Being and the Other: On Paul Celan Author(s): Emmanuel Lvinas and Stephen Melville Source: Chicago Review,

Vol. 29, No. 3, Anthology of Contemporary Literature in German (Winter, 1978), pp. 16-22 Published by: Chicago Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25303699 . Accessed: 02/06/2011 03:02
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Emmanuel

L?vinas

BEING AND THE OTHER: ON PAUL CELAN

Towards

the Other

"I see no difference," to Hans Bender, "between Paul Celan writes a handshake and a poem." the level of an Here then is the poem?perfected language?at as little articulated as the blink of an of an expression interjection, to one's neighbor! of life? eye or a sign given Sign of what? or of complicity for either of nothing complicity? good-will? Sign no reason: is its own to speak without Or a sign which speech. the subject signals that gift of sign to the point of mak signified: without communication, ing itself into a sign. An elementary awkward entry into revelation?mumbling infancy of discourse, the celebrated "die Sprache the celebrated of language," "speaking entry into the "dwelling place of Being." spricht": a beggar's It thus comes about that Paul Celan?whom Heidegger saw fit to praise one of his to nonetheless trips during us of the little understanding he has of a certain Germany1?tells as in Being and which founds the world signifies language which Celan compares forth of pre-Socratic the shining "physis." Rather,
language to a "lovely . . . incomparable road" in the mountains,

"to the left blooms the turk's-cap where lily, blooms wild, as nowhere the rhapontic, else, and to the right stands 16

blooms and di

the superb pink unthus superbus, for you and not for me?because, I tell you, the earth, not for you,

is not far off ... a language not I ask you, who is it meant for, is it meant, and not for me?a any I and without any Thou, noth language, yes indeed, without but It, do you understand, but She, but He, nothing ing nothing and that's all." Language of the neuter. It thus comes about that, for Paul Celan, the poem situates

at that level which and pre-logical is pre-syntactic itself precisely which is also prior to "unconceal (as is currently de rigeur)?but at the moment ment": of pure touch, of pure contact, of that grasp a way of giving even to the is, perhaps, ing, that pressing which that gives. A language of and for proximity?more ancient it probably that of the "truth of Being" bears and (which the first of languages?response supports), preceding question, to the neighbor?, its "for possible responsibility making through the other" the whole miracle of giving. it con to make The poem "continues for that 'other,' which set free, and, perhaps, siders to be attainable, capable of being . ."Around this proposition is from "The Meridian" unoccupied. built a text wherein Celan delivers what he perceives of his poetic so act. An elliptical and allusive itself ceaselessly text, interrupting as to let its other voice enter into these interruptions, as if two or were a strange more discourses with coherence superimposed to a counter is not that of dialogue, which but is rather accorded their immediate melodic point which?despite unity?constitutes But the vibrant the fabric of his poems. formulas of "The Meri dian" are nonethelsss extremely precise and call for interpretation. The poem goes toward the other. It hopes to rejoin it, free and The solitary work of the poet carving the precious unoccupied. a "vis-a-vis." stuff of words2 is an act of "ambushing" The poem hand than
"becomes counters, conversation?it a voice's paths to is a often thou futile capable conversation of perception"?Are . . . en

to be preferred Buber's categories then? Are they to be preferred to so much to the benefit of H?lderlin, Trakl, and inspired exegesis that descends in majesty from the Black Forest in order to Rilke, show poetry opening in Being, the world between heaven and Are they to be preferred earth, where man finds a dwelling place? to the aligning in the intersidereal of structures of space in Paris, of which, the poet precariousness Objectivity?the the good or bad luck to align himself, be rightly senses, having with the entirety of his being, to the very objectivity of longing, these structures? Poetics of the avant-garde where the poet has no Buber is without to them. personal destiny. question preferred The poetry of the poem will be the personal: "... the poem does of its dates, but? it speaks, to be sure, speak! It remains mindful 17

it speaks only in its own, its own, individual cause." The per to the other. But the breathless sonal: from me meditation of to cite Malebranche from a text on Kafka by Walter Celan? daring to Leo Schestow? and Pascal according imitates no Benjamin, one. Itmust be heard more closely. The poem which was speaking of me, speaks "in the cause of an other"; "a wholly other"; already it speaks with an other, "an is not far removed, which is very near"; "it makes 'other7 which at a considerable for that other"; "we are outside, dis already . . . shoots "Literature tance", already "in the light of utopia." ahead of us. La Po?sie, elle aussi, br?le nos ?tapes."

Transcendence

to nonplace, The movement thus described?going from place from here to u-topia?is That there is, in Celan's transcendence. an attempt cannot be to think transcendence essay on poetry, into conversion and futility of mortality doubted.3 "Poetry?this of this transcendence lies not in the the infinite.* The paradox starting in futility, but in the contradiction origin of its adventure of its very concept: a leap across the abyss open in Being?a leap to which the very identity of the leaper gives the lie. Must we not die to transcend?against nature, against the essence of Being, against in what duration??unless logic: Or to leap and yet not leap?and a terms: discover the Iwere able to disengage from self? In Celan's a person in setting himself succeeded free, as an? "place where "turned I." Unless the poem which goes to the other? estranged were terms (which to go and not go; in Celan's to face him"? at the edge of itself." Un remain ambiguous): "takes its position terms: Celan's to endure, holds back its acumen?in less the " . . . . poem, calls and fetches itself from its now without interruption in view of But a place where, back into its as-before." no-longer to the poet would not know how to keep, in passing this as-before, terms: the Poet "speaks of self. In Celan's the other, the sovereignty the angle of of his existence, the angle of inclination from under . . . Whoever all living creatures of his position inclination among desubstantiation it must writes remain in its company." Singular make oneself trace?it of the I!Make oneself is, perhaps, sign?or creative poses! "Let's not be bothered that.4 Enough of glorious, with to Bender, writes Celan, again poein and such nonsense," to the other, a of poems. A sign made about the production talking more a speaking without in handshake, important speech?much as the natural than in its message. The "attention its "inclination" prayer of the soul" of which Malebranche speaks through the pen without Attention?mode of consciousness of Walter Benjamin. 18

distraction?which

is to say: without to evade in its power a full light, not to make knowledge but shadowy depths; possible, sense of the insomnia to forbid escape: that is the original that is consciousness. of the responsibility, above all, to be Rightness

evident.

the speech of this poetic appear, and images: Things speak at last in the very movement that brings them ing. Things appear to the other; personified, but as figures of this movement. "Each is a form of the other for the poem, as itmakes thing, each person . . . that which is addressed for this other form and take(s) is addressing around the Iwho and naming it." In this gather(s) this giving, forms emerge and take on meaning? the offering, to the other, and not the for-other of the speaking of Man speaking in the land evokes a presence speaking of Being which blossoming the poem would The act of the poem scape to which respond. to its neighbor all evocation; but it is in poetic precedes speaking toward the other that, as if by magic, speaking outstretched things as things. The for-other precedes assemble their qualities the per The poem thus leaves to the real the alterity ception of evidence. erases. Poetry "allow(s) which pure imagination the most idiosyn in the conversa cratic quality of the other, it's time, to participate tion." Do not poetry and art begin?rather than in the cruelties of to the other precisely the for-other this for tragedy?in speaking this very giving of the sign, in love speaking other, in signalling that love, in lyricism? Song of songs! Does this departure toward the other person lead to some term to the move "outside"? The word the "utopia" designates ment which Celan accords the poem. A step "beyond human na ture . . .yet not devoid if humanity of human characteristics"?as were a species that admitted at the interior of its logical space? its extension?a total rupture; as if, in moving the other man, toward one transcended the human. And as if the Utopian were not the lot of some accursed wandering, but rather the clearing in which man . . .And human "... in light of u-topia shows himself: beings? ... And all living creatures? In this light."

3
This

In Light of Utopia
exceptional

is not an other landscape. "outside" the Beyond in art?and the opening of the Being of simply strange beyond poem takes a further step: the strange is the stranger. beings5?the is stranger or more alien than the other man, and it is in Nothing the light of utopia that one touches man outside of all rootedness and domestication. Homelessness becomes the humanity of man?and not his degradation in the forgottenness of Being and the triumph of technique. 19

In this adventure where the I dedicates itself to the poem so as in the non-place, to meet the other it is the return that is return based not on the response of the summoned surprising?a of the meridian?perfected relation, but on the circularity trajec of this movement without which is the "finality return?, tory without end" of the poetic movement. As if in going toward the in a soil and implanted myself other, Iwere reunited with myself that would, be native; as if the distancing of the I drew henceforth, me to myself, closer of the full weight of my discharged movement of which would be the possibility identity?a poetry owes nothing land which to rootedness, noth itself, and a native a native to "prior occupation": land that has no need to be a ing it spew forth its Native land or promised land? Does birthplace. inhabitants when goes off in they forget the course of one who search of the other. Native land on the meridian?which is to say: a here which a is also the everywhere, and expatriation wandering to the point of depaganisation. Is the earth habitable otherwise? I do not see Celan's references to Judaism as some picturesque or familial the Passion of Israel under lore. No doubt particular in Strette? Nazism theme of the twenty pages of "Strette" (the lamentation of lamentations) has in the eyes?and the guts?of the a grave significance, which but it is a significance for poet signifies the human as such, of which Judaism is an extreme possibility?to the point of impossibility?a the naivete of the break with of Being. the messenger the herald, shepherd, A bursting to offers no rest, but only, open of Being which stones against which strikes the stick of wander pass the night, in mineral in the bed of Being, Insomnia ing, echoing language. like the impossibility of curling up to shut one's eyes. Expulsion of him who bor the "worldliness of the world"; beyond nudity rows everything; to Nature "?for the Jew, you insensibility to him, that isn't know, what does he really have that truly belongs
his on loan, borrowed and never given back . . .". We are once

in the Mountains." again in "Conversation evoked earlier by the turk's Two Jews stand in the landscape . . . "But they, the cousins germain, and raphontic. cap they have covers any no eyes" or, more exactly, for them a veil immediately apparent they are two fold, now image, "For the Jew and Nature,
too, even today, even here . . . Poor turk's-cap, poor raphontic!

you do not stand and do not bloom, you .you poor wretches, in their are not present and July is not July." And those mountains of which of those mountains said, with Hegel majesty?what ". . . . and liberty: "That's how it is"? Celan writes: submission the earth folded up here, folded once and twice and a third time, there is water, and in the middle and opened up in the middle, 20

. .

and
comes

the water
from even

is green,
further

and
up,

the green
comes from

is white,
the glaciers.

and

the white
. .".

There must the silence and insignificance of a be?beyond and beyond fold in the terrain, called "mountain", the sound of must be, the sound?there stick striking stone and stone echoing it?there must be a true against "the language here" and beyond
word.

a world or a non that, for Celan?in a Mallarm??the is again the spiri world inconceivable for poem and inevit tual act par excellence: an act that is at once impossible an "absolute able because exist". Abso of "doesn't poem" which this poem then speak the meaning of Being, "dwell lute: would it, the dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde poetically" with of H?lderlin, wherein the Being of beings names itself? It speaks rather of the failure of all dimensionalty and moves toward utopia. it undertakes less than the unfolding of Being, "the im Infinitely . . ." "the absolute this path of the impossible possible path, it doesn't exist, it cannot exist." Is Celan speaking with poem?no, ideal"? Is he not suggest facility, of some "unrealisable gratuitous amodality and nonexistence, other than that of existence other ing than all those that are to be found between these two limits? Does as an "other itself as an unheard modality, he not suggest poetry It cannot be doubted than Being"??The wise absolute poem does not exist: "But each even the least pretentious, contains real poem, this inescapable A meridian?"like this incredible demand." question, language,
abstract, yet earthly . . .". An unavoidable questioning, interrupt

a search in search of the Other; ing the games of the beautiful, itself in poem toward the other: the song rises in the dedicating in the one-for-the-other, in the very of giving, significance or the is older than ontology which signification?a significance of Being, and which is assumed and de thinking by knowledge and libido. sire, philosophy ?translated from the French by Stephen Melville

21

NOTES

1. Each ness. 2. "Hand 3. To

of which

"altered

him

profoundly"

according

to incontestable

wit

work",

Celan

writes

Bender.

nor is given in perception in that which from poetry neither expect of Celan's the tradition of the is perhaps?independent path?in original than that of some of the Kantian of the schematism, rather problem discovery A characteristic mark of modern of the concrete and sensible. exaltation positivist an ascent to pure side of the mathematisation of fact through rationalism: along a descent of the intelligible the sch?matisation into the sensible. forms, through new significations. in the concrete, Schematised the formal concepts resonate with in time is certainly to limit the rights of reason, the categories To unfold but it is a physics at the very bottom structures: also to discover of the logico-mathematical the abstract idea of substance the principle becomes of mass-conservation, and that of community, the principle of the interaction In Hegal of beings. do not the figures in figuring of the dialectic draw with the history of themselves, particular vigor a way Is not Husserlian of ''schematising" the real in humanity? phenomenology the unsuspected horizons of sensible Just as formal logic is referred by subjectivity? so the worlds to the concreteness Husserl of subjectivity, and history, of perception in their pure objectivity, their abstraction and become threads" for betray "guiding the discovery of those horizons of sense wherein they take on their true significa tion. In reading the recent and remarkable de book on psychoanalysis by Alphonse nor Heidegger from whom neither Husserl have any sec Waelhens?a philosopher more rets?we itself does nothing had the impression that Freudianism than restore its con would still be logical in its images, the phenomenologically sensible?which a sort of yet more more its convergences and repetitions?to traries, sensible, and in psychoanalysis the opposition of masculine "impure" Notably, sensibility. a deeper feminine schematism. makes (A. de Waelhens: possible Psychose; Paris & Louvain). would thus be as Our traditional Nauwelaerts; sensibility as the principle An entire the Critique abstract of causality before of Pure Reason. in the "ether" of our most drama then lies coiled critical concepts. concepts between *Note the difference in "The Meridian." this phrase the French J.G. and this this body that tearing itself." translation and the English translation of

tear from me 4. Simone Weil writes somewhere: "Father, and leave of me only, eternally, soul to make things for yourself, in Veto: La Philosophie de Simone Weil; Vrin; Paris. Cited

Martin of the essent." of the being 5. "But art is disclosure Heidegger: New York. toMetaphysics troduction (trans. Ralph Mannheim); Doubleday;

In

22