Besprechungen / Reviews 93 R OCHELLE T OBIAS : The Discourse of Nature in the Poetry of Paul Celan: The Unnatural World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. 168 pp. $ 50. Among the poems in Paul Celan’s collection Atemwende (engl. Breathturn), published in 1967, is a condensed text entitled «Harnischstriemen.» It became a famous example for reading Celan, because in 1986 the renowned German philosopher Hans- Georg Gadamer re-published his book on Celan, which had originally appeared in 1973, and the new edition contained a revised interpretation of «Harnischstriemen» in which Gadamer acknowledged that he had overlooked the origin of its peculiar vocabulary. Four out of seven nouns in the poem were technical terms from geology. The identification of the sources of Celan’s poetic language, as well as the reflection on the value of such findings, has since produced a number of studies. Using a rather broad view of «nature,» Rochelle Tobias makes another advanced contribution to this sort of study, this time including the fields of geology, astrology, and anatomy. Her introduction makes it clear that she is not interested in a comprehensive overview of exemplary lines from Celan’s poetry that seem to allude to these three special discourses. Instead, she advances an ambitious agenda that raises additional theoretical questions pertaining to figurative language. As a first general assumption, Tobias sees the presence of specialized vocabulary in the context of the «self-reflexive nature» (12) of Celan’s poems. More specifically, she is looking at the role that the specialized terms play for the self-representation of the poems. She denotes this central interpretive aspect of her study as «strategies of embodiment» (13). Positions similar to those in traditional «New Criticism» as, say, Cleanth Brooks’s The Well-Wrought Urn, however, should not be confused with Tobias’s approach. Instead, she insists on «the metaphors for language that underlie [Celan’s] work» (4). For her, the main such metaphor is language as «an infinitely extending space» (3). Also, linking the question of self-reflection to time, Tobias establishes temporality as the basis for a periodization of Celan’s oeuvre. With respect to this periodization, the stylistic aspects of her book come to the foreground. Her style exhibits a preference for formulaic but imaginative statements in which she tries not to have herself limited by technical considerations. For example, she discriminates the temporality of the «geological poems» (admittedly not an ideal name for poems that borrow from geology) and the «astrological poems» as follows: the former show a «concern […] with the ways in which what once was determines the horizon of the future,» whereas the concern of the latter supposedly «is with an eternity that […] impinges on the present» (13). The character of those poems that use vocabulary related to anatomy seems to dominate the late period, in Tobias’s opinion. The temporal characterization she finds for them is «impatience» (121). Neither past nor future seem to come into view, as she regards the «world» of these poems as «a dead world, emptied of all significance» (121). In a phrase of Werner Hamacher’s - whom Tobias quotes - this viewpoint corresponds to a tradition of «the theories of negativity that have become widely accepted in the literature on Celan.» Hamacher remarks that these theories have often tended to obscure the «self-sameness» (his term is «Selbst- Sein») of Celan’s poems - a condition which declaredly lies at the heart of Tobias’s agenda. 94 Besprechungen / Reviews Yet Tobias expands the thematic scope of her book even beyond the issues that I have mentioned so far, in addition to tracing three scientific discourses. She accomplishes this by reading virtually all the poems she discusses alongside additional texts with which they interact. Geology, astrology, or anatomy never dictate the thematic concerns of these texts. Their range shows a breathtaking variety: fragments by Democritus, Rilke’s tenth Duino Elegy, Heidegger’s Being and Time, Jean Paul’s «Speech of the Dead Christ,» the writings of Gershom Scholem on Jewish Mysticism, or the Epistles of Saint Paul - to name only the most important. I find two examples of this way of reading particularly instructive. The first is Tobias’s interpretation of «Heute und Morgen,» in «Earth Science,» the first chapter. Here she points out the surprising connection with Rilke’s tenth Duino Elegy. This poem must have aroused Celan’s interest, as it begins with the desire to be able to turn a song of suffering and pain into «exultation and glory.» He distills Rilke’s vague but colorful promise into a poetic statement of almost sublime intimacy and simplicity. This statement is about a poetry the voice of which is actualized between «I» and «you.» Celan’s image for this voice is a liquid that trickles through the stone to a locality that holds the «things remembered.» The stone structure is Celan’s transformed version of the «sphinx» mentioned by Rilke. Here, this trickling voice can become a source of life - not «joy,» as in Rilke - for the addressee of the poem. To be sure, Tobias could have explored the reduction process to which Celan subjects the elegy in even greater depth. Her mode of inquiry, conversely, seems to be commentary, rather than an approach aimed at extracting from her analyses a theory of Celan’s writing. The second example is the interpretation of «Aus Engelsmaterie» from the third chapter, entitled «The Dismembered Body.» The poem brings together quite incongruous components: an allusion to Isaiah, Chapter 43, Verse 5, at its center; the almost absurd metaphor «angelic material» in the title line; and the description of an ascent charged with sexual imagery. However, Tobias succeeds in showing how these conflicting elements fit together, as she aptly points to the connection between this poem and Gershom Scholem’s writings on «the Righteous One» (Tsaddik). A key moment of the poem appears to be the self-reflexive remark on a writing that «burns.» It refers to the allusion to Isaiah that the medieval kabbalistic writers read against the canvas of the concept of the «Righteous One.» However, through the specific historical perspective of the poet, it takes on the character of a horrific truth about the greatest injustice in history - this is why this inscription «burns.» Seen in this light, it remains an open question whether the poem «documents […] not the power but the impotence of its words to conjure the spirit of a beloved, who is missing if not dead» (Tobias 92). Tobias points out the difference between her approach and that of mainly three critics - Peter Szondi, Werner Hamacher, and Uta Werner. Szondi and Hamacher on the one hand, and Werner on the other, represent opposite ends of the interpretive spectrum: at the one end we find a meticulous theoretical and hermeneutic intensity; on the other, an allegorical view of the textual form, mixed with some sentimentality. However, despite Tobias’s dispute with Szondi and Hamacher, it is hard to say whether she really does establish a third, alternative stance, though she is certainly different from both in approach and style. At times, a more thorough analysis of the Besprechungen / Reviews 95 poems, as well as their interaction with other texts, might have complemented some of Tobias’s blanket statements. Also, where, indeed, does Celan’s poetic language fit in among Benjamin’s remarks on allegory and symbol in his Origin of the German Mourning Play? The brief discussion in the «Epilogue» hardly allows for a concrete answer to this compelling question. Still, like every reader who grapples with Celan’s highly specialized poetic vocabulary, Tobias surely deserves credit for trying to meet the challenge. Kenyon College Paul Gebhardt L ESLIE A. A DELSON : The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005. 264 pp. $ 65. This perceptive study is a notable contribution, primarily due to the author’s construction of new analytical paradigms and new ways to conceptualize familiar issues surrounding the cultural mythology of Turks in post-1961 Germany. Adelson treats the emergence of the strikingly innovative literature that has followed the Turkish migration - their «newly imaginative labors of invention» - taking up not only the subject of migration patterns and national issues, but also processes of imagination and narrative structure (172). Her aim is to offer a comprehensive picture of cultural influences on Turkish migrants in Germany, which she tries to do by illuminating some of the otherwise ambiguous discussions on the topic, all while raising critical questions about key issues such as the various cultural frameworks involved and their relation to one another. One significant contribution of this study rests on the book’s initial chapter, where Adelson provides a meticulous analysis of the popular archetype «between two worlds,» which for Turks in Germany has become a cultural myth. The author provides credible support for the notion that no literary or historical account on the subject can prevail under the impact of this concept once incidents are imagined this way. After elaborative theoretical deliberations, Adelson goes on to textual analyses of works by Sten Nadolny and Emine Sevgi Özdamar, in an effort to explore the issue of Turkish migration outside this archetype. What makes her approach distinctive is that she does not separate real and fictional realms within the textual elements she discusses. Both thematically and structurally, she allies these two realms, envisioning «the concept of touching tales as an alternative organizing principle for considering ‹Turkish lines of thought›» (20-21). Literary (i.e., fictional) and historical (i.e., real) discourses are thereby blended into one another. The entire second chapter of her book dwells on the concept of «touching tales,» and this also constitutes the book’s most problematical aspect. She does see the vital difference between historical and literary contexts, particularly in regard to ethnic identity and political rights, and she acknowledges that the «fusion of horizons in interpretation» becomes rather challenging when cultures with immensely different histories are concerned (26). For, as the author herself confirms, «touching tales» (as literary narratives) allude to cultural