A Topological Reading of Paul Celan’s Poetry

Abstract

I propose a topological approach to Paul Celan’s poetry, exploring the boundary-places he persistently constructs within it. This reflection originates from the poet’s own words in his discourse The Meridian, where he states that “the poem asserts itself on the margins of itself” and that the search for the place of poetry would be a “topological investigation” (Celan, 1960). Celan’s tireless quest for orientation results in an intriguing spatialization in his poems: whether in syllabic ruptures, abrupt verse breaks, the interior of poetic words, the tense junctions of composites that generate linguistic opacity, the unusual effects of directional and negation particles, or the transitional places evoked in the verses—points that will be examined in this study. Celan’s topological approach begins with an analysis of an excerpt from The Meridian, a discourse characterized by critical reflections on contemporary poetry and by philosophical problematizations, particularly of a Heideggerian nature (Lyon, 2006). In this sense, the topological reading of Celan’s work is conceived not as a system of signs or as a repertoire of commonplaces – whose tradition goes back to the discussion of topoi developed by Curtius – that would aim at a distancing from reality, but as a mapping of spaces established in language itself, in which singular modes of presence and interlocution are configured. It is concluded that the topos of Celan’s poetry constitutes an open-ended boundary, created by a subject inscribed within it, in infinite dialogue with memory and with the “you,” as in a Möbius strip.