Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger This page intentionally left blank Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger An Unresolved Conversation, 1951–1970 james k. lyon The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2006 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 246897531 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lyon, James K. Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger : an unresolved conversation, 1951–1970 / James K. Lyon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8018-8302-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Celan, Paul. 2. Poets, German—20th century—Biography. 3. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976—Influence. I. Title. pt2605.e4z6296 2006 831Ј.914—dc22 2005016233 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. contents Preface vii 1 The Repulsion and Attraction of Opposites 1 2 Approaching Heidegger: Celan Reads Being and Time, 1952‒1953 9 3 “Connecting” with Heidegger, 1952–1954 22 4 Earliest Traces of Heidegger in Celan’s Works, 1953–1954 31 5 Celan’s Notebook on What Is Called Thinking and Introduction to Metaphysics, 1954 42 6 Doubts Grow and Problems Arise, 1954–1956 56 7 More Appropriations from Heidegger: The Principle of Reason, 1957 68 8 Drawing on and Withdrawing from Heidegger, 1958 81 9 Mounting Cognitive Dissonance, Growing Independence, 1959–1960 92 10 Heidegger as Catalyst: Celan Begins to Write His Own Poetics, 1959‒1960 108 11 The Meridian: An “Implicit Dialogue with Heidegger,” 1960 122 12 Descending into the “Loneliest Loneliness,” 1960–1961 135 13 The Dialogue Continues: Heidegger Reads Celan’s “Meridian,” 1960‒1961 146 vi Contents 14 “An Epoch-Making Encounter”: Freiburg and Todtnauberg, 1967 159 15 “Todtnauberg” and Its Aftermath, 1967–1968 173 16 Heidegger’s Thought and Language in Celan: Similarities, Affinities, Borrowings 192 17 Unresolved Contradictions: The Last Years, 1968‒1970 202 18 A Conclusion of Sorts 215 Appendix. Celan’s Known Readings of Works by Heidegger 219 Notes 221 Works Cited 237 Index 245 Illustrations appear following page 107 preface The 1967 encounter between Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger stands as a landmark in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. In a flood that shows no signs of diminishing, there are books, essays in edited volumes, docu- mentary collections, scholarly articles, sections in doctoral dissertations, and scores of shorter references that interpret this meeting between a Jewish Holo- caust survivor—whose poetry, George Steiner claims, “is to be included with the very greatest in Western literature”1—and Heidegger, one of the most original and influential thinkers of the twentieth century, who had joined the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party in 1933. Contrary to received critical opinion, Celan’s meeting with Heidegger was probably not the most dramatic or important event in the poet’s life, and it was certainly not the most important in Heidegger’s. But the dissonant nature of a relationship that spanned nearly twenty years between two figures of extraordi- nary stature who appeared so diametrically opposed stretches the imagination and begs for explanation, especially if its significant impact on Celan is consid- ered. This reason alone invites examination of the context in which their meet- ing occurred. Because little information about Celan’s overall relationship to Heidegger has been available until recently, critics seldom mention this broader context. It is not widely known, for example, that the poet began reading Heidegger in 1951 and borrowed concepts and metaphors that he entered into his own writings or that he continued reading and engaging the thinker’s works until the very end of his life in 1970, well after their allegedly ill-fated meeting in 1967. Nor are most crit- ics aware that Celan’s library shows evidence of his reading carefully more than two dozen works by Heidegger or that the thinker played a decisive role in help- ing him formulate his own poetic theories. Scholars also have not realized that the men corresponded over a period of years and that Celan sent copies of his po- viii Preface etry to Heidegger. Finally, there have been few attempts to analyze how highly this thinker esteemed Celan’s poetry; how eagerly he attempted to encourage and promote him (for example, by trying to secure a teaching position for him at a German university); how many copies of his own writings with handwritten ded- ications he sent to Celan in an attempt to approach him (at least ten); and how frustrated he was at his inability to “connect” with or help the disturbed poet. Early in 2004 (soon after the present manuscript was submitted for publica- tion), Hadrien France-Lanord’s book Paul Celan et Martin Heidegger: Le sens d’un dialogue appeared in Paris. Drawing on works by Heidegger that Celan owned and read, France-Lanord examines some elements of their intellectual dialogue. Philosophical, speculative, and biographically incomplete, France-Lanord’s book makes no attempt to examine coherently the cultural contexts of the two men’s relationship or the literary impulses Celan drew from Heidegger. Nor does it pro- fess to analyze the human complexity of this troubled attraction of opposites. By contrast, in this volume I examine the relevant evidence available to date in an attempt to give a more complete version of the largely untold story of this relationship. Even at present that story is admittedly incomplete, since at least two major collections of Celan’s letters in which he refers to Heidegger are still off limits to scholars—those to Ingeborg Bachmann and those to Klaus Demus. Nevertheless, this study provides an overview that can serve as a starting point for further exploration of their troubled connections, interactions, and responses to each other—two immensely gifted creative minds who shared more affinities in their thinking than their radically different national, social, and cultural back- grounds would suggest. Given that the poet drew far more from Heidegger than the thinker did from him, the primary focus of this study will be on Celan. In general it is conceived as a historical and intellectual biography of him vis-à-vis Heidegger and an analysis of the contradictory and dissonant elements that marked their relationship. It also examines how Celan read, responded to, re- jected, accepted, or modified Heidegger’s thinking by “translating” his readings into his own works, so there will be some analysis and interpretation of Celan’s poetry. In part because Heidegger’s engagement with Celan is not as well docu- mented, but primarily because their teacher-pupil relationship was heavily one- sided in the direction of the learner, the focus on Heidegger will not be quite as intensive or extensive. In the complex development that Celan underwent before their first meeting in 1967, Heidegger, who until 1959 served largely as an unwitting mentor and object of the younger man’s adulation, also unwittingly became a target for the younger man’s anger and hostility toward all former Nazis. This study will at- Preface ix tempt to contextualize their historic encounter in 1967 and show how limited knowledge about what preceded and followed it has led to misunderstandings and distortions of a relationship that began years earlier as an imaginary dia- logue with Heidegger. As a fundamental principle, I have tried wherever possible to describe and an- alyze this topic on the basis of documented sources. The study of a relationship between a Holocaust survivor and a prominent thinker who had joined the Nazi Party in 1933, which in Celan’s eyes stigmatized him as an inveterate, lifelong Nazi, offers a tantalizing invitation to speculate and psychoanalyze. I have re- sisted this impulse. Drawing on documentary evidence, memoirs, and the oral reports of informants who, as far as I have been able to determine, are reliable, I have attempted to establish a concrete basis for analysis and interpretation. For example, I do not follow the common practice of connecting words or concepts in Celan’s poems to works by Heidegger unless there is concrete evidence that Celan had read those particular works. This is not to say he could not have read other works by Heidegger beyond those known to have been in his library (listed in the appendix). It only means that I am unwilling to admit this kind of specu- lation as evidence when there is an abundance of concrete information on what he did read and respond to. When my analysis appears to become speculative, I iden- tify it as such and base it on what seems to be compelling documentary material. Another limitation has been imposed on this study. Though it centers on the problematic relationship of a Holocaust survivor to a former Nazi, I do not enter the tangled thicket surrounding Heidegger’s culpability for his behavior during the Third Reich. I am acquainted with the extensive literature that condemns him for his actions, as well as with other material that seems to mitigate at least partially what he himself admitted was a dreadful political mistake. I personally can add little to the debate, however, and focus only on Celan’s perception of Hei- degger, who for him was clearly complicit with the Nazis and their ideology. In part it seems Celan wanted to condemn Heidegger for his past, but, perhaps more important, he wanted from Heidegger, whom he greatly admired, an explana- tion of what to Celan were inexplicable actions. What some also may consider a limitation of this study is the question— which I do not answer to my satisfaction and probably not to that of many read- ers—of what drew Celan to someone who in many ways was his polar opposite.