Who Am I and Who Are You?: Gadamer on Celan’s Dialogical Poetry

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I shall discuss Gadamer’s interpretation of Celan’s dialogical poetry in his essay “Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du?” (“Who am I and Who are You?”). One may argue that this is Gadamer’s articulation of the problem of the self-other relationship. To understand the question of self and other, it is first of all necessary to return to the poetic word from which the question arises. Speaking is, for Gadamer, the most profoundly self-forgetful action, because when one speaks, one is so deeply “within the word” that one is not turned toward the word but, rather, to what one wants to say with the word. For hermeneutics, interpreting means putting oneself on the task of the poetic text. The proximity between poetizing and interpreting emerges, also in its specificity concerning the proximity between poetizing and thinking. Such a proximity, in turn, divides itself into two extremes: the word that sublates itself, and the word that stands for itself. It is hence the uncertain fullness of language, where, unsurprisingly, both poetizing and interpreting come into themselves, which constitutes the link between the one and the other. Therefore, the interpreted word, intertwined with the poetic word does not replace what it indicates, but merely points beyond itself, to what is other than itself. Both pursue a meaning that points toward an open realm.

KEYWORDS:

• poetry
• dialogue
• I and you
• art

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Gadamer, “Epilogue to the Revised Edition,” Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 161.

^2. Di Cesare, “The Dialogue of Poetry,” 125.

I am indebted to the discussion by Di Cesare on the dialogue of Celan’s poetry, where the author argues that poetry is the open place of infinite dialogue which hermeneutics seeks. To the question “Who am I and Who are You?” poetry responds by keeping the question open (125–32). This discussion helps me in forming the relevant ideas necessary for this piece.

^3. Klink, “You. An Introduction to Paul Celan,” 1.

^4. Ibid.

^5. See Gadamer, “Hermeneutics Tracking the Trace,” The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later writings.

^6. Gadamer, “Philosophy and Poetry,” The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, 131–39.

^7. See Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 67–126.

^8. See Gadamer, “Are the Poets Falling Silent?” and “Under the Shadow of Nihilism” Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, 73–82, 111–24; see also “Meaning and Concealment in Paul Celan” and “A Phenomenological and Semantic Approach to Celan?” Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 167–78, 179–88.

^9. Bruns, “Ancients and Moderns: Gadamer’s Aesthetic Theory and the Poetry of Paul Celan,” 43.

^10. Gadamer, “Philosophy and Poetry.”

^11. Gadamer, “Hermeneutics, Poetry and Modern Culture,” Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics.

^12. Gadamer, Truth and Method.

^13. Gadamer, “Language and Understanding,” The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later writings, 107.

^14. Gadamer, “On the Contribution of Poetry to the Search for Truth,” The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, 107.

^15. Ibid., 110.

^16. Ibid., 106.

^17. Gadamer, “Composition and Interpretation,” The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, 67.

^18. Gadamer, “Philosophy and Poetry,” 132–33.

^19. Gadamer, “Composition and Interpretation,” 67. [Italicised mine]

^20. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 382, 406, 415, 600–01.

^21. Ibid., 309–11, 370–87.

^22. Lawn, “Gadamer on Poetic and Everyday Language,” 115–16.

^23. Derrida’s third question of his “Three questions to Gadamer” in the 1981 Paris “encounter,” concerns the underlying structure of the goodwill, in Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer Derrida Encounter.

^24. Gadamer says in an interview entitled “Writing and the Living Voice,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, 71.

^25. Ibid.

^26. Gadamer, “On the Contribution of Poetry to the Search for Truth,” 110.

^27. Gadamer, “Philosophy and Poetry,” 134.

^28. Valéry, The Art of Poetry, 170–71.

^29. Gadamer, “Philosophy and Poetry,” 134.

^30. Ibid.,136.

^31. Gadamer, “On the Contribution of Poetry to the Search for Truth,” 111.

^32. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 160.

^33. Ibid.

^34. Bruns, “The Remembrance of Language: An Introduction to Gadamer’s Poetics,” Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 6.

^35. Blanchot, The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays, 46.

^36. Gadamer, “Philosophy and Poetry,” 135.

^37. Valéry, The Art of Poetry, 74.

^38. Gadamer, “Philosophy and Poetry,” 135.

^39. Bruns, “An Introduction to Gadamer’s Poetics,” 6.

^40. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 472–90.

^41. Heidegger, “The Nature of Language,” On the Way to Language, 59.

^42. Bruns, “An Introduction to Gadamer’s Poetics,” 9, 16.

^43. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 15–86.

^44. Ibid., 31.

^45. Ibid., 44.

^46. Bruns, “An Introduction to Gadamer’s Poetics,” 21.

^47. Celan, “The Meridian,” Collected Prose, 44–5.

Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Georg Büchner Prize, Darmstadt, 22 October 1960.

^48. Celan, “Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen,” 34.

^49. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 63–4.

^50. Bruns, “An Introduction to Gadamer’s Poetics,” 14.

^51. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 70.

^52. Celan, “Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen,” 34–5.

^53. Celan, “The Meridian,” Collected Prose, 37.

^54. Ibid., 38–9.

^55. Ibid., 39.

^56. Bruns, “An Introduction to Gadamer’s Poetics,” 20.

^57. Celan, Gesammelte Werke, Vol.V., 2:14.

^58. Celan, Breathturn. Translated by Pierre Joris, 61.

^59. Celan, “The Meridian,” Collected Prose, 44–5.

^60. Ibid., 42–4.

^61. Ibid., 49.

^62. Ibid.

^63. Ibid., 50.

^64. Ibid.

^65. Ibid.

^66. Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 67–126.

^67. Bruns, “An Introduction to Gadamer’s Poetics,” 27.

^68. Mandelstam, Critical Prose and Letters, Translated by Jay Gary Harris and Constance Link. Edited by Jane Gary Harris, 73.

^69. Derrida, “A Shibboleth for Paul Celan,” Translated by Joshua Wilner, 35–36.

^70. Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 67–126.

^71. “Foreword” to Who am I and Who are You, 63.

^72. Celan, “Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen,” 35.

Celan takes this example from Mandelstam. Mandelstam says: “a seafarer throws into the ocean waves a sealed bottle, containing his name and an account of his fate. Many years later, wandering along the dunes, I find it in the sand, read the message, learn the date of the event and the last will of one now lost. I had the right to do so. I did not open someone else’s mail. The message sealed in the bottle was addressed to the one who would find it. I found it. That means I really am its secret addressee.” (Mandelstam, “On the Interlocutor,” Selected Essays, 234–35.)

^73. Ibid.

^74. Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 67.

^75. “Foreword” to Who am I and Who are You, 63.

^76. Ibid.

^77. Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 67, 127, 129, 184–85.

^78. Ibid., 69.

^79. Dallmayr, “Self and Other: Gadamer and the Hermeneutics of Difference,” 510.

^80. Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 134.

^81. Ibid., 73.

^82. Di Cesare, “The Dialogue of Poetry,” 130.

^83. Ibid.

^84. Gadamer, “The Relevance of the Beautiful,” 9.

^85. Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 70.

^86. Ibid., 73.

^87. Ibid.

^88. Dallmayr, “Self and Other: Gadamer and the Hermeneutics of Difference,” 511.

^89. Gadamer, “Epilogue,” Who am I and Who are You,” 127.

^90. Gadamer, “Composition and Interpretation,” 72.

^91. Gadamer, Gadamer on Celan: “Who am I and Who are You?” and Other Essays, 126.

^92. “Epilogue,” Who am I and Who are You,” 129.

^93. Gadamer, “On the contribution of poetry to the search for truth,” 115.

^94. Gadamer, “The Diversity of Europe: Inheritance and Future,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, 233.

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Arup Jyoti Sarma

Arup Jyoti Sarma has been teaching in the Department of Philosophy at Tripura University, Tripura, India, since 2010. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 2010. His areas of interests are ethics and Western philosophy. His book Kant and Hegel on Is-Ought Dichotomy was published in 2014 from Progressive Publishers, Kolkata. He has also completed a minor research project on “Kant’s Moral Faith,” funded by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi. He has published articles in many national and international peer-reviewed journals.