Near the End: Celan, between Scholem and Heidegger¹

Abstract

In May 1967, at the bottom of a page in a book by Gershom Scholem, Celan jotted down three lines in Yiddish. This note, which alludes to a poem by Moyshe‐Leib Halpern, is the predecessor to “Nah, im Aortenbogen.” The poem, completed while Celan was intensely preoccupied with his meeting with Martin Heidegger, expressed his poetic reaction to Heidegger and Scholem, a sense that between the German and the German‐Jewish an ironic fissure might divide the wall of words. Confronting Scholem's return to Kabbalah (and Zion) and Heidegger's return to Meister Eckhart (and Germania), Celan's reference carries a clear ironic view of both the German and the German‐Jewish “return.” In contrast to previous interpretations of “Nah,” I contend that Celan's complex intertextual strategy resisted both, in favor of a non‐messianic force that debated all teleological courses. What opens with a declaration of “nearness” ends with a simple comma, separating the Hebrew and the German.