Douglas
Surely the 'point' about Celan, whether fragmentary or not, is that his
poems represent a recovery of language, a threratened claiming back, from a
situation (the Nazi ascension & holocaust) where meaning , history and
shared humanity had been destroyed.
This 'recovery' of Celan's looks toward the need we are all faced with to
re-inhabit a language that is so evidently now invaded by the
meaning-destroying language of the supra-national, global capitalist,
corporate 'state without a state', which may differ from Nazism in the
extent to which it exports its violence to its peripheries but not in its
drive towards Totality.
Incidentally, I don't think it's quite fair to say that Celan 'wrote one
great poem in his twenties then lived off it for the rest of his life'.
Must be off to work.
david
----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas Clark <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2000 9:34 PM
Subject: Re: Totality
> I think I must have read all the books on Celan and translations
available.
> From the translation point of view it appears that he wrote the one great
> poem in his early twenties and lived off it for the rest of his life,
> merely writing brilliant fragments. But this is from a point of view
> in English. For a native German speaker he seems to be a much richer
> poet but also that is beyond my penetrability.
>
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