“Your country behind the mountain, behind the year”: Insistence of an Inaccessible Alterity in Paul Celan’s Poetics
Rosanne Ceuppens
Publication: Volume 3 Issue 3
Abstract
Alterity is a key issue in modern literature and in related disci-plines such as philosophy. In ‘The Meridian’ (1960) Paul Celan clearly foregrounds his poetics of otherness. He posits that “[f]or the poem, everything and everybody is a figure of this other to-ward which it is heading.” In this paper, Celan’s conception of alterity will be examined with regard to Levinas’s account of otherness in Existence and Existents (1947). Both men believed that poetry stands in a relation of proximity to the Other. This relationality means above all a listening to the Other, as poetry addresses the Other who made a claim on poetry. This paper seeks to underscore that Celan’s poetics principally has an ethical dimension which shows affinities with Levinas’s conception of the il y a or there is. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, key issues such as the interconnectedness between poetry, alterity, and Being will be clarified.
Keywords: Poetics, Alterity, Ethics, Paul Celan, The Meridian, Levinas, Existence and Existents.
Rosanne Ceuppens (rosanne.ceuppens@kuleuven.be) is currently a PhD student at the Centre for Reception Studies (CERES), KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research topic focuses on the translation, circulation, and reception of Heinrich Böll’s novels in the Low Countries. She has successfully finished two M.A. degrees in German, English, and Dutch literature in 2015, and has a particular interest in comparative literature and hermeneutics. In addition, she enjoys writing poetry and teaching foreign languages.