'Give it the Shade': Paul Celan and the Politics of Apolitical Poetry

This article analyses the political impact of Paul Celan's poetry to illustrate the potential for social transformation contained in seemingly apolitical practices of speaking and writing. Celan's work epitomizes the search for thinking space in the immediate post-war period. Much of the German language at the time was so closely associated with the horrors of the Nazi regime that it was difficult to address critically many important social issues. In dealing with this dilemma, Celan recognized that politics ought to deal with language, with how we have come to objectivize the dilemmas that surround us. His poetry tried to stretch the boundaries of the German language such that it became possible to speak once more, critically, dialogically, humanely. By scrutinizing the potential and limits of this process, the present article addresses various issues that are at stake in the interaction between language, politics and society.