German and European Poetics after 1945: Crisis and Creativity Edited by Gert Hofmann, Rachel MagShamhréin, Marko Pajevié, and Michael ShieldsThe editors would like to thank Queen's University Belfast and the Centre d'Etudes sur l'Allemagne et |'Autriche (CR2A) of the University of Rouen for their generous financial support of this publication,Contents Introduction Gert Hofimant/ Rachel MagShamhrain’ Marko Pajevié/ Michael Shields 1. Poetics after Auschwitz ‘The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs Elaine Martin, Maynooth Flaschenpost and Wurfholz: Reflections on Paul Celan’s Poems and Poetics Gisela Dischner, Hanover Paradigms of Transformation and the Natural in Postwar Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann ‘Marton Marko, Montana Mourning of Remembrance: Writing as (De-)Figuration in the Poetry of Rose Auslinder ‘Annette Runte, Siegen! CR2A On the Fringes: Mistrust as Commitment in the Poetics of Ilse Aichinger ‘Marko Pajevié, Belfast/ CR2A Nazi terror and the poetical potential of dreams: Charlotte Beradt’s Das Dritte Reich des Traums Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, Galway Il. Further Poetical Developments “Schwer erklérbare Macht des Wortes, das lést und fugt” (The barely explicable power words have to separate and conjoin): Gottfried Benn's Problems of Lyric Poetry and Its Poctology of Existence ‘Stefan Hajduk, Limerick Between “Kahlschlag” and New Sensibilities: Notes towards a Poetics of Thought after Gottfried Benn Riidiger Gorner, London Concrete PoetryChris Bezzel, Hanover Rupture, Tradition, and Achievement in Thomas Kling’s Poetics and Poetry Aniela Knoblich, Freiburg Heiner Maller -- Discontinuity and Transgression Renata Plaice, Cork Let’s Begin, Again: History, Intertext and Rupture in Heiner Miller's Germania-Cycle Barry Murnane, Halle I. Comparative Explorations in European Poetics Sartre and His Literary Aller Ego Mathieu in Les Chemins de la liberté (1938-1949): From the roads to an abstract freedom fo the roads of authenticity Manuel Braganca, Belfast André Malraux and Oswald Spengler: The Poetics of Metamorphosis Peter Tame, Belfast Freud’s Brain in the Snow: Catastrophe and Creativity in the Poetics of Danilo Kis Tatjana Petzer, Berlin Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and the Aesthetics of Ohnmacht Gert Hofmann, CorkIntroduction In this 65th anniversary year of the War's end and Auschwitz’s liberation, we are fast approaching the eight-decade death-knell for all “lebendige Erinnerung” (living or communicative, memory) of the Nazi genocide. It would seem, then, that we have reached another critical milestone on our path backwards into the future. As the last witnesses, survivors, and perpetrators pass out of real time, the imperative of Holocaust remembrance and attendant conundrum of how to express that re-presented past, seems to be entering a new and particularly perilous phase, one that will soon be exclusively characterized by “post-memory,” to borrow Marianne Hirsch’s term. The idea of a dawning age of post-remembrance is associated for many with a terrible sense of urgency, fuelled by the idea that such a transition may take us a step nearer to a coming time of complete erasure. On this view, the act of remembrance is now engaged in a “race against time,”* requiring such massive interventions as, for example, the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which aims to record and archive on film and in aeternam the memories of all remaining Holocaust survivors. So, nearly seven decades after the “break” of 1945, another major sense of caesura has come upon us, arguably even more radical than that first Zero Hour. With this sense of impending ending comes the sense that returns, recall and representations are needed now more than ever. The“Morocussi! p Supplied Coerkly) by "Shout ' fran p. feeling of a coming break prompts us also to revisit with renewed vigor old debates of total, partial, and impartial recall, and discussions of the hows, ifs and shoulds of Shoah testimony, representation and rememoration, not to mention the question of the proper and improper reception of the resulting cultural material in a consumer age. In this sense, the aesthetic and theoretical debates of this volume are particularly timely. It would, however, be a mistake, for all our love of neat periodizations, and a clear sense of beginnings, endings and breaks, to see them as something new. After all, one of the most revisited diagnoses of the post-war cultural period is Theodor W. Adomo’s statement of statements announcing the barbarity of the poem after Auschwitz. Apparently inexhaustible, it has given rise to some sixty years of re- (and of course mis-) interpretation. As such, our anxious returns to the Shoah debates of the past may bé restoked by, but are certainly not unique to, the advent of a post-memory period The contributions to the current volume are merely the latest realizations of an on-going struggle with the issue of the present’s representation of, and relationship and duties towards the past, a struggle that is revealed in all its complexity in the context of the Holocaust. One of the most pressing difficulties with which the faultline between past and present confronts us in the case of post-1945 poetics, is how to, if not replace entirely or fall silent inthe face of, then somehow resist the lingua (et cultura) terti imperii, which, in Adomo’s and others’ eyes, constitute the heart of darkness of the entire modem European Enlightenment project.‘ All post-1945 writing must return, and undo forgetting, and yet it must perform this in resistance to what Cassirer called the Enlightenment’s restitutio in integrum, too perfect a return.> Using Adomo’s categorical imperative of sorts regarding writing “since Auschwitz," and paying homage to Maurice Blanchot’s literary fragments on Auschwitz, “scattered throughout his texts,” Sarah Kofiman, for instance, formulates her own version of the pledge, undertaking, “as a Jewish woman intellectual who has survived the Holdcaust,” to find a new way of writing: a “writing of the ashes, writing of the disaster, which avoids the trap of complicity with speculative knowledge, with that in it which is tied to power, and thereby complicit with the 7 tortures of Auschwit: Jean Luc Nancy described the Shoah as the “ultimate crisis of representation.”* So, how is “writing” still possible here? Or should we rather understand writing now as an attempt to make the impossible possible or real? Crisis is always a moment that simultaneously imposes change and creativity. It is a period of transition, paving the way for the new. In this context, the famous lines from Hélderlin’s poem “Patmos” come to mind: “Wo aber Gefahr ist, waichst / das Rettende auch” (But where danger threatens, that which saves [us] from it also grows).” Henri Choma (leah olen t psn rayMeschonnic expresses very succinetly the necessity of crisis for all creation: La crise est permanente, Elle I’a toujours été ... La crise est la condition méme, et histoire, des concepts, des stratégies. Le conceptuel ne se fait que de se défaire. Inchoatif, Dés qu'il s’installe, il devient du pouvoir, il devient un obstacle & lui-méme, 11 faut Ie casser pour penser."” {Crisis is permanent. This has always been the case. Crisis is the very condition and the history of concepts and strategies. The conceptual cannot be done without undoing itself. Inchoative. As soon as it establishes itself it becomes power, and it becomes an obstacle 0 itself One has to destroy it in order to think.] Cathérine David applied this idea to the visual arts on the occasion of the documenta 1994, affirming “Krise ist immer" (There is always crisis). Usually the term crisis is applied to periods of turbulence, to eruptions or irruptions of new ideas and phenomena; it is hardly, if ever, used io describe states of stagnation, or of conceptual decay. In the creative sphere, in the arts and in thought, ironically then, it would be a “crisis” if therewere no crisis. Paul Celan described his poetry collection Die Niemandsrose to Ingeborg Bachmann as “Das Dokument einer Krise, wenn Du willst -- aber was ware Dichtung, wenn sie nicht auch das ware, und zwar radikal?””? [The document of a crisis, you might say -- but what would poetry be if it were not this as well, and, indeed, radically so?) There is, then, an obvious and recognized connection between crisis and creativity. This volume examines this connection in the specific and radical context of literary production after 1945, as well as charting the ongoing consequences of the issues of this period for poetics. Drawing on historian Dan Diner's 1988 conception of the Third Reich as a “Zivilisationsbruch” (rupture in civilization), the following articles demonstrate how and if this rupture is reflected in poetics, approaching the subject in very different ways In his 1989 book Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman posited the thesis that the Holocaust was no accident in, but rather an expression of modemity and its culture of Enlightenment, He affirms: ‘The Holocaust was conceived and realised in the midst of modem rational society, in a highly developed civilisation and in the” context of extraordinary cultural performances: it must therefore4 4 be considered a problem of this same society, civilisation and culture,'* Bauman goes on to deduce from this that the Holocaust is not an exclusively German problem or phenomenon, but a problem of modemity in general. Consequently, more fundamental changes are clearly necessary if we are to prevent other such catastrophes, which by now presumably have the potential to destroy the world completely. It is not simply a question of political structures, then; a way of thinking in general seems to be the issue. 10 bea ‘The fact that some 40 years after the Dialektik der a Phearivy uacher Aufklarung'* (Dialectics of Enlightenment) had already said much the same thing (Bauman’s thesis received so much attention | demonstrates just how little of Adomo’s and iorfebois criticism of what they called the “Kulturindustrie” (cultural industry) had actually filtered through, and shows how strong resistance to this idea was and still is. The problem of an Enlightened modernity compromised by National Socialism and the Holocaust, and the devastating implications for the rational mind as such, remain unresolved. Poetics, however, has the potential to show the way forward here, offering new ways of dealing with this past, paths (perhaps even Holzwege [forest paths), to borrow Heidegger’s idea), that lead out of the aporia of instrumental reason, Hare, ton -evep leg hon OF Me Gin tdi tf din Potovneg Se be be of We 'eocerek! palh— tay be neviled tm & boalhnoh-Adomo’s famous dictum that to write poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric'’—first published in 1951 and already infamous by the late 1950s, although only really thoroughly analyzed from the 1990s onwards—cast a dark shadow over postwar German literature, and expresses in nuce the arguably unique difficulties facing any act of artistic creation in Germany after the catastrophe of the Third Reich, but with implications that stretch far beyond the borders of this country of perpetrators, In the Afterword to his semi-fictional novella Der Vater eines Morders (The Father of a Murderer), Alfred Andersch questions the idea of humanity to which the humanist tradition subscribed, He discusses the fact that Heinrich Himmler’s father taught Latin and Greek at a Humanist Grammar School, the school in Munich that Andersch himself attended, asking: “Schitzt Humanismus denn vor gar nichts? Die Frage ist 7 Does this mean ‘geeignet, einen in Verzweiflung zu stirzen. that humanism offers no protection whatsoever? The question may well plunge one into despair.”)'* The question is disturbing, even devastating, because it suggests that, far from offering resistance, there is, in fact, a connection or céntinuum between ‘humanist ideals and education on the one hand and the ruthless murders perpetrated by the SS on the other. In short, the Afterword offers us the thesis of Dialectics of Enlightenment personified, in the human form of the (father of the) man responsible for the Holocaust. Humanism now takes on a Janus- tTfaced aspect, the noble aim of perfecting humankind being coupled here to its technical manipulation. Humanism, at the latter, obscene end of its development, opens the door, then, to a way of thinking that considers human beings in terms of biopolitical strategies. This flaw still haunts humanist ideals today. As much as Adomo’s provocative verdict on the possibility of post-Holocaust poetty has haunted poetical discourse ever since, it has also given rise to multifarious poetic and theoretical endeavors that attempt to transform the pievailing sense of negativism into artistic and literary acts of resistance against history."® A certain historical distance allows new questions to be asked, such as whether it is possible to talk about postwar poetics in terms of creativity rather than merely in terms of the destruction of traditions? And if so, how does or did this crisis generate new potential? If we consider, with Jean-Luc Nancy, “representation” as the “birthmark” of Western civilization, then the “entire fevered history” of what he calls “the gigantomachies of mimesis, of the image, of perception, of the object and the scientific law, of the spectacle, of art, of political representation” (Nancy 37) has fallen victim to the Shoah. A “fissure of absence,” of absolute violence has opened up, the gap of those who have been lost or silenced and annihilated, of people and their works, ‘ideas and thoughts, shatters the integrity of our Westem historical self-image. The challenge is to develop new and alternative 12So-called by how literary and artistic approaches which convert the violent exclusions of this image into an absence within the image, readmitting, in a way, those who are absent, their extinguished lives and acts of expression, allowing them a sort of presence in their own right, albeit, perhaps only at the very margins of our awareness, and never to be re-presented completely. Such attempts range from Peter Weiss’s Poetik des Widerstands” (Poetics of Resistance) and Blanchot’s l'écriture du désasire”' (The Writing of the Disaster) to more recent theories in which certain kinds of literature are seen as acts of témoignage (testimony) (for instance Lévinas)”* and processes of survival (Agamben), to mention just a few. The first part of this volume deals with major literary figures of the immediate postwar period, such as Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ilse Aichinger, Rose Auslinder and Gottfried Benn, The second part examines examples of what followed on from this phase of so-called “poeticized thought,” moving from Concrete Poetry, through Charlotte Beradt’s dream protocols, to the re-appropriations of Thomas Kling. The two last contributions of this part concentrate on one major representative of post-war poetics, analyzing Heiner Muller's take on the idea of a rupture in civilization. The final chapters, then, deal with the central question from a European perspective, focusing on the cases of France and Yugoslavia, 1BIn the first section of the book, the focus is mainly on actual “survivors” of the period of National Socialist persecution, such as Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, Ilse Aichinger, Rose Auslander, and including Ingeborg Bachmann, who always emphasized how Fascist rule in Austria, and her father’s allegiance to the National Socialist regime, traumatized her in childhood, Elaine Martin's article examines the work of Nelly Sachs, revealing it to be emblematic of the crisis within artistic discourse in the wake of the Shoah and Adomo’s verdict against “poetry after Auschwitz.” Martin argues that Adomo did not, in fact, want to negate the possibility of writing after Auschwitz, but to problematize the aestheticisation of the Shoah. Gisela Dischner’s contribution discusses how Paul Celan, influenced by the Russian Akemeists and convinced of the failure of human dialogue in times of persecution, still pursues a poetic dialogue of the “message in a bottle” kind, which, although no recipient is specified or guaranteed, is not to be confused with Gottfried Benn’s “monologic” poetry. Marton Marko points out how Ingeborg Bachmann's writing engages in a confrontation with the Fascist backdrop of Austria and Germany by interrogating the violence of authoritarian symbolic systems. Annette Runte explores Rose Auslinder’s mytho-poetic retum to the “unthinkable,” which, contrary to Paul Celan’s approach, is based on a common trust in language and results in “a process of resignification without designification.” Auslinder’s approach remains, however, 4embedded in poetic features of “undecidability.” In the case of Ise Aichinger, Marko Pajevié identifies a “privatistic” and privative attitude in her poetics, demonstrating her texts’ sophisticated “inaccessibility,” where any pragmatic or common use of language is disavowed and any easy communication refused, instead provoking and promoting an upheaval of thought—a literary practice that claims to resist the “cultural industry.” In the last article of this section Hans-Walter Schmidt- Hannisa looks at Charlotte Beradt’s collection of dreams gathered from people living in Nazi Germany, anid recorded between 1933 and 1939, They are interpreted in this chapter as products of the unconscious, which not only reflect terror, persecution, and propaganda but form part of a system of pressure that penetrates even the privacy of sleep In the second section of the book which deals with the wider discourse on postwar poetics, going beyond the realm of those who are driven by the ethos of the witness, the first two articles deal with Gottfried Benn whose poems and poetology had profound impact on German poetry in the second half of the twentieth century, Stefan Hajduk diagnoses Benn’s entire oeuvre as ‘suffering’ from a “theoretical unrest,” showing that Benn understands “mental existence” as lifelong crisis conjoined with an obsessive drive to creativity. Benn’s theory seems to exist in a state of tension, caught between the traditional idealist focus on creative subjectivity and his own linguistic materialism. In 15— [(Geosier Gomer'd camition pays tribute to Benn’s influence on contemporary poetic praxis. He notes that, inspired by Bonn, a “poetics of thought” has emerged in post-1945 German poetry, @ “hermeneutical paradigm” that gained particular prominence in the immediate post-war period and still remains of genuine significance for current discourses on poetry. Chris Bezzel’s essay investigates the phenomenon of Concrete Poetry, seeing it as a form of avant-garde literary production, and not only as the poetic innovation of a younger generation, but also as radical reaction to the postwar crisis in society and culture. Anicla Knoblich takes a similar position in her analysis of ‘Thomas Kling’s poetics and poetry, Casting himself actively as a postwar writer, Kling shows particular interest in the “rupturing” potential of poetry since 1945, Knoblich’s examination looks at the ways in which his poetry seeks to realize this potential The two concluding articles of this section address discontinuity in Heiner Miller’s poetics from different viewpoints, Renata Plaice pursues in Millers texts traces of an antidialectic historical and poetological train of thought that leads the new by way of the destruction of history's utopian telos Literature loses here its ability to create a (utopian) “realm of aesthetic appearance,” and persists only in acts of transgression, as a fragment of a deconstructed reality. Barry Mumane, on the other hand, highlights traces of poetological and historical continuity in Muller's writings which employ the figure of the 16spectre or revenant as a “poetological and historical trope.” Referring to Derrida’s theory of spectrality, and by drawing on theories of the camivalesque, he shows how intertextuality and repetition thus become productive poetological models in Maller’s writing, The final part of the collection contains comparative explorations of post-1945 poetics in the European context. Manuel Braganga analyses Jean Paul Sartre's trilogy Les Chemins de la liberté (The Roads to Freedom) in order to unveil the intertwining of his philosophical development with his literary style in his postwar shift from “the quest for individual freedom to the necessity of authenticity.” Peter Tame compares André Malraux and Oswald Spengler in terms of the “poetics of metamorphosis,” and looking at the idea of a repeated, but metamorphosed, “rupture of civilisation” after the First and Second World Wars. Finally, Tatjana Petzer discusses the poetics of the Yugoslavian author Danilo Ki8, analysing the techniques he uses to retrace the catastrophic trauma and violence of the Shoah in the narrative text Petzer connects this to Viktor Sklovskij’s concept of “defamiliarization” (ostranenie) and Arthur Koestler’s principle of “bisociation,” demonstrating how human creation in a biological sense, when activated by a catastrophic event, can be transformed into the act of literary creation. 7‘The last study of the collection takes the volume into the sphere of intermediality. Gert Hofmann approaches Claude Lanzmann’s monumental film Shoah from the perspective of “aesthetics of non-power” (dsthetik der Ohnmachi) where the ‘moment of annihilation, of death, is articulated by leaping over it, producing elliptical figures of absence, clision, caesura and reduplication Notes * Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedéichtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identitat in frihen Hochkulturen, 6th ed. (Munich: CH. Beck 2007), 51 ? Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997) * Slogan from a fund-raising poster for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, cited in Oren Baruch Stier, Committed to Memory. Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust (Amherst: U_ of Massachusetts P, 2003), 68. * Another formulation of this idea would be Blanchot’s “Concentration camps, annihilation camps, figures where the invisible is forever made visible, All the features of a civilization are revealed or laid bare... .” Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, trans, Ann Smock (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1995), 81 185 The philosophy of the Enlightenment ... does not understand its task as an act of destruction but as an act of reconstruction. In its very boldest revolutions, the enlightenment aims only at ‘restitution to the whole’ (restitution in integrum) .....” Emst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans, Fritz Koelln and James Pettegrove (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1951), 234. Cassirer, of course, saw this dynamic in the positive sense of a return to the eternal rights of man, © Theodor W. Adomo, Negative Dialectics (New York: Continuum Intemational Publishing Group, 1973), 365: “to arrange one’s thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.” 7 Sarah Kofman, Smothered Words. Holocaust Studies (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1998), 7. * Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image (New York: Fordham UP, 2005), 34. Subsequent references to this work will be quoted in the text using Nancy and page numbers. ° Translation by Michael Hamburger. Friedrich Holderlin, Hyperion and Selected Poems, ed, Eric L. Santner (New York: Continuum, 1990), 257. "© Henri Meschonnic, Les Etats de la poétique (Paris: PUF, 1985), 95. "' “Krise ist immer,” in Die Zeit, 23.9.1994. " Herzzeit. Ingeborg Bachmann - Paul Celan. Der Briefwechsel. Mit den Briefwechseln zwischen Paul Celan und Max Frisch 19sowie zwischen Ingeborg Bachmann und Giséle Celan-Lestrange, ed. B. Badiou, H. Holler, A. Stoll, B, Wiedemann, letter from 21 September 1963 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 240. ® Zivilisationsbruch. Denken nach Auschwitz, ed, Dan Diner (Fischer: Frankfurt am Main, 1988). ™ Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 1989) © Written already during the Second World War and published in 1947. *® Theodor W. Adomo, “Prismen: Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft,” in Gesammelte Schriften in zwanzig Banden, Band 10.1, ed. Rolf ‘Tiedemann (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1977), 30 "7 Alfred Andersch, Nachwort fiir Leser, in Der Vater eines Morders -- Erzahlung (Zovich: Diogenes, 1982 [1980)), 136. '8 Translation from Alfred Andersch, The Father of a Murderer, trans. Leila Vennewitz, (New York: New Directions, 1994), 92. See for example the collection of reactions to Adomo in Lyrik nach Auschwitz?: Adorno und die Dichter, ed. Petra Kiedaisch (Stuttgart: Reclam, ©1995), ® Peter Weiss, Die Asthetik des Widerstands (Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp, 1975-81). 2! Maurice Blanchot, L’Ecriture du désastre (Paris: Gallimard, 1980). ” See, for instance, Emmanuel Lévinas, Autrement qu’étre ou au- dele de l'essence (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1974) 202 3 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Hellet-Roazen. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998 [1995)]); and Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone books, 2000 [1998)).I. Poetics after Auschwitz 2223, | Elaine Martin, Maynooth ‘The Poeties of Silence: Nelly Sachs “Hinter den Lippen | Unsagbares wartet”! ‘Unsere Zeit, so schlimm sie ist, muB [...] in det Kunst ihren Ausdruck finden, es mu mit allen neuen Mitteln gewagt ‘werden, denn die alten reichen nicht mehr aus.” [Our epoch, as terrible as it is, must find expression in art. We ‘must dare to express it using all possible new means because the old methods no longer suffice.] Das Ubermaf an realem Leiden duldet kein Vergessen; ... jenes Leiden ... etheischt ... die Fortdauer von Kunst, die es verbietet; kaum wo anders findet das Leiden noch seine eigene Stimme.* [Extreme suffering tolerates no forgetting, This suffering demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids. It scarcely finds a voice anywhere else.} Two clear directives from two highly significant figures in the field of post- Shoah art: both Nelly Sachs and Theodor W. Adomo recognized theShulman cued ‘dichvin! TE gov dos etre Wonk Th one. 24 formidable task confronting writers attempting to find new literary tools to express the horror of the Shoah in artistic form. It was not the legitimacy of the artistic rendering of the Shoah that was at issue but rather the attempt, however futile, to find the appropriate artistic tools in order to do so. The difficulty for both was the dilemma facing the post-Shoah artist: the absolute necessity of giving voice to the suffering and the impossibility of doing so adequately. Both Sachs and Adomo recognized the irreparable fissure that the Shoah had left in its wake; art's new task was to find means of presenting the reality of this fissure. What is puzzling then, in light of this, is that the name Theodor W. Adorno has come to be automatically associated with a general interdiction against post-Shoah art, This anomaly can be directly linked to what has become a seemingly established maxim in the debate on Holocaust art, namely, his so-called “dictum” concerning the “barbarity of poetty after Auschwitz.” This|dictan} has exerted a profound influence on the course of postwar literary discourse pertaining to the Shoah, accompanying almost every critical contribution to the debate surrounding its “representability”, like an uneasy shadow. The exceptional range of interpretations it has solicited -- and indeed continues to solicit ~ is simply astounding These have ranged from references to Adomo’s “injunction against poetry,” to the “nihilism of his prohibition against poetry,” to his “silencing of poetry,”® to his supposed pronouncement of the “impossibility of poetry.” Others have made reference to Adomo’s “bitter 7 to his “desperate rhetorical flourish,”* to his and final word of resignation, “hyperbolic dictum” and, most recently, to his “famous axiom” demanding a “vow of silence.”!” What is simply perplexing, however, is that the so-25 called dictum in question constitutes a mere sub-clause of the original German paragraph, this paragraph in tum constituting but a minuscule element of Adomo’s extensive reflections on the problems of artistic production in a post-Auschwitz world. What is especially bewildering is not only its repeated citation without reference to the broader framework of Adomo’s thought, but also the fact that it is habitually quite literally extracted from its immediate textual context. When examined within its context, however, and within the general framework of Adomo’s extensive deliberations on post-Shoah art, the aporetic tension that Adorno was attempting to communicate comes, unmistakably, to the fore: Je totaler die Gesellschaft, um so verdinglichter auch der Geist und um so paradoxer sein Beginnen, der Verdinglichung aus Eigenem sich zu entwinden. Noch das duBerste BewuBtsein vom Verhangnis droht zum Geschwatz zit entarten, Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegentiber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das friBt auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmdglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben." [The more total society becomes the greater the reification of the mind and the more paradoxical its attempt to escape reification ‘on its own. Even the most extreme consciousness of doom threatens to degenerate into idle chatter. Cultural criticism finds26 itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism: to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, and this, even corrodes the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. the process of reification, which had reached such an extreme in the Nazi death camps, that prevents the poet from recognising poetry's inadmissibility. Not only is the very idea of artistic subjectivism intrinsically V ieragina That a | For Adomo the barbarity of post-Auschwitz poetry lies in the fact that itis | problematic given that the Shoah had rendered the idea of individuality Nars shiner} wry le —~ completely void, the concept of subjectivism is itself an illusion in the chaltoged \ a aftermath of Auschwitz, an illusion which, in tum, prevents the artist from \ \ recognising the entrenchment of a reification process of which he too forms fated the concept of individualism, the very core of critical consciousness and the conditions for self-reflective thought. By its very nature, subjective, figurative discourse cannot be reconciled with the Teo bot reality of this reification process. In the Ni Nee aaa kind of death, th reification had, after all, b come a kind o e process of reification er all, been Surly obouk We sams pocess nea tor Pelvon reduced to an absolute extreme: Coommoifrebon?) of Vow yt walere ney celteny IM den Konzentrationslagem des Faschismus wurde die jeath camps, where “life” had “y difluant Demarkationslinie zwischen Leben und Tod getilgt. Sie schufen cinen Zwischenzustand, lebende Skelette und Verwesende, Opfer, denen der Selbstmord missrat."™ ov subecls'vih mouof indivicbonts / 27 [ln the concentration camps the line of demarcation between life and death was erased. The Nazis created an in-between state; living skeletons, decomposing wretches for whom even suicide would go wrong.) ‘The concrete manifestation of this process was to be seen in the figure of the so-called “Miselmann,” the wretched victim of gradual liquidation. This figure has been most terrifyingly described by Primo Levi: “Theit life is short, but their number is endless; they, the Maselmanner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men.”"* The obliteration of the very concept of the individual in the death camps and the resulting death of death itself effected, in Adomo’s view, immense repercussions for both the survivor and the post-Shoah writer. For the survivor, death can never mean death in the traditional sense of the word, after a hell has been created in which specimens and not human fi, where “life” means walking corpses, where the line between life and death has become blurred and where the central aspect of a dignified death — individuality -- has itself been obliterated: Mit dem Mord an Millionen durch Verwaltung ist der Tod zu etwas geworden, was so noch nie zu fiirchten war, ... Da8 in den Lager nicht mehr das Individuum starb, sondem das Exemplar, mu das Sterben auch derer affizieren, die der MaBnahme entgingen. (Negative Dialektik 355)28 [With the murder of millions as an administrative measure, death has become something never before feared in this manner. The fact that the specimen, not the individual, died in the death camps, must of necessity also affect the dying of those who escaped the administrative measure.] For the post-Shoah writer the repercussions were similarly grave: in the death camps the victims had been wholly robbed of freedom and individual choice, and this reality posed an immense practical problem for the writer attempting to portray the Shoah: “Die Undarstellbarkeit des Faschismus .. rohrt daher, da8 es in ihm [keine]... Freiheit des Subjekts mehr gibt ‘Vollendete Unfreiheit 1a8t sich ... nicht darstellen.” (The impossibility of portraying Fascism stems from the fact that in it subjective freedom does not exist. Absolute lack of freedom cannot be represented.) Failure to reflect this changed reality would result in a breach between the artwork and the subject of representation. Reinhart Baumgart has taken a resolute stance in this regard. Not just people, but individuality, humanity itself, was exterminated in Auschwitz, and as a result: “Wo Massenmord ihr Gegenstand wird, kann sie [die Literatur] sich den Luxus solcher Individuation nicht mehr leisten. Es wird Asthetisch zur Lge, moralisch zur Heuchelei,”"* (Where mass murder is its subject, literature can no longer afford the luxury of individuation. If it does it becomes an aesthetic lie and morally hypocritical.) Adorno’s dictum must be examined within the overall framework of his thoughts on culture in the aftermath of the Shoah. Upon his retum to29 Germany he was astounded by the cultural euphoria amongst the postwar populace in its desperate attempt to glide over the recent past and reconnect to the supposed “true” soul of pre-National Socialist Germany, Adorno emphasised instead the need to examine culture’s complicity.'* The fact that the egregious crimes had been committed by one of the world’s supposedly most “civilised” nations is a dilemma that haunts Adomo’s postwar writings. Max Frisch provides a disturbing description of this anomoly, Die blosse dumpfe Bestie, die nichts anderes kann und kennt, ist nicht das Ungeheuerliche; denn sie ist ‘leicht 2a erkennen Ungeheuerlich scheint mir die Bestie mit dem Geist Ungeheuerlich ist das Januskopfige, die Schizophrenic, wie sie sich... innethalb des deutschen Volkes, .. offenbart hat. Nicht \enige von uns hielten sich lange an den trdstlchen Irrum, es handle sich um zweierlei Menschen dieses Volkes, solche, die Mozart spielen, und solche, die Menschen verbrennen, Zu erfahren, dass sich beide in der gleichen Person befinden kénnen, das war die eigentliche Erschiitterung,’” [The mere hollow beast that knows no better is not what's terrible, since it is easily recognized. To me what’s terrible is the beast endowed with intellect .. the Janus-headed one, the schizophrenia that revealed itself among the German people, For a long time many of us held on to the comforting notion that this, nation was made up of two categories of people: those who playCoiher incited | Merk wok ba Voougt of er & Lecsuce oF be veh 2 Yok Alem doer Saw Pusch” 4S OCeasioning ao bee y? Wes stems pore domes 30 Mozart and those who bum people. To discover that both types ‘could be found in the one person -- that was the real shock.] For Adomo the Shoah was not simply a blemish on an otherwise pristine cultural tradition, since this very tradition had proven far from impervious to the murderous National Socialist ideology. The relegation of Auschwitz to the status ofa mere interruption of Germany’s cultural tradition was seen by him as exculpating a culture which, as demonstrated by the fact of Auschwitz, had manifestly failed, ‘The fact that the Holocaust had taken place in the midst of the great German philosophical and artistic traditions had the effect of reducing these traditions, in Adomo’s view, to the status of rubbish (Negative Dialektik 360). Within this context the original dictum assumes yet another level of meaning; after all, given culture’s complete failure, what status could culture — and art, as part and parcel of that same culture ~ possibly have after Auschwitz? To simply resume pre-Auschwitz amtistic forms was seen by Adomo as ignoring the caesura, the irreversible break that Auschwitz had occasioned; it involved overlooking the complicity of culture itself: “Den aberlieferten asthetischen Formen, der traditionellen Sprache ... wohnt keine rechte Kraft mehr inne, Sie alle werden Lagen gestraft von der Katastrophe jener Gesellschaft, aus der sie hervorgingen.”"* (Those aesthetic forms which have been handed down, and traditional language ... no longer have any power. They are belied by the catastrophe of that society from which they emerged.) Adorno wamed against simply assuming pre-Shoah artistic forms and thereby ignoring the irreparable fissure that the Shoah had left in its aftermath. For Adomo, if art31 is to claim any kind of ethical legitimacy then it cannot be as it was before Auschwitz. Not only has the medium of language become thoroughly tainted as a result of its misappropriation for murderous purposes, subjectivity is now also inherently problematic, Art thus cannot be as before and yet the suffering must be voiced in art. His later qualification of his original dictum summarizes this aporetic tension: “Wahrend die Situation Kunst nicht mehr zulabt -- darauf zielte der Satz uber die Unmoglichkeit von Gedichten nach Auschwitz ~ bedarf sie doch ihrer.” (In a situation where art is no longer acceptable -- that was the point of the sentence about the impossibility of art after Auschwitz. -- the situation nonetheless demands it, Adomo, Asthotische Theorie 374) Adomo’s dictum must also be explored in the light of his extensive reflections on the ever-present dangers involved in any attempt to portray the victims’ suffering in aesthetic form, He argued that the danger inherent in any artistic attempt to portray the events of the Shoah lies in the potential of each artwork, in spite of the hellishness of content, to facilitate aesthetic pleasure as a result of the beauty of the artwork’s formal qualities. Adomo deemed any such pleasure an unacceptable violation of the victims’ suffering. (Noten 125) What concerned him most was what he termed “the principle of aesthetic stylization”: Durchs asthetische Stilisationsprinzip ...erscheint das unausdenkliche Schicksal doch, als hatte es irgend Sinn gehabt; es wird verklart, etwas von dem Grauen weggenommen, damit allein widerfahrt den Opfern Unrecht. (Noten 125)32 {By means of the principle of aesthetic stylization the unimaginable fate of the victims appears as having had some kind of sense after all; it becomes transfigured, some of the horror is softened, and that already involves doing an injustice to the victims] ‘Adomo’s concems are thus multiple: not only is there a very real danger that pleasure might be somehow “squeezed” from the portrayal of human suffering, there is also a possibility that some kind of “sense” might be attributed to the senseless suffering of millions by means of the formal and structural coherence of the artwork, since, he argued, the aesthetic principle of form always means the attribution of meaning, even where meaning is rejected at the level of content.'? Given the moral magnitude of the event, Adomo viewed any such attribution of sense with mistrust ‘Wo vom Aufersten, dem qualvollen Tod die Rede ist, schamt ‘man sich der Form, so, als ob sie an dem Leiden frevelte, indem sie es unausweichlich zu einem Material macht, aber das sie sich verfiigt.” (Negative Dialektik 597) [Where the subject is utmost extremity and agonizing death, form is shameful, as though it sinned against the suffering by reducing it inevitably to a material over which it disposes}33 Presenting extreme human suffering within an orderly, coherent, formal framework creates the impression that the artist can deal with this suffering which has now been reduced to mere “subject matter” at his disposal ‘Adomo makes it clear that there is an “extremity” in the reality of Auschwitz which is not amenable to human conceptualization, and that all thought processes must recognize this extremity Mit es [das Denken} sich nicht an dem Aufersten, das dem Begriff entflieht, so ist es vorweg vom Schlag der Begleitmusik, mit welcher die SS die Schreie ihrer Opfer dbertonen lie8, (Negative Dialektik 358) [Uf thought is not measured against the extremity that eludes concept, it is automatically of the same cast as the musical accompaniment with which the $$ drowned out the screams of its victims. } For Adomo self-complacent thought in the aftermath of Auschwitz is not permissible, he wams against any form of self-satisfied, conclusive reflection on Auschwitz; mediation of this matter must itself remain unsettled, closure is not an option, Adomo’s “Auerste” (extremity) should not, however, be equated with the concept of negative sacralization whose dangers have been summed up by Johann Baptist Metz:34 Dieses Grauen darf nicht aus der Geschichte herausgenommen und zu einer Art “negativen Mythos” stilisiert werden, Dadurch warde der Holocaust zum unfaBlichen Schicksal, zur Tragodie beyond history, die den Standpunkt der Verantwortung und der Scham ... aufldsen warde.”™ [This horror must not be removed from its historical framework and stylized as some kind of “negative myth.” If that were to happen the Holocaust would become some kind of inconceivable fate, a tragedy beyond history. This would render the notions of responsibility and shame superfluous.) Its precisely at this juncture that the poetry of Nelly Sachs can be examined as an example of a work dealing self-referentially with problems of representation, The aporia facing the post-Shoah writer the indispensability of appropriate representation and its impossibility -- is a constant theme running through her work. Firstly a brief examination of the characteristics of the poetic genre will serve to demonstrate the intrinsic advantages which place it in a position to best express the rupture of language and experience, the horror of unimaginable magnitude in the wake of the Shoah, Bound neither to narrative structure, narrative or grammatical coherence, nor to expectations of narrative closure, poetry is in a position to bring the senselessness of the event to the fore without attributing a semblance of meaning ~ in aesthetic terms ~ to the slaughter. Moreover, poetry allows for unorthodox punctuation which can have expressive value;35 by allowing for a strong congruency between form and content the formal structure itself can act as a function of literary content. Nor does the poem rely on finite syntax -- an indication of logic and reason which is so essential to the formal coherence of most narrative, for example, It allows for complete destabilization and fragmentation of form which can have strong expressive value: the irrationality of the massacre can thus be recreated through the dissolution of form, coherence and conventional logic. ‘Adomo, as we have seen, warmed against attributing a semblance of meaning to the events, and against the attainment of pleasure by means of what he called “das dsthetische Stilisationsprinzip.” This is of immediate significance in the case of Nelly Sachs since here the so-called “principle of aesthetic stylization” itself prohibits these dangers, a crucial and paradoxical characteristic of the “form” of her poetry is a Jack of form, hers may be described as a poetics of disfiguration, Her verse is one of severe incoherence and fragmentation; her distinctive mode of writing is one not of construction but of demolition. She avoids the risk of subjugating a ruptured and shattered language to what Susan Shapiro calls an “order making medium” and attributing in the process some semblance of meaning to the senseless massacre in terms of formal or structural coherence.”! The strategy employed by Sachs was to use this ruptured language as her medium. In a letter to Carl Seelig in 1946, Sachs stated that her own broken and “pierced” state had its correlation in the physical make-up of her poetry: Sie ... werden fuhlen, daf ich, wenn ich so sagen darf, nicht rund verwundet bin, sondern einfach durchstochen. Darum kann ich36 kkeine Romane schreiben, es bricht aus mir heraus in den Formen, die ich Ihnen sandte. (Briefe 67) [You'll see that I'm not so much in a state of all round injury, but rather -- if I may say so -- pierced, That's why I can’t write novels. It erupts from within me in the forms I've sent to you.] In much of her poetry a textuality of rupture and severe formal disintegration become manifest. The poem “Szene aus dem Spicl Nachtwache” (Scene from the play Nightwatch) is a good example: DIE AUGEN ZU uund dann -- Die Wunde geht auf und dann -- ‘Man angelt mit Blitzen ° die Geheimnisse des Blutes ° fir die Fische Alles im Grab der Luft Opfer Henker Finger37 Finger Das Kind malt im Sarg mit Staub Den Nabel der Welt - und im Geheg der Zahne halt der Henker den letzten Fluch -- ‘Was nun? [Eyes shut / and then -- / the wound opens / and then -- // Fishing with flashes of lightning / O / the mysteries of blood / O ‘for the fish / all in the grave in the sky / victim / hangman / finger / finger // The child draws with dust in the coffin / the belly-button of the world -- / and the hangman holds the final curse / in the stockade of teeth -- / What now?]" In this poem we get an intense replay of the struggle surrounding the attempt to find commensurate words to articulate what thwarts language. ‘The image of the wound — an image characteristic of Sachs’s work -- appears in relation to the abyss between the pre- and post-Shoah worlds. Structural disintegration and severe linguistic reduction appear in this poem with exceptional clarity. The collapse of language is implicit in the very opening lines of the poem. The first thing which immediately catches the reader's attention is the frequent interruption of the poem by means of hhyphenation, This is highly characteristic of Sachs’s work. This hyphenation permeates the textuality of her poems and assumes crucial symbolic value38 Dischner describes the dashes as the “verzweifelte Sprachgebarde des Verstummens, einen Abbruch des Gedichteten, weil Worte fehlen, das Ungeheuerliche, das Unsagbare zu sagen.” (the despairing gestures of speechlessness, a breakdown of the poetic voice because there are no words to say the unsayable.) As formal features of the poem they serve as a function of literary content: they express that which is beyond words. The dashes are a manifestation of the mutilation of language in the aftermath of the Shoah, The lack of verbs and punctuation is immediately apparent in the second stanza, and by the third stanza the language has been reduced to single words. It is at this point that the poetic voice appears breathless. As Robert Foot writes, it is as if the poem is trying breathlessly to express the totality of its vision before speechlessness sets in, the single words acting as a kind of severely compressed synecdoche condensing a whole range of inexpressible images into a series of sharp and panicky outbursts.”* The repetition gives the impression of retardation; it is evidence of the poetic voice grappling for words in an effort not to succumb to silence. The final line of the poem “Was nun?” is evidence of a despairing poetic voice working with language completely incommensurate with the subject at hand. In this poem there is not so much as a hint at redemptive release from the suffering endured, since the executioner stil lies in wait for his victim and the threat is implicit that evil will ultimately triumph: “der Henker [halt] den letzten Fluch.” Thus neither in form nor in content does Sachs attribute any kind of meaning to the senseless butchery. The following poem is another example of the acute structural disintegration of form:39 Holle ist nackt aus Schmerz —- Suchen Sprachlos ‘Suchen Su Su Su’* [Hell is naked with pain -- / searching / speechless / searching / / sear sear sear] This poem is another primary example of severe linguistic reduction; in it, too, formal structure serves as a function of literary content. The poetic voice struggles to find the words to express the naked pain which the Shoah has left in its wake, but is unable to give expression to the experiences of the survivors. The use of aposiopesis -- the poetic voice breaking off abruptly as if unable to continue -- suggests that the poetic voice is searching desperately for adequate words but does so in vain, Once again the poem is progressively fiagmented and dispersed, moving from a syntactically complete, if reduced opening sentence ending with the familiar dash, to single words, to individual syllables without defined semantic content. The speechlessness referred {0 in these poems may be equated with “Stummheit”: the poetic voice is mute and helpless in the face of the horror and heinous nature of the crimes committed. This silence in its opacity suggests that there is something which is impenetrable _and incomprehensible. This “something” may be equated with Adorno’s concept40 of the “extremity that eludes concept.” In another poem this silence once again comes to the fore as Sachs makes a direct appeal to the victims themselves: ‘Verzeiht ihr meine Schwestern ich habe ever Schweigen in mein Herz. genommen Dort wohnt es und leidet die Perlen cures Leides Klopft Herzweh So laut so zerreifiend schrill . (Suche nach Lebenden 27) [Forgive me my sisters / Thave taken your silence into my heart / There it lives and suffers the pearls of your suffering / heartache knocks / so loud, so piercingly shrill ..) (Chimneys 257) In this poem Sachs makes a direct petition to the dead and pleads that her failure to voice their sufferings be forgiven. The sisters’ Schweigen (silence) is described as “laut” and “erreiftend schrill” itis a silence that demands articulation -- “dort Klopft Herzweh’” -- yet simultaneously thwarts speech. ‘This is a prime example of the aporia upon which Adomo reflected. The silence thematized in so much of her work and into which so many of her poems evaporate is not always, therefore, to be equated with mere muteness, ‘The silence which petmeates Sachs's work also has a constructive purpose; the way in which language collapses is itself a telling process, To use Berela Lang’s formulation, the breakdown of both the formal and linguistic structure makes manifest the limits of representation but simultaneously succeeds in representing these very limits (Lang 300). The disintegration of form succeeds paradoxically in giving silence form, So the silence that permeates Sachs’s work is a constitutive part of her poetry; as Emestine Schlant says, it is not just a “monolithic emptiness” or a “semantic void,” but has representational value, Silence, after al, is the absence of words. At the same time, therefore, it is the “presence of their absence.””” The applicability of such comments to Sachs’s work is clear. The hhyphenation which permeates her writing is a symbol that there is something unsayable to be said. The sense of the unrepresentable is thus strongly perceptible in her work: that which is not said is just as important as that which is. One particularly distressing poem in which the reader is forced to apprehend an unspoken reality behind the lines is “Sie schreien nicht mehr.” This is undoubtedly one of Sachs’s most disturbing poems: SIE SCHREIEN NICHT MEHR ‘wenn es weh tut Einer steigt auf die Wunden des anderen aber es sind nur Wolken auf die sie treten die tropfen dann geistethaft — (Suche nach Lebenden 126)42 {They no longer scream / when it hurts / one stands upon the ‘wounds of another / but they are only clouds / which they are climbing onto / and it makes them drip, like ghosts ~ ] In this poem Sachs attempts to portray the scene in the gas chamber. We are confronted with the image of the vietims fighting for the last breath of oxygen. The death scene in the chambers is presented here with disturbing clarity. As Ruth Klager writes: “In der letzten Agonie sind die Starken auf die Schwachen getreten und so waren die Leichen der Manner stets oben, die der Kinder ganz unten,” (In the last moments of dying the strong stood upon the weak, and so the corpses of the men were always on top, those of the children on the bottom, Kranz-Léber 149) This is the image that Sachs attempts to provide us with. The poem ends, like so many of Sachs’s poems, in a resonant silence represented by the dash, bringing to the fore the inability of language to portray such unimaginable horror. It is, however, a constructive silence since it is at this point thatthe reader is confronted with the task of apprehending Adomo’s concept of the “extremity,” that which has been consigned to silence, that which has thwarted language. The silence which interrupts these poems is thus not a semantic void, and itis of utmost importance to be aware of this when reading Sachs’s poetry. The reader is compelled to apprehend the silence produced by the failure of words and confront that which is not said, The aesthetic strategy employed by Sachs is, thus, paradox; she uses form in such a way as to enact a breakdown of form.” What lies behind the dash is the true horror. For Sachs, the primary task of the post-Shoah writer is to lift the veil of silence43 that enveloped the unspeakable crimes at Auschwitz. The inevitable failures in adequately performing this task do not, however, mean an automatic lapse into further silence; instead the poetic voice now has the responsibility of presenting the reality of this silence and the reality of the “extremity” inherent in the Shoah; one that evades description but of whose existence the poetic voice is acutely aware. The very uncomfortable and ever-active absent presence of this “extremity” in Sachs’s poetics prevents any kind of closure from occurring ~ closure most certainly not being the objective of this poetry, ‘Another issue to which Adomo repeatedly retumed in his writings was the liquidation in the death camps of the concept of the individual subject. ‘As hitherto discussed, this acquires central importance in Adomo’s reflections on post-Shoah art. His primary concern lay with the possible dangers of representing the Shoah in figurative discourse and in particular with the tendency of the latter towards subjectivity. The mass-production of death, as has been seen, had rendered void the very concept of the individual. One of the determining features of Sachs's work, however, is the prominence[plural forms of speech. As one critic comments: Das Fehlen des Subjekts ... erinnert an den massenhaften Tod, die Shoah, die, wenngleich sie ein millionenfaches individuelles Sterben war, ... den individuellen Tod und somit auch den Status des Subjekts mitvernichtet hat. ... Die Ichlosigkeit der Lyrik gewinnt ... nahezu mimetische Qualitat. (Kranz-Lober 68) bob a bind of eyenng collier?Caphetese 1 44 [The absence of the individual subject... serves as a reminder of ‘the mass death that occurred -- the Shoah, Whilst millions of individual deaths occurred, the concept of individual death itself ‘was also exterminated and with it the status of the individual subject. ... The absence of the lyrical “I” ... in the poems thus acquires .... a mimetic quality.] ‘As has been mentioned above, it is in this respect that the poetic genre has a distinct advantage. Not tied to the narration of individual characters, poetry can reflect the extermination process as it was: “the unceremonious mass- production of death.” The “death of death” in tum, had been a direct result ‘Auschwitz, death can no longer be comfortably assumed to exist in its traditional forms. This is particularly relevant with respect to Sachs since she most certainly does not present us with any illusory sense of death as a release from suffering. Rather she presents the scenario of perpetrator and victim as all-pervasive. Death has become a haunting spectre that permeates life itself. Life for the survivor is now a steady progression towards the grave, Although they may have survived physical annihilation, death is now ubiquitous. The poem “Chor der Geretteten” (Chorus of the saved), undoubtedly one of Sachs’ most disquieting works, demonstrates this clearly by portraying a survivor constantly haunted by the presence of death, Wir Geretteten, Immer noch hangen die Schlingen fir unsere Halse gedreht45 ‘Vor uns in der blauen Luft ~ Immer noch fullen sich die Stundenuhren mit unserem topfenden Blut. Wir Geretteten, Immer noch essen an uns die Wiirmer der Angst. (Fahrt ins Staublose 50) [We the rescued / The nooses wound for our necks still dangle/ before us in the blue air ~ / The hourglasses still fill with our dripping blood / We the rescued/ The worms of fear still feed on us. (Chimneys 25)] In its clarity the imagery in this poem is disturbing, to say the very least Nooses dangle in the blue air, worms of fear feed on the survivors, the hourglass contains blood instead of sand. Death has become omnipresent, determining life itself. The distortion of traditional imagery is characteristic ‘of Sachs’s work: the symbol of the hourglass is no longer a reminder of a ed adeed « transitory but a permanent state. There is no hint of redemptive release. The blaele ix fey a aeemee than byl Sebi dash once again expresses the muteness with which the poetic voice is.) V1." ‘t rrievel | struck in the all-pervasive presence of death. We have seen how the compulsion to bear witness lay at the heart of the aporia which the writer faced in the aftermath of the Shoah: a moral obligation to give expression to the events together with the impossibility of doing so adequately. Sachs’s accomplishment is thus paradoxical: she “succeeds” by presenting in her representation the fact that adequate46 representation is impossible to achieve. She confronts the aporia facing the post-Shoah writer by inscribing into her poetry the impossibility of representing the suffering. Thave attempted here to demonstrate that although the language and the formal structure of her poems are characterised by destabilisation, severe condensation, indeterminacy and absence, they nonetheless speak a language, The potential for deriving aesthetic pleasure from her poetry that ultimate danger against which Adomo wamed ~- is reduced given the permeation of her poetry by fragmentations; of despair, pain and relentlessly distorted imagery, In its clarity, her poetry is disturbing; in its opacity itis distressing. The source of this distress lies in the knowledge that behind the stark imagery, which in itself reveals so much, the reader is left with the perturbing realization that so much has also been consigned to silence. It is at that moment of realization that we confront Adomo’s “extremity” and our thought is denied closure. Opacity and clarity are mutually exclusive, but Sachs succeeds in presenting both simultaneously: the opacity in her poetry presents the fact that speech has been thwarted; it is what is left unspoken that counts, Sachs presents the fact that this unspoken reality exists Paradoxically, by making clear through the formal structure of her work the impossibility of adequate communication, Sachs makes communication possible, Notes "Behind lips, the unsayable awaits.” Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are my own.a7 ? Ruth Dinesen / Helmut Miissener (eds.), Briefe der Nelly Sachs. (Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp, 1984), 98. Subsequent references to this edition are cited in the text using the abbreviation Briefe and page number. * Theodor W. Adorno, Noten zur Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), 125. Subsequent references are cited in the text using the abbreviation Noten and page number. * Susan Gubar, Poetry after Auschwitz, Remembering what one never knew (Bloomington /Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 240. * Elrud Ibsch, Die Shoah erzdihlt: Zeugnis und Experiment in der Literatur (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004), 48 ® Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Die Steine der Freiheit,” in Lyrik nach Auschwitz: Adorno und die Dichter, ed. Petra Kiedaisch, 73-76 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1995), 73. 7 Walter Jens, “Nobelpreis flr Literatur: Nelly Sachs,” Ruperto-Carola. Zeltschrift der Vereinigung der Freunde der Studentenschaft der Universitat Heidelberg 14.4 (1967): 4-7, 4. * Ronald Aronson, “The Holocaust and Human Progress,” in Echoes from the Holocaust. Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time, eds. Alan Rosenberg and Gerald E Myers, 223-44 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 223, ° Casey Haskins, “Art, Morality, and the Holocaust: The Aesthetic Riddle of Benigni's Life Is Beautiful,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59.4 (2003): 373-84, 373 "© Stephen J. Whitfield, “The Holocaust: Remembrances, Reflections Revisions,” Religion Compass 1.1 (2007): 190-202, 194,48 Theodor W. Adomo, Kulturkritk wnd Gesellschaft. Gesammelie Schriften in zwanzig Banden, ed, Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, worn (o.) 2 5 this vol. or poet 7 ” ‘Theodor W. Adomo, Negative Dialektik, Gesammelte Schriften in zwanzig Banden, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 42, Subsequent references to this work are cited in the text using the abbreviation Negative Dialektik and page number. ™ Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Orion, 1959), 82. ™ Theodor W. Adomo, Minima moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschadigten Leben, Gesammelte Schriften in zwanzig Banden, ed, Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 148. 'S Reinhard Baumgart, Literatur fiir Zeitgenossen: Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966), 28. '© This restorative climate was starkly evident in the debates that surrounded the reconstruction of the bombed Goethehaus in Frankfurt, and the celebrations in Weimar -- less than ten kilometres from Buchenwald -- of the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth "” Max Frisch, Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976), 252. " Theodor W. Adomo, “Aufersichung der Kultur in Deutschland,” in Kritik, Kleine Schriften zur Gesellschaft, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 20-33 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 27. Theodor W. Adomo, Asthetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften in Suhrkamp, zwanzig Banden, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, (Frankfurt am M: 1970), 403. — Vol ne?49 ® Johann Baptist Metz, “Fir eine anarnnetische Kultur,” in Holocaust: die Grenzen des Verstehens Eine Debatte tuber die Besetzung der Geschichte, ed. Hanno Lowey. (Hamburg: Rowohit, 1992), 36. * Cf. Susan Shapiro, “Hearing the testimony of radical negation,” in Coneilium. International Journal for Theology 5.175 (1984): 3-10, 6 ® Nelly Sachs, Fahrt ins Staublose -- Die Gedichte der Nelly Sachs (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1961), 375, Subsequently cited in the text as Fahrt ins Staublose, with page number. * Nelly Sachs, O the Chimneys, trans. Michael Hamburger (New York: Farrar Straus 1967), 367. Subsequently cited as Chimneys, with page number. % Gisela Bezzel-Dischner, Poetik des modernen Gedichis: Zur Lyrik von Nelly Sachs (Bad Homburg, Gehlen, 1970), 89. * Robert Foot, The Phenomenon of Speechlessness in the Poetry of Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Gunther Rich, Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan (Bonn: Bouvier, 1982), 149. © Nelly Sachs, Suche nach Lebenden -- Die Gedichte der Nelly Sachs (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 57. Subsequent references to this volume are cited in the text using the abbreviation Suche nach Lebenden, with page number, °” Cf. Emestine Schlant, The Language of Silence. West German Literature and the Holocaust (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), ™ Ruth Kluger, weiter leben -- Eine fagend\Gottingen: Wallstein, 1992), 34, Here quoted after Ruth Kranz-Lober, “In der Tiefe des Hohiwegs.” Die ‘Shoah in der Lyrik von Nelly Sachs (Worzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann,50 2001), 149, Subsequently cited in the text as Kranz-Lober, with page number. ” Cf. Lea Wemick Fridman, Words and Witness: Narrative and Aesthetic ‘Strategies in the Representation of the Holocaust (New York: State University, 2000), 132. * Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi, By words alone. The Holocaust in literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 83.5 Gisela Dischner, Hanover Flaschenpost and Warfholz: Reflections on Paul Celan’s Poems and Poetics While Gottfried Benn spoke of the monologic character of the poem, “the poem, addressed to nobody,” Celan insisted on the dialogical nature of “every true poem.” In any case, both refer very often to a you in their poems, which can be the lyrical ego, a beloved woman, or even the reader. In his concept of dialogue, Celan was influenced by the Russian poetical movement of acmeism, a literary group which brought together poets such as Ossip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova and Nikolaj Gumilev in 1912/1913. When he was composing his Bachner Prize acceptance speech, Der Meridian, Celan came across the acmeists’ polemics against traditional symbolists, and also read Mandelstam’s essay On the Nature of the Word Ey, a we ae Taf and Gumilev’s Letters on Russian Poetry (1923). [Phes| not only saw dialogue as being central to their idea of the poem, but as something that reflected their idea of a literary community. When Mandelstam says: “There are no lyrics without dialogue,” he is referring to the reader as well as to the text itself, Or, as Gumilev says, the poet always speaks to somebody (Citadel 1923, The Reader), while for Anna Akhmatova the reader is the invisible friend of the poet. The poet must remain at a great distance to the Over | (7) reader to remain free, of course, but he is there, looks ter him from this distance. There is no doubt that these statements influenced Celan's poetics, for instance his idea of the poem as a Flaschenpost (message in a bottle)! which could reach the “land” of the reader’s heart, “gespalt an Herzland,.”wllegy by whan be expla 52. Another of the group’s ideas which clearly resonated with Celan was one which can be encapsulated in Mandelstam’s statement: “Away with symbolism, long live the living rose.”* Having read Margarete Susman’s book Deutung biblischer Gestalten (Stuttgart 1960), Celan wrote to the author in early 1963, saying that in a time of “inflation of symbols” she had given him back the idea of the invisible and the unique communicating with ‘one another through the creative form.’ Celan refers to this as a sensitivity towards the thing itself to which the poet opens his soul, reflecting a familiarity with Heidegger's sentence “das Ding dingt” (the thing things) in which the separation of subject and object is abolished for a moment—“Die Dinge schlagen die Augen auf” (the things open their eyes), as Walter Benjamin says. Here the word returns to the dignity of name; itis not just a medium of communication. In contrast to this, words suffered a degradation in the propaganda of the Stalin and Hitler regimes. Recognizing often overlooked parallels between the two political systems, Celan, who was in his heart of hearts an anarchist in the old sense of the word of freedom from Aes rule, saw Stalin’s massacres reflected in the fascist movement, After all, most of the Russian poets he had translated, were murdered or committed suicide under Stalin, for according to the doctrine of socialist realism, the acmeists were “reactionary.” In this fight against “entartete Kunst” (dogenerate art) and simultaneous encouragement of kitsch propaganda-art, Stalinist Russia could not fail to be reminiscent of Nazi Germany. For Benn and Celan, however, both of whom would be considered “degenerate,” art was not something to be made info an instrument for or a ‘weapon against anything, Poetry set its readers free inasmuch as they wereaap lain? cael oe Magers, © a ne v O 53 open to such an experience, and it was this freedom that resisted all totalitarian tendencies, making the poetry so politically relevant. The poem entails, then, a process of initiation rather than analysis. Only an existential reading can lead to the point where the reader experiences freedom. The J is not connected to, but resides berween earth and heaven; itis like the iris, that connects both spheres for a short moment. The invoked reader, the poem’s “you,” feels his own being—Dasein—as an in-between, a moment of eternity in consciousness of his mortality: “Ewig, verunewigt bist du, / verewigt, unewig, du” (etemal, rendered non-eternal ‘you are, / eternalized, non-eternal, you. Celan, GW Il 122). In opposition to the illusion of eternity and the traditional language of sublime symbols and metaphors, Celan evokes the allegory of truth, not as adomment or in terms of moral “engagement,” but rather as a resonating noise: “Ein Drohnen: es ist / die Wahrheit selbst” (a rumbling: truth / itself. GW II 89).* This may cause the reader to experience the “shock of the Unintelligible,” a shock which, according to Adomo, makes all other debates about political commitment mere shadow-boxing, Celan always uses words that are very precisely related to their context and to the time in which the poet was living.’ The particular time in which he lived made it necessary for him to break with the conventional rales of poetry. In other words, the poem after Auschwitz is possible, but it catinot be a poem in the old manner; its breath is different. Breath—Atem— is an essential word for Celan, and the book title Atemwende (Breath Turn) refers to this change of breath necessary for new poetry. I have elsewhere called poetry of this disputed tradition within modemity “die Holderliniinie4 der Moderne” (the Holderlin-line of modemism”).‘ Rilke, Trakl, Nelly Wace, Pretvmully, : a ! Sachs, Benn and Celan belong, I claim, to his Holderlin-tine,Yistinguishing her tks origin ie German them from the other main tradition of moderiv poetry, Erenelt symbolism. I Der tom bert the former, the existential situation of the poet is responsible for Helderlin Lr breaking of traditional rules, whereas in the latter it is motivated by experimental impulse. As in Benn’s so-called monologue poems, when Celan says you in his poems, it refers at the same time to himself as his own lytical alter-ego, to a | ‘beloved woman who is remembered in a situation of love, and to the reader. Vtoos dows tlss _. Whereas est eee) ere Foy tees wih words, Celan’s poetry invokes another form of language. The Hélderlinlinte es of propaganda or commercial advertisement degrade ragting ! hee, 63 eomecph ek Uhrery Lisluey 7 forsgeing addresses the situation both of the pdet in his simultaneous freedom and responsibilty, and ofthe poem dvelling at the horizon of its particular time Celan refers to the aftermath of National Socialism, asserting his own responsibility as a poet, and pitting himself against the language abuse of the tert mpertt Lis poe 9 WEGGEBEIZT om qvekd by depen le: Strablenwind deiner Sprache 6 des bussion das bunte Gerede des An- of vse of lees ol ad | erlebten—das hundert- breath, zingige Mein- Bur ik reqvins — gedicht, as Genicht. (GW 1131) eae Una bo soy talk ih [ETCHED AWAY from docory base d35 the ray-shot wind of your language the garish talk of rubbed- off experience—the hundred- tongued pseudo- poem, the noem | (SP 239) The first word weggebeizt (etched away or corroded) is difficult to translate without losing its very specific connection to a geographical phenomenon. Ina copy of Sigmund Gunther's book Physikalische Geographie, Celan had underlined this very word in a passage describing pyramids in the Libyan desert which had become ruins because their softer stone structures had been gradually etched away by the wind, “vom Winde weggebeitzt.”” Celan imports the two words (Wind, weggebeiet) into his examination of language, which is connected, of course, with breath (for example, at the end of the poem where we find the often-used word Atembristall, which ‘means literally ‘breath crystal’). Celan, who was familiar with the different meanings of the Greek term pneuma (he uses this word in his poetological writings), also combines the ideas of wind and breath. The Strahlenwind (ray-shot wind) of language refers both to the geographical phenomenon in Giinther’s book as well as to the more physiological meaning of breath that is connected with spoken language (“deiner Sprache”). The word Strahlenwind has a synaesthetic element inasmuch as it fuses wind and light. But light and language are also combined in the cabbalistic theory of language: its most important part, the book of Zohar, is called das Buch der Strahlen (Book of the Rays). Interestingly, Nelly Sachs referred to Celan’sdoo co lag vied 56 anthology Sprachgitter (Language Lattice) as “Das Buch det Strahlen” and to Celan himself as “the new Holderlin of our time. Ana, if we pursue these interconnections further, we note that the Hebrew word ruach, similar in its chain of meanings to pneuma, means breath, wind, storm and soft breath (Hawch). Celan was naturally aware of these etymological links and refers indirectly to them, Ruach, however, is also the “speaking spirit of God” who appears in light and a column of fire. In the Old Testament, God appears in a buming bush and accompanies the people of Israel in the desert night as a column of fire, The reader is dared to connect the lines “Weggebeizt vom / Strahlenwind deiner Sprache” (etched away by the / ray-shot wind of your language) not only to the lyrical "I, but possibly also to the “speaking voice” in the column of fire. But this is not written out of religious reds 2 conviction, because Celan, unlike Nelly Sachs, was skeptical about any attempt to pin down the nature of God, as we see in his poem “Zarich, zum ne Storchen.” T assume the reference to the cabbalistic tradition is connected with the cabbalistic idea of language, where word and name are the same. But Celan could equally be referring to the idea of a deus abscondinus, who departs, leaving all creation to mankind. In translating his favorite poet Ossip Mandelstam, Celan writes: “Ossip Mandelstamm’s [Gedichten] ist [...] das Tetragrammaton eingeschrieben, der Name des Deus absconditus, der El...” (inscribed in Ossip Mandelstam’s [poems] is the tetragrammaton, which is the name of the Deus absconditus, the El... . Meridian 203), ‘There plnis ef bee nat casreveyy Were 2 Pe eabtaes eur Oy brogengt: OK, tae ct cehened be bein } 37 mysticist interpretative approach refuses to acknowledge one singular meaning, always engendering a new approach to the language of names, taking the word as a source and not simply as a communication tool, Never is any given interpretation the only or ultimate one. This takes us back to the importance of the reader who is seen as a new creator. Friedrich Schlegel’s idea of the “progressive universal poetry,” which remains in a constant state of becoming, without ever being perfect, is reminiscent of this gesture of Janguage where the breath of the reader intertwines with the words of the poem which he speaks. The poet here is never possessive, he is open and his poem thus becomes a message na bottle Das “bunte Gerede des An-erlebten” (the garish talk of rubbed-off experience) has no real existence, it is a decoration, without truth, lying, “hundert-/zingig” (hundred-/tongued) and possessive—“Mein- / Gedicht” (@ word which could be read with Michael Hamburger to mean pseudo- poem, but can also mean my poem). Fs nothing (das Genicht) and it shall be etched away, weggebelzt like the soft stone of the pyramids that fall into ruins, Der “Strahlenwind” (pnewma, ruach), however, is stronger, as is therefore also language; this “Strahlenwind deiner Sprache” transcends mere colourful, garish talk (Gerede) of something that has no real existence, but is simply “anerlebt.” Weggebeict in its hard (dental) articulation is a very appropriate word in Celan’s description of language because of the connection with wind as a force of nature that can erode even stone. Celan wrote many poems whi ae of which are found in Fadensonnen, These poems speak about the situation undergoing psychiatric treatment most 2 of being confined and distant from a nature which he loved. Only in the 18 oR epee _welre not bold Chak) ee secon ty iter | 38 landscape of language can he go out; otherwise the “living sky” has disappeared and with it the stars, His brain is in vibration and gets what he calls a second "Nesselnachricht” (nettle message). As no first is mentioned, ~The reader is let to imagine what the first message might have been, The old-fashioned word tuckern, a combination of zucken (twitching) und ticken/tackern (ticking), suggests a state of nervous vibration in the skull or brain (tckemder Schade, which receives a second Nesselnachrichr ? DIE ZWEITE Nesselnachricht an den tuckernden Schadel: ‘Weggesackt der lebendige Himmel. Unter der jaulenden Duse, mitten im ewigen Blinkspiel, beif dich als Wort in den wissenden, stemlosen Halm! 10 (GW II 149) [The second / nettle message / to the / trembling /skull: // Subsided / the living sky. Under / the yowling / jet, / amid the39 eternal / twinkle play, / bite yourself as a word into the knowing, / starless (grass) viateQtr) In the powerless painful situation described, the only strength is the word: you bite yourself ais Wort (which means you are the word) into the starless Halm (blade of grass). Starless—sternlos—links back to the living sky (der lebendige Himmel) earlier in the poem; but this sky is “weggesackt,” has sunk, subsided ‘The Halm can also be understood here as a blade of straw, Strohhalm, suggesting the last possible solution in a painful or dangerous situation, the idea of clutching at straws. Via its etymological connection, explored ina footnote above, to cones, the idea of Haim can be linked to that of Diise (Cone) and man as a thinking cone or tube, a hollow reed (both in the sense C¥ pund of the primitive pen and Psalm 89.11), blown in unexpected directions, powerless, His only power is the capability of thinking The second stanza-part at the beginning of the anthology Sprachgitter reminds one of the Nesselnachrich{ 12} “Stimmen vom Nesselweg her: / Komm auf den Handen zu uns, / Wer mit der Lampe allein ist, / hat nur die Hand, daraus zu lesen.” (GW I 147) (Voices coming from the nettle road: / Come to us on hands. / Whoever is alone with the lamp, / has only the hand from which to read.) ‘The last and often-quoted part of Sprachgitter is the poem Engfthrung (The Straightening). There we find yet again the image of grass blades, if not reeds, in combination with reading and looking—both in the imperative- form “go”: “Gras, auseinandergeschrieben. Die Steine, Wei8 / mit den\ l 2 60 Schatten der Halme: / Lies nicht mehr—schau! / Schau nicht mehr—geh!”” (Grass, written asunder. The stones, white / with the shadows of grass blades, GW I 197 / SP 141). The imperative-form: “Don’t read anymore— look! / Don’t look anymore—go!” is addressed both to the lyrical ‘I’ as well as to the reader. This strong gesture of the imperative is found again in the second Nesselnachricht: “bei dich als Wort in den wissenden / sternlosen Halm.” Here | find the most dominant gesture to be towards the lyrical ‘I’ itself. But the reader can participate in this imperative to do something, in the case of Engfiihrung to move, to go away. The poem is to be understood as a message in a bottle, a Flaschenpost which is perhaps washed ashore in the reader’s heart (the heart as the landing place) Das Gedicht kann, da es ja eine Erscheinungsform der Sprache und damit seinem Wesen nach dialogisch ist, eine Flaschenpost sein, aufgegeben in dem—gewiss nicht immer hoffiuungsstarken—Glauben, sie konnte irgendwo und irgendwann an Land gespalt werden; an Herzland vielleicht. Gedichte sind auch in dieser Weise unterwegs: Sie halten auf etwas 2, [Since it is a linguistic phenomenon and therefore essentially dialogical, the poem can be a message in a bottle, posted in the—certainly not always hopeful—faith it could be washed ashore somewhere, to heartland perhaps. In this sense poems too61 are underway: They are heading towards something, ]13 (GW IIL 186) In this poem, Die zweite Nesselnachricht, the “Flaschenpost” arrives in the form of a sound effect, Sound elements from Weggebeizt echo back at us again in “Weggesackt [...] bei® dich als Wort” in what I would call Klangsemantik (a semantics of sound). But there is also an analogy in terms of the content: In both poems itis the power of language (“Weggebeizt vom / Strahlenwind deiner Sprache”) and the word (“bei dich als Wort. ”) that resists the aforementioned trivial or degraded strains of language, thereby creating what we are reading: the poem. Part ofthe fascination ofthese poems isthe tension been the often dark content and the semantics of sound which awaken amagie Bower inthe reader's soul even if he does not “understand” the poem. The poem’s effect, derives from another dimension: The dimension of magic participation which the reader can only access if he opens his “Herzland” (the land of his hear) ‘When the word is identified with the name, as in the cabbalistic theory of language, it becomes its own reality. One example of this would be the word Nesselnachricht, a term which is not understandable at first glance. But on the basis of a semantics of sound, the two elements Nessel and Nachricht, both beginning with » and forming an alliteration, also echo each other rhythmically as each is made up of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed, a trochee. The neologism Nesselnachricht, by dint of this metric regularity, starts to sounds like Morse code, a code-word or a hidden62 message, pointing back to something prior to or outside the space of the poem: it is pointing back to the poetological space then, the space of its origin, as it were. ‘The content of the second nettle message says: “Weggesackt der lebendige Himmel.” (subsided the living sky). Before, then, there was a living sky, that has disappeared in a sudden movement: not upwards into the air, but downwards to earth like a heavy piece of material sinking down beneath the horizon. The poet leads the reader into a paradoxical situation, rn whi Nyse are he Vosges disbinck outside of normal logic, conflating the coordinates of down and up. toordarnrlis of down ond of paradoxical message reaches a brain that is probably in pain and vibration, The receiver is not in a passive state, but in one of excitement brought about by that unwritten previous nettle message which has caused { hhim to tremble. The second message is transported to that “tuckemnden / Schadel,” The reader could wonder, if paradoxically the message’s content has undergone a metamorphosis because of the place at which it arrives: the trembling skull? And who is the speaker of this second message? The lyrical °T? And, if so, who exactly is the lyrical ‘I’? The sender? The recipient? ‘Who speaks, in what time, and where? And who is the ‘you’ who is at the receiving end of the Nesselnachricht's imperative: “bei8 dich als Wort” (bite yourself as a word)? A sound-semantic biography of life in a closed hospital, enclosed not only in a room, but in his own tuckernden Schadel? The power of transforming an unbearable situation into lyrics as a means of survival? While researching my thesis on Nelly Sachs,'* I asked her about her influences. She answered in a letter of 12" July 1966 from Stockholm:| Die furchtbaren Ereignisse, die mich selbst an den Rand des Todes und der Verdunkelung gebracht haben, sind meine Lehrmeister gewesen. Hite ich nicht schreiben konnen, so hatte ich nicht uberlebt. Der Tod war mein Lehrmeister. Wie hatte ich ‘mich mit etwas anderem beschaftigen konnen, meine Metaphern sind meine Wunden. [The terrible events that have pushed me to the edge of death and darkness have been my teachers. If I had not been able to write, I would not have survived. Death was my teacher. How could I have done otherwise, my metaphors are my wounds.} 63 Taur naeds bo be heerelahd » Paul Celan met Adorno several times, read his books and cast him as the Oe gurt ef “roBeftua” (the big Jew) in his Gespréich im Gebirg with himself as the a ee aa “ling/Jud”, the litle Jew." But the incipient friendship was burdened by aay leat 4 Adormo’s well-known and much-discussed statement that after Auschwitz it Mighr help ‘would be barbaric to write a poem. Adomo elaborated fi Me vend ch hesaid Ve deter of dorno's Orrginsd Stiliman ond He Kiba stlbuew boo. Soe give bert Den Satz, nach Auschwitz noch Lyrik zu schreiben, sei barbarisch, mochte ich nicht mildem; negativ ist darin der Impuls ausgesprochen, der die engagierte gute Dichtung beseelt Aber wahr bleibt auch Enzensbergers Entgegnung, die Dichtung masse eben diesem Verdikt standhalten, so also sein, daf sie nicht durch ihre bloBe Existenz nach Auschwitz dem Zynismus sich aberantworte, Ihre eigene Situtation ist paradox, ther on that, whenGiveng doles of Dy Toa 5 oer gins stele oof subrequick eleaberaleos Wovll sk yot moe wre ann lo qv Colonts nicht erst, wie man sich zu ihr verhalt, Das Uberma8 an Leiden duldet kein Vergessen. [1 do not want to soften my statement that it is barbaric to continue to write poetry after Auschwitz; it expresses, negatively, the impulse that animates committed literature. But Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s rejoinder also remains true, namely that literature must resist precisely this verdict, that is, bee such that it does not surrender to cynicism merely by existing after Auschwitz. It is the situation of literature itself and not simply one’s relation to it that is paradoxical, The abundance of real suffering permits no forgetting, '* Paul Colan was disappointed ph original statement and wrote in anger wold bale dishwquel AL that Adomo’s sentence originated from the mistaken view that poetry merely peddled what he called. =a “Nachtigallen- Singdrosselperspektive,” (a nightingale or song thrush perspective), Howover, in a letier of 13 August 1969 to the author of this article, Celan "Mer cla hy ULen pope hive sea ably Nee te Pelee wlrak Peldg os 96 mae Dare seb Che raged Addoro's devel? wrote: Auch ich war betroffen, bestirzt, als ich in der Zeitung die ‘Nachricht vom Tode Adomos las. Ich empfand Schmerz, auch jetzt empfinde ich Schmerz. Es ist ein schwerer Verlust. Er war cin genialischer Mensch, ein Reichbeschenkter, und nicht der Teufel, hatte ihn beschenkt,Tess ie He seane 65 [1 t00 was upset, distressed, when I read in the paper the news of Adomo’s death, I felt pain, even now I feel pain. It is a grave loss, He was an ingenious man, richly gifted, and it was not the devil who had thus endowed him. }!” 1 see the poetry of the Hélderlin-Linie der Moderne as addressing the question of the place of poetry in times that reject the poetic impulse. When Holderlin’s lyrical ‘I’ asks “wozu Dichter in dirftiger Zeit”"® (what need for Poets in times of want) he is referring to the the period’s appreciation of harmless poems with “Nachtigallen- oder Singdrosselperspektive” for the leisure time of busy men, and its concomitant hostility towards real poetry. He who speaks in a new existential language, is seldom on the list of demavar ged 7 bestsellers, but is very often in the situation of being pathologized by —_ society. So poets and artists suffer most ftom normality’s pathological desire to annul anything it does not find immediately intelligible;’? they are isolated and live in a constant struggle for social survival (often consumed by alienating work).”” In the words of Margarete Susman’s letter of 3° July 1963 to Paul Colan: Vielleicht ... ma® jemand, der derart eine neue Sprache spricht, notwendig leiden und cinsam werden, weil er sehr schwer verstanden wird. ... [DJas bedeutet, daS die vollkommene Dichtung ein Element des Verstummens enthalt, von dem Sie in Ihrer Buichner-Rede sprechen.”" as Ne Gespedh te Carey re tk wor % U Maigh ew clrhying woh able firck mm bon of Gap ecls mn bebiry Up-62) 4 crqvied66 [Perhaps ... someone who speaks this new language necessarily ‘must suffer and become isolated, because he is so difficult to understand. ... This means that perfect poetry contains that element of muteness which you speak about in your Bachner speech.] The content of Celan’s poems remains more and more hidden in magic sound and evocation, moving nearer to silence. A poem, which tries to utter the horror of the Shoah, like the Todesfuge (Death Fugue), is no longer possible for Celan in his later work. But the poem that does attempt to speak out in this way is only the readable dimension of the text, the analyzable part that does not require the weary process of initiation. Celan’s own Holocaust poem, which can be found in every other German schoolbook, Dore 1h mabe made him famous, but it was not a fame he enjoyed. By contrast, his late Stam be clrerechui re poetry is not at all popular, and, although there are many interpretations, Glass pm da Wefone of popwlarthy 7 ofmoxaiy ‘most of them attempt to translate the content into the (annulling) language In terms of interpretations, Barbara Wiedemann manages to negotiate bee ceseful wi WL this tendency to normalize very well. The commentary in her wonderful uss --cyuberen . efron rene | Stltion of Celan’s collected poetry, written with great knowledge and UL We editvon v2 respect helps the reader to understand certain words and allusions, but Vedoble $las sey why eventually itis the reader who has to step alone into Celan’s landscape of language, a universe that often relates the human to the cosmic, and is full of paradoxes and isolated details which do not come together without thedad be eee ML Defer by Mehicle NO 4 iw Waet vol» G29 67 imagination of the reader, requiring him to leave the firm ground of normal logic and discourse. ‘Much has been written about Verstummen and Schwelgen (becoming and being silent). This constellation is significant in two different ways: One aspect is the unspeakable horror of the Shoah which moved Adomo to talk Sf about the impossibil At the other end ig a poem after Aus of the spectrum from the horror that renders speechless, is the ecstatic wordless experience of being merged with the universe—an experience called “god” by the mystics who influenced Celan (as well as Nelly Sachs): Meister Eckhart, Jakob Bohme, and the cabbalistic tradition. The words Nichts, Niemand, Leere (nothing, no-one, emptiness) are often found in Celan’s poems. These words, associated with both Eastern and Western mystical traditions, are taken up in one of Celan’s books entitled Die ‘Niemandsrose (No One's Rose, 1963). To quote from the poem of this collection entitled Psalm: ‘Niemand knetet uns wieder aus Erde und Lehm, njemand bespricht unseren Staub. Niemand, Gelobt seist du, Niemand. Dir ieb wollen wir blohn, Dir entgegen.68 Bin Nichts waren wir, sind wir, werden wir bleiben, bluhend: die Nichts-, die ‘Niemandsrose. (GW I 225) [No one molds us again out of earth and clay, / no one conjures ‘our dust ./ No one. // Praised be your name, no one. / for your sake / we shall flower. / Towards / you. // A nothing / we were, are, shall / remain, flowering: / the nothing-, the / no one’s rose.) (SP 179) ‘The Zohar begins with the interpretation of the rose (Song of Solomon 2,3). It is the ghetto-rose of Israel.” “Rabbi Chiskija begann mit den Schriftworten: ‘Wie die Rose zwischen den Doren’ ... Wer ist die ‘Rose’? Die Gemeinschaft Israels.” (Rabbi Chiska began with words from the Scriptures: “Like the rose amidst the thoms” ... Who is the “rose”? The community of Israel.) In the Psalms (Psalm 41.13, 72.18 etc.) the formula is introduced “Praised be the Lord God [, the God] of Israel.” But Celan throughout his poem which retells the first story of the Bible and the Zohar replaces this God of Israel with the God Niemand. ‘The reborn human being made of spitit rather than flesh (John 3.3-7) is not created by God in this poem, but by Niemand. Joachim Schulze refers69 to the poem “Mandorla” (GW I 244)" stating that Niemand is identical with God: Nach einem Seitenblick auf Mandorla laBt sich Niemand ... als Gottesbezeichnung verstehen, als Negation des unpersonlichen twas. Der Anfang der zweiten Strophe bestitigt die Zulssigkeit dieser Annahme, Denn die Wendung Gelobt seist du, Niemand Klingt an die Preisungsformel mancher Psalmen [A glance at “Mandorla” shows that no-one ... can be understood as the name of God, as a negation of the impersonal Some-thing. The beginning of the second stanza confirms this assumption. For the phrase “praised be thou, no-one” reminds us of the formula of praise used in certain psalms,} Twould contend, however, that the idea of Nlemand and Nichts, though used in Christian and Jewish mysticism, is not simply to be identifed with the name of God. There is another tradition at work in Celan’s words: the tradition of existentialism, specifically Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, The connection between Celan and Heidegger is well known, of course, and recorded in the poem Todmauberg (recalling a visit to Heidegger’s hut in the Black Forest). But the connection goes further: Heidegger, understanding his philosophy as the end of metaphysics, also refers to the mystic tradition when he speaks of Nichts (Jakob Bohme,pels oka f 10 Meister Eckhart etc.). His concept of “being” (Sein) and “beings” (das Seiende) is important in relation to the human being as the only Sefendes, Which participates in the Sein as transcendence: ‘Sein ist das transcendens schlechthin. Die Transzendenz des Daseins ist eine ausgezeichnete, sofern in ihr die Méglichkeit und Notwendigkeit der radikalsten individuation liegt.”* [Being is the transcendens pure and simple. The transcendence of the Being of Dasein is a distinctive one since in it lies the Possibility and necessity of the most radical individuation. Individuation is the task of the human as self-transcending being. From this point of view, it is quite possible to take nobody—Niemand—literally, ‘because it refutes the idea of a God who created men: There is nobody who formed human beings out of dust. The personal address to the subject ‘Niemand “Gelobt seist du, Niemand” (as opposed to God) could be seen as the post-religious thinking of free self-fashioning man as responsible for himself, ‘The cabbalistic and Bible references are, from this viewpoint/a religious tradition’ "hich ig = CSTR by hich and stored away—to recall two aspects of "*8"* "Hl © oF the word sed Auphedung CP Hs tye third aspect) *s EI preserved 1 the possitlty of tamsconding the visible world {he iavnble universe ofthe soul's and accessing 3 Crary oe tbins chock in docuwtas“Noe bed in posterity’ T n pose dear: dostroved nd “alvaged at once Mist —"Ein Nis arn wi, sin wit meni id: ie, eNews” (Guy J 295) Human beings—we—are a nothing. This nothing, like the whole book Die Niemandsrose, is transcending upwards from the earth to the sky and downwards from the sky to the eartioon ascent and descent. The landscape of language (Sprachlandschafi) stretches from the earthly stone to the star in the sky. Incidentally, Ossip Mandelstam, the poet beloved of Celan and to whom the Niemandsrose is dedicated, sees an analogy between the star and the poet. He speaks of a possible reader, who may be reached after the poet's death—perhaps. As with the Flaschenpost in Celan’s speech, the reader remains unknown, and so the poet weighs the possibility of a communication with this unknown party, Similarly, Mandelstam speaks of a “Leser in der Nachwelt” (reader post mortem) to whom he has a connection after the “Lichtgestime” (light stars) have vanished.* In Celan’s poetical landscape, water and air are the elements into which the instruments of poetical language are thrown out by the poet in order to reach somewhere, someone, in some future time, ‘The instrument in the air, the poet’s language (sometimes message) is seen as a “Wurfholz” (a Boomerang) that can return to whoever has thrown it: “EIN WURFHOLZ, auf Atemwegen, / so wanderts, das Fligel- / michtige, das / Wahre verbracht und verworfen, / sich selber der Reim,—/ so kommt es / geflogen, so kommis / wieder und heim.” (A boomerang, on breath-ways, / thus wandering, mighty / of wings, the / truthful ... brought and cast away, (its ‘own rhyme,—/ so it comes / flying, so it comes / back and home. GW 1258) repbrreee2 ‘The Wurfholz is like a poet's word that has been forgotten or not lunderstood for a thousand years and that suddenly comes back “einen Herzschlag, ein Tausendjahr lang,” and in the skipped heartbeat moment of its retum are gathered the thousand years of its absence. ‘The moment of return and the thousand years are one in the kairos, the eternal moment in which time stands still, because the poet’s word has finally (momentarily) reached somebody, describing this someone’s soul in describing his own, By joining together the thousand years (of its absence) and moment (of its return), the boomerang brings with it the whole idea of time. When the boomerang word returns, it hits the as yet unmarked soul which is then “beziffert” (be-numbered like a clock or marked) in that instant of “innehalten,” the pause between heartbeats. The time of somebody (the reader), who is reached by the word out of a past that could stretch to a thousand years, marks or numbers the recipient’s soul: another time begins after the poetic word comes back through time and space like a boomerang, a Wurfholz, It comes on the wings of breath, and is thus called “das Flagel- / ‘michtige, das / Wahre” (mighty / of wings, the / truthful). ‘The wings allow us to connect this flight to Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology which symbolized poetic genius. The poet, on wings of imagination, professes truth, “das Wahre”—as in the poem “Ein Drdhnen,” (GW II 89) mentioned above. The Wurfholz is another such flying object, but this time a tool or weapon used for hunting. Professing truth, “das ‘Wahre,” can be a shock for the reader (der “Schock des Unverstindlichen,” [shock of the unintelligible] as Adorno put it). Truth does not come “auf ‘TaubenfiiBen,” (on doves’ feet) but loudly, suddenly, unexpectedly,2B accompanied by Drdknen (a rumbling). The Wurfholz too is something that comes suddenly, literally out of thin air, but not with a rumbling, In the Poem “Aber” it is compared to the noise of the swan’s flight. die Schwane, / in Genf, ich sah’s nicht, flogen, es war, / als schwirrte, vom Nichts her, ein Wurfholz / ins Ziel einer Seele: soviel / Zeit / denk mir, als Auge, jetzt zu: / daB ichs / schwirren hor, naher—nicht / neben mir, nicht, / wo du nicht sein kannst. (GW 1182) [the swans, / in Geneva, I didn’t see it, were flying, it was, / as if, from the Nothing, a boomerang was whirring / into the target | of his soul: so much / time / think towards me now, as an eye: / ‘that I shall hear it whirr, closer—not / beside me, not, / where you cannot be.] Celan transforms the experience of a noise into a poetical sign just as the swan itself is—in the French language—connected with the poetical signe: eygne. The Wurfholz as swan sound contrasts with the idea of the “swansong”: The change from this to the airy whirring of the flying swans mirrors a change in poetry itself it is a good bye to the sublime metaphor of the swan as well as to its erotic tradition (Leda and the swan etc.). The Wurfholz is also to be understood as an aggressive tool—it is thrown to hit somebody and, in this case, push him out of the world of lies and hypocrisy. The cluster of perceptions of the flying swans making a loud4 noise with their wings is condensed into the metaphor of the Wurjholz: The boomerang also provides the lyrical ‘I’ with a ready image for swans not seen but heard—a sound that, like the Wurfholz, comes suddenly “out of nothing.” In this poem it is “das Flagel- / michtige, das / Wahre” that also comes from the Nothing—vom Nichts her. Celan, acquainted with the philosophy of Heidegger, was familiar with the Greek word aletheta (truth) which Heidegger had translated into German as “Unverborgenheit des Seins” (unconcealment of Being).*” Truth is nothing which you can grasp and identify like a fact; it is a Nothing that is essentially hidden and can suddenly appear and disappear like the rainbow between earth and sky. The truth in this old sense is the moment of transcending; it is the moment in which you realize that you yourself are—in the depths of your soul—a transcending being, wandering from earth to sky and back, wandering from past to future and back into the present. The reader is like a glider tethered to the ground. The Murfholz has the power to slice through the string and you fly upwards, and from this higher point of view (after the release), the pathological structure of reality is left below—“das Flugel- / michtige,” the poem, endowing the unleashed reader with the ability to recognize “das / Wahre.” ‘The other metaphor of the poem, Faschenpost, can again be found in Celan’s poem “Weissgerdusche,” dedicated to Hans Mayer. WEISSGERAUSCHE, gebiindelt,8 Strahlen- ings ‘aber den Tisch mit der Flaschenpost hin. (Sie hort sich zu, hort einem Meer 2u, trinkt es hinzu, entschleiert die wegschweren Mander.) Das Eine Geheimnis mischt sich fur immer ins Wort. (GW II 146) [WHITE NOISES, bundled, / ray- / ways / over the table / with the message in a bottle. //(Itis listening to itself, listening / to a sea, drinking it / over, un-veiled / the mouths heavy of way.)] Hans Mayer mentioned the Flaschenpost in a lecture on Hofmannsthal in October 1957 at which Celan met him for the first time. Mayer remembered later on that Celan himself had spoken about the origin of the Flaschenpost16 which, he said, had been one of Adomo’s favorite ways of conceptualizing literature: as an esoteric message in a bottle (Celan 762). In Celan’s poem the (esoteric) Flaschenpost is connected with “Strahlen- / gange / Ober den Tisch” (ray- / ways / over the table). In the singular form we find the same word in the poem “Aber” (But): @u fragst ja, ich. sags dir) Strahlengang, immer, die Spiegel, nachtweit, stehn segeneinander, ich bin, hingestoBen zu dir, eines ‘Sinnes mit diesem Vorbei, Aber: mein Herz sing durch die Pause, es winscht dir das Aug, bildnah und zeitstark, das mich verformt- die Schwane, in Gent... (GW 1182)7 [(Vou / ask, yes, I/ tell you.) // Ray way, always, the / mirrors, night wide, stand / against each other, I am, / pushed towards you, one / sense with this / over. // But: my heart / passed through the pause, it wishes you / the eye, image close and time strong, / that deforms me—: // the swans, in Geneva... ] So the word Sirahlengang links the ideas of the Wurhole and the Flaschenpost as it is used in conjunction with both, as a singular and in conjunction with the boomerang in “Aber,” and as a plural and in relation to the message in a bottle in “Weissgerdusche.” Barbara Wiedemann writes in her commentary ‘that Celan originally chose the word Strahlengang as the lille of the anthology he later called Lichtzwang (ight compulsion). In the volume’s notes he remarks: “Strahlengang / die durch die Linse hindurchtretenden Lichtbindel” (ray way / bundles of light moving through the lens. Celan 659). Following the text of “Weissgerausche,” the message in a bottle “hort sich zu, hort / einem Meer zu, trinkt es / hinzu” (is listening to itself, listening / to a sea, drinking it / over) In this listening and drinking in, the Flaschenpost removes the veil that covers the mouths: When this cover is cast aside, the secret trickles into the spoken word, merging with it forever, like the water in the belly of bottle at sea, leaking back into the ocean the sen water it has taken in, The retumed words are not the same anymore, their meaning is differen, is enriched with the content of the Flaschenpost ‘The eye in the poem “Aber” (But), “bildnah und zeitstark,” (close up to the image and time strong), is able to see (what has been overlooked), andSet nobe om poe 8 the ear is able to hear the message of the Wurfholz in “Weissgertiusche”: the idea of real seeing and listening is present in both poems, but this real perception is hidden in a context which the reader has first to enter. Having, entered, his eyes will open to the Sirahlengang of light and his ears to the secret of the Flaschenpost and the whirring of the Wurfholz. Only then shall he receive a book of poems, a Book of Rays, that provokes a new kind of reception in every initiated reader) Notes "Paul Celan, “Ansprache anlisslich der Entgegennahme des Literaturpreises der Freien Hansestadt Bremen,” in Gesammelte Werke in Jinf Banden, ed. Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert, vol. III (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 186, Subsequent references to this edition are cited in the text using the abbreviation GW, volume and page number. “Since itis a linguistic phenomenon and therefore essentially dialogical, the poem can be a bottle message, posted in the—certainly not always hopeful—faith it could be washed ashore somewhere, to heartland pethaps.” Translated by the editor! Al subsequent translations are by the editor, unless otherwise stated. > Cf Annette Werberger, “Das sublunarische Gedicht. Celans Dialog mit dem Akmeismus,” Celan Jahrbuch 8 (2001/2): 240. > Paul Celan, Margarete Susman, “Der Briefwechsel aus den Jahren 1963- 1965,” Celan Jahrbuch 8 (2001/2): 35.19 * Paul Celan, Selected Poems, trans. Michael Hamburger (London: Penguin, 1990), 271, Subsequently referred to in the text using the abbreviation SP and page numbers * “Das Godicht blaht mit all seinen Horizonten, ein kreatirliches Phinomen.” (The poem flourishes within all its horizons, a creature-like phenomenon.) Paul Celan, “Der Meridian,” in Lichtewang. Vorstufen— Textgenese—Endfassung, ed, H. Schmull, Markus Heilmann, and Christiane Wittkopf_ (Frankfurt am. Main; Suhrkamp;—2001),—215. Subsequently referred to in the text using the title Meridian and page number. ° Gisela Dischner, “.. bald sind wir aber Gesang”: Zur Holderlin-Linie der Moderne (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1996). Sigmund Gunther, Physikalische Geographic (Stuttgart: Goschen, 1891), * Cf. Gisela Dischner, “*.. die wildemde Uberzeugung, da8 dies anders zu sagen sei als so.” Postkabbalistische Poetik: Nelly Sachs und Paul ‘Celan,” Celan-Jahrbuch 8 (2001/02): 153-74. ° The most well-known sort of Nessel (nettel) is the Brennessel, the stinging nettle, burning and painful. It is in this sense that the word is used in the Bible (Hos. 9.6; Hiob 30.4), To plant Nesseln means to despise a person, while “sich in die Nesseln setzen” means to expose yourself to something that is painful and shaming. To become a Nesse! means to get strong and brave. Nesselausschlag is a painful skin disease. So Nesselnachricht is probably a message that is painful and burning. From the volume Fadensonnen 2. Cf. the “thinking tube” in the unpublished poem Kine Handstunde (A Hand Hour): Paul Celan, Die80 Gedichte, Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe in einem Band, ed. Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp, 2003), 465. Subsequently Cited in the text as Celan and page number “The term “Halm” in German means both tubular plant stem as well as grass blade, linking it not only to the “thinking tube” of another of Celan’s poems, but also to this poem’s “Dase” (literally a truncated cone) which is derived from the Czech word for the inside of a tube, and, pethaps more interestingly, the Old Slavic diisa meaning soul and breath. One cannot help but speculate that Celan knew all of this, Colan wrote this part of Sprachgitter in 1956-1957. In February 1958 Celan translated a poem by Sergej Esenin “Bei den gelben Nesseln” (Near the Yellow Netfik. Celan 667) * Bremer Rede. Cf. endnote 1 * Gisela Bezzel-Dischner, Poctik des modernen Gedichts: Zur Lyrik von Nelly Sachs (Bad Homburg, Gehlen, 1970) ** Cf. Marlies Janz, ““Judendeutsch’, Paul Celan’s ‘Gesprich im Gebirg’ im Kontoxt der Atemwende,” Celan-Jahrbuch 10 (2003/2005): 75-102. “Theodor W. Adomo: “Engagement,” in Noten zur Literatur IIL (Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp 1965), 125-26; translated in “Commitment,” in Notes ‘0 Literature, ed, Rolf Tiedemann, vol. It (New York: Columbia UP, 1992), 87-8. " Paul Celan, Gisela Dischner, Briefvechsel 1964-1970 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2010),81 "* Priodrich Holderlin, “Brot und Wein,” in Holderlin Werke und Brief, vol. I, ed. Friedrich Beiiner, Jochen Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp, 1969), 118. © Erich Fromm’s idea of the “Pathologie der Normalitat” (pathology of normality) sees normality as annulling everything which is not immediately comprehenfe ® Cf. “Schreiben und wie aberleben” and “Pathologie der Normalitat” in Gisela Dischner, Worterbuch des Mufigeangers (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2009), *" Paul Celan, Margarete Susman, “Der Briefwechsel aus den Jahren 1963- 1965," ed. L. Koelle, Celan Jahrbuch 8, 33-61 (2001/2): 44-45. In her autobiography she highlights the non-abstract, however in a unique way reality-metamorphosing quality of his poetry: Margarete Susman, Ich habe viele Leben gelebt: Erinnerungen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1964), 175. ” Cf. Psalm 116.13. ® On the simile of the “Rose von der Rose” see Der Sohar: Das Heilige Buch der Kabbala, ed, Emst Muller (Dusseldorf: E, Diederich, 1932), 21 % Joachim Schulze, Celan und die Mystiker: Motivtypologische und quellenkundliche Kommentare (Bonn: Bouvier, 1983), 22. * Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tabingen: Niemeyer, 1977), 38. © Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 1978), 85. 7” Cf. the poem “Ziirich, Zum Storchen,” (dedicated to Nelly Sachs) where he addresses Nelly Sachs, referring to her belief in God (GW 1214).82 * Ossip Mandelstam, Uber den Gespratchspartner: Gesammelte Essays 1913-1924, ed, Ralph Dutli (Zarich: Ammann, 1991), 248, ” In his interpretation of the poem, Marko Pajevié stresses the “concentration” that takes place in Celan’s Wurjholz and interprets it as a 6] form of “Selbstbehauptung” (self-assertion), This moet conveys ‘uth to the reader who embarks on the trajectory of the “Wurtholz, das Flagel-/ michtige.” (Marko Pajevié: “Die Konzentration, Zur Bewegung des dichterischen Sprechiens in der Poetik Paul Celans”, Weimarer Beitrage 47, 213-21 [2001, 2]: 215-16.) *° This idea of truth coming out of concealment is also found in the line “Schwirthdlzer fahren ins Licht, die Wahrheit / gibt Nachricht.” (GW II 67) (Whirring woods wayfaring to the light, truth sends a message). Te veh ovals wrote about truth in an early poem from 1790: “Enlighten me leohs « Lie with a ray / of truth, through and through.” Novalis, Werke, eatbieecy te Coury dion wilh We 5 Clot Sex Vege Simmel Darmstadt: WBG, 1999), 92 a} Ve pines - We Link bray of brut! covld be mnibe more tepltick, igebilcher und Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs, vol. 1, ed. H.-J. Mihi and R83 ‘Marton Marko, Montana Paradigms of Transformation and the Natural in Postwar Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann At the time of Ingeborg Bachmann’s premature passing at age 47 in a 1973 apartment fire in Rome, she was a leading figure of the postwar Central European literary scene.as a poet, essayist, critic, prose-writer, and radio playwright. In the voluminous critical discussion of Bachmann, focused largely on the self-reflection of language as a theme in her writing, there has as yet been little attention given fo the interrelationship in her work between language and nature. While aspects of the natural are significantly visible throughout her writing, nature imagery is particularly present as a motif in her lyrical work of the early 1950s, the period in which German- language authors sought to establish new avenues of socially conscious and critical writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, These efforts were most notably represented by the well-known association of Progressive postwar German-language authors, the Group 47, of which Bachmann became a prominent member. In her use of natural motifs during a period in which the prospect of returning to traditional paths of literature ‘would be regarded as particularly problematic, Bachmann’s commitment to literary innovation involves a renegotiation of Central European aesthetic ‘traditions, Her engagement with the natural directly confronts the immediate fascist past in Austria and Germany by interrogating authoritarian symbolic systems, clearly allegorized by National Socialism,84 By presenting traditional tropes of nature which become challenged and transformed, Bachmann sets both history and nature in motion to reclaim poetic language as a catalyst for cultural change in the postwar era. In re-positing the transformational value of literary engagement in the wake of catastrophe, Bachmann’s postwar poems present in their idealism an aestheticized model of nature by which human history can be critically confronted, and from which utopian bonds between world and self can be recognized and internalized. These connections are rooted in what amount to meeting points between nature and language, highlighted by the concentration of linguistic form afforded by the poetic genre, Such convergences are significant from the standpoint of the simultaneous de- and re-romanticization of the natural which Bachmann’s poetry performs; in this respect, her lyrical work ftom the early 1950s is to be regarded as groundbreaking, both in its challenge of paradigms and its transformational force. Bachmann herself claims that the phenomenon of personal transformation took on significance for her early in fife. In an interview in 1971 she tells of her reaction at age twelve to the marching of the Getman National Socialists into her hometown of Klagenfurt in the Southern Austrian province of Carinthia in 1938; Bachmann describes the brutality surrounding the event as so horrific that her memory begins with that day. ‘The experience of Hitler’s troops marching into her “quiet, peaceful Carinthia” shaped her consciousness from that point on as a critical one," Of note here is the fact that it has been debated whether Bachmann was actually a witness to the events in Klagenfurt on 12 March 1938, the date85 ‘on which the troops entered the city. If we accept suggestions that she may have been hospitalized on this day and not actually present at the scene she describes in the interview, this would in fact point even more strongly to the significance of the trauma surrounding these events in the construction of her critical consciousness.? The supposedly tranquil realms of provincial Austria would, of course, become among the most fertile breeding grounds for the propagation of fascism in all of Central Europe. Among key figures in Bachmann’s early life who illustrate the ubiquity of fascism in her everyday world we find her school teacher and mentor, Josef Friedrich Perkonig, who, while guiding Bachmann’s first literary efforts during the war, became a Nazi sympathizer.’ Later on, as a graduate student at the University of Vienna, Bachmann tumed her critical eye toward one of the notorious cases of philosophy, and problematic politics, of the recent past In her 1949 thesis, “Die kritische Aufnahme der Existentialphilosophie Martin Heideggers” (The Critical Reception of Martin Heidegger's Existential Philosophy), Bachmann refused to dissociate the philosopher from his Nazi affiliations. As Sara Lennox has described, though Bachmann was “powerfully drawn” to the existential questions Heidegger hhad posed, she found his answers “historically and politically inadequate.™ Bachmann soon turned to the philosophy of a fellow Austrian, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and to his treatment of ethics as related to problems of language. She became deeply involved with Wittgenstein’s writings, and retuned time and again in het work to the implications of the famous conclusion to his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “Woyon man nicht sprechen kann, dariber mu man schweigen” (That about which one cannot