To Sing Beyond Mankind: The Turn to the Nonhuman in Paul Celan’s Atemkristall Cycle
In May 1965 the poet Paul Celan sent a letter to his wife, the graphic artist Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, from a mental institution in the western suburbs of…
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To Sing Beyond Mankind: The Turn to the nonhuman in Paul Celan’s Atemkristall Cycle.
Introduction
In May 1965 the poet Paul Celan sent a letter to his wife, the graphic artist Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, from a mental institution in the western suburbs of Paris. In his letter, Celan referred to his recently published unique bibliophilic edition Atemkristall (Breathcrystal), in which a cycle of twenty-one of his poems was accompanied by eight striking etchings created by Celan-Lestrange: “I saw your etchings be born alongside my poems, even arising of these poems, and as you well know, Atemkristall, which, once again, paved ways to poetry for me, was born out of your etchings.”1 For Celan, this cycle signified the end of a long period in which he barely wrote poetry due to his mental condition. Through the 1950s Celan gained growing recognition for his poetry, a process which culminated in the prestigious Büchner Prize for German Literature granted to him in 1960. Nonetheless, his past as a Holocaust survivor who lost his parents, home, and community during the war continued to haunt him, as well as a false plagiarism accusation that did not fade away and relentlessly disturbed him. All these factors took a toll on him, and Celan’s challenging mental condition took a turn for the worse in the early 1960s, the last decade of his life.2 Following a major mental breakdown that led to his hospitalization and a lengthy period of clinical treatments, the collection of short cryptic poems of Atemkristall paved for Celan a renewed path for poetry through the act of writing itself; by recomposing his poetic world, he was able to return to it. Atemkristall was not only the title of the exceptional collectors’ edition, but
1 My translation. “J’ai vu naître vos gravures à côté de mes poèmes, naître de ces poèmes même, et vous savez bien que
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also a word emerging towards the end of the cycle’s last poem — “Weggebeizt” (Eroded).3 Therefore, the word Atemkristall takes on an added significance, as the title opening the cycle, as well as the word the readers meet at its end. The reading leads from it and to it. Given the limited scope of the edition, most readers encountered these poems only later, as part of the 1967 collection Atemwende (Breathturn). In the collection Atemwende, the cycle kept its primacy by being the opening cycle of the book, but the etchings are only to be found in the exclusive 1965 edition. Celan disclosed a unique relation to Atemkristall and the collection it was later published in, Atemwende. After the publication of the cycle, he chose to read poems from Atemkristall in many of his public readings. One especially memorable evening took place in July 1967 at the University of Freiburg, in which, among a crowd of a thousand listeners, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, with whom Celan planned to meet as part of his visit, attended.4 In a letter to his wife in March 1967, he described Atemwende, then in final stages of proofing, as the most ample and dense collection he had ever written. One month later, in a letter to his son Eric, he wrote that this book, in many ways, marks a turn that even readers could not avoid noticing.5 The importance ascribed to the cycle in Celan’s oeuvre is also due to the interest the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer found in it. Gadamer perceived the cycle as the culmination of Celan’s work and devoted to Atemkristall the extensive critical essay Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du (Who am I and who are You), in which Gadamer gives his general interpretation on the cycle while commenting on each
3 Weggebeizt is a word compounded by Celan by adding the prefix “weg” to the verb “beizen,” making it a challenging term to translate in a way that reflects the different meanings and associations it may entail. Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton chose “Etched away” as their translation, and John Felstiner decided on “Bitten Away.” Finding that in many cases Pierre Jorris’ translations resonate dimensions of the poems I wish to explore here, I will use his translations of the cycle in Breathturn into Timestead. Paul Celan, Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Pierre Joris (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2014), 18–19; Paul Celan, Selected Poems, trans. Michael Hamburger and Christopher Middleton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 84; Felstiner, Paul Celan - Poet, Survivor, Jew, 218. 4 Felstiner, Paul Celan - Poet, Survivor, Jew, 254. 5 Paul Celan, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, and Eric Celan, Correspondence. 1: Lettres, ed. Bertrand Badiou (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 2001), 502, 508.
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one of the poems. Celan’s other readers also recognized the importance of the cycle, such as Giuseppe Bevilacqua, who focused his research on the figure of the Atemkristall and claimed that the closing poem of the cycle, “Weggebeizt,” is an acme in a cycle of poems that has an eminent meaning in Celan’s creation. For this reason, according to Bevilacqua, there are many interpretations of this poem from various points of view.6 Reading the poems in Atemkristall, which had such importance for Celan both for his entire poetic endeavor and his personal life, it is intriguing to see that the cycle is packed with elements of nature, silent objects, and phenomena such as snow, trees, icebergs, sunrays, rivers, and volcanos. What seems to be bluntly absent in these poems is the human, whose presence is mostly only hinted. Celan's poetry is generally characterized by its abstractness and cryptic nature, but upon closer examination of his earlier works, it becomes apparent that human presence is portrayed in a different way in Atemkristall. In the collection Die Niemandrose, which contains Celan's last poems before Atemkristall, the presence of the human is significantly more pronounced. For example, the poem "Zürich, Zum Storchen" mentions a real inn in a familiar city and is dedicated to the poet Nelly Sachs. Even readers who are unaware of the actual encounter between the two can discern that the poem takes place in a human environment and centers around a conversation about human concepts such as religion. Die Niemandrose is replete with references to human cities, regions, and countries like Russia, Krakow, Prague, and the Pont Mirabeau in Paris, as well as rivers such as the Seine and the Rhine. In "Tübingen, Jänner," a poem named after a specific human place and time, Celan refers to the place where the poet Friedrich Hölderlin spent the last decades of his life. The poem mentions human figures like the "drowned carpenters" and imagines the coming of a man, stating "if a man was born, today, with / the lightbeard of / the patriarchs."
6 Giuseppe Bevilacqua, Auf der Suche nach dem Atemkristall: Celan-Studien, trans. Peter Goßens and Marianne Schneider (München: C. Hanser, 2004), 110.
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While this is an imagined scenario with religious connotations, the presence of the human figure is nonetheless apparent.7 The human presence is further evident in other poems that mention Jesus and Abraham, and other figures such as in the poem "Einem, der vor der Tür stand," which directly addresses a Rabbi Lew. The human is even mentioned directly in poems like "Die Hellen," which refers to "everyman's hands," and "Mandorela," which declares "human locks, you will not turn gray". The human presence in Die Niemandrose is thus evident in many ways that are absent in Atemkristall. Perhaps the clues to the forthcoming shift can be found in the human references scattered throughout Die Niemandrose, such as in the poem "Bei Wein und Verlorenheit," where the lines "our last ride over / the human hurdles" suggest a problematization of human existence.8 Nevertheless, it is clear that a noteworthy shift has taken place in terms of the human's place in Atemkristall. The question I will explore here concerns the meaning of this inexplicable turn away from the human that takes place in Atemkristall, and to the fact that a poet, whose standpoint is the human condition in light of modernity and the horrors of the Second World War, finds a cycle that deals with snow, ice, and trees to have such importance in his work. I will show how this turning away from the human has much to do with Celan’s general poetic project, and specifically with the turn he wished to make as a poet in the early 1960s. Celan’s diminishing mental state, connected with the intense treatments he had received, worsened his feeling of estrangement form the world. Even his poetic endeavor, which was delayed for a time, had to find a new way for its survival. The fact Celan perceives these poems as a return to writing and to life, also points on a
7 Translations: Paul Celan, Paul Celan: Selections, ed. Pierre Joris, First edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 75–93. 8 Translations: Paul Celan and Michael Hamburger, trans., Poems of Paul Celan: A Bilingual German/English Edition, Revised Edition, Bilingual edition (New York: Persea, 2002), 130–200.
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way to reestablish a connection between him and his world and such search for a new connection to the world is evident in the cycle. One of the poems in the cycle, “Fadensonnen” (Threadsuns) does make room for human beings by mentioning them directly, as it ends with the words: “es sind noch Lieder zu singen jenseits der Menschen“ (there are still songs to sing beyond mankind). The rest of the poem, however, typically to Atemkristall, deals with nonhuman figures, such as Fadensonnen, Ödnis and Lichtton: FADENSONNEN über der grauschwarzen Ödnis.
Ein baum- hoher Gedanke
greift sich den Lichtton: es sind noch Lieder zu singen jenseits der Menschen. THREADSUNS above the grayblack wastes.
A tree- high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are still songs to sing beyond mankind.9 The fact that the last word in a poem that turns away from the human is Menschen, hints to the way the poems of the cycle are taking, since it is contradictory to the statement that it is making: By stating the desire to sing beyond mankind, it brings the human presence into the poem by mentioning it and leading the poem towards it. This is, as I will show, what is at the center of Atemkristall, which makes a detour from the human in order to return to it. Atemkristall turns away from the human not for the sake of leaving the human behind, or denying humanity’s unique position in the world, with all its meanings and responsibilities, but in order to better understand
9 All of the cycle’s poems and translations are taken from this edition:: Celan, Breathturn into Timestead, 2–19.
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the human condition exactly by not denying the nonhuman parts of the world. It takes a step away of the human as part of poetry’s destiny to be what Celan calls “a school of true humanity.” Atemkristall is, however, usually interpreted as a cycle that constructs a metaphoric reality in order to speak about the nature of poetic language. The main example is the previously mentioned essay by Gadamer, who regards the cycle as a journey in search for the true poem, a pure poem that emerges like a snowflake, which is the Atemkristall in the last poem of the cycle.
10 Gadamer understands the word Atemkristall in relation to the sphere of breath and its role in the creation of language. It is intimately tied to the Atemwende, which Gadamer views as an occurrence of silence in the brief moment between inhalation and exhalation. In the recurrence of the breath, and the return of the air to the lungs, Gadamer finds a meaning of hope, as an act of renewal of life. He writes of the poems in the cycle:
The poems in this sequence are, in fact, as quiet and barely perceptible as the breath- turn. They offer witness to a last constriction of life and, simultaneously, represent anew
its recurring resolution, or better, not its resolution, but its elevation to a secure linguistic form [Sprachgestalthttps://doi.org/10.1515/arcadia-2022-9057.
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to the nonhuman can contribute to the existing interpretation, since the question of poetic language cannot be separated from any other poetic endeavor that takes place in the poems. Limiting the interpretation to the question of language, however, results in reducing the nonhuman objects, creatures, and phenomena that distinctly dominate the cycle to mere metaphors of language and by that overlooking their robust presence in these poems. Following Celan’s own notions of metaphors and images in poetry, any reading should be wary of staying only in a metaphorical perspective.13 Moreover, an interpretation that solely focuses on the question of language neglects the fact that the cycle was initially published with accompanying etchings. It is therefore not surprising that Gadamer's interpretation did not take the etchings into account. As I will demonstrate, the etchings also have a crucial role to play in the cycle's turn towards the nonhuman. I suggest a reading of Atemkristall that gives the nonhuman elements a central role. This perspective is also in light of what Celan himself comments in The Meridian, the title of the speech he gave on the occasion of receiving the Georg Büchner Prize in 1960 regarding the ability of the poem to turn towards the nonhuman. As of yet, some of these comments have not garnered significant attention as they were not the main focus of the speech. By interweaving them with the poems of Atemkristall, their importance too can be underscored. When Celan talks of Lenz’s Atemwende, a central poetic notion articulated for the first time in the speech, he describes it as “a stepping beyond what is human, a stepping into an uncanny realm turned toward the human--the realm where the monkey, the automatons and with them ... oh, art too, seem to be at home.”14 Later in the speech, he states that “The poem wants to head toward some other, it needs this other, it needs an opposite. It seeks it out, it bespeaks itself to it. Each thing, each human is, for the poem
13 In the drafts to “The Meridian” Celan writes that “the poem has, I believe, even there where it is most visual, an anti-metaphorical character” Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version - Drafts - Materials, Meridian, Crossing Aesthetics (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2011), 125. 14 Celan, 5.
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heading toward this other, a figure of this.”15 Celan’s mentioning of “each thing” should not be read as an accidental addition or emphasis. Zealously preparing for the speech, Celan invested a great amount of thought in the text that was a rare opportunity for him to articulate his poetic thought, and not a word made it to the final version by chance. Adding “each thing” before mentioning the human leaves room for an encounter with something that, whatever it is, has to be somehow different than another human-being. Drawing from the philosopher Walter Benjamin’s essay on the work of Franz Kafka, Celan speaks of the poem’s attentiveness, explaining that “the poem becomes — under what conditions! — the poem of someone who always still perceives, who is turned toward phenomena, questioning and addressing these; it becomes conversation — often a desperate conversation.” The ability of the poem to become this desperate conversation derives from the fact that the absolute attentiveness the poem is capable of does not only takes into account the human, but it is also “turned toward phenomena, questioning and addressing these.” Since this is the what the poems of Atemkristall are clearly turned toward, it is plausible that their goal is take part in this conversation. In the next chapters I will trace the role the nonhuman elements play in this turn and demonstrate how these objects, creatures, and phenomena take place in Celan’s poetic project and where do they stand in relation to its poetical, philosophical, and ethical dimensions. I will show how such an exploration can not only provide a new perspective to reading Celan’s poetry but also tell something of the place of the nonhuman in poetry in general. I will address these questions by tracing the poetic attempt made in the cycle Atemkristall and show not only how this turn towards the nonhuman should be acknowledged and understood as a meaningful part of Celan’s general
15 Celan, 9.
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project, but also how such a reading demonstrates the relevance of his poetry to the challenges of our time and the place poetry, literature and art have in addressing them.
Part I: Atemwende
Atemwende was a term that Celan first uttered in The Meridian speech as well as the title for the later collection that opens with the Atemkristall cycle. The linguistic connection between these terms is not coincidental, since Atemkristall includes the first poems that were written after the conception of the poetic idea of the Atemwende. Although reading Celan’s poetry while having in mind the poetic notions he expressed in The Meridian is quite common in scholarship on Celan, this kind of reading becomes even more crucial when it comes to the cycle Atemkristall, which was unmistakably written in light of the Atemwende and perhaps even as an immediate enactment of this notion. 16 The term Meridian — chosen as the title of the speech only after the award ceremony, when the text was first published — is only mentioned toward the end of the speech. It is meant to express the ways in which Celan attempted to walk during his speech: a detour one is able to take only by way of poetry. Completing such a detour, according to The Meridian, enables those who
16 Reading Celan with The Meridian in mind is an extremely common practice in Celan’s scholarship of the last decades. The speech, while being at times no less cryptic and hermetic than Celan’s poems, is nevertheless considered to be his most exhaustive account of how he thinks of his poetic endeavor, and of poetry per se. Starting with monumental readings of Celan such as those of the philosophers Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas and continuing with dozens of academical research, The Meridian became the most essential text for approaching Celan’s poetry. A few examples are those of David Brierey who wrote in 1984 a detailed interpretation in which he tried to trace every word of the speech, or Marlies Janz, who, in her important work on Celan’s poetics from 1999, referred to the speech as a search for a poetic theory after Auschwitz. Since the publication of Celan’s complete drafts to the speech, tht uncovered a profuse, rich, and complex world of thought and ideas that stood behind the speech, the attention to The Meridian only grew and new interpretations and readings opened. So, for example, by recovering vital information from the drafts, Amir Eshel’s study showed the central place ethical thought took place in how Celan thought of poetry. Up until today, many researchers turn to The Meridian as a kind of companion for reading Celan’s poetry, from articles who rely on quotes from the speech or its drafts, to extensive studies that take the challenge of rereading the speech, such as those of Galili Shahar and Chiara Caradonna in their recent books. David Brierley, “Der Meridian”: Ein Versuch zur Poetik und Dichtung Paul Celans (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Nancy: Lang, 1984); Marlies Janz, Vom Engagement absoluter Poesie: zur Lyrik u. Ästhetik Paul Celans (Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1976); Amir Eshel, “Paul Celan’s Other: History, Poetics, and Ethics,” New German Critique, no. 91 (2004): 57–77; Galili Shahar, The Stone and the Word: on Paul Celan’s Poetry ןבאה הלימהו: לע תריש לואפ ןאלצ (Jerusalem: Mosad Byaliḳ, 2019); Chiara Caradonna, Opak : Schatten Der Erkenntnis in Paul Celans “Meridian” Und Im Gedicht “Schwanengefahr” / Chiara Caradonna (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020).
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take it to return to themselves after a certain transformation — “a kind of homecoming,” as Celan puts it, following a radical distancing that involves a fundamental transformation.17 The turn back to the self only occurs after such a distancing takes place. Poetry is able to obtain a distance from the self since it is an artform. This feature is, according to Celan, a fundamental characteristic of art, but the turn back to oneself is where, so he suggests, art and poetry set apart. Art, claims Celan while drawing from Georg Büchner’s writings in which similar ideas appeared, involves a distancing and an alienation from oneself, and even from the human being as such, since it is “a stepping beyond what is human, a stepping into an uncanny realm turned toward the human.”18 Art thus encompasses artificial and mechanical elements and results in an uncanniness generated by the human wish to capture the beauty of the world, and in failing attempts to do so. Art freezes movement, which is a basic trait of all life, and turns living creatures into breathless objects in order to capture the observed and experienced world. It is also what causes humans to tame and dress up wild creatures, to construct automatons that imitate human thought, appearance and voice, and to force language into patterns of social norms, historical determinisms, and even, God forbid, conventions of rhyming. Celan, however, did not spend months of feverish preparations on writing The Meridian just to restate Büchner’s reproaches towards idealistic art, but rather, while unquestionably sharing Büchner’s criticisms, also used them in order to show the possibilities that hide in the routes of alienation art generates. According to Celan, the described distance from the human also opens the intimidating, uncanny, option of forgetting oneself and walking the route of estrangement. Poetry, being intertwined with art, walks with it along the same way, but what Celan offers in The Meridian, is the option that poetry can also take a further step, a special kind of turning to which
17 Celan, The Meridian, 11. 18 Celan, 5.
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he gives the name Atemwende, which is a radical moment in which the preceding reality is being challenged and a fundamental change transpires for those who walked this route. The Atemwende is an experience which occurs when alienation is at its most extreme. It can take place only after one manages to use the ability of alienation that art possesses to obtain a complete distance from the self. Since this path requires a journey to the limits of human consciousness and existence, it is intimately tied to both mortality and insanity. Celan’s examples in the speech for moments in which an Atemwende occurs relate to two works written by Büchner, Danton’s Death and Lenz, both of which were based on real historical characters and events. The first instance of the Atemwende presented in the speech is when the character based on the French revolutionary Lucile Desmoulins defies the officers of the new French regime by shouting a rebellious statement that will ultimately lead to her death. The second instance is when the character of the Sturm und Drang writer Jakob Reinhold Lenz, while setting off to his journey of escaping civilization by walking through the mountains, resents the fact that he cannot walk on his head, and by that, according to Celan, makes the sky above him into an abyss. Celan does not clarify what exactly makes these moments into occurrences of an Atemwende, but it stands out that they are both incidences of proximity to insanity and death. Both Lucile and Lenz let go of normal conventions of reason and leave behind their belonging to human society, from a rational and physical perspective. The distancing from the self is a necessary step since it allows a true encounter with otherness. That is what makes the poem take part in what Celan calls “the mystery of the encounter.”19 The identity of this encountered other, however, is not explicitly specified in the speech and is left open to any conceivable otherness. It is however indicated in comments Celan
19 Celan, 9.
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had made during the preparations to the speech that the ability to encounter the other is deeply connected to the ways in which he addressed the terrors of the Second World War. While mentioning otherhood, Celan had in mind the antisemitic tropes of Jews that were led to their extermination by the Nazis and used these tropes in order to think of the figures of the outcasted, deformed, and “ugly,” which are not only mistreated by society, but also neglected by poetry that mistakenly wishes to focus on what it counts as beautiful. Celan sees poetry as a way to meet the other that is not intuitively approachable. The Atemwende uses the ability to forget oneself in order to encounter an otherness that is not reachable in everyday life, since it allows the self, the “estranged I,” as Celan puts it, to meet itself as an Other. For that reason, as Amir Eshel showed in his research on the Other in Celan’s poetics, following the drafts to The Meridian, Celan’s poetic thought can be situated at the crossroads of ethics and aesthetics, and the experience of the poem was considered by Celan to be “a school of true humanity.”20 Many readings of Celan continue to draw on these ideas, which retain durability, and even the cycle Atemkristall is read from that angle, including for example, Stefanie Heine’s recent interpretation in her study of poetics of breathing. Heine refers to the Atemkristall and emphasizes that it is a surface that remains empty when the poet’s breath leaves the space and makes room for the new breath of the reader to enter into the poetic space. Heine finds this kind of openness to otherness not only in Atemkristall, but in the different uses Celan makes of the notion of breath in his poetry. Celan’s poetics of breath, according to Heine, makes room for the presence of a singular other.21 By building upon this research tradition, my aim is to broaden the ethical implications of otherness in Celan's poetry by delving into a less-explored avenue. I believe Celan not only opened
20 Eshel, “Paul Celan’s Other.” 21 Stefanie Heine, Poetics of Breathing: Modern Literature’s Syncope (Albany: SUNY Press, 2021), 241–78.
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this path in his comments on the nonhuman along the speech but also tried to take it later on, particularly in the cycle Atemkristall. Alongside earlier readings that explore the notion of the Other in Celan’s poetry as the other human being, or as a turn to a God that is no longer there, I wish to show that another reading is possible, by which this otherness is also a desire to use poetry as a way to establish a relation to the nonhuman elements of the world. This encounter with the nonhuman is, however, not a stepping out of the human into a new type of existence, but, since it is done by way of the Atemwende — a detour that enables coming back to the self after the experience of radical otherness — still counts as part of the “school for true humanity” that Celan identifies in poetry. It is another way of dealing with issues that are at the center of Celan’s poetic endeavor — the crises of modernity which had reached during his lifetime to new peaks of dreadfulness and cruelty. Tracing this notion also presents the ability to address the human condition in our time in novel manners. In his analysis of Celan's criticism of humanism, outlined in "Humanismuskritik," Felix Christen suggests that "The Meridian" is a work in which Celan presents his own perspective on humanism. This perspective involves viewing humanity through the lens of mortality, and following in the footsteps of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber, regarding humans as beings whose essence is defined by the inevitability of their impending death.22 These ideas are indeed at the heart of the Atemwende which is also a demand to carry the poem on a single voice of a mortal speaker. The turning of the breath expressed in the term Atemwende sketches a route that passes through the point in which breath halts, and so alongside being the breath of the voice of a singular being, is also a reminder of the permanent presence of mortality. Understanding the Atemwende also as a philosophical endeavor can shed light on the extent to
22 Felix Christen, “Celans Humanismuskritik,” ed. Bernd Auerochs, Friederike Felicitas Günther, and Markus May, Celan-Perspektiven, 2019, 97–106.
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which Celan thinks of his poetics and can explain the challenge he undertakes when writing Atemkristall. Tracing these philosophical aspects of Celan’s work is thus necessary in gaining access to this poetic attempt.
Part II: Resonance
The German sociologist and philosopher Hartmut Rosa explores similar questions as those which occupied Celan in the Atemkristall. Rosa dedicated a study to what he calls “a sociology of our relations to the world” in which he coins the term “Resonance” as a way to understand, evaluate, and affect the ways in which human beings relate to whatever they encounter in their life experience. The questions Rosa deals with in his book Resonance draw from similar traditions of thought as Celan, and, much like Celan’s poetics, they also attempt to provide new ways of thinking about and responding to the human condition in the modern age. Despite the fact that Rosa composed his theory decades after Celan’s death, and the obvious difference between a sociological theory and abstract poetics, both projects seem to respond to the same crisis, which, from many perspectives, has worsened since Celan’s years of writing. According to both Rosa and Celan, humans have become more and more alienated from their surroundings, society, and themselves. Rosa, a keen reader of the Frankfurt School, is part of an intellectual tradition that took upon itself to explore the undercurrents which enabled disasters such as the Holocaust. The war, from that perspective, is a culmination of a larger crisis of humanity. The thinkers of the Frankfurt School took it upon themselves to develop critical theories that decipher the processes that shape human individuals and societies and expose the dangers as well as the possibilities that the modern world entails. One of the main products of this line of thought was Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, which tied the change in the way human thought developed since the time of Enlightenment to the horrors of the twentieth
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century. Situating his project in relation to the philosophical enterprise of the Frankfurt School, among other intellectual movements, Rosa adds his perspectives, ideas and language to the exploration of human existence in light of modernity. Prior to his research of Resonance, Rosa dedicated much of his work to the concept of Acceleration. In it, he tracked the ways in which the growing pace of technological development since the nineteenth century changed how human beings experience time. One of the main implications of the processes of acceleration is the growing sense of alienation between people and the world. According to Rosa, not only technological processes had accelerated, but also social processes. Resonance has a significant role in these processes, since it is a driving force that the desire for it caused many of the changes in human lives, also functions as a response to the crises of acceleration and alienation. Resonance according to Rosa, refers to the way any subject relates to the world, and describes a kind of relation in which both sides of the relation are both affected from the other and responsive. A resonant relation according to Rosa, is what enables subjects to create new things in the world. Resonance is not, however, a way to avoid the difficulties of human existence or the crisis of modernity. It is a way to understand a certain aspect of the human experience that also has a part in the processes that led to the crises of acceleration, and understanding it incorporates the realization that alienation is not something that can be taken out of the human experience, but it does explore a way that Rosa believes to be missing in the writings of many of his predecessors, to live a better life. According to Rosa, resonant relations between a subject and the world are situated at the center of the human experience, and perhaps at the center of any experience of whatever object that exists in world. The subject engages in a reciprocal exchange with external elements, resulting in a transformation of the subject and a subsequent creation of a fresh reaction. This reaction is
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influenced by the relation between the two. It is not merely a social experience, but a physical one. In his book Resonance, Rosa dedicates dozens of sections to demonstrate how resonant relation is at the base of all human activities, from basic physical acts such as breathing, eating, and standing to more complex examples such as emotional, intellectual, and political relations. Naturally, there is a difference between humans’ relations with objects or animals and those with other human beings or institutions, but resonance theory attempts to show how resonant relations are a factor in each of the possible interactions between a subject and the world, when “world” can mean whatever one encounters in the course of his or her life. The term Resonance is based on the acoustic phenomenon that “describes a specific relationship between two vibratory bodies whereby the vibration of one body prompts the other to itself vibrate in turn,” each of them “at its own frequency.” The second vibration is a new occurrence in the world that was made possible through the relation to the first, and it is how a new sound emerges. For a resonant relation to be established, resonant spaces which allow vibrations to be carried away also must exist. In physics, for example, different materials and surfaces affect the way vibrations transfer and so not only the parties that communicate have part in the relation, but also the mediator that creates the conditions and shapes the relation. In psychotherapy the therapist and patient use not only the physical space of the clinic, but the conventions of treatment and the relationship they have established as resonant spaces. In fact, each social institution or community can be examined as a resonant space that enables responsive relations between its members, as does art, nature, religion and even technology. Speaking in terms that are not only acoustic, “the core idea here is that the two entities in relation, in a vibratory medium (or resonant space), mutually affect each other in such a way that they can be understood
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as responding to each other, at the same time each speaking with its own voice” and so each side of the relevant relation is both affected and responsive to the other side. 23
The ability to be receptive to the world Rosa calls “af←fect” which he marks with an arrow showing the inward movement of the impression made by the encounter, and the responsive reaction of the subject that emerges by the encounter is marked by an arrow pointed outwards in the word “e→motion”: “This relationship, as we have seen, may be understood from the standpoint of the subject as a vibrating wire formed by af←fect and e→motion, i.e. by the double movement of passively being affected by and actively relating to.” The emphasis in the word “e→motion” is on the motion that is created, which is an essential emphasis, since while emotion is definitely a prevailing resonance response, it is not the only one. Resonance is described by Rosa as a relation that is indeed open to emotion, but not strictly limited to it, since there are other kinds of resonant relations. Since for a resonant relation to be resonant means that both parties will be receptive and responsive, and react with their own voice, it is crucial that each side of the relation will be open enough to participate in the relation, but also closed enough to keep its independence and agency. Maintaining a measure of distance is thus an essential element of a resonant relation as well as a condition that enables it. Despite the fact that Resonance offers a possibility for a better life within a modern “accelerated” world, it does not present a utopian vision of a world comprised of only resonant relations. Not only that such a world cannot exist, but the desire for a reality that is constituted only on resonant relations is the cause for many social ills, such as fascist societies or cults. In those communities the subject loses its measure of closeness and its ability to respond in a unique manner. Alienation is thus not a phenomenon that can or should be eliminated but rather a precondition that enables resonance, and the two are in a constant dialogue.
23 Hartmut Rosa, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, trans. James Wagner, 1st edition (Medford, MA: Polity, 2019), 167.
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While a resonant relation is a responsive one, alienation is characterized by a mute relationship to the world. The feeling that there is no counter reaction on the other side and that the subject is separated from the world, lacking the ability to influence one’s reality, or be affected by it. The scientific point of view which has developed in modern times is a catalyst of mute relationships, since it objectifies everything that it observes. Mute relations are an immanent part of today’s reality, since processes such as research, medicine, and mass manufacturing require alienation in order to exist. This alienation is not only unavoidable, but also necessary for the ability to establish a resonant relation. According to Rosa, “We can establish a responsive relationship only to a counterpart that we cannot completely appropriate or adaptively transform, that ultimately remains foreign and inaccessible to us as a whole.”24 Since resonance always takes place between two independent and separate entities, the border and distance between them are acute. Without a separation there will be no Resonance which is always “constituted by its ‘other.’” Resonance and alienation are thus in constant dialectics, and, as Rosa illustrations, are in constant need of each other: A dialectic of resonance and alienation thus means that, on the one hand, resonance is only possible against the backdrop of a mute and unfamiliar Other, while, conversely, what is
yet mute can only be “affected” or adaptively transformed on the basis of a prior or deep- seated, dispositional faith in resonance that feeds one’s hopes and expectations of being
able to make some segment of world speak. In a way, much like Celan’s Atemwende in which his own alienation was the precondition of the text, Resonance, too, is only possible in a world that has alienated relations. It should not be understood as a new position that desires constancy, but rather as “a flash of hope for adaptive transformation and response in a silent world.” Not only that, but the idea of a new original voice emerging from the interaction as a response to the encounter with the world, seems to have great
24 Rosa, 185.
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affinities to the process of the Atemwende in which the return to oneself entails a change that transpired consequently of the experience of otherness. The philosopher Theodor Adorno’s ideas and thoughts are present throughout Resonance, as Adorno, according to Rosa, “clings to the notion of a mimetic, affectionate, warm relationship to the world and an undistorted experience in opposition to bourgeois coldness and the predominance of instrumental reason.”25 According to Rosa, Adorno is key to understanding the social processes that have led human society to step away from resonant relations and be replaced by mute ones. Adorno does not think of the world from one perspective, he shows how these processes not only influenced culture and philosophy but were also encouraged and supported by ways of thought that hiddenly see alienation as a target. Another reason for the centrality of Adorno’s thought in Rosa’s theory is his notion of alienation since he identifies it not as a byproduct of modernity and Enlightenment but as its concealed goal. Auschwitz, he described, was the culmination of this desired alienation that instrumentalized the relation to the other. As a poet whose work—many times reductively—is identified with what he, his family and community had undergone during WW2, Celan’s work is destined, time and again, to be contrasted with Adorno’s much quoted saying that “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch” (writing a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric). Celan, who indeed wrote his poetry following and in relation to the Holocaust, and whose poem “Todesfuge,” probably his most know work, is categorized, read, and learned as a poem that thematizes the Holocaust, is often branded as a poet who replies to Adorno’s statement.26 This engagement between poetry and philosophy is more than just an anecdote, since Celan and Adorno were not only familiar with each other’s work
25 Rosa, 27. 26 For a comprehensive study of “Todesfuge” and its reception, see Thomas Sparr, Todesfuge : Biographie Eines Gedichts / Thomas Sparr, 2. Auflage (München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2020).
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and took it into account while writing, but they also corresponded and had quite a few mutual acquaintances. In 1959, a planned first meeting between the two was cancelled by Celan due to his mental state. In a letter he sent to Adorno following the cancelation, Celan attached a short prose text he just wrote, inspired by the meeting that did not take place. The prose text, a short and cryptic story called “Gespräch im Gebirg” (Conversation in the Mountains), tells the story of two nameless Jews, who meet each other while strolling through the mountains, a landscape that seems to be out of space and time ,and start to chat in a kind of German that Celan, already in his letter to Adorno, described as German-Jewish language (Judendeutsch).27 “Gespräch im Gebirg,” written a few months prior to The Meridian, addresses similar issues to those of the speech, while more straightforwardly dealing with questions of antisemitism and Jewish fate and identity. Celan even mentions it in The Meridian, and claims that he walked a Jew in the story “like Lenz.” Considering that Lenz's walk in the mountains incorporated an Atemwende, as per Celan's interpretation, it appears that the meeting between the two anonymous Jews in the story can also be regarded as such. Hence, this encounter holds significance in Celan's poetic shift during that period. The elements of the breath in Atemwende can also be understood as a kind of response to Adorno’s thought about the place of culture in modernity. In fact, Adorno’s text known for the quoted sentence about poetry and Auschwitz, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” is actually a critique of the way in which spirit and matter became radically separated in modern times. It is also about how culture neglected its part in shaping reality and turned into a disconnected sphere detached from the material reality.
28 Celan’s insistence on poetry as the voice of a living creature being carried on one’s breath, can also be understood as a reply to Adrono that insists on art that
27 Rolf Tiedemann, ed., “Theodor W. Adorno und Paul Celan: Briefwechsel 1960-1968,” in Frankfurter Adorno Blätter, vol. VIII (München: Ed. text + kritik, 2003). 28 Theodor W. Adorno, Prismen: Kulturkritik u. Gesellschaft (München: Dt. Taschenbuch, 1963), 26.
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is immanently connected to matter. This also applies to his identification with Büchner’s critique of art that came as a response to German idealism to which it attributed similar reproaches. 29 These seem to be at the heart of Resonance, in which Rosa, like Adorno and Celan, seems to be troubled with this partition of mind and matter: It is worth noting that the concept of resonance as I have elaborated it up to this point sits at the critical intersections of modernity’s understanding of the world and the self, helping to bridge its harsh dualisms. It is a concept which connects those phenomena that naturalistic or rationalistic Enlightenment philosophy holds to be strictly separate: mind and body, reason and emotion, individual and society, nature and spirit. Resonance may be understood as a Romantic idea insofar as the basic ambition of Romanticism is to reconcile these same divisions and oppositions with each other – it stands in opposition to the reifying concepts of a rationalism oriented toward calculation, specification, domination, and control.30 Adorno’s thought seems to be extremely helpful to Rosa in analyzing the crisis. Yet it is Martin Buber who helps him articulate the response to the crisis. Buber’s ideas and linguistic terms seem to be mainly dominant in Rosa’s work on the notion of Resonance, especially Buber’s emphasis on his model of interactions in the book I and Thou, which centers on a desired relation to the world. This is evident when Rosa discusses the place of Resonance in the family sphere: In modernity, the love directed toward an intimate partner has become a personal passion, the focal point of what Martin Buber has called the relationship between I and Thou in a world otherwise dominated by impersonal relationships and the primary site for the manifestation of what touches, grips, and moves us – three resonant terms that, by no means coincidentally, have become the indispensable vocabulary for the commercialization of all kinds of love stories. It is evident that Buber identified what Rosa sees as spaces of resonance, social structures that allow the desire for resonance to find an expression. By formulating the relationship of I and Thou, Buber created a language that highlights resonant relations while outlining a vision of an inspired
29 Marc Kleine, who traces the relationship between Celan and Adorno, traces these influences and even shows how the concept of Absurd (which is mentined in The Meridian in relation to Lucile’s cry, which is one of the Atemwendes) is inspired from Adorno’s writing Marc Kleine, Korrespondenz und Widerspruch: Adorno und Celan, 1st edition (Würzburg: Königshausen u. Neumann, 2021), 65–89. 30 Rosa, Resonance, 170.
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kind of relation. I and Thou seems to give Rosa somewhat of the idea of the immanent longing for a relation with an Other, while also emphasizing the elements of individuality and responsiveness that are important to Rosa’s notions. The inclusion of a relation to the nonhuman as an eminent part of humans’ relation to the world could also be traced back to I and Thou:
Buber defines the human being, in accordance with the “dialogical principle” he elaborates, as a being created with respect to a You, and thus as a being that by nature is both capable and in need of resonance. It is only through encountering a responsive You – and for Buber this could well be an animal, plant, or thing – that the subject becomes itself and finds actual life. Buber further understands this to be a transformational encounter in which both I and You are changed; the I is by its nature always already both question and answer.31 Much like Rosa, Celan thoroughly read Buber, who was not only an esteemed thinker, but a figure which Celan identified with, mentioned in many contexts, and waited years to have a chance to meet. The expected meeting, however, did not go as planned and ended up with a disappointment for the poet. Thinking of home and community, Buber was connected to two spaces Celan held dear, the destroyed place of his birth that no longer existed, which is the Jewish communities of the eastern outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the land of Israel, an option for a new life for many members of Celan’s community, that he never joined. In a comment he makes to a friend, Celan even mentions Buber as a meaningful encounter in an imagined immigration to Israel, when wondering “how would it be to arrive in Jerusalem, go to Martin Buber, and say: 'Uncle Buber, here I am, now you've got me.’”32 In a speech on the occasion of receiving the Bremen Prize for Literature in 1958, Celan mentions Buber in relation to their shared homeland. Celan focuses not only on the place, but the role stories and books had in the lives of its inhabitants, and Buber’s role as a mediator of these texts. The fact Buber translated these stories
31 Rosa, 261. 32 Felstiner, Paul Celan - Poet, Survivor, Jew, 42.
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into German, the language Celan learned at home, mainly from his mother, and the one he wrote poetry in, is another source for the deep connection he feels towards Buber:
The region from which I come to you – with what detours! but then, is there such a thing as a detour? – will be unfamiliar to most of you. It is the home of many of the Hassidic stories which Martin Buber has retold in German. It was – if I may flesh out this topographical sketch with a few details which are coming back to me from a great distance – it was a landscape where both people and books lived. There, in this former province of the Habsburg monarchy, now dropped from history...33 Reading Celan’s comments in the drafts to The Meridian, it is apparent that Buber’s thought had significant influence in the creation of the poetic notion of the Atemwende. One aspect, as Maya Barzilai showed, is thinking of poetic language in relation to the rhythm of the human breath.34 In his drafts to The Meridian, Celan mentions key terms in Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig’s project of the Bible translation that treat the biblical texts as constructed from Atemeinheiten (breath-units). About this translation, Buber wrote that in order to verdeutschen (Germanize) the Bible, one must take into consideration the manner in which the text is read out loud, since the original Hebrew text is organized according to the rules of human breath. He wished to remain loyal to the way in which the script is transferred through the sound of a speaker, and to succeed in translating the parts in which the text is silent.35 Buber also mentions that his intention was to embody the natural rhythm of the script’s speech by editing some of the prose in “Colons,” that is, in units that are consistent with the rhythm of the speaker’s breaths.36 Rosenzweig tells of the challenge set by the German punctuation system, which takes over whatever enters the realms of the language; in order to maintain the character of the Hebrew script, they wrote in a new
33 Paul Celan, Collected Prose (Psychology Press, 2003), 33. 34 Maya Barzilai, “‘One Should Finally Learn How to Read This Breath’: Paul Celan and the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible,” Comparative Literature 71, no. 4 (December 1, 2019): 436–54, https://doi.org/10.1215/00104124-7709613. 35 Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung (Berlin: Schocken, 1936), 322–23. 36 Martin Buber, Darko Shel Mikra [ וכרד לש ארקמ) [ Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1964), 356.
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German punctuation system, a natural one based on the rhythm of breath.37 Rosenzweig’s emphasis seems no less important to Celan: an attention to the living element in language that accedes in importance and maybe even is opposed to its artistic decorations that Celan refers to in The Meridian when he talks of art as a “iambic, five-footed thing”38 and so defines it by the metric line used in traditional western poetry. The second aspect in which Celan seems to draw from Buber is, similarly to Rosa, his notions of a relation to the world. In one of the comments, Celan cites from I and Thou, while directly relating to the breath and to Lenz’s Atemwende: Buber, I and Thou, p. 137 "–until the great fright comes, and the •holding of one’s breath in the dark, and the readying silence": + • for only at times it was unpleasant for him.39 In a different comment, the relation to the “eternal You” can show Celan is also pondering Buber’s idea of relation to the nonhuman, the immortal, which, in Buber’s religious thought, is mainly God: Buber, I and Thou, p. 107: “... the eternal I of the mortal and the eternal You of the immortal ...”
-i- "cathexability," addressability \Ansprechbarkeit, address \Anspruch\ p. 108 (Buber on Buddha): the thou-saying to the origin40 Another comment contains only two words, the creature, accompanied with Buber’s name: ‘The creature’ (Buber)41
37 Franz Rosenzweig, Naharayim: Mivhar Ktavim [ םיירהנ: רחבמ םיבתכ[ , trans. Shemu'el Hugo Bergman (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960), 22. 38 Celan, Collected Prose, 37. 39 Celan, The Meridian, 129. 40 Celan, 193. 41 Celan, 210.
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The Kreatur (creature) is also mentioned in The Meridian in relation to the critique of art, which tries, in the writings of Büchner, to dress up the animal and control it, and so steps away from understanding of the human as part of the world of the creatures. Buber is also connected to the radical notion of otherness in Celan’s thought, as can be seen in Celan’s use of the intriguing notion of the totally other: But I do think—and this thought can hardly surprise you by now—I think that it had always been part of the poem’s hopes to speak on behalf of exactly this strange—no, I cannot use this word this way—exactly on another’s behalf—who knows, perhaps on behalf of a totally other.42 Two uses of this term that likely inspired Celan’s choice of words were that of Buber in I and Thou and the theologian Rudolf Otto, whose book The Idea of the Holy was purchased by Celan shortly before starting his work on The Meridian.43 Otto talks of the wholly other from a mainly religious perspective, and treats it as something involving the divine and demonical, the mysterious dimensions in our experience of existence that we sense but do not manage to understand or perceive.44 In I and Thou, Buber connects Otto’s use of the term “the wholly other” to God, and states that God is not only in the distant and different, but also in the close and similar.45 Buber as well uses this term to speak of the divine, but adds that the divine is something that is present in every relation to the world, which he divides to three kinds of possible relations: to nature, to other human beings, and to spiritual beings. According to Buber, every relation to the world contains something godly in it, and God is to be found in each of the three relations, since “in every sphere, in every relational act, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal You; in each we perceive a breath of it; in every You we address the eternal You, in
42 Celan, 8. 43 Felstiner, Paul Celan - Poet, Survivor, Jew, 165. 44 Rudolf Otto, The Idea Of The Holy, trans. John Harwey (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), 26, http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.22259. 45 Martin Buber, I and Thou: A New Translation with a Prologue and Notes by Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 127–29.
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every sphere according to its manner.”46 Without negating the role that God, — or, even more so, the absence of God — takes in Celan’s work, it does not seem to be what is situated at the center of Atemkristall. If God is present there, it is exactly in the manner that Buber talked about, which is being revealed through the relations to the world. Rosa relates to this aspect of Buber’s thought and says Buber defines God as “both origin and vanishing point of all desire for resonance, and thus an ineluctable promise of resonance and responsiveness.”47 For Rosa, who is not a religious thinker, Buber’s “eternal other” is found in each of the relations, since Resonance is in the center of human existence, and experiencing Resonance is fundamental for being human. Unlike Buber, however, Rosa sees religion as a resonant space, and so God is in service of resonance, not the other way around. What Rosa seems to have in mind though, is the different kinds of relation to the world Buber mentions. Unlike Buber, who indicates the existence of different types of relations to all of the objects in the world but focuses his work on the other human and the relationship between human beings, Resonance theory takes upon itself to explore all kinds of relation. In Resonance, Rosa also explores the types of relation that are less accessible and understandable, since they occur outside of language. That is why resonant theory – written, as I showed, with similar notions in mind as those of Celan’s poetics – can also be a prolific source for understanding the poetical attempt that occurs in Atemkristall: It addresses the crisis of modernity as a crisis of relation to the world, without ignoring the different, less approachable parts of that world. If Rosa is writing a “sociology of our relation to the world,” perhaps Celan had tried to write a “poetics or our relation to the world.” Juxtaposing the two, as I will show in the next part of the article, can thus be a prolific exploration
46 Buber, 149–50. 47 Rosa, Resonance, 261.
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of the poems in Atemkristall that not only opens the cycle for a new perspective, but also demonstrates why this kind of poetic endeavor is particularly relevant to today’s challenge.
Part III: Atemkristall
Already in the first poem of Atemkristall, one can sense an invitation to exit the realm of the human sphere, as its first words are: “Du darfst mich getrost mit Schnee bewirten” (You may confidently serve me snow), and thus the petic “I” shows a readiness or even willingness to be served with snow by the addressee: DU DARFST mich getrost mit Schnee bewirten: sooft ich Schulter an Schulter mit dem Maulbeerbaum schritt durch den Sommer, schrie sein jüngstes Blatt. YOU MAY confidently serve me snow: as often as shoulder to shoulder with the mulberry tree I strode through summer, its youngest leaf shrieked. The German verb bewirten kindles connotations of hospitality by – in addition to the translation of “serve” – also meaning “host” and “entertain,” as well as even “cater” and “dine.” The “I” of the poem is ready not only to be a guest of this world, but to consume its foreign materials and to be dined with the snow it will receive. In Resonance, Rosa shows how eating is an extremely significant way of relating to the world, since eating is a taking-in of the world with its shapes, colors, and textures, and it is an adaptive transformation of the world and the self that has grave cultural and psychological implications. The fact that the cycle opens with the wish to be served with snow might point to a desire to be immersed in a different part of the world by forming a
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high-level relation to it: feeling, tasting, dismantling, and digesting it and being nourished by its foreign materials. The emphasis on the establishment of a new relation here is twofold. The poetic “I” addresses a “You” and asks the addressee for a welcoming which includes being hosted and fed. This “I” however not only asks for the hospitality, but also reassures the addressee by stating that the conditions are ready for such an interaction with the modal verb du darfst (you may). The word getrost also creates a reassurance and intimacy in this foundation of a relation, since it is connected to the word Trost, which implies of comfort and consolation. The “I” thus not only asks the other to be open, but also states of its own openness, both crucial elements in the formation of a relation. The atmosphere of hospitality can also be found in the closing poem of the cycle, “Weggebeizt,” in which a path through the icebergs is leading to “den gastlichen Gletscherstuben und -tischen“ (the hospitable glacier-parlors and -tables): WEGGEBEIZT vom Strahlenwind deiner Sprache
das bunte Gerede des An- erlebten – das hundert- züngige Mein- gedicht, das Genicht.
Aus- gewirbelt,
frei
der Weg durch den menschen- gestaltigen Schnee,
den Büßerschnee, zu den gastlichen Gletscherstuben und -tischen. Tief in der Zeitenschrunde, beim Wabeneis wartet, ein Atemkristall, dein unumstößliches
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Zeugnis. ERODED by the beamwind of your speech
the gaudy chatter of the pseudo- experienced—the hundred- tongued perjury- poem, the noem.
Evorsion- ed,
free
the path through the men- shaped snow,
the penitent’s snow, to the hospitable glacier-parlors and -tables. Deep in the timecrevasse, in the honeycomb-ice waits, a breathcrystal, your unalterable testimony. These descriptions, and the fact that they are found in the opening and closing poems of the cycle, seem to imply that the “I” of the poems is a welcomed guest in this world of snow and icebergs. The poetic “I” also shows desire to follow this path towards and then into the iceberg and this path seems to be paved as the poem advances. In the first verse of “Weggebeizt,” before arriving at the hospitable glaciers, the poem talks of “das bunte Gerede des An- / erlebten – das hundert- / züngige Mein- / gedicht, das Genicht” (the gaudy chatter of the pseudo- / experienced–the hundred- /tongued perjury- /poem, the noem). This gaudy chatter describes a situation which precedes the
hospitality of the iceberg, a world in which poems are not to be trusted and people, being “pseudo- experienced,” only pretend to have an experience of the world. The human sphere with its
characterized by the chatter seems to lack kind of experience that the silent, monochromatic
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iceberg possesses. The human experience and human language do not suffice in order to get a true experience of the world and stepping out into a different reality seems to not only be an option this cycle encompasses, but a desire of both counterparts of the relation. In terms of resonance theory, subject and world are both responsive in this encounter. The subject shows a desire to engage with a different world, to immerse in it and take part in its reality. In the opening poem of the cycle, “Du Darfst,” the poetic “I” wishes to be served with snow, walks side by side with the mulberry tree, and by doing so situates itself as on an equal grounding to the tree as they both experience the world together. The poetic “I” also shares with the tree the same time and space, when they both experience summer together. At the end of the poem, the subject becomes attentive to the cry of the youngest leaf, and he is both open to hear the voice of another being and allows the world to be responsive. In the closing poem, “Weggebeizt,” a journey away from a human world of color and language that lacks truth leads to the Atemkristall, a true testimony that becomes accessible to those who made the long route into the iceberg. What starts with the wish to be served with snow ends with an entrance deep into the heart of the iceberg. From taking the snow into the body, the body ends surrounded with ice, and only after such a radical journey the Atemkristall is to be found. Despite the fact that there is almost no evidence of human presence throughout the cycle, the limitations of language and the tension between speech and silence are very much present. The absence of a talking human thus stands out, and with it the question of how and if to form a relation without language. The poem “Stehen,” which ends with the lack of language, mentions a special
kind of way to be situated in the world, and calls for a “Für-niemand-und-nichts-Stehn” (Standing- for-no-one-and-nothing), and so expresses a certain lonely standpoint that is perhaps required for
the poetic challenge that the cycle takes upon itself:
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
STEHEN, im Schatten des Wundenmals in der Luft. Für-niemand-und-nichts-Stehn. Unerkannt, für dich allein. Mit allem, was darin Raum hat, auch ohne Sprache. TO STAND, in the shadow of the stigma in the air. Standing-for-no-one-and-nothing. Unrecognized, for you alone. With all that has room in it, even without language. The significance of the act of standing in relation to the world is described in detail in Resonance, which demonstrates how a subject’s position has a very meaningful role in the experience of the world. Before any other factor, the body is the means of being in the world and the physical posture is always connected to the emotional, social and cognitive stance. Standing, according to Rosa, is the most basic way to be situated in the world and the touch of the feet on the ground creates a constant necessary relation between the standing subject to the world. Gravity, the phenomenon that makes this connection compulsory, is what situates the bodies in the world and gives a sense of direction.48 Contemplating such a basic act of how to stand in the way the poem does, is thus also a rethinking of how to be situated in the world and reestablishes the connection between
48 Rosa, 47–48.
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
subject and world. Standing differently is also living differently in relation to the world, and thus it is no wonder that the poem defines this standing in relation to all others, people as well as things. The final verse of the poem seems to put the special kind of standing that was described in the beginning in an intriguing perspective, since this lonely, seemingly selfish standing, turns out to also be a way to share a space with something else, since this standing takes place “Mit allem, was darin Raum hat, / auch ohne / Sprache” (with all that has room in it, even without Language). What seems to be a contradiction between standing “Für-niemand-und-nichts” on the previous verse and then standing “mit allem”, may be understood in relation to Celan’s comment in The Meridian about the poem being lonely, and that due to that loneliness it longs for an encounter with an Other.
49 It seems as though “Stehen” is a poem that situates itself in a resonant space, a space where subject and world can meet in a responsive manner, and that the space it is looking for has to possess specific characteristics in order to enable a relation with whatever has no language. Loneliness, along with forgetting of the outer world and the self, seems to have a main role in such positioning, and only after the poem distances itself it makes room also for what lacks language. Encountering the other without language is also an essential part of the material biography of this cycle, since, as mentioned before, in its first publication as a bibliophilic edition, the poems were published alongside eight of Celan-Lestrange’s etchings. Much like the poems of the cycle, and even more bluntly, the etchings lack any hint of human presence, and are constructed mainly from shapes and patterns. While the cycle’s poems describe objects such as icebergs, volcanos, snow, rivers, and trees, the shapes in the etchings only hint to such elements. Interestingly, “Stehen” is the only poem of the cycle that was situated between two etchings, and so its
49 Celan, The Meridian, 9.
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materiality actually was to be situated surrounded with objects that have no language. This is the etching that precedes the “Stehen:”
And this etching comes right after it:
The combination of the two etchings and the poem between them creates a powerful caesura in the reading of the cycle. By situating it in this manner, “Stehen” also becomes a kind of lesson on how one should look at the cycle’s artworks, and perhaps a demonstration of how to relate to the silent
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
and unapproachable elements of the world. “Stehen” suggests a standing that is clean of expectation and purpose, losing oneself, being “unerkannt” (unrecognized) and by that allowing something different to share the same space. The etchings are not only an object of observation, but also seem to follow the lesson of the poem and are themselves “unerkannt,” and so they, too, take place in giving room to otherness, and not just play the role of the other. In doing so, they are also a guide of how to read the cycle’s poems, since they share many of their characteristics of obscureness and abstractness. The poems, however, are not capable of escaping language altogether, and so the paintings realize an aspiration of the poems and are telling of that desire. In order to trace the effect that the etchings have in the cycle, there seems to be much to gain from the approach to abstract paintings Florian Klinger describes in his work on Gerhard Richter’s notions of art. According to Klinger, Richter understands art as a relation, a one-time reaction to the artwork that happens only at a specific encounter and relies not only on the form of the piece, but also on the responsiveness of the viewer.50 This relation-focused notion seems to be a proper way to understand the etchings and the kind of standing described in “Stehen,” since it implies that taking a position that forgets other obligations and any other authority of prior knowledge, conventions, or language, enables the relation between the viewer and the forms he observes to exist without distractions. The artwork, in that manner, escapes the objectifying point of view that makes the world, according to Rosa, mute, and manages to be part of a responsive relation in which it “speaks.” Such kind of speech is only possible when language is out of the picture. The cycle’s poems are facing an even harder challenge, since their journey away from language is destined to always be in language, since it is the material of which they are made. This might be a way to understand Celan’s comment in his letter to his wife in which he says that the
50 Florian Klinger, Theory of Form: Gerhard Richter and Art in the Pragmatist Age (University of Chicago Press, 2022), 12, 97–99.
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poems stemmed from the etchings, and furthermore to think of a kind of a resonant relation between them that allowed the poetry to take something from the interaction with abstract graphic art, and to use it to create something new in its own voice. The etchings and the poems are thus mutually influential and can complement each other in terms of interpretation and appreciation. While the poems can serve as a helpful guide for how to approach the etchings, the etchings can also provide guidance for how to understand the poems. As such, both the etchings and the poems should be viewed as interconnected and mutually reinforcing elements that contribute to a more comprehensive understanding and appreciation of the artistic work as a whole. One of the more renowned poems of the cycle is the captivating five-lined verse “In den Flüssen,” which sketches yet another image in which human presence is obscure: IN DEN FLÜSSEN nördlich der Zukunft werf ich das Netz aus, das du zögernd beschwerst mit von Steinen geschriebenen Schatten. IN THE RIVERS north of the future I cast the net, which you hesitantly weight with shadows stones wrote. The first line of the poem creates a reality with an irregular temporality that is somehow integrated with a spatial direction by stating that the rivers are “nördlich der Zukunft” (north of the future). The poem seems to make an attempt to challenge conventional perceptions of temporality. On the one hand there are the rivers that are somewhere in the future, and, as rivers do, they constantly move, while on the other hand there are stones that also take part in the work of writing. These stones are a contrast to the moving rivers since they are weighing down the net casted in the poem.
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
From a temporal perspective, these stones bring the past into the poem, since they are writing shadows which may be the dead that insist on taking part in this poetic event and insist on its entanglement with the past. The verbs of the poem, however, are all in present tense, and so the poem binds together the future and past and connects them to the current present of affairs. This present is constituted by way of relation to the world, since the “I” of the poem casts the net in the rivers, meaning that there is an action taking place with an anticipated outcome. The stones are also involved in such an action, since they are writing new beings into the world, and thus the poem manages to bring future and past to co-reside in its poetic present. The structure of the net allows it to be able to capture something, and by doing so to be receptive to the world it emerges in while not interfering with the movement of the river. It is however material in the necessary amount in order to feel the weight of the past. In The Meridian, Celan states that the poem always has only its own present, and that it brings together all of our dates into that present. Perhaps we can understand the temporality of “In den Flüssen” in light of these questions Celan raises in The Meridian: “But don't we all write ourselves from such dates? And toward what dates do we write ourselves?”51 Then, the stones who write shadows may be the dates we write ourselves from, and the rivers the dates the poem aims towards. Hölderlin’s hymns of the rivers come here to mind, since the rivers in his poetry know their destination already at the source, and in its movement the water always encompasses both its origin and its destination. Time and temporality are crucial elements in the experience of relating to the world, since the way in which past, present and future are perceived have great influence of the kind of relation to the world one is able to imagine. Temporality has a very important role in Resonance theory, especially in Rosa’s notion of Axes of Resonance. While the horizontal axes deal with the relation
51 Celan, The Meridian, 8.
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the subject has with other human subjects of present times, such as family, friends, and even social and political individuals and organizations that are active at the same time, the vertical axes are related to the movement of time and to concepts that deal with past and future such as history, religion, art, and nature. In order to maintain a resonant relation to the world, both axes must take part in one’s life, and the connection between them has to be maintained. While a mute relation to the world involves a disconnection from the past and using the present as a means to strive for a desired future, a resonant relation requires a different perception of history that loops together past, present, and future and makes past and future enter into a dialogue in the present.
52 With this idea in mind, Celan’s choice of the rivers and the net seems to offer a way to relate to history through the logic of the river, since the river is always in movement from the past to the future. When the “I” of the poem casts a net, it actually creates a present that has a place in this flow and feels it, while allowing the water to come from the past, encountering the present, and to keep flowing through the net towards the future. Unlike other poems of the cycle the poem, “Fadensonnen,” which was mentioned in the introduction to this paper, is not lacking the presence of the human, but actually declares its intention “zu singen jenseits der Menschen” (to sing beyond mankind): FADENSONNEN über der grauschwarzen Ödnis.
Ein baum- hoher Gedanke
greift sich den Lichtton: es sind noch Lieder zu singen jenseits der Menschen. THREADSUNS above the grayblack wastes.
A tree- high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are 52 Rosa, Resonance, 296–304.
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still songs to sing beyond mankind. If forming a relation to the nonhuman is one of the attempts of Atemkristall, then “Fadensonnen” is its leading example. The first word of the poem is “Threadsuns,” which by itself is a compilation of two different words, Sonnen (Suns) and Faden (thread).
53 The combination of these words brings to mind an image of sunrays, but describing the rays as threads grants them a kind of materiality. Being threads, they are not just seen, or sent from one point to the other, but they are also graspable and thus might enable an obtainable connection. Starting with its title, the poem’s moment of departure, it already offers a new way of relating to the world: Sunrays that are not a one-way projection that comes from above, but material objects that allow a connection. The poem does not speak of one sun, but of suns in plural form, and thus creates an image of a multiplicity, which, since it is not limited in quantity, might even point to an endless amount of Fadensonnen. If the Fadensonnen indeed offer a possibility of connection to a distinct object, perhaps the multiplicity suggests that each relation to the outer object is unique and grabbing one of the threads will always result in a different connection to the object they are coming from and leading to. In other words, as the sun takes part in a relation it becomes a unique appearance that only exists in the specific relation created with the observer. The materiality that the sun receives thanks to the threads is thus connected to its plurality of possible relations. Once the sun becomes, by the poem, a reachable object, it is possible to come in contact with it and form a relation, and so it also loses its unified essence and becomes divided as the number of relations it is engaged in. Gadamer’s interpretation to “Fadensonnen” is rather short in comparison to the ones he wrote on other poems in the cycle, and he does not seem to think of it as a poem with significant
53 It is unknown whether Celan knew of a device called “Fadensonnenzeiger” that is meant to show the exact time of noon. Barbara Wiedemann and Paul Celan, Die Gedichte. Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe, 2nd edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 723.
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importance. That is of course not surprising considering his understanding of the cycle as a metaphor for language in search after the pure poem, and from that perspective, “Fadensonnen” does not seem to have much to contribute. One thing Gadamer does find noteworthy in the poem is the fact that Sonnen is in plural form, and he also finds this fact to be a sign for a plurality of worlds: “It is striking that ‘thread suns’ is a plural form—a plural that suggests the anonymous expanse of infinite worlds.”54 By thinking of these threads as ways of relating to the world, other similar figures to the Fadensonnen in the cycle come to mind. The poem “Weggebeizt,” for example speaks of a Strahlenwind (beamwind) that erodes the way into the heart of the iceberg where the breathcrystal hides. It is also a ray that possesses a certain materiality since it is connected with air, and it affects the world by eroding what seems to be the way the poetic “I” follows in the poem. Another example can be found in the poem “Im Schlangenwagen,” which is clearly inspired by Euripides’ Medea, and describes how Medea escapes on a coach of snakes at the end of the play following her horrifying vengeance. The addressee of the poem is escaping up the “schwarzen Strahl Gedächtnis” (black ray memory): IM SCHLANGENWAGEN, an der weißen Zypresse vorbei, durch die Flut fuhren sie dich. Doch in dir, von Geburt, schäumte die andre Quelle, am schwarzen Strahl Gedächtnis klommst du zutag. IN THE SERPENTCOACH, past the white cypress, through the flood 54 Hamacher’s comparison of Celan with Heidegger plurality vs unity
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
they drove you. But in you, from birth, foamed the other spring, up the black ray memory you climbed to the day. Here too, the ray is tangible and enables a movement towards an outer world. The strong hints by which the poem implies to Medea, mainly the serpent coach which derives from the mythological story, turn her into the most evident human figure in the cycle, since her presence is distinguishable and can even be identified by name. Medea, however, is not exactly human, according to the myth she originated from a divine, magical, and dark origin, and her escape comes after a horrifying failure to take part in the human world. The poem clearly relates to her differentiation when stating: “Doch in dir, von Geburt, schäumte die andre Quelle” (But in you, from birth, foamed the other spring). The failed attempt of relation that lead to the image in “Im Schlangenwagen” might actually tell us something of the nature of the entire cycle, as well as of Celan’s turn towards the nonhuman following his difficult social and personal experiences. Medea’s attempt was a horrific one, but it does not end with her giving up on any relation to the world. When the poem ends with the climbing up the ray it seems asthough its addressee turned away from the human world towards a nonhuman one which might still have something to offer. The significance of this poem in the cycle is even more evident considering the fact that Celan actually contemplated using its title as the title for the entire cycle.
55 The escape journey on a mythological coach driven by magical wild creatures, up a dark path and out of an intolerable reality, seems to be telling of the journey Celan
55 Paul Celan, Atemwende: Vorstufen - Textgenese - Endfassung, ed. Heino Schmull and Christiane Wittkop (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), VIII.
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
tries to send his poetics to in this cycle: taking an irrational route into a completely different world as a response to a horrifying state of affairs. One of the main terms in Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance is a “resonance-wire” which describes the relation formed between subject and world. Rosa uses the word Draht (Wire) and
not Faden (Thread), but despite a slightly different materiality, as connectors that allow a subject- world relation, resonant-wires seem to bear a resemblance to the Fadensonnen. Rosa sees the
resonance-wire as a vibrating object between subject and world that enables both to be affected as well as to respond. When the wire vibrates it is not only an emotional or physical response, since the wire is “a mode of relation that remains open to emotional content” or any other content.56 Different relations not only imply that different subjects possess different perspectives, but also that one subject can relate to the world in many ways. This understanding might also be significant to the plurality of suns in the poem. If the sun is the world that manifests itself as something similar to “resonant-wires”, the endless number of Fadensonnen may not just be the endless subjects who might reach out to the world, but also the endless number of ways to approach it. It is important to relate to the fact that the sun is not a random object that represents the world in subject-world relation since it is not only an object humans relate to by observing it, feeling its heat, exploring it or even poeticizing about, but it is what, in many ways, gives life through a resonant relation. For humans, animals and plants, as any other organism, the sun is the preliminary encounter with the world that generated life. Since the image of the biblical creation is without a doubt very much present in “Fadensonnen,” in which the sun emerges above an empty dark world, understanding the sun as a creator of life seems to also be justified from a religious point of view, as well as from a scientific one. In Buber’s I and Thou the sun also plays a
56 Rosa, Resonance, 163–64.
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meaningful role when thinking of relating to the world. Buber, who believed in the ability to create what seems to be a kind of utopian encounter with the world, positions the sun as an object that signifies such a positive relation: How beautiful and legitimate the full I of Goethe sounds! It is the I of pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly with it; she reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her mystery. It believes in her and says to the rose: “So it is You”—and at once shares the same actuality with the rose. Hence, when it returns to itself, the spirit of actuality stays with it; the vision of the sun clings to the blessed eye that recalls its own likeness to the sun, and the friendship of the elements accompanies man into the calm of dying and rebirth.57 Buber describes the encounter with the sun, that appears as an object of beauty that reminds humans of their part in creation. It is an all-embracing encounter in which nothing is out of its right order or in the wrong measure. In Celan’s poetry, such utopian aspirations might have a place as a desperate hope, but this kind of unwavering brightness seems strange for a poetry which refuses denying darkness and sees it as its base. 58
Unlike the impression left by Buber’s text, the encounter with the sun, as any encounter with the world, has its dark sides, and the sun is no less violent and dangerous than it is beautiful and lively. Such an understanding of the encounter with the sung is to be found in the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin, a poet with whom Celan is in intensive dialogue. Hölderlin is not only a poet who inspired Celan, but also — perhaps more than any other poet — someone Celan identified with deeply, due to, among others, the story of Hölderlin’s mental illness and tragic fate, as shown by Helmut Böttiger who traced biographical and poetical affinities between both poets.59 In “In a
57 Buber, I and Thou, 116. 58 Not long before Celan learned that he was to deliver the speech for the Büchner Prize, he compiled lists for a work he intended to write titled "Die kongenital Dunkelheit des Gedicht” (The Innate Darkness of the Poem). The work was never completed, but the lists served the poet as material for his Meridian speech. Paul Celan, Der Meridian: Endfassung - Entwürfe - Materialien, ed. Bernhard Böschenstein and Heino Schmull (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), XI. 59 Böttiger also shows how Celan’s connection to Heidegger and his thought on poetry, is also connected to the latter’s meditations on Hölderlin’s poetry. Helmut Böttiger, Celans Zerrissenheit: Ein Jüdischer Dichter Und Der Deutsche Geist / Helmut Böttiger, 1st ed. (Köln: Galiani Berlin, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2020), 99–121.
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lovely blue,” Hölderlin mentions a relation to the sun without ignoring the deadly implications of an interaction with the world. In fact, the beauty of the sun in “In a lovely blue” is what seduces the humans into an encounter which also has dreadful implications: But to be covered in freckles, to be covered all over with them, that is a sort of suffering too. The beautiful sun is to blame for that: it brings everything out. The sun encourages the young men along their way with its beams as with roses. The sufferings Oedipus bore seem as if a poor man were crying that something was wrong. Son of Laius, poor stranger in Greece! Life is death, and death too is a life.60 It is noteworthy that Buber and Hölderlin both consider the observing eye to be a significant factor in their discussions about the relationship with the sun, but if Buber’s eye is blessed and “recalls its own likeness to the sun,” Hölderlin’s encounter with the sun becomes a reminder to Oedipus’s blind injured eyes. Considering the way Celan writes of Medea in the cycle, the Greek tragedy seems to be more reflective of the way Celan experience the connection to the world, conscious to the pain and tragedy that comes with it. The eye, a repeated motive in Celan’s poetry, is explained by Galili Shahar to be an opening to the world, a kind of doorway between man and world. It is, as Shahar shows, a type of seeing that involves blindness and darkness that is also deeply connected to the way Hölderlin states of blindness are present in Celan’s poetry.61 The eye, however, is not the only body part Hölderlin mentions regarding the sun, but also the skin on which the influence of the interaction with the sun leaves its marks. Hölderlin's text presents an exposure to the world that evokes a resonant relation; something shifts, leaving an indelible impression, yet this encounter is not without anguish. Considering the relation between subject and world to be what at stake here, then the mentioning of the implications of the sun on the skin is extremely significant, since it is the border and meeting point between human body and
60 Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems, trans. David Constantine, 2nd edition (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 1996), 103–4. 61 Shahar, The Stone and the Word: on Paul Celan’s Poetry 91–169 , ןבאה הלימהו: לע תריש לואפ ןאלצ .
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whatever surrounds it. In Resonance, the skin is considered to be a critical interface of resonance in bodily relationships with the world. Rosa claims that the skin is not only a boundary and dividing line through which humans sense the world around them, but a semi-permeable membrane that brings subject and world into relation with each other, making them mutually receptive and pervious to each other.62 The sun is thus a complex object that can meet the subject in different kinds of relations and should not be considered merely as a positive manifestation of the world. This should be taken in mind while reading the next line of the poem, “über der grauschwarzen Ödnis“ (above the grayblack wastes), since its emptiness and darkness could be easily situated as a contrast to the Fadensonnen, but such a binarism would be strange to Celan’s poetic world. Therefore, it is not simply a poem about the interplay of light and darkness, but rather a nuanced exploration of their intricate relationship, one that aligns with Rosa's view that resonance and alienation are in a perpetual state of dialectical tension. In fact, Rosa even states moments such as the one found in the opening image of “Fadensonnen” as involving feelings that derive from these dialectics: Resonance is the momentary appearance, the flash of a connection to a source of strong evaluations in a predominantly silent and often repulsive world. Hence moments of intense resonant experience (a sunset, captivating music, being in love, etc.) are always also filled with moments of intense longing. They contain the promise of a different way of relating to the world – we might even say that in a certain sense, they offer a promise of salvation. They convey a sense of being deeply connected with something. But they do not abolish the intervening moments of foreignness and inaccessibility.”
The way in which Celan constructs the following two lines of the poem is quite intriguing. He formulates the compound adjective "baum-hoher" (tree-high) and chooses to split it across two separate lines. This creates a parallel structure, where the first word of the adjective, "baum," can also be interpreted as a standalone noun connected to the indefinite article that precedes it: "ein
62 Rosa, Resonance, 48.
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Baum" (a tree, but also: one tree), which is then followed by another object, a "hoher Gedanke" (high thought). This form entices a few ways for reading these two short lines, since before encountering the poetic object of “a tree-high thought” the readers first encounter just “a tree.” Thus, two readings coexist thanks to the breaking of the lines, in the first a tree is compared to a high thought, and in the second appears a tree-high thought. Both readings, a tree compared to a high thought and a tree-high thought, are essential to the reading of the poem and complete each other. Emerging in a world in which only wastes so far existed, the tree can be seen as a continuation of the biblical story of creation that evidently takes place in the poem. Since Ein baum in German means “one tree” as well as “a tree,” the singularity of the tree is also emphasized, and it can be understood as a first growth following the interaction between the sun and the wilderness. The appearance of the tree in relation to the interaction that occurred between the empty land and the sunlight, might hint on the first image as a process that creates change and manages to generate something new in the world. In this case, there is a hinted process of photosynthesis that is taking place that uses the sun in order to create new matter and new life in the world. Splitting the adjective “baum-hoher” also exposes an affinity between “Fadensonnen” and Reiner Maria Rilke’s Die Sonette an Orpheus. In this renowned work, a "hoher Baum" is featured prominently in the opening scene, appearing in the very first verse: Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Übersteigung! O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr! Und alles schwieg. Doch selbst in der Verschweigung ging neuer Anfang, Wink und Wandlung vor. There arose a tree. Oh, pure transcension! Oh, Orpheus sings! Oh, tall tree in the ear! And all was still. But even in this suspension new beginnings, signs, and changes were.63 63 Rainer Maria; Macintyre C. F. Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus (University of California Press, 1960), 1–2.
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
The emergence of the tree in Rilke’s sonnet is connected to the starting point of one of the greatest works of poetry in world literature. It is also what brings with it a new beginning and transformation. But what is being created in “Fadensonnen” is not only a tree, but also a thought, and the high tree becomes a way to describe this kind of thought. Situating the tree as an adjective point to the process of thinking that Celan wishes to guide to, and implies it is not an ordinary thought but a “high” one, a thought of a different order. The association with such a momentous occasion in Rilke's poetry suggests the potential poetic significance of such a notion. By employing the adjective “baum-hoher” to describe the “Gedanke,” Celan may offer a description of how poetry thinks. This mode of thought, as indicated by the verb "greift" (grasps) that appears in the following line, arises from actively engaging with the world by seizing upon Fadensonnen in order to create something novel. Since it specifies a certain height, the compounded adjective “baum-hoher” is also a form of measurement of the emerging poetic thought. The only information that the poem discloses about this thought is that it is as tall as a tree. In his renowned essay on Hölderlin’s poetry, the philosopher Martin Heidegger refers to poetry as the way of man to take measure, since poetry brings heaven and earth to one another. Writing poetry, says Heidegger, is measure-taking, since “by which man first receives the measure for the breadth of his being.” Poetry thus has a significant role in the way humans are able to understand their presence in the world since “only this measure gauges the very nature of man. For man dwells by spanning the ‘on the earth’ and the ‘beneath the sky.’ This ‘on’ and ‘beneath’ belong together. Their interplay is the span that man traverses at every moment insofar as he is as an earthly being.”64
64 Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought., trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 221.
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Heidegger believes humans measure themselves by looking at the divine, the space between the earth and the heaven allows human beings to give measure to their existence. What differentiates the humans from the gods is the fact of their mortality. Observing the sky reveals a God which is kept hidden, but the poet’s task is to bring this measure into language, to call upon the divine measure to appear, while rendering it apparent in its hidden state, as that is how it discloses itself. Celan appears to share Heidegger's concept of poetry as a way for humans to gauge their existence, but what he offers seems different than Heidegger’s idea of how poetry allows humans to take this measure. Celan’s poetic thought in “Fadensonnen” is also in the space between earth and heaven, but its measure is that of one single tree. It is attentive to the heavenly, and it takes of it what it needs in order to grow, yet it is still just one appearance of an organic object that, being taller than man, has closer proximity to the heavenly, but is still limited in scope, and thus allows for a humble, checked, one-time rising towards the divine. Choosing the tree as a metric might be Celan’s way of defining how a poem should take the measure of the human: through a singular resonant relation to the world. But what does this poetic tree-high thought take from the Fadensonnen? What does it wish to obtain from its relation to the world? The answer, so it seems, has something to do with the poem’s voice, since it takes from the sun the “Lichtton” (Light-tone), which then leads to the assertion that “es sind noch Lieder zu singen jenseits der Menschen” (there are still songs to sing beyond mankind). The process described in the poem seems to be that of a resonant relation that the poem is engaging with the world: It observes the Fadensonnen, and takes something from this interaction, but this process immediately develops into a change that takes place in the subject. In the case of “Fadensonnen,” the poetic “I” came to a new thought, of its own, as the colon before
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
the last sentence of the poem hints, and it wishes not only to articulate it, but to sing it, which brings to mind the acoustical dimensions of resonance from which the term emerged. As mentioned, the notion of Resonance is based on the relation between two vibrating objects which produces an original new sound, but sound and music have a special place in many other resonance relations, specifically with the ability to form a relation with the nonhuman. Rosa claims that things that have no language to speak to us, but they do sing: “Even and perhaps especially in relation to the world of things, there exists reified, mute, or – in the sense elaborated here – alienated relationships that can make this world ‘hush’ and stand still, but also resonant relationships in which it begins to ‘sing.’” It is worth noting that Rosa's guide in uncovering the singing quality of mute objects is actually Rilke, whose words "Die Dinge singen hör ich so gern" (I like to hear the singing of things) are, alongside other of his poems, a source of inspiration for this quest.
65 When Celan ends the poem with the fact that there are songs to be sang beyond mankind, it seems as though he also searches for a way to form a relation that is not based on language, songs to be sang means that music and voice should be taken in mind, and not, for example, essays to be written and even not poems to be written. The last line of "Fadensonnen," born out of the poem's earlier interaction with the world, embodies the essence of poetry's effort to enliven the nonhuman by inciting its music through language. As mentioned in the introduction, this statement that seems to wish to part the human, is actually the place in which the human is most present in the cycle, since it is directly mentioned and stands alone as the goal of the poem when the word “Menschen” (humans) gets its own line. Poetry attempt to be able to sing the nonhuman, is thus also its quest to try and reach the human. Conclusion
65 Rosa, Resonance, 229.
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
In Gadamer’s interpretation to the cycle, he looks at the figure of the Atemkristall as a snowflake, and thus focuses on its delicateness and briefness. It is read as a pure word that the cycle, having only poetic language in mind, eventually finds. Rereading the cycle also brings to mind other qualities crystals possess that should also be taken into consideration when approaching the cycle. In her studies on crystals, Marisa Galvez shows how crystals are – since premodern times and up until today – objects that manifest a linkage between the human and the nonhuman, as well as a way to be at home in the world.66 Due to the fact crystals were perceived as being created by “a changing mixture of elements or as an interaction of bodies”, crystals, according to Galvez and the other researchers she draws from, were also considered to possess transformational — even healing — powers and “reinforced porosity between human and nonhuman, forming local ecologies of multiple existences.” Crystals, as Galvez demonstrates, also have the power to change the way humans see themselves as central to the environment and expose the commonalities between all creatures and objects who are part of the world, by charging the nonhuman with agency. Not only that crystals make connections to the nonhuman, but they also offer a different temporality since the lengthy way in which they are created makes then into a testimony of past times. Thanks to their durability, they expand the temporal and geographical scale of the common human perception. The fact that Celan’s Atemkristall at the end of the cycle hides “tief in der Zeitenschrunde“ (deep in the timecarvesse) and that it is described as an “unumstößliches Zeugnis” (unalterable testimony) seems to have in mind similar conceptions such as those Galvez describes when she writes that “through its various forms as stone or powder, crystal incites and creates local
66 Marisa Galvez, “Shards in Hand: Crystal Dwelling as Ecology,” Postmedieval 13, no. 1 (June 1, 2022): 179–95.
Gilad Shiram’s Qualifying Paper, Stanford’s Department of German Studies, Winter 2023
ecologies that involve various substances, beings, and elements, a shared world that spans the living and the dead.”67 Just as the cycle leads its readers from the Atemkristall in the title to the Atemkristall in its last poem, returning to the crystal at the end of the reading, together with the insights gathered enables to look at it in a different light. Reexamining the figure of the crystal in the context of human history and culture appears to be a necessary perspective in understanding the cycle. Atemkristall should thus be also read as part of this tradition, since its poems challenge assumed partitions and boundaries between the human and the nonhuman. By using the possibilities of the poetic experience, it offers its readers a way to distance themselves from norms of subjectivity, time and space, in order to form a relation to the nonhuman elements of the world. The manner in which this relation is established via an Atemwende, a detour that ultimately leads to a return, highlights the significance of this poetic encounter for contemporary times, as it may provide a means to engage with the human condition while acknowledging realms of existence that are increasingly out of reach. In times when such spheres of existence become less accessible, Atemkristall seems to suggest that poetry has much to offer. How to relate to the world is a question that not only has ethical implications, but also invites exploration of what it means to be human. Atemkristall appears to suggest that poetry can play a vital role in such an exploration, as it possesses the power to create an experience in which the dimensions of existence that often go unheard, sing.
67 Galvez.
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51 Bibliography
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