Meeting on Death Mountain
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On July 25, 1966, Paul Celan visits Martin Heidegger at his secluded hut in the middle of the Black Mountains. Heidegger, a known and unrepenting supporter of Hitler and the National Socialist party, was both admired and despised by Celan whose parents died at an internment camp, and whose youth was spent labouring under the hateful gaze of Nazi party members.
That the meeting had to occur was both inevitable and incongruous. Heidegger’s political affiliations had tarnished his reputation as an academic, but had done little to shake his position as the 20th century’s foremost philosopher, and poetry had always played a central role in his philosophical thought (through Hölderlin and Trakl).
Celan’s early verses bear the mark of the German Romanticism present from Novalis to Rilke, but the horror of war seemed a betrayal not only by a nation, but by a language. In 1944, one year after the death of his parents, he would write:
And can you bear, Mother, as once on a time,
the gentle, the German, the pain-laden rhyme?
A German speaking Romanian Jew exiled in Paris, Celan kept writing in the language of his torturers, torturing it in turn, seeking suffering and penitence in its harsh inflections.
Celan was driven to Todtnauberg, signed his name in the guest book, saw Heidegger, and left the same day. We do not know what transpired between the two men. On August 1st, Celan wrote a poem recounting the meeting and sent it to Heidegger who was so pleased by it, he had it framed and displayed it to all guests that came after Celan.
The Poem
Todtnauberg:
| Arnica, eyebright, the draft from the well with the starred die above it in the hut the line --whose name did the book register before mine?--, the line inscribed in that book about a hope, today, of a thinking man's coming word in the heart woodland sward, unleveled, orchis and orchis, single, coarse stuff, later, clear in passing, he who drives us, the man, who listens in, the half- trodden log trails through the high moors, dampness, much. | Arnica, Augentrost, der Trunk aus dem Brunnen mit dem Sternwürfel drauf, in der Hütte die in das Buch —wessen Namen nahms auf vor dem meinen?—, die in dies Buch geschriebene Zeile von einer Hoffnung, heute, auf eines Denkenden kommendes Wort im Herzen, Waldwasen, uneingeebnet, Orchis und Orchis, einzeln, Krudes, später, im Fahren, deutlich, der uns fährt, der Mensch, der’s mit anhört, die halb- beschrittenen Knüppel- Pfade im Hochmoor, Feuchtes, viel |
The Path of Hope
The poem is a single sentence of nouns and noun phrases. It begins with an impressionist detail:
Arnica, eyebright, the
draft from the well with the
starred die above it
Celan arrives at Heidegger’s hut and sees omens of healing and hope. Arnica and eyebright are plants known for their medicinal uses; the first heals bruises, while the second, as its name suggests, treats eye infections. A cure for the memory of death greets the poet on the mountain of death (Todt-nau-berg). A meeting fated but whose future hangs in the clutches of chance. Remember Mallarmé
Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard.
The die smiles at the pilgrim come to wisdom, but chance is never a single throw.
Celan enters the hut and signs the guest book. Others have done the same in the past. Heidegger’s hut had long been a place for the thinking person’s pilgrimage. Yet the image that passes through Celan’s mind is not of the poets, philosophers, or artists, but of those who had come to Heidegger in 1933 to be indoctrinated into the new ideology.
Celan hopes for a word. A single word to illumine the soul.
a hope, today,
of a thinking man's
coming
word
in the heart
Who is the thinking man and what is a word in the heart? Perhaps we ought to believe that Celan hopes that Heidegger will clear up his past actions and erase all doubt in Celan’s mind. Perhaps he hopes the thinking man coming will bring a word to the heart of the other. Or the word itself is in the process of becoming in the heart of the man, and the meeting is the missing catalyst of its bloom. The Wort separates the healing unreality of hope from the reality of the meeting.
The Many Buried
The two walk along woodland sward, two men, orchis and orchis, same yet alone, same yet singular. The heart-link does not occur. The poet and the philosopher walk over
woodland sward, unleveled
The Waldwasen of the German is a woodland sward or turf, but the Wase can also be translated as a killing field for chattel. The unleveled killing fields serve as a reminder of the slaughter like cattle of Celan’s kin in unmarked graves throughout the country. This is no peaceful tête-a-tête, but a treading over a graveyard intensely real for Celan, yet never actualised for Heidegger.
orchis and orchis, single,
The orchis, named from the Greek for testicle, hints at a masculine obstinacy in the two, their rootedness in their ideas and ideals. The orchid, coloured from white to blood-stained, contrasts with the arnica and eyebright in its use primarily as aesthetic object. The orchid is a garish, towering show-piece whose value is its presentation.
Heidegger and Celan walk across the fields of the dead. They talk, perhaps, but the words do not penetrate, and they remain singular, though at nature the same. The essence of the question Celan wants answered is not, or cannot be understood by the elderly philosopher.
The Unanswered
coarse stuff, later, clear
in passing,
he who drives us, the man,
who listens in,
The meeting is cut short, the half-trodden log trails are retraced, and Celan is driven back. His only memento of the meeting is coarse stuff that can only be made clear by an interpreter.
This, at least, is the historical interpretation based on what happened that day after Celan left Heidegger and spoke, on the way back, with a friend, Gerhard Neumann.
I would offer a different interpretation, however unlikely. Nothing passes between Heidegger and Celan on their walk, and they remain singular orchis and orchis. Rain interrupts their walk, and they are both driven back. It is only here, in the presence of a third, that Heidegger mumbles some coarse stuff meant as either apology or justification.
For Celan, a shy man who finds any form of social engagement difficult, this is tantamount to a betrayal. The hope expressed at the beggining was for a coming word in the heart of a thinking man, but such a coming to be cannot be filtered through the thinking of a third without being indelibly changed.
dampness,
much.
What Celan wrote in the guest book at the hut was a hope for a word that passes beyond understanding, but the end sees only the oppressive wetness of the rain.
References
Much of the text is based on a reading of:
