Paul Celan. The abyss of the word “forgivennes”

Abstract

In 1967, Paul Celan, a poet and Holocaust survivor, took part in a reading in Freiburg. There, he personally met the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who was Rector of the University of Freiburg promoted by the politics of National Socialism. Much has been said about the meeting between the two and the friendship and admiration that arose after the poet’s visit to the philosopher’s hut in the Black Forest. The most eloquent as well as the most enigmatic testimony is Celan’s poem Todtnauberg, in which he expects to hear “a coming word” from the philosopher’s lips. We can speculate that, perhaps, this word was “forgiveness.” But Heidegger never apologized. After several encounters over the next three years, Celan eventually threw himself into the Seine. This chapter speculates whether it is possible that it was never hearing the word “forgiveness” for the crimes of Nazism that drove him to suicide. To reconstruct this suicide hypothesis, the chapter leans towards the existing biographical documentation on the author, both studies by specialists and Celan’s own epistolary exchange. It will also turn directly to his poetic work, especially his late work (in which I believe the encounter with Heidegger is important), where he expresses the absurdity of any attempt at communication, confronting existential anguish itself, perhaps that which led him to the abyss because he could not find the word “forgiveness” in the language of extermination, an otherwise impossible encounter.