L’horizon référentiel de la poésie celanienne. Une lecture de Für den Lerchenschatten ( Pour l’ombre de l’alouette )

Abstract

The question of the referentiality of Paul Celan’s poetry dates back to Peter Szondi’s founding questions, formulated in 1971. In order to solve the methodological problems posed by the relationship that a highly individual language can have with elements that are external to it, proposals have been made in the line of this first unfinished reflection of Szondi, notably by Jean Bollack. More recently, following numerous discoveries concerning the book references mobilized in the poems, a different approach to the problem, defended in particular by Barbara Wiedemann, has appeared, which can be said to be “contextualizing” insofar as it envisages, on the one hand, a resumption of the original context in the poem and, on the other hand, assumes that the punctuality of the reference exceeds any central or founding reference, that of the Shoah. This article discusses this proposal on the basis of an exemplary case: the reading of a book of Gert Kalow, Hitler – das gesamtdeutsche Trauma, about the weight of Hitlerism in post-war German society, which appears central in the writing of a poem of Lichtzwang, Für den Lerchenschatten.