See Post 49 for some other things in Celan's work.


In what sense? It certainly is regularly invoked by the groups of people I indicated, and has been regularly ever since the 1967 war in particular.


I was bringing that up in the context of the quote you post about the affirmatory value of simply creating a work of art. My question to follow that has to do with what type of work of art, and what types of experiences it draws upon? If Celan's work were viewed as purely abstract poetry, I doubt the same claims would be made for it as are, because it relates (albeit very obliquely, I know) to historical events and as such is seen to have some wider significance. So I think it's relevant to look at how exactly it relates to this events and their changing meanings, in particular their meaning in 1967. The Eurovision song may be trash (I haven't heard it, but I'd be surprised if that were not the case), but it is also some sort of art work that draws upon real events (and genuinely traumatic ones for many Israelis), but for reactionary ends.

So is his address to the Writer's Association not relevant? And whilst the poem referring to the Freistatt might only in the most oblique manner be related to the Israeli state, do you not think that the whole notion of a place of asylum, sanctuary, etc., is a paradigm that is central to Zionist thought, and as such it is not irrelevant to consider aspects of Celan's work in this context?

It amazes me just quite how sacred Celan has become in some quarters. My big question is the precise nature of why and how you think his work continues to be relevant and important today (I'm not saying it isn't, I don't think so, but I'm interested to know why you and others think it is)?

I think it does continue to be relevant, though perhaps I wouldn't make quite as exalted claims for it as others would do. I do think it is a little dated in the light of changing political circumstances. Why I do has to do with its unflinching attempts to recover some possibilities of lyric expression within a language so irrevocably tainted by association, to try and give voice to a particular form of consciousness that is intensely fragmented in the absence of so many past certainties, and so on. But the horrors that lie beneath its motivations and birth are now the stuff of Hollywood movies and the like, and there is a whole industry that exploits these things for often reactionary ends. And in that light I'm not sure if it has quite the same meanings as it once had.


Of course, though it's not of course the first poetry to do that (look at Mallarmé and Lautreamont, for example). The question is how and why it enacts such a strategy, and why it is, not just in spite of but precisely because of, its particular historical and political resonances (note I use that word, as George Steiner does in the context of Heidegger (a rather unfortunate irony in this context) rather than 'meanings'), seen as having a special relevance in terms of post-war consciousness and society?


It's equally naive to take a purely phenomenological view of art and language that shuts off other aspects that might be brought to bear upon it - no language is like that.


It makes a difference in terms of the implicit and relatively automatic assumption that Celan speaks a progressive language, politically. Again, I'm not saying he doesn't, I just think the situation is rather more murky. And the possible politicisations of the Holocaust, from all shades of political opinion, are something to be borne in mind when considering art that in one sense or another has to do with such things.

They can be annoyingly wayward things these analogies between the progress of science on the one hand and developments in the arts on the other. If that one fell into the wrong hands it might equally be argued that the truer parallel would be that, once discovered, like the curvature of the earth or e=mc2, tonality could never be put back into the bottle and was from now on part of the conceptual landscape whether we wanted it to be or not.  

Indeed so, Mr S. I wouldn't disagree with any of what you are saying there.

My gentle little dig was more at the lurking implication that artistic endeavours are like scientific advances and supersede one another (Beethoven supersedes Bach, Schoenberg supersedes Schubert as Einstein supersedes Newton) in some linear historical progress. In my book anyway (and I know there are other books available in the local library which take a different view ) artistic insights, and works of art, are cumulative and aggregate over human history rather than replace one another. It's almost the defining difference between art and science and certainly one of the reasons why the history of art is a quite different animal from the history of science. The sum total of 'art' gets bigger and richer in variety as time goes on; the sum total of science, which is in another line of business altogether, has the quite different aim of fitting recalcitrant reality more and more snugly and with richer explanatory power as it progresses. I'm just very dubious indeed about drawing parallels between two fundamentally different enterprises and in particular borrowing the idea of 'progress' from the one to describe the other.

But back to the subject...many thanks for that link which is a good deal more on topic than my generalised waffle. As c is not with us as yet perhaps I could also warmly commend the discussion on that website to all not quite on 3.

Well certainly, no lack of admiration on anyone's part for the truly astounding achievements of earlier scientists. I think what early astronomers, for example, managed to achieve just by looking and thinking is almost more jaw-droppingly gob-smackingly astounding an achievement (can you do both at once?) than what modern cosmologists get up to. Long may they be remembered, admired and applauded. They are a crucial (and possibly even necessary) part of the history of science. But the fact remains that their actual science has been overtaken. It isn't any longer part of the current, continually updated and refined, corpus of scientific theory. It's been clambered over and superseded. But that is (IMHO) importantly different from the position of Greek sculpture, say, which is as vital and valid and living as art, not just as an earlier stage in the history of art, as it was when it was made. It's that distinction that I was trying to get at when referring to the difference between the history of science and the history of art. Both, I agree entirely, have their giants 'without whom .....' and long may they all be celebrated.

Hmm. Well, possibly not for here, but I do think that the explanatory power of science is demonstrably greater than it was pre-relativity and pre-quantum theory (the strange events of 1905  ). I think it would be generally accepted that there is a deeper understanding of underlying mechanisms, and hence greater predictive power, than there was previously and that is continuing to grow.         

On Richard's comments in relation to 'Dark Matter', yes indeed, I read and have seconded the recommendation of the Elision site. I wish I'd known about the Berlin performances at the time. No chance of London I suppose?  Absolutely agree that Richard puts his finger on a central question about the extent to which scientific theories are 'discovered' or 'invented', are 'out there waiting for us' or are imposed (creatively or necessarily) by the structure of the human mind. Kant had plenty of interest to say about this but I am becoming resigned to being a bit of a lone voice trying to lure people in that direction and away from the heady comforts of Hegel.   I'll keep trying to lure   But yes, I agree, it's a very live and lively issue.  

Brecht was always mystified by that (in the context of Greek art in general) - how, despite the fact that the social conditions had changed significantly, somehow such art still had a hold over us. Could some ideas of transhistorical humanity (eeeek) have some validity?