Celan and Badiou and orphans as the universal

Celan and Badiou: Towards a Universal Truth

In the following, I will re-examine Paul Celan’s poetry in light of Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the universal. While Celan is often read through the lens of an “ethics of suffering,” I aim to show that his work can also be understood as a meditation on what Badiou calls “militant truth.” This shift in emphasis allows us to reconsider Celan’s poetry not simply as a site of mourning and remembrance, but as an active engagement with truth and universalism. I will focus on four key aspects of Celan’s work to develop this argument: his concept of the poem as a “Flaschenpost” (message in a bottle), his correspondence with Nelly Sachs, and two poems that directly address the theme of orphans (Waisen).

Militant universalism or Levinasian Otherness

Badiou’s critique of the ethics of alterity and victimization is directed primarily at Emmanuel Levinas and “modern sophism” (postructuralism), and, more broadly, at post-Holocaust ethical frameworks that emphasize the primacy of the Other and the victim. For Badiou, this ethics — while rooted in genuine concerns about responsibility and respect — ultimately depoliticizes the subject and reduces ethics to a passive acknowledgment of suffering. His critique unfolds across several key points.

Badiou criticizes what he calls the “ethical turn” in contemporary thought — a shift where ethics becomes focused on victimhood, suffering, and alterity. He argues that this framework positions the victim as the ultimate figure of moral authority. While this is meant to counteract violence and exclusion, Badiou believes it leads to a moralizing stance that limits the possibility of transformative action. By placing the victim at the center of ethics, this approach risks reinforcing passivity rather than encouraging commitment to new possibilities. For Badiou, this victim-centered ethics is ultimately conservative; it mourns the past but struggles to generate new truths. Ethics, in this model, becomes about recognizing suffering rather than pursuing change. This turns ethics into a mere framework for guilt rather than a call to act.

Badiou critiques the Levinasian notion of the Other as radically separate — as someone whose alterity must be preserved and never reduced to the Same. In this framework, the Other is always beyond comprehension, always in excess of understanding. For Badiou, this view prevents the creation of universal truths. By privileging otherness, it locks people into isolated identities rather than encouraging the construction of shared worlds. Badiou’s critique emphasizes that true ethical engagement is not about recognizing difference but about producing what he calls a universal singularity — a form of truth that transcends identity and belongs to everyone.

Instead of centering ethics on respect for the Other or victimhood, Badiou promotes an ethics of truth-processes. A truth-process is an event that disrupts the existing order and calls for fidelity — an ongoing commitment to a new reality. Truth, for Badiou, is always universal. It emerges when individuals act in fidelity to an event (such as a political revolution, an artistic breakthrough, or a scientific discovery) that redefines the possible. Instead of recognizing others as distinct or isolated, Badiou’s ethical subject seeks to incorporate others into a shared universal commitment.

Badiou’s critique extends to identity politics and the valorization of marginalization. While acknowledging the need to oppose exclusion, Badiou warns that overemphasizing victimhood can paradoxically reinforce divisions. In this sense, his critique parallels Lacan’s warning that the demand to recognize one’s suffering can itself become a form of enjoyment. For Badiou, politics should focus on universal emancipation rather than endless affirmations of difference or victimhood.

This critique opens the door to reading Celan as a poet who does not merely bear witness to suffering but engages in a militant pursuit of truth — a poetry that insists on universalism rather than retreating into an isolated reflection on trauma. Celan’s poetry can be seen as an act of universal address. The Flaschenpost metaphor aligns with Badiou’s view of a truth-process — a poetic gesture sent into an unknown future without certainty of reception, yet with a militant commitment to communication. The figure of the orphan in Celan’s poetry no longer needs to be read only in terms of abandonment and trauma but can also be seen as a figure of radical new beginnings — someone detached from genealogical or historical burdens, open to new possibilities. Celan’s precision and linguistic rigor can be seen not just as a way to mourn but as a militant insistence on truth — on creating a language that breaks with established forms and demands something new.

Badiou understands the work on the 20th century to be that of “memory”, and that the century is often defined as the “totalitarian century” (Badiou 2005, p. 2). “At the heart of the century lies the Crime whih provides the paragon for all the others: the destruction of the European Jews”. If we follow Badiou in this diagnosis of our present, we could perhaps also say that Celan’s poetry is often seen as poetry that bears (impossible) testimony to this Crime. Badiou continues as follows, which often lists statistics about the dead as a way to avoid politics and a universal Cause.

“why this will to count? Because, in this instance, ethical judgment can only locate its real in the devastating excess of the crime, in the counting — by the millions — of victims. The count is that point at which the industrial dimension of death intersects with the necessity of judgement. The count is the real which is presupposed by the moral imperative. The union of this real with state crime has a name: this century is the totalitarian century.” (ibid.)

In this way Celan is often read as a protest of the singular, of difference and testimony against the “totalitarian century”. This also becomes a way to read Celan’s difficult poems: precisely because the count is unfathomable, we can bear no phenomenological access to such a count, the sheer numbers, where individual lives becomes statistics, means that it is also impossible to bear testimony. In one of the most famous lines by Celan: Niemand zeugt/für den Zeugen: no one bears witness/to the witnesses. Derrida used this line as definitive of Celan’s poetry, and Derrida’s poststructuralist reading, concerned both the testimony, the ethical turn, as well as the differance of language thereby could combine both of these aspects in Celan: the language’s opacity was in a negative way testimony to the count as the Real (that there was no language that could mediate the Real of this number).

Where the “ethics of alterity” emphasizes silence, respect, and mourning, Badiou’s emphasis on truth encourages us to see Celan’s work as generative, transformative, and universal — a poetic fidelity to a truth that cannot be reduced to the suffering of the past. This reading repositions Celan’s poetry as something that does not merely memorialize trauma but actively participates in the creation of a new order — one that insists on possibility, change, and universal address.

Badiou reads Celan as well in his book on inaesthetics. Here we quotes Celan’s emphasis on the narrow (from the narrower slit/a gist is coming too,/it’s broken/by the deadliest of our/upstanding liths) (after, Badiou, p. 33).

Badiou takes this against “modern sophists”, because instead of language and its instability of reference, “there is indeed a fixed point. Not everything is caught in the slippage of language games or the immaterial variability of occurences.” There is still “Being and truth”, even if this truth has to pass through the “narrow slith” (and is not understood as a truth emerging from a collection of wholes). Secondly, Badiou takes from Celan, that “we are not prisoner’s of the world’s bonds. More essentially, the very idea of binding or relation is itself fallacious. A truth is unbound, and it is towards this unbound, toward the local point where the binding is undone, that the poem operates” (ibid.). So, Celan’s idea of dialogue of the poem, the poem directed towards the Other, is not the wholly Other of ethical turn, nor of spectral Otherness, but an Other to the fixed relations and rules, the poem is “unbound” in the sense, that everyone can participate in it, like one can universally participate in the eternal Idea of justice. It is not a justice-to-come, “Celan teaches us that what a truth rests upon is not consistency, but inconsistency”, a “murmur of the indiscernible”. This goes together with Badiou’s thesis that an Even can only occur in the void of a situation. This does not happen in the poem alone, but by a reader’s decision: “the reader must will his or her own transliteration”. While Badiou’s reading is suggestive it leaves much to be defined or “transliterated” further. Nevertheless, the reading of Celan as different from “modern sophism” (as in the predominant poststructuralist reading, or Adorno’s) is instructive.

“Consequently, as far as I am concerned there is no paradox in the fact that Celan, for whom Auschwitz was a particular intense question — a sort of black consuming fire, a referent at once universal and grimly intimate, never ceased inventing a poetry capable of reckoning with what what men underwent during the thirties and fourties, and (with supreme defiance) forcing the German language, that of the murderes to carry inventiveness.” (2007, p. 87–88).

While Badiou also speaks of the “poet-witness of those years”, the point is also inventiveness over testimony, or to put it differently, what really matters, I think is not so much testimony as speech, the miraculous fact of speaking and inventing after survival.

The Universalizable Flaschenpost

Rather than looking at Celan through the image of someone who speaks less and less, his production in the last year rather suggests an intensification of speaking. The poems might look more sparse on the page, yet they speak more and more the quantitively few words they have to say. This I hope to show in the following.

But let me first mention what I call the “universal,” here in terms of “universal address.” Celan says in his Bremer Rede (1958) that the poem is like a Flaschenpost, a message in a bottle, directed to an ansprechbares du, and that it should be directed at reality:

“Das Gedicht kann, da es ja eine Erscheinungsform der Sprache und damit seinem Wesen nach dialogisch ist, eine Flaschenpost sein, aufgegeben in dem — gewiss nicht hoffnungsstarken — Glauben, sie könnte irgendwo und irgendwann an Land gespült werden, an Herzland vielleicht. Gedichte sind auch in dieser Weise unterwegs: sie halten auf etwas zu.”

This has predominantly been read as an ethics against universality. Almost all critics have understood Celan’s poetological address as part of an ethics of alterity. Language is seen as universal, and the poem as the singular or particular appearance. Herzland is seen as a figure of otherness, as well as the messianic promise — the message in the bottle on the way. The prevailing interpretation suggests that Celan’s poem operates as an ethical act that preserves the singularity of the Other, and that the poem’s address is defined by its respect for the unknowability or unreachability of the addressee. However, this interpretation risks reducing Celan’s poetics to a framework of interpersonal ethics that ultimately limits the poem’s universal potential.

But here, we could turn things around. The poem is rather an appearance of the problem of language as such. Language does not constitute a whole, but only what Badiou calls a ‘situation’, a structure of Being.

The Event is precisely what introduces a void into this Being of language. In Celan’s conception, the poem is unterwegs precisely insofar as it keeps this rupture open — the fact that language is structured around its own void. This is also where the possibility of truth emerges. What Celan calls “halt auf etwas zu” I understand as fidelity — a commitment to this openness and to the structure of language as incomplete and unresolved.

It might seem that the “du” is merely singular as opposed to the universal. What Celan here calls “dialogical” is what I understand as his singular form and poetologicalisation of the universal. The universal does not refer to a shared substance, nor to a Totalität. It is not the pseudo-Hegelian sublation of subjectivity into the objective. Celan is trying to safeguard the poem from this because such a procedure would involve anonymity and the eradication of difference. In this sense, his concerns about preserving the singular subject against being swallowed by the “objective” are evident.

Yet is the point then two singular subjects speaking to one another? One “I” and one “you”? Does this presume a framework of intersubjectivity (the two subjects already given in advance)? Celan’s “you,” which although inspired by Martin Buber, should not be reduced to it, is rather an undefined “you.” The ansprechbares du means that it is always possible to be spoken to. That is, it is not exhausted by any answers, since it is “open.” It reaches the “you” only through the poem. The poem, like a message in a bottle, must be picked up, must be read. Hence it has precisely that universality, not because it refers or designates a given substance, but precisely because no one can be excluded from it. It is not a normative category. It is not what closes down, but what opens up. This is the indomitable insistence of the poem (sie halten auf etwas zu).

“Worauf? Auf etwas Offenstehendes, Besetzbares, auf ein ansprechbares Du vielleicht, auf eine ansprechbare Wirklichkeit.” (ibid.)

The poem does not stand in the open against “universality as closed structure”; the universal is rather what opens it up. The universal is not what is given, not an established field of knowledge, not the reified society. What is here is put in a conditional (underlined by “könnte irgendwo und irgendwann,” “vielleicht”). If the field of knowledge can be verified, it is also a closed structure. It eliminates the act of speaking. This is “universality” in the sense I do not use it here. This is also the field of hermeneutical meaning (or even of the failure of hermeneutics), but instead a constitutive meaninglessness. The singular subject and the universal are not opposed. “I become ‘universal’ only through the violent effort of disengaging myself from the particularity of my situation: through conceiving this situation as contingent and limiting, through opening up in it the gap of indeterminacy filled in by my act. Subjectivity and universality are thus strictly correlative: the dimension of universality becomes ‘for itself’ only through the ‘individualist’ negation of particular context which froms the subject’s specific background.” (286). As Slavoj Zizek also says it is precisely in the most singular that the universal becomes ‘for itself’, not at a norm, but as a opening in the symbolic order: “there is ethics — that is to say, an injunction which cannot be grounded in ontology — in so far as there is a crack in the ontological edifice of the universe: at its most elementary, ethics designates fidelity to this crack.” (Zizek, 274).

The signifiers such as “herzland” and “holding on” do not mean that one waits for community to come. Rather, it could be the militant fidelity to this universality already at work in the poem’s address, the “crack” in ontology. As I said, it is universal in the sense that no one can be excluded from it; no one can, to stay with the image, “control” the Flaschenpost, where the message of the bottle will be picked up.

It is crucial to emphasize that the singular is not opposed to the universal. Since what is universal is not a common substance, the singular and the universal do not stand in contradiction. Celan’s poetry demonstrates that what is singular — in its fragmented, contingent form — precisely maintains the universal by avoiding closure and remaining open to any and all possible receivers.

Herzland is precisely Celan’s “singular” way — his subject-language — of constructing the universal. It does not necessitate a certain “sentimentality.” It is true that this is Celan’s response to a particular and concrete situation. But it is not as though humanity would be united in a universal “heartland.” The point here is that the Event is not a deeper meaning, but rather a break with established meanings. Celan introduces a void into the situation of how “hearts” are understood.

Badiou also connects it to the topology of the Lacanian Real as opposed to reality. The Real is not a substance, but what, “in a situation, in any given symbolic field, the point of impasse, or the point of impossibility, which precisely allows us to think the situation as a whole.” The Real is external to the symbolic order, but also what is an impasse within that very order. The whole in the sense Badiou uses it does not mean to eliminate the impasse, but rather to include the impasse, the void, in the symbolic order.

By invoking Badiou’s concept of militant truth, we can understand Celan’s Flaschenpost as not merely a singular communication but as a universal address that insists on fidelity to this rupture. Celan’s sparse yet intensified late poetry does not diminish language but reveals its inherent incompleteness. In this way, the “message in the bottle” is not only a testament to hope but an active reminder that truth itself is structured through this void, always addressed to a universal du that remains open and indeterminate.

Nelly Sachs:

The correspondence between Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan reveals an intense preoccupation with address, and in particular with the word “Du.” This frequent invocation of the “du” cannot be reduced to a mere personal address; rather, it carries a deeper significance that resonates with Alain Badiou’s notion of a militant truth. For Badiou, truth is not a mere statement of facts but involves a sustained fidelity to an event that disrupts the established order. In Sachs and Celan’s letters, the “du” emerges as a position that enacts this fidelity, calling the other not as an isolated individual but as one who must partake in the unfolding of truth. In this sense, the “du” transcends the personal and enters into a broader engagement with language, identity, and history.

This essay will argue that the deeply personal tone of Celan’s letters is inextricably tied to a political and historical truth. The “du” is never simply a private address; instead, it becomes a means of engaging with a collective experience and a traumatic past. As Celan himself writes in his letter from February 20, 1960: “Was steht uns Juden noch bevor?” (“What still awaits us Jews?”). In posing this question, Celan reveals that Jewish identity is not treated as an ethnic or cultural substance but rather as a position of enunciation — a standpoint from which speech emerges. For Celan, to speak as a Jew is not to assert a fixed identity but to mark a point of departure, a fragile yet insistent voice emerging within and against the public sphere.

This interpretation departs from readings of Celan that emphasize Jewishness as a form of primordial otherness, such as in Lyotard’s conception. Rather than grounding Jewishness in an inescapable alterity, Celan’s understanding links it to a position that does not neatly fit within the established symbolic order — what Badiou might describe as the supernumerary part. Jewishness, in Celan’s usage, becomes a disruptive element that unsettles both post-Holocaust public discourse and prevailing conceptions of identity.

The tension between the personal and the public is crucial here. The Briefwechsel between Celan and Sachs is not merely an intimate exchange in opposition to the anonymity of public life; rather, the personal character of their correspondence actively engages and prepares for their work in the public sphere in the form of the poet’s vocation and poems. This dynamic is reflected in Celan’s repeated alignment of “Jewishness” with “Menschen” — human beings — in ways that resist fixed definitions. In the same letter from February 20, written in response to the plagiarism affair, Celan reflects on his strained relationship with those he once trusted:

“Sie wissen nicht, wieviel Freundschaften ich diesen Menschen (Menschen?) entgegengebracht habe! Einige schreiben sogar Gedichte. Sie schreiben, diese Menschen, Gedichte! Was schreiben sie nicht alles, die Verlogenen. Ach, könnte ich in ihrer Nähe sein, oft, mit ihnen sprechen! Gott schütze sie.” (“They do not know how many friendships I have offered these people (people?)! Some even write poems. They write, these people, poems! What don’t they write, these liars. Ah, if only I could be near them often, speak with them! God protect them.”)

In this passage, the ambiguity surrounding “Menschen” underscores Celan’s hesitation to define the term. The question mark destabilizes the notion of the human as a fixed category, emphasizing instead its openness. “Menschen” does not signify a shared identity or a common humanity in the existentialist sense; rather, it signals a fragile and provisional position — one that remains undefined and incomplete.

This refusal to reduce “Menschen” to a stable concept reveals Celan’s concern with maintaining the openness of language itself. As with his notion of the “Flaschenpost” (message in a bottle), Celan’s invocation of “Menschen” emphasizes a direction — a gesture toward meaning that refuses final closure. The “du” in Celan’s letters similarly functions as a site of potentiality — a militant assertion that truth, however elusive, remains possible through language that resists ossification. This essay will explore how this dynamic unfolds in Celan and Sachs’ correspondence, where the personal address is ultimately inseparable from a broader ethical and political engagement, as in a letter to Hans Bender around the same time as most of the letters from the Sachs-correspondence: “Wir leben unter finsteren Himmel und — es gibt wenig Menschen” (GW III, 178).

The correspondence between Sachs and Celan reveals an intense preoccupation with address, with the ansprechbares Du and ansprechbares Wirklichkeit, (GW III, 186), and in particular with the word “du.” This frequent invocation of the “du” cannot be reduced to a mere personal address; rather, it carries a deeper significance that resonates with Badiou’s notion of a ‘militant truth’. For Badiou, truth is not a mere statement of facts but involves a sustained fidelity to an event that disrupts the established order. In Sachs and Celan’s letters, the “du” emerges as a position that enacts this fidelity, calling the other not as an isolated individual but as one who must partake in the unfolding of truth. In this sense, the “du” transcends the personal and enters into a broader engagement with language, identity, and history.

The singular tone of Celan’s letters is inextricably tied to a political and historical truth. The “du” is never simply a private address; instead, it becomes a means of engaging with a collective experience and a traumatic past. As Celan himself writes in his letter from February 20, 1960: “Was steht uns Juden noch bevor?” (“What still awaits us Jews?”). In posing this question, Celan reveals that Jewish identity is not treated as an ethnic or cultural substance but rather as a position of enunciation — a standpoint from which speech emerges. For Celan, to speak as a Jew is not to assert a fixed identity but to mark a point of departure, a fragile yet insistent voice emerging within and against the public sphere.

This interpretation departs from readings of Celan that emphasize Jewishness as a form of primordial otherness, such as in Lyotard’s conception. Rather than grounding Jewishness in an inescapable alterity, Celan’s understanding links it to a position that does not neatly fit within the established symbolic order — what Badiou might describe as the “part that is not counted in the situation.” Jewishness, in Celan’s usage, becomes a disruptive element that unsettles both post-Holocaust public discourse and prevailing conceptions of identity.

The tension between the personal and the public is crucial here. The Briefwechsel between Celan and Sachs is not merely an intimate exchange in opposition to the anonymity of public life; rather, the deeply personal character of their correspondence actively engages and intervenes in this public sphere. This dynamic is reflected in Celan’s repeated alignment of “Jewishness” with “Menschen” — human beings — in ways that resist fixed definitions. In the same letter from February 20, written in response to the plagiarism affair, Celan reflects on his strained relationship with those he once trusted:

“Sie wissen nicht, wieviel Freundschaften ich diesen Menschen (Menschen?) entgegengebracht habe! Einige schreiben sogar Gedichte. Sie schreiben, diese Menschen, Gedichte! Was schreiben sie nicht alles, die Verlogenen. Ach, könnte ich in ihrer Nähe sein, oft, mit ihnen sprechen! Gott schütze sie.” (“They do not know how many friendships I have offered these people (people?)! Some even write poems. They write, these people, poems! What don’t they write, these liars. Ah, if only I could be near them often, speak with them! God protect them.”)

In this passage, the ambiguity surrounding “Menschen” underscores Celan’s hesitation to define the term. The question mark destabilizes the notion of the human as a fixed category, emphasizing instead its openness. “Menschen” does not signify a shared identity or a common humanity in the existentialist sense; rather, it signals a fragile and provisional position — one that remains undefined and incomplete.

Celan also introduces a different sense of time in his letters. There is not simply verifiable time, but also “evental” time — one connected to Jewishness. As Celan writes:

“Das Jahr, das jetzt anfängt — denn, ja es fängt jetzt an, ohne Rücksicht auf das Kalendarjahr — ist das Jahr unserer Schweden-Reise; wir leben darauf zu.” (“The year that now begins — for yes, it begins now, regardless of the calendar year — is the year of our Sweden journey; we are living towards it.”)

Here, Celan emphasizes a notion of time that ruptures the ordinary flow of chronological time — a time that introduces something new. This “evental” time is also a timeless time, a rupture of time, akin to a void in the temporal situation. The truth is not simply “over” time but manifests as a rupture within time itself. This rupture holds open the possibility of transformation, underscoring that the “du” is not merely “personal” as opposed to the universal; rather, it keeps possibilities open.

Celan emphasizes this openness not only through the “du” but also through recurring signifiers such as “hands” and “heart.” These terms, however, are themselves destabilized — their conventional meanings are suspended. With a Badiouian term, Celan “subtracts” these signifiers from their expected meanings, maintaining their openness. This refusal to fix meanings extends to Celan’s complex positioning as a Jew. He does not position himself as a “verifiable” Jewish identity in a cultural or religious sense; instead, Jewishness becomes part of an existential and poetological strategy — a position of speaking on behalf of experiences, yet without claiming to define those experiences fully. In that sense, Celan is paradoxically “less Jewish” than many others, since he does not practice Judaism in a conventional sense but invokes it as a site of rupture and openness.

Celan in this way goes against precisely the identification of the “Jew” as the “wholly other”, that for example Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Francois Lyotard defines (although Celan says he prefers Blanchot to structuralism in a conversation with Esther Cameron). Their writing is, although they tend to present the jew as a negative ontological category, very much a particular historical response to a postholocaust situation. While they, in a levinasian vein tries to define the jew as “beyond”, or “before” any identity, any dialectics, any language, then this becomes not a truly “open” category, but instead very much an identity:

“There is truth of exile and there is vocation of exile; and if being Jewish is being destined to dispersion — just as it is to call to sojourn without a place, just as it ruins every fixed relations of force with one individual, one group, or one state — it is because dispersion, faced with the exigency of the whole, also clears the way for a different exigency and finally forbids temptation of the Unity-Identity.” (Blanchot: 125–126).

The jew is the lack of a proper identity, for Blanchot, but this definition is of course itself an identity. We can see this even in Blanchot’s quite “fatalistic” declarations: “destined to dispertion”, “ruins every fixed relation”, “forbids the temptation of Unity-Identity”, “call to sojourn without a place”. The paradox is that Blanchot merely inverts the antisemitic figure of the jew as “without a place”, and also comes to depolitize Nazism (instead being Jewish a negative ontological category). Celan is much more responding to precisely being a jew as part of a historical configuration where it means something particular, and how to unsettle this meaning, since identity is part of the ‘situation’, what can be ‘known’ in Badiou’s sense (it is obvious that from Blanchot’s designation quite a lot can be very definitively put about the jew, as “errance”, exodus, vagabond etc.”[1].

In Badiou’s reading the jew’s extermination stands as the absolute victims of the “Crime” of the (totalitarian) century. As he puts it in his books on Ethics:

What is the legitimate political usage of the category ‘Jew’? It is very hard to ask this question in France, without instantly being labelled an anti-Semite. I think, thought, that it is absolutely necessary, if this word is to have a progressive political signification, that it be something different from what Hitler, for instance, designated by that name. It can’t be the same thing turned on its head.” (Badioy, p. 109).

In other words, we have to remember that it was Nazi politics to designate the Jew as “rootless”, as “errant”, “vagabond”; the only particular that was not a particular at all, that had no firm place. And Blanchot’s designation, shared by Derrida and others, seem very much to be the same thing “turned on its head” (now errancy is precisely the political valence, why it cannot be fixed int he metaphysics of presence…) — but is this not simply the same thing turned on its head? We have to understand the political valence in a different way than the ethics of spectrality, of the “jew” that is simply non-identity, difference as such…

This complex interplay of communitarian identity, subject-language, and time means that Celan’s letters cannot be reduced to biographical or private matters alone. Instead, they reveal a sustained engagement with truth and universality — one that insists on the potential for transformation through language and enunciation. I will focus on six aspect of this in my example:

“Ich denke an Dich, Nelly, immer, wir denken, immer, an Dich und an das durch Dich Lebendige! Weißt Du noch, wie, als wir ein zweites Mal von Gott sprachen in unserm Haus, das das Deine, das Dich erwartende ist, der goldene Schimmer auf der Wand stand? Von Dir, von Deiner Nähe her wird solches sichtbar, es bedarf Deiner, bedarf, auch im Auftrag derer, denen Du Dich so nah weißt und denkst, Deines Hier- und Unter-den-Menschen-Seins, es bedarf Deiner noch lange, es sucht Deinen Blick –: schick ihn, diesen Blick, wieder ins Offene, gib ihm Deine wahren, Deine befreienden Worte mit, vertrau Dich ihm an, vertrau uns, Deine Mit- und Mit-Dir-Lebenden diesem Blick an, laß uns, die schon Freien, die Allerfreiesten sein, die Mit-Dir-im-Licht-Stehenden! Schau, Nelly: Das Netz wird fortgezogen! Schau, Nelly: da ist die Hand Gudruns, sie hat geholfen, sie hilft! Schau, es helfen noch andere Hände! Schau: die Deine hilft mit! Schau: Es wird hell, Du atmest, Du atmest frei! Du bleibst uns, ich weiß, Du bleibst uns, wir wissens, Du bist, mit allem Dir Nahen, auch mit allem Dir von so weit her Nahen, da und hier und bei Dir und bei uns! Dein dankbarer, Dein Dir aus tiefstem Herzen dankbarer Paul.”

1. The Emphasis on “You” (Du) and the Singular

Celan’s persistent focus on you (Du) in this passage is a way of emphasizing singularity — a personal and intimate form of address that resists generalization. However, this singularity is not isolating; rather, it opens onto something larger, something that extends beyond the immediate relationship between Celan and Sachs.

“Dein Da- und Bei-Dir- und Bei-Dir-im-Freien-Sein” — This layered phrasing turns Nelly’s presence into a spatial, almost ontological marker. By emphasizing “being there” (Da-sein) and “being with you” (Bei-Dir-Sein), Celan invokes a form of presence that extends through space and time. The repetition of “bei” (with) gestures toward a subject-language — a way of speaking that centers around a singular presence while still allowing something universal to emerge.

The emphasis on “you” insists on a unique, non-interchangeable subjectivity. Yet this “you” is not locked in solipsism. Instead, Celan connects the singular to a broader, communal dimension:

“Dein Da- und Bei-Dir- und Bei-Dir-im-Freien-Sein, nimm es, bitte, laß es da sein, durch dieses Heute-und-Morgen-und-lange-zu-Dir-Können!”

Here, Celan’s use of time-related terms — Heute, Morgen, lange — introduces a temporal horizon that links the singular “you” to an enduring presence. This is not just a fleeting moment of intimacy but a sustained and unfolding relation. The “you” becomes the site of potentiality — a position that remains open to future encounters and change.

2. Evental Time and the “Rupture” in the Present

Celan’s reference to time in phrases like “durch dieses Heute-und-Morgen” evokes his understanding of evental time. As with the earlier letter where Celan claimed the year begins “regardless of the calendar,” time here does not follow a stable, linear progression. Rather, it is shaped by moments of rupture — events that redefine the flow of past, present, and future.

The phrase “nimm es, bitte, laß es da sein” (take it, please, let it be there) underscores this open-ended temporality. The “you” is not merely an object in time; it participates in shaping a form of time that is still unfolding — a time that keeps the possibility of transformation alive.

3. The Universal Dimension of the “You”

While Celan’s address emphasizes the deeply personal, this “you” is not enclosed within the limits of subjective experience. Celan insists that Nelly’s presence extends outward to others:

“Von Dir, von Deiner Nähe her wird solches sichtbar, es bedarf Deiner…”

Here, Celan links the singular “you” to a broader field of visibility and recognition — a public dimension that moves beyond the intimate. Nelly’s presence becomes a condition for revelation, for what can become visible in the world. This is not the visibility of verifiable knowledge but something that emerges from the presence of a subject who carries within themselves a form of truth.

The universality of this presence is reinforced by Celan’s repeated invocation of “Menschen” (human beings) in earlier letters. Just as “Menschen” functions as an undefined and open term in Celan’s work, here the “you” remains similarly indeterminate — pointing not toward identity in a fixed sense, but to a position that disrupts the settled structure of public and social meaning.

4. The Role of Language as Mediation

Celan’s insistence that Nelly must send her “words” back “ins Offene” (into the open) reflects his commitment to language as a site of truth. This openness is crucial — Celan repeatedly avoids closure in favor of potentiality. The open, undefined quality of the “you,” combined with Celan’s call for Nelly to entrust her words to this openness, shows how language itself participates in truth.

This idea resonates with Badiou’s notion of truth as a rupture — not something grounded in established meaning, but something that emerges through the persistence of fidelity to what remains unsettled and undefined.

5. Transformation and Survival Beyond Victimhood

Celan’s reference to “die schon Freien, die Allerfreiesten” (the already free, the freest of all) points to a crucial shift. Celan does not construct Nelly’s role as that of a passive victim or even survivor. Rather, he calls upon her to affirm a position of transformative agency — a position that insists on freedom and possibility even in the face of suffering.

The image of the “net being drawn away” evokes liberation — not from trauma as such, but also from the confinement of a fixed identity as either victim or witness. Celan refuses to reduce the post-Holocaust subject to a static category. Instead, the “you” becomes a site of active engagement with language, experience, and potentiality.

6. The Hands and the Communal Gesture

Celan’s repeated invocation of hands — “die Hand Gudruns,” “noch andere Hände,” “die Deine” — functions in a similar way to his earlier use of “Menschen.” Hands suggest action, gesture, and solidarity — but their meaning is left open. Celan’s point is that no single “hand” is sufficient; the shared gesture of multiple hands working together emphasizes a communal striving — one that resists closure or completion.

Part Conclusion: The “You” as an Open Structure

The final passage — “Du bleibst uns, ich weiß, Du bleibst uns… bei Dir und bei uns!” — underscores the paradox of the “you.” Celan affirms Nelly’s singularity, yet insists that this singularity is also collective. The repeated emphasis on presence — “bei Dir”, “bei uns” — emphasizes a language that resists reduction. The “you” does not signify a stable identity but remains a point of possibility — a presence that unsettles fixed meaning and keeps language, truth, and time open.

In this sense, Celan’s “you” becomes the condition for a universal that is not abstract or totalizing, but grounded in the singular, the fragile, and the unsettled. The “you” marks the site where language becomes an act of resistance — an insistence on truth not as something verified, but as something that ruptures the established order and insists on the possibility of transformation.

Summary and Broader Context

What we have explored so far in Celan’s letter to Sachs is an intricate layering of subjectivity, temporality, and language that resists easy categorization. The frequent use of “du” in the letter, far from being a simple personal address, is a marker of both singularity and universality. It keeps open the potential for transformation, a rupture that challenges conventional forms of time, identity, and language. This is not about victimization or mere survival, but about possibility — a possibility that refuses to be enclosed within preordained structures of meaning or experience.

The emphasis on “you” in Celan’s letters invites us into a space that is simultaneously personal and communal. The “you” is not just a singular, intimate address; it stands as a site of potentiality — a point from which new possibilities can emerge. Celan calls upon Sachs to inhabit this space, to allow her words, her presence, her gaze, to be sent into the open. This is an invitation to a dynamic engagement with the world — one that challenges the victim/survivor binary and instead positions both Celan and Sachs as subjects who actively create meaning through their language.

This brings us to the question of the letter itself, which functions as a crucial container for the unfolding of this truth. The letter, in Celan’s poetics, is not just a communication between two individuals but a medium for transmitting something larger — a site where the singular and the universal intersect. Unlike technological or mechanical modes of communication, which often reduce language to instrumental exchanges, the letter as a container is imbued with presence and possibility. It is something you hold in your hands, something that cannot be reduced to a mere object or tool, but is instead a space for real engagement, a place where the subject can inscribe a truth.

In contrast, Celan is also deeply critical of technological machinery and its role in shaping contemporary communication. In his works, technology is often seen as a force that subordinates language to functional, instrumental ends, stripping it of its potential for rupture and transformation. The letter stands in opposition to this mechanized exchange; it is slower, more personal, more capacious. It preserves the openness of language, allowing it to function not as a tool for delivering information, but as a space for generating new meanings, new possibilities, and new forms of engagement. A particular use is that of a word that develops during the Briefwechsel, or that has special significance for Celan and the other person. This becomes something like a ‘token’, something that is like a special passage between the two.[2]

Thus, the possibility that Celan speaks of in the letter is not the passive possibility of mere survival, nor is it the defeatist possibility of victimhood. It is a possibility that emerges through language, through the act of address, and through the embrace of the letter itself as a medium that holds and transmits truth. In this sense, the letter is not just a historical artifact or a biographical document, but a dynamic, living space where language and truth continue to unfold.

Toward a Tactile Universal: Celan’s Orphans and the Ritual of Affirmation

In much of the scholarship on Paul Celan’s later poetry, emphasis is placed on themes of spectrality, catastrophe, and linguistic ruin. Celan’s poetics is frequently read through the absence of the Other, the breakdown of signification, and the haunted residue of the Shoah. Yet in the poem that begins “Die Ewigkeiten führten / ihm ins Gesicht und drüber hinaus,” we find a different mood, a distinct quality of touch, rhythm, and life. This short lyric offers not merely a meditation on loss but — contrary to the dominant emphasis on negativity — what might be called a ritual of affirmation, even a subjective fidelity to something enduring. Rather than trauma and disintegration, we encounter tactility, rhythm, and the quiet forming of a truth. Celan is unsettling the postholocaust “knowledge” about Holocaust as a given situation.

The poem opens with an image of “eternities” leading into the face and beyond. The enjambment here immediately signals something soft and decelerated. The phrase is stretched gently across the line break, as though what enters the face — eternity — is too expansive to be named in one breath. The rhythm resists closure. Eternity is not a violent or sudden intrusion, but a caress, something that “leads” or “guides” into the face and then beyond. It is tactile, not metaphysical. The poem moves with care, line by line, and this slowed pacing, this enjambed unfolding, becomes essential to its meaning.

A few lines later, a fire is described as slowly extinguishing all that is “Gekerzte.” This word evokes both candles (Kerzen) and carved marks, perhaps inscriptions or ritual signs. There is a paradox here: the fire does not consume destructively but gently erases or washes away what is marked. It performs a cleansing, a purification. What is extinguished is not presence but the remnants of mourning or ritualistic rigidity that might otherwise trap the subject in spectral repetition.

Then comes the image of a green, “not from here,” surrounding the chin of a stone. This green is not of this world, yet it is intimately close, wrapping itself around the lower part of a face — perhaps the face of a gravestone, or even a dead god. The verb “umflaumen” suggests something soft, downy, like feathers or new leaves — protective, enveloping. The tactile contact between this life (“Grün”) and the stone (death, permanence) avoids harsh contrast. Instead, it affirms a co-presence: life can emerge within the site of death. The poem does not dwell in negation but rather marks the possibility of an affirmation arising within finitude.

The poem concludes with the orphans, the “Waisen,” burying and re-burying this stone. This repetition is not neurotic or compulsive. Rather, it is a sustained fidelity. The gesture is repeated, not because it is futile, but because it is meaningful. In doing so, the orphans become subjects to a truth, in the sense articulated by Alain Badiou: not by asserting identity or knowledge, but by repeating a faithful act born from an encounter with the eternal. The homophonic echo between Waisen (orphans) and Weisen (sages) intensifies this reading. These orphans, though seemingly marked by lack and exclusion, are in fact the bearers of wisdom — not a transmitted or inherited wisdom, but one gained through fidelity to a practice. They do not speak; they act. They bury and re-bury — not to conceal but to protect, to hold open the space for the green “not from here” to return. In Celan’s case, we might also read this as the “orphan” making a grave not to the victims in general, but to his own mother in particular, a theme that comes up again and again in his poetry (see Rasmussen).

The poem’s rhythmic structure reinforces this affirmative gesture. Unlike the sharp caesurae and stress-heavy constructions common in Celan’s earlier work, this poem begins most of its lines without hard stress. The resulting rhythm is not urgent or violent but gentle. Each line arrives softly, carrying forward the previous one without rupture. This rhythm, soft and breathing, becomes a mode of care, sheltering both the gesture of the orphans and the eternal presence that touched the face. The poem thus embodies a tactile poetics — not simply thematically but formally, through pacing, line breaks, and sound.

The opening word, Ewigkeiten, is striking in itself. It is not the singular Ewigkeit, which might suggest a unified, metaphysical absolute, but the plural: eternities. This immediately destabilizes any monolithic or theological notion of the eternal. Instead of one transcendent realm, the poem begins with a plurality of eternities — a dispersion of the infinite into multiple traces, each with its own temporality, its own vector. These Ewigkeiten are not spatially or ontologically centralized — they move, they “lead into the face and beyond.” They arrive as a touch, a guiding presence — not as final revelation.

In everyday German, Ewigkeiten is also used idiomatically to describe a long and often boring duration — Es hat Ewigkeiten gedauert — connoting something like endless waiting, tedium, even Langeweile. Celan may be echoing this idiom, but he transforms it entirely. The poem does not present Ewigkeiten as dull extension but as rhythmic visitation, as something arriving and marking the face. He reclaims what is commonly a flattened, empty time into something evental, affective, and intimate.

This plural eternity bears striking resemblance to the Waisen. Both are plural but singular: scattered, unmoored, yet marked by a kind of intimate sovereignty. Just as each orphan is an individual without lineage, each eternity seems to touch a singular face, not as a representative of a metaphysical order, but as a fragmented, particularized eternity. These Ewigkeiten are not a background or theological absolute; they are the event to which the orphans respond — not with doctrine, but with a ritual of care and repetition. Each burial is not the same. Each eternal is not the same. And yet, in their rhythm, a truth is composed.

In Badiouian terms, the orphans can be seen as subjects to an event: the event being the contact with something eternal, which did not offer knowledge but imposed a task — a fidelity. The orphan does not emerge as a melancholic remainder but as a new figure of universality, not grounded in identity but in repetition of an act. That act is the burial, again and again — not to forget but to remember differently. In this sense, the poem names a truth-procedure: a trajectory that begins with the touch of the eternal and proceeds through careful repetition, forming a subject who is not defined by trauma but by responsiveness.

Where much Celan interpretation emphasizes absence, here we are offered contact — not fullness, but the minimal event of something touching, something that leads into the face and beyond. It is enough to start a sequence, to found a subject.

Digging as Clearing: Negation, Miracle, and the Ring

In “Es war Erde in ihnen, und sie gruben,” Celan returns to one of his central images: the act of digging. But unlike the horrifying abstraction of “Todesfuge”, where digging becomes the annihilating labor of those marked for death — “ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng” — this poem reclaims the gesture. Digging is no longer a terminal inscription into air and erasure, but a persistent, grounded, tactile movement, a ritual of clearing.

The poem reads:

Es war Erde in ihnen, und sie gruben.

Sie gruben und gruben, so ging ihr Tag dahin, ihre Nacht. Und sie lobten nicht Gott, der, so hörten sie, alles dies wollte, der, so hörten sie, alles dies wußte.

Sie gruben und hörten nichts mehr; sie wurden nicht weise, erfanden kein Lied, erdachten sich keinerlei Sprache. Sie gruben.

Es kam eine Stille, es kam auch ein Sturm, es kamen die Meere alle. Ich grabe, du gräbst, und es gräbt auch der Wurm, und das Singende dort sagt: Sie gruben.

O einer, o keiner, o niemand, o du: Wohin gings, da’s nirgendhin ging? O du gräbst und ich grab, und ich grab mich dir zu, und am Finger erwacht uns der Ring.

At first glance, the repeated phrase sie gruben seems to enact monotony, even futility. They dig and dig, day and night, but hear nothing. They are not praised, they are not made wise, they do not invent song, and they create no language. All the usual gestures of meaning-making — wisdom, worship, music, speech — are denied. But these negations are not nihilistic. Rather, they mark a refusal of premature consolation. In the place of inherited forms of sense, the poem performs a clearing — a ritual silence, an abstention from closure. Esther Cameron writes about Celan’s eyes and being as “eine troglodytische Kraft” (Cameron, 340).

Celan’s use of the verb graben is rhythmic, incantatory. It repeats, returns, insists — not compulsively, but faithfully. The diggers do not abandon their labor. Even when “sie hörten nichts mehr,” they persist. This fidelity is not anchored in hope for a result but in a commitment to the act itself. Digging becomes a way of being-with the earth — of staying close to what is material, without illusion, but also without despair.[3]

And then, something shifts. The voice becomes personal: “Ich grabe, du gräbst, und es gräbt auch der Wurm.” Suddenly, there is a you, a worm, a singing. The sterile plural of “they” breaks into a relational grammar: I, you, we. The worm digs too — it is both a sign of decay and of continuity. And “das Singende dort sagt: Sie gruben.” There is no new song, but there is a citation of song, a quiet echo of poetic voice. Not creation ex nihilo, but transmission through the very act that seemed mute.

The final stanza is both intimate and metaphysical:

O einer, o keiner, o niemand, o du: Wohin gings, da’s nirgendhin ging? O du gräbst und ich grab, und ich grab mich dir zu, und am Finger erwacht uns der Ring.

Here, Celan calls out across multiple modes of address: one, none, no one, you. These are not stable identities — they are fragments of address, appeals in the dark. The line “wohin gings, da’s nirgendhin ging?” names the impasse: where did it go, when it went nowhere? But the poem does not end in that impasse. Instead, it turns toward encounter: “ich grab mich dir zu” — I dig myself toward you. It is not about reaching a destination, but about moving toward, forming a path through repeated, shared gestures.

And then: “am Finger erwacht uns der Ring.” The ring awakens, not as a product of the digging, but as something found — miraculously, quietly. It does not close the poem but opens it. The ring does not symbolize resolution or return, but relation. It is tactile, personal, intimate: on the finger — perhaps the wedding finger, perhaps the hand of the dead. Yet it awakens, and it awakens “uns.” A pronoun appears: we are here, even if only briefly. This final image transforms the repetition and negation of the earlier stanzas into something affirmative: the digging has not led nowhere. It has created the conditions for the emergence of something to hold on to — not a totality, but a symbol of unity, a bond, a sign of the possible.

In this way, “Es war Erde in ihnen, und sie gruben” is not a poem of death but of fidelity. The negations are not the end, but the clearing that allows something — unexpected, fragile — to appear. The ring, like the philosopher’s stone, is not forged by mastery, but found through patient, shared movement through earth and silence. The poem stages a miracle — not as spectacle, but as residue, as awakening. What begins as absence becomes a form.

The ring at the end of “Es war Erde in ihnen, und sie gruben” does not close the poem like a sealed circuit. Rather, it marks the emergence of something to hold on to, a token of unity or intimacy found not despite negation, but through it. This is not a redemption but a miracle, not transcendence but contact — a ring that awakens on the body, am Finger, as if poetry itself has risen to touch the reader.

This image does not remain isolated. When Celan later takes up the verb begruben — as in “den die Waisen begruben und wieder begruben” — it resonates with the earlier act of digging. But now, digging has become burial, and burial becomes ritual. The repetitive, aimless gesture has transformed into a quiet act of care, a sheltering of what cannot be fully named. The Waisen, in their re-burial, echo the diggers not thematically, but poetologically: their gesture enacts fidelity, protection, and relation.

What connects these two poems — indeed, what connects much of Celan’s work — is not primarily theme or symbol. It is sound. The Graben, the Begraben, the Ring that erwacht — these words do not simply carry meaning; they touch. The connection between the poems is tactile in the ear, resonant in the voice. It is not paraphrasable. It cannot be explained in conceptual terms, because it is in the rhythm, in the pressure of the consonants, in the way language moves across silence. This sonic thread is not decorative — it is ontological. It is the way Celan’s poems hold together even across great distances of time, theme, or voice.

And yet this intra-poetic resonance does not mean the poems are sealed off from the world. On the contrary, it is precisely through this sonic density, this tactile musicality, that the poem remains wirklichkeitsuchend — seeking reality. Not by reflecting it or translating it, but by participating in it. Celan’s poetry is not about the world, but part of the world — a kind of pressure in it, a movement within its language. The poem does not depict the real; it presses against it, digs into it, holds it.

This is why the return of a verb like begraben carries weight across the work. It is not a motif — it is a pulse, a sonic echo of previous gestures. And in this echo lies a fragile kind of continuity: not logic, not theology, not narrative, but a felt memory in the poem’s body, in the Klang, that makes each poem not an island but part of a terrain — a place both of shelter and of exposure, a Heim for what has no home.

Digging Toward the Possible: Negation, Sound, and Poetic Fidelity in Celan’s “Es war Erde in ihnen”

The closing image of the Waisen poem — “den die Waisen begruben und wieder begruben” — marks a shift in Celan’s poetics. The act of burial, repeated and tender, is not only mournful but protective. The orphans (Waisen) are not merely figures of lack, but subjects to a truth procedure, in Badiou’s sense: not by possessing knowledge, but by repeating a gesture, burying and re-burying, not to forget but to guard what cannot be said. The repetition is not futile but ritualized, performed with care. The burial becomes a way of holding open the possibility of a fragile appearance — like the green that is “not from here,” a trace of the eternal that brushes the mortal world.

There are thus both the “theme”, the narrative even within the poem (what the waisen do), but there is also the poem as a linguistic event, what Badiou calls the “poem as event” (in relation to Mallarmé).

What connects this poem to Celan’s earlier work is not primarily thematic, but acoustic. The recurrence of begraben reaches back to one of Celan’s most haunting and spare poems: “Es war Erde in ihnen, und sie gruben.” The link is not conceptual, but sonic, tactile, and rhythmic — a kind of material memory within language. This resonance cannot be paraphrased; it lives within the poem, in the pressure of consonants and the silence between lines. And yet, this resonance is not hermetic. It is precisely this formal, sonic density that makes Celan’s poetry wirklichkeitsuchend — not merely representing reality, but part of it, pressing against it with language’s full corporeal weight. It is part of Celan’s ‘subject-language’ to precisely develop such a language of tactility.

The poem reads:

Es war Erde in ihnen, und sie gruben.

Sie gruben und gruben, so ging ihr Tag dahin, ihre Nacht. Und sie lobten nicht Gott, der, so hörten sie, alles dies wollte, der, so hörten sie, alles dies wußte.

Sie gruben und hörten nichts mehr; sie wurden nicht weise, erfanden kein Lied, erdachten sich keinerlei Sprache. Sie gruben.

Es kam eine Stille, es kam auch ein Sturm, es kamen die Meere alle. Ich grabe, du gräbst, und es gräbt auch der Wurm, und das Singende dort sagt: Sie gruben.

O einer, o keiner, o niemand, o du: Wohin gings, da’s nirgendhin ging? O du gräbst und ich grab, und ich grab mich dir zu, und am Finger erwacht uns der Ring.

At first glance, the poem appears steeped in monotony and negation. The diggers dig, and nothing comes of it. They do not grow wise, do not invent song, do not form language. They “graben und hören nichts mehr.” But this repetition is not despairing. It is faithful. The digging is not conditioned by hope or result. It becomes a gesture emptied of expectation, but not of meaning. These negations do not foreclose significance — they clear a space. They refuse premature symbolism or theology (“sie lobten nicht Gott”) in order to make room for something else: for what might arise only after the clearing.

The poem’s form accentuates this. In contrast to the later poem with the Waisen, where enjambment slowed the movement and gave the lines a protective, rhythmic quality, “Es war Erde in ihnen” is marked by a notable lack of enjambment. Lines often end with a full stop or a clear pause. This gives a punctuated, sculptural quality to each clause. The line “Sie gruben.” returns like a blow, insistent and discrete. It is not flowing — it is cut, like the earth itself. This lack of syntactic overflow isolates and emphasizes the act of digging, reinforcing that this act, however minimal, is not empty. It is marked, meaningful, and productive.

Moreover, the frequent use of the conjunction “und” plays a crucial role[4]. It connects without subordinating. “Sie gruben und gruben,” “und sie lobten nicht,” “und ich grab mich dir zu” — each und resists causal logic or hierarchy. Instead, it introduces a continuation — a movement of persistence, of adding one gesture to another. The poem’s und is a quiet affirmation of life’s forward motion, even in the absence of clarity. It insists that digging continues, language continues, relation continues — even if without revelation.

A crucial shift occurs in the middle of the poem: the anonymous “sie” becomes “ich” and “du.” The dig becomes intimate. “Ich grabe, du gräbst” — and even “der Wurm” digs. Suddenly, we are not in abstraction but in a shared gesture. A minimal community forms around the act itself, not its outcome. Even the worm, as figure of decay and transformation, participates. The shift in voice is not sentimental, but radical: the poem finds, in repetition, not alienation but contact.

The final stanza culminates this shift:

O einer, o keiner, o niemand, o du: Wohin gings, da’s nirgendhin ging? O du gräbst und ich grab, und ich grab mich dir zu, und am Finger erwacht uns der Ring.

The addresses — einer, keiner, niemand, du — move from universal abstraction to singular intimacy. The “you” is unstable, flickering between absence and presence, but the voice reaches toward it nonetheless. “Ich grab mich dir zu” — I dig myself toward you. It is not arrival, but movement, that matters. And then: “am Finger erwacht uns der Ring.” The ring awakens. It is not placed, not worn — it stirs into being. This is not closure, but miraculous emergence. The ring, traditionally a symbol of union or commitment, here signifies not a contract but a contact, a touch that arises from the very soil of repetition.

The ring is tactile. It appears on the body. It does not transcend the digging — it arises from it, like a miraculous “find” rather than a predetermined goal. It signals not completion, but the possibility that something remains, that the real can be touched, if only for a moment, through rhythm, through effort, through persistence.

This poem and the later Waisen poem are thus joined not only by vocabulary (graben / begraben), but by a shared poetics: repetition as fidelity, negation as clearing, rhythm as care. What connects them is not thematic closure, but the sound of language itself. The tactile consonants, the pressure of g and r, the slow unfolding of syntax — these are the material elements that link Celan’s poems across time. Their connection cannot be paraphrased. It is in the ear, in the mouth, in the hand that writes and the hand that is touched.

And yet, this does not make Celan’s poetry sealed off or private. On the contrary, it is precisely through this material density that the poem remains wirklichkeitsuchend — seeking reality not as representation, but as contact. The poem is not about the world, but part of it, pressing against its limits, digging toward its hidden potentials. The poem holds within it not only memory and mourning, but the possibility of a ring: a trace of relation, of miracle, of form — found in the act of digging.

Zum Storchen

Zürich, Zum Storchen

Für Nelly Sachs

Vom Zuviel war die Rede, vom Zuwenig. Von Du und Aber-Du, von der Trübung durch Helles, von Jüdischem, von deinem Gott.

Da- von. Am Tag einer Himmelfahrt, das Münster stand drüben, es kam mit einigem Gold über Wasser.

Von deinem Gott war die Rede, ich sprach gegen ihn, ich ließ das Herz, das ich hatte hoffen: auf sein höchstes, umröcheltes, sein haderndes Wort –

Dein Aug sah mir zu, sah hinweg dein Mund sprach sich dem Aug zu, ich hörte:

Wir Wissen ja nicht, weisst du, wir wissen ja nicht, was gilt. (GW, 214–215).

We can approach the “you” between Celan and Sachs from another angle — namely, through Celan’s poem Zürich, Zum Storchen. Unlike many of his other poems, this one contains a direct and unambiguous reference to a real place and dedication to real person (Nelly Sachs). But what happens to the “you” in this poem?

First a bit of background (following Sparr). It was first published: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, №2646, August 7, 1960, and then Reprinted in: Nelly Sachs zu Ehren. Frankfurt am Main 1961, p. 32. The manuscript consists of five handwritten pages, including one with Celan’s note: “First draft / Paris, May 30, 1960.”. A second version written on the same date, and a typewritten version of the poem which was supplemented by hand.

Celan met with Nelly Sachs in Zürich on May 26, 1960, Ascension Day. Nelly Sachs was on her way to receive the Annette von Droste-Hülshoff Prize in Meersburg on Lake Constance. She flew from Stockholm to Zürich, where Celan, together with his wife Gisèle and their son Eric, welcomed her at the Kloten airport. At the Hotel “Zum Storchen” in Zürich, they had an intense conversation. Upon returning to Paris, Celan composed a poem on the day of the award ceremony in Meersburg, a poem that refers to his conversation with Nelly Sachs, to her receiving the prize, and to the Jewish religion. Also present in this poetic conversation is a third figure: Margarete Susman, who lived in Zürich at the time, and her book The Book of Job and the Fate of the Jewish People.

Let us first recall that demonstrative pronouns belong to what linguists call “deixis.” It is often assumed that deixis creates presence, anchoring the utterance to the here and now. But as Émile Benveniste reminds us, in Problems in General Linguistic, deixis is not a gesture toward something existing outside language — it is an instance of discourse, referring only to the moment of enunciation. For Benveniste, deixis refers to the linguistic function by which certain words (like I, you, here, now, this) derive their meaning only from the situation of the speaker — from the instance of discourse (l’instance de discours).

These terms do not refer to fixed entities but instead point to positions within the act of enunciation. Their meaning is context-dependent and exists only within the event of speaking.

“Each instance of use of a noun is referred to a fixed and “objective” notion, capable of remaining potential or of being actualized in a particular object and always identical to the mental image it awakens. But the instances of the use of I do not constitute a class of reference since there is no “object” definable to which these instances can refer in an identical fashio. Each I has its own reference and corresponds each time to a unique being who is set up as such.” (218).

In other words, deixis does not point to a presence beyond the poem, but exists only within the act of speaking: “I can only be identified by the instance of the discourse that contains it and by that alone.” (218).

Already in the opening lines, we are disoriented. There is talk of zuviel and zuwenig — too much, too little — but of what? The poem immediately plays with deixis: to understand what is too much or too little, we would have to have been there. And yet, the “now,” the presence we would need in order to understand what these terms refer to, is evoked only within the poem itself. In contrast to the view that this leads to a more intensified phenomenological “presence” (as claimed by Ricour a.o.), we must remember that this presence is solely evoked by language. Perception is itself not without language and difference, although the perception itself might be the perceived is not. Hence Ricours mistake is to accept that there is some pure perception. Language instead only evokes this. (for a good discussion see Rasmussen).

The speaker then shifts from “I” to “you” — but not just any “you”: the aber-du. Who is this “you”? We might assume it is Nelly Sachs, since the poem is dedicated to her. But is it Sachs herself, or a poetic “Sachs” — a figure within the poem? The phrase aber-du does not reject the “you” but complicates it; it introduces a disjunctive force that, in a sense, invents a new demonstrative function. The “you” becomes thematized, not simply as address but as a problem of reference, a gesture that points and simultaneously recedes.

In this way, the “you” becomes linked to the phrase Trübung durch Helles — clouding through brightness. If the “you” is what signifies presence, clarity, illumination, then the poem immediately folds that presence into opacity. It is not that brightness dispels the clouding, but that brightness itself contains the clouded. The moment of deixis, then, does not stabilize meaning but marks a split — what Adorno might call pure mimesis, where language shows itself in its estrangement. It is in this rupture that the “you” appears — as uncanny, as sudden, as linguistic event.

The word Jüdischem (“Jewish”) furthers this ambiguity. What does “Jewish” mean here? The poem does not say. It introduces a term that appears grounded but remains undefined. It gestures toward identity, tradition, or lineage, yet without fixing any of them. This indeterminacy includes the possibility of dissent or division — since the “God” in question is not God as such, but your God (deinem Gott). This signals a kind of rift: this is not a universal God (das Allgemeine), but one reserved within the frame of the poem for the “you.” In this sense, even God becomes a deictic figure — a manifestation of difference rather than shared presence.

Thus, deixis in Zürich, Zum Storchen does not stabilize reference but reveals its fracture. The “you” is not a clear addressee but the site where presence and estrangement collide.

In the next stanza, we encounter yet another deictic gesture: Da–. The dash suspends the utterance, suggesting a spatial or temporal location — Da as in Dasein, the “there-being” of existential presence. But this gesture toward location is immediately deferred in the very next line: Da– / von. Rather than anchoring us in a place, the deixis folds back into the previous stanza, repeating and dispersing orientation rather than grounding it. What initially appears as a temporal and spatial marker is transformed into a verbal hinge, a cut without stable reference.

The poem recalls the day of the Ascension, the occasion on which Celan and Sachs met in reality. Yet instead of referring directly to Christi Himmelfahrt, Celan writes einer Himmelfahrt — not the Ascension, but an ascension. This softens the historical-religious specificity, moving the reference away from a Christian frame and rendering it more layered, more open to multiple readings. The concrete event gives way to something symbolically suspended.

We then find another reference to a real place: das Münster. But this reality too becomes estranged, refracted through the image of gold over water: es kam / mit einigem Gold übers Wasser. This could easily evoke sunlight reflected on the river’s surface — an image of beauty, yes, but also of transience and irreducibility. Celan often pairs gold and water: where water suggests the fluid, the inchoate, gold appears as what is gathered, einig — one, unified. The phrase einigem Gold carries a double resonance: not only “some gold,” but also the possibility of unity (Einigung) — in contrast to the dissensus evoked earlier through deinem Gott, the “God of yours,” which already marked a divide.

The third stanza circles back to this deinem Gott, taking it up again with a new urgency. The enjambment leading into gegen ihn isolates and emphasizes the phrase, as though the very ability to speak against has become crucial. Gegen ihn — “against him” — falls in the center of the poem, both formally and thematically marking a rupture. It names a break: not just between speaker and God, but perhaps between “I” and “you,” or between one who speaks and one who remains in the orbit of a personal, reserved God.

This God is not shared, not general (das Allgemeine), but claimed as private, belonging only to the you. The exclusion involved in deinem Gott may allude to Celan’s unease with a conception of God as the God of the “chosen people” — a God who, in being particular, risks cutting off the person right in front of you. The dissent at stake here is not primarily political but existential: it concerns the capacity to live, to speak, to become a singular person in Celan’s sense.

This is why the poem shifts from confrontation with God to the question of hope. The speaker ließ das Herz, das ich hatte — “I left the heart I had.” The past tense suggests the heart is not a stable possession but something that might be lost or transformed. The following line — hoffen: — occupies its own verse, set apart. Hope becomes a free-floating act, untethered to a specific person or religious framework. In contrast to deinem Gott, hope does not belong to anyone; it is not grounded in covenant or tradition. It is universal in the strongest sense: a movement without anchor.

Yet this hope gathers force. After the suspended lines and enjambments of the earlier stanzas, the rhythm shifts. Verse 17 builds momentum: sein höchstes, umröcheltes, the alliteration and assonance accelerating the language. “Sein” opens up a variety of meanings, since it can both refer to “heart”, but also to “God” (precisely the two that cannot be reconciled, that are the unreconciliable in the poem). Sein (which is of course also being, when not a possessive pronoun is therefore not a synthesis or common frame, but rather the word of fissure, what is “sein” is precisely uncertain. And then: sein haderndes Wort — his quarreling word. The emphasis falls heavily on haderndes — not simply complaint, but contention, perhaps even Job-like protest. Yet Job quarrels with God and his lack of a sign of his justice (why does he do it), whereas for Celan’s poem, the hadernes refer to the lines before (perhaps for the hope). To be quarrelling then, is to be insistent on hope — making dissent and incalculability itself into a form of hope. The quarrel is not just with suffering, but with the entire interpretative apparatus that would make God’s ways legible. The “dissent,” then, may lie precisely in resisting any theological closure, any hermeneutics that would soften the fracture.

This fracture carries into the following stanza, where the eyes fail to meet. If we look for a real-world echo, we might consider Nelly Sachs’s speech at the Annette-Von-Droste-Hülshoff-Presie Prize ceremony. In her address, Sachs spoke words that the final stanza of Celan’s poem seems to respond to. (to be continued)

When Celan writes einer Himmelfahrt, he deliberately avoids a definite article. This indefinite form — “an ascension” — opens the possibility that such an event might be accessible to anyone. As he writes in his letter to Sachs, time should not be measured by the calendar but should begin anew, grounded in the singularity of a person. This logic of singular time — of lived, irreducible experience — echoes throughout Zürich, Zum Storchen. And in the poem’s final stanza, we glimpse the possibility of reconciliation: for the first time, a wir (“we”) appears. But this we is not grounded in shared belief, substance, or certainty. Rather, it emerges precisely in the face of uncertainty, in not knowing what counts — was gilt. Geltung has a wide variety of meanings, “to be valid,” “to count,” “to be considered,” “to apply,”

The phrase “Geltung ohne Bedeutung” appears in Gershom Scholem’s letter to Walter Benjamin, dated September 20, 1934.

In this letter, Scholem reflects on Kafka’s world as one in which the structures of law, command, and order still exist, but no longer carry any discernible meaning — they are valid (Geltung) without significance (Bedeutung). It is a world of nothingness of revelation, or revelation as nothing (Nichts der Offenbarung):

“a state in which revelation appears to be without meaning, in which it still asserts itself, in which it has validity but no significance [in dem sie gilt, aber nicht bedeutet], a revelation, “reduced to the zero point of its own content, so to speak.” (after Agamben, Homo Sacer, 50–51).

This becomes his striking characterization of Kafka’s universe. (Gershom Scholem, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, ed. G. Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Gary Smith and Andre Lefevere (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 142.).

Celan seems to echo this here. Something counts, but we don’t know what. This describes a condition where norms or forms remain in place, but the deeper grounding or significance behind them has vanished. It’s a concept with strong implications for post-theological or post-metaphysical thought.

In Celan’s poem, the final word gilt (3rd person singular of gelten) quietly invokes this terrain — something “counts,” something is “in effect,” but what exactly remains unknown.

The poem does not say that nothing counts, but rather that we don’t know what does. This lack of knowledge, this shared unknowing, may be what makes the wir possible. It is for a reading of deixis very important that Celan in the first drafts of manuscript let the “wir” in quotation marks (thereby indicating more referentiality) (see Sparr). By removing the quotation marks the “wir” becomes not a reference outside the poem, but much more a happening within the poem, as such on the same “level” as the du in the stanzas before.

Not a theological or political community, but one grounded in uncertainty, in the absence of revelation rather than its presence. And this uncertainty is no longer tied to God, who is absent from the final stanza. The focus shifts instead to the relation between you and we — or even to the function of poetry itself.

This is underscored by the stanza’s subtle linguistic play. The formal verb wissen (“to know”) dissolves into the colloquial weißt du — a shift from epistemological claim to phatic gesture, as Roman Jakobson would describe it. In Roman Jakobson’s theory, the phatic function of language is not meant to transmit information but to establish or maintain the communicative link between speaker and listener.

The phrase “weißt du” (“you know?”) often serves this phatic function. Here, “weißt du” is not an actual question seeking knowledge, but a colloquial gesture of connection — a way to keep the conversation open, to engage the listener, or to signal shared attention. It is not about knowledge, but about speaking with someone (or Mitsprechen as Celan might put it), the dialogical function of the poem.

The phrase weißt du here is not an inquiry into hidden truths but a way of speaking, a mode of keeping communication open. It is intimate, almost habitual: “you know?” not as question but as contact. The line Wir wissen ja nicht, weißt du thus contains both the fracture and the gesture that tries to cross it. The ja is ambiguous too: it is colloquial, yet also a form of affirmation. It belongs to parole, not to langue — to speech, not system.

The poem’s final word, gilt, reverberates with earlier terms — Gold, Gott — all four-letter words beginning with G. But unlike the others, gilt is not a noun. It appears in lowercase, understated, and yet it is left alone on its own line, standing out precisely by its subtlety. As if to suggest that meaning resides not in what is monumental, but in the minimal; not in dogma, but in the slight echo of a word.

This can be read in relation to Sachs’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which she says: “Wir alle sind Betroffene […] auf Erden zu leben […], bis er [dieser Stern] durchsichtig wird, von unserem gesagten und ungesagten Wort durchzogen — diese Geheimschrift, mit der wir ein unsichtbares Universum lesbar machen für ein Göttliches Auge. Alles gilt. Alles ist Ferment, das wirkt.” (after Sparr 68; Dinesen, p. 198). Sachs proposes a kind of divine legibility, a secret writing (Geheimschrift) under the gaze of God, in which everything counts — alles gilt.

Celan, in contrast, subtracts this theological guarantee. His poem ends not with alles gilt, but with wir wissen ja nicht, was gilt. No divine eye, no secret script — just the word gilt, hanging alone, without its alles. The subtraction is profound. It marks a break not only from Sachs’s mystical vision but also from Margarete Susman’s theological reading of Jewish suffering. In Das Buch Hiob und das Schicksal des jüdischen Volkes, Susman writes: “Wir, die so unendlich viel, die viel zu viel wissen, wir wissen nichts. Wir wissen nichts von dem, worauf es für uns allein ankommt: von dem Plan, in dem wir befasst sind und aus dem wir leben. Aber darum wissen wir auch nicht, ob nicht diese unsere dunkle, ganz von der Erlösung abgetriebene Welt der Erlösung am nächsten ist.” (after Sparr, 68). Here, even unknowing is folded into a divine plan. The mystery affirms a hidden wholeness.

Celan, however, refuses both this hidden plan and Sachs’s universal affirmation. What remains is a form of knowing that affirms its limits — and it is this limit that paradoxically becomes the condition for the wir. Not knowing what counts is what counts; it is what links speaker and other, not through meaning, but through the very fissure in meaning.

A note Celan wrote during his stay in Zürich captures this ethos of dissent. Barbara Wiedemann-Wolf cites it: “26. Mai. Hotel Zum Storchen / 4h Nelly Sachs, allein. ‘Ich bin ja gläubig.’ Als ich darauf sage, ich hoffte, bis zuletzt lästern zu können: Man weiß ja nicht, was gilt.” (Briefwechsel, 1993, p. 41). Sachs says, “I am a believer.” Celan replies: “I hoped to be able to blaspheme until the end — you never know what counts.” The remark is quiet, devastating. To lästern is to break with sanctity, to dissent — not out of nihilism, but because dissent is the last site of authenticity. To blaspheme, for Celan, is not to reject the sacred but to preserve the possibility of the human. It links hope and we, not through redemption, but through resistance.

In the absence of revelation, das hadernde Wort — the quarreling word — remains. Or to to back to Benveniste, who claims more in general about the poetic: “The poet does not want to teach us anything, he does not want to awaken ideas in us; he wants, with words put together, to reach a place within us that a feeling can touch.” (Benveniste, 2011: 546). In this context he teaches “nothing”, not the nothingness of revelation (which itself turns into too much of a something) — too close to that experience of Sachs and Susman, but rather nothing as an affect, as the minimal difference, or subtraction from the way the conventional meanings, reality as it can be known, is taught. What is subtracted from the Book of Job is not only God’s final answer but also the expectation of an answer. What remains is the ability to speak, to contest, to remain in tension. That, perhaps, is what still counts.

Returning to demonstrative pronouns and deixis: in Zürich, Zum Storchen, deixis does not function as a simple indicator of presence, of something firmly situated in time or space. It does not grant access to a higher or fuller presence within the poem. On the contrary, deixis here signals a fissure — a break in the very fabric of reference. Rather than stabilizing meaning, it exposes its instability.

In this sense, the deictic gesture does not lead us to presence, but to the limits of presence. This is where Adorno’s notion of pure mimesis becomes illuminating. For Adorno, mimesis at its most radical does not reproduce the world or offer a symbolic stand-in for it; rather, it breaks with referential logic entirely. It manifests language as such — not as a vessel of meaning, but as something that gestures, stammers, and interrupts.

Deixis, then, becomes the site of this break. It points, but to no fixed object. It calls forth presence, only to reveal its absence. It does not produce plenitude or clarity, but a kind of linguistic exposure. The demonstrative does not stabilize meaning — it voids it. The pointing gesture turns back on itself, revealing not what is “there,” but the impossibility of full disclosure.

This is not to say that all is fiction, or that nothing refers. Rather, the poem insists on the irreducibility of its own speech situation. Language here does not ground meaning — it marks its limit. The instance of discourse is not the replacement of reality by fiction, but the exposure of language’s borders, the moment where saying cannot be anchored in what is said.

In this way, Celan does not simply undermine meaning — he situates the poem precisely where meaning falters. And in this faltering, something else becomes possible: not a higher presence, but an opening, a form of address that retains its singularity, its du, even as it resists grounding.

[1] In contrast Hannah Arendt’s analysis of statelessness and the jews is much more historically nuanced. See Origins of Totalitarianism.

[2] In the poem Frihed, Celan uses the ships that carried jews over to Sweden in the second world war for such a “passage”, something that is connected to salvation. For an excellent analysis of the poem see:

[3] If Blanchot opposes the Jew to the Heideggerian dwelling, we can say that Celan rather formulates different strategies for each poem and not simply for the jews. Nevertheless in general, although not always he does not talk of vagabond, or dwelling (wohnen), but more about burying, or lying in the ground. Celan himself says that he prefers Blanchot over structuralism in a conversation with Ester Cameron (Cameron, 339).

[4] It might be possible to read this as special Hebrew “parataxis”. For Celan’s “camouflaged” use of Hebraic grammatical construction see