Sep 24, 2019

Dr. Daniel Tate, professor of philosophy, recently published a paper titled "The Verge of Silence: Gadamer on Celan and the Poetic Word" in the journal Research in Phenomenology 49 (2019), 163-182.

Tate examines the engagement of Hans-Georg Gadamer, a 20th century German philosopher, with the work of Paul Celan, regarded by many as the pre-eminent post-war German language poet. In Celan's late work, Gadamer finds often cryptic poems that nonetheless speak, forming compact yet delicate structures figured by the poet as a "breath crystal."

Considering the turn toward language in modern lyric, the article discusses the contribution of Gadamer's commentary on Celan to a hermeneutic understanding of the poetic word as an event of language which fulfills the "saying power" of the word.