THE LANGUAGE OF REMEMBRANCE: CULTURAL MEMORY AS “ACTUALISED LANGUAGE” IN THE POETRY OF GEOFFREY HILL AND PAULCELAN
THE LANGUAGE OF REMEMBRANCE: CULTURAL MEMORY AS “ACTUALISED LANGUAGE” IN THE POETRY OF GEOFFREY HILL AND PAULCELAN

Summary/Abstract: In his essay Celan and the Recovery of Language Charles Taylor discusses the concept of language as a creative and performative force which enables human beings to grasp concepts which exist outside language but which cannot be accessed without it. By referring to Taylor’s analysis of Celan’s poetry, to Sheridan Burnisde’s concept of ‘memory as undoing’ (as expounded in her essay Undoing Remembrance: The Poetry of Geoffrey Hill and Paul Celan) I shall argue that both Celan’s and Hill’s poetics possess that performative power which is able to render worldly that which transcends language, namely memory. In order to analyse the way in which cultural memory is created through poetry, I shall use concepts from Heidegger’s Being and Time. I shall argue that poetry embodies truth and that cultural memory is created by the release of truth into the present of the reader. I shall argue that the cultural memory of the Holocaust cannot exist without the Holocaust being constantly actualised through poetry, which Celan referred to as aktualisierte Sprache. I shall further argue that this creation of cultural memory through ‘actualised language’ is part of a Vergangenheitsbewältigung which occurs at two levels, namely personal – in Celan’s case – and cultural – in Hill’s case. Nonetheless, the boundaries between the two levels are not always clear, and shifts from personal memories to a cultural desire for reconciliation with the past can occur.

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