This thesis examines a selection of poems of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan for stylistic devices, used to express the dynamic of speaking and silence in the poems. The main question of the thesis is how speaking and silencing are represented in the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan and which influence has the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger on this representation. For both poets the problem of speaking and expressing themselves appeared to be an acute question in the post-war time (World War II). The language scepticism led to the reconsideration of the role of language in poetry and the search for the new ways of expression.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-14T13:55:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 447353.pdf: 1245058 bytes, checksum: f42c2947915207a6fd4fea1079a4061c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-05 / Seg?n Paul Celan el poema est? de camino quiz?s al otro totalmente otro, experiencia imposible en la exposici?n a las alteridades que imanta las lecturas de Emmanuel Levinas en Paul Celan De l ?tre ? l autre(1972) y de Jacques Derrida en Schibboleth pour Paul Celan (1986) y B?liers le dialogue ininterrompu: entre deux infinis, le po?me (2003). Sin ignorar las rupturas, la distancia, la pasi?n de verdad indesligable del secreto sin secreto, el cortante quiasma que solicita portar sin reposo, a la vez que dejarse portar por el otro, a la vera del fin y del otro lado del mundo, en el interminable giro de aliento dictado, hiperbolizado, virado, contrafirmado en la antecedencia de cualquier otro totalmente otro, el peregrinaje del poema, irreductible a la autosuficiencia soberbia de lo bello, a la autotelia, aventura en la inaprensible errancia meridional de las cenizas a la abertura irremediable del pensamiento a lo que arriba, en memoria de lo que in-finitamente nutre el por venir aqu? y ahora. / Segundo Paul Celan o poema est? de caminho qui?? ao outro totalmente outro, experi?ncia imposs?vel na exposi??o ? alteridade que imanta as leituras de Emmanuel Levinas no Paul Celan De l ?tre ? l autre (1972) e de Jacques Derrida no Schibboleth pour Paul celan (1986) e B?liers le dialogue ininterrompu: entre deuxinfinis, le po?me (2003). Sem esquecer as rupturas, a distancia, a paix?o de verdade insepar?vel do segredo sem segredo, o cortante quiasma que solicita portar sem repouso ao outro, ao mesmo tempo em que se deixar portar pelo outro, ? beira do fim e do outro lado do mundo, na intermin?vel mudan?a de alento ditada, hip?rboli?ada, virada, contra-assinada na anteced?ncia de qualquer outro totalmente outro, a peregrinagem do poema, irredut?vel ? auto-sufici?ncia soberbia do belo, ? autotelia, aventura na inapreens?vel errancia meridional das cinzas ? abertura irremedi?vel do pensamento ao que vem, na mem?ria do que in-finitamente nutre o por vir aqui e agora.

Cette thèse interroge les fondements de la pensée d’Ivan Illich et ses implications pour la manière d’être les uns avec les autres et pour le langage. La pensée d’Illich s’ancre dans une vision singulière de l’être humain en tant que créature qui atteint la perfection en s’engageant dans une relation à l’autre, une relation libre, gratuite, et pleinement incarnée. J’explore les formes que prend cette idée à travers trois grands axes qui traversent l’oeuvre d’Illich : la relation entre soi et l’autre, le rôle des institutions et la pratique du langage. Dans un premier temps, j’examine le geste de pensée d’Illich, c’est-à-dire la manière dont il tente de faire de la quête de vérité une pratique conviviale, entre amis. Il s’inscrit par là en lien avec la figure du Samaritain issue de la parabole des Évangiles, qu’il interprète toutefois de manière très personnelle, hors de la tradition chrétienne. Ce lien étroit au Samaritain ouvre la question du jeu entre la foi et l’intellect dans sa pensée. Dans un deuxième temps, partant de cette interprétation, j’expose la vision du monde et des rapports entre les êtres qui en découlent. Selon Illich, Jésus révèle qu’aucune règle ne peut me dicter qui est mon prochain : je me porte vers lui d’un geste libre et gratuit qui émerge des entrailles, comme celui du Samaritain envers le Juif. Les Évangiles ouvrent ainsi une possibilité inédite d’être les uns avec les autres au-delà des règles d’appartenance à un groupe (clan, ethnie, nation etc). Cette idée particulière amène Illich à percevoir les institutions et les organisations qui structurent la société occidentale comme le résultat d’une perversion de cette relation, puisqu’elles cherchent à garantir, par une structure ou un service, ce qui devait rester une vocation personnelle librement assumée. Pour Illich, c’est en renonçant à toute garantie et au pouvoir dans le monde, que nous pouvons encore être les uns avec les autres à la hauteur de notre vocation de créature. Les réflexions de Jean-Luc Nancy sur l’être-les-uns-avec-les-autres offrent ici un contrepoint qui répond aux intuitions d’Illich et montre à quel point elles débordent la tradition chrétienne en se tenant au plus près de la condition simplement humaine. Enfin, dans un troisième temps, j’aborde le langage comme revers incorporel de cette irréductible condition d’être les uns avec les autres. Selon Illich, la perversion atteint aussi la langue dans laquelle nous nous parlons. Il en retrace l’origine au Moyen-Âge, au moment où émergent la notion de « langue maternelle » et l’idée de l’enseigner. Illich montre néanmoins, par sa pratique et dans ses textes, qu’une parole non ii pervertie continue d’exister, rythmée par le silence de l’ascèse et de l’écoute. Les mots de Paul Celan sur la persistance de la parole dans un monde corrompu rejoignent ici ceux d’Illich, ils les relaient et y répondent : s’ouvre ainsi un riche dialogue sur la possibilité toujours présente, mais jamais garantie, de se parler les uns aux autres. À travers tous ces enjeux, la pensée d’Illich revient sans cesse à la dimension temporelle du hic et nunc, l’ici et maintenant entre nous, difficile à saisir par l’esprit. / This thesis explores the foundations of Ivan Illich’s thinking and its implications for language and for our ways of relating to one another. His thinking is rooted in a singular vision of the human being as a creature who achieves perfection by establishing a relationship that is free and fully incarnate. I explore this fundamental idea through three major lines of thought running through Illich’s oeuvre : relations between self and other; the role of institutions; the practice of language. In the first chapter I examine this vision through Illich’s way of thinking together with friends, a convivially practiced search for truth. He thus places himself in the filiation of the Good Samaritan from the parable of the Gospels. In Illich’s highly personal interpretation, which stands outside the mainstream Christian tradition, this parable bears on the relationship between faith and reason. In Illich’s view, Jesus reveals that no rule dictates who is my neighbor: the Samaritan’s gesture of charity toward the Jew is completely gratuitous and comes from a deeply felt unease (Illich refers to the Hebrew word rhacham, often translated as mercy). In the second chapter I discuss the worldview that results from such an interpretation. For Illich, the Gospels open up a unique opportunity to be with each other beyond the rules that frame various groups (clan, tribe, nation etc). This thinking leads him to perceive the institutions and organizations of Western society as resulting from a perversion of that opportunity, because they seek to guarantee—through a structure or a service—precisely what should remain a freely-chosen, personal inclination. Illich demonstrates that by renouncing any guarantee and power in the world, we can still be with each other and live up to our personal inclination as creatures. Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking on being-one-with-another offers here a counterpoint to Illich’s intuition and shows how this intuition goes beyond the Christian tradition by fully adhering to the human condition. Finally, in the third chapter, I approach language as the intangible reverse side of the irreducible condition of being with one another. According to Illich, the language we speak has also been corrupted through institutionalization. He traces the origin of this corruption to the Middle Ages, with the emergence of the notion of "mother tongue" and of its transmission via teaching. Through both his practice and his writing, however, Illich shows that uncorrupted speech remains possible, when punctuated by the silence of asceticism and listening. The iv words of Paul Celan on the persistence of speech in a corrupt world relays and responds to Illich’s thoughts on this theme, thus opening a rich dialogue on the possibility—always present, but never guaranteed—to speak with one another. Interwoven throughout these themes is the temporal dimension of hic et nunc, the here and now between us, which constantly surfaces in Illich’s writings yet remains difficult to grasp with the human mind.

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In his “Letter on Humanism,” Martin Heidegger conveys the importance he attributes to poetry when he states: “Language is the house of being” (“Letter” 239). In response to his early Jesuit education, he developed a secular alternative to theology with his existential phenomenology. Theology, poetry, and phenomenology share the basic concern of explaining the foundations of being. For Heidegger, ownership characterizes being in a fundamental way; in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), he establishes the “Ereignis” (“event of appropriation”) as the foundation of being. Ownership lies at the core of being in his thinking following Being and Time. Yet his philosophy ignores the material circumstances of ownership. By way of a materialist critique of Heidegger’s Idealist phenomenology, I expose how property-relations are encoded in the modern poetry and philosophy of dwelling with the question: who owns the house of being? The answer lies in “self-possession,” which represents historical subjectivity as the struggle for the means of production. Paul Celan, T. S. Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Valéry are all poets who address the relationship between being and ownership in expressing what Marx and Engels call the “language of real life” in The German Ideology (26). In 1927, Eliot converted to Anglicanism and found solace in the realm of faith; by opting for the theology of dispossession, he surrendered his historical subjectivity. Rilke thought that he could find refuge from the marketplace in aesthetic beauty and pure philosophy but eventually disabused himself of his illusion. Similarly, Valéry sought refuge in the space of thought; basing reality in the mind, he forsook the social realm as the site of contestation for gaining ownership over being. As a poet who distinguished himself from the Idealism of his predecessors, Celan developed a structure of dialogue based upon shared exchange on common ground. A materialist approach to the poetry and philosophy of dwelling exposes property-relations as the foundation of the house of being.

In his “Letter on Humanism,” Martin Heidegger conveys the importance he attributes to poetry when he states: “Language is the house of being” (“Letter” 239). In response to his early Jesuit education, he developed a secular alternative to theology with his existential phenomenology. Theology, poetry, and phenomenology share the basic concern of explaining the foundations of being. For Heidegger, ownership characterizes being in a fundamental way; in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), he establishes the “Ereignis” (“event of appropriation”) as the foundation of being. Ownership lies at the core of being in his thinking following Being and Time. Yet his philosophy ignores the material circumstances of ownership. By way of a materialist critique of Heidegger’s Idealist phenomenology, I expose how property-relations are encoded in the modern poetry and philosophy of dwelling with the question: who owns the house of being? The answer lies in “self-possession,” which represents historical subjectivity as the struggle for the means of production. Paul Celan, T. S. Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Valéry are all poets who address the relationship between being and ownership in expressing what Marx and Engels call the “language of real life” in The German Ideology (26). In 1927, Eliot converted to Anglicanism and found solace in the realm of faith; by opting for the theology of dispossession, he surrendered his historical subjectivity. Rilke thought that he could find refuge from the marketplace in aesthetic beauty and pure philosophy but eventually disabused himself of his illusion. Similarly, Valéry sought refuge in the space of thought; basing reality in the mind, he forsook the social realm as the site of contestation for gaining ownership over being. As a poet who distinguished himself from the Idealism of his predecessors, Celan developed a structure of dialogue based upon shared exchange on common ground. A materialist approach to the poetry and philosophy of dwelling exposes property-relations as the foundation of the house of being.

xi, 182 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation develops an interpretation of Martin Heidegger's philosophical project in On the Way to Language and some of his earlier works that pave the way for this text and offers criticism of Heidegger's project in light of this interpretation. On the Way to Language stands apart from most twentieth century philosophy in arguing that, although human beings are within language in one sense, our relationship to language is nevertheless an estranged one. Heidegger often describes this condition as "lacking the word for the word." Because we are constantly speaking, we rarely if ever stop to wonder about the nature of language itself. Heidegger calls this our "entanglement" within language, a concept rooted in Being and Time 's exposition of the human being's thrownness. Read in terms of language, thrownness describes how we inherit concepts and find ourselves entangled in words prior to our reflection upon them. Heidegger presents what motivates us to bring the word to word in two ways. First, this need is rooted in the human being's fundamental structure of thrownness. Second, the need makes itself manifest through translation. My reading expands upon these two explanations of how we come to experience this entanglement, arguing that everyday communication regularly offers such experiences and demands that we modify, therefore temporarily distancing ourselves from, given language inheritances. The dissertation employs three other theorists, Roman Jakobson, Judith Butler, and Julia Kristeva, to flesh out how this need naturally arises in ordinary language development. Though he underestimates the extent to which everyday communicative situations require ongoing transformations of ordinary language, Heidegger nevertheless considers social encounters to be an important vehicle for language transformation. In this way, the goal of bringing our thrownness into language to word is not to disentangle ourselves from social relations, as some commentators have suggested. The last chapter shows how Paul Celan's poetics, in its inheritance of Heidegger's project, expands upon the role of social relations in language entanglement. / Committee in charge: Scott Pratt, Co-Chairperson, Philosophy; John Lysaker, Co-Chairperson, Philosophy; Beata Stawarska, Member, Philosophy; Peter Warnek, Member, Philosophy; Jeffrey Librett, Outside Member, German and Scandinavian

Le poète-traducteur Paul Celan compte parmi le nombre d’écrivains qui ont exercé une activité professionnelle. En s’appuyant sur des documents d’archives inédits et des témoignages d’anciens élèves, le présent travail aborde un champ de recherche quasi inexploré en se proposant de retracer et d’analyser son activité de lecteur d’allemand en relation avec son œuvre poétique. A partir d’une mise en perspective biographique, institutionnelle et sociale de la fonction assumée en 1956/57 et de nouveau entre 1959 et 1970, il se concentre sur l’enseignement de la littérature allemande et de la traduction. On y voit que, en étudiant Kafka, Büchner et d'autres auteurs, l’intérêt de Celan se porte surtout sur des questions relatives à la figure du poète, à l’individu et à la langue, et que sa méthode didactique garde une certaine distance à l’égard des pratiques universitaires. Il en va de même des exercices de thème allemand que plusieurs anciens élèves ne se rappellent pas uniquement en termes de préparation aux examens du concours, mais avant tout comme des séances de « réécriture », où l’accent était mis sur la « poésie » des textes abordés. L’« anthologie professionnelle » de Celan qui réunit plus de 150 extraits laisse supposer que cet enseignement, au-delà de l’approfondissement linguistique, révèle, entre autres, sa dimension anthropologique en engageant une réflexion critique sur les temps présents. En somme la thèse, tout en mettant à la disposition de la recherche littéraire des documents jusque-là inédits, met en évidence la portée de l’enseignement de Celan pour faire voir le poète et l’homme derrière le lecteur d’allemand. / The poet and translator Paul Celan belongs to the writers who have exercised a professional activity. The present study examines his largely unknown work as a language instructor in Parisian elite universities. It presents and analyses unpublished material from Celan’s estate as well as accounts of his former students and establishes relationships with his poetry. In the light of a biographical, institutional and social contextualisation of Celan’s work in 1956/57 and, again, from 1959 to 1970, the study concentrates especially on Celan’s literature and translation teaching. This shows that his reception of Kafka, Büchner or Heine in a didactic context is strongly linked to poetologically relevant questions such as that of the poet, the individual or language and that it must not be understood as systematically subordinate to conventional academic constraints. Similarly, several “anciens élèves” recall the translation classes (“thème allemand”) as not only a preparation for the “agrégation” examination, but also as involving poetic “réécriture”. Celan’s “work anthology” for the ENS, which contains more than 150 passages, suggests that these classes were not only aimed at the consolidation of linguistic proficiency but that they became a scene of engagement with terminology relating to the natural sciences, with contemporary developments and other poetic figures, and with aesthetic and anthropological issues. Thus, the examination of hitherto unknown original material which sheds light on an important part of Celan’s intellectual biography elucidates the way in which his academic teaching was shaped by questions and motifs which refer to the poet and the person. / Der Dichter und literarische Übersetzer Paul Celan zählt zu denjenigenSchriftstellern, die einem bürgerlichen Beruf nachgegangen sind. Seine in der Forschung bislang nur unzureichend bekannteTätigkeit als Deutschlektor an Pariser Elitehochschulen wird in der vorliegenden Untersuchung unter Rückgriff auf bislangunveröffentlichte Nachlassmaterialien und Berichte seiner ehemaligen Studierenden aufgearbeitet, analysiert und insVerhältnis zu seinem dichterischen Werk gesetzt. Vor dem Hintergrund einer biographischen, institutionellen und sozialenEinordnung der im Jahre 1956/57 und erneut von 1959 bis 1970 ausgeübten Funktion rücken dabei vor allem der LiteraturundÜbersetzungsunterricht in den Mittelpunkt, den Celan mit den normalien-ne-s abgehalten hat. Dabei kann gezeigt werden,dass seine im didaktischen Rahmen erfolgende Auseinandersetzung mit Franz Kafka, Georg Büchner, dem deutschenVolksliedgut, Thomas Mann oder Heinrich Heine nicht zuletzt auf poetologisch relevante Fragen wie die nach dem Dichter,dem Individuum und der Sprache rekurrierte und sich dabei auch den hergebrachten akademischen Gepflogenheiten nichtbedingungslos unterordnete. Ähnliches gilt für das thème allemand, das verschiedene ancien-ne-s élèves nicht nur alsVorbereitung auf das Staatsexamen, sondern insbesondere auch als eine letztlich dichterische „réécriture“ erinnern. Celansmehr als 150 Textausschnitte umfassende Arbeitsanthologie für die ENS lässt darauf schließen, dass dieser Unterricht jenseitsder Vertiefung sprachpraktischer Fertigkeiten zu einem Ort der Auseinandersetzung nicht nur mit naturkundlichemFachvokabular, sondern auch mit Zeitkritik und Dichterfiguren sowie mit ästhetischen und anthropologischen Fragestellungenwurde. Im Zuge der Erschließung bislang unbekannter Originaldokumente, die Aufschluss über einen nicht unerheblichen Teilvon Celans intellektueller Biographie geben, wird somit insgesamt deutlich, dass seine akademische Lehre nicht zuletzt vonFragen und Motiven geprägt war, die auch auf den Dichter und den Menschen verweisen.

This dissertation examines the writings of three seminal twentieth century thinkers, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Jacques Derrida, through the lens of their encounter with the post-Shoah poetry of Paul Celan. These thinkers are associated with influential, competing movements in twentieth century literary theory: philosophical hermeneutics, critical theory, and deconstruction. The three philosophers have disparate biographies and political orientations, yet each championed the ambiguity of literary language as a bulwark against the problematic, even violent, certainties of quotidian language. Additionally, each of them regarded Celan as an exemplar of a salutary literary ambivalence. This project clarifies how the critics’ approaches to literature, honed through consideration of a survivor-poet, represent an attempt to come to terms with the catastrophic violence of the Holocaust. While perceptive in their readings of Celan’s poetry, each sought to secure trans-historical insights into the nature of human language, a task that risks effacing the ‘real’ historical and experiential specificity of Celan’s writing. Celan readings are thus a case study for understanding philosophical contemporaries’ treatment of literary texts and their relationship to contemporaneous history. By looking at these varied theorists in tandem and by showing how Celan’s poetry both informs and resists their ideas, this dissertation cultivates a method of reading that is adaptable and not beholden to one tradition. Treating what the thinkers neglect, new readings emerge that explore Celan’s allusions to the Hebrew Bible, Jewish ritual, and antisemitism. Celan’s poetry animates multiple, conflicting interpretive traditions, yet questions, in its testimonial character, the adequacy of a theoretical approach to literature.

Trümmerliteratur - literally “rubble-literature" - is a brand of literature that became important after the Second World War, led by Heinrich Böll, whom I term the apologist of German Trümmerliteratur. Typically included under this classification are the writers who began to produce in the years immediately following the war, and in whose work the rubble and ruins of the landscape figure prominently. Böll provided the programmatic framework for the movement in his “Bekenntnis zur Trümmerliteratur" but his relationship to another type of ruin writing presents a point of friction when he appears to be working in a romantic mode to describe his experience of Irish ruins. This problem was the point of departure for a new thinking of ruins. Discovering the strains of rubble literature in Grass and Celan presents the second part of this study, which dramatically recasts these writers, demanding that the presence and prevalence of ruin images and themes receive consideration. Grass's hermeneutical ruins, a reading of narrative gaps, presents the first level of ruin, separating the reader from the text's reliability and authorial immediacy. The next type of ruins that Grass presents is the violent ruinating involved in the the act of writing itself, whether chiseled into gravestones or flecking virginal paper. Similarly, Celan's images of ruins are produced in a form consciously resembling berubbled structures, with dashes and slashes often left jutting dangerously into the space of a wide margin, like the rusty reinforcing steel bars of modern construction. Considering these writers in these terms leads to the question of language and how they attempt to overcome the problem of a language manipulated into complicity in the crimes of totalitarianism. Finally, there is the transparency offered in the porous structure of the ruin. These houses prove incapable of providing the shelter or protection. The inhabitants are exposed, exhibited to the observer with all of the intimate contents of quotidian existence, the low objects of the everyday. Entrance into this interiority is a powerful part of what makes the ruins an interesting object for observation. In this literature of ruins and rubble the reader is offered this transparency, an offer of entrance into society's interiority.