DOCSLIB.ORG

The Ethics of Poetic Force Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Paul Celan

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Ethics of Poetic Force Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Paul Celan The Ethics of Poetic Force Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Paul Celan Janice Sant A thesis submitted in candidature for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Critical and Cultural Theory Cardiff University 2017 Abstract This thesis makes the claim that there is an important correlation between the poetic and the ethical in the work of Jacques Der rida, Hélène Cixous and Paul Celan. Taking its cue from Derrida’s 1988 ‘Che cos’è la poesia?’, it proposes that what he calls the ‘poematic’ entails an ethical experience. It seeks to show that the underlying link between the poetic and the ethical as it emerges in Derrida’s text calls for a reconsideration of the relation between the literary and the ethical. Rather than merely describe ethical situations or prescribe ethical behaviour, the poetic involves an ethical experience of the arrival or ‘invention’ (from the Latin invenire : to come upon) of the other. Focusing on Derrida’s notions of responsibility and hospitality in turn, it argues that the inte rruption at the heart of Derrida’s ethical event is what characterises poetic force. Chapter 1 presents a reading of Derrida’s notion of the poetic as an instance of ethical responsibility. It begins with a discussion of Derrida’s understanding of responsibility that underlines the importance of the interrelation between the secret, the call and the response. It subsequently argues that the poetic dictate, like responsibility, also involves an interruptive call or apostrophe that demands a response. Referring closely to the biblical narrative of Abraham’s near -sacrifice of Isaac as well as Derrida’s notions of the ‘double yes’ and the countersignature, it finally considers the ethics of poetic response. Chapter 2 claims that the force of Hélène Cixous’s work is intricately bound to the Derridean ethical imperative of responsibility as explored in Chapter 1. It begins by showing the parallels between Cixous’s ‘coming to writing’ and the Derridean notion of the poetic dictate. It maintains that the complex ques tion of genre in Cixous’s work is related to her writing practice as an instance of submitting to the call of the other. Finally, it argues that the ethical import of her work is to be found in what Derrida has described in terms of a monstrous force. Turn ing its attention primarily to Derrida’s seminars around the subject of hospitality, Chapter 3 begins by focusing on the inherent violence in hospitality through an analysis of the etymological root of the word ‘hospitality’ and Derrida’s neologism ‘hostipitality’. It then addresses Derrida’s aphoristic claim that an ‘act of hospitality can only be poetic’. Relating this assertion to his understanding of invention as the instance o f the coming of the other, it argues that the poetic is ethical at its core because it invents the impossible. Finally, drawing out the implications of Derridean hospitality for a reading of Sophocles’ play Antigone , it demonstrates that the eponymous character enacts the poetic experience at the centre of the discussion. In an extended analysis of the notion poetic hospitality, Chapter 4 takes the concept of the uncanny in Paul Celan’s ‘Der Meridian’ speech as its foremost concern. It makes the claim that the ethical force in Celan’s oeuvre lies in its power to overcome the uncanny automaticity of art. It then turns to Die Niemandsrose to explore the uncanny in relation to what Celan calls the ‘groundlessness’ of the poem. Finally, it suggests that the uncanny in Celan’s oeuvre can be seen as the ethical counterpart to the aesthetic of the Romantic sublime that is arguably no longer possible today. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my tutor Laurent Milesi for his prompt feedback, for generously making available publications, his own or otherwise, that were relevant to my research and for sharing his expertise on all matters. My gratitude is also due to Ivan Callus whose continued interest in and engagement with my work has always been a great motivation. Sincere thanks to Rhian Rattray for guiding me through the necessary paperwork and for her unfailing readiness to respond to all my queries. I would like to thank my family and friends for their support. A special mention goes to my mother for helping me in more ways than one in the weeks leading up to submission. And a final word of gratitude is surely due to Ian and Julie for learning to live with my all too frequent retreats. iii Contents Declaration of Authenticity i Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii List of Abbreviations 1 Introduction: Derrida’s Ethical Counterpoetics 2 1. On Poe(ma)tic Respons(e)ibility 28 2. Hélène Cixous’ s Poetic Puissance 70 3. In-venire : A Poetic Hospitality 103 4. Paul Celan’s Abyssal Unheimlichkeit 144 Conclusion: The Ethics of Poetic Force 186 List of Works Cited 190 List of Abbreviations CCP Jacques Derrida, ‘Che cos’è la poesia?’, trans. by Peggy Kamuf, in Points… Interviews, 1974 –1994 , ed. by Elisabeth Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) GD Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death , 2 nd edition, trans. by David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2008) WB Hélène Cixous, ‘Writing blind: Conversation with the donkey’, trans. by Eric Prenowitz, in Stigmata: Escaping texts (London and New York: Routledge, 2005) WE Hélène Cixous, ‘Without end, no, State o f drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner’s taking off’, trans. by Catherine A. F. MacGillivray, in Stigmata: Escaping texts (London and New York: Routledge, 2005) OH Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality , trans. by Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000) TM Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version –Drafts –Materials , trans. by Pierre Joris and ed. by Bernhard Böschenstein and Heino Schmull (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011) JF Paul Celan, Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan , trans. by John Felstiner (London: W.W. Norton, 2001) MH Paul Celan, Selected Poems , trans. by Michael Hamburger (London: Penguin Books, 1996) DY Paul Celan, No One’s Rose , trans. by David Young (Grosse Pointe Farms: Marick Press, 2014) PJ Paul Celan, Breathturn into Timestead , trans. by Pierre Joris (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) 1 Introduction Derrida’s Ethical Counterpoetics Writing in 1988, in response to the question ‘Che cos’è la poesia?’, Jacques Derrida’s answe r is radical; not only does he call into question what may traditionally (or, in his view, naïvely) be called ‘poetry’, but, more provocatively, he orders that the ‘library of poetics’ be set alight. 1 As he elucidates in the interview ‘Istrice 2: Ick bünn all hier’, ‘the great Western poetic tradition’, from Greek antiquity up to, and indeed including, Martin Heidegger’s ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, is a genealogy that ‘repeats the most originary foundation of […] mimesis ’. 2 This is the genealogy that Derrida rejects. What he calls the ‘poematic’ is that which turns away from the ‘histrionics’ of poiesis or the Heideggerian imperative of ‘the “ setting-forth-of-truth-in-the-work ”’ ( CCP , 297). Out of the ashes of this genealogy rises the lowly hedgehog that imperils its life across the highway. This hedgehog is not a member of the Grimm, Schlegel, or Heidegger family. 3 1 Jacques Derrida, ‘Che cos’è la poesia ?’, trans. by Peggy Kamuf, in Points...Interviews, 1974 –1994 , ed. by Elizabeth Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 295. Subsequent references to this work shall be provided in parentheses within the main text following the abbreviation CCP . 2 Jacques Derrida, ‘Istrice 2: Ick bünn all hier’ , trans. by Peggy Kamuf, in Points...Interviews, 1974 –1994 , ed. by Elizabeth Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 313. 3 Derrida explains: ‘[…] although they have the same name, these two hedgehogs [Schlegel’s and Heidegger’s] don’t have much relation to “mine”; they don’t belong to the same family, the same species, or the same genre, even though this non-relation says something about a deep genealogical affinity, but in antagonism, in counter- genealogy’ ( Derrida, ‘Istrice 2’, p. 302). Interestingly, Derrida would later hint at a possible next of kin or blood relative for his so-c alled ‘counter -hedgehog’ . Writing in The Animal That Therefore I Am , he remarks: ‘I would of course have liked to inscribe my whole talk within a reading of Lewis Carroll. […] You can’t be certain that I didn’t already do it one day when, ten years ago, I let speak or let pass a little hedgehog, a suckling hedgehog [ un nourrisson hérisson ] perhaps, before the question ‘What is Poetry? For thinking concerning the animal, if there is such a thing derives from poetry. […] The hedgehog of ‘What is Poetry?’ not only inherited a piece of my name but also responded, in its own way, to 2 Rather, it is ‘a solitary counter -hedgehog’, whose fate, when traversing the road, is entirely subject to chance. 4 Derrida’s humble hedgehog hazards the journey on the autoroute in the hope of an accidental encounter with an ‘other’ on whom it will leave its mark. This is the mark that gives birth to ‘you’ and to whom the injunction ‘learn by heart’ is addressed. Central to the Derridean ‘poematic’ experience (a word, as Philippe Lacoue -Labarthe reminds us, that retains the trace of its Latin root ex-periri ‘crossing through danger’), 5 this address is not to be understood merely as an instance of apostrophe; for what Derrida invites us to attend to is the claim that this address has on its recipient. The ‘poematic’ is, therefore, more event than written text. This is clearly exemplified in the following extract from ‘Che cos’è la poesia?’ where Derrida’s radical reconception of the ‘poem’ is as alluring as it is elusive: No poem without accident, no poem that does not open itself like a wound, but no poem that is not also just as wounding.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1 © Luisa Greenfield
    1 © Luisa Greenfield © Luisa MING TSAO (*1966) 1 – 7 ensemble ascolta Conductors: 1 – 7 Johannes Kalitzke, Andrea Nagy, clarinet 8 – 19 Stefan Schreiber Erik Borgir, violoncello Recording dates: 1 – 7 18–19 Jul 2014, Hubert Steiner, guitar 8 – 19 28–29 Nov 2015 Plus Minus (2012 /13) Mirandas Atemwende (2014 /15) Andrew Digby, trombone Recording venues: 1 – 7 KvB-Saal Funkhaus Köln, Germany Realization of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Markus Schwind, trumpet 8 – 19 Teldex Studio Berlin, Germany “Plus Minus” Anne-Maria Hoelscher, accordion Producer: 1 – 7 Eckhard Glauche Florian Hoelscher, piano 8 – 19 Markus Heiland 1 Plus Minus – Page I. 05:53 8 Erwartung 02:54 Martin Homann, percussion Recording engineer: 1 – 7 Mark Hohn Boris Müller, percussion 8 – 19 Markus Heiland Julian Belli, percussion Technique / Editing: 1 – 7 Astrid Groflmann 2 Plus Minus – Page II. 05:38 9 Es gibt einen Ort 02:33 Akos Nagy, percussion Executive Producer: 1 – 7 Harry Vogt 8 – 19 Markus Heiland 3 Plus Minus – Page III. 04:15 10 Du entscheidest dich 02:01 8 – 19 Kammerensemble Final mastering: Markus Heiland Neue Musik Berlin Graphic Design: Alexander Kremmers 4 Plus Minus – Page IV. 03:24 11 Heute 04:44 Miranda: Tajana Raj, soprano (paladino media), cover based on Caliban: Christoph Gareisen and artwork by Erwin Bohatsch 5 Plus Minus – Page V. 03:04 12 Helligkeitshunger 04:36 Jan Pohl, speaking voices Publisher: Edition Peters Rebecca Lenton, flute Gudrun Reschke, oboe / english horn 1 – 7 © 2014 Produced by 6 13 Plus Minus – Page VI. 03:59 Das Geschriebene 03:44 Theo Nabicht, bass clarinet Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln.
    [Show full text]
  • Uninterrupted Dialogue: Between Two Infinities, the Poem1
    RIPH 34_f2_1-19 10/27/04 8:57 AM Page 1 TOPIC Interpreting Tradition Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 06:47:46PM via free access RIPH 34_f2_1-19 10/27/04 8:57 AM Page 2 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 06:47:46PM via free access RIPH 34_f2_1-19 10/27/04 8:57 AM Page 3 UNINTERRUPTED DIALOGUE: BETWEEN TWO INFINITIES, THE POEM1 by JACQUES DERRIDA École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales ABSTRACT With the attempt to express my feeling of admiration for Hans-Georg Gadamer an ageless melancholy mingles. This melancholy begins as of the friends’ lifetime. A cogito of the farewell signs the breathing of their dialogues. One of the two will have been doomed, from the beginning, to carry alone both the dialogue that he must pursue beyond the interruption, and the memory of the first interruption. To carry the world of the other, to carry both the other and his world, the other and the world that have disappeared, in a world without world. That shall be one of the ways to let resound within ourselves the line of poetry by Paul Celan, “Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen.” Will I be able to express, accurately and faithfully, my admiration for Hans-Georg Gadamer? I obscurely sense, mingling with the recognition and affection that have characterized this feeling for such a long time, an ageless melancholy. Such melancholy, I dare say, is not only historical. Even if, by some event still difficult to decipher, this melancholy corresponded to some such history, it would do so in a singular, intimate, almost private fashion, secret, and still in reserve.
    [Show full text]
  • Thirty Poems of Paul Celan Translated
    EARISH THIRTY POEMS OF PAUL CELAN TRANSLATED BY ROBERT KELLY MATTER BOOKS ANNANDALE 2006 for Dick Higgins, in memor I am [First version completed 23 March 2002. Revised Winter 2005/ 2006] Translator’s Note: In 2002 I was asked to contribute to Alec Finlay’s edition of translations by several hands of Paul Celan’s poem “Irisch.” While working on my translation (which duly appeared in the second volume, Irish (2), Edinburgh 2002), I began to work on other dimensions of the poem, then of other Celan poems. The present homeophonic translations are one result. By homeophonic translation I mean: listening to the sound of the [in this case German] poem until you can hear it as English – the result, the poem heard, no doubt ‘says’ a ‘different’ thing from the ‘original.’ Those quoted words are all questionable, more question than answer, I mean. So here are some of my hearings of Celan poems. They are, in effect, translations into Earish. A reference in italics at the foot of the page identifies the book in which appears the German original text here heard heading towards English: at = Atemwende f = Fadensonnen licht = Lichtzwang schn = Schneepart zeit = Zeitgehöft (This edition is not for sale, and is for private distribution only.) 2 WILD YOU THEN NOTE SHARING FONDEST in the view’s tongue rune the shattered yards hounded a neighbor to rouse and hay run thick – thank him Feel like it’s a war, dash here the freed of twice failed curb’s rock out tone ― go face them. f 214 3 THE STREAKER, salt’s washer, clomb the wiser grove’s keynote in dismal gate and knickers off Off the shudder see grass down even in anchor shot and naked as number dares (ant’s willing) red sail.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul Celan's Poetic Practice
    From Reading for Form, ed. Susan J. Wolfson and Marshall Brown (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2006), 177-202. «Sound Scraps, Vision Scraps»: Paul Celan's Poetic Practice Marjorie Perloff Thirty-four years after his death, Paul Celan's status as the greatest German-language poet of the second half of the twentieth century seems assured. His oeuvre—roughly 900 pages of poetry distributed over elevenvolumes, 250 pages of prose, more than 1,000 published correspondence, and nearly 700 pages of poetry translated from eight languages—has by now received massive critical attention. And yet the work continues to be to a great extent terra incognita . --Pierre Joris (2005)1 Paul Celan's reception, at least in the English-speaking world, has always been connected to his status as great Holocaust Poet, the poet who showed that, Adorno's caveat notwithstanding, it was possible to write poetry, even great poetry, in the German language, after Auschwitz. As «Poet, Survivor, Jew» (the subtitle of John Felstiner's groundbreaking study of 1995),2 Celan has become an iconic figure: continental philosophers from Hans-Georg Gadamer to Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe have read Celan's poetic oeuvre as a post-World War II Book of Wisdom. The result, ironically, has been to place Celan in a kind of solitary confinement, a private cell where his every «circumcised word» (Jacques Derrida's term)3 can be examined for its 1 allegorical weight and theological import, even as, so Pierre Joris suggests in the excellent Introduction to his new Selections, its actual poetic forms and choices are largely ignored.
    [Show full text]
  • Message in the Bottle BALÁZS KÁNTÁS
    BALÁZS KÁNTÁS Message in the Bottle BALÁZS KÁNTÁS Message in the Bottle Essays around Paul Celan’s Poetry Cédrus Művészeti Alapítvány – Napkút Kiadó Budapest, 2016 Th e publication of the book Preface – was sponsored by the Nagy Lajos Foundation. On Paul Celan’s Poetry in General Paul Celan, originally named Paul Antschel, the German-speak- Edited by ing Jewish poet from Bukovina was evidently one of the most Prof. Dr. Erika Szepes CSc prominent fi gures of the post-war European literature. Al- though he is frequently called the poet of the Holocaust, many literary historians agree that apart from his well-known poem entitled Deathfugue (Todesfuge) and his early, by and large un- derstandable poetry, his late and much more mature, clearer po- etry is more interesting for literary studies. According to Jacques Derrida Celan was one of the most important poets of the 20th century, because all of his poems were dated; i. e., they were in a sense separated from the dimen- sion of time and place, reaching some artistic eternity (Derri- da 1986: 46). Furthermore, the hermetic and mysterious poetry that Paul Celan wrote mainly aft er 1960, as it is also mentioned by one of the most prominent Hungarian translators of Celan László Lator, Celan’s poetry was completely appropriate for the ways of analysis of the new trends in literary scholarship spread- ing in the 1960-70s, such as Deconstruction, Hermeneutics or Discourse Analysis. Although Lator appreciates Celan’s literary importance, but it may seem that he also sees Celan’s poetry too theoretical as for his concepts about language and the expressi- bility or the lack of expressibility via language (Lator 1980: 94).
    [Show full text]
  • Wolfgang Wildgen (Universität Bremen) Minimal Syntax: Comparison of Meaning Construction in Everyday Compounds and Compounds In
    Theory of language and semiotics University of Bremen: Languages and Literatures Wolfgang Wildgen (University of Bremen) Enigmatic meaning construction in Paul Celan’s poetry and some evolutionary and cognitive outlooks Lecture at the University of Melbourne, 23rd of April 2009 Theory of language and semiotics University of Bremen: Languages and Literatures Part I An analysis of nominal compounds and minimal expressions in Celan’s poetry Theory of language and semiotics University of Bremen: Languages and Literatures The poet Paul Celan (his family name was Anschel) was born in Czernowitz (Bukowina) in 1920. He went to Paris in 1938 to study medicine but returned to Czernowitz in 1939. He stayed in Rumania until 1947 when he fled to Vienna and 1948 came to Paris to study German Linguistics and Literature. In 1959 he became lecturer of German at the École Normal Supérieure (ENS) in Paris. After 1961 he had to be treated in different psychiatric clinics. He committed suicide in Paris 1971. 3 Theory of language and semiotics University of Bremen: Languages and Literatures Compounds in experimental poetry: analysis of some compounds in poems by Paul Celan (1920-1971) Titles of collections: year - Mohn und Gedächtnis (Poppy and remembrance) (1952) - Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (From threshold to threshold) (1955) - Sprachgitter (Language grid) (1959) - Die Niemandsrose (The no one‘s rose) (1963) - Atemwende (Breath turn) (1967) - Fadensonnen (Fathom suns) (1968)- - Lichtzwang (Light compulsion) (1970) - Schneepart (Snow part) 1971) - Zeitgehöft (Time stead; Homestead of time)) (1976) 4 Theory of language and semiotics University of Bremen: Languages and Literatures Variants of names for collections The number of proposals tested shows how important they were for the author.
    [Show full text]
  • Naomi Eleanor Shulman Dissertation Final Draft
    A Poetics of Survival: Figures and Forms of the Ethical in Poetry after the Shoah By Naomi Eleanor Shulman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Judith Butler, Co-Chair Professor Chana Kronfeld, Co-Chair Professor Robert Alter Professor Winfried Kudszus Spring 2011 A Poetics of Survival: Figures and Forms of the Ethical in Poetry after the Shoah © 2011 By Naomi Eleanor Shulman Abstract A Poetics of Survival: Figures and Forms of the Ethical in Poetry after the Shoah by Naomi Eleanor Shulman Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Judith Butler, Co-Chair Professor Chana Kronfeld, Co-Chair This dissertation considers poetic responses to the Shoah: the critical and cultural consequences of the genre in relation to this catastrophe have been largely neglected or discussed primarily in light of Theodor Adorno’s narrow statement questioning the possibility of writing poetry after Auschwitz. I maintain, however, that it is vital to engage the transnational and multi-lingual breadth of poetry, which lays claim to the problems as well as the significance of its endurance, as it confronts attempts to regulate creative impulses on the one hand and to mandate forms of testimony and commemoration on the other hand. In what I term a “poetics of survival,” the works I examine employ intertextuality to question the ethical implications of situating poetic voice and address. These works explore the limits of poetic form, in order to foreground poetry as a literary mode that is involved in critical discourse and ethical critique rather than invested only in aesthetic or historical representation.
    [Show full text]
  • Verlorene Autorität. Über Die Atemwende Bei Paul Celan
    Radikale Kreatürlichkeit Zur Sphäre der erinnernden Körperlichkeit in Paul Celans Fadensonnen-Gedichten Maximilian Runge Abstract: In his 1968 poetry collection „Fadensonnen“, Paul Celan offers a hermetic blend of existen- tialism and mysticism, which is unusual in two respects. Firstly, the European philosophy of existence, especially with its proponents Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Martin Heideg- ger, had gone to great lengths to criticize and delegitimize the Abrahametic religions, for the concept of god seemed to be an obstacle to humanity in pursuit of its own humanization. Sec- ondly, in the aftermath of the holocaust, the idea of man wanting to merge with a god that had not prevented this cruelty from happening had lost much of its plausibility. Despite these two objections, Celan's poems address the struggle of togetherness in a world that negates the mere possibility of otherness, trying to salvage the unique identity and dignity of the other. With this in mind, the modus operandi of his poems is that of a butcher: Whatever has previ- ously been alive – before the Shoah – now has to be stripped bare of its layers of individual and collective history, has to become less than body and flesh. In this way, the poems' inherent pain and misery transform the reader into a nobody, for only a nobody has got the prerequi- sites to encounter other people unbiasedly in their unique wholeness. Within this space of en- counter, only the reminiscence of body and sexuality exists, commemorating the other, so that radical corporeality seems to be the prerequisite for togetherness. In this ahistorical sphere there is no room for a god that permitted the holocaust, redefining mysticism as the connec- tion between men instead of one between man and god.
    [Show full text]
  • The Illusion of Immediacy – Medial Aspects of Paul Celan's Poetry
    BALÁZS KÁNTÁS The Illusion of Immediacy – Medial Aspects of Paul Celan’s Poetry Introduction In the present research paper I intend to examine one of the very important aspecst of Paul Celan’s poetry – namely mediality, the problems of mediality and immediacy, highlighting how the problem of mediatedness by media and the impossibility of immediacy, and the fight against the medial nature of the world appear in several works by the poet. Nowadays, we may speak about a number of types of media, that is why I think that it is worth examining poems that permit interpretations from the direction of mediality. First and foremost, perhaps it is worth investigating what Paul Celan could think about one of the most primordial media that were also considered an imperfect means of communication even in the age of the poet – a few words about language. Language as Medium by Paul Celan Paul Celan’s view about language is very controversial, and it has a dual nature. On the one hand, the poet wished to demolish the limits of human language considered as an imperfect medium for communication; on the other hand, Celan’s poetry permits an interpretation according to which he wanted to create a new poetic language that is beyond the human language used in everyday communication, even if not ceasing, but perhaps somehow reducing the mediatedness and mediality of the world. To illustrate this view of human 1 language, one of the author’s well-known, programme-like poems entitled Sprachgitter – Speech-Grille may serve as a good example, in which Celan makes an effort to cease the limits of human language: JOHN FELSTINER’S ENGLISH TRANSLATION: “Speech-Grille Eyes round between the bars.
    [Show full text]
  • The Defiance of Poetic Tradition in Paul Celan and Osip Mandelstam a DISSERTATION
    NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Counter-Quotation: The Defiance of Poetic Tradition in Paul Celan and Osip Mandelstam A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Comparative Literary Studies By Anna Glazova EVANSTON, ILLIONOIS June 2008 2 ABSTRACT Counter-Quotation: The Defiance of Poetic Tradition in Paul Celan and Osip Mandelstam Anna Glazova This dissertation concentrates on problems of quotation, tradition, and translation in the poetry of Paul Celan and Osip Mandelstam. While examining the nature of poetic inheritance, Celan often refers to Russian poetry and, in particular, to Osip Mandelstam, who, in his turn, understands poetry as an essentially dialogic process. Both for Celan and for Mandelstam, every new poem is an utterance within a poetic conversation. Nowhere is the dialectic of newness and tradition better exemplified than in the act of quotation, both direct and indirect. For this reason, I begin my dissertation with a chapter discussing Celan's idea of quotation as "encounter" in poetic dialogue. Celan welcomes the understanding of poetry as conversation and yet also indicates the limits to which the act of welcoming can be reciprocated. This limit is contained in the so-called "counter-word" (Gegenwort). In my second chapter, I turn to Celan's own encounters with Osip Mandelstam concerning the act or event of "breathturn" (Atemwende), which is a translation and transformation of Mandelstam's poetics of breathing, as it unfolds in his Voronezh Notebooks . The problem of stopping and re-starting breath becomes, as I argue, a way of reconceiving both the content and the idea of tradition.
    [Show full text]
  • From Concretism to Paul Celan
    Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 8 Issue 1 Special Issue on Paul Celan Article 5 9-1-1983 Poetry and the Extremities of Language: From Concretism to Paul Celan James K. Lyon Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the German Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Lyon, James K. (1983) "Poetry and the Extremities of Language: From Concretism to Paul Celan," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 5. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1131 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Poetry and the Extremities of Language: From Concretism to Paul Celan Abstract Despite his disdain for most contemporary German language poets, Paul Celan in his own verse shares and reflects in several ways the attitudes toward language and the possibilities of poetic speech found in the practitioners of so-called "concrete poetry." Skeptical of language that had fallen victim to the "verbicide" of modern usage, each set out to re-create or revitalize language by using it in an anti- metaphorical sense where words, rather than functioning as bearers of meaning, are often employed as unconventional, in some cases anti-referential sign systems that have meaning only in relationship to themselves, but which simultaneously attempt to create (or discover) a pristine language.
    [Show full text]
  • Preface in 1992 When We Began This Project, Our Intention Was to Supply Versions of Celan Poems Not Yet Available in English.1 S
    PAUL CELAN: THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE MARCH 1, 2002 SEMINAR MATERIALS: PAGE 1 Preface Celan’s poetry cannot be comprehended merely in terms of reference. (What from Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan. Trans. Nikolai Popov and Heather is “reference” in Celan?) We sought, cautiously, to create poems that follow McHugh. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. Celan’s intentional mode (Benjamin’s Art des Meinens), and the intensity of his listening to language itself. Given the fundamentals of Celan’s poetics (phono- In 1992 when we began this project, our intention was to supply versions 1 graphic, grammatical, and rhetorical), any attempt to isolate a “literal” of Celan poems not yet available in English. Such a restriction focused meaning apart from those fundamentals would seriously impoverish and Fadensonnen Atemwende our attention on Celan’s collections and . As our distort the effect of the poems, both individually and as a whole. Everything work progressed we added untranslated poems from Celan’s later books in a poem is literal, that is, made of letters, blanks, and their interrelationships and retranslated a few poems already available in English, for the sake of on the page, and the literal is everything. Precisely this omnipresence of the contextual coherence (Celan’s later poems often quote, allude to, or rewrite letter, and the depth of Celan’s probings into the matrix of his “original” earlier poems of his). We believe that only a wide range of translatorial language, prohibit naive replications of line or meaning. Celan’s word order in approaches can do justice to a poetry as complex as Celan’s, and through our German is quite natural, but the same linear order in English can sometimes selection and method we have emphasized some of his understudied poetic misleadingly suggest experiments in syntax where there are none, and so virtues.
    [Show full text]