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ABSTRACT

Locating early Celan within the concept of “Romantic absolute,” this essay examines how Celan has problematically yet interestingly forced what German Romantics conceive as “the unconditioned” or “the absolute” into the process of “de-absolutization.” I will engage the Hegelian moment or “speculative thinking” in Celan’s early works to see how the absolutized concept has been contorted, set into self-contradiction and hence “deconstructed” in the poetic process. Celan’s efforts at piercing and rewriting some of the major concepts of German Romanticism and Idealism reveal his deep concern with the epistemological assumptions of the dialectical/Hegelian understanding of the Concept. The second part of this essay unfolds Celan’s fiercely concealed strife with the idea of “infinity.” Contra Kantianism, in Hegelian philosophy the finite and the infinite are caught in the process of eternal becoming or what Hegel calls mutual “transition” (Übergang). The foaming of the absolute spirit is activated by nothing else but the self-transcendence of finitude. Celan is similarly drawn to the infinite’s digesting or annihilation of the finite and the “foaming-up” (schäumen) of the finite towards infinity. The theoretical import of early Celan’s “inverted world,” as will be shown in this essay, consists in his poetic critique of the ultimate ground of these concepts and their various embodiments.  

KEYWORDS:Paul Celan, Hegel, Romanticism, the Absolute, Infinity, Idealism

 

摘  要

 

本文以德國浪漫主義之「絕對」觀念來定位策蘭(Paul Celan)早期詩歌的矛頭所向,並表明策蘭早期作品如何迫使觀念論哲學中的「無條件者」或「絕對者」(das Unbedingte)進入「解絕對化」過程。進而,本文將早期策蘭視為「思辨活動」在詩歌中實現的一個特例,即詩的意義在運行過程中所發生的針對「概念」的解構活動。此活動質疑了觀念論哲學中某些關鍵概念的絕對內涵,暴露出這些概念的被設定的思維基礎與可能的總體化趨勢。本文第二部分考察早期策蘭如何隱蔽地回應德國觀念論哲學中「無限性」這一概念。在黑格爾哲學中,無限與有限時刻處在交替的相互過渡(der Übergang),正是有限物的自身超越構成了無限,此即絕對精神的泡沫式翻湧。策蘭既關注於無限對有限的純然吞食或銷毀,也著力於表現有限向著無限的泡沫翻湧(schäumen)的揚棄過程。處於顛倒世界的策蘭早期詩作的理論旨趣,於是在於詩意地考察絕對與無限這兩個力量的形成與表象,揭示這些概念性力量內在的不可靠性。本文力圖將策蘭詩學帶出傳統闡釋學和猶太研究領域,令其深刻地進入觀念論哲學維度。 

關鍵詞:策蘭、黑格爾、浪漫主義、絕對、無限性、觀念論

DOI: 10.30395/WSR.201812_12(1).0006