The Stance in the Poetics of Paul Celan

Abstract

This article develops the ethics of Paul Celan's poetics. Celan's use of the semantic and terminological cluster of ‘Stehen’ shows that terms such as resistance, instant, constancy, insistence and existence lead to Celan's ethics of uprightness and solidarity. These values also define Celan's ideal of a human being.The analysis of Celan's poem STEHEN shows stunning parallels with Martin Buber's conception of space and his idea of verticality and allows us to clarify the specific relation of identity and alterity in the stance. The stance is not just talked about in Celan's poems, it is also manifest in his manner of speaking, which makes literature an ethical act. It shows that the other is at the same time a condition and a result of this verticality, without which he or she cannot exist. This is linked to Buber's notion of ‘Verwirklichung’, which claims a reality more real than the ordinary state of mind. The specific relation to a ‘thou’ makes this reality.Celan's ethics of the stance in the light of Buber's philosophy shows that literature, at its best, is a realisation of the self in the encounter with the other.