is blessingbeyond everything of what or sign'22. we are with a knowledgecommemorating through forgetting or the unimpartedsecret, partaking yet in the unimpartable.The 'Quatorze/juillets'form the cut of an unrepeatable singuMty.
In manyways we witnesshow this poemcontains many dates or signsof other eventsassociated with July 14'h.We thencome to think of this date,July 14'h,not asa dateof public andpolitical historybut moreperhaps as a datewhich signsin secret.it signalsthe adventof this particularpoem. We re-callthat 'Conversationin the
Mountains'also says: 'and July is no July"'. This occursin the courseof a meditation on the Jew,son of a Jew,whose name is unpronounceable,who possessesnothing of his own,who hasnothing that is not borrowed.,Like a date,what is properto the Jew is to haveno propertyor essence,or identity.It is worth asking,does Celan open a spacebeyond the confinesof identitypolitics?
21Glottal Stop: 101poems by Paul Celan: WesleyanUniv. Press:Hanover: 2000, Trans. by Nikolai Popov and HeatherMcHugh, p. 16 22jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1995,p. 37 23Selected Poem and Prose of Paul Celan: 2001, p. 398 140
We havementioned before what we havedesignated as 'constellations':the severalheterogeneous singukrities that are consignedto the starry configuration of a singledated mark. We bring backto mind the 'constellationsof November'.This time theyare associated with an earnot of grainas in shihboleth,but of com:
WITH THE HAILSTONE, in
the rust-blightedear
of maize,at home,
obedientto the late,the hard
Novemberstars:
woveninto your heart-thread,the
conversationof worms-:
a bowstring,from which
your arrow-scriptwhirrs,
24 archer.
Monthsreturn here, March andSeptember especially. The monthand its return arementioned without referenceto the year,and so it becomesa sign,a way of markingoff the date,its partakingand deportation. What is re-calledis the ring and fate of all archivalrecording. As Derridawrites: 'A datemarks itself andbecomes readableonly in freeingitself from the singularitywhich it nonethelessrecalls. It is readablein its ideality; its bodybecomes an ideal object:always the same,traversing
24Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan 1 1994:p. 38 141 the differentexperiences which point to or constituteit, objective,guaranteed by codes.This ideality carries forgetting into memory, but it is the memory of forgetting forgetting'25This is because is itself, the truth of . the referenceto a singularevent annulledin the ring's annulation,when a monthrecalls and annually annuls a year.
This becomesthe moment when the year turns on itself
The date,in truth, offersitself up for annihilation.The threatdoes not come from without andit is not connectedto the possibilityof someaccident suddenly destroyingthe archive's material support.For the date is threatenedin its coming due, in its conservationand its readibility,by them,insofar as it remains,and permits itself to be read.In its risking the annulmentof what it savesfrom forgetting,it may always becomeno one'sand nothing's date, the essencewithout essenceof ashin which one canno longereven know what oneday, one time alone,under some proper name, was consumed.The nameand the datepartake of this destinyof ash.This is intrinsic to the functioningand being of the date.For it is inherentto the date'serratic essence. to becomereadable and commemorative only in effacingthat which it will have designated,in becomingeach time no one'sdate.
How do we understandthat 'no one's? Thereare two possibilities.The ateis encryptedand remains so. That is, PaulCelan has named and ciphered an eventthat he alone,or alonewith a few others,is ableto commemorate.In this case,then, the
26 - dateof this 'Nevermansdayin September' is destinedno longerto signify at all one day for the survivors,that is to say,essentially, for the reader,interpreter, or guardian of the poem.The datebecomes, once it hascrossed the thresholdof this survival,or
25Jacques Denida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 38 26Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 39 142 spectralreturn, from the momentit crossesthe thresholdof the poem,a no one'sdate, nevermansday.We havejust a momentof finite survival.The nameof September cropsup in a poemthat 'speaks!' It lendsitself to readingto the extentthat it is caught up in, catchesitself up in a networkof marksthat signify andare by convention, intelligible. It has its sharein the beauty of the poem. However, it pays for this readability with the terrible tribute of this lost singularity. We catch a rare moment of mourningreading itself Whatis encryptedin the date,is datedin the date,is in effect effaced.The date becomesmarked in marking itself off. And we have all the losses, all the beings whom we lament in this mourning, all the griefs gatheredin the poem of a datewhose effacement does not await effacement.
The secondpossibility: nothing at all is encryptedin the date.It makesitself availableto all. And yet, the effect in the endis the same.For the other'ssingularity is incinerated.The Septemberrose that is no one'srose. In 'Huhediblu' we find: 'Oh whenwill they reflower,of roses,your Septembers?1,27 The futurebelongs to dates,to their blossomingto come,more particularly in the re-floweringof returns.One does not placeflowers on the stoneof a date,but ratherone awaits the time of the roses,the datedtime. Whatis significantis the dateand not what is born, flowers,opens.
This doublephenomena of sortsis in the natureof things.For the samenessof all datingis gatheredand constituted here. What we encounterhere is the possibility of readingand recurrence, the ring, the anniversaryand its keeping.We encounterthe truth of the poemand its madness.For a datenever is what it is, or what it saysit is,
27Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 40 143 andis alwaysmore or lessthan what it is. Instead,it remainswithout being,by force of music, remains for song.
When
whenbloom, when,
whenbloom the hoomenclibloom,
hoohedibloo,yes them, the September-
roses?
Hoo tue - on ... whenthen?
When,whenwhen,
manywhens,yes mania-
brother 29 ...
And so in the date'sannulment in the anonymityof nothing,as in that of the ring, is this givenof the datethat leavesits tracein the poem.In fact, this traceis the poem.It is notjust the traceof something,of a non-tracethat happened,which took placein that it waslived throughin onesense of the word andasks to be commemorated.It is this andmore. Firstly, it is the traceas date, that which is bound to mark itself off if it is to mark,to bereaveitself if it is to remain.it mustexpose its secret,and risk losingitself if it is to keepit. It mustconstantly blur the border, crossingand re-crossing it, betweenreadability and unreadability. This is the madness of fire that consumesa datefrom within. During the finite time of incinerationthe
21Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 42 144 password,however, is transmitted,communication happens, and the shibbolethis passedfrom handto handand heart to heart.
This annulmentis properand right. For annulmentis at work everywherethat a datedescribes its hereand now within iterability, whenit consignsitself to losingits senses,in self-forgetfulness,succeeding only thus in effacing itself Thesenames standfor others.And a date'sdestiny is analogousto that of everyname, every proper name.Desire leads us to praiseand bless the givenletter, a datewhich, in orderto be what it is, must give itself to be read in ash, in the non-being of its being. Ash is that remainderwithout remainder.Concerning the dateitself, nothingremains, nothing of whatit dates,nothing of what is datedby it. Ratherno oneremains, a priori.
We re-callthe lines from 'Psalm':
Praisedbe your name,no one.29
Or in 'Eimnal' ('Once'):
Oneand Infinite,
annihilated,
ied.
Light was.Salvation. 30
29Selected Poems: 1990,p. 175 30Selected Poems: 1990,p. 271 145
Whenthe datebecomes readable its shibbolethsays to you: T (an almostnothing, oncealone, once alone endlessly recommenced but endedin that very act), I am,I am only a ciphercommemorating just that which will havebeen consigned to oblivion, destinedto becomename, for a finite time, the time of a rose,name of nothing,
'voices of no one', name of no one. Ash, finally.
Like the Septemberroses, the no onevsrose calls for the blessingof that which remainsof that which doesnot remain,what doesnot remainin this remainder,the dust or ash.It sings,yes, amen,to this nothing that remains, and even to the desertin which therewould be no oneleft to blessthe ashes.And so we have'Psalm' again: I-
No onemoulds us againout of earthand clay,
no oneconjures our dust,
No one.
Praisedbe your name,no one.
For your sake
we shall flower.
Towards
you.
A nothing
we were,are, shall
remain,flowering:
the nothing-,the 146
31 no-one'srose.
To speakto no oneis an act of faith itself Whatblessing could be otherwise?
Onceit becomescertitude, it becomesdogma. We aredealing with whatmight be given.We cannever presume. It is incalculable.Thus 'Chymisch':
Great,grey,
sisterly shape
nearlike all that is lost:
All the names,all those
names
burrit with the rest.So much
ashto be blessed.So much
land won
above
the weightless,so weightless
rings 32 of souls.
However,there is a remainder.What seemsto nourishitself or quenchits thirst at the springof being-present.Although it emergesfrom being,it usesup in advancethe beingfrom which it seemsto draw.The remnanceof the remainder- ash, almostnothing - is not the beingthat remains.What is drawn,sucked up, drunkwith
31Selected Poems: 1990: p. 175 32Selected Poems: 1990:p. 179 147 the scoop,with the ash-scoop,with the ash-ladlecomes out of the tub of being.It comesout of it clean, soapy:
DRAWN WITH THE ASH-LADLE
from the tub of being 33 soapy...
A Lingedng Relevance
The centralityof the shibbolethto language,and thereby to all humanthought, canbe garneredby a wideningof our discussionfrom the post-warpoetry of Paul
Celanto the variousshibboleths we encounterin the poetryof SeamusHeaney. We will beginby lookingat a poemfrom his 1972collection WinteringOut. The thematic of the shibbolethis developedin the poem'Broagh':
Riverbank,the long rigs
endingin broaddocken
anda canopiedpad
downto the ford.
The gardenmould
bruisedeasily, the shower
gatheringin your heelmark
wasthe black 0
33Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 47 148
in Broagh,
its low tattoo
amongthe windy boortrees
andrhubarb-blades
endedalmost
suddenly,like that last
gh the strangersfound
difficult to manage.34
We notethat the word 'Broagh' is an anglicizationof the Gaelicword
'Bruach' which means'riverbank'. The first threelines of the poemconclude with dialectwords: we have'rigs' for 'furrows', a word broughtto the North of Irelandby
Scotsplanters; 'docken' is a Scotsand archaic English word, a plural for 'dock- leaves';and the last 'pad' is an Englishand Scotsdialect word for 'path'. Furtherinto the poemwe find the word 'boortrees'which is an old Scotsplural for the elderberry.
This poemthen celebrates the local Planter'sdialect as well asthe 'native' tongue.
What is interestingis how Heaneyconnects the landscape,language and the body.
The languageand the landscapeare tattooed like the body.
The poemdoes set up a paradigmof exclusivenessthrough the last 'gh the strangersfound/ difficult to manage'.And this in the nameof a type of inclusiveness.
For the word 'Broagh' is a word availableto Unionist andNationalist in the North of
Irelandbut excludesanyone from the islandof Britain, especially,one imagines
34Seamus Heaney: Opened Ground. * Poems 1966 - 1996: 1998, p. 54 149 someonefrom Englandwho hasno culturalconnection to the rootsof this particular idiomaticusage of the language.Neil Corcoranwrites of this poem:'Exhilaratedly riding on its own melting,it actsas the linguistic paradigmfor a reconciliationbeyond sectariandivision. Its point is that conflictualhistories have resulted in a community whoseindividual members, whatever their political or religiousaffinity, now all speak the samelanguage, whether derived from Irish or English or Scotsroots. Hence the ability of everyonein this community,whether Catholic or Protestant,to pronounce the place name "Broagh" is intended as a little optimistic or hortatory allegory of potential political, as well as linguistic, communityv35.
Anotherpoem in which we encounterin a significantway the 'shibboleth'in
Heaney'swork is 'From the Frontierof Writing'. It is oneof manyparabolic poems that mark a departurein styleand ambition in Heaney'swriting. It is from the 1987 collectionThe Haw Lantern:
The tightnessand the nilnessround that space
whenthe car stopsin the road,the troopsinspect
its makeand number and, as one bends his face
towardsyour window,you catchsight of more
on a hill beyond,eyeing with intent
downcradled guns that hold you undercover
andeverything is pureinterrogation
35NeH Corcoran: The Poetry ofSeamus Heaney. A Oilical Study: Faber:London: 1998,p. 47 - 48 ISO
until a rifle motionsand you move
with guardedunconcerned acceleration -
a little emptier,a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated,yes, and obedient.
So you drive on to the frontier of writing
where it happensagain. The guns on tripods,
the sergeantwith his on-off mike repeating
dataabout you, waiting for the squawk
of clearance;the marksmantraining down
out of the sunupon you like a hawk.
And suddenlyyou're through,arraigned yet freed,
asif you'd passedfrom behinda waterfall
on the black currentof a tannacroad
pastannour-plated vehicles, out between
the postedsoldiers flowing andreceding
like tree shadowsinto the polishedwindscreen. 36
What is new hereis the vocabularysuggestive of sexualviolation. The 'little
36Seatnus Heaney: Opened Ground. Poems 1966 - 1996: Faber:London: 1998, p. 297 - 298 151 emptier'and 'a little spent',the 'quiver in the self' all conveysomething of sexual transgression,where the poethas been left weakenedand powerless by this encounter.
Whatis interestingis the movefrom the reality of roadblocksin the North of Ireland, or somewhereresembling it, to the land of language,imagination and form. In the world of art an examination,interrogation of the self occursalso. The self is examined,questioned, one presumesby the other half of the self; is it that the ethical self mustask questions of the artistic self?This presumesan othernesswithin, a division within the self A path must be cleared, to allow one to journey on. In the poem Heaneyachieves this. There is a senseof liberation and progressionby the poem's conclusion. What is interesting is how Heaneyimagines the transition. The world of definiteobjects, soldiers, guns, tripods and surveillance equipment, becomes bluffed, fuzzy,indefinite, conveyed through the wateryimagery of a verb like
'flowed'. We havea senseof movementin stasis.Things are not asthey seem.We are in a liminal spaceof the nihilism prior to creation.We shouldbe opento an element of surprisein the actual.Keeping the waysopen for a momentof liberation,an opemngout to a momentof freedom,one has a releasefrom the forcesof tyranny.As
Daniel Tobin writes: 'The poet is never completely cleared, though the hope of clearance,of puretranscendence, is a promisemade viable by our willingnessto forgo in here clearance the andnow'37 .
37Daniel Tobin: Passageto the Centre.- Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetty ofSeamus HeaneY: univ. Pressof Kentucky: Lexington: 1999,p. 232 152
The CrackedTune ChronosSings
Mewe havediscussed things thus far the commemoratingdate and the commemorateddate have tended to rejoin andconjoin in a secretanniversary, and the poemis this anniversary- the anniversaryit singsand blesses, the giving of this ring, the seal of an alliance and of a promise. It belongsto the samedate as the one it blesses,gives and gives back again - the dateto which it at onceboth belongsand is destined.At this strangeborder point that has already passedand is still yet to come there is an effacementbetween the poem's external appearance,its 'empirical' date, and its internal genealogy.We are in a utopian place, where the barriers that nonnally existbetween the inner andthe outer,between the empiricaland the essential,break down.Such is the placeof the poemthat is a blessing.
For Derridawe beginto crossthe borderinto philosophicalquestioning at this point. The philosophicalexperience begins with a questioningthat is a crossingof limits, andit alwaysoccurs within the experienceof language;and as such it is as poeticand literary asit is philosophical.
Derridatouches on the significanceof the clock andthe calendarin Celan's work. Both arekey in how they mark off the day,months and years. We havethe spaceand sound of the revolutionof the hourssounded to us in the beatingof the clock.Both, for Derrida,nmne 'the returnof the other,of the wholly otherin the same'38. For Derridathe hour writes andthe hour speaks,in Celan'spoems with their
" JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan. 1994,p. 48 153
frequentreference to Uhr andStunde. The hour calls andassigns the poem.The hour
provokes,convokes, apostrophizes and addresses the poemthereby, and the poetwho
is claimedby the hour.There is a summonsand an hour.In the poem'Nacht' thereis
a senseof the hour,and a dialogueor conversationwith the turninghour; the sharing
of a word with it.
Mallarmespoke of the initiative returningto words.For Derridathe initiative
alsoreturns to the hour.The poetis provokedand constituted by it. He is revealedto himself from within it. The 'caesuraof the hours', cadence,chance, and sufferance scanthe poem from the moment and moments of its origin. This rhythm that involves a spacingconcerns not only the form of the language,but alsothe origin of meaning,
andof the meaningof language.Celan's Bremen address confronts these questions.
What is the meaningof language,of its senseand place for an exile?The German
languagefor a poetof the Germanlanguage who is not German:
In this languageI havesought, during those years and the yearssince then, to write poems:so asto speak,to orient myself,to find out whereI wasand where I wasmeant to go. It was,you see,event, movement, a beingunderway, it was an attemptto gain direction.And if I inquireinto its meaning,I believeI musttell myselfthat this also involvesthe questionof the clockhand'sdirection. For a poemis not timeless.Certainly it laysclaim to infinity, it 39 seeksto reachthrough time - throughit, not aboveand beyond it.
This is a fearful moment.It is the momentwhen the hourbegins to turn on itself We are at a momentof consumption.It is the becoming-ashor burningup of the date:on the hour, in the hour itself, at eachhour. This is the everpresent threat of
39 SelectedPoem and Prose of Paul Celan: 2001, p. 395 - 396 154 the absolutecrypt: the momentof nonrecurrence,unreadability, amnesia with nothing left, but nonrecurrenceas recurrence,in recurrenceitself
We areat the momentof the holocaustof eachhour. Every hour within the world thereis a holocaust.There is a hell, a memoryof the all-consuming,within our consciousness.To quote Derrida: 'every hour is unique, whether it comesback, and this is the wheelthat turnson itself, or whether,the last, it comesno more,no more
40 thanthe sister,its own the same,its otherrevenant '.
Go, your hour
hasno sisters,you are-
areat home.A wheel,slow,
rolls on its own, the spokes
climb,
1----1
Years.
Years, years,a finger
feels down and up,
Came, came.
Came a word, came,
came through the night,
wanted to shine, wanted to shine.41
' JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 50 41 Celan, JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul 1994,p. 50 - 51 155
In this poemthe ashand the night call to eachother:
Ash.
Ash, ash.
Night.
Night - and- night.
We havespoken of the commemorateddate and the dateof the commemoration,the commemorating.How do you distinguish betweenthem today?
Or on the anniversaryhour, when it hascome? Not so muchbecause this hour,today, at this date,this datedhere and now is not rigorouslythe sameas, merely analogous to, the other,but becausethe originarydate, as coded mark of the otherhere-now, was alreadya sort of fiction, telling of singularityonly in the fable of conventionsand generalities,of what are in any caseiterable marks. What is the truth of this fiction?
Canwe speakof the untruetruth of this truth?Are we at the shibboleth?
The Jewishnessof Thought
Derridastates that 'poetic writing offers itself up to datingin its entirety,42. He pointsout that Celan'sBremen address hints at this ideaalso. Here Celan suggests the poemis alwaysen routefrom a placetoward 'something open' ('an approachable you'), andit makesits way 'across'time, it is never'timeless'. The poemis cipherof singularity,offering its placeand recalling it, offering andrecalling its time at the risk of losingthem in the holocausticgenerality of recurrenceand the readabilityof the
42Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan. 1994,p. 52 156 concept,in the anniversaryrepetition of the unrepeatable.Derrida writes that whereverthere is 'a signaturewhich is at onceunique and iterable, cryptic and is date'43It be date,in readable,there . cannever an absolute the sameway that there cannever be an absolutepoem. However, date, the madnessof when,and the terrifying ambiguityof the shibboleth,the sign of belongingand the threatof discrimination,remains.
A date discernsand concernsa place. It is a situation. The poet's passionis for what Derrida calls the crypt. It occurs every time a singular incision marks the
language.A voice of a poem will always carry beyondthe singular cut: in that the cut
becomesavailable for readingfor thosewho haveno part in the eventor the
constellationof eventsconsigned to it, for thoseexcluded from partakingbut who
mayyet thuspartake and impart. And thuswe cometo whatDeffida calls poetry's
resemblingor possessingthe statusof a philosopheme.Derrida writes: 'Philosophy,
hermeneutics,and poetics can only comeinto beingwithin idioms,within languages,
the bodyof eventsand dates a metalinguisticoverview of which onecould not sayis
impossible- but ratherthat it is guaranteed,from within, soto speak,by the structure
of markingoff which pertainsto the date'siterability, that is to sayits essential
annulment.The effacementof the dateor of the nameinside the ring: hereis the
hermeneutics, their origin of philosophy,of of poetics, sendoff44.
Doesthe affirmationof Judaismwithin Celanhave the samestructure as that
discuss of the date?Derrida proceeds to whatthe statement'We are all Jews'might ,
mean.It suggestsa notion of responsibility,suggesting that we take it Uponourselves.
4' JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan.- 1994,p. 52 44Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Cetan': 1994,p. 53 157
It suggestsan ancientrootedness, and an acceptedmemory within an unchosen destination.Is therean essencehere? Is therea senseof belongingand of partaking?
Celanrecalls the commontheme that thereis no Jewishproperty. 'Because the
Jew,you know, what doeshe havethat is really his own,that is not borrowed,taken A5 andnot returned? The hint is that the Jew is alsothe other,myself and the other;I amJewish in saying:the Jew is the otherwho hasno essence,who hasnothing of his own or whoseown essenceis not to haveone. Thus we haveat oneand the sametime the quote from Russianpoetess Marina Tsvetaeva'All poets are Jews', with its suggestionof the alleged universality of Jewish witnessing, and the incommunicable secretof the Judaic idiom. We have the singularity of 'his name, his unpronounceable 46 namei, .
Whatthen of the Jew's unpronouncablename, his propername? It says shibholeth:this unpronouncablename that cannotbe saidby onewho doesnot partakeof the covenant.The Ephraimitesknow what oneought to saybut cannot.If onepartakes of the covenantor allianceone cannot utter the nameof God also.It is unpronouncableto the Jew,who can sayit, but doesnot, a fact commandedby the law. It is finally the nameof the Jew which the non-Jewhas trouble pronouncing; or, which he doesn'twish to pronounceor deridesby mispronounciation.And so we can saythat its unpronouncabilitykeeps and destroys the name.It cankeep it like the nameof God,or doomit to annihilationamong the ashes.And so Derridawrites:
41Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 54 ' JacquesDenida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994, p. 54 158
4apparentlydifferent or contradictory, thesetwo possibilities can always crossthe border andexchange with oneanother'47 .
The Jewand the nameJew come to exchangethemselves with the shibboleth.
Theyare both in the nameof the other,both singularand universal. Derrida writes:
'witness to the universal by virtue of absolutesingularity, by virtue of and in the name of the other,the stranger,you towardwhom I musttake a stepwhich, without bringing me nearerto you, without exchangingmyself with you, without being assuredpassage, lets the word passand assignsus, if not to the one, at least to the same"8.For Derridawe are dealingwith the passageof the other,toward the other- respectof the same,of a samethat respectsthe othernessof the other.In
'Sprachgitter'we find Celanchoose the word Tassat' to say'We arestrangers',
'Passat'being the nameof a wind:
(WereI like you. Wereyou like me.
Did we not stand
underone tradewind?
)49 We are strangers.
Theyare both strangers.We areboth strangersto eachother. Are we both strangersthen to outsideparties?
find in We Celana temptationto designatethe Judaic,Jewishness - yours and inappropriable for not only mine, asalways something of the other's- found example
41Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbokihfor Paul Cejan': 1994,p. 54 48Jacques Derrida: 'Shibboklhfor Paul Celan 1:1994, p. 55 159 in the poem'Zurich, zurnStorchen'. We find Celanuse the words'I andYou' in complexways. You canbe andare a me. Sothe word You, maybe addressedto the otheras well asto myself,to oneselfas other.
Of too much was our talk, of
too little. Of the You
and You-Again, of
how clarity troubles, of
Jewishness,of
your God.
I I ...
Of your God was our talk, I spoke
against him,...50
The "you', the 'yours' may be addressedto the otheras Jew but alsoto the self asother, as another Jew or asother than Jew. 'The Lock Gate' addressesyou, and your mourning,'all this mourninglofyours". What hasbeen lost, andis beyonda trace,is the word, a word which openslike a shibboleth,on what is mostintimate.
This lost word, the word that is to be mourned,is not only the word 'that had remainedwith me': 'sister'. It is alsothe word that opensthe possibilityof mourning what hasbeen lost beyonda trace(the exterminatedfamily, the incinerationof the family in figure for hour name the of the sister- the word is 'sister' - at the final
49 SelectedPoents and Prose of Paul Celan: 200 11P. 107 50SelectedPoeins: 1990,p. 157 160 which no longerhas a sister- 'your hour/has no sisters').It is the very word which grantsaccess to Jewish mourning: 'Kaddish'. This word addressedme, soughtme, like the hour's interpellation;it camebefore me, it soughtme out, it took the initiative. Then,I lost it. Like the word that hadremained with me: 'sister'. I lost the word that hadremained with me, I lost the onethat soughtme out to mournthe one that hadremained with me:
To a mouth
for which it was one of a thousand
I lost -
I lost a word
that hadremained with me:
sister.
To
the worshipof manygods
I lost a word that waslooking for me: 52 a'h.
Celanis imaginingthe worst kind of loss.He imaginescrossing the line, the boundarywhere mourning itself is deniedus, the interiorizationof the otherin memory,the preservingof the otherin the sepulchreor epitaph.Celan names the incineratedbeyond of the date,words lost without sepulchre.Once dead, and without sepulchre,these words of moumingwhich arethemselves incinerated may yet return.
51Selected Poem: 1990,p. 169 52Selected Poems: 1990,p. 169 161
Theycome back then as phantoms. One hears them roaming about the stelae:
like unsepulcheredwords,
roaming
in the orbit of attained
goals and stelaeand cradles.53
Celan mentions the spectral errancy of words. This spectralreturn is partaken of by all words, from their first emergence.Derrida writes: 'What one calls poetry or literature, itself is but intense familiarity the ineluctable art ... nothing perhaps an with 54 the We translate it into ineluctable loss the originarity of specter' . can the of origin.
It is the momentof mourning,and the experienceof mourning.
The CircumcisedMind
Celanhas mentioned the uniqueevent of circumcisionthat marksthe legitimate entry of the Jew into his community. We have the phrase'it carries across/
55 We have beyond, is to the wound-read' . a passing over that which readto the quick, the point of bleedingand wounding. The cipheris painfully inscribedon the body itself It is readableand unreadable. The literal word 'circumcision' appearsrarely in the bodyof Celan'swritings. However, Derrida writes 'the tropic of circumcision 56 disposes cuts,caesuras, ciphered alliances, and wounded rings throughout the text' .
" JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 58 54Jacques Derrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 58 5' JacquesDenida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994,p. 58 " JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994, p. 59 162
He arguesthat 'it is tied to both the differentialmarks and the destinationof language: the inaccessibilityof the otherreturns there in the same,dates and sets turning the 57 ring,
What does Celan mean by saying 'all poets are Jews'? What the trope comes to, then, is locating the Jew not only as a poet but also in every man circumcised by
languageor led to circumcisea language.We havethree basic significations, for the
word 'circumcision':
(1). The cut which incises the male sexual member, entering and passingaround it to
fonn a circumvenient ring;
(2). A namegiven to the momentof covenantor allianceand of legitimateentry into
the community:a shibbolethwhich cutsand divides, then distinguishes, for example,
by virtue of the languageand the namewhich is givento eachof them,one
circumcisionfrom another,the Jewishfrom the Egyptianoperation from which it is
saidto derive,or indeed,the Muslim operationwhich resemblesit, or manyothers.
(3). The experienceof blessingand of purification.
As Celandevelops the idea,those who undergoor participatein a certain
experiencemight well be calledJews. And that experiencemight be legitimately
referredto asa type of circumcision.We can saythat if all the poetsare Jews, they are
all, then,circumcisers, or circumcised.Celan is keento focusin on all ciphered
wounds.
5' JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celan': 1994, p. 59 163
What doesCelan mean by 'no one'scircumcision'? The evocationof the exterminatedrace designates the raceand root of no one:black erectionin the sky, verge and testicle, race and root of no one. Uprooting of the race and the sex in
'Radix,,Matrix':
Who,
who wasit, that
lineage, the murdered,that looms
black in the sky:
rod andbulb-
(Root.
Abraham'sroot. Jesse'sroot. No one's
root-0 58 ours.
We havethe commandin Celanto circumcisethe word. The verb herehas the word asits object,it speaksabout an operationto be performedon the verburn,on the word. Its complementis the world, or ratherthe Word. We havea referenceto Rabbi
Low:
Rebbe,I gnashedmy teeth,Rebbe Loew:
58Selected Poems: 1990,p. 187 164
cise
this one's
59 word...
This word givento be circumcisedfor someone,this word mustbe an opened word. Open like a wound. Open like a door. A door open to the stranger,to the neighbour,and the guestand to whoever.Open to the onewho will come.Maybe open to the monstrouscreature. Monstrous becausebeyond anticipation, form and norm, beyond every conceivable and known genre.
Is therea referencehere to the prophetElijah? Is he the oneto whom hospitalityis due?He may comeat any moment.And thenin Derridawe find: 'He maycause the eventof his comingto happenat eachinstant'60. Elijah is not only the guest,the one to whom, as relationship itself, the door of the word must be opened;he is not only or simply a messianicand eschatological prophet; according to tradition
Elijah is by God'scommand to be presentat all circumcisions,each time, everytime.
He watchesover them. The onewho holdsthe circumcisedinfant mustbe seatedon what is knownas Elijah's chair.
So,here in this place,in the poem,the monster,or Elijah, the guestor the other,stands before the door, at the poem'sfirst step,on the thresholdof the text. The poem'stitle in translationis: 'To onewho stoodoutside the door... 61He stands
" Glottal Stop: 101 Poents by Paul Celan: WesleyanUniv. Press:Hanover: 2000, Trans. by Nikolai Popov and HeatherMcHugh, p. 9- 10 ' JacquesDerrida: 'Shibbolethfor Paul Celmi': 1994,p. 62 61Glottal Stop: 2000, p. 9- 10 165 beforethe door,as before the law. We think of Kafka's obtuseparable 'Before the
Law'. The door andthe law are intimatelyconnected in Jewishtradition.
The '1' of the poem,the poet,(as figure for you andme maybe?), as representativeanyway of 'all' thosewho 'are Jews'.He opensthe doorto him, but the door turns into the word. What he opensto him is not the door, but the word:
To one who stood outside the door, one
evening:
to him
I openedmy word -: )
Canwe readthis poem,then, as an allegory?We rememberthat an allegory bearsthe word for the other,to the otheror from the other.The poemfollows the vicissitudeof the hours.The times in their turnsare marked.The vicissitudebegins oneevening in the Occidentof the poem'eines Abends'. The poet,the onewho says
opensthe word and addresseshimself to the Rabbi, to the Mohel, to the one whom he appoints as circumciser since he saysto him 'circumcise'. What does he ask of him?To closethe door of the eveningand to openthe door of the morning.If the door speaksthe word, he now, oncethe word is circumcised,asks it for the word of morning,the Orientalword, the poemof the origin.
And Rebbe,slam shut evening's door. 166
Fip open morning's, Re-62
Here we witness a violent opening and closing. Celan's Gennan suggeststhe openingof somethingbrusquely, rapidly andwide. It alsohas connotations of breaking somethingopen, to rend in one stroke, like a veil. There is a hint also of a door being slammed,of somethingbrutal. As though in someone'sdirection, signifying its closing to someone.As for Re-, the name interrupted in the final caesura,the first syllable of an appellation that is not completed and finally remains in the mouth, the Rabbi cut in two. It also carries a connotation of the Egyptian God as well, the sun or light, at the opening of the 'morning door'. This poem is the becoming-poeticof the word; of the wordsbecoming Jewish, if 'all poetsare Jews'. It attemptsto describethe becomingcircumcised of the word of origin.
Circumcisionwill alwaysremain, inescapably, a matterof the body.As much of the physicalbody as the corpusof poemsPaul Celan bequeathed to us.It offers itself for writing andfor readingon the body.Or rather:the senseof the senses,the body, offers itself for thinking, signifying, interpreting thus, as it is revealedthrough this responseto the question:'What is the body proper,said to be proper?': a placeof circumcision.
In the Bible, on the subjectof circumcision,the oppositionof the cleanand the
unclean,the properand the improper,the pureand the impure,coincides often with
that of the circumcisedand the uncircumcised,extending without limit the semantic
62Glottal Stop: 2000, p. 10 167 field of circumcisionand thus defining it only at the limits of definition,of limitation, of circumscription itself, which is to say, conferring on it a singular indefiniteness.
The circumcisionof a word is intimatelyrelated, always, to the body.There is thenan essentialanalogy between this event,on the onehand, and the diacritical difference betweenshibboleth and sihboleth, on the other. For, it is in the body, by reasonof a certain impotence coming over their vocal organs,but an impotence of the bodyproper, of the already cultivated body, limited by a barrier neither organic nor natural, that the Ephraimites experiencedtheir inability to pronouncewhat they nonethelessknew ought to be pronouncedshibboleth - and not sibboleth.
Sowe havean 'unpronounceablename' for some,shibboleth is a circumcised word.For this one,Rabbi, circumcise the word. Give him the word of partaking, impartit to him, also,to this onealso.
The word which is to be circumcised:here it is first of all, opened,like a door, offered, given, or at least promised to the other. The other remains indeterminate- unnamedin the poem.He hasno identifiableface, he simply hasa facesince he must seethe door,and receive the word, evenif this faceremains invisible. It nevershows itself in the poem.It is no one,anyone, the neighbouror the stranger,for with the otherit comesto the same.
The onewho is not yet named,the onewho perhapsawaits his name,awaits its bestowalby a circumcision,is the one-and-only,the unique,this one.He drawsthe whole poemtowards him. It is to him, to this one,that onemust open, give, 168 circumcise,for him that the living Nothingmust be inscribedin the heart:to him, for him, this one.
to him
I openedmy word
[ I ... cise
this one's
word, write
the living
nothing-
nessinto
this one's
heart, spread
this one's
two crippledfingers into a healer's benediction.
This one's.)63
The offering of this word for circumcisionis indeedthe giving of a word, of one9sword, sinceit is saidthat 'I openedmy word'. Givenword, promise, engagement,signature, date, saving word alsoin the form of a poemor a decision.
This word of openingpermits one to passthrough the doorway.It is yet another
63Gload Stop: 2000, p. 9 169 shibboleth,the very shibbolethat the origin of all the others,and yet oneamong others, in a given language.
The shibbolethis givenor promisedby me to the singularother, 'this one' that he may partake of it and enter, or leave, that he may passthrough the doorway, across the line, the border, the threshold. This word also asks.It asks intercession,or rather it intercedeswith the Rabbi- still an other- that he might bestowhim, the third, the value of circumcision on this word - the shibboleth of the community before the law, the sign of the covenant.The Rabbi is a wise man invested with this right; he has the knowledge,and the power to circumcise the word. He is the guardianand the guarantor;it is throughhim that the transmissionof the shibbolethpasses just asthe doorwayis crossed.And this doorwayis nothingother than circumcision as shibboleth,the placeof decisionfor the right of accessto the legitimatecommunity, the covenantor alliance,the givenname of a singularindividual, but the datedname, singularbut inscribedright on the body,on a givenday in a genealogical classification.
It appearsthat the intercessorseems to hold all the powersand all the rights, whetherone thinks of the poem'sintercession, of mine, or of the Rabbi's.This -a shibboleth- intercedes.Here, the powerand knowledge are annulled of themselves.
The knowledgeand the powerof RabbiLow are annulled,his knowing- beingable - to circumcise,which amountin truth to the samething, which arebut one- are immediatelyannihilated in the object-less.They know how andare ableto infinitely, but mustalso infinitely annihilatethemselves. For the writing of circumcisionwhich I askof him, for which I intercedewith the intercessor,is a writing ofNothing. It 170 performs its operation on Nothing, an incisive surgerywhich, to the point of bleeding, to the point of wounding, embedsthe inscription of Nothing in the flesh, in the living word,in the fleshof the pronounceableand circumcised word. In Celan'swriting thereis a proximity of wordsfor writing, slicing,inscribing, cutting and separating.
One gives the word, one's word, in inscribing this Nothing in the heart; thus one shouldnot cut in, but on the contrary allow the word passage.
There is in Celan the echo of Heidegger; in the poem 'Todtnauberg 64a hint of the question of Nothing and the meaning of being. There is the hint of the truth of a being which passesthrough the experienceof Nothing. We have in Celan the hint always of no one's circumcision, the word's circumcision by the incision of Nothing in the circumcisedheart of the other,of this one,you.
What is meantby the demandto circumcisethe word for him, to circumcise his word? More thanone can mean-to-say, more and less than this or that meaning, moreor lessthan this determination.Circumcision is alsoa determination:it defines andit decides.But to askfor circumcisionis not to askfor somethingdeterminate, a meaning or an o ect.
The circumcisedword isfirst ofall written, at onceboth incisedand excised in a body,which maybe the body of a languageand which in anycase always binds the bodyto language:the word which is enteredinto, woundedin orderto be what it is, the word cut into, written becausecut into, caesuredin its origin, with the poem.
64Selected Prose and Poeins of Paul Celan: 2001, p. 315 171
The circumcisedword is, nextofall, readable,starting from nothing,but readable,to he read to the point of wounding and to the point of bleeding. This
circumcisedword grantsaccess to the community,to the covenantor alliance,to the
partakingof a language,in a language.The Rabbibecomes then a poet,revealing the
poet in him. Celan exploresthe question:how can the German languagereceive
circumcision at this poem's date, that is to say, following the holocaust,the solution
thatwas the final cremation,the ashof all? How is oneto blessthese ashes in
German?
And then, as a mark at once both readableand secret,a mark of belonging and
of exclusion,as the woundof partaking,the circumcisedword remindsus alsoof the
doubleedge of a shibboleth.As the mark of a covenantor alliance,it also intervenes,
it interdicts,it signifiesthe sentenceof exclusion,of discrimination,indeed of
extermination. It may be turned againstoneself: then it is the circumcised who are
proscribedor held at the border,excluded from the community,put to death,or
reducedto ashes:at the meresight, in the merename, at the first readingof a wound.
How does one guard oneself against it? With Nothing.
The circumcisionof the word is not datedin history.It calls forth the date.It
opensthe word to the other,and the door, it openshistory andthe poemand hermeneutics philosophyand andreligion. Of all that calls itself - of the nameand the
blessingof the name,of yesand of no, it setsturning the ring, to affirm or to annul. 172
Chapter Foun 'Out to An Other Side: Poetry as a Way to the Transcendental Other
Before proceedingto a discussionof poemsby SeamusHeaney we will look at poemsby two very different writers. The poet Cathal 0' Searcaighcomes from
Donegalon the North Westcoast of Irelandand writes in Gaelic.The secondis the
American contemporarypoet Adrienne Rich. The first poem from 0' Searcaighis called 'Breakthrough':
Soundasleep, you put up
No defences,no wall,
So at night, I walk
Your mind's landscape,
Its sky more naturally blue
Thanthe sashGod's motherwore.
On the otherside of a word
Thereis sucha view.'
This is a poemdrawn from the intimacyof the boudoir.We identify its context fairly quickly; it is a pillow poem. It is significant that it is so intimate. We are at a 173 point wherenormal boundaries break down. There is a possibilityof deepcommunion which humanromantic love offersus the greatesttaste of The bodyis oneof our primary boundaries.Interestingly 0' Searcaighclaims the de-limiting power of this fact is challenged,removed, rendered less powerful in the momentof human intimacy. So he can walk the 'mind's lanscape' of his lover. And how does0'
Searcaighenvision this space?It is a deepblue - bluer than the virginal blue of Mary the Mother of God.So we aretalking aboutpositivity andpurity. Thereis a quality of absolutenessabout this bluenessalso, because it is associatedwith the divine. We re- call that 0' Searcaighis in a very positive frame of mind here lying besidehis sleepinglover. The poem arguesthat this is the spacethat poetry itself emergesfrom.
0' Searcaighintroduces a very strangeidea, alien, apparentlyto his overall preoccupation.He sayspoetry, or languagetries to capturethe plenitudehe has touchedon here.It is the view on the far sideof a word. Sothere is a gapto be traversed,there is an echoto be heard,a promiseto be fulfilled andit is poetrythat signalsthat for us. In anothertranslation the suggestionis of a melody,a musicwhere word andfeeling are united, the distancenormally or typically hauntingthem is 2 close own.
In this contextanother poem of 0' Searcaigh'sprovocatively titled
'Transubstantiation'is worth examining:
Betweenthe thoughtand the word
Are regionsof ice andfog;
I Cathal O'Searcaigh:Out in the Open: CIOIar-Chonnachta: Conarnara: 1997, p. 117, Trans. by Frank Sewell I Cathal O'Searcaigh:An Bealach 'na Bhaile. Homecoming: CIOjar-Chonnachta: Conamara: 1995, p. 151, Trans. by JoanMcBreen 174
But all my life I'll be
Shatteringthe frost, scatteringthe fog
Stirringand sunning
th my heart's fiery rays
So that you'll flower one day
You that are only a shadow.3
0' Searcaighpaints the momentthat existsin between.The momentof
poetry's birth is when the fog and the ice are dispersedby the sun's rays flowing from
the poet'sheart, in an attemptto bring the momentof shadowto light. Whatexists
betweenthe thoughtand the word is a nebulousregion within which we cannotdwell
comfortably.In morecontemporary terms, is 0' Searcaighspeaking of the gapthat
existsin the realmbetween signifier and signified? 0' Searcaighsuggests a moment
of nothingness.For Blanchot it is the moment of absence.For 0' Searcaighthe
continual poetic task is to venture into this domain and bring the poem to light, to
makeit live, to allow it to be. And he hassucceeded in doingthat here.We canenter
into the momentof nothingnesssuggested by his terms'fog' and 'ice' anddwell
there.So his poetryhas succeeded. We canimagine the momentof nothingness,
approachit anddwell within it, all throughthe transubstantivepoetic world andword,
wherethose terms are tautological.
3 CathalO'Searcaigh: An Bealach 'na Bhaile.- Homecoming: Clo lar-Chonnachta:Conamara: 1993, 185, Trans.by GabrielFitzmaurice 175
AdrienneRich's poemcomes from a collectionsuggestively titled TheDream ofa CommonLanguage: Poems 1974 - 1977:
Your silencetoday is a pondwhere drowned things live
I want to seeraised dripping and brought into the sun.
It's not my own face I seethere, but other faces,
evenyour faceat anotherage.
Whatever'slost thereis neededby both of us-
a watchof old gold, a water-blurredfever chart,
a key....Even the silt andpebbles of the bottom
deservetheir glint of recognition.I fear this silence,
this inarticulatelife. I'm waiting
for a wind that will gentlyopen this sheetedwater
for once,and show me what I cando
for you, who haveoften madethe unnameable
nameable,for others,even for me.4
Rich is talking aboutthe natureof poeticactivity here.The implicationof her imageryis that shesees it asa sacramental,certainly sacred process. She creates the ideaof depththrough the useof waterimagery. The nothingnessthat existsbefore the poeticmoment and which alwaysthreatens it from the outside,at the edgesof poetic utterance,is vast,has a surfaceand depth to it. Rich succeedsin suggestingits spatial dimensions.And yet, paradoxically,drowned things live there,waiting to be retrieved.Items, useless elements from a pastitinerary wait there,exist, live, awaiting
" AdrienneRich: The Dream ofA Common Language: Norton: New York: 1993, p.29 176 retrievalby the poeticword which is a type of personal,maybe racial, memory. It is a necessitythat we enter into this space.We need to name even the most inconsequentialthings. What is normallypassed over must not be missedin our namingof creation.Nothing exists outside the poeticword.
The one moment of dread soundedin the poem is the fear of silence, of not
beingable to utter the poeticword. The mouthof Orpheusmust never be silenced.It
is the voice of the race, its past, presentand future dependson the ability of this poetic
word to name the world within which it exists and the nothingnessfrom out of which
it came:which alwaysshadows it. Thereis a continual,creative and constructive
battlegoing on betweenthe poeticnaming and the nothingnessthat precedesit and
from which it proceeds.Wind is a traditionalterm for poeticinspiration, sanctioned
by the Judaeo-Christiantradition alsoas an imageof the holy spirit. The poetawaits
this momentof visitationin orderto be ableto name.Is the 'you' in that poema
partner,a lover of the poet?Or is it inspirationitself which is known in intimate
terms?Again, the key suggestionis oneOf similarity, in the senseof familiarity.
Somethingwill affive whi.ch you will know andbe ableto name,and help you to
namethereby. The struggleis alwayswith bringingthings to the surface,to the light,
to clarity andunderstanding by naming.
Somepoems by SeamusHeaney are informativein this context.The first
comesfrom his sequence'Glanmore Sonnets'. It is numberfour, anda poemtaken
from his 1979collection Field Work. 177
GlanmoreSonnets
IV
I usedto lie with an earto the line
For that way,they said,there should come a sound
Escaping ahead,an iron tune
Of flange and piston Pitched along the ground,
But I neverheard that. Always,instead,
Struck couplings and shuntingstwo miles away
Lifted over the woods. The head
Of a horse swirled back from a gate, a grey
Turnoverof haunchand mane, and I'd look
Up to the cuttingwhere she'd soon appear.
Two fields back,in the house,small ripplesshook
Silently acrossour drinkingwater
(As they are shakingnow acrossmy heart)
5 And vanishedinto wherethey seemedto start.
The circumstancesdescribed in this poem are easyenough to sketch in. The poethad been told to listen to the train comingby feeling its vibrationsthrough the railway tracks.The poetdisputes what he hasbeen told, andreceived wisdom is under question.You musttest it for yourself He sayshe heardthe train comingover the trees.There is an interestingplay or reversalat work here,between the groundand the air asimages for transmittingpresence, between the below andthe above.While Rich favouredthe undergroundcurrencies of rivers,the lake andthe sea,Seamus Heaney is
3 SeamusHeaney: Opened Groun& Poems 1966 - 1996: Faber: London: 1998, p. 166 178 optingfor the air, its very airinessand lightness is the mediumof travel for any messageof significance.Heaney conveys brilliantly how you can know something beforeit arrivesby its registeringin the sensiblethings around you, in its vibrations.
Its beingis announceddespite its absence.Even the sensitivealthough unintelligent world can register this. Thus the image of the horse that is sensitiveto and re-acts, pre-empts,is aware of, the oncoming train and announcesthis moment to the poet.
Eventwo fields back,registering distance in local currency,the presenceof the train is anticipated in the rippling water which also registersin the poet's heart. What is interestingto note is the 'now' of that secondlast line. Is Heaneytalking about the later moment of poetic creation which has come after the original, originary event but which still retainsits innateforce, or presence?And thenwe havethe stunningfinal image:'And vanishedinto wherethey seemedto start'. And so we havethe imageof nothingnessand clearance; what seemsto allow beingto emergeis the momentof its disappearance.To quoteDerrida on Heideggerfrom Aporias:death 'signifies the 6. possibilityof the measurelessimpossibility of existence The poemitself exists,is, canbe readand understood, just asthe imagethat is inscribedwithin it containsthe ideaof its own disappearance.
The secondpoem from Heaneycomes from his sequenceof sonnets
'Clearances".from his 1987volume TheHaw Lantern.This entirecycle deals with the deathof significantmembers of Heaney'sfamily, particularlyhis motherand a favouriteaunt:
6 JacquesDerrida: Apotias: StanfordUniv. Press:California: 1993, p,72, Trans. by ThomasDutoit 179
Clearances
II
Polishedlinoleum shone there. Brass taps shone.
The chinacups were very white andbig -
An unchippedset with sugarbowl andjug.
The kettle whistled. Sandwich and tea scone
Werepresent and correct. In caseit run,
The butter must be kept out of the sun.
And don't be dropping crumbs. Don't tilt your chair.
Don't reach.Don't point. Don't make noise when you stir.
It is Number5, New Row, Land of the Dead,
Wheregrandfather is rising from his place
With spectaclespushed back on a cleanbald head
To welcomea bewilderedhoming daughter
Beforesh6 even knocks. 'What's this?What's thisT
And they sit down in the shiningroom together. 7
In this poemHeaney creates and re-creates a lost world. SimonCritchley identifiesthe poetictrope prosopopeia as onein which an absentor imaginaryperson is presentedas speaking and acting8- He speaksof this asrevealing a failure of representation,an inability to conveythe reality of deathbecause it is a momentwhen consciousnessdisappears. And it is a failure of presence.We will readHeaney closely
7 OpenedGround. 1998,p. 308 Very Little Almost Nothing: 1997, 73: deathis the SimonCritch1ey: ... p. 'the representationof not intuition fikeness death, representationof a presence,an object of perceptionor - we cannot draw a of a 180 bearingthis reflectionin mind, with the view that Heaneystill createsa world that is thereand into which we canenter and comprehend. So we entera transcendental spacethat is meaningfuland can be comprehended.It existsin its own uniquespace.
Heaneysuggests the world his mothergrew up in. It is a very orderedworld where
everythinghad its properplace, from the childrento the china.There is a luminosity
announcedin this world from the word go, or at least from the use of the word 'shone'
twice in the opening line. A trait of Heaney's work is the focus on the particular and
the tangible. We recognizethe scones,the butter, the tea set and the sun. The moral
world is createdor suggestedalso, the world apart from the material world that the
child inhabited, through phraseslike 'Don't run', etc. The surprising shift is the sestet
whenwe realizethat the placedescribed in the octetdoes not existany longer. It is the
'land of the dead'.Heaney's grandfather is rising to meethis spectraldaughter,
althoughhe is a spectrehimself Thereis a momentof recognition,a meetingpoint
which the poemcan only hint at andnot describewhere both expectthe arrival of
somethingthey will know, haveexpected and yet not haveunderstood or graspedwith
the intellect,or conceptualunderstanding. The poemsuggests that the world of the
unknownwill be recognizedand understood.
Heaneyhas created two tangibleworlds. Through the real he hassuggested the
liminal, the unreal,the disappeared.We can enterinto or residein the world of the
octet.It is the world we know,yet it is only, althougha significantonly, the world of
a poem.So there are layersof removal.We havethe poeticre-creation of a world, of
the real world that is the world of the disappeared,and then, in the sestetwe havethe
descriptionof an afterworldin termsdrawn from this world, a world that we don't
death portrait, a still life, or whatever.Thus, representationsof are misrepresentations,or rather they are representationsof an absence'. 181 know yet. Poetry, the innate argumentof the poem dealswith the languageof presenceand absence,is a practicing of the sacramentalword, and is the only means by which suchcross over lines,the traversingof the chiasmusbetween being and nothingness,presence and absence, can be achieved.Heaney's poem operates on a transcendentalact of faith groundedin the possibilities of the poetic word. We are urged to travel with him as we believe in the reality of the fictional world he has constructedor created.
The idea of a type of sacramentalpresence being conveyed,suggested, created by meansof the poetic word is an idea Heaneyutilizes in anotherpoem from this sequence,sonnet three from 'Clearances':
III
Whenall the otherswere away at Mass
I wasall hersas we peeledpotatoes.
Theybroke the silence,let fall oneby one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comfortsset between us, things to share
Gleamingin a bucketof cleanwater.
And againlet fall. Little pleasantsplashes
From eachother's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parishpriest at her bedside
Went hammerand tongs at the prayersfor the dying
And somewere responding and somecrying 182
I rememberedher headbent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives- 9 Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
We note the daring use of sexual innuendo in the secondline 'I was all hers'.
This is all the more striking by being placed in the vicinity of the referenceto religious observation;the rest of the family are at Mass. The religious ceremonyis aimed at creating communion, a moment of unity when the normally disparate
elementsof the human world are united in harmony through and with the body of
Christ. Heaneycreates a secularalternative. Through the act of peeling potatoes,again
a solid, everydayreality, also a life sustainingfood item for Heaney's generationof
rural Irish folk, a momentof communionis createdbetween Heaney and his mother.
Thereis a sensethat they are lost in their work; the mind is removedfrom the body in
a way. This languagesand imagery is suggestiveof a type of spiritual or mystic
harmony;where the alienatedmind that often operatesat a removefrom the activities
of the bodyis suspendedin a type of ecstasy.And so while the priestgoes through
with the formal liturgy utilised at the death-bedHeaney recalls this moment of
gemimeintimacy and closeness as he mournsfor the lossof his mother.In this poem
we witnessthe creativityof the analogicalimagination at work. What is interestingto
noteis how Heaneyis still intnguedby andfascinated with the notion of communion;
it is whathe is still trying to attainpoetically, and in the real world. The situation
describedby Heaneylocates a sacredpower within the everyday,and within the
injaginationof the poetas he drawsit out throughhis verbalact of poesy,in a direct
challengeto the representativesof official religion. The implicationbehind Heaney's
opened Ground: 1998,P. 309 183
is to the the draws to poem of a unity experienceand world; -poet on metaphor overcomethe world's apparentgaps and breakagesin a narrative moment of wholenessand meaning.
Enter Maurice Blanchot
The SpaceofLiterature (1955) by French novelist, critic and philosopher
Maurice Blanchot contains a chapter entitled 'The Work and Death's Space"O.Here
Blanchot expoundsa core argument in his thesis for the first time. A novelist himself,
Blanchot is keenly aware of the elusive nature of 'creative' writing. The figure for this is Poetry. For him Poetry is always escapingeach and every attempt by the writer to hold it or tie it down,to formulateand thereby contain it. Thereis no certainty aboutPoetry in termsof eitherform or content.Those who attemptto formulatea moralframework on the basisof poeticactivity or its productsare bound to flounder.
The mark of the true poetis his hesitancyregarding his statusas a poetat all. What is vital is the poet'ssearch for her poetry,or just Poetry.The poetmust relinquish all attemptsat masteryhere as she is challenged,tested, investigated,rendered uncertain by Poetryitself The work producedby Poetryquestions everything. The work always
forcesthe writer out of complacency,and forces her out of the familiarity of what she
doesand knows, thereby forcing her out from the possibilitiesof what shecan do.
Whatthen is the natureof the poeticwork? What is achievedwhen the poem
is finally bom?For Blanchotthe poemis but one instantof the infinite possibilitiesof
the humanmind. The poemis the momentwhen possibility becomes power, the
10maurice Blanchot: The Spaceoftiterature: Univ. of NebraskaPress: Nebraska: 1989,p. 85 - 159, Trans. by Ann Smock 184
4gra, (to usea word foreignto Blanchot'sformulation) when mind U--ced' moment becomesthe givencertainty of a realisedform, a beautifulbody. For Blanchotthe work is but one instant, a privileged moment, along the path of infinity which the mind is capableof conceiving.The mind is infinite andthe work alwaysrecognises this.
Blanchotconsiders in detail a notefrom FranzKafka's Diaries: 'On the way home, I said to Max that on my death bed, provided the suffering is not too great, I will be very content. I forgot to add, and later I omitted this on purpose,that the best of what I have written is basedupon this capacity to die content". Kafka writes about the powerhe feelsover his characterswho are dying,and indirectly the readerwho will feel the pathosof this moment:'I evenenjoy dying in the characterwho is dying.
ThusI calculatinglyexploit the reader'sattention which I haveconcentrated upon death;I keepa muchclearer head than he, who will lament,I suppose,on his deathbed.My lamentationis thusas perfect as possible. It doesnot interruptitself 12 abruptlythe way real lamentationdoes, rather it follows its beautiful,pure course'
The senseof masteryand calculation suggested here by Kafka amazesBlanchot.
Contemplatingthis Blanchotwonders, should one turn the momentof supreme dissatisfactionto oneof satisfaction;should one be clearheadedand balanced in this moment,the moreso to the degreethat thesevalues are threatened? One should be capableof turningthe extremenegative, death, into the supremeand absolutely positive,where possibility, project and time are realised.
II The SpaceofLiterature: 1989,p. 90 12The SpaceofLiterature: 1989,p. 90 185
Blanchotargues that a concernwith deathis the centralfactor in all of Franz
Kafka's work; from the storiesIn the Penal Colony and The Metamorphosisand The
Judgementright throughto whenhe conceivesand writes his novel TheTrial. What
surprisesthe readerwho identifiesthis line of enquiryis how quickly andsilently
Kafka's charactersdie. Blanchot accountsfor this through what will becomethe
central argumentof The SpaceofLiterature. He suggeststhat not only when they die,
evenas they struggleto live, whenthey arealive, Kafka's protagonistsexist within
death's space.It is to the indefinite time of 'dying' that they truly belong. In fact the
reasonthat they exist at all is to test this strangenessout, and through them Kafka
himself is also tested.The reasonhe can work, creatework at all, is through his ability
to be in tunewith this eventualpossibility, to standtrial with death,to be its equal.
Enter Kirilov, Stage Right
The figure of Kirilov hashaunted modem writing eversince Dostoyevsky
conceivedhim for his novel ThePossessed. French writer and philosopher Albert
Camusdevotes some reflections to this figure in his philosophical and political essay
knownin Englishas TheRebel. Kirilov is the cool and calm rationalist.Men fear
deathand that is why they arepersistent in living. Our humanfear of deathis the
point at which the ideaof God originates.The authentichuman challenge is to liberate
ourselvesfrom this fear,and to oustGod, and we can only conductthis enterprise
satisfactorilyby choosingdeath, to die in oppositionto what we fear.It is herethat
authentichuman freedom is located.Vital to this is that we annexto our
consciousnessthe ideaof our own disappearance.Blanchot's particular insight lies in
his question:'Does he [Kirilov] provethrough his deaththe possibilitywhich he 186 receivedin advancefrom his death,that powerof not beingwhich permittedhim to be is, freely himself himself - to be, that though linked to himself, always other than - the power,to act, speak,take risks,and be without being?' 13
Blanchot is here developing themesthat he touched on in his earlier essay
14 'Literature the Right to Death' found in The Work (1949) In that and ofFire . earlier essayBlanchot had written: 'The realm of the imaginary is not a strangeregion situatedbeyond the world, it is the world itself, but the world as entire, manifold, the world as a whole. That is why it is not in the world, becauseit is the world, grasped and realized in its entirety by the global negation of all the individual realities containedin it, by their disqualification,their absence,by the realizationof that
absenceitself, which is how literary creationbegins, for whenliterary creationgoes
backover each thing andeach being, it cherishesthe illusion that it is creatingthem,
becausenow it is seeingand naming them from the startingpoint of everything,from
the starting point of the absenceof everything, that is, from nothing'15.Blanchot will
go on to saythat literature,like life, mustendure death and maintain itself in it. The
basis for Blanchot's argumentlies in an interpretation of how languageworks. It lies
in how meaning is createdin the first instancein languageitself We presentan object
in language.We representit. This is the death,though, of the objectin itself andof the
person.When we speakof the boy, the man,or of John,we denythe boy, the manand
Johntheir reality. We denythem their flesh andblood reality in the realmof
representationthat is language.The word is a placeof deprivationpresenting being in
the absenceof being. For Blanchotthe deaththat is to comeis presentin this moment
of figurativedeath. It is what makesit possible.The boy, a man,or John,or a woman,
13The SpaceofLiterature: 1989:p. 99 14 The Work of Fire: StanfordUniv. Press:California: 1995,Trans. by Charlotte Mandell 187 canbe removedfrom their presentand presence, removed from their existenceand be plungedinto nothingnessby the fact of their future death.The annihilation through which significationcomes into beingthrough language is possiblebecause of the mortalityof humanbeing.
Speakingof the woman, as figure for his thought, Blanchot writes: 'if this womanwere not really capableof dying,if shewere not threathenedby deathat every moment of her life, bound andjoined to death by an essentialbond, I would not be able to carry out that ideal negation, that deferred assassinationwhich is what my
16 17 languageis' We Gillian Rose's Blanchot here She . note astute criticism of . notes the passivityof this femalesubject for Blanchot.Does this femalesubject not havea will, identity,personality and a desireto work of her own?Blanchot goes on to write that literature'is the presenceof thingsbefore the world exists,their perseverance afterthe world hasdisappeared, the stubbornnessof what remainswhen everything vanishesand the dumbfoundednessof what appearswhen nothing exists"'. And so
RodolpheGasche will write: 'if literatureis a marvel,a wonder(une merveille), as
Blanchot holds, it is so precisely becauseits origin is a mystery. It occurs in ways that arenot predicatable.It happensas if it hadno antecedents,each time new and singular.The contradictoryconditions that give rise to literatureare felicitious, preciselybecause it remainsmysterious how literaturedepends on them.The wonder
15 77te Work of Fire: 1995, p. 316 16 The Work of Fire: 1995,p. 323 11 Gillian Rose: 'Potter's Field., death worked and unworked, in Maurice Blanchot.- The Demand of Writing: Routledge:London: 1996,p. 203. Shewrites: 'nothing be learnt from the disparity ... can betweenthe evocationof her nameand her actuality, her desire and work, becauseshe is not a self- relation whosemiddle term is equallythe other's self-relation,his desireand work. The ruin of love, with its alwaysattendant risk of loss, follows from the ruin of action and the impossibilityof deathin manchot'. Is The Work of Fire: 1995, p. 328 188 of literature is nothing but the silent wonder about its existence'19.Given the impossibility of his task the writer will always produce somethingthat is singular and unique.Gasche writes: 'the work is an Otherin that it is unpredictable,umnasterable in its effect,and escapes reappropriation. It is not an Otherin the Hegeliansense of beingthe Otherof self. Its Othernessis not that of the alienatedself, but of something
derivation from hence irrecuperablev20 Paradoxically that refuses self and remains . then in a moment of emptinesseverything becomespossible. Literature possessesan infinite power to endurecontradiction. This is founded ironically on the death of the subjectfor Blanchot. For languageand literature to proceedat all, which they patently do, then I must not be fully recuperableto myself For me to speakat all and become therebya universalsubject I mustexperience a distancefrom myself And thuswe reachthe point describedby ChristopherFynsk where we canspeak of 'my consciousnesswithout me, appearing as other in the form of an impersonalanonymity that is lessa presencethan the presenceof an absence,the intrusionof the outside, relation with an irreduciblealterity"21.
For Blanchot then to be is always determinedby our capacity not to be.
Shadowdetermines light. We arenow beginningto strikethe particulartenor of
Blanchot'sthought, what we might submitas his 'originality'. Blanchotargues that whoevergives him or herselfover fully to negationcan never use it. For if you belong absolutelyto it, youcan never take leave of yourself,for youthereby belong to the neutralitythat is absence,in which oneis oneselfno longer.From this perspective deathis no longerto come,for it is that which comesno longer.Death, or suicide,
" RudolpheGasche: 'The Felicities of Paradox:Blanchot on the nulls-spaceof literature, in Maujice Blanchot. The Demand of Witing: Routledge:London: 1996, p. 45 20 Gasche:1996, p. 47 - 48 189 moreproperly considered, is a delusionaccording to Blanchot,if the desirethat lies behindsuicide is to kill oneselfat a determinedmoment. For Blanchotdeath can neverbe present.Suicides seek to abolishthe future asthe mysteryof death. indecipherabledeath is renderedreadable, is madetransparent, the suicidevainly hopes.The suicide seeksto relieve death of its still-to-comenesswhich is its very essence,to render it safe and vulnerable, but substancelessthereby. For Blanchot all our preparationsand readiness, the carefulsuicide note and chosen moment are vain,
for we can have no power over the essentialindeterminacy that is the moment of
be death- for death can never a relation to a chosen,determined moment any more
than it can bear a determinedrelation to myself
For Blanchotthen there is a similarity anddifference in art andsuicide. Both
involvean investmentin possibility.Both wish to extendthemselves into the region
of the ungraspable.Death as such is not the answer.Death appearsto offer an answer
in that we haveconceived of it asan attemptto deliver us up finally into the
unfathomablebeyond. For Blanchotall that deathreveals is the 'empty depthof the
beyond'. Death loosensmy hold upon myself and castsme out of my power from the
beginninguntil the very finish, andbecomes ultimately, without relationto me, 'the
unrealityof the infinite'. This is what suicidedelivers. However, the work seeksthis
reversalas its origin. The work seeks,wants to dwell in the momentof absence,when
my deathis robbedfrom, or deniedto, me. Suicideor voluntarydeath is blind to this
possibility,refuses to seethe deathone cannot grasp, the deathone cannot reach. A
call from this spacereaches out to the work. The work is drawnto this spacedespite
itself It is absolutelyput to the testby somethingthat visits it from this space.The
" ChristopherFynsk: 'Crossingthe Areshold. Literature and the Right to Death', in Maurice Blanchot.- The Demand of Wtiting: Routledge: 1996, p. 84 190 work is drawnto this moment,space, or placewhere everything is exposedto the highest risk, where being is put at risk, where the right and power to die itself is gambled.As he wrotein his earlieressay 'Literature and the Right to Death': 'Death workswith us in the world; it is a powerthat humanizesnature, that raisesexistence to being,and it is within eachone of us asour mosthuman quality; it is deathonly in the world - man knows death only becausehe is man, and he is man only becausehe is deathin the processof becoming.But to die is to shatterthe world; it is the lossof the person,the annihilation of the being; and so it is also the loss of death,the loss of what in it and for me made it death. As long as I live, I am a mortal man, but when I die, by ceasingto be a man I also ceaseto be mortal, I am no longer capableof dying, andmy impendingdeath horrifies me becauseI seeit asit is: no longerdeath but the
-)22 impossibilityof dying
The Descent into Hell
In Blanchot'sview two modempoets have had somethingvaluable, interesting and revealing to say concerning suicide and art. For a time Mallarme confuseda concern for the work with an affirmation of suicide and Rilke sought a relationship with deaththat would be more 'exact' thanthat previouslyconsidered under the rubricsof voluntarydeath.
Mallarmeacknowledges in a letterto Cazalis(November 14,1896) that Igitur is an undertakingin which poetryitself is at stake.The ideaof igitur suggestsan attemptto makethe work possibleby graspingit at the point wherewhat is presentis
22The Workof Fire: 1995,p. 337 191 the absenceof all power,a type of impotence.As Mallarmedescribes it: dunfortunately, by digging this thoroughly into verse,I have encounteredtwo abysses
despair.One is Nothingness The I havefound is whichmake me ... othervoid which 23 the onein my breast. 'And now, havingreached the horriblevision of a purework,
I havealmost lost my reasonand the meaningof the mostfamiliar words.'
'Everything which, as a result, my being has suffered during this long agony is indescribable,but fortunatelyI dead Which is I am perfectly ... to conveyto you that impersonal,and no longer Stephane know'24 What is for am now whom you . altered Mallanne is his 'normal' relationships; that relationship that ordinarily exists to the world, to his habitual use of the language;what this experiencealters is the physical assuranceof his own living. Mallarmethe poetis finally yieldedup to the experience of death- the deathof his personand its truth; he meetsthe cold faceof death's impersonality.We hazard.
From outsidethe experiencewe guessthat Mallarmebegan within the feeling or sensationof nothingness.He wasattentive to, in touchwith the pulsingof its vitality, its force and mystery was what he contemplatedin order to accomplishthe poetic task. In the languageof paradox we might say that he experiencedthe activity of absence.For Blanchot, in the moment of his poetic darknessMallarme graspedthe peculiarpresence that shadesabsence. In the momentof abandonmentone feels the strengthof a persistentpresence. Mallarme articulated in his remarkson languagethe ability of the word to renderthe absenceof things,to evokethem in this absence,and yet to somehowauthentically transmit, to be faithful to, the valueof their absence.We might speakparadoxically of a presentabsentness: 'it subsistsas the dissimulated
23 The SpaceofLiterature: 1995,p. 108 24 The Spaceof Literature: 1995,p. 108 192 presenceof being,and in this dissimulationit persistsas chance which cannotbe abolished.And yet this is where everything is at stake, for the work is possible only if absenceis pureand perfect, only if in the presenceof Midnight, the dice canbe thrown.There alone the work's origin speaks;there it begins,it finds therethe force 25 of the beginning'.
In the momentof absoluteabsence the poetencounters two words:it is.
Disengagedfrom beings he meetsthe mystery of this reality. In the flioment of nothingness,nothingness itself can no longer be negated,it is what is affinned, the baseline which is asserted,and which statesand claims nothingnessas being. This experienceoperates as the limit uponthe infinite andbears witness to a definitive momentwhen the momentof deathpartakes in truth. For the work which beginsin negationcan do sobecause it beginsin the certaintyof that distanthorizon which is its point of origin, and ultimately, arrival.
The authenticigitur experiencepresents to consciousnessits own disappearance.This is the ongoing artistic task. We have to imagine, lucidly, advance outsideourselves, 'transcend' our bodily limits, our presentpresence, and grasp the momentof our disengagementour absenceand dissolution. We mustappear to ourselvesin this disappearance,we mustgather up to ourselvesthis essentialdeath which is the life of the consciousnessand form the uniqueact of the deathto come.
Thereis a convergingof emergentand vanishing lines of thought,consciousness,
Beingor Poetry,at the momentwhen thought reaches the point whereits-very-setf
25 The SpaceofLiterature: 1955,p. 109- 110 193 emergesand disappearsinto liquidation. For Blanchot what is experiencedhere is the intimacy of absence,the moment of night. Essentially, by disappearinginto death we do not institutedisappearance and thereby establish the night. No, it is alwaysthe absolutepresence of this disappearance,and that alone,whereby we areallowed to
die. Through this baselineof experiencewe are introduced to our mortal decisionsand
ability to act. As Blanchot wrote in 'Literature and the Right to Death': 'if we call this
powernegation or unrealityor death,then presently death, negation, and unreality, at
work in the depthsof language,will signify the advent of truth in the world, the
constructionof intelligible being, the formation of meaning-)26.
H%ereinthe Panther Stalks
For BlanchotRainer Maria Rilke of all modempoets carried out the intensest
clarificationof our humantask of what it meansto live within this intimacyof
darkness,night, or death.When we examineRilke's poeticimages something
philosophicallysignificant is revealed.Rilke suggeststhat death'ripens' in our very
heart.Death is the 'fruit'; that sweet,obscure fruit, a fruit still 'green' that, we 'leaves bear For Rilke deathis from andbark', must andnouriSh27 . then not something
outsidethat befallsus by accident.The logic of his imagessuggests that we should
strive,or aim to live with deathas an intimateamidst our being,our living. Death
strikesprofoundly from within the deepheart's core. Death draws life from deep
within, from the centreof our living. We haveto strive to respectthe immanenceof
deathwithin our lives. At the sametime we mustrespect the transcendenceof deathto
26 The Work of Fire: 1995,P. 344 27 The SpaceofLiterature: 1989,p. 125 194 our humanhistory, life andexperience. So it is alwaysthere, as a presence,and not there,at the sametime.
We mustcontinually strive to be awareof 'this otherside'. Rilke struggledto articulate it in poetic terms:
With all its eyesthe creaturesees
The Open. Our eyesonly are
28 As if reversed.
For Rilke, if we could seethings from the other side,we will alter our perception,or accessto our experience.We would be readyfor transformation.Rilke alsocalls this
'other side' 'the purerelation', becausethe fact of beinglies in this relation,outside oneself,in the thing itself, andnot in the representationof the thing. Throughdeath our eyesturn backand this returnindicates, comes from the otherside, and the other sideis the fact of living no longerturned away but turnedback, working from within the intimacy of conversion,from within the night. We are not deprived of consciousness,but establishedby consciousnessitself, outsideof it. For Rilke this is alwaysan ecstaticmoment or movement.What Rilke is strugglingto articulateis the spacewhereby the reality of the outdoorsis experiencedintimately from within, and wherethe outsideis within ourselvesin all its intimacyand when the intimate vastnessof the outsidewithin the intimacyis known, felt andexperienced. Rilke namesthis experienceby the term Wellinnenraum,the world's inner space:
29 The Spaceof Literature: 1995,p. 134 195
Through all beings spreadsthe one space:
The world's inner space.Silently fly the birds
All through us. 01 who want to grow,
I look outside,and it is in me that the tree grows!29
Blanchot notes how everything is convertedinward, and needsto be transmutedby this experienceof the outside/inside,and the inside/outside:
Man is linked to things, he is in the midst of them, and if he renounceshis realising and representingactivity, if he apparently withdraws into himself, it is not in order to dismiss everything which isn't he, the humble and outworn realities, but rather to take thesewith him, to make them participate in this interiorization where they lose their use value, their falsified nature, and lose also their narrow boundaries in order to penetrateinto their true profundity. Thus doesthis conversionappear as an immensetask of transmutation,in which things, all things, are transformedand interiorized by becoming interior in us and by becoming interior to themselves.This transformationof the visible into the invisible and of the invisible into the always more invisible takes place where the fact of being unrevealeddoes not expressa simple privation, but accessto the other side which is not turned toward us nor do we 30 shed light upon it.
Thus emergesthe poetic task. The poet introduces all things into the space where nothing retains them at all and where they are utterly free, then, to be themselves,after havingconfronted the possibilityof their very non-being.In confrontationwith their absolutedispossession they arereleased, we no longersee themas objects of decoration,of purposeor utility. Theyjoin us in the intimacyof the risk wherethey andwe areno longersheltered. In the poemRilke saysthat interior space'translates things'. Throughthat spacethey are passed,translated, one dares to saytransfigured from onelanguage to another.The poettranslates them through this
29 The Spaceof Literature: 1989,p. 136 30 The SpaceofLiterature: 1989,p. 139- 140 196 spacefrom the foreign, exterior languageto the altogetherinterior, the interior of languageeven where languagenames in silence and possibly becauseof and by silenceitself The poem's spaceis one in which nothing is no longer presentand is, whereeverything is spokenin the midst of absenceand emptiness, and everything finally returnsinto its true spiritualaccord which is openness,the deadcentre of the eternalmovement.
The poet's task as a bearer of the Word is to translatethe visible into the
invisible and the invisible into the visible. As Rilke reflected: 'how could one sustain, how could one savethe visible, if not by creating the languageof absence,of the
invisible' ?31The poem is the vortex into which everything dies, where everything is
reversed,where there is an infinite passagebetween the two domainsand the final
spaceof metamorphosisand energetic circulation. The figure for this possibilityin
Rilke's writing is Orpheus.Orpheus is the act of metamorphosis:a singer of the song
born at the momentof disappearance,the songthat articulatesthe anguishof that
disappearance.He is alwaysmore though than poetic plenitude although he is that. He
is the origin of the poem. He is the sacrificial point which is no longer the
reconciliation of the two domains,but rather he is the abyss,the chasmof the lost god,
the onewho infinitely tracesthe momentof absence:
0 you, lost god! You, infinite trace!
By dismemberingyou the hostile forceshad to disperseyou 32 To makeof us now hearersand a mouthof Nature.
31 The SpaceofLiterature: 1995,p. 142 33 The SpaceofLiterature: 1995,p. 143 197
There is an interesting shift in the later Rilke. He seemsto allude in later writings to a completedtime that would hold still in a pure circle of time closed upon itself What exactly is the nature of that time? Does Rilke mean a spacewherein this time risesabove the specificnature of a givenmoment, or a spacewherein absent
presenceis consumedand duration is alteredinto timelessness?Rilke seemsto have
in mind a spacewhere we can be, but not just subsisting,a being there that is whole,
liberated,complete and content. We haveas our taskto aim for this space,this stateof
equilibrium, to establishthings and ourselveswithin this space.We will not just
disappearbut perpetuate.We will make things invisible so that they may be reborn in
their invisibility. Rilke seemsto open up the horizon, window, or possibility whereby
throughdying we canescape death:
And thesethings whose life
Is declineunderstand that you praisethem; fleeting,
They lend us, us the mostfleeting, the powerto save.
Theywant us to changethem in the bottomof our invisible
heart
Into -0 infinite - into ourselves!Whatsover we may be in the 33 end.
For Rilke if oneonly seesdeath then one suffersthe error of a limited life and
a poorly convertedor understoodconsciousness. Maybe death narrowly understood is
the dangerouslie. Deathis the meansby which we closedown, de-limit, being.It is
the falseroute through which we transmute,badly, all thingsinto objects.When we
13 The Spare of Literature: 1995, p. 146 198 areunjustifiably pre-occupied with our own finish we tendto closeoff, narrowdown other objects. If freedom meansanything then it must be liberation from this closing off, a real liberationfrom deathwhere we approachthe point wherebydeath becomes transparent.
As Blanchot readsRilke there is a key element to the human's consentto death.It hingeson our awarenessof our own passingaway. We arethe only onesthis side of deathto be aware and to have the opportunity to consentto the passingthat is death.We are the only creatureswho articulate through speech,song, drama, art and poetry, our disappearance.So, in humanity death attains a new level, a unique point, of being,in that in andthrough us it sings.For Blanchotthen there is a pactbetween deathand singing, death is the momentthat is transmutedin song,the invisible transformedby the invisible.We mustnot losesight of the everydayworld here.For it is only throughthe mediationof objectstowards which we arecalled to be responsible that this transformationis possible:
Being here below and being beyond, may both claim you
Strangely,without distinction. 34
one of the two domainsmust not be overemphasisedat the expenseof the other:the visible is necessaryto the invisible; it is savedin the i'visible, but it is alsowhat saves the invisible.This necessarycontrast establishes a vital equalitybetween the two
poles.
34 The Spaceof Literature: 1989,p. 150 199
This entiremovement is dependentupon what we will term the transcendental momentoftsion. It is found in our gazeas it no longer looks forward at goals, but that looksbackward, over the shoulderat thingsthemselves as they lie behindin order to grasptheir 'closedexistence', a vision foundin my attemptto graspthem in their completeseparateness, as objectsperfected not definedby contextor utility, but in the pureinnocence of beingitself. This experiencelies at the kernel(this detachedvision, at the heart)of Rilke's Duino Elegies.For Blanchotthis experienceis 'an ecstatic
is the 'an death35 The experience'which also gazeof art and experienceof . writer doesnot beginwith the hierarchyimposed by the materialand commercial worlds.
Art is only interestedin objectsaccording to an absolutedisinterestedness defined by the infinite distancegiven it by death. The poet's point of departureis the approachto the point wherenothingness begins. Art searchesfor the point of opening,the experienceof the origin, the Open.Art is in searchof a true dying. As Simon
Critchleynotes: 'Orpheus does not wantto makethe invisible visible, but rather(and impossibly) the invisible invisible'36 to see as .
For Blanchot there is a dark impurity that hauntsthis moment isolated by
Rilke's writings andreflections. It is the fearful sideof the absoluteindetenninacy that is the momentof death.It is the other sideof its excessiveness.It is the very indeterminacythat makesit an impuretranscendence, what makesthis moment absolutelyungraspable. Death is somethingbeyond its worldly reality, it is always elusive,its faceis alwaysturned away. Death is discrete,revealing its essential intimacyat the very momentthat it opensus up to its profoundunreality. For deathis an abyss,something which doesnot foundbut alwaysreveals absence and the lossof
35 The SpaceofLiterature: 1989, p. 151 31 Very Little Almost Nothing: 1997, Simon Critchley: ... p. 43 200 all foundation.So, for Rilke, deathbecomes at the heartof its invisibility, a non-event, a moment that is not there, yet is an accomplishment,a part of an event that is happeningand yet cannotbe realised.As RodolpheGasche writes: 'Deathis the power of an alwaysother or alternatepossibility (alternative) and hence the "cause" of ambiguity, becauseeven though it allows ideality, universality and meaningto come about, it continuesto perpetuate"an irreducible double meaning, a choice whoseterms are covered over with the ambiguitythat makesthem identical to one another as it makesthem opposite" [Gascheis quoting from Blanchot's essay
'Literature and the Right to Death']. Indeed, death is the inevitable power of the additional possibility of a foundering of meaning, a lack of meaning, and losing the chanceof its occurrence.Ideality and universality are always in jeopardy. There is alwaysthe possibilitythat they may not occur.This alsomeans that all relationto an
Other, be andall possibleaddress could possibly missing'37.
The Orphic SpaceDescends
Onceand for all, 38 It is Orpheuswhen there is song.He comesand he goes.
In Rilke then,according to the readingprovided by MauriceBlanchot,
Orpheusis not a symbolof a lofty transcendencethat the poetis the vehicleof and for. Orpheusis not the figure for the god speakingthrough the poet.Orpheus is not a symbolfor etemityand the immutabilityof the poeticsphere. No, Orpheusis the
37 Gasche,Maurice Blanchot. The Demand - of Writing, p. 64 - 65 38 The Spaceof Literature: 1989,p. 156 201 symbolof the immeasurabledemand that we disappear.Orpheus prophetically calls us to die more profoundly:
0 seekto understandthat he mustdisappear!
Even if the anguishof it dismay him,
While his word extendsthis world,
Already he is beyond where you may not accompanyhim.
And he obeysby going beyond.39
Orpheusdraws us towardsthe point wherehe himself,symbol of the eternalpoem, entersinto his own disappearance,where he identifieswith the very forcesthat
dismemberhim andbecomes a purecontradiction, the 'lost god, the absenceof God.
Orpheusis the bridge,the emptysignifier, lying over the momentof origin, wherethe
poemis lacking,as well asthe secureexistence and hope for andin truth andthe
gods.In this spacethe powerto speakand the powerto hearare tested, they undergo their own lack, they endurethe instanceof their impossibility.
We arrive,then, at the symbolof the rosein Rilke's poeticoeuvre. For Rilke
the roseis a symbol,the perceptiblepresence of Orphic space;it is the spaceof
outernessand intimacy. It is a placewhere things do not de-limit oneanother, where
in their commonunfurling they makeroom for eachother, and where constantly they
into handful Within 40: f transfonnthe outsideworld ... a of
39 The SpaceofLiterature: 1989,p. 156 40 The Spaceof Literature: 1989,p. 157 202
Almost a being without boundariesand as if spared
And more purely inner and very strangelytender
And illuminating itself right up to the edge,
41 Is such a thing known to US?
in it is intimacy The poem - and the poet - this exposedto the world, opened unreservedlyto being. Within this space,things and being itself are transformed into innerness.Here the word touchesand is touched by the deepestintimacy. The word abandonsassurance and risks itself The word touchesthis point where nothing can be said of being and nothing made. Here everything starts over, and here, dying itself is a never-endingtask:
Rose,oh reinerWiderspruch, Lust
NiemandesSchlaf zu seinunter soviel
Lidem.
Rose, 0 pure contradiction, delight
Of being no one's sleep under so many
42 Lids.
introducing Jacques
In his first major work Of GrammatologyJacques Derrida proposed the thesis that 'differance' is the sourceof linguistic value.For meaningto be constitutedthere
41 The SpaceofLiterature: 1989,p. 157 42 The SpaceofLiterature: 1989,p. 157 - 158 203
has to be a trace of othernesswithin the smallest portion of temporal experience.
Meaningis constitutedthrough difference: 'Without a retentionin the minimal unit of
temporal experience,without a trace retaining the other as other in the same,no difference do its 3,43At would work andno meaningwould appear . this point we witness the birth of the trace. For Derrida the traceppens up meaning. It is neither in the world nor in 'another world', neither in time or space.Differences produce the elementsof texts through the chains and systemsof traces: 'The trace is injact the absolute origin ofsense in generaL Which amountsto saying once again that there is no absolute origin ofsense in general, The trace is the difference which opens A4 appearance[I'apparaitre] and signification
Derrida and the Faith of the Blind
In Memoirs ofthe Blind. The Set(-Portrait and Other Ruins,45 Derrida writes of the structuralblindness that is built into all art. Arguablythe coreargument of the book is that all seeingis inhabitedby a type of blindness.Writing of this text by
Derrida John D. Caputo speaksof a 'transcendentalblindness'46, that is, the invisibility of the act of drawing itself which can never be represented.Drawing becomesthereby an operationof the blind.
To illustrate.A blindnessinheres in the originaryact of drawingitself, at the very point of contactbetween pen and paper. The momentof the traceinvolves both
43 JacquesDerrida: Of Grammatology: JohnHopkins Univ. Press:Baltimore: 1998, Trans.by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak p. 62 44 of Grammatology: 1998,P. 65 45 JacquesDerrida: Memoirs of the Blind- The Self-Porft-ait and Other Ruins: Univ. of Chicago press: Chicago: 1993 204 memoryand forgetting. Even in the presenceof a live model,once the artist turnshis or her eyefrom their modelto facethe blank sheetbefore them, they must proceed on the basisof memoryalone. So there is a breakwith the tyrannyof the present.Before the penstrikes a line on the blank pagethere is a re-assemblingof sortsas there is an act of exclusionand inclusion, enlargement and diminishment as somethings are left out andothers are exaggerated. When the artist proceedsto draw theybecome blind to the immediacyof what is presentand surrender their pensor brushesand paper to the world that is instituted in the dark.
Derrida, continuing his idea of the trace first developedin Of Grammatology, noteshow eventhe traceitself, what is tracedout, after it is traced,is alsowithdrawn.
The linesdrawn must not obtrudewith their own densityand colour. For the picture or paintingto work they mustwithdraw, become invisible and allow themselvesto be eclipsed,in favourof the visible thingsthat rise up into presencethrough the trace.In the strict senseof the term we do not seethe linesbut 'through' the lines which are what permitthe visible to be seenby shutteringor structuringthe light. Derridanotes how this echoestalk of the deusabsconditus, the God who disappears,who withdraws 47 behindthe visible world.
Concerningthe self-portrait,Derrida notes how it is a drawingthat always arrivestoo late.This is setup by the gapor spacingthat existsbetween the seeing glanceand the seen.The artist's living gazeis alwaysa momentof ruin. For Derrida thereis no seeingthat seesitself asseeing. The seeingeye of the artist,the deadeye in the miffor, andthe spectatoreye that seeshimself or herselfas an objectseen, are all
46 John D. Caputo: The Prayers and Tears of JacquesDerrida: Refigon ivithout Religion: Indiana Univ. Press:Bloomington: 1997,p. 319 205
separatedby an abyss.As soonas the artist attemptsto re-capturehimself, to see himself seeing,the thing itself hasalready slipped away.
For Deffida this ruin is not a failure or a weakness;rather the momentof
fracture is the transcendentalcondition of the self-portrait:
Ruin is that which happensto the imagefrom the moment of the first gaze.Ruin is the self-portrait,this facelooked at in the faceas the memoryof itself, what remainsor returnsas a specterfrom the momentone first looks at oneselfand a figurationis eclipsed.The figure,the face, thensees its visibility beingeaten away; it losesits integritywithout disintegrating.48
For Deffida, then,rather than the felicity andoriginary integrity of self-knowledge,
the self-portraitis morelike mourninga lost lovedone, the thing itself havingslipped
away.Derrida speaks of ruin not asif it werethe remainingfragment of a lost totality,
but the conditioningstructure of experienceitself, andof memory,the inherent
spacingand withdrawal that inhabitsexperience so that what we experienceis never
quite 'presence',is alwaysmarked up andpartially withdrawn,marked and re-marked
by trait andretrait.
And by suchmeans Jacques Derrida makes room for faith. We cannotknow
faceto face,we mustsee through the glassdarkly, or throughthe looking glass.
Ue 11faut 'I don't know, has believe%49 Deffida will say ne saispas. croire', one to .
47 The Prayers and Tears of JacquesDerrida: Religion without Religion: 1997, p. 320 48Memoirs of the Blind. The Seff-Portrait and Other Ruins: 1993,p. 68 49Memoirs of the Blind., The SeY-Portrait and Other Ruins: 1993,p. 129 206
Chapter Five: Un-solid Foundations: The Aporetic, Philosophical Faith and the Plight of Metaphysics today
We concludedthe last chapterwith a referenceto JacquesDerrida's Memoirs ofthe Blind'. That referencesuggested a type of post-modemfaith. We will explore this position in the current chapter with the aid'of SeamusHeaney's poetry. There is a recurrent concern in Heaney's oeuvre with the act of writing itself. We can trace this tendencyat work from the poem that is often seenas his early poetic manifesto
'Digging' (foundin the 1966collection Death ofa Naturalis?) right throughto 'Field
of Vision' (in 199I's SeeingThings). This preoccupationis revealedin the Heaney
poemsthat concernthemselves with reflectionson the work of art andthe role of the
artist.One of the finestexamples of this type of Heaneypoem is 'The Forge"found in
his 1969collection Door Into the Dark4.'The Forge' is generallyseen as belonging to
a distinctivetype of Heaneypoem in which he takesthe craftsmanor the artisanand
imaginativelyre-constitutes him asa figure for the poet.Such poems also include
'The Diviner', 'Follower, 'Digging' from Death ofa Naturalist and 'Thatcher'and
'The GivenNote' foundin Door Into the Dark.
1Jacques Derrida: Memoirs of the Blind., The Sey-Portrait and Other Ruins: Trans. by Anne Brault and Mchael Naas: Univ. of ChicagoPress: Chicago: 1993 2 Naturalist: Faber& Faber: SeamusHeaney: Death of a London: 1991,p. 13 - 14 207
The Forge
All I know is a doorinto the dark.
Outside,old axlesand iron hoopsrusting;
Inside,the hammeredanvil's short-pitchedring,
The unpredictablefantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoetoughens in water.
The anvil mustbe somewherein the centre,
Homed as a unicom, at one end square,
Setthere immoveable: an altar
Wherehe expendshimself in shapeand music.
Sometimes,leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leansout on thejamb, recallsa clatter
Of hoofswhere traffic is flashingin rows;
Thengrunts and goes in, with a slamand flick
To beatreal iron out, to work the bellows.
The suggestionof a negative poetics is hinted at in the rather gnomic phrasing
line: know is is hint here of 'The Forge's'opening 'All I a door into the dark'. There a The "all know' is intrinsically It of knowledge,transition and passageway. I negative. limits knowledge is concernsitself with the of aboutsomething. The passage not the for 'door into normalvoyage into enlighteningunderstanding, the poetonly knowsa
the dark', or maybethe voyageinto 'the dark' will be a paradoxicaljourney into a
dark understandingthat will be illuminating?The knowledgeworth knowingmight be
3 SeamusHeaney: Seeing Things: Faber & Faber:London: 1991, p. 22 1 SealnusHeaney: opened Ground. Poents 1966 - 1996: Faber & Faber:London: 1998,p. 19 208 locatedwhere we cannotfind, arenot looking for it, or wherewe leastexpect to locate it.
Heaney'suse of the phrases'outside' and 'inside' suggesta barriercrossed, a beforeand an after.It is worth notinghow he constructsthe senseof spacein this poem.The passageto the interior of the ironmonger's forge is seenas a journey from the mundaneand the transitory,the coldaxles and iron hoopsrusting' to the fantastic and the exciting, the 'unpredictable fantail of sparks'. Although the end of the poem indicatesthat the trade of the forger is virtually extinct, for now the 'traffic is flashing in rows', Heaneystill usesthe suggestivephrase 'the anvil mustbe somewhereat the centre'.Does this 'centre' indicatea creative,literary, philosophical or theological centreremoved from the commercialhighways or the technologicalhighways? We arejustified in askingthis questionbecause the impreciselanguage used in the poemsuggests more than it defines. The vaguenessof 'somewhere'indicates an appropriatelack of definition or fixednessthat is somewhatparadoxical given the very solid world of the forgewith its iron hoops,axles, and anvils.
In fact, the languageof the poem operatesat two significant levels. On the one
handwe havethe concretelanguage of the 'clatter of hoofs', of the 'slam anda flick'
andthe 'hairs in the nose'of the forgerhimself. On the otherhand we havethe anvil
which is called'an altar' at onepoint, the 'unpredictablefantail of sparks', 'shape
andmusic', andas we shall seethe 'real iron' that getsbeaten out in the world of the
forge.Both tendenciesare unitedin the descriptionof the anvil. It is 'homedas a
unicorn' at oneend and at the otherit is just 'square'.The imageof the unicorn
emergesfrom the world of myth andfantasy while the phrase'square' suggests the 209 somewhatdull, if reliable.Heaney holds both togetherin his imageof the anvil as altar.It is a placeof transformation.Does the fantasticbecome the real,or doesthe realbecome fantasy? Or areelements of both foundtogether? Heaney doesn't answer this 'question'after raising it. In onesense poetry has an advantageover the more rigorousprocedures of thoughtfound in philosophyor theology.The poetdoes not haveto justify his choiceof metaphor.It is asif the real world is shadowedby the world of the imagined.One seems to reflect andcontain the other.That is all he needs for his poemto work.
For the farrier to do his creativework thereis a type of generousgiving required.We noteHeaney's use of the term 'expends'.This verb suggestsmore than hardphysical labour, a labourof love maybe,or life-giving birth?There is something stubbornlyresistant in the work andattitude of the farrier.He returnsto his work with
defianceeven after observinghow the world haspassed him andhis tradeby. He goes
'to beatreal iron out'. The poemsuggests that despitethe fact that his tradehas been last, supercededby modemtransport the farrier is still involvedin work that will
somethingof value.What is that value?
To help us explicitly theorize our concerns we turn to the arguments about
by Jacques Derrida in his This negative theology presented essay 'Saufle Nom5.
5 Thefirst versionof thistext appearedin Englishunder the title Post-Scriplum(subtitle: Aporlas,
Waysand Voices)in a volumedevoted to negativetheology (Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, eds.
Denida andNegative Theology [Albany: State University of New York Press,1992]). The version we
haveworked from appearedin the collectionof essayscalled On the Name(trans. John P. LeaveyJr. ) le Nom(Post Scriptum)(Thomas Dutoit California: underthe title Sauf - ed.: StanfordUniv. Press: 1995). 210 essayconcerns itself with the limits of negativetheology. In particularit meditateson the mystic poetry of Angelus Silesius.
The logical premiseof negativetheology is easilystated. God, the deity, exceedsall the boundariesof containmentwe cancreate for him in andthrough the languageof human thought and argument.The manner in which Derrida writes about this indicates a recurrent pre-occupationof his own Philosophical meditations. For him negativetheology dealswith 'the singularity of the unknown God1,6 that always overflows the boundariesof essenceand divinity. The unknown God will always exceedthe conceptionsof negative or positive theology, of philosophical categories like being and nothingness.The unknown God utterly transcendsall theselimiting categorizations.Derrida notesthat he is not the first to arrive on this scene.Husserl statedthat the apophaticstatements of negativetheology indicate a significant 7 Of CriSiS, This 4moment . crisis challengesthe presumptionsof phenomenology,as well asontological and transcendental theology and philosophy. What challengesthe premisesof thesedisciplines is the emptinessarticulated by the apophaticstatement; this is 'essentialand necessaryto themI8.One outgrowth of this is a new senseof community,precisely and paradoxically through this communal,possibly primal emptiness.Can a new tongue,a new speech,a new languagebe translatedfrom the depthsof this silence,this primitive inarticulatenessthat negativetheology concerns itself with?
6 JacquesDerrida: Samfk Now 1995,p. 52 7 JacquesDerrida: Sauf k Now 1995,p. 50 " JacquesDerrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 51 211
Deffida's Saufle Nomopens up a 'window', a doorinto the world of Heaney's forgerthat allowsus readthis world asa world that alwayscontains something
'more'. Thereis a plus factor,an alternativedimension to the world aswe have conceivedit. It is simplynot enoughto seethings as they are.In the wordsof conventionalclichd: there is moreto the world of the forgerthan meets the eye.
Heaneyhas something in commonwith the forger.Indicative of this is our question:
Why doesHeaney deploy the forgeras a figure for the artist,if we concedethat that is that he is doingin this poem,and in similar poemslike 'The Diviner' and 'The Given
Note'9?Heaney is clearlyworking in the world of metaphorbut is this dependent,and doesit revolveor hingeon the possibilityof transcendenceas deployed by linguistic andimaginative substitution? Are we in the world of Derridean'differance'? Is the imaginativeact at work in Heaney'spoem (where the forgercan come to standfor so muchmore than the manualworker he is) indicativeof somethingprofound in the way languageworks, wWch is of profoundsignificance to anydiscourse that presupposesto speakof 'God'?
As we have noted before, in his first major work OfGrammatology Jacques
Deffida proposedthe thesisthat 'differance' is the sourceof linguistic value.For meaningto be constitutedthere has to be a traceof othernesswithin the smallest portionof temporalexperience. As we sawearlier, meaning is constitutedthrough difference:'Without a retentionin the minimal unit of temporalexperience, without a traceretaining the otheras other in the same,no differencewould do its work andno meaningwould appear''O.At this point we witnessthe birth of the trace.For Deffida the traceopens up meaning.It is neitherin the world nor in 'anotherworld', neitherin
9 SeamusHeaney: Opened Ground. Poenn 1966 - 1996: Faber & Faber:London: 1998,p. 13, p.36 212 time nor space.Differences produce the elementsof textsthrough the chainsand systemsof traces:'The trace is infact the absoluteorigin ofsensein generaLWhich amountsto sayingonce again that thereis no absoluteorigin ofsensein generaLThe traceis the differencewhich opensappearance [I'apparaitre] and signif ication'
John D. Caputo arguesthat Derrida's concept of differance is not a 12 transcendentalcategory. The Deffidean term differance is not a symbol for the hiddenGod, it is not a manifestpresence, it hasno truth. Still andall we haveto allow for the fact that it is what enableswhat is manifest to appearin the first place. In the passagequoted above from OfGrammatology Derrida is dealing with the conditions underwhich wordsand concepts come to be conceived,formed or articulatedin the very first instance.The term is a substitute,all we have,for the differentialmatrix from which all names,concepts and identities emerge. For Deffida the term differance indicatesa certainnervous breakdown of language.It extendsa challengeto all discoursesfrom negativetheology, with its attemptto non-speakGod's groundand soul,as if from within the inner sanctumof divine beingitself, to the representational thinking,conceptual formation and discursive reasoning of traditionalphilosophy and theology. Negative theology is always an event within language,something that occursto language,a fear andtrembling of language.As suchit will alwaysbe tainted by the brushof differance.
Canwe speakof differancethen as a primary category,to speakthe language of a moreconventional and traditional metaphysics? Any sufficientor enabling
10Jacques Derrida: Of Grammatology: John Hopkins Univ. Press:Baltimore: 1998,Trans. by Gayatri Chakraworty Spivak,p. 62 " JacquesDerrida: Of Grammatology: 1998,p. 65 213
conditionwould be traditionallyreferred to asa transcendentalcondition. A classic
expressionof this type of formulation is David Tracy's argumentsin BlessedRagefor
Order13 Here Tracy 'moments' birth . arguesthat thereare two that give to eachand every fonn of philosophical reflection. Tracy identifies the first by the tenn 'the
phenomenologicalmoment' and the secondby 'the transcendentalmoment'. The
phenomenologicalmoment has been with us since the birth of Westernphilosophy
(even though it might find the terminology strange)insofar as one of the primary aims
of classical philosophy was to initiate and sustaina detailed exploration of the very
ground, that is, basis, of every phenomenonwhich presenteditself to human
consciousness.By its very self-definitionphilosophy was obliged to seekout the
fundamentalpresuppositions of every discipline, method and phenomenon.The
transcendentalmoment has also shadowed Western philosophy from the very outset,
for philosophyhas always sought to rise aboveor delvebelow each and every
phenomenon,discipline and method in an attemptat unearthingthe 'conditionsof
possibility' of that phenomenon,that disciplineand that method.
It is a fundamentaltenet of Westernphilosophy in its transcendentalistmode
that everyphenomenon or objectpossesses 'a priori' conditions.These conditions are
constitutiveof all humanexperience and knowledge to the extentthat we might call themconditions ofpossibility, that is, theyare so constitutiveof anyperformance of actionor cognitionthat we canexhibit themdeductively from it. Modemphilosophy is still pursuingthis taskwhen it addressesthe question:what arethe basic'a priori' conditionsof all humanliving andthought?
12John D. Caputo: The Prayers and Tears of JacquesDerrida: Religion without Religion: Indiana 214
Onesuspects the reasonwhy Tracyuses the term 'moment' is that he wishes to suggestthe basicunity behindwhat is really a philosophicalmovement, that the
metaphysicalmoment is an essentialpart of the phenomenologicalmoment itself; that
the phenomenologicalmoment moves on into the transcendentalmoment; that both
aredifferent dimensions of the onephilosophical movement. We witnessthis clearly
when phenomenologicalself-awareness is raised to the point where a reflective and
explicit examination of the problematic statusof phenomenologicalreflection itself
becomesunavoidable. At this point the phenomenologistis obligednot only to
explore phenomenabut must reformulate the transcendentalquestion itself since logic
demandsthat sheor he addressthe primaryquestion of the basicground or
presuppositionsof everyand all phenomena,of anyor all phenomenological
reflection.To phraseit differently,the phenomenologicalmoment discloses the
meaningand meaningfulness of anygiven experience while the transcendental
momentdiscloses the true conditionsof possibilityof that experience.
For JohnD. Caputothis is indicativeof traditionalmetaphysics' attempt to tie
thingsup, nail thingsdown, seal up the case.Caputo argues that it is a betterand more
adequatedescription to refer to differanceas a quasi-transcendentalcondition. It is all
too awareof its own inadequacyand feebleness. Differance always indicates a
momentwhen meaning slips away, when sense squirms free from the strict
demarcationsof surrounding,enclosing horizons. It alwaysexceeds, overflows, 14 transcendsits own margins.
Univ. Press:Bloomington: 1997,p. 12 13David Tracy: BlessedRagefor Order. The SeaburyPress: New York: 1975 Tears Dmida: 14John D. Caputo: The Prayers and ofJ"ques 1997,p. 13 - 14 215
In the light of sucha position'The Forger'can represent Heaney and his world, it canbe itself, aswell asbeing a figure for the artist,as well asstanding for all of creativehumanity, in an infinite varietyof creativepossibilities. It is surely liberatingto conceiveof poetry,language and meaning in suchplayful terms.
In Saufle Nom it is interesting to observehow Derrida deals with the logical incongruities of the negativetheological tradition that always threatensto deconstruct its own premisesfrom within beforeit evenutters a word. A distinctivetradition of negativetheology exists becauseit has left behind the traces of its thought in its own classictexts and its own style.The mostcreative metaphor or symbolof this tradition is 'the desert'.From within this desertthough negative theology cultivates itself asan oasisof memory,an institution,a history:'it is a culture,with its archivesand its
A5 For Deffida the language in theologytests the traditions . utilized negative very limits of languageitself It is no surpriseto find the authorof Of Grammatology interestedin sucha prospect.Through the momentof witnessnegative theology finds
'by it 16 its presence: testifying remains' .
Let us look at the poem with which Heaney closesDoor Into the Dark,
Togland'. Togland' is the startingpoint of a major concernof Heaney'sthat grows in staturein subsequentvolumes of verse.The imageof the bog asa source,as a repositoryof the past,as a transcendentalspace within which it is possibleto re- imagineour past,our presentand ourselves will grow in interestfor Heaney,reaching its logical conclusionin his volumeNorth:
15Jacques Derrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 54 216
Bogland
for T.P. Flanagan
We haveno prairies
To slice a big sun at evening-
Everywhere the eye concedesto
Encroachinghorizon,
Is wooed into the cyclop's eye
Of a tam. Our unfencedcountry
Is bogthat keepscrusting
Betweenthe sigbtsof the sun.
They'vetaken the skeleton
Of the GreatIrish Elk
Out of the peat,set it up
An astoundingcrate full of air.
Butter sunkunder
More thana hundredyears
Wasrecovered salty and white.
The grounditself is kind, black butter
16Jacques Derrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 54 217
Melting andopening underfoot,
Missingits last definition
By millons of years.
They'll neverdig coal here,
Only the waterloggedtrunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneerskeep striking
Inwardsand downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seemscamped on before.
The bogholesmight be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centreis bottomless.17
For HeaneyIreland's values are epitomized by its spiritualheartland, as expressedin 'Bogland'.What arethe valuesassociated with this terrain?The openness,the freedomand imaginative sense of adventuresuggested by the prairiesof
Americais foundin 'our unfencedcountry', the bog. We canbe astoundedin the has by GreatIrish presentby the pastthat beenpreserved the bog.The skeletonof the
Elk hasbeen retrieved from the bog: 'an astoundingcrate full of air'. We note
Heaney9s suggestion of hollownessat the coreof this image:air lackssubstance.
Butter hasbeen retrieved from the bog fully preserved.At the centreof the bog itself
we discovera peculiar,maybe necessary, certainly customary hollowness: 'Missing
"' SeamusHeaney: Opened Ground. - Poem 1966 - 1996, p. 41 - 42 218 its last definition/Bymillions of years'.Let us not, in a momentof theologicalnayvetd, missthe political implicationsof Heaney'srhetoric. Heaney sets up a contrastwith the landscapesof the IndustrialRevolution that madeBritain great.England's coal- fields providedthe powerthat fuelledthe Empire.For Heaneythe coal-fieldsare symbolicof imperialmight, strength,brutality: 'They'll neverdig coal here,//Only the waterloggedtrunks/Of great firs, soft aspulp'. The Irish bog is softer,feminine, andpliable. The bog is an inexhaustiblesource of excavationand exploration: 'every layerthey strip/seemscamped on before'. In fact the bog is so rich for explorative possibilitiesthat it almostseems endless: 'the wet centreis bottomless'.What is interestingin this poem'ishow Heaneyconstructs a senseof never-endingspace that is opento continualand expanding definition. Is Heaney'spoem sitting at the center of an aporiathat we canlocate at the heartof languageusage and creation itself? Can we readHeaney's poem as a potentsymbol of languageitself, of languagechasing its own tail? Is it revealingin the contextof our discussionof the possibilitiesof God- talk?Let's look againat Derridain Saufle Nom.
For Derridanegative theology has one pre-eminent word in andthrough which we glimpsemany fraught questions. That word is 'God' andnegative theology's most potentsymbol of bottomlesscollapse. It indicatesthe continualdesertification of language".Heaney's bog, it could be argued,is a slightly colderand wetter version of
Derrida'sdesert. What is surprisingand worth noting is that we canalways state this.
We canname this name.This is an eventpossible to language.We cansay 'God' equals'Desert' equals'Bog'; althoughthe tradition of negativetheology argues that we cannever exhaust the nameof 'God'. Is he the arche-typeof Heaney'sbottomless
Is JacquesDerrida: Sauf leNom: 1995,p. 55 - 56 219 centre?God is beyondall giving, eventhe giving of the name,his name.Is it Godthat lies at the bottom of Heaney's soggywet bog?
Derridais intriguedby the re-configuringof spacethat seemsto alwaysoccur in the traditionsof negativetheology. For Derridathis hasa long andhonoured history and manifestsitself in many different cultural traditions: the Jewish, the
Christianand the Greeknetworks of thought.The nameof God is oftenreferred to within the contextand experience of place.When one hangs out in the locality of the word 'God' one often developsinteresting re-configurationsof this spatiality. They oftenhave a distinctlydesert hue to them.In fact the desertis 'a figure of the pure place'19.This place has no geographicallocation and doesnot play host to a single objector subject.Have we witnessedan exemplaryindication of this in the readingof
Heaneywe haveoffered? We recall that Heaneywrote in an earlyessay called The
SenseofPlace: 'We aredwellers, we arenamers, we arelovers, we makehomes and
for histories'20 What is here is Heaney's that search our . worth noting use of verbs suggestcontinual activity. Is this culturaland personal work that we arealways doing, work we will alwaysneed to do andwith which we will neverbe finished?Are we alwaysleft to chasethe tail of the trace?
Thereis a lexical peculiarityto the wordsdeveloped in negativetheology to speakof 'God'. Thesewords, metaphors, symbols attempt to nameGod, to speak
God,to speakto him. The namesused are always shadowed by uncertainty.They attemptto namesomething beyond themselves. They point to the unnameablebeyond the name.This is whereDeffida developshis phrasesaufle nom.He developsthis
'9 Jacques Derrida: Sauf le Nom: 1995, p. 57 220
Frenchphrase in an attemptto protectthe nameof God itself Oneis caughtin paradoxicalterrain. One needs to savethe nameand everything except the name, everythingoutside the namewhich isn't tangiblebut therenevertheless, which escapesthe namebut which the name'shadows': 'as if it wasnecessary to losethe namein orderto savewhat bears the name"'. Thereis a reversalof 'normal logic': if you lose the name you respectit. By losing the name you do not undermine, disrespector attackit. In pronouncingthe nameyou travel throughand across it towardthe other.
Let us look at somepoems Heaney published in his 1972 collection Wintering
Out. Theseare Heaney's well-known 'word' poems.They include'Anahorish',
'Toome' and 'Broagh'. We can also include 'Gifts of Rain' and 'A New Song'22.We
caninclude the poem'Song' from 1979'scollection Field Workdue to its provocative
last line: 'And that momentwhen the bird singsvery close/Tothe musicof what
happens723 There is Genesis this Throughout . somethingof about groupof poems. thesepoems Heaney uses words 'to call into play' the qualitiesof a place.We will
look in detail at just two of thesepoems: 'Anahorish' and 'Toome'.
Anahorish
My 'place of clearwater',
the first hill'in the world
wheresprings washed into
the shinygrass
20 SeamusHeaney: Preoccupations: SelectedProse 1968 - 1978: Faber& Faber:London: 1998,p. 148 - 149 * 21Jacques Derrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 58 221
anddarkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish,soft gradient
of consonant,vowel-meadow,
after-imageof lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows
thosemound-dwellers
go waist-deepin mist
to breakthe light ice
at wells anddunghillS. 24
In the poem'Anahorish" the title is an Irish placename translated by Heaney as 4myplace of clearwater'. SoHeaney is on homeground. For Heaneythe poetthe nameof the placecalls into beingthe placeitself The world of this poemis almost primeval.For Heaneythis 'first placein the world' is his first place,and thereby resemblesall first places.His experienceof this placecan be translatedinto a transcendentalmetaphor for all persons,and all places,all homespossibly. When
Heaneypronounces the nameAnahorish in the poemit conjuresup a world of 'soft gradient/ofconsonant, vowel-meadow'. This world thentranslates into an afterglow
22Seamus Heaney: Opened Ground. Poems 1966 - 1996: Faber & Faber:London: 1998 23Seamus Heaney: Opened Grounik Poems 1966 - 1996: Faber & Faber:London: 1998,p. 181 24Seamus Heaney: Opened Ground. Poems 1966 - 1996: 1998, p. 46 222 of lights swungin farmyards.Heaney uses the phrase'mound-dwellers'. The inhabitants,the natives,of this world work asthey havealways worked, disappearing in 'the mist' to breakthe ice that hasformed over their watersupplies. Things have not changedall that much.There is an elementof continuityin this world. What are the links in this chainof light andlanguage? The wordsthemselves possibly, as articulated by the memory bank of the poet, caught in the world imagined through the languageof image and metaphorin the poem.
In the poem 'Toome' the place name becomesfor the poet an historical repositoryand then the placeitself:
Toome
My mouthholds round
the soft blastings,
Toome,,Toome
asunder the dislodged
slabof the tongue
I pushinto a souteffain
prospectingwhat new
in a hundredcenturies'
loam, flints, musket-balls,
fragmentedware,
torcsand fish-bones 223
till I am sleevedin
alluvial mud that shelves
suddenlyunder
bogwaterand tributaries,
25 andelvers tail my hair.
When Heaneypronounces the name Toome,Toome as an incantation in the poem, he entersinto the world of the place name's past to unearth a troubled history. The historicalstruggle is inscribedinto the nameof the placeuntil both arc inextricable.
The weaponsof ancientand modem warfare have collected here, from the primitive flints to the musket-balls.The artworkshave a similar genealogy,from the more primitive fish-bonesto the advancedtorcs. However Heaney digs so deepin this poemthat he entersinto an undergroundtorrent. He digs down
till I am sleevedin
alluvial mud that shelves
suddenlyunder
bogwaterand tributaries,
andelvers tail my hair.
Heaneyhas become part of the landscapeitself Hashe becomea part of the life-giving streamsthat bubblecreatively underground, under the world of the real,
25Seamus Heaney: Opened Ground. - Poenn 1966 - 1996:Faber & Faber:London: 1998, p. 53 224 the tangible,the historicaland the linguistic?In becomingpart of this unifying and assuagingcurrent, does he escapethe narrowdefinitions that havebecome so central to our intransigentand intractable history? What transcendental possibility inherent in languagehas allowed Heaney this creativeleap?
The poem 'Toome' can be read as a poem which offers us a positive way out of the intractablelinguistic (read as symbolicfor the manyreligious, social, and economic) barriers that exist in Northern Irish society. In its conception of an originary, benign river as resting place for the creative imagination the poem can becomea spaceof imaginativerenewal. However, there is the issueof the ethical responsibilityof the artisthimself or herself For we seeHeaney in the poem'A New
Song' write a poem that implicitly calls for a linguisitic re-clamation or re-plantation, with the poem'stitle itself soundinga rathereschatological tone, which is somewhat woffying:
But now our river tonguesmust rise
From licking deepin nativehaunts
To flood with vowellingembmce,
Demesnesstaked out in consonants.
And Castledawsonwe'll enlist
And Upperlands,each planted bawn-
Like bleaching-greensresumed by grass-
A vocable,as rath andbullaun. 26
26 SeamusHeaney: Opened Grounik Poeno 1966 - 1996: 1998,p. 58 225
Let us not be foundguilty of offering a theologicalor aestheticreading of
Heaneythat is not attentiveto political overtonesand implications from within his work.
From a readingof JacquesDerrida's essay Saufle Nom we discoverthat languageis openedup by the referenceto what is namedby the word 'God' but at the sametime this phrasealways points to andindicates its own inadequacy.It is at this juncture that we might conceive of poetry as a continuing theological exercise.The languageused by negativetheology always declaresits own inadequacyconcerning that aboutwhich it claimsto know something.So there is a continualdesire and need for re-invention.This might be the basisfor the negativepoetics we haveargued is at work in the poetry of SeamusHeaney. For Derrida.the symbols used in negative theologyalways traverse across a mighty chasm.There is no commonmeasure found betweenthe momentof revelationand knowledge on the onehand and the suggestion of an absolutesecret on the other.Paradoxically we are usheredinto that placewhere we arenot ableto go. We are invited into a concernwith place:'over there,toward the beyond the in the Is Heaney the name,toward of name name'27. this why values the work of the diviner,the farrier andthe poeteven though this defiescommon sense?Through the ordinarywe are invited into the extraordinary.Heaney's forger is a paradigmfor onewho canpoint us towards,send us off in the directionof the other.
Is this why the forger,the diviner andthe thatcherare emblemsfor the poet?The poet is onewho sendsus in new andunexpected directions. As the cultural archivistof language,the high priestwho servesat the altar of language,the poetis a channelfor
2' JacquesDerrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 59 226 the other.In keepinglanguage alive the poetkeeps open the channelsof communicationto the other.
In Saufle Nomthe word of negativetheology is alwaysa post-scriplum. " It is alwaystrailing behindthe eventitself The phrasesused in the poetryproduced by negativetheology always occur at the edge of language,the border of referenceitself
As it flows over the edge negativetheology draws its energy from having occurred, having carried off the legible-illegible text of itself So the text always operatesas a post-scriptum;it trails behindthe event.
Derridadevelops a key metaphorat this juncture.The languageof negative theologyis for him an arrow.An arrowis only that, an arrow,and an endin itself It is pointedtowards something, destined to strike it, but it cannever become that towards which it is directed.So the arrowmisses, even as it touches,and that is what makesit safe
Sothere is a peculiarpassiveness about this work. Onethinks of the writer
Heaneyin the poem'Digging' observinghis fatherat work. Heaneyis in a passive positionin relationto the activity of his father.Heaney's father works the land while he workshis pen.Heaney constructs an archaeologicaldig from his personalpast, a family memorialand a type of the poeticarchive. Heaney refers to the grandfather
'cut turf day/Than in Toner'sbog 29 Thereis who more in a anyother man . an anxiety at work in this poem,the primal anxietyof procreationmaybe. Heaneywonders whetherhe is following his ancestorsin a fitting andworthy manner:'I've no spadeto
29Jacques Derrida: Samfle Now 1995,p. 60 227 follow men like them'. He is trailing behind.Heaney develops this thememore explicitly in his poem'Follower'. Referringto his father'sability with the plough
Heaneynotes: 'I stumbledin his hob-nailedwake', and'All I everdid wasfollow/In his broadshadow round the farmOO.What is revealingin thesepoems is the anxiety aboutfollowing, trailing in a pastwhich the poetworries about catching in his poetry.
Are they indirectly meditations on the inability of the writer to hold meaning down in words?Are wordsalways shooting off somewhereelse, pointing where you want them to go but not getting there fully? Are thesepoems fraught with the anxieties of
Deffida's arrow? Can we read them as metaphorsfor the anxiety of writing itself?
Derridahimself does not usethe term metaphor.He optsfor a moreresonant tenn. He seizeson Plato's use of the tenn huperbole in The Republic. For Plato, as readby Derrida,the term suggeststhe movementof transcendencethat carriesor transportsbeyond being or beingness,epekeina tes ousias.This hyperbolealways announceS:it indicatesan openpossibility, but it alsoprovokes thereby the openingof the possibility.It revealsas it produces.It will precipitatediscourse, and hence being, existence.For Derrida:'the Platonic,Plotinian, or Neoplatonicstyle will not only precipitatebeyond being or Godinsofar as he is (the supremebeing), but beyondGod evenas name, as naming, named or nameable,insofar as reference is madethere to Ol some ing .
The beyond,what is conceivedof asbeyond God, is for Derridaradically
conceivedbehind, before and after, beyond place itself. This movementof
29Seamus Heaney: Opened Ground. Poems 1966 - 1996: 1998, p. 3 30Seamus Heaney: Opened Ground. Poems 1966 - 1996: 1998, p. 11 31Jacques Derrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 65 228 transcendencesurpasses God himself It surpassesthe being, the essence,the proper self, the divinity of God. This is the sourceof the radical thought that lies behind negativetheology. For Derrida this movementof thought has radical implications for all philosophizing.In its transcendentalgusto this movementradically shatters being and knowing, existenceand knowledge.Such thought shatters,fractures, and opensup the cogito as conceivedby St Augustine or Descartes.
Do we witnessthis at work in the poemswe have examinedby Heaney?The moment of the poem opensus into a vista we could not enter otherwise.We are invited into the world of Heaney'sfarrier in order to enter into the gracedworld of poetry itself We are called into a unique place of consciousnesscaught only in the languageof the poet. In the being of the world of the poem we have our existenceand knowledge. Eric Voegelin in his collection of essaysAnamnesis has an essay
'Reason:The ClassicExperience' in which he articulatesideas concerning human
be to here32 understandingthat may of use us .
Eric Voegelin arguesthat the classicphilosophers developed key symbolsor terms-around which any discussionof thepsyche of humanity shouldbe developed.
For Plato a central symbol was the 'philosopher" in whosepsyche humanity had becomeluminous for its noetic order. This is most apparentin the writings of Plato where 'man, in 'his' tensiontoward the ground of existence,is openedtowards a depth of divine reality beyondthe stratumthat has revealeditself as the nous. So in the Platonic systema window is openedto a theophanicunderstanding of reality. An extensionof this openingis the type of pneumaticrevelation found in the history of
32Eric Voegelin:Anamnesis: Univ. of Mssouri Press:Columbia: 1990 229
Judaeo-Christianity.There is also an opening for the argumentsand insights gained from the later traditions of mysticism. Can we extend this definition and understandingto include momentsof poetic insight? Let us explore further.
As Voegelin understandsit reasonin the noetic sensedoes not end history in an apocalypticsense. Rather it pervadeshistory with a new luminosity. The primary stateof humanity for Plato and Socratesis our existencein a stateof unrest.Humanity is not a self-sufficient end in itself We are awarethat we do not bear the origin and end of our existencewithin ourselves.The human is not a divine causasui; from the experienceof his or her life in precariousexistence within the limits of birth and death there rather rises the wonderingquestion about the ultimate ground,the aitia orprote arche, of all reality and specifically her or his own. Our humanity is defined through our questionsabout the where to and the where from of our existence.As Plato and
Aristotle explore the issuehumanity's questioningunrest carries within itself the assuaginganswer. This is so becausethe human is moved to his or her searchfor the groundof existenceby the very divine ground of which he or she is in search.As
Voegelin argues:'The man who asksquestions, and the divine ground about which the questionsare asked,will mergein the experienceof questioningas a divine- humanencounter and reemergeas the participantsin the encounterthat has the luminosity 33 The Voegelin is and structureof consciousness . ground of which speaks not a spatially distant thing. It is rather the divine presencethat becomesmanifest in the experienceof unrestand the desireto know. The wondering and questioningis sensedas the beginningof a theophanicevent that can becomefully luminous to itself if it finds the proper responsein the psycheof concretehuman beings. The responsive
33 Eric Voegelin:Anamnesis: 1990,p. 95 - 96 230 pursuitto the divine moverrequires the effort of articulatingthe experiencethrough appropriatelanguage symbols. The productof this effort is insightinto the noetic structureof thepsyche. It is my contentionthat it alsoproduces poems. It opensthe way to a type of revelatorytheology based on the presenceof Godas articulated throughthe languageof the poemas it tracesits own inadequacyor searchfor the basis of its own being. The poem is fraught with this anxiety. As is the question of
'God' asexplored by Derridain Saufle Nom,and as a humanbeing is all too awareof
their fragile hold on existence.What is the net effect of all this?
'ForDerrida this post-scriptum has the characterof a countersignature,even as
it effacesitself Evenas it effacesitself beforethe faceof God,it effacesitself before
that which it names.It is necessaryfor this to happen.The nameis not enough.It is
lackingand it is necessarybecause it is lacking.We mustcontinue to re-nameeven as
we areaware of the inadequacyof namingitself (Onewonders if this is why we keep
writing poetry).In saying'God is not, neitherthis nor that' you are still saying
somethingabout what the beingis. You are still sayingthe entity. Onekeeps to the
promiseof telling the truth. Onerenders an accountof oneselfbefore the name:'it is a
matterof recordingthe referentialtranscendence of which the negativeway is only
oneway, one methodic approach, one series of stages.A prayer,too, anda testimony but I love the to love, s34 of love, an you" on way pmyerand to alwayson the way .
Derridagoes so far asto saythat he trustsno text 'that is not contaminatedby
negativetheology'. For him negativetheology is an attemptto recordthe 'referential
34Jacques Derrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 68 231 transcendenceof language35. This form of theologicaliconoclasm is attemptingto suggestGod ashe is, beyond,behind, before his images.It attemptsto shatterthe idols of positivetheology. The namethat we know Godby, to be andto hearand respondto. The negativetheological approach favors non-saying over the inadequate
attributionto the point of denialand refiisal. Such defiance is carriedout andjustified
on the basis of being a way of truth and in the name ofiustice.
What is significantfor a theologicalpoetics is the independentstance of
negativetheology. Derrida calls it its translatability. The apophatic mode of discourse
stepsoutside of revelatory modes,of the literal languageof New Testament
eventness:the birth of Christ,the Passionof Christ,and the subsequentdogmas of
Christ's divinity andthe Trinity aswell asthe credalformulations. At its extreme
limit the logic of this mysticismpoints to an independencefrom the historyof
Christianity.
For Deffida thereis a greatplayfulness in the dynamicsillustrated by negative
theology.,For him it allows an approachto the other. Through the poetic forms
explored in this tradition of thinking we can approachthe other without crossingthe
thresholdinto the other.One can learn to respectand love the invisibility that shrouds
the other.One can lay one'sweapons down. We are allowedan entry into the
playfulnessof the divine creation.We canbe co-creatorswith God.To quoteAngelus
Silesius:
Godplayswith creation.
" JacquesDerrida: Sauf le Now 1995,p. 69 232
All that is play that the Deity givesItself:
It hasimagined the creaturefor Its pleasure.36
(2: 198)
Whatwe do not know on this sideof our experienceis whetherthis event,testified to by the classic texts of negativetheology, is openedby God, or the name of 'God', or if it is older thancreation, older than Time, History or the Word itself We do not know whether we can appealto this event. We do not know whether it is impervious to our pleading. This is the j ourney of faith.
The Era of the Question:
Canwe formulatea philosophicalfoundation for the issueswe haveexplored thusfar? To aid us in this taskwe will now considerthe writings of a thinker very differentfrom Martin Heidegger,Maurice Blanchot or JacquesDerrida, and that is
EmmanuelLevinas. In his writingsEmmanuel Levinas indicates an awarenessof and attentivenessto the post-modemscene of intellectualthought-, however what is distinctiveabout his writings is their consistentattempt at constructingand maintaininga broadlyreligious framework for contemporarythought. We will deal
with his thoughtthrough the critical probingof oneof Levinas'closest readers,
JacquesDerrida. In Derrida'sessay 'Violence and Metaphysics:An Essayon the
ThoughtofEmmanuel Levinaswe find a fascinatingmeeting of two significant 37 contemporarymin .
36Jacques Dertida: Sauf k Now 1995,p. 75 233
In the essay'sopening paragraph Jacques Derrida begins by writing that we are living in an eraripe with new possibilities.Our erais a time of questioning,with the questionhaving liberated us from pasttyranny. We cannow questionthe totalities that surroundus. We caninterrogate the totality of beingsin our world aswell asthe manyobjects that exist within it andthe determinationsthat appearto securethem and us; the question is our ultimate point of reference.We live with its discipline. We mustconsider the origin point of this question.There is still a distinctly holy, metaphysical,religious dimension to this line of inquiry insofaras Derrida speaks of the absoluteorigin' of this question,of an origin that is absoluteand other. The 38. questionand its historymay be 'grounded'in the 'other absolutedecision, we witnessthe emergenceof the questioningof the questionin EmmanuelLevinas" work
Totalityand InfiniV9. Herewe standclose to the essentiallymetaphysical nature of philosophyitself, for whenwe askthis type of questionwe discussthe very possibility of philosophyitself, what might be termedthe 'fundamentalsof philosophy'.The questioncorresponds with itself, remembersits point of origin andyearns for it, and is hauntedby this placeof beginningsand return.
A Copernican Revolution:
WhatEmmanuel Levinas' project in TOtafitYandInjinity entailsfor Derridais a questioningof the origin of Westernphilosophy from plato throughto Kant and
Heidegger.In the disciplineof Westernphilosophical thinking thereexists a particular history,pattern of thought,a tracingof a seriesof questionsthrough definite texts
37Jacques Derrida: Violenceand Metaphysics.*An Essayon the Thoughtof EmmanuelLevinas: from Writing Difference: Routledge:London: 1997,Trans. by and Alan Bass,p. 79 - 153 38 Derrida: Wtifing Difference. 1997, 80 Jacques and p. , 234 ascribedto individualwriters. The definiteparadigm is that of Beingor being,from
Platothrough to Heidegger.Levinas however attempts to exist outsidethat line of questioning,this history,those texts and the questionor questionsthey attemptto clarify, expandand explore. In Levinasan attemptis madeat a new beginningand a total re-thinkingof the question.This maybe a valuable,and certainly is an intriguing project. There has,by necessity,to be a dislocation of our Greek origins here, our
Greekidentity asWestern European thinkers and citizens. We areurged, provoked andchallenged to movefrom the safe,secure site of our usualpreoccupations and concernsto reconsiderthem, to put themunder question! Derrida describes this 40. departureas an 'exhalation Derrida.hints at the distinctivelyJewish nature of this project.When the adjective'prophetic' is placedbefore speech we arein the territory of the Old Testamentand the origin of the propheticword. Derridagambles that this word that emergesfrom this freshsource point maybe closeto, relatedthrough othemess,to the word andwords of the Greekphilosophers. With thesetwo distinctiveconjunctions we standwithin the bosomor cradleof our civilisation.
Distinctiveto Levinas'sposition is his considerationof an ethicalrelationship that existsin relationto its infinitely other,to the Other.For Levinasthis is the only placethat transcendenceand metaphysics can begin. Ethics and metaphysics thereby becomeself-supporting and autonomous entities. Levinas justifies his positionon the basisof analyzedexperience. It is within the ambit of our experienceto witnessthe birth of metaphysicalthinking andethics from within experienceas it departsfrom itself in the directionof the other.Everything is shadowed,or halved,communicates with, travelstowards that which is irreduciblyother within it: Others.As Derek
3' EmmanuelLevinas: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority: DuquesneUniv. Press: 235
Walcott describedit in an earlypoem; the artist is in possessionof 'Only the gift/ To seethings as they are, halved by a darkness/From which they cannotshifl'41. This hollow spaceis not oneopening amongst many. For Levinasthis aporiadoes not exist in equalityalongside many other fissures in the fabric of experience.Rather this is the openingof openings,and thus is irreducible,cannot be enclosed,shut off or limited by any categoryor totality, that is, everythingwithin experiencethat cannotbe articulated,touched, understood by traditionalconcepts, and thus is the placeof resistanceto all being thought.
Levinas probesmany traditional stancesof Western philosophy. He challenges someof the presumptionssurrounding the sunof the epekinates ousias.This has alwaysilluminated the awakeningof our capacityto reasonand has been seen as the inexhaustiblesource of all our thinking.It is the ancestorof the GreekInfinite that transcendstotality. It is alsothe instrumentof destructionfor the phenomenologyand ontologysubjected to the neutraltotality of the Sameas Being or asEgo. Ever since
Platothe Westernmind hashad a tendencyto placethe Goodbeyond Being. For
Levinasthis movementis not theologicaland is not an instanceof transcendence towarda superiorexistence. He calls it instead'excendence'. It beginsfrom beingbut excendenceis a 'departurefrom beingand from the categorieswhich describeits42.
The term 6excendence' names the site from which metaphysicsbegins as meta- theology,meta-ontology and meta-phenomenology.
Pittsburgh:1998, Trans. by Alphonso,Lingis 'Jacques Derrida:WMing and Difference:1997, p. 82 41Derek Walcott: Collected New 1948- 1984:Faber & Faber:London: 1992, p. 66 42Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference:1997: p. 85 236
Levinastakes issue with Husserl'spositions as outlined in the Fifth
Untersuchung.As Levinasreads it this work givesa primal positionto the theoretical consciousness.This is the meansby which we access,create the being of the object.If
, the existingworld, which is revealedto us,has the modeof existenceof the object givenover to the theoreticalglance', if 'the real world is the world of knowledge',if knowledge is life 'in his [Husserl's]philosophy .. andrepresentation not a modeof to the samedegree as the others,nor a secondarymode' thenLevinas is obligedto from Levinas depart this conceptionof understandingor philoSophy43. reads Heideggerin the light of his oppositionto this placingof the centreof our beingas consciousnessby Husserl.Heidegger, as read by Levinas,does not seethis world as primarily givenover to the theoreticalglance, but rather,in the wordsof Levinasis, Beinglike field A4 For 'in its very a centerof action,a of activity or of solicitude . Levinasthere is in mana historicity andtemporality that arepredicates for, and
his And it is 'this indeedare, the substantialityof substance. structure... which important in Heidegger'sthought A5 occupiessuch an place .
Levinashowever does not let Heideggeraway too easilyeither. He directsalso a critical ray overHeidegger's writings. Heidegger fails to questionkey metaphorsin the Greco-Platonictradition of thought,for examplethe surveillanceof the agencyof the glanceand the metaphorof light. That is, by the spatialpair of inside-outside which giveslife to the familiar oppositionof subjectand object. 'Heideggerean care, illuminatedas it is by comprehension(even if comprehensionoffers itself ascare), is alreadydetermined by the structure"inside-outside" that characterizeslight'46.
43Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 87 44Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 87 45Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 87 4' JacquesDerrida: Wtiting and Difference: 1997,p. 88 237
Levinasdoes not denyor pretendto erasethe existenceand power of the structure
'inside-outside'.As suchLevinas respects the layersof 'traditional truth' anddoes not
criticize the philosophieshe describes,nor doeshe refutethem. Rather he seeksto
revealwhat foundsthem, what is dissimulatedwithin them, 'a situationwhich division Beinginto inside A7 His is precedesthe of an andan outside . aim to inaugura!e a new metaphysicsof radicalseparation and exteriority. Quite correctly
Derrida suggeststhat this new departurewill find it difficult to createa languagein
the mediumof the traditionallogos governed, as it is, by the structure'inside-outside',
'interior-exterior'. Tradition illustrates how the Eleatic strangerand disciple of
Parmenideshad to give languageits duefor havingvanquished him: shapingnon-
Being according to Being, he had to say 'farewell to an unnameableopposite of
Being' andhad to confinenon-Being to its relativity to Being,that is to the movement
of alterity48.
The Origin of the Altedor Motive:
For Levinasmultiplicity andalterity areto be understoodas the absolute
solitudeof the existentin its existence.The relationshipto the otherarises from the
depthsof this solitude.To understandthe secreton the basisof the unity of existence,
on the pretextthat it existsor that it is the secretof the existent'is to confineoneself
49 To this Levinas towardsthe thought difference. to unity . escape moves of original
47Jacques Derrida: Wtiling and Difference: 1997,p. 88 48Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 89 49Jacques Derrida: Miting and Difference: 1997,p. 90 238
Levinasseeks a direct andumnediated encounter with the face,using phrases like 'face to face without intermediary' and without 'communion'50.Having no intermediary,having no communion,without beingmediate, or immediate,the truth of our relationwith the otheris the truth to which the logos,traditionally conceived, is by definition inhospitable.Levinas seeks to persuadeus that this is a living of the
truth of experiencethat is unthinkable,and which cannotbe encompassedor
containedby philosophicalspeech without its fracturesbeing illuminated by that very
speechitself What appearsto be solidity is really rigidity. Metaphor to which
philosophy is so often reducedat key junctures is an illustration of this; for metaphors
provide an opening in and through which experienceitself is silently revealed.We are
dealing with a type of non-presenceand a non-phenomenality.It is the totally other
that illustrates or manifestsitself prior to the moment of sharedtruth, as a type of
nonmanifestationor asa certainabsence. The implicationsof this for philosophical
thoughtare immense. Traditional philosophy in its overlookingof the absoluteOther
cannothave time. Without time they haveno history.And the absolutealterity of each
instant,without which therewould be no time, cannotbe constitutedwithin the
identity of the subjector the existent.This canonly emergein time throughthe Other.
If onerenounces the Otherone becomes enclosed within solitude,and it is the
negativesolitude of solidity andself-identity. By this routeone suppresses ethical
transcendence.,For Levinasthe tradition disregardsthe irreduciblesolitude of the
existentand thereby disregards the relationshipto the other.Its solitudeis that of
totality andopacity. There emerges a soliloquyof reasonand of light in all its
solitude.The tradition cannotrespect Being and the meaningof the other,and by this
meansphenomenology and ontology become philosophies of violence.Through them
50Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 90 239 communionis madewith oppressionas philosophy is boundto the totalitarianismof the same.The otheris seized,possessed and known aswe attemptto conquerit in the nameof powerand control. Under the aegisof this light everythingthat is given appearsto be givenfrom myselfto myself.
How doesLevinas envisagea way out or beyond the current impassein our thinking?We beginwith conceivingof metaphysicsor ethicsas desire. We see beyondour disdainor disregardof the otherin a transcendentalmovement that breaks us free from the limits that constrainthe otheras we attemptto understandand possessit. For Levinasdesire has nothing but respectfor the otheras other, and knowledgeof it assuch, and consciousness must forbid itself the transgressionof this respect.This desireis alwaysinadequate before the claimsof the other,as it is appealedto by the absolutelyirreducible exteriority of the other.No totality canever encompassthis desireand the vastnessof differenceto which it is drawnand by which it is defined.There is a greatgulf betweendesire and its other.As Derrida readsLevinas we are dealingwith a metaphysicsof separation,and a distancethat createsan openingwithin which freedolnis bom.
We havebeen trapped within our egos.Levinas argues that the apparent alterity or negativityof the ego,the interior difference,is but an illusion, for it is but the play of the same.The egoalters itself from within itself We are caughtwithin a momentof the same,a finite momentthat forms a systemand a totality with the ag,ent., History is but the tracing'outof this 'progression'as we areblinded to the other,and as the samemoves laboriously in procession.Derrida asks whether we can truly havehistory if work is not met with resistancethrough alterity. Does history not 240 beginwith this relationshipto the otherthat Levinasplaces beyond history? Derrida wonderswhether the egocan engender alterity within itself without encounteringthe
Other?
For Levinasthe egoand the otherdo not permitthemselves to be dominatedor made into totalities by a conceptof relationship. Languageis always given to the other,never encompasses the otherand never includes the other.We cannot, conceptualiseour encounterwith othernessthen: it is madepossible by the otherthat is the unforeseeable'resistant to all categories'51.The infinitely-other is by definition beyond our capacity for conceptualisation.The idea of horizon implies always a horizonof the same.Within this conceptionof thingsthere is alwaysa unity as eruptionsand surprises are welcomed by understandingand recognized. To escape this conceptualisationLevinas conceives of the presenceof the otheras trace. This othercan achieve the only possibleopening of time not by any industryof ours.And it is foundat the heartof experienceas a presence.It is not wholly presentbut exists thereas a trace.Before all systemsof thought,before all dogmaticsystems of belief, before theology and before philosophy, there exists this opening of experienceto an eschatologicalending which is alsoits beginning,and which is to be foundor traced throughoutall its varyingaspects.
We arecalled to recogniseas our primaryrelation respect for the other,and therebyethics precedes metaphysics. Metaphysics is bom at the point whentheory is forcedto criticise itself asontology, 'as the dogmatismand spontaneity of the same, andwhen metaphysics, in departingfrom itself, is put into questionby the otherin the
" Jacques Denida: Wridog and Difference: 1997, p. 95 241 movementof ethics.Levinas argues for the primarynature of metaphysicsover that of ontology.He thusproceeds to critiqueHeidegger. Heidegger, in affinning the priority of Being over the existent,makes a decisionabout the essenceof philosophy.As
Levinasreads this move,Heidegger subordinates the relationWith someone, who is an existent,to a relationwith the Beingofthe existeW2-The impersonalnature of this relationpermits, or allows,the dominationof the existentand subordinatesjustice to freedom.True metaphysicaltranscendence occurs when we conceiveof infinity beyond the restraintsof totality. This is the infinity that is irreducible to the representationsor thought of infinity, it exceeds,goes beyond, transcends,the ideation in which it is thought.It is in truth that which cannotbe an objector a simple tobjectivereality' of the idea.The expressionof this ideaof infinity is theface. This faceis not only a visagethat may only be a surface,it is that which is seenbecause it is naked,but alsothat which sees.And it is not only that which seesthings, but also that which exchangesits glance.This visageonly becomesa facein the momentof face-to-faceencounter.
This faceis presence,ousia. The facerepresents the original unity of glance andspeech, eyes and mouth. The primaryunity of the faceexists prior to the dispersioninto the organsof sensibility:the eyes,ears and mouth. The otheris given
'in person',truly andcompletely, without allegory,in the face.It is the origin point of space,orienting space through speech and glance, through the face.The faceis not a signifier,does not understandor presentitself asa chief sign,but expressesitself, offersitself in person,in itself. the thing in itself expressesitself, Living speechin its masteryand magisteriality is the only thing ableto assistitself; it is not a servilesign
52Jacques Derrida: Wtifing and Difference: 1997,p. 97 242 but a genuineexpression, the only genuineexpression that living speechcan be. For
Levinasthen the written andthe work arenot expressionsbut signs.
Deffida pointsout how Levinasis keento preservethe living dimensionof original speechitself Outsideof this horizonwriting itself becomesnothing. Writing is secondary.To be behind the sign that is in the world is afterward to remain invisibleto the world within epiphany.In andthrough the face,the otheris givenover in personas other,that is, asthat which doesnot revealits very self, andas that which cannotbe made thematic. We can only speakto the other. The other appearswithin our missing categoriesas non-presence,or presentas absence,appearing as the non- phenomenal.--I- Lurking behindits signsand works, always dwelling within its secret interior,forever discreet, interrupting all historicaltotalities through its freedomof speech,the faceis not, andcannot be, 'of this world'. Thoughtis alwaysrelated to the other.However it is the relationto an irreducibleother who summonsme without possibilityof returnfrom without.It is throughthis orderthat we arepresented with the ideaof the infinity that no thoughtcan enclose and which forbidsall monologue.
Throughthis meanswe arriveat a cornerstoneof EmmanuelLevinas's thinking: the otheris andcan only be the otheronly if his or her alterity is absolutelyirreducible, that is infinitely irreducible;and the infinitely Othercan only be Infinity. As speech andglance the facedoes not belongto the world, becauseit opensand exceeds the totality. Due to this it marksthe limit of all power,all violence,and the beginningsor origin of the ethical.
Derridaasks some serious questions of Levinas'sthesis. Levinas stresses the
invisibletranscendence of the Other.As suchit is not possibleto conceiveof the face 243 asa momentof religious,or other,revelation. What is termedthe unrevealableis expressedthereby beyond all thematization,beyond all constitutiveanalysis and beyondall phenomenology.Philosophers, theologians and poets are all out of ajob. In
Levinas'sschema the infinitely-Otheris not an objectbecause it is speech,speech as the origin of meaningand the world. By meansof this schematicphenomenology is ruledout asa meansby which to accountfor ethics,speech and justice. We witness
Levinasexplore these ideas through the themeof nudity. Speechis obligedto uncover the nudity of the face,without which no nudity would haveany meaning. All nudity,
$eventhe nudity of the body experiencedin shame', is a 'figure of speech' in relation
the faCe53This is for to the non-metaphoricalnudity of . nudity not an opening, an openingis alwaysrelative to a surroundingplenitude. So the word nudity is effectivelyerased as soon as it servesto indicatesomething beyond itself What is the appropriateresponse to this exposureto andby the nudeface? The demandis for supplication,as the unthinkableunity of a speechable to assistitself anda glancethat callsfor assistancesummons to us in all its nakedness.
Deffida pointsout that for Levinasa basicpresupposition is the ideaof a finite totality. WhenLevinas speaks of infinity, what is infinitely other,he is always speakingof a non-violentreality. This is differentto his presumptionssurrounding totality. The figure of God redeemsthe world for Levinasinsofar as a world without this figure of infinite othernesswould be torn apartby strife of the worstkind imaginable.A world without God is unimaginable.We arenot ableto imaginethis world at all, a world of primaryviolence, inescapable immorality, of pureblood lust and uninhibitedviolence. War aswe know it would not be definable,approachable,
"Jacques Derrida: Wtiling and Difference: 1997,p. 106 244 without our experienceof the faceof God.In the networkof thoughtor understanding expoundedby Levinasthen, Derrida. argues, the figure or faceof God is implicatedin war. War impliesthe presenceof Godas a form of denialof that presence.War would be meaninglesswithout the presenceof Godas absence. War, the reality of which we cannotdeny, is the differencebetween the revelationof the faceand the finite world without a face.
Derrida points out that in Levinas' conception of things we are always too late as human beings. We are an after image of the already primary divine presence.We are gods arrived too late, or emerging on the plane of a pre-existent,primary Being.
We canwalk upright,but only after or in the midst of beingdrawn to the faceexisting before,above and beyond us. It is this originaryface that drawsus up from our knees andallows us to walk uprightat all. Metaphysicalthought begins when we recognise this a priori basis.We mustreturn to our true selves,the point of recognition, comparisonor similarity wherewe acknowledgethe resemblancebetween or with our faceand the faceof God.However, Levinas argues that we mustconverse with God, and not as a god or gods,we are not in God as co-equalsin a conversationof participation.God is after all infinitely Other.We enterinto the spaceof separation whereGod properly dwells. This is what creatio ex nihilo means.We areoutside the world of incarnationhere. We aredwellers in the presenceof the trace of God.We notethe distinctivenote of post-modernitythat rings throughsuch a thought.
As Gods faceemerges, so it disappears.In Totality andInfinity then,the Face
of Yahwehis evokedin manydifferent guises and locations.We arein the primary
site of Old Testamenttheology: 'Thou canst not seemy face:for thereshal I be no man 245
live it seeme and ... thou shaltstand upon a rock: and shall cometo pass,while my glory passethby, that I will put theein a clift of the rock, andwill coverthee with my handwhile I passby: And I will take awaymine hand,and thou shaltsee my back parts:but my faceshall not be seed(Exodus 33: 20 - 23)54.Edmond Jabes has written in the Book ofQuestions:'All facesare I-Iis: this is why HE hasno face?'55 The face outlinedby Levinasthen is not the faceof God or the faceof man:it is their resemblance.Derrida points out thoughthat this facethat is a resemblancemust be thought before, or without, the idea of the Same,without its assistanceor as a means or road, guarantee,to its possibility. This is a strongbone of contention' for Derrida and the meansby which he deconstructs,or questionsthe premisesof Levinas' thinking in Totality andInfinity.
Stubbornly Jacky:
Derridawill beginhis deconstructionof Levinasby pointingout the linguistic gamewithin which Levinas'sthought is encircled,caught up, playedout andengaged.
We arewithin 'the system'ofLevinas's thought that is self-referentialand self- defined. It makes sensewithin the terms defined by its own internal logic: 'the route followed by Levinas'sthought is such that all our questionsalready belong to his own interior dialogue, are displacedinto his discourseand only listen to it, ftom many vantagepoints and in many waysv56
54Jacques DerTida: Writing and Difference:1997, p. 108 55Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference:1997, p. 109 56Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference:1997, p. 109 246
Levinas has arguedconsistently and thoroughly in Totality andInfinity that thereis no interior difference,no fundamentaland autochthonous alterity within the cgo. The otheris not myself(Dcrrida asks: who hasever maintained that it wasor is?) but it is an Ego,and has to be if Levinasis to maintainhis own discourse.The journey from Ego to other as an Ego is the passageto the essential,non-empirical egoity of subjective existencein general. When SorenKierkegaard speaksof himself it is not just the Danish Protestantwriting of his own egotistical and 'self-centred'concerns for personalsalvation, but this namebecomes a pseudonymwithin which we all standfor ourselvesand everybodyelse. Otherwise he would not be writing philosophy and we would not be concernedwith readingit. It would be a self-containedand meaningless babble,the ravingsof a madmanand lunatic. For example,the'l'of Walt Whitman's
Song qf*seýfcontains all of our individual 'I's past, presentand future, otherwise it could not be the poemof a new nation,or indeeda poemfor us all aschildren of the humanspecies. Unless we could enterinto or be containedby the 'subjectivity'that speaksto us, or speaksfor us, in this poem,we would not conversewith it at all.
Derridaasks: 'is not this essenceof subjectiveexistence presupposed by the respect 57'The for the other,which canbe what it is - the other- only assubjective existence? logic of Levinas'sposition Derrida points out would seemto requirethe eliminationof all discussionof the essenceor truth of subjectiveexistence. Here lies the radical breakwith previousconceptions of phenomenologyand ontology. Derrida points out that Levinas,cannot do this without renouncingphilosophical discourse itself in the first instance.As suchthis cannotbe doneoutside of the arenaof language.The attemptto attain,speak toward, or from, the beyondof philosophicaldiscourse, by meansof philosophicaldiscourse, impossible by definition, cannotpossibly succeed
57Jacques Derrida: Wiling and Difference: 1997,p. I 10 247 within language,unless we, formally and thematically pose the question of the relationsbetween belonging and the opening,the questionof closure.Are we moving towardsthe beginningsof poetry?Derrida speaks of departingfrom logic andwriting from within an inscribeddescription, in an inscriptionof the relationsbetween the philosophicaland the non-philosophical,in a kind of unheardof graphics.
Levinas attemptsto radically restructureour notions of exteriority in Totality andInfinity. Previously when we spoke of exteriority we spoke of a unity of space that neutralisedradical alterity: the relation to the other, the relation of instantsto each other,the relationto death. All of theseissues revolve around notions of an Insideto an Outside.We are all post-Heideggerin this sense:read Blanchot's The Space of
Literature. Levinas writes in Totality and Infinity: 'the relation with the other is a relationwith a Mystery.It is the other'sexteriority, or ratherhis alterity, for exteriority is a property of space,and brings the subject back to himself through the light which constituteshis entire being58.We recall the subtitle of this work by Levinas, Essay on
Exteriority, which abundantlyemploys the notion of exteriority, but true exteriority, according to Levinas, is not spatial for spaceis always the site of the same;the Site is always the site of the Same.Can we truly speakof an exteriority outside of a conception of space?Derrida arguesthat we find Levinas here attempting to obliterate our notion of exteriority but without erasingthat notion altogether.Can we not avoid speakingof infinitys excessover totality within the languageof totality itself?Can we possiblyconceive or speakof the otherwithout usingthe languageof the Same?
Derridaargues that we cannotavoid the Inside-Outsidestructure and spatial metaphors.We cannotbut speakfrom within the ruinedmetaphor and we are obliged
" JacquesDenida: Wtiting and Difference: 1997,p. 112 248 to wearthe patchyclothes of the tradition.For Derrida,we mustbe deportedfrom our own site towardsthe Site,toward the spatiallocale that is the metaphorcongenital to the philosophical word or logos. Is all thought therefore primarily poetic, insofar as its point of beginningis concerned,dependent on andemerges from the world of metaphor?Metaphor is the emergenceof languageitself, referringto itself within itself prior to being a rhetorical procedurewithin language.For Derrida all philosophy can do is, is a speakingof this metaphor, a stating of the metaphor itself, which amountsto thinking through this metaphor within the silent horizon of the non- metaphorthat we identify as Being. Spaceis the primary wound without which we cannoteven open language, without which onewould not havea true or false exteriorityto speakof
For Derridaone can only write by crossingout, by crossingout what hasbeen alreadycrossed out: for crossingout writes,still drawsin space.And thus we find
Heaneygoing down anddown for the'goodturf in poemslikeDigging! or the bog in
'Bogland!'missing its last definition/ By millions of years'59.We can only re-write, haveor operateour discoursewithin a tradition.And thuswe find poetsre-writing on the words of previous poets. Thus is T. S. Eliot's The WasteLand a compendium of the bestlines written in the tradition of Western(and Eastern) writing andpoetry. We can alsoread Cathal USearcaigWs selected poems Out in the Openas a commentary,a modemre-inscription of the classicalconventions of Gaelicpoetry, or asa re-writing of poetsof the Irish tradition writing in Englise. For Derridawe cannotconceive of languagewithout the ruptureof space.An aquaticor aeriallanguage would be meaningless,unless we could tracealterity within it. Derridapursues Heidegger in
59 SeamusHeaney: Opened Ground. - Poems 1966 - 1996: 1998,p. 41 249 arguingthat the meaningsthat emergefrom, radiateoutwards, the conceptsInside-
Outside,from Light-Night,inhabit proscribed words, and are embeddedin personor vicariously,at the heartof conceptualityitself. Why or how, we might be temptedto ask?
Derrida arguesthat the structuresInside-Outside, Night-Day do not signify an immersion in space.These structureshave no meaning in a pure spacegiven over to itself anddisorientated. It is becauseof an includedorigin that this structureemerges, an inscribed easternhorizon that is neither within nor without space.The text of the glance is the text of speech.It is on this basis that we can speakof it as Face.
Languageand space are inseparable.Language rises with the dayto facethe sun.
Surely what Levinas is attempting to do when he speaksof the infinite exteriority of the otheras non-spatial, as non-exteriority and non-interiority, is to acknowledgethat the infinite cannotbe stated?Is this not to saythat the structure'inside-outside' which is the very structureof languageitself is markedby the original finitude of speech?
Derridawrites: Thilosophical language belongs to a systemof language(s).Thereby, its nonspeculativeancestry always brings a certain equivocality into speculation.
Sincethis equivocalityis original andirreducible, perhaps philosophy must adopt it, think it andbe thoughtin it, mustaccommodate duplicity anddifference within speculation,within the very purity of philosophicalmeaning 61
For Derridathe infinitely other,the infinity of the other,is not the otheras a positiveinfinity, asGod, or asresemblance with God.The infinitely Otherwould not
60 Cathal0' Searcaigh:Out in the Open:Clo - lar Chonnachta:Conamara: 1997, trans. by Frank Sewell,especially a poemEke 'Dear Dark-Haired Love', p. 113 "' JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference:1997, p. 113 250 be what it is, other,if it wasa positiveinfinity, andif it did not maintainwithin itself the negativityof the indefinite,of the apeiron.To speakof the 'infinitely otheeis to talk aboutthat which doesnot enddespite my endlesslabours and continual and continuousexperience. Derrida, tackles Levinas, on the groundsthat we cannotexpel negativity- understoodas labour, work, or maybe'care' - from within the realmsof transcendence,for to do so would disrespectthe Other as Other. What we speakof as the positive Infinity (God) cannot be infinitely Other. We can only understandinfinity as Other in the form of the in-finite. When one attemptsto speakof Infinity as a positive plenitude purely and absolutely then one banishesthe other as the unthinkable,the impossibleand the unutterable.
If we areto follow Levinasall the way downhis streetthen we arerequired to neutralisespace within the descriptionof the otherin orderthereby to liberatepositive infinity. Doesthis not requirethat we neutralisethe essentialfinitude of the faceas speechand glance that is alwaysa body,and not, asLevinas continually insists, the corporealmetaphor of etherealized.thought? When we speakof the bodyand embodimentwe aretalking aboutthe literal body,an exteriorityembedded in a locale that is fully spatial and literally so. Thereby the point of origin is inseparablefrom the spaceit engendersand orients. It is inescapablyan inscribedorigin. The inscriptionis the written origin: tracedand inscribed within a system.Unless this inscriptionis written in, thenwe would no longerpossess, have or be a bodyproper to ourselves.
The entiremetaphysics of the Facewould literally collapse,but not fall on its face.
Deffida arguesthat within philosophyand within language,within what he terms philosophicaldiscourse we cannotsimultaneously maintain, save, preserve or speak of the ideasor themesof positiveinfinity andof the face.We canonly preserveor 251 unify themand hold themtogether within the horizonof infinite andindefinite alterity asthe irreduciblycommon horizon of Deathand the Other.What he terms'the horizonof finitude or the finitude of the horizon".
If the faceis body it is mortal.Logic illustratesan infinite chiasmus,as such, for if we speakof infinite alterity as death then we cannot reconcile this with infinite alterity as positivity and presence(God). What we are identifying as a metaphysical transcendencecannot be at onceboth transcendencetoward the otheras Death and transcendencetoward the other as God, unlessof coursethat God meansdeath. Can he appear,or is he namedwithin the differencethat existsbetween all andnothing?
CanGod be both all andnothing? Is Godboth life anddeath? Is God inscribedhere within difference,as Difference itself? Negative theology is bom at this frontier.It speaksa speechthat knowsitself doomedto failure, enmeshedas it is in the finite.
Levinashas landed himself in troublesomewaters. What happenswhen within your conceptionof thingsmetaphysical responsibility is responsibilityfor language, becauseas Levinas writes in Totalityand Infinity, 'thoughtconsists of speaking',and metaphysicsaims to be a languageof communicationwith God?63 How doesone beginto think the other,if the othercan be spokenonly asexteriority and through exteriority,that is, nonalterity?How doesone do this if the speechthat must inaugurateand maintain absolute separation is by its essencerooted in space,which cannotconceive of separationand absolute alterity?
Wheredo we find peacethen? We recall what Levinaswished to achievein
Totality andInfinity. He washoping to establisha modemethic, and this wasand is a
62 JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. I IS 252 commendableaim. All Levinaswished to do wasre-situate the ethicalquestion.
Havingcriticised the foundationsof Levinas!s thoughtdoes Derrida attempt to recaptureor redirect,reclaim Levinas's original aim whenhe setout the arguments
containedwithin Totality andInfinity? Derridaargues that peaceis a certainsilence, a
certainbeyond of speech,a certainpossibility, albeit asa type of futurepresence, a
certain silent horizon of speech.As soon as discourseopens war begins. Peaceand
silenceare the strangevocation of a languagecalled outside itself by itself Finite
silenceis a mediumof violence.We experienceit assuch. What then? Language can
only indefinitely tend toward justice by acknowledgingand practising the violence
within it. We mustuse violence within violencewithin an economyof violence.We
mustuse light againstlight, in orderto avoidthe worstviolence, mainly the violence
of the night of repressionthat precedesdiscourse. If we takehistory seriously we must
be vigilant. Philosophymust be awareof its historicalstature, its statureas an
economy.Speech is the first victory againstviolence, and yet violencedid not exist
beforeour possibilitiesfor speech.
Vlolence and the Transcendental:
Levinashas argued that the Talse-infinity'(a Hegeliantenn not usedby
Levinas)is, or would be, the indefinite,negative form of infinie. Levinashimself
conceivestrue altenty asnon-negativity (non-negative transcendence), and so he can
makethe otherthe true infinity, andmake the same(in a strangecomplicity with
negativity)into the false-infinity.We aska basicquestion here: how canyou separate
63Jacques Derfida: Wtiting and Difference: 1997, p. 117 64Jacques Derfida: WHfing and Difference: 1997,p. 119 253 alterity from negativity?How canalterity be separatedfrom the 'falseinfinity'? To put it simply, how can absolutesameness not be infinity?
If we follow Levinaswe are led to believethat the sameis a violent totality, andas such it is finite. Again, assuch it is abstract.It is moreother than the other.He would have us believe that the sameas finite totality would not be the same,but still the other.He appearsto be speakingof the otherunder the rubric of the same,and of the sameunder the rubric of the other.For, if the finite totality wasthe same,it could not be thought or posedas such, without becoming other than itself Failing to do so would meanthat it couldnot enterinto war with others(finite totalities)and could not be violent.No longerbeing violent it could not be the swnein Levinas'ssense, of whatwe call a finite totality. Whenwar is engagedin, we mustbegin to speakof the other'sother, gaining access thereby to the otheras an otherself At this point thenit no longer exists as a totality in Levinas'ssense.
How do we escapethis minotaufSmaze? We might beginby conceivingthe false-infinityas irreducible. Where can we find a tenableposition? One position we canlive with is foundin the writings of EdmundHussert. He setabout demonstrating the irreduciblenature of intentionalincompleteness, and therefore of alterity.If consciousnessis irreduciblethen it cannever become absolute self-consciousness. In somefuture parousia of an absoluteknowledge it cannotbe reassembledabsolutely closeto itself by its very self-definition.Can we think of the Talse-infinity'without the true infinity lurking too far behind,near, alongside it, for we cannotconceive of the falsewithout thinking of the true?Husserl consistently argued that vision always calls into questionthe necessity,utility, function,or adequatenature of the division or 254 structure,inside-outside. We arecontinually forced by our vision to the point where we overflow our constrictinghorizons. We deal with incompletenessthe minutewe setout on the pathof pursuitthat leadsus towardthe transcendent.Husserl's position is that we arecreatures of immanentperception that areplaced or occurwithin the infinite horizon of the flux of experience.
V- For example,we canspeak of theIdea in the Kantiansense. This designates the infinite overflowingof a horizon,which dueto an absoluteand essential necessity can never be, or become,an object itself The horizon cannot becomean object becauseit is the unobjectiflable wellspring of every object in general.The concept of horizonturns every constitutive act into an object,and in that very moveopens the work of objectificationto infinity. We mustreverse our perspectiveand realise that in phenomenologywe do not speakof the constitutionof horizonsbut ratherthe horizon of constitution.This is valuablein the contextof Derrida!s debatewith Levinas.This is becausethe Husserlianhorizon takes the form of an indefiniteopening and thus offersitself, ceaselessly,without anypossible end to the negativityof constitution.
This project,role or task,Derrida implies, keeps it from all totalizationwhile at the sametime preservesit from the illusion of the immediatepresence of a plenitudinous infinity in which the otheris absolutelyand untraceably swallowed. We respect exteriority,thereby, realising that our consciousnesscannot but be infinitely inadequatein its approachto the infinite (andindeed the finite). We dwell within the thoughtof the eternalirreducibility of the otherto the same,but of the otherappearing asother for the same.And it is at this point within the world of phenomenologythat ethicsfinds its true freedomand its absoluteradicality. 255
Whatare the implicationsof Husserl'sconcept of horizon?It meansthat the ultimatejurisdiction of evidenttruths is infinitely open,is openfor everytype of possibleobject, that is, for everyconceivable sense present for consciousnessin general.Derrida posits that no discourse(for example,the oneoffered by Levinasin
TotalityandInfinity) canbe meaningful,can even be thoughtor understood,without drawing upon the layer of phenomenologicaltruth proposedby the writings of
Husserl.When we beginto speakof the possibilitiesof essence;that which guidesall concepts;what is presupposedor assumedwhen one proceedsto speakof ethics, transcendence, of infinity, et al, we have to be in the domain of ideas accessible to concreteconsciousness at the most general level, for, if not no human discourseor thoughtwould be possibleat all. We arein the domainof a transcendental phenomenologyand prior truths, from which a phenomenologyof ethics must take root. We areat the beginningsof thought,truth, value,before concrete positions are arguedfor, created,begin, or areheld, even acted upon.
Derridanotes the surpriseof readingin Levinas'swork Totalityand Infinity the Trombeyond totality hiStorY65 Thereis in the phrase: the or . a presupposition phrasethat the totality is finite and that history can be a finite totality, and finally that thereis no historybeyond the finite totality. Deffida will arguefor the positionthat historyis impossible,actually meaningless within a finite totality, andthat it is impossibleand meaningless within the positiveand actual infinity. Derrida.elaborates ideashere that will preoccupyhim for the rest of his writing life: the ideaof differancedeveloped in OfGrammatologyand the aporeticdeveloped in Khora, Sauf
63 JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 122 256 le Nom,and. 4porias. 66Derrida argues that historykeeps to the differencebetween totality andinfinity, historybeing precisely that which Levinascalls transcendence andeschatology, a systemthat is neitherfinite nor infinite, but a structuraltotality that escapesthis alternativein its functioning,escaping the archaeologicaland the
eschatologicalby inscribing them within itself
Levinas's tussle with Husserk
Levinas has a disagreementwith Husserl, with positions developedand
outlined by Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations. According to Levinas, by making
the otherthe ego!s phenomenonconstituted by analogicalappresentation on the basis
of belongingto the ego'sown sphere,Husserl allegedly missed the infinite alterity of
the otherand ultimately reduced it to the same.Levinas reiterates often that assoon as
onemakes of the otheran alter egothen one neutralises its absolutealterity.
'V- For Derrida.Husserl is involvedin a different strategyin the Cartesian
Meditationsthan Levinas is preparedto admit. Whatpreoccupies Husserl according to
Deffida is how the otheras other, in its irreduciblealterity, is presentedto me. Husserl
will argueit is presentedto me asoriginary non-presence. The ego'sphenomenon is
the otheras other: the phenomenonof a certainnon-phenomenality that is irreducible
for the egoas ego in general.We cannotencounter the alter ego(in the very form of
the encounterset up by Levinas'sthought), it is impossibleto meetand know it, with
respect,in languageor experience,if this other,in its alterity, doesnot appearfor an
ego(in general).To quoteDeffida: 'onecould neitherspeak, nor haveany senseof the
" JacquesDerrida: On the Name:Stanford Univ. Press:California: 1995, Thomas Dutoit (ed.); 257 totally other,if therewas not a phenomenonof the totally other,or evidenceof the
And to Husserl his dilemma in his totally other as SUCh67- allow speakof own voice:
They, (the otheregos) however, are not simplerepresentations or objectsrepresented
within me, syntheticunities of a processof verificationtaking place"within me", but
"others...... for this the precisely subjects sameworld ... subjects who perceive thereby just I the in it, world ...and who experienceme, as experience world and "others"'(Cartesian MeditationS)68.
Here we meet a core issue for Husserl in the fifth of the Cartesian
Meditations.His mostcentral affirmation concerns the irreduciblymediate nature of
the intentionalityaiming at the otheras other. The otheras transcendental other (other
absoluteorigin andother zero point in the orientationof the world), cannever be
givento me in an original way andin person,but only throughanalogical
presentation.The world of poetrybegins here. The essenceof metaphoris a respect
andconfirmation of separationand does not reducethe otherto the same.We can
only approachthe otherthrough analogy, for, if I did not approachthe otherby way of
analogy,but immediately,originally andsilently, in communionwith the other's
experience,the otherwould immediatelycease to be the other.Husserl's theme of
appresentativetransposition indicates, preserves, recognises, the radicalseparation of
the absoluteorigins.
Bodies,transcendent and natural things, are othersin generalfor my
consciousness.They are alwaysoutside, and thereby their transcendenceis the signof
an alreadyirreducible alterity. We alsohave something hidden within us. We canonly
Apotias: StanfordUniv. Press:California: 1993,Trans. by ThomasDutoit 258 approachthis hidden"somethingness' through poetry, that is, by meansof analogy, anticipationand appresentation. Derrida argues that in relationto the otheras transcendentthing, in principle,it is alwaysopen to a presentationof the originary andoriginal hiddenvisage. In Levinas'thoughtthis is neverpossible. We aretalking abouta distantand absolute incompleteness that is unapproachable.It would be radically impossible to go around and seethings from the other side. The strangerwill alwaysbe infinitely otherbecause, in essence,no enrichmentof his or her profile can give me the subjectiveface of his or her experiencefiromhis or herperspectivesuch as he or she has lived it.
Derridapoints out the key differencebetween Husserl's conception of things
and that of Levinas. For Husserl when he speaksof the infinitely other what appears
to us assuch, Husserl legitimates, founds and authorises his discussion,through
speakingof the intentionalmodification of the ego.However, Levinas speaks of the
infinitely otherwithout speakingof the intentionalmodification of the egowhich
would be a violent act for him, deprivinghimself thereby of a foundationfor his
discussion.How canhe beginto speakof the infinitely otherif it doesnot appearin the zoneof the same?If to follow Husserlis indeedviolent thena primarylevel of transcendentalviolence is inescapableand exists prior to everyethical choice.
Levinashas written in Totality andInfinity: 'The other,as other, is not only an alter
ego.It is what I myselfam not. He hasalso written that'decency'and'everyday life'
incorrectlylead us to believethat'the otheris knownthrough sympathy, as an other
like myself,as alter ego69.Husserl adopts a totally differentstance. He stressesthe
otheras Other only in its fonn asego, in its form of alterity, which cannotbe that of
67Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 123 259 thingsin the world. If the otherwere not recognizedas a transcendentalalter ego,it would be entirelyin the world andnot, asego, the origin of the world. Husserl stressesthe point that the otheras alter egosignifies the otheras other, irreducible to my ego,precisely because it is an ego,because it hasthe form of the ego.This is why he is face,can speak to me andunderstand me. Dissymmetryitself would be impossible without this symmetry, which is not of the world, and which, having no real aspectimposes no limit uponalterity anddissymmetry - in fact, probablymakes them, on the contrary, possible.
A basic position of Derri(las againstLevinas is crystal clear at this point: we cannotmove transcendentally toward the other,unless, in my ipseityI know myselfto be otherfor the other.Unless this wasthe caseviolence would haveno victim or author.It is only whenall egosare othersfor othersthat we canlegitimately speak of violenceand its victims andthe authorsof violence.The infinitely othercan be what it is only if it is other,other than. Other than mustalways be otherthan myself It cannotbe absolvedof a relationto an ego.If it wereit would no longerbe infinitely, absolutelyother. It could no longerbe what it is. Deffida arguesthat this is not some form of self-enclosedgame available to language.If it werethen the expression
'infinitely otheeor'absolutely othee could not be statedand thought simultaneously.
The othercannot be absolutelyexterior to the samewithout ceasingto be other.The sameis not andcannot be a totality closedin uponitself, an identityplaying with itself, possessingonly the appearanceof alterity in whatLevinas calls economy,work andhistory. There could not be a'play of the same'if alterity itself wasnot alreadyin
68 JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 123 6' JacquesDerrida: Wtiting and Difference: 1997,p. 125 260 the same.Unless there was alterity the play of the Samecould not occurin the sense of playful activity, or of dislocation.
Whatdoes Derrida achieve with thesethoughts? Derrida! s basicposition is that: the otheris absolutelyother only if sheor he is an ego,that is in a certainway if he or she is the sameas 1. Simultaneouslyless other and less 'the same'than 1.Are we encounteringa form of 'irrationality? It appearsthat we find it difficult to translatemy relationto the Otherinto the rationalcoherence of language.What does this suggest?
Deffida bravely venturesto suggestthat we can no longer draw inspiration from within the coherenceof the Logos,but that thoughtis stifled in the regionof the origin of languageas dialogue and difference. We are dealingwith an origin that is an inscribedinscription and with the 'irrational'concrete condition of rationality,that which cannotbe'included! within language.
For Derridato accessthe egoityof the alter egoas if to its alterity itself canbe a peacefulgesture. He hasacknowledged the existenceof a transcendentaland pre- ethicalviolence. This exists,though, as a generaldissymmetry whose archia is the sameand permits, actually, the inverse dissymmetry,that is, the very ethical non- violencethat Levinas'sthought attempts to approach.This transcendentalviolence, whatLevinas might call an ethicalviolence is the original point that institutesthe relationshipbetween two finite ipseitiesaccording to Derrida.To gain accessto the otheras other may well be a violent act. To understandand approach the other involvesan approachto their territory.We are in the domainof paradox,for, as
Derridawrites: 'this transcendentalorigin, asthe irreducibleviolence of the relationto 261 the other,is at the sametime nonviolence,since it opensthe relationto the other70. we are within an economy.It is the natureof the economyitself, which, by this opening,will permitaccess to the otherto be determinedin ethicalfreedom as moral violenceor nonviolence.
For Derrida.violence is the origin of meaning and of discourseduring the reign of finitude.The differencebetween the sameand the other,which is not a difference or a relation among others, has no meaning in the infinite, except to speakas Hegel does of the anxiety of the infinite that determinesand negatesitself So violence necessarilyappears within the horizonof an ideaof the infinite. Whatthe ideaof othernessmeans is phenomenalityas disappearance. We arenot in searchof a third
elusivepath or route.Rather we witnessthe birth of the trace,the word asmetaphor whosephilosophical elucidation will resultin the explorationof contradictions.
Withoutthis metaphoror word its originality would not emergeor appear.It mustbe
madeto appear.And the phenomenonitself supposesan original contaminationby the
sign.War is the emergenceof speechand of appearing.We are it seems,within the
realmof strife asfirst suggestedby Martin Heidegger.
Discoursedoes itself violence,negates itself in orderto affirm itself andwages
war againstthe war that institutesit without everbeing able to re-appropriatethis
negativity.We mustutter the word in orderto avoidthe nothingnessof purenon-
sense.It is the taskof philosophyagainst nihilism, or the task of discourseto choose
itself violently in oppositionto nothingnessor purenon-sense. We witnessDerrida's
awarenessof the contemporaryphilosophical scene here. And, what is interesting,
Wtiling Difference: JacquesDerrida: and 1997,p. 128 - 129 262 writing againstit, or at least creatively countering it. Derrida takesLevinas to task for not takingproper responsibility for the termsand implications of his philosophical discourse.Levinas spoke in Totality andInfinity of the horizonwhich'overflows its frameworle71.By this meansLevinas wishes to suggestthe abolitionof violenceby the suspensionof the differencebetween the sameand the other.However this also leads to the banishmentof any possibility for peace.Levinas's goal can only be achievedthrough violence. As such,the passagethrough violence is what we know as history. Levinas is harshly rebuked by Derrida at this point in so far as Derrida re- assertshis position thatno philosophy responsiblefor its languagecan renounce ipseity in general,and the philosophy or eschatologyof separationmay do so less than anyothe? 72. Philosophy exists as the discoursebetween original tragedyand messianictriumph. Through philosophy violence is returnedagainst violence within
-, knowledge,in which original finitude appears3 and in which the otheris respected within, andby, the same.Why is an experienceOutside of my own unthinkableand impossible?We areat the limits of reasonin general.We canonly answerin language,and language itself is only openedby the question.Philosophy opens itself to the questionwithin it andby it. It canonly let itself be questioned.
Violencemight be inescapable.When we free absolutealterity in the absolute samewe areliberating temporality to its movementand so we openaccess to the living present.This living presentmight be the absoluteform of egologicallife insofar asit is the absoluteform of the openingof time to the otherin itself If egoityis the absoluteform of experience,then the present,the presenceof the present,and the presentof presence,are all originally andforever violent. Our living presentis always
71Jacques Derrida: Miling and Difference: 1997,p. 130 263 markedby the absenceof death.We speakof presenceas a form of violencein the senseof beingthe meaningof finitude andthe meaningof meaningas history. Derrida suggeststhat whenwe beginto questionthe very groundsof 'transcendental phenomenoloewe encounterthe origin andend of phenomenoloeslogos, in that the naked opening of the question,its silent opening always escapesphenomenology.
Yet the silent openingof the question about history as finitude and violence permits the appearanceof historyas such. We are in pursuitof the originsof the strange dialoguebetween speech and silence.
Ontology and Violence:
Derridaargues that afterHeidegger we havea tendencyto hold the position that Beingis not simplya predicateof the existent,any more than it is the existenfs subject.When we takeBeing, and he is inclinedto do so, contraLevinas, as essence or existence(as Being-such or Being-there),if it is takenas copula or the unitaryfocal point of all thesepossibilities, then the Beingof the existentdoes not belongto the realmof predicationbecause it is alreadyimplied in all predicationin generaland makespredication possible. The questionof Beingbecomes the basisfor every
syntheticor analyticjudgement, it existsbeyond genre and category, as well asbeing
the mostconcrete thought of all thoughts,the commonroot of essenceand existence,
whatallows for everyjudgement and language itself We areat the centreof a new
understandingor basisof metaphysics.Can we speakof andfrom the strange
differencethat existsbetween Being and the existent?Does this haveany meaning?
Canwe talk aboutthe 'prioriW of Beingin relationto the existent?This is where
I JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 131 264
Levinasbegins his caseagainst core presumptions of Westernthought and is the impetusbehind much of Totality andInfinity. Levinashad soughtto questionthe enslavingof ethicsto'ontology.
Derrida.states: 'there can be an orderof priority only betweentwo detennined things, two existentst73.As Heidegger has made clear though, Being is nothing outside of the existent and in no way precedesthe existent in terms of time or dignity. One cannot legitimately speakof the 'subordination'of the existent to Being or of the ethical relation to the ontological relation. There is no violent subordinationhere for
Being is but always the Being-of this existent. As explicated by HeideggerBeing is not a principleand Being is not a principal existentin the form of an archia that would permitLevinas, to insertthe faceof a facelesstyrant underthe nameof Being.
The thoughtof Beingis alien to the searchfor a primaryprinciple, as it existsbeyond theoryand outside all hierarchies.As Derridawrites: 'if every"philosophy", every
"metaphysics",has always sought to determinethe first existent,the excellentand truly existentexistent, then the thoughtof the Being of the existentis not this metaphyicsor first philosophy.It is not evenontology, if ontologyis anothername for first The Being is does philosophyt74. thoughtof not concernedwith and not yield any power,for powerrelationships only existbetween existents. Levinas has written in
TotalityandInfinity: 'Ontology,as first philosophy,is a philosophyof power75.This may well be true,but, asdeveloped by Heidegger,the thoughtof Being is not an ontology,a first philosophy,and neither is it a philosophyof power.If it is true, as
Heideggersuggests, that the Logos'is the Logosof no one',he doesnot meanthe anonymityof oppression,the impersonalityof the State,or the neutralityof 'one
73 JacquesDerrida: Wtiting and Difference: 1997,p. 136 265 says06. It is anonymousonly as the possibility of the name and of responsibility. In his Letter on HumanismHeidegger has written: 'But if man must one day arrive in the
Being,he first learn in has neighbourhoodof must to exist that which no name'77.
For Derridathere can be no ethicswithout this thoughtof Being.Moreover this thought of Being conditions our respectfor the other as what it is: other. Being is nothing outside of the existent. The opening itself amountsto the ontic-ontological difference,and it is impossibleto avoidthe ontic metaphorin orderto articulateBeing in language,in order to let Being circulate in language.Language both illuminates and hides Being itself Being is alone though in its absoluteresistance to every metaphor.
Thoughtreaches a point wheremetaphor itself mustbe thoughtof asmetaphor, and that is the momentwhen it hasbeen ripped apart as the momentwhen it is lifted asthe veil which hidesor disclosesBeing. The momentof metaphoricityis the moment whenthe thoughtof Being itself emerges.This emergenceoccurs always under or beneaththe emergenceof anothermetaphor. We canonly think throughand with metaphor,and so, at somelevel, we arealways involved in a poeticworld.
To treat Being and the sameas categories,or to treat the relationship to Being asa relationto a categorywhich itself couldbe posedafterward, or subordinatedto a determinedrelation (an ethicalrelation, for example),Derrida asks, is this not to forbid oneselfevery determination from the outset?Following a classical
Heideggerianline Derridaargues that everydetermination in effect presupposesthe thoughtof Being.It is only throughthis thoughtthat we can groundor give meaning
74 JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 137 75 JacquesDerrida: Wtiting and Difference: 1997, p. 137 76 JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 137 ' JacquesDertida: Witing and Difference: 1997, p. 137 266 to Being asother, as other self, to the irreducibility of the existenceand the essenceof the other,and to consequentresponsibility. If Being is alwaysto be let be, andif to think is to let Beingbe, thenBeing is indeedthe otherof thought.But sinceit is what it is only by the letting-beof thought,and since the latter is thoughtonly by virtue of the presenceof the Beingwhich it lets be, then thoughtand Being, thought and the other are the'same;which doesnot mean identical, or one, or equal.
Like the OtherBeing is not at all the accompliceof the totality, whetherof the finite totality, the violent totality of which Levinas speaks,or of an infinite totality.
Being cannotand could not oppressor enclosethe existentand its differencesand therebyis foreignto the ideaof the finite totality, to the infinity of existents,foreign without beinganother existent or anothertotality of existents.If, asLevinas would haveit, the glanceof the otheris to commandme, thenI mustbe ableto let be the otherin his freedomas Other. Being itself, however,commands nothing or no one.
Beingdoes not lord it over the existentand it is not, in its priority (an inescapably ontic metaphor)is not an archia. In orderto be liberatedwe mustset the questionfree that will makeour searchfor the archia tremble.The thoughtof Beingis the best, maybe only, meansof doing this. For Derrida the pre-conceptualunity of Being, and pre-analogical,is the only roadthat canbreak open the possibilityof relationbetween manand God, possibly the mostancient of metaphysicalpreoccupations.
Could we possiblyspeak of the face,without referenceto the questionof
Being?Eyes and mouth can only makea face if they'let be', if they canreach the
Being of what is. SinceBeing is, we do not produceit, but respectit throughthe glanceand speech. There can be no speechwithout the statementof Being.However, 267 asBeing is nothingoutside the determinedexistent it could not appearoutside of the possibilityof speech.And so Beingis dominatedby the themeof unveiling.Derrida speaksof the birth of historyand of the world in the ontic detenninationsunveiled, uttered,in the historyof metaphysics.Historical 'epochs' are metaphysical or onto- theologicaldeterminations of the Beingthat thusbrackets and reserves itself beneath metaphysicalconcepts.
Thereforethe Site is not an empiricalHere but alwaysan Iffic: for Heidegger, as for the Jew, the Irishman and the Poet. This site is never a given proximity but a promised one. The Sacredof which it speaksbelongs not to religion in general,nor to a particulartheology, and cannot be determinedby anyhistory of religion.It is first the essentialexperience of divinity or of deity. It precedesevery relationship to God or the gods.It presupposessome pre-comprehension of the Deity, of God!s Being-
god,of the Sacred.Heidegger writes in his Letter on Humanismthat it is the'only essentialspace of divinity which in turn opensonly a dimensionfor the godsand the
78v
This spaceis within faith andatheism for both presupposeit: 'it is only on the basisof the truth of Beingthat the essenceof the Sacredcan be thought.It is only on the basisof the essenceof the Sacredthat the essenceof Divinity mustbe thought.It is only in the light of the essenceof Divinity that onecan think andsay what the word 79. "God" mustdesignate', writes Heidegger, again in the Letter on Humanism m
Derridawrites: 'that the godsor God cannotbe indicatedexcept in the Spaceof the
Sacredand in the light of the deity, is at oncethe limit andthe wellspringof finite-
78 JacquesDerrida: Wiling and Difference: 1997,p. 145 268
Being as history'80.We cannot grasp God but we can seehim coming. The sacred appearsbut Godremains distant. And so we are at the beginningsof a negative theology,a thoughtconcerned with liberatingand acknowledging the ineffable transcendenceof an infinite existent.And "'ontological" anticipation,transcendence towardBeing, permits, then, an understandingof the term "God", for example,even if this understandingis but the ether in which dissonancecan resonate.This transcendenceinhabits and founds language, and along with it the possibilityof all 81 Being-together' .
Derrida dwells in the paradoxical by arguing that only a face can arrest violence,and can do so only becauseit is a facealone which canprovoke it. It is the thoughtof Beingitself which opensthe face,without it therewould be only pure violenceor non-violence.The thoughtof Being in its unveilingis neverfar removed from the ideaof violence.Being dissimulates itself in orderto appearand does violenceto itself in orderto be stated.A speechproduced without violencewould offer nothingto the other;it would not be history,and it would shownothing. Such a languagewould be without the verb to be andone wonders hypothetically what sort of languageit would be. It would be a languageof pureadoration and pure invocation,
Levinassuggests. It appearsthat violenceemerges with articulation.And so the unhistoricityof meaningat its origin, therefore,is what profoundlyseparates Levinas from Heidegger.For HeideggerBeing is history,and so it is not outsidedifference, andthus it originally occursas (non-ethical) violence, as dissimulation of itself in its own unveiling.
79 JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 146 0 JacquesDerrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 146 'Jacques Derrida: Writing and Difference: 1997,p. 146 269
Derridaconcludes by payinghomage to Greekthought and the birthplaceof his own philosophizing.He acknowledgesthe site of philosophicalencounter as a placethat doesnot offerjust occasionalhospitality to a thoughtthat remainsforeign to it. The Greekis not absentwhen the Jew andthe Christianmeet in his home.
Greececan never be a neutral,provisional site. Why?The Greeklogos can house eschatologicalprophecy and does not remain outside and accidental for any thought.
AS!Saint John Chrysostom noted no onecan treat the Greeksages as 'sages of the outside'. Greek thought recognizesthat alterity has to circulate at the origin of meaning, and by this welcoming of alterity into the heart of the logos, the Greek thought of Being has forever protected itself against any and every absolutely surprising convocation. 270
Conclusion:
FVF. I ne State of Play: Some Useful Tipsfrom Hans-Georg
Gadamerand Paul Ricoeur, with illustrationsfrom
Seamus Hean ey an d Mich ael L ongley
in the previous chapter we noted the line from Angelus Silesius' poem in which he scandalouslyobserves: 'God playswith creation". We re-callJacques
Derrida'sreference to the significanceof play in his work OfGrammatology.There
Deffida wrote: 'one could call play the absenceof the transcendentalsignified as limitlessnessof play,that is to sayas the destructionof onto-theologyand the metaphysicsof presence',but wewill hopeto illustrate,not necessarilythe end of all theologybut maybeeven the placeof a new anddifferent beginningý. What canwe sayfor this themeof playfulnessas expressed in languageand art? Has it any relevancefor the noble,serious and sublime subjects of philosophyand theology, as they aretraditionally understood? In orderto clarify our thought,and in fact, asan elaborationof thoughton the subject,we call to our aid Hans-GeorgGadamer, especiallyhis work Truth andMethodin which he devotesa considerableamount of time andspace to the themeand act of play.
1Jacques Derrida: On the Name: StanfordUniv. Press:California: 1995,Ed. ThomasDutoit 2 JacquesDerrida: Of Grammatology: 1998,p. 50 271
Hans-Georg Gadameron Play
The first thing that Gadamerwishes to makeclear is that whenwe speakof the event,or activity, of 'play' we are not referringto a stateof mind of the creatoror evenof the spectatorwho is caughtup in andenjoying the world of the art object.
Whenwe speakof 'play' we arenot evenreferring to the freedomof subjectivity engagedin play,but ratherwe are referringto the modeof beingof the work of art itself.3
Firstly we canmake a valid distinctionbetween the activity of play andthe behaviourof the player.We notethat for the playerplay is not serious,for that is the reasonwhy he playsin the first instance.However, play existsin a specialrelation with what is serious,and indeed has its own sacredaura of seriousnessabout it. In the momentof play the usualpurposive relations that pertainto humanactivity are curiouslysuspended. Gadamer notes that 'play fulfils its purposeonly if the player loseshimself in play. Seriousnessis not merelysomething that calls us awayfrom play, rather,seriousness in playingis necessaryto makethe play wholly play.
Someonewho doesn'ttake the gameseriously is a spoilsport.The modeof beingof play doesnot allow the playerto behavetoward play asif towardan objeCt'4.
Our aim is to discovermore about the natureof play itself Whatthe concept of play forcesus to recogniseis that the work of art is not an objectthat standsover againsta subjectfor itself, but instead,the work of art's true beingresides in the fact
3 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth and Method- Continuum: New York: 1998,trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall: p. 101 4 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth andMdhod. 1998,p. 102 272 that it becomesan experienceor eventthat altersthe personwho hasundergone it, or hasexperienced it. If we cansay that the 'subject' of the experienceof art is not actuallythe subjectivityof the personwho experiencesit but the work itself, thenwe mustrecognise that play hasits own essence,independent of the consciousnessof those who engagein the act of play.
Let us focusbriefly on commonusages of the word play. In commonspeech we speakof the play of light and the play of forces; there again we note the play of the waves,and we note somebody'sdeft use of wordplay. What such colloquial usage suggestsis an eventor happeningof a to-and-fromovement that is not tied to a particulargoal that would bring it to an end.So, the eventof play hasno goalthat bringsit to an end,but ratherit is an activity that renewsitself throughthe meansof
constantrepetition. The play is the occurrenceof the movementand thus a play of
coloursdoes not meanthe happeningof onecolour playingagainst another, but rather
a processunderway in which to sightthere is displayeda changingvariety of colours.
'the is ,5 One then Gadamernotes: primordial senseof playing the medialone . can 6 speakof 'the primacy ofplay over the consciousnessofthe player, (Gadamer's
italics).
We canall relateto the view that a vital part of the play is t at its movement
mustnot onlybe without goal or purpose,but alsowithout effort. It musthappen by
itself, andhave the appearanceof somethingthat is spontaneouslyoverflowing. Real
play, ironically enough,must exist without strain,and is mostoften experiencedas a
relaxation.The structureof play is suchthat it absorbsthe playerand thereby rids her
5 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth and Method. 1998,p. 103 6 Hans-GeorgGadarner: Truth andMethod: 1998,p. 104 273
or him of the burdenof taking initiatives,which is a typical burdenof everyday,
mundaneexistence. Real play artlesslytends towards a refreshingrepetition and
constantself-renewal. Could we legitimatelyand ironically speakof it asa typeof
spirit at work?
Can we say that nature itself is without purposeand intention, in fact is without exertion, and is a very model of constantly self-renewing play? Is it through this fact that it can appearas a very model for art? Are we beginning to come close to a senseof how the Godheadmight play with creation, in a way that is joyous, refreshing,and liberating?
Gadamerobserves 'the movementto-and-fro obviously belongs so essentially to the gamethat thereis an ultimatesense in which you cannothave a gameby
This does that there is literally yourselfv7. not mean always, necessarilyand another player.Rather, there must be somethingelse with which the playerplays, responding to her or his countermove.Allied to this is the notion of risk. For the gameitself is a risk for the player.One can only play with seriouspossibilities, and so throughthe play of the gamewe enjoy a freedomof decisionthat is endangeredand limited.
What is reflectedhere is the ideathat all play is a being-played.For whoever tries a gameis in fact the onewho is beingtried. Whenwe startto play the gameonce again,we gamblewith the fact that this time aroundthe gamemay not succeed,it may not work out, andwe might fail. Fromthis we can ascertainthat the real subjectof the
7 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth andMethod. 1998,p. Jo5 274 gameis andcan only be the gameitself, for it is that alonewhich drawsin, seduces andengages us in its spell,and thereby retains us in the there.
The empiricalfact of their beingmany games in our world makesobvious that thereis not just onegame played within the one spirit. Ratherthere are manygames that differ widely with each other in terms of the spirit with which each is played, and which, moreproperly, each engenders. The particularnature of a gameproperly lies in the rulesand regulations that prescribethe way the field of the gameis filled. interestingly the playing field in which the game is played is set by the nature of the gameitself andis definedmost by the structurethat determinesthe movementof the gamefrom within thanby what it confronts.
The gamedoes play something.We want to play, andwe chooseone game over another,and this is for the movementof that gameover another.The movement of the gameis especiallymarked out andreserved for that particulargame. When we setoff a playingfield we setoff the sphereof play asa closedworld. Within this spherethe playerscomport themselves in a particularway. Gadamerwrites: 'every gamepresents the manwho playsit with a task.He cannotenjoy the freedomof playinghimself out without transformingthe aimsof his purposivebehaviour into meretasks of the game.Thus the child givesitself a taskin playingwith a ball, and suchtasks are playful onesbecause the purposeof the gameis not really solvingthe task,but orderingand shaping the movementof the gameitself 8.
8 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth and Method. 1998,p. 107 275
The Benefit of One ExanWle
Let us look at an examplefrom SeamusHeaney's body of poetry.
Markings
We marked the pitch: fourjackets for four goalposts,
That wasall. The comersand the squares
Werethere like longitudeand latitude
Under the bumpy ground, to be
Agreedabout or disagreedabout
Whenthe time came.And then we pickedthe teams
And crossedthe line our callednames drew between us.
Youngstersshouting their headsoff in a field
As the light died andthey kept on playing
Becauseby thenthey wereplaying in their heads
And the actualkicked ball cameto them
Like a dreamheaviness, and their own hard
Breathingin the dark and skidson grass
Soundedlike effort in anotherworld
It wasquick andconstant, a gamethat neverneed
Be playedout. Somelimit hadbeen passed,
Therewas fleetness, furtherance, untiredness
In time that wasextra, unforeseen and free. 276
II
You also loved lines peggedout in the garden,
The spadenicking the first straightedge along
The tight white string.Or stringstretched perfectly
To makethe outline of a housefoundation,
Pale timber battens set at right angles
For everycomer, each freshly sawn new board
Spickand span in the oddly passivegrass.
Or the imaginary line straight down
A field of grazing, to be ploughed open
Fromthe rod struckin oneheadrig to the rod
Stuckin the other.
III
All thesethings entered you
As if they wereboth the door andwhat camethrough it.
Theymarked the spot,marked time andheld it open.
A mowerparted the bronzesea of corn.
A windlasshauled the centreout of water.
Two menwith a cross-cutkept it swimming
Into a felled beechbackwards and forwards
So that they seemedto row the steadyearth. 9
SeamusHeaney: Seeing 77tings:Faber & Faber:London: 1991,p. 8-9 277
Heaneycaptures well the senseof the role of the imaginationin this world of the game.It might be clearerto speakof his obliquelysuggesting the invisible boundariesdefined by the rulesof the game.This is suggestedby the lack of definition conveyedby a field of play hintedat by the fourjacket goalpostswithin which the gameis played; what is left open are the exact parametersof the field of play which will be arguedabout later by the boys in the courseof the game. Then thereis the imaginaryline drawnbetween the playerson oneteam as opposed to another.It is arbitrarybut allowsthe gameto proceed.The senseof othernesshinted at by Heaneyin the direction of which we are invited or lifted up to in the playing of the game,is foundin the phrases'dream heaviness' and the 'anotherworld' towards which the playersare playing. What is the effect of this activity?It altersthe world within which the boysexist. They are lifted to a placewhere time is transformedand their movementwithin it. Theyare brought to a placewhere a nimblenessof activity is experiencedand time's heavinessis removedas they moveinto an extratemporal dimension.Understandably enough this is experiencedas a liberation.
Heaneyextends the field of referenceof his own poemin the secondpart. He refersthere to a gardener'sactivity of markingout partsof the gardendesign.
Buildersuse a similar methodto constructon the groundthe foundationplans of a house.There is somethingethereal, unreal, unrealised about the builder's plansas sketchedout on the ground,but beforetoo long they will becomesomething solid, foundedand very real andtangible. The hint of the poemis that both realitiesdepend on eachother for their existence.The momentof unity of thesetwo separatedomains is containedwithin the line: 'all thesethings entered you/ As if theywere both the door andwhat camethrough it". It is worth noting that Heaney'spoem contains two 278 odd setsof diction,unusual and striking in the sensethat they clashagainst each other whenplaced side by sidewithin the world of this poem.The last sentencequoted abovecontrasts with the concretetenns of ploughing,gardening and playing football.
Its referenceis to an abstraction:as are the referencepoints of termslike 'dream heaviness'and 'somelimit'. Phraseslike thesecontrast with the concretenessof referencebehind 'the actual kicked ball'. The opposite of actual is imagined or unreal, andthat ball is alsokicked in this poem,strangely enough, and has to be if the 'actual kicked ball' line is to make any sense.That is part of Heaney's magical achievement in the poem.
The poem'smovement is containedin its paradoxicalfinal image.We have the two menrowing the steadyearth. The key verb is 'seeming'and the argumentof the poemis that the imagined,virtual world is as important,significant and influential
asthe 'real'. narrowlydefined. And onekey way to enteror accessthis world is
throughthe play of the game.
Let us returnto Gadamer.Gadamer argues that performinga task successfully
rpresentsit'. Play is limited to presentingitself It, like the world of nature,is a form
of self-presentation.This drawson the playerto presenthim or herselfin the courseof
the gametoo. Gadamerwrites: 'only becauseplay is alwayspresentation is human 10. play ableto makerepresentation itself the task of a game" And this representationis
alwaysfor someone,especially so whenwe are in the realmof art or the religiousrite.
10Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method. 1998,p. i o8 279
We notethe 'in between'nature of the game.We havesaid that a gamedoes not haveits beingwithin the consciousnessof the playeror within his or her attitude, but ratherthat the play drawseither her or him into its dominionand fills themwith its spirit. In this activity the playerexperiences the gameas a reality that surpasses him or her.In a senseartistic presentationexists always for someoneeven if thereis
no evident presenceof someonelistening or watching.
Gadamercalls the changein which humanplay comesto its true
consummationin beingart a 'transformationinto structure"' (Gadamer'sitalics).
The word transformationmeans that somethingis suddenlyand as a whole something
else, with the ftansformed thing that it has becomebeing its true being. In the play too
the playwrightand the playerscease to be themselvesin a way andbecome utterly
only whatthey areplaying. The world of the play is anotherworld, maybea closed
world, andis its own measureand measures itself by nothingoutside of itself The
actionof the dramaexists entirely within itself Gadamernotes: 'it no longerpermits
of any comparisonwith reality asthe secretmeasure of all verisimilitude.It is raised
aboveall suchcomparisons - andhence also above the questionof whetherit is all because from it' 12 real- a superiortruth speaks .
Whathappens in art in this instance?What is emerges.What is producedand
broughtto the light is what hasbeen constantly hidden and withdrawn. And so what
we experiencein a work of art andwhat invites our attentionand sustains it is how
true the work of art is. Within the work of art we know andrecognise something and
ourselves.The realjoy of recognitionis the discoveryof knowingmore than is
11 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth and Method. 1998,p. I 10 12 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth andMethod. 1998,p. 112 280 alreadyfamiliar. We touchupon the essenceof things.And so the play hasa revelatorydimension to it. We cannotthen definethe beingof art asof somethingthat is an objectfor aestheticconsciousness, for the aestheticattitude is morethan it knowsof itself For art is a part of the eventof beingthat occursin presentation.And
so Gadamercan write: 'what we havecalled a structureis oneinsofar as it presents
itself as a meaningful whole. It does not exist in itself, nor is it encounteredin a
mediation(Vermittlung) accidental to it; rather,it acquiresits properbeing in being
13There is fact its being And mediated' . primarily the eventor of embodied. yet the work can only open up from itself its own possibilities of being. We are in a situation
wherewe areboth bound and free.
Play in the ConcreteInstance
Let us testour analysisby looking closelyat somepoems. We will look at a
clutch of poemsby contemporaryBelfast poet Michael Longleyfrom his collection
GorseFires.
The Velocipede
He walkspast my bedroomwindow carryinga spade.
That JosephMurphy, fatherof four setsof twins,
Jockey,lover of horses,the gunclub's secretary,
Shouldhide in his cottagea ledgerfull of poems
Is hardlysurprising: consider his grandfather
Who beachcombedfrom the strandbarrels and spars
13 Hans-GeorgGadamer: Truth andMethod. 1998,p. 117 281
And built the first velocipedein Thallabaun.
Out of an umbrellaand old sheetshe improvised
A parachute,launched himself from the byreroof
And after a brief flight wastaken to hospital.
On home-madecrutches and slipping all the tethers
JosephMurphy's grandfatherswings past my window. 14
This poem tells the story of JosephMurphy, and at one level it is a straightforward narrative poem. Longley presentsus with a picture of a man solidly rootedin the communalworld in which he wasborn andraised. He loveshorses and shootingand so is well groundedin 'real' life; the poempresents his beinginvolved in what arethe respectablepursuits of the averageindividual of thoseparts. The surpriseis the revelationthat he is a closetpoet. Longley traces a genealogyof oddity for him, his grandfatherwas a bit of an innovator,a manwho followed his own star, let his creativitylift him out of the ordinaryworld to which he customarilybelonged.
JosephMurphy's grandfatherrisked social ridicule by beingchildish and indulging a type of play normallyreserved for naivechildren, as well aseventually enduring physicalinjury, by building the first velocipedein Thallabaun.He aimedfor freedom but foundhe wasbound to the world in a way that he could not ultimatelyescape. He wasmotivated by a desireto fly, to moveabove the ordinaryand see it from a new perspective,from within a new anddifferent element.Longley uses the telling phrase
4slippingall the tethers'.
14 Mchael Longley: GorseFires: Secker& Warburg: London: 1992,p. 14 282
WasJoseph Murphy andhis grandfatherin searchof what a conventional theologymight call 'elevatinggrace'? In termsof Gadamer'sanalysis there is an expressionof desirefor transformation,of needingto escapeone element by moving throughanother. One sought for it throughpoetry and the otherthrough the act of flying. Werethey pursuing an intuition that therewas more to their humanitythan their mundaneworld and social networks allowed or grasped?The poet hints at his participationin this desireand world in the final imageof the poem.Longley says he can seeJoseph Murphy's grandfather swinging outside his window. At a literal level we could say this must be a lie. For he has only imagined it after watching Joseph
Murphy passby his window with a spadeand his subsequentreflections on his possessinga ledgerfull of poemsand then the meditationon his family's past.
However,the storyof the grandfatherwas only recollected;yet Longleyhints at the truth andsubstance of his recollectionthrough the concreteimagery of the grandfather swayingoutside his window.Within the world of the poemsuch a statementhas its own truth andvalidity. Real art doesnot and cannotlie.
The secondpoem we look at from GorseFires dealswith Longley'smother.
TheBalloon
You are a child in the dreamand not my mother.
I float aboveyour aheadas in a hot air balloon
That castsno shadowon you looking up at me
Acrossthe shallowstreams and fields of shinygrass
As thoughthere were neither malformation nor pain.
This is the first time everI haveseen you running. 283
You are a child in the dreamand not my mother
Which maybe why I call out from the balloonto you:
'Jump over the hedges,Connie, jump overthe trees'.13
Fromthe circumstancesrevealed in the poemwe gatherthat Longley'smother was disabled in 'real' life, certainly she could not walk 'properly', for she has suffered from 'malformation'and 'pain' andthe poethas never seen her running.The scenario imagined by Longley in the world of his poem is his having a vision of his mother running andjumping and being so agile, fit and able, to an almost superhumandegree, that shecan spring over hedgesand trees. Longley imagines himself as if in a balloon
floating abovethe world in which this is happening.Once again we seehim develop the imageof flight asa type of transcendentalmetaphor that symbolizesthe
possibilitiesof poetryitself. The ideaof flight allows oneto rise abovethe mundane,
the real, andthe ordinaryinto the world of the imaginedand open-ended possibility.
Thushe looks at the world of his mother'sreal sufferingand disability by
constructinga counter-world.This suggestsa dissatisfactionwith the givenand a
yearningfor somethingmore, an 'other'. We appearto be peopleof a dual identity
too. Thereis anotherpart of ourselvesthat canthink againof otherpossibilities apart
from the concretefacts of our beingin the world. What is this strangecapacity?
Again, is the poetin pursingthe possibilitiesof his imaginationand the mediumin
which he workslanguage and metaphor moving towards a world of 'other-ness'?So
we seethe poetenter a dreamscapethat moveshim to an-otherplace of betterthings.
15Mchael Longley: Gorse Fires: 1992,p. 34 284
The lastpoem is a fascinatingobservation of the ritual life of a rural Irish village. Watchhow Longleyconstructs the role of the narratorof the poem:
Detour
I want my funeralto includethis detour
Down the single street of a small market town,
On eitherside of the processionsuch names
As Philbin, O'Malley, MacNamara, Keane.
A reverent pauseto let a herd of milkers pass
Will bring me faceto facewith grubbyparsnips,
Cauliflowersthat glitter after a sunshower,
Thenhay rakes,broom handles, gas cylinders.
Reflectedin the slow sequenceof shopwindows
I shallbe part of the actionwhen his wife
Drainingthe potatoesinto a steamysink
Calls to the butcherto get readyfor dinner
And the publicandescends to changea baffel.
Frombehind the onelocked door for miles around
I shall prolonga detailedconversation
With the man in the concretetelephone kiosk 16 About wheremy funeralmight be goingnext.
Ostensiblymarking the passingof a hearsedown a village street,what the poet actuallyachieves is a descriptionof the life of the village in which the individual
16Mchael Longley: Gorse Fires: 1992,p. 7 285 beingburied once partook. Through the ritual of deathwe are forcedinto observing the daily ritualsof living. And in asking,maybe praying, that his funeral will be like the onebeing enacted before him, the poetis in fact elevatingthe life he witnesses.It is worthy of emulation.In disappearinginto the everydayLongley finds somethingto elevate,to praise.We noticethe daily rituals:the wife cookingdinner for the butcher, the changingof the barrels. Longley castsa loving eye over the debris of the village, as if seeingit for the last,maybe first time: the hayrakes, the broomhandles, the gas cylinders.
The really striking achievementof the poem is Longley's construction though of the T of the poem.While deadhe alsomaintains a presenceand effectiveness in the world, for it is he who watchesand participates in the eventof his own funeral.He is conversingwith, playingagainst the othercharacters in the poem'sworld. His identity,his concreteplace and location are constantlycalled into question,or are shifting andchanging in a fluid movement.He will movethrough the streetobserving the everydaygoings on of village life, but he will alsobe conductinga conversation with the personat the otherend of the telephoneline aboutthis funeral.Is that what he is actuallydoing in this poem?Because the poemis abouta hypotheticalevent that will oneday be real, for he will havea funeralat somepoint in the future.The whole poemis an inventionand so canconsider this possibility.We know whatthe poetis talking about,we canunderstand him andvalidate his desires. 286
Within the Playground of Philosophy
Whatare the benefitsof suchan understandingof 'play' andits importancefor philosophicalthought as outlined by Gadamer?As JohnCaputo writes in Radical
Hermeneutics:'the "principle of reason7is all around us today. As a principle, reason is an arche, aprinceps, a prince, which like all royalty makes its presencefelt everywhere.It has an enormoussphere of influence (Machtbereich), leaving nothing out, no entity untouchedby the claim it makes.It demandsreasons, sufficiency, the rendering of a sufficient reason,for everything. So how can we speakof the play of reasonif reasonis a deadly serious principleT 17Poetry as a manifestation of play can rescueus from the deathlyefficiency of reason.
Martin Heideggerwas aware of this, especiallyas he lived throughthe dawningof the nuclearage, and in his later writings setabout de-limiting the sphere of influenceen j oyedby reason.This is part of Heidegger'swell-noted turn towards the poets.Heidegger spoke of theAb-grund, the Abyss,with which the poetis an intimatefamiliar, a sphereof groundlessness.It is a regionwhere play is to be found andwhich is outsidethe reachof principle.Heidegger was in searchof a sphereof poeticisingand thinking which eludedrationalization, especially when he arrivedat the point in his thoughtwhere he discoveredthat the principle of reasoncan offer no reasonfor its reasonableness.
17 JohnD. Caputo:Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the HermeneuticProject: IndianaUniv. Press:Bloomington: 1987, p. 222 287
Play 's Importfor Theology
Jean-LucMarion notesin God WithoutBeing that the real challengeof
theologylies in the Eucharistand 'the theologianmust go heyondthe text to the Word,
interpreting itfrom thepoint ofview ofthe Word'18(Marion's italics). Yet we accept
as Christiantheologians that we cannotthrough any hermeneuticreach a view that
could openour eyesto seethe exegeteof the Father(John 1:18). However, we can reacha shiningthrough an absence,when we realisethat oncethe Word hasbeen announcedit disappearsin favour,or towardsthe benefitof the eucharisticmoment in (Luke24: 28 - 33). The Word intervenesin personin the Eucharistto accomplish this way the hermeneutic.There is a profoundimplication for theology:the text, wherethe Word's effect of meaningis fixed in verbalsigns, consigns the incommensurabilityof the Word:the Scripturesthus exceedthe limits of the world
(John19: 30,21: 35). Potentiallythen we havean infinite reserveof meaning.Do we witnessan expressionof this in the poeticword? The implicationof this for interpretationis immediatelyobvious; there must also be an infinite responseon the part of interpreters,with eachone leading a fragmentof the text backto the Word, in takingthe point of view of the Word; so,we musthave then an infinite amountof eucharistichermeneutic activity. Marion writes: 'in orderto give an (infinite) hernieneuticof the (finite) text in view of the (infinite) Word, an infinity of situations aremobilized from the point of view of the Word, hencean infinity of Eucharists, celebratedby an infinity of differentcommunities, each of which leadsa fragmentof
18 Jean-LucMarion: God Without Being: Hors-Texte: Univ. of ChicagoPress: Chicago: 1995,Trans. by ThomasA. Carlson:p. 149 288 the wordsback to the Word,to the exactdegree that eachone repeats and welcomes
19 eucharisticallythe Word in person' .
This opensup someroom for play.Theology can learn from the achievements of play in poetryas we haveexamined them above. The flexibility of play asa mode of comprehendingaesthetic activity and interpretation lends itself quite readily as a modelfor activity in theologicalthought. Maybe they provide the basemodel that theologyshould be following?We canlearn from the new horizonsopened up by the poet,and can learn something about the natureof communionas pursued through the poet'snatural reliance on metaphoricstrands of thought.We seethis in the examples givenabove. Michael Longleyin the poemsexamined above illustrates a community orientationworth emulating;in the poem'The Velocipede'there is a senseof familial ancestry,of communalactivity betweenfather and son,but alsoindirectly the poet who sharesa similar activity to the sonin the poem.In 'Detour' a communityand its is ritual observedand the poetaims to participatein that ritual in a centrallyimportant way.The poetoffers to theology a way of openingup new horizonsof thoughtand connection,and his or her exuberanceof thoughtas evidencedby the manyexamples providedcounters nihilistic conceptionsof the world, througha radicalre-thinking of human the situation,and a continuallystriking representationof humanways of being within new contexts.
Paul Ricoeur and 10nesey'asAnother'
To help us pursueour strainof thoughtwe turn to philosophyonce again. in his book OneselfAsAnother Paul Ricoeur is interestedin pursuingthe question:what
19 Jean-LucMarion: God Without Being.* Hors-Texte: 1995,p. 157 289 modeof beingbelongs to the self, andwhat sort of beingand entity is it? He is also interestedin the relationof the self to others,or the relationof selfhoodto otherness.
He writesthat 'only a beingthat is a self is in the world; correlatively,the world in which this beingis, is not the sumof beingscomposing the universeof subsisting thingsor thingsready-to-hand. The beingof the self presupposesthe totality of a is horizon its 20. world that the of thinking, acting, feeling - in short, of its care Again he notes:'there is no world without a self who finds itself in it andacts in it; thereis
that is in fashion'21 no self without a world practicable some .
In what waysdo we noteour activity ashuman beings? One example is our movefrom inadequateto adequateideas about the world, at leastabout ourselves and thingswithin the world. This signalsthe possibilityof our beingtruly active.It also constitutesan ethicalactivity. Herebywe notea closeconnection between the internal dynamismthat is life andthe powerof humanintelligence that presidesover the movementfrom inadequateto adequateideas. We becomepowerful as human beings whenwe noteour horizontaland external dependence upon all things,as well asour ' vertical andimmanent dependence with regardto the primordialpower that motivates us ashuman beings.
How do we accountfor the work of othernessthat we experienceat the heart of self-hood?Firstly we havean experienceof our own body asa mediatorbetween the self andthe world that is itself takenin, in accordancewith variabledegrees of practicabilityand foreignness. The self finds itself in relationto the foreign,in the very precisesense of otherthan self, which implies an othernessat the very heartof
20 Paul Ricoeur: OneseyAs Another: Univ. of ChicagoPress: Chicago: 1994,p. 3 10 21Paul Ricoeur: OneseyAs Another: 1994, p. 311 290 inter-subjectivity.Then there is the relationof the self to itself So our senseof othernessindicates a high degreeof complexityand relational density.
Let us look a little closerat Ricoeur'sunderstanding of the importanceof our bodiesand of the flesh in any analysisof the self andotherness. We notethat if others arebodies, it is sobecause we havea body ourselvesor are a body.I am for myself my own body.And thuswe canascribe mental and physical predicates to oneand the sameentity becausethe humanbody is at oneand the sametime a body amongothers andmy body.We notealso the twofold adherenceof our bodiesto the domainof thingsand to that of the self dueto our observingthat humanaction constitutes an eventin the world, designatingits authorin a self-referentialmanner, because the latter belongsto the world in a modein which the self is constitutiveof the very sense of this belonging.-Our body is the very placeof this belonging.
Ricoeurnotes 'this globalphenomenon of anchoring'.In any ontologyof the flesh we mustemphasize one important dimension of the body,and that is its passivityin the presenceof sufferingwhich is undergoneand endured. Ricoeur writes: 'most of the evil in the world comesfrom violenceamong human beings.
Here,the passivitybelonging to the metacategoryof one'sown bodyoverlaps with the passivitybelonging to the categoryof otherpeople; the passivityof the suffering self becomesindistinguishable from the passivityof beingthe victim of the other 22. (than) self This alerts us to the body as a place where resistancegives way to effort. We are awareof our body andits intimate diversity,as well asits extension irreducibleto any imaginedor representedextension, its massas well as its gravity.
22Paul Ricoeur: OnesetfAs Another. 1994,p. 320 291
Throughactive touch things attest to their existenceas indubitably as our own.
Existenceis a form of resistance,attesting to our existenceand that of the world.
Ricoeurwill alsorecognise the othernessof our own flesh.We canreign over our bodies.But they resist us in their strangeness.And so Ricoeur will write:
6ontologically,the flesh precedesthe distinction between the voluntary and the involuntary'23 Thereby implies its for flesh . selffiood own proper ownness which the is the support.And so, evenif the othernessof the strangercan by someimpossibility be derivedfrom the sphereof ownness,the othernessof the fleshwill alwaysprecede it. Husserlnoted that I mustmake the flesh part of the world if it is to appearas a bodyamong bodies.
We notein this contextHeidegger's concept of thrownness.This phrase
suggeststhe way in which Daseinbecomes a burdenfor itself, andsuggests the characterof the weight of existencebeing such as to constitutea burdenfor oneself, of beingdelivered over to oneself,which suggestsa certainbeing there and self- intimacy.And so we touchupon what Ricoeurwill describeas 'the strangenessof humanfiniteness, insofar as it is sealedby embodiment,hence what we call here
in distinguishit from the foreignv24 primaryotherness, orderto othernessof the .
We will examinenow the othernessof otherpeople. We will realizethat the
Otheris not only the counterpartof the Samebut belongsto the intimateconstitution of its sense.In fact the seýfis differentiatedfrom the egoby the degreeto which it is
23 Paul Ricoeur: Onesey'AsAnother. 1994,p. 324 24 Paul Ricoeur: OnesetfAs Another. 1994,p. 327 292 affectedby the activitiesof others.One obvious example is the way in which we are affectedby the addressof othersto us in speech.Ricoeur notes that this is the premise on which fiction operates.Rather than distracting us with the unreal,the receptionof fictional workswidens our experienceand makes a vital contributionto the imaginary and symbolicconstitution of the actualexchanges of wordsand actions. Ricoeur notes that in any given moment of ethical decision there is both an agent and a patient, with the possibilitythat at any point in the future theseroles may be reversed,and so, we must retain a necessaryplurality in our thinking, for the acting beings in any ethical moment are each affected by forces operating reciprocally. And so we are enjoined to conceive of a 'two-pronged conception of otherness',one 'that doesjustice in turn to the primacyof self-esteemand also to the primacyof the convocationto justice from coming the other25.
Ricoeurnotes that we canonly really speakof a 'world' whenwe have establisheda 'commonnature'. And we canonly build an analogywhen we recognise that my bodyis alreadyheld to be a body amongbodies. 'Only a flesh (for me) that is a body(for others)can play the role of first analogonin the analogicaltransfer from flesh flesh926 We do to . mustalso acknowledge the other'sgivenness, which we when we recognisethat intentionalitiesthat aredirected to the otheras foreign, that is, as otherthan me, go beyondthe sphereof ownnessin which they arenevertheless rooted.We cannever live the experienceof othersalthough we cancommute between our separateselves on the basisof an analogisingapprehension whereby we gatherthe otherpossesses a body like my own. It canonly be analogicalas I cannever convert the other"sexperience into an eventof originarypresentation. We bearin mind that
25Paul Ricoeur: OnesetfAs Another. 1994,p. 331 26Paul Ricoeur: OneseyAs Another. 1994,p. 333 293
therewill alwaysbe a gapboth implied andreal in this procedure,for the notionof
analogisinggrasp suggests the assimilation of one term to another,and what is
impliedin the necessityof the useof analoguesis the notionor fact of a fundamental
dissymmetry.
For Ricoeur, Immanuel Levinas' criticism of Husserl touchesuPOn this fact.
As Levinasunderstood Husserl, if onerepresents something to oneselfone assimilates
it to oneself,and thus includes it in oneself,and hence you denyit therebyof its
otherness.For Levinasthe faceof the otherwhen raised before me is not an
appearancethat I caninclude within the sphereof my own representationsbut is
rathera spectacle,a voice that tells me 'Thou shaltnot kill'. In me the movement
from the Othercompletes its trajectory,with the otherconstituting me asresponsible.
In Levinasthere is a desireto avoidthe Sameas it speaksa languageof totalization.
With Levinasthere is a desireto protectthe exteriorityof the other which cannever
be expressedin the languageof relation.However, Ricoeur points out we are left with
the questionof 'how are we to think the iffelation implied by this othernessin its movementof absolution?'27Ricoeur also notes that Levinas'conception of the self is that it such rendersselfhood devoid of any opennessand capacity for discovery.
Ricoeurthen proceedsto emphasizethe importanceof the consciencein any the considerationof senseof the self, andconscience is implicitly connectedto For, notionsof otherness. underthe impetusof consciencethe self is capableof taking in hold of itself the anonymityof the 'they'. We experienceconscience as a sort of
27 PaulRicoeur: Onesey'As Another: 1994,p. 336- 337 294
call or appealindicated by the metaphorof the voice.In this interior, intimate the be conversation self appearsto calledupon and to be affectedin a uniqueway. It
is Heideggerwho notes that consciencedoes not say anythfng,defivers no messageA7
the midst of a commotion but rather is completely immanent: 'the call undoubtedly
doesnot come from someoneelse who is with me in the world. The call comesfrom
heyond 28 Ricoeur this me and yetfrom me and over me . sees as a moment of othernessproper to the phenomenonof conscience,for listeningto the voice of
consciencesignifies the being-enjoinedby the Other.And, afterHegel, Ricoeur will
ask:is this Othernot, in oneway or another,other people?
In the concludingpages of the last chapterof Oneseý(AsAnother, 'What
Ontologyin View?', PaulRicoeur notes Sigmund Freud's notions about moral
conscience.For Freudmoral conscienceis anothername for the superego.The
superegoitself is madeup of sedimentedand forgotten,often repressedidentifications
with parentaland ancestral figures. Freud's notions although dressed up in the
garmentsof sciencereally concurwith populistnotions that the voicesof our
ancestorscontinue to makethemselves heard among the living, therebyensuring the transmissionof wisdom,but alsoits intimatepersonal reception each step along the way.An interestingthought, although Ricoeur points out that the generationalmodel of conscienceruns into problemswhen we considerthat thereis an unavoidable movementof infinite regressin which the Otherprogressively loses from generation to generationits initial, presumedfamiliarity. And whencedoes the ancestordraw the authorityof their voice, if not from their privilegedtie to the Law, immemorialjust as they are?
28Paul Ricoeur: OneseyAs Another. 1994, p. 348 - 349 295
coeuris cn ica oe re uc ion resu s rom e wor o mmanue
Levinasas a whole.With Levinasall we arefinally left with is the reductionof the othernessof conscienceto the othernessof otherpeople. With Heideggerwe are left with the reductionof being-in-debtto the strange(r)nesstied to the facticity of our being-in-the-world.Writing continuallyagainst the backdropof Heidegger'sthought
Immanuel Levinas is left only with the modality of othernessderived from reflection uponthe externalityof the face.In short,for Levinas,'the modelof all othernessis the other person'. Ricoeur seesthat as restrictive, and seeksto retain a third modality of otherness,'being enjoined as the structure ofsetMood-ý29 (italics Ricoeur's). For him if the injunction coming from the other is not part and parcel of self-attestation,it losesits characterof injunction, for lack of the existenceof a being-enjoinedstanding before it its as respondent.Ricoeur concludeshis reflection humbly: 'Perhapsthe
.-I- philosopheras philosopher has to admit that onedoes not know andcannot say this Other,the whether sourceof the injunction,is anotherperson whom I canlook in face the or who canstare at me, or my ancestorsfor whom thereis no representation, to greatan extentdoes my debtto them so constitutemy very self, or God- living God God,absent - or an emptyplace. With this aporiaof the Other,philosophical discoursecomes to an endM.
29 PaulRicoeur: Onesey'As Another: 1994, 354 30 p. PaulRicoeur: Onesey'As Another: 1994,p. 355 296
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