Besprechungen / Reviews 365 For readers already familiar with Bottigheimer’s work, this book is an opportunity to see how her ideas play out as the basis for a short history of the fairy tale. Some will find her definition of the genre to be limited, though the plot structure she sees at its center is a well-worn route to the fairy tale’s «happily ever after,» and she is not the first critic to recognize its importance. There may be a few snags in her argument’s overall historical thread, for example in Basile’s neglect of the rise tale and popular tradition’s embrace of the restoration tale. But she does address these seeming inconsistencies, and in doing so she brings up issues that are thought-provoking in and of themselves. Whatever your opinion about the way this book ropes off its subject, there are flashes of insight here that would not exist if the author had lacked the tenacity to lay hold of this slippery genre, wherever she decided to grab it, and set about trying to pin down its origin and write a brief account of its history. University of Louisville Alan Leidner D EREK H ILLARD : Poetry as Individuality: The Discourse of Observation in Paul Celan. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2010. 181 pp. $ 47. For those familiar with the biography of the German-language poet Paul Celan, it comes as no surprise that the motif of melancholy, or images of mental illness, surface in his poems. From the winter of 1962-63 on, Celan was hospitalized repeatedly in psychiatric clinics. It is also no coincidence that connections between the poet’s battles with depression and paranoia and his premature death in 1970 have been drawn. In his book Poetry as Individuality: The Language of Observation in the Poetry of Paul Celan, Derek Hillard cautions against viewing the references in the poems to madness, or other psychiatric phenomena, as a simple expression of the poet’s struggles with mental illness - with much justification. The title of Hillard’s book does not betray this, but it presents an extensive study of the motif of madness and the themes related to it. In many fastidious individual discussions of poems, as well as of the famous Georg Büchner Prize address, «Der Meridian,» the author aims to show the interpretive and poetic significance of this «language of madness» in Celan’s work beyond biographical considerations. Using Celan’s statement that «poetry is the language of an individual that has become form» from his Büchner Prize address as starting point, Hillard examines the «efforts at individuation that [Celan’s] poems pursue» (22). With madness as the dominant theme, he focuses on three main motifs that he considers connected to «discourses of self-observation»: Schein (semblance, illusion, appearance), Wahn (madness, delusion), and Wunde (wound, trauma). Hillard divides his study into five main chapters. Chapter One, «The Phenomenology of Illusion,» contains in its first part an investigation of the notion of Schein in an early poem by Celan, «Die letzte Fahne.» In order to demonstrate how poems «conceive of themselves as agents that ward off attacks» (27), Hillard turns to Nietzsche. He is able to apply the opposition between the Dionysian threat to individuality and the shelter against it that Apollonian semblance and appearance provide in The Birth of Tragedy to the poem. He then looks at the notion of Wahn in two additional poems, «Ich kenne dich» and «Kleine Silbe.» Among other details, Hillard CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 365 CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 365 19.08.11 09: 38 19.08.11 09: 38 366 Besprechungen / Reviews discusses the «conflict» between «the clinical and metaphorical concepts of madness and depression» (47). The study continues with readings of Celan’s «melancholy poems,» poems that refer to Schwermut. The chapter concludes with an interpretation of «Die Schwermutschnellen hindurch» from the volume Atemwende. Celan’s engagement with the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger is of particular importance for Hillard’s interpretation of these texts. Binswanger’s writings on melancholy facilitate compelling conclusions about the temporality of melancholy in the interpretation of «Die Schwermutschnellen hindurch.» In Chapter Two, entitled «Hallucinations,» Hillard turns to Celan’s 1960 Büchner Prize address, «Der Meridian.» He views the speech as «a reflection on the relationship of madness and literature» (58) and considers writings by Eugen Bleuler and Karl Jaspers as well as a discussion between Foucault and Derrida concerning the relationship of madness to reason. This proves to be particularly useful for understanding the relationship between art and poetry that Celan posits in his speech, and stresses the formal, more narrowly poetic, elements that illustrate the way in which poetry addresses itself «to the entirely other.» The focus on madness also leads him to read the remarks on dates in the speech in the sense that «every poem may be inscribed with its own crises, its own madness, political, experiential, biographical, or linguistic» (73). Hillard also sees here the opportunity for creating a date that is marked by «the voice of the emerging individual in the void of the voice that has been silenced» (ibid.). The reader is able to observe such poetic attempts at the emergence of individuality in the reading of a single poem from the volume Die Niemandsrose, «Huhediblu,» that forms the third chapter of Hillard’s book, entitled «Slivers of the Self.» The interpretation relies fundamentally on ideas set forth by Ludwig Binswanger in his book Melancholie und Manie (1960), a book that Celan read. According to Hillard, the poem exhibits the use of a «manic language» (90) in Binswanger’s understanding but employs it for the projection of «individual meaning into the void of the extinguished» (91). This view opposes the loss of the authentic individual that Binswanger postulates in connection with mental breakdown. Hillard lends further depth to his elucidation of «Huhediblu» by engaging additional contexts, such as essays by Adorno on Valéry and Hölderlin, and by Heidegger on Georg Trakl. In the fourth chapter, «Original Translations,» Hillard seeks to explore another aspect to madness in Celan’s poetry by investigating the link between originality, genius, and illness in the poem «Tübingen, Jänner,» in which the poet refers to, and repeatedly quotes, Friedrich Hölderlin. The chapter recounts in its opening passages not only eighteenth-century Germany’s fascination with origins - especially as represented by the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder - but also a rapid history of the association of madness and (literary) genius. The central goal of Hillard’s reading of «Tübingen, Jänner» is to demonstrate how Celan questions the «essence of natural geniality» (168), as the quote from Hölderlin’s hymn «Der Rhein» in this poem has traditionally been read. According to Hillard’s interpretation, this critique is ultimately aimed at the «claim of authority» that lies at «the core of the ideology of origins» (115). Contrary to other chapters, in which Hillard contradicts the impetus to read Celan’s poetry along biographical lines, he concludes the reading by viewing CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 366 CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 366 19.08.11 09: 38 19.08.11 09: 38 Besprechungen / Reviews 367 the way in which the poem challenges the cult of originality from the perspective of a moment from Celan’s life. This biographical occurrence relates to the plagiarism case leveled against Celan by Claire Goll, since support in this matter from Walter Jens had been one of the purposes of his visit to Tübingen in 1961. Hillard devotes the second half of this fourth chapter on genius and illness to the poem «Ich trink Wein» from the posthumous volume Zeitgehöft. He reads this text in basically the same vein. Celan asserts his «critique of origins and the link between illness and poetry» here not through a technique of recitation (as in «Tübingen, Jänner») but through one of «similarity and semblance» (126). Hillard derives this to a great extent from the use of the simile in the poem. In place of madness, wounds are the central metaphor under investigation in the fifth and last chapter of the book. Hillard glances at a couple of poems from Celan’s early work in order to demonstrate a development with respect to wounds in the late work from which most of the examples in this chapter are taken. While in the early work Celan’s concern was with the wounded body, particularly that of his mother, wounds are more textually based in the late poems. According to Hillard, Celan locates them «in textual bodies» (139). A slight shift takes place towards the end of the last chapter from the investigation of texts that mention wounds explicitly to those that address the psyche and the effects of traumatic events. In all of the last three texts interpreted, the author underlines the figure of repetition that he also links to the texts of Freud, as well as the overarching agenda of the book, the emergence of the individual through the word. The reading of the final poem analyzed in this work («… auch keinerlei») contains the important claim that the poem alters Freud’s theory of the «protective shield.» With Poetry as Individuality, Derek Hillard has written the first comprehensive study of the motif of madness and its related phenomena as they appear in Paul Celan’s poetry. Far from employing a one-sided approach, he tackles this topic from a variety of perspectives - philosophical, more narrowly textual (e.g., madness as an effect on and of language), and biographical. He deserves much credit for avoiding, and speaking out against, simple biographical identifications in Celan’s poems. At many points in the book, his interpretations powerfully confirm the self-referential nature of this poet’s work. While Hillard presents close and meticulous readings of the investigated poetry and prose, his study offers also another excellent contribution to the wider topic of Celan as a reader by referring to other authors’ texts that provided Celan with material for his work. In this way, Hillard demonstrates his methodical efforts in exploring Celan’s library at the literary archive in Marbach, Germany. One could add in this respect that the book also displays the usefulness of the more recent Tübingen edition of Celan’s works that has made a lot of valuable material accessible for scholarship. The array of additional sources that Hillard incorporates to supplement his readings shows considerable erudition. Among this material are texts by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Kierkegaard, Freud, Foucault, Derrida, Binswanger, Mandelstam, and Hölderlin. Highly laudable is the inclusion of some more obscure texts from which Celan drew material for his poetry, as well as renowned texts whose connection to Celan’s works has not yet been explored - such as Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. Hillard’s will to trace developments within Celan’s work with respect to the use of CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 367 CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 367 19.08.11 09: 38 19.08.11 09: 38 368 Besprechungen / Reviews the motifs he investigates is also impressive. This keen devotion to the macro level, the author balances with shrewd and attentive observations on the micro level. Here, he displays tremendous sensitivity for rhetorical detail in the poems - individual passages of «Huhediblu» are exemplary here (84-85). This also holds for the phonic element, and the reading of «Seelenblind» presents a remarkable instance (149-50). While Hillard does discuss an impressive array of authors whose work is relevant for the poems he analyzes, a more in-depth discussion of these theoretical, philosophical, or literary sources would at times have left it less to the reader to discover the exact parallels or interconnections. A passage where this can be felt is in the remarks on Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. Here, Hillard employs the connection of the Dionysian to Wahn, and the conflict between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, but the entire theory of aesthetic representation in Nietzsche’s early work that is associated with this dichotomy remains largely unexplored. This also holds for Nietzsche’s related remarks on the German national character that may be highly relevant in this context. Similarly, it would have been desirable if Hillard had positioned himself more clearly towards earlier scholarship on some of the texts that he investigates. Such positioning may have lent depth to his readings of «Der Meridian» (Chapter Two) and «Huhediblu» (Chapter Three), both texts that have been scrutinized in excellent books and essays (on «Meridian,» cf. Buhr 1976, Lacoue-Labarthe 1986, Müller-Sievers 2003; on «Huhediblu,» cf. Kudszus 1978, Derrida 1986, Colin 1991), to which he refers only very briefly. In general, Hillard’s book shows a tendency more towards the commentary of particular lines than towards an overarching, comprehensive analysis of an entire text. This is not to say that Poetry as Individuality lacks all-embracing interpretive narratives completely. However, they often appear at the end of investigations of individual texts, and statements are not always derived from closer analysis. On a related note on the subject and the goal(s) of the study, this reviewer could not fight the impression that the fifth chapter of Hillard’s book (on wounds) did not harmonize well with the preceding four chapters that were so clearly about madness and related concepts. This issue may be connected to the goal of the book, viewing «poetry as individuality.» One of Hillard’s phrases specifies this goal as observing the way in which a poem transforms «words into works which is also to say into individuals in their own right» (127). The concern with individuality is certainly undeniable in Paul Celan’s poetry - his poetics of «gestaltgewordene Sprache eines Einzelnen» and the encounter alone bear witness to this. However, in Hillard’s study the transition from the discussion of interpretive details to the assertion of a meaning pointing to the emergence of the individual is hardly ever linear. Most often, it is declarative and at times seems forced. This creates the impression that the concern with individuality is a more general result that is supposed to supplement and unify analyses from more specialized perspectives, i.e., madness and wounds. While the analytical link between these «metaphors for observation» and the emergence of the individual in the poems is not always apparent, Hillard’s provocative work will certainly provide material for further discussion in Celan studies. Kenyon College Paul Gebhardt CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 368 CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 368 19.08.11 09: 38 19.08.11 09: 38