Paul Celan in Conversation with Walter Benjamin: “The Secret Open”

Abstract

This essay is focused on Paul Celan as a reader of Walter Benjamin. It analyzes Celan's poem, “Port Bou – deutsch?”, which consists almost exclusively of quotations from Benjamin's review of a book on German poetry written by a scholar from Stefan George's circle, Max Kommerell, in 1929. Benjamin's essay is an act of resistance against George's idolization of poetic purity and mythologization of the German tradition. In his poem, written decades after the collapse of the Third Reich, Celan re-reads Benjamin's review in light of contemporary events and reflects anew upon the problem of purification. Celan's poem, “contaminated” with quotations, is an attempt to purify Benjamin's essay and, at the same time, a condemnation of purity. Aware of these intrinsic contradictions, Celan does not consider publishing his poem. Citation, the ground for the poetic encounter, reveals itself in this poem as a political gesture.

Keywords:

• Paul Celan
• citation as device
• Stefan George
• Friedrich Hölderlin
• Max Kommerell

Acknowledgments

I thank Samuel Weber and Willi Goeschel for insightful suggestions on this essay.

Notes

Jean Daive, Unter der Kupel, trans. Anke Baumgarten (Basel: Urs Engeler, 2009), 59.

Und mit dem Buch aus Tarussa” [“And with the book from Tarussa”]. Gesammelte Werke 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 287.

I thank Markus Hardtmann for drawing my attention to an article in the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, where this poem is discussed in relation to the events of the 1968 (“Die Kunst der Verwebung,” December 17, 2005).

Max Kommerell, Der Dichter als Führer in der deutschen Klassik (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1982).

Paul Celan, Die Gedichte. Kommentierte Ausgabe, ed. Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 510. This edition is hereafter cited as KA. I consulted the English translation of Benjamin's review by Rodney Livingstone for my rendering of Celan's allusions to it. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings 2, ed. Michael Jennings, trans. Rodney Livingstone et al., (Cambridge: Belknap Harvard University Press, 1999), 378–385. I use Livingstone's translation for excerpts from this text in the quotations hereafter as well. Besides this, all translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

Celan owned a copy of Schriften, ed. Theodor and Gretel Adorno (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1955), as referenced in La bibliothèque philosophique, ed. Alexandra Richter et al. (Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2004), 299; and KA, 955.

The English title is by Pierre Joris.

Paul Celan, Die Gedichte aus dem Nachlaß, ed. Bertrand Badiou et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997).

Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften in sieben Bänden (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991) 3, 641. This edition of Gesammelte Schriften is hereafter cited as GS with volume number.

“Masterpiece” in the English translation by Rodney Livingstone.

GS 2, 254; Selected Writings 2, 379.

Ibid.

This word is subsequently quoted in Celan's poem.

GS 2, 254; Selected Writings 2, 379. Translation is slightly modified. Benjamin quotes here a list of George's terms with an unmistakable archaic undertone, characteristic of the circle's vocabulary.

Edith Landmann, Gespräche mit Stefan George (Düsseldorf: Helmut Küpper, 1963), 37.

For example, as Friedrich Gundolf, for various reasons, started to distance himself from the circle, he indicated the root of his reluctance in growing “distrustful of Geist” as cited in Robert E. Norton, Secret Germany, Stefan George and His Circle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 596–597. In his memoirs, Raymond Klibansky, a close friend of Gundolf's at that time, mentions that the reason for his own rejection of the George circle was the unbreakable conviction of its members in being the “Geistesaristokratie” (“spiritual aristocracy”) of postwar Germany. Robert Klibansky, Erinnerungen an ein Jahrhundert, trans. Petra Willim (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 2001), 66.

GS 3, 259; Selected Writings 2, 383.

GS 1, 140–141.

GS 1, 180–181.

Mainly Friedrich Wolters.

Jahrbuch für die geistige Bewegung (Berlin: Verlag der Blätter für die Kunst, 1910–1914). Title page, italics mine.

Ibid., 145.

“[George] once said to Michael Landmann, son of Edith and Julius, that his disciples see with his eyes, which he had lent them, in regions into which he otherwise did not see—for that reason their works actually belonged to him. He lives with many bodies” (Norton 652–653).

GS 3, 259, Selected Writings 2, 383, translation modified.

Jahrbuch, 140, italics mine.

GS 1, 259. A pit filled with sacrificial blood is the image that Benjamin uses also in an earlier essay, “Goethe's Elective Affinities,” in which he, too, situates Hölderlin in opposition to George: “vor dem tiefen Grunde seiner Dichtergabe steht er [der Dichter; Goethe] wie Odysseus mit dem nackten Schwerte vor der Grube voll Blut” [“he stands before the deep ground of his poetic gift like Odysseus with his naked sword before the ditch full of blood.” GS 1, 179.

GS 3, 641. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno, trans. Evelyn and Manfred Jacobson (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994), 355. Translation modified.

GS 3, 398. Marion Picker in her dissertation points to the problematic stance of the two George articles by Benjamin (the review of Max Kommerell's book, 1928, and “Rückblick auf Stefan George,” 1933). Benjamin speaks of the lack of an appropriate critic of George, thus not considering himself fit for this task. Der konservative Charakter (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2004), 35. But there is more to Benjamin's stance toward George: by indicating his own inability to criticize George, while writing two critical essays about him, Benjamin is de facto engaging in this same critique. Moreover, the whole concluding chapter of Benjamin's essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities stands in direct opposition to George's poetics of vision and his disciple, Friedrich Gundolf's uncritical method of interpretation.

In his recent study of Celan's poem, Ulisse Dogà interprets the words “too late” in Benjamin's review as an expression of a melancholic sentiment about his (and Friedrich Heinle's) youth, when both, according to Dogà, were seduced by George's heroism. I disagree with Dogà's judgment. I read these words in Benjamin's review as a warning for the George circle and for the German people in general. I view this text as an attempt to point at the dangers of George's ideology rather than as a capitulation, as Dogà implies. “Port Bou – deutsch?” Paul Celan liest Walter Benjamin (Aachen: Rimbaud-Verlag, 2009), 123–124.

This double intention stays unrecognized by Jean Bollack in his interpretation of “Port Bou – deutsch?” Bollack writes: „Diese mystische Konstruktion [allegedly Benjamin's], die sich, wie die meisten, auf eine Geschichtsphilosophie berief, der zufolge das geschichtliche Ereignis zwischen Apokalypse und Erlösung eingezwängt wird, schien Celan dermaßen inakzeptabel, daß er gleich nach der Lektüre mit einem polemischen Text antwortete.” [“This mystical construction, like so many others, relied on a philosophy of history, according to which historical events were squeezed between apocalypse and redemption, and for Celan it was so unacceptable that he responded immediately with a polemical text.”] And further: „Celan empört sich mit letzter Kraft gegen die Apologie der Tradition, die die Verantwortung der Dichter vergessen läßt. Deswegen läßt er seine Reaktion auf Benjamin mit einer tabula rasa beginnen” [“Celan protests as best he can against the apology of a tradition that allows for the authors’ responsibility to be forgotten. For this reason, he begins his response to Benjamin with a tabula rasa.”] „Celan liest Benjamin,” trans. by the author and Christoph König (Mitteilungen des Marbacher Arbeitskreises, 13/14, 1998). Bollack posits Benjamin as a traditionalist, while viewing Celan's poem as a break with tradition, although without further identifying the nature of this tradition. At any rate, Bollack's claim that the extensive quotations from Benjamin's review in the poem represent a “tabula rasa” seems to be rather misleading, as is his claim that Benjamin is a traditionalist. Benjamin's major critical project, The Origin of the German Baroque Drama, concerns itself with origination rather than tradition.

GS 3, 259; Selected Writings 2, 383–384.

A number of poems from Celan's Nachlaß document his exasperation with this silence, most significantly, “Mutter, Mutter” [“Mother, Mother”] (1965), where the Germans are addressed with the word “Linksnibelungen” [“left Nibelungs”], which returns in “Port Bou – German?” (KA, 482).

For a biographical account of Celan's critical reception of the Paris events, cf. Gerhart Baumann, Erinnerungen an Paul Celan (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 55–56.

Otto Pöggeler gives a possible reason for Celan's allusion to the Bauhaus in this poem: “Martin Heidegger hatte damals [1959] im neuen Ulmer Bauhaus Klee zur Sprache bringen wollen und Celan für eine Stelle vorgeschlagen, beides aber vergeblich. (Das hätte man vorher wissen können, meinte Celan dazu.) Für Max Bill, der die Hochschule für Gestaltung erbaute und leitete, waren Inge Scholls Erinnerungen an ihre ermordeten Freunde nur Ablenkungen von den kunsttechnischen Aufgaben. Noch 1968 verband das Gedicht Port Bou – deutsch? Walter Benjamins Absage an Max Kommerells Buch über den Dichter als Führer in der deutschen Klassik mit einer Absage an “B-Bauhaus”. Stotterte der Dichter absichtlich, oder unterschied er Max Bills Bauhaus von dem ersten und wirklichen Bauhaus eines Gropius?” [Back then [in 1959] Martin Heidegger had wanted to speak about Klee at the new Bauhaus in Ulm [more precisely, Hochschule für Gestaltung] and suggested Celan for a position there, but both in vain. (This much could have been expected, Celan said afterwards.) For Max Bill, who was the founder and leader of the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Inge Scholl's memories of her murdered friends were a mere distraction from her technical and artistic tasks. As late as 1968 Walter Benjamin's rejection of Max Kommerell's book, Der Dichter als Führer in der deutschen Klassik, is linked with the rejection of a “B-Bauhaus” in [Celan's] poem “Port Bou – German?” Did the poet stutter intentionally, or did he separate Max Bill's Bauhaus from the original Bauhaus of Gropius?] Der Stein hinterm Aug (München: Fink, 2000), 47.

GS 3, 253.

Kommerell, 481.

In his study of non-mimetic expression in poetry on the example of Celan's “Engführung” (“Stretto”), Peter Szondi analyzes a language that cannot be “seen” as a series of images. Furthermore, Szondi reads “Engführung” as a programmatic text against re-creation of the world in the language of images. Such a world is, Szondi writes, “too pure.” “Die Dichtung ist nicht Mimesis, keine Repräsentation mehr: sie wird Realität. Poetische Realität freilich, Text, der keiner Wirklichkeit mehr folgt, sondern sich selbst als Realität entwirft und begründet. Deswegen darf weder dieser Text gelesen, noch das Bild, das es beschreiben könnte, angeschaut werden.” “[J]ene Welt, ein Tausendkristall aus geometrischen Elementen [ist] unzureichend. Es fehlen ihr, entmischt, die Unterschiede, aufgrund derer sie gemischt ist und, sich mischend, vermittelt. Diese Welt ist zu rein.” [“Poetry ceases to be mimesis, representation; it is becoming reality. To be sure, this is a poetic reality: The text no longer stands in the service of predetermined reality, but rather is projecting itself, constituting itself as reality. Thus, we are no longer to ‘read’ this text nor to ‘look’ at the picture it might be describing.” “This ‘world, a myriad crystal,’ is deficient. Once it has been ‘unmixed,’ it no longer contains the differences that constituted its ‘mixedness’ and caused it to engage in meditation through the mixing process. This world is too pure.” Celan-Studien (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972), 80, 93. Celan Studies, trans. Paul Fleming (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 31, 67.]

Here and in the following I am relying on the newly published translation of The Meridian by Pierre Joris (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 2011.

With its mythologizing approach to Goethe, the George circle produced a rigid image of Goethe's life in place of a reading of his works: “Das gedenkenloseste Dogma des Goethekults, das blasseste Bekenntnis des Adepten: daß unter allen Goetheschen Werken das größte sein Leben sei – Gundolfs ‘Goethe’ hat es aufgenommen” [“The most thoughtless dogma of the Goethe cult, the most jejune confession of the adepts, asserts that among all the works of Goethe the greatest is his life; Gundolf's Goethe took this up”]. GS 1, 160; Selected Writings 1, 324.

GS 3, 664; Correspondence, 416.

“Ô les hâbleurs” (KA, 526). Celan attaches it to a letter to his son Eric.

Ilana Shmueli remembers that Celan's visit to Israel was, for him, a return to the memory of Chernivtsi. Briefwechsel, ed. Ilana Shmueli and Thomas Sparr (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), 165. Israel Chalfen remembers that many listeners at Celan's reading were from Bukovina (Shmueli 149). Celan also emphasized that he wrote German because it was the language of his motherland, Bukovina, in an interview he gave to radio Kol Israel on October 10, 1969 in Jerusalem. Mikrolithen sinds, Steinchen.’ Die Prosa aus dem Nachlaß, ed. Bertrand Badiou and Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 217, 943.

Shmueli, 19.

Both in Latin and in Greek, the terms for purity and impurity tend to collapse together, as Robert Parker points out in his book dedicated to the problem of purity: “In Latin, even the limited connection between ‘sacred’ and ‘accursed’ contained in the use of sacer in the leges sacratae came to be puzzling; similarly in Greek, if the etymological link of agos with hag- is correct, differentiation occurred early, through the loss of the aspirate, between beneficial and destructive forms of consecration.” Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 12. Curiously, the problem of pure to impure is reduced, on the etymological level, to the soundless aspirate. In “Schibboleth for Paul Celan,” Jacques Derrida points out that the phonemic difference between “shi” and “si” in the pronunciation of the password “schibboleth” possesses the divisive and decisive power; it is the word of circumcision, the separating word. Sovereignties in Question, ed. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 28. “Shibboleth” means “stream” and names, among other meanings, the river Jordan—where this minimal phonetic difference has power to decide over life and death.

Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Michael Knaupp (Munich: Hanser, 1992), 343. Translation of this line is by Samuel Weber.

After Celan's death, Hölderlin's biography by Wilhelm Michel was found—open and with reading marks—on his desk. Gisèle Celan-Lestrange Briefwechsel, ed. Bertrand Badiou, trans. Eugen Helmlé (Memmingen: Suhrkamp, 2001), 493.

KA, 133.

KA, 681–682. Celan explains this reference in a letter to Gisela Dischner. Briefe, ed. Jens Runkehl und Torsten Siever (Hannover: Privatausgabe, 1996), 28. Dischner used this information for her research. He mentioned this also in a letter to Ilana Shmueli (58).

KA, 85.

Etymologically, both “rein” and “Rätsel” (as well as the English “riddle”) derive from the same Old Germanic root (h)ritara, literally “to sift,” which, in turn, tracks back to the Latin cernere and Greek κρινϵιν, “to separate.” Cf. entry to “rein” in Friedrich Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, ed. Elmar Seebold (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), 677.

Meridian, 215.

Ibid., 106.

I quote the penultimate version of “Friedensfeier” [“Celebration of Peace”]. Section 1.

GS 1, 181–182; Selected Writings 2, 340–341.