Poetry as Experience

Author(s): Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Roxanne Lapidus

Source: SubStance, Vol. 18, No. 3, Issue 60: Special Issue: Writing the Real (1989), pp. 22-29
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685248
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Poetry as Experience
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

IS THERE, CAN THERE BE a singular experience? A mute experience, totally

untouched by language, brought about by no speech, however badly articulated? And if, impossibly, it is true, if in spite of everything singularity

can exist, or resist (over and above all empirical considerations, such as the

presence of a witness, as was the case with Peter Szondi, or of someone

who knows), is it possible that language, being what it is, can be entrusted

with such a singularity? And can an idiom suffice, being obviously something other than a simple "cryptage" or the refusal to say what something
is about-that immense facileness of the "modern"? This is neither the
problem of solipsism nor that of autism. But very probably it is the problem of solitude, of which Celan can be said to have stood the ultimate test.

I reread "Tiibingen, January" (that poem dated in the old style, Jiinner
for Januar, an allusion to the disconcerting way that H61derlin dated poems
as "from the period of insanity"). I reread it in the same way that I read it,
in the way that I can understand it, since I cannot do otherwise-by translating it. It's partly unnecessary, since there exists the beautiful translation

by Martine Broda (from whom I will borrow at least her "tournoyees de

mouettes," completely irreplaceable), and it's hard to see how anyone

could do better. But I can't avoid translating here. Therefore I am taking up
again and amending a translation I attempted a few years ago in the course
of a study on H61derlin:

TUBINGEN, JANVIER
Sous un flot d'eloquence
aveugles, les yeux.
Leur - "une

enigme est le

pur jailli" -, leur

memoire de

SubStance No 60, 1989 22

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Poetry

as

tours

Experience

H61lderlin

23

nageant,

noyees

de

mouettes.

Visites

de

menuisiers

ces

paroles plongeant:
Viendrait,
viendrait un homme

viendrait un homme au monde, aujourd'hui, avec

la barbe de lumiere des

Patriarches: il n'aurait,
parlerait-il de ce
temps, il
n'aurait

qu'd begayer, begayer

sans sans
sans cesse

("Pallaksch. Pallaksch.")

TUBINGEN, JANUARY
Beneath a flood of eloquence
blinded, the eyes.
Their-"an

enigma is the

pure well-spring"-their
memory of

H1lderlinean towers swimming, under circling gulls.

Visits of carpenters submerged beneath
these

plunging words:
There would come

there would come a man

there would come a man into the world, today, with

the luminous beard of the

Patriarchs: he would have only,

would he speak of these
times, he
would have

only to stutter, stutter

un- un-

unceasingly.
("Pallaksch. Pallaksch.")

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subm

24 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

This, this which is said in these fe

speech that is exhausted, crippled, falter

incomprehensible (of "gibberish" or of t

an "account"-it does not recount anyth

of H1lderlinturm to Tiibingen. It certain

you will, is delivered. There is in any ca

a man, a Jewish man-Sage, Prophet or

des / Patriarches"-wanted today, as H

pronouncements on the times, he would

manner-let's say-of Beckett's "meta

into aphasia (or "pure idiom"), as repor

was the case at any rate in the resu

H1lderlin:
MNEMOSYNE (II)
Un signe, tels nous sommes, et de sens nul,
Morts A toute souffrance, et nous avons presque
Perdu notre langage en pays etranger.
(Translation by Gustave Roud)

MNEMOSYNE (II)
A sign, such are we, and devoid of sense,
Dead to all suffering, and we have almost
Lost our language in a strange country.

More precisely, it was enough for him, for such a man, to describe the
times, to stammer-stutter; the times are given over to stammering, to stut-

tering. Or stammering is the only "language" of the times. The end of

sense, hiccupping, halting. Nonetheless, this message is secondary in the

poem; it's a bit like the "lesson" or the "moral" in the classical fable; it

comes to make explicit-within the poem but slightly removed (by the
colon at the end of the second strophe)-that which the poem already says.
That which it says as a poem. It's a translation. The poem, being idiomatic,
contains its translation, which is a justification of the idiomatic. In its first
approximation, anyway. The problem then is to know of what, explicitly, it
is the translation.

That of which it is the translation, I propose to call experience, in the

strict sense of the word-the Latin ex-periri, the traversing of a dangerand to avoid, above all, referring the thing to some "slice of life" or some

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Poetry

as

anecdote.

what

Experience

Erfahrung,

the

poem

25

then,

springs

and

from

ing the pure vertigo of mem

place, has not happened or co
with which the poem deals bu
many

others

since

those

of

the

of the Neckar where H61derlin

years of his life (half of his lif
the
I

null

will

to,

is

form

try

its

is

its

seeking

to

in

Le

adds:

"Et

scarcely

tell-the

the

cause

had

enigma.

le
it

before

is

run

dry.

it

the

was

And

"Une

reads

here,

lui-me
But

that
is

if

it

in

this

mirroring

the

also

exp

Because

there
the

reflections,
visitors,

is

tells

lui-m&me".

there

thus

chant

gene

to

revealed.")

enigmatic,

zlement,

many

par/

trai

maki

the

which

source,

chant

of

its

the

alwa

The

attempts

Rhin,

itself

is

thus

at

non-

what

us.

In

arrive

or

pure

poem

well-spring"):

hymn

itself

source.

possibility,

le

the

reminds

own

expresses,
pure

of

explain:

source.

Meridien"2

to

to

image

of

brutal

revealed

that

spring.
A vertigo can arise (survenir); it does not "happen" (advenir). Or rather,

in it, nothing happens. It is the pure suspension of happening: caesura or

syncope. It's what "to have an absence" refers to. What is suspended, put
on hold, balancing suddenly in strangeness, is the presence of the present

(the present existence of the present). And what happens then, without
happening (for it is such that by definition cannot "happen"), is non-being,

nothingness, the "nothing-being" ("rien d'dtant") (ne-ens). Vertigo is the

experience of nothingness, of the (non)occurrence "its very self" (as Heidegger says) of nothingness. Nothing therein is "lived," as in every experience,
for every experience is the experience of nothingness. And vertigo is such,

on an equal footing with the anguish described by Heidegger or with

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an

en

26 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Bataille's smile. Or with the dazzling ack

in reality all experiences) infinitely p

about disappearance in the present. Wh

to have to think that Celan chose to

infinity of the gift) by throwing himse

To put it differently, there is no suc

the sense of something "lived" or of a p

or imagines that it exists (and after

literature to believe in something and

instance can that give rise to a poem. T

versified or not. To "literature," per

understood today. But not to a poem

nothing to say; what it recounts and sa

as a poem. If one talks of "poetic em

agitation (dmoi), meaning absence or pr

not the nostalgic account of a meeting,

dejection, the pure echo of agitation-sin

ly dares to say (although he assuredly

wording, peut-etre) what Proust did
Baudelaire. No doubt it is also what B
did not understand in understanding
poems, which saves the situation).3

But the "vouloir-ne-rien-dire" of a po

A poem wants to speak, it is nothing bu

pure wanting-to-speak of nothing, of n

through which there is presence-that

eludes all wanting, the will of the p
always involuntary, like anguish and
chooses.) It's nothing that allows itself

allows itself to be spoken of in and b

himself, who receives it as unreceivable

trembling lest it refuse him, it being s

as is all the meaning of what is.

If there is no such thing as "poetic

experience is the default itself of the "

a rigorous sense, of a poetic existence, i

in life and shreds it, now and then, p

also why, existence being furtive and d

sarily brief, even when they expand th

the loss or the evanescence of that whic

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Poetry

And

and
far

as

that

Experience

is

people

also

are

extreme

(where
have

of

we

anything,

pure
say
it's

there

usually

in

in

nonetheless

(never

of

is

wrong

triviality,

Mallarme

this

ing-as

why

27

an

pure),

str

insignifican

nothing;

it

could

terrifying, just as it could b

H61derlin, gone insane, repea
nothing happens to me."

This,

this

January"
what

vertigo

says.

surged

And

up

or

it

of

existe

says

what

it

as

remain

commemorates. This non-advent is what wrests the event from its sin-

gularity and causes singularity itself, at its height, to self-destruct while the

words survive; the poem is possible. Singbarer Rest; the singable residue, as

Celan says elsewhere.

This is why the poem commemorates. Its experience is an experience

of memory. The poem speaks of Erinnerung, but it also secretly appeals to

the Andenken of the h1lderlinean poem on Bordeaux or to the Ged-ichtnis i

which H61derlin found again the resonance of Mnemosyne. The poem wa

not born at the moment of the visit to the Hilderlinturm. It was not strictly

born in any instant. Not only because a vertigo, a bedazzlement is never of

an instant, by definition, but because what provokes the vertigo and recalls
the water of the Neckar is not the water of the Neckar, it's another river, it

the h61lderlinien river itself. Which has a double meaning: the river o
rivers that H61derlin sings about (the Rhine, the Ister, the source of th
Danube, etc.), and the poetry of H61derlin as a river. Or, as we say, like
"flood of eloquence".

In "Tiibingen, January" the eyes are not truly blinded, no bedazzle

ment has taken place. They are zur Blindheit fiberredete: talked into sightless

ness, into blindness. But to translate ilberreden as "to persuade" or "t

convince" does not give the full meaning, all that is secreted in the particle

fiber, which is the particle of overflowing. To be fiberredet (here I am relying

on Michel Deutsch), is simply to be "duped" ("se faire avoir"), to b

"gulled" ("bonimente"), to be powerless under a barrage of eloquence. It

not so much being "taken for a ride" as being "submerged," "drowned."

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28 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

More precisely, to be "taken in" /"e

eyes that see H61derlin's tower, the w

gulls-the eyes are blinded beneath a f

eyes are engulfed; it's the memory of

which recalls and brings flooding back

ment-engulfment. In other words, as

memory," it's the memory of "that w
consciously lived by the subject," as

Freud's authority versus that of Bergso

that vertigo is here the indicator of th

simple recollection, is the paradoxical

cause every true memory is dizzying, g

that which takes place without taking p

the poem to be one of thanksgiving-

indebted to thought-"Think and g

Brnme-"denken und danken are in our

same origin. Whoever abandons hims

field of the meanings of 'to rememb

'meditation' (gedenken, eingedenk sein, A

The poem thus puts into words no

perience of the subject, no Erlebnis. It f

of H61derlin (he would say, rather, t

by H61derlin). It is absolutely not a "

sense of Schiller nor in the banal sens

the poetry of H61derlin. It tells it as it

infinitely and interminably paradoxical

poem, in that it possibly-impossibly t

possibility-at least the very limited pos

Translated by Roxa

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Poetry

as

Experience

29

NOTES

1. I hark back here to Roger Munier (response to an inquiry into experienc

Mise en page, No. 1, May 1972): "There is first of all etymology. Experience comes
the Latin experiri, to undergo. The radical is periri, that we find again in peric
peril--danger. The Indo-European root is PER, to which is attached the idea of tra

ing and, secondarily, enduring a trial. In Greek, numerous derivatives indi

traversing, a passage: peir6, to cross; pera, beyond; pera6, to cross in the oppo
direction; perain6, to go all the way to the end; peras, the limit. As for the ger

languages, we have, in Old High German, faran, from which come fahren, to trans
and fiihren, to drive. Is it necessary to add Erfahrung, experience, or is the word

to the second sense of PER-trial, in Old High German fara, danger, which has

us Gefahr, danger, and gefahrden, to endanger? The distinctions between one mea

and another are blurred. Likewise in Latin periri, to venture and periculum, w
means first of all trial, then risk, danger. The idea of experience as a travers

difficult to separate, at the etymological level, from that of risk. Experience is fr

beginning, and no doubt fundamentally, a putting of one's self in danger."
2. I am referring here not to Andre du Bouchet's translation (in Strette, Mer
de France, 1971), but to that obtained by Jean Launay in Po&sie, No. 9, 1979, w
slightly modify now and then to suit the needs of punctual argument.

3. "Sur quelques thbmes baudelairiens" in Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudel

Un porte a' l'apogee du capitalisme, Payot, 1982.
4. Ibid.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This extract from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's La podsie comme expirience

tian Bourgois Editeur, 1986, 27-37) has been translated and reprinted with the p
sion of the author and the publisher.

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