Abstract

"Paul Celan and the End of German Literature" considers Celan's work in view of its aim or end. That end, the study argues, changes as Celan's work develops from its middle to its late period. The first half of the study thus examines the encounter his poetry pursues. The poems from the middle period attempt to realize this encounter in addressing themselves to a "you". In the encounter with another, the study claims, Celan's poems reach an end in as much as they reach or attain an instant: the instant in which their call is heard. Only another can bring the text to this end, because only another can define it as a singular or unique work. The work emerges in its uniqueness as it is transported to a space between, where its words, which were never an exclusive property, yield a unique meaning. This meaning lasts only for the duration of the encounter or only for an instant, for which reason the instant also counts as an end, i.e., that which determines something as finite or mortal. ;The second half of the study argues that Celan's late work no longer permits such an exchange, because the poems are no longer motivated by a speaker calling out to a "you". In lieu of an address outwards, the poems present an address inwards which indicates the place where a speaker would have been. No speaker emerges in this place, however, because what calls out here is itself only an echo of something which is no longer present--something which has already disappeared and which, thus, cannot be given a response, since it is nothing but a vacancy. Celan's late poetry puts its readers in the position of this addressee, by delivering to them these echoes as its last word