Nature, Condensed: Reading Paul Celan, Esther Kinsky, and Theodor W. Adorno in the Anthropocene

AbstractThis essay explores a particular kind of German postwar aesthetics as a framework for thinking through the conceptual challenges of the Anthropocene. Focusing on the relationship between nature and history, the article reads Paul Celan’s “The World” from Speech Grille (Sprachgitter) together with Esther Kinsky’s 2013 volume Nature Preserve (Naturschutzgebiet) to trace how both authors intertwine commemoration of the Shoah with exact attention to the more-than-human world. These two aspects of their poetry are not merely complementary but mutually constitutive; together, they give shape to the ecological entanglements that Donna Haraway has referred to as naturecultures. Considered in relation to Theodor W. Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, both poets combine reflections on language, history, and the natural world in a way that remains conscious of its own mediation as a specifically human—and, as such, necessarily partial—form of expression. In this way, memory gives rise to a poetics of condensation, a form of literary expression in which history and nature, including human nature, emerge as interwoven in language.Keywords: AnthropoceneecologyaestheticshistoryHolocaustnatureculturespoetryShoah Notes1 Bertolt Brecht, The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, trans. David Constantine and Tom Kuhn (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2019), 734.2 Due to its etymological focus on humans, the term Anthropocene has been contentious. Plantationocene and Chthulucene are possible alternatives. The former explicitly links our current ecological crisis with colonialism and racism, while the latter, coined by Donna Haraway, emphasizes non-human agency and the need to move away from anthropocentric frameworks. Sophie Sapp Moore et al., “The Plantationocene and Plantation Legacies Today,” Edge Effects, January 22, 2019, https://edgeeffects.net/plantation-legacies-plantationocene/. Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).3 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 197–222, 207.4 As Chakrabarty notes, this distinction had been in place “even in environmental histories that saw the two entities in interaction” (207). Jason Moore has referred to this dynamic as the “Green Arithmetic, […] the idea that our histories may be considered and narrated by adding up Humanity (or Society) and Nature, or even Capitalism plus Nature” (2). For Moore, this calculation continues to do damage by projecting the existence of separate realms, “Society without nature, Nature without humans.” Such a division has, of course, always been questionable, and yet Cartesian dualisms have hardened into political and economic agendas, determining not only extractionist policies, but also efforts to curb them, shaping approaches to conservation over the course of the twentieth century. On this last point, see also Jamie Lorimer, “The Anthropo-Scene: A Guide for the Perplexed,” Social Studies of Science 47, no. 1 (2017): 117–42, 25.5 Gregg Mitman, “Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing Reflect on the Plantationocene,” Edge Effects, June 18, 2019, https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/.6 Lorimer, “The Anthropo-Scene,” 17.7 Donna J. Haraway, “The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness,” in Manifestly Haraway (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 95.8 This argument for the importance and challenges of aesthetic representation in the Anthopocene forms one of the central tenets of the environmental humanities. Important examples include Amitav Ghosh’s controversial critique of the novel in relation to climate change, Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey’s study of allegory as a mode of representation in indigenous and postcolonial art, and Timothy Clark’s thorough consideration of art and criticism in the Anthropocene. Gosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); DeLoughrey, Allegories of the Anthropocene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019); Clark, Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).9 While novels, for instance, have the capacity to tell stories of nonhuman agency across vast scales of time and space, they run the risk of reiterating all-too familiar terms and narrative structures that may inadvertently sustain anthropocentric perspectives. Clark, Ecocriticism on the Edge, 178. See also Adam Trexler, Anthropocene Fictions. The Novel in a Time of Climate Change (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015). Critics like David Farrier, meanwhile, have argued for the value of poetry in this context. David Farrier, Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).10 While it falls outside of the purview of this essay, another relevant context to consider would be more traditional post-war nature poetry, for instance that of Günther Eich or Peter Huchel. Often explicitly political and written in a purposefully simple language that at times also plays with questions of mediation in response to the experiences of the war, such poetry nevertheless differs significantly from the poetics of condensation I trace in Celan and Kinsky. Among other things, it does not employ complexity to open up nonanthropocentric perspectives and often remains faithful to familiar nature imagery. See Annette Graczyk, “Naturlyrik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ein kritischer Literaturbericht,” Zeitschrift für Germanistik 14, no. 3 (2004): 614–18, 616.11 Celan’s nature imagery has played a central role in the critical literature, from Peter Szondi’s canonical reading of “Engführung” to its critique by Rochelle Tobias in her monograph on natural-scientific discourse in Celan; the ecological dimension of his work has received less attention, however. While many prominent readings focus on the linguistic self-reflexivity of Celan’s work, I hope to add an additional layer to this scholarship by considering this aspect of his work in light of the idea of naturecultures. Such a perspective not only renders Celan’s poetry fruitful for thinking history otherwise, but also challenges readings that posit Celan’s alienation from the natural world, as Wolfgang Emmerich does (408). Emmerich, “Kein Gespräch Über Bäume: Naturlyrik Unterm Faschismus Und Im Exil,” in Exilliteratur 1933-45, ed. Wulf Koepke and Michael Winkler (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1989), 394–423; Peter Szondi, “Reading ‘Engführung’: An Essay on the Poetry of Paul Celan,” trans. D. Caldwell and S. Esh, Boundary 2 11, no. 3 (1983): 231–64. Rochelle Tobias, The Discourse of Nature in the Poetry of Paul Celan: The Unnatural World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).12 Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version, Drafts, Materials, ed. Bernhard Böschenstein and Heino Schmull, trans. Pierre Joris (Stanford University Press, 2011), 9.13 For a summary, and critique, of theoretical positions that favor an aesthetics of complexity and disjunction, see Clark, Ecocriticism on the Edge, 183–94.14 Paul Celan, Collected Prose, trans. Rosmarie Waldrop (New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1986), 34.15 Aleksandra Ubertowska, “Nature as a Counter-Historical Narrative in Holocaust Poetry (Milosz, Celan, and Pagis),” in Ecopoetics and the Global Landscape: Critical Essays, ed. Isabel Sobral Campos (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019), 105–28, 112f.16 Vivian Liska, “‘Roots against Heaven.’ An Aporetic Inversion in Paul Celan,” New German Critique 91, no. 91 (2004): 41–56, 44.17 For a thorough discussion of this kind of Naturlyrik, see Emmerich as well as Graczyk. Wendy Anne Kopisch discusses the legacy of this poetry for nature writing in the German context in Naturlyrik im Zeichen der ökologischen Krise: Begrifflichkeiten - Rezeption - Kontexte (Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2012).18 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (New York: Verso, 2005), 21. For a meditation on Adorno’s thought image in relation to both Brecht and the position of the intellectual in the modern world, see Gerhard Richter, “Gespräch über Bäume,” Zeitschrift für kritische Theorie 34/35 (2012): 202–13.19 These entanglements mark Adorno’s thought from the very beginning, appearing in one of his earliest lectures, “Die Idee der Naturgeschichte,” from 1932. Theodor W. Adorno, “Die Idee der Naturgeschichte” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Philosophische Frühschriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 345–65.20 For a detailed exploration of the many ways in which Adorno’s aesthetics relate to the challenges of the Anthropocene beyond the question of art after the Shoah, see Marah Nagelhout, “Nature and the ‘Industry that Scorched It’: Adorno and Anthropocene Aesthetics,” Symploke 24, no. 1–2 (2016): 121–35, https://doi.org/10.5250/symploke.24.1-2.0121.21 The most notorious—and most frequently misunderstood—of these statements can be found in “Cultural Criticism and Society:” “Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today.” Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982), 34.22 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 5. This ambiguity accounts for the fact that while some critics have lauded the ability of modernist aesthetics to give expression to the complexities of the climate change and other environmental crises, these same aesthetic frameworks have at times also contributed to the domination of nature. See Matthew Griffiths, The New Poetics of Climate Change: Modernist Aesthetics for a Warming World, Environmental Cultures Series (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).23 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noeri, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), xviii. German original: Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2011), 6.24 It is important to note that nature in Adorno’s work is not simply a self-identical concept; rather, the notion refers to a continuously shifting constellation of meanings. Owen Hulatt gives an excellent summary of this problem: “Much of the difficulty of Adorno’s conception of nature arises from Adorno’s commitment to the idea that nature is: (1) a historical category which is constituted by the conceptual presuppositions of a given historical period, (2) a determiner of the nature of thought, and (3) an extra-conceptual repository for ‘non-identical’ truths which cannot be captured by the conventional application of concepts” (793). Owen Hulatt, “Review: Adorno on Nature by Deborah Cook,” Mind 121, no. 483 (2012): 793–95.25 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialektik, 45.26 Deborah Cook, Adorno on Nature (Durham: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2011), 88–89.27 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik / Jargon der Eigentlichkeit, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 6, Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 355.28 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 78. German original: Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Gretel Adorno (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 121.29 Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, 104.30 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 131; Ästhetische Theorie, 198.31 Ibid., 219. Ästhetische Theorie, 325.32 Ibid., 218; Ästhetische Theorie, 325.33 See Simon Schama, “Der Holzweg: The Track Through the Woods,” in Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 75–134.34 Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, 104.35 Joachim Seng offers a comprehensive account of the personal and intellectual connections between Adorno and Celan in “‘Die wahre Flaschenpost.’ Zur Beziehung zwischen Theodor W. Adorno und Paul Celan,” in Frankfurter Adorno Blätter VIII, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 151–76.36 Paul Celan, “Die Welt,” in Die Gedichte. Neue Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe in einem Band, ed. Barbara Wiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2018), 114.37 Paul Celan, Memory Rose into Threshold Speech. The Collected Earlier Poetry, trans. Pierre Joris (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2020), 219f.38 Joris’ translation of “Hochblatt” as “spathe” is also accurate, since the German term can denote both. A spathe is a specific kind of bract that is usually found on either palm trees or flowers such as lilies. The more general “bract,” in contrast, can also refer to parts of common European tree species, such as linden trees.39 Ibid., 767.40 Tobias, The Discourse of Nature in the Poetry of Paul Celan, 13.41 Barbara Wiedemann, “‘In der Blasenkammer‘. Paul Celans Physikalische ‘Anreicherungen‘,” Wirkendes Wort 2 (2018): 267–84.42 Paul Celan, “[Reply to a Questionnaire from the Flinker Bookstore, Paris, 1958],” in Collected Prose, trans. Rosmarie Waldrop (New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1986), 16.43 Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version, Drafts, Materials, ed. Bernhard Böschenstein and Heino Schmull, trans. Pierre Joris (Stanford University Press, 2011), 4.44 For a comprehensive summary of ecocritical interpretations of the idea of nature under National Socialism, see Donna Coffey, “Blood and Soil in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces: The Pastoral in Holocaust Literature,” Modern Fiction Studies 53, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 27–49.45 Celan, “Answer,” 16.46 Paul Celan, Collected Prose, 33.47 Ibid., 34.48 Celan, Meridian, 4.49 Ibid., 9.50 Donna J. Haraway, “The Companion Species Manifesto,” 116.51 Ibid., 9.52 Celan, Meridian, 9.53 Ibid., 84. Der Meridian, 84: “eine konstitutive, kongenitale Dunkelheit […] das Gedicht […] kommt, als Ergebnis radikaler Individuation, als ein Stück Sprache zur Welt, […] mit Welt befrachtet.”54 Ibid.55 A poet, translator, essayist, and novelist, Kinsky has received numerous literary awards for her work. including the Paul-Celan prize (2009), the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (2016), the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (2018), and the newly founded W.-G.-Sebald Literature Prize (2020). She has also been long-listed for the German Book Award (2011, 2014). Most recently, her oeuvre was awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize for 2022, which she shares with the likes of Bertolt Brecht, Robert Musil, Anna Seghers, and Herta Müller.56 Esther Kinsky, email message to author, January 5, 2022: “die Prozesse der Bennenung der Welt waren verkümmert, der Pfad der sprachlichen Konvention wurde immer schmäler und enger dabei.” My translation, thereafter marked as nlv.57 The Shoah is also thematized in some of Kinsky’s other work. See Helga Druxes, “Transgenerational Holocaust Memory in Anne Weber’s Ahnen and Esther Kinsky’s Am Fluß,” Feminist German Studies 34, no. 1 (2018): 125–50.58 Kinsky, "Die Sprache der Wahrnehmung und Erinnerung. Esther Kinsky im Gespräch mit Jente Azou und Hanne Janssens, interview by Jente Azou and Hanne Janssens," April 21, 2021, https://www.literature.green/en/die-sprache-der-wahrnehmung-und-erinnerung-esther-kinsky-im-gesprach-mit-jente-azou-und-hanne-janssens/.nlv.59 She has spoken about her complicated relationship to nature writing many times, including in "Nature Writing / Über Natur schreiben heißt über den Menschen schreiben," interview by Katharina Teutsch, January 28, 2018, https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/nature-writing-ueber-natur-schreiben-heisst-ueber-den-100.html.60 Kinsky, “Sprache der Wahrnehmung und Erinnerung.” nlv.61 Esther Kinsky, Naturschutzgebiet (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2013), 81. As the volume has not yet appeared in English, all translations are my own.62 This key term appears again and again in Kinsky’s reflections on her work, including in my personal communication with her (January 5, 2022). She has also coined a new genre, Geländeroman, for her prose text Hain (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2018). See also Kinsky, “Nature Writing.”63 Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963).64 Kinsky, “Nature Writing.”65 Kinsky, email.66 Kinsky, Naturschutzgebiet, 5.67 “doch gibt es anderes zu tun wie das / ertasten der risse und sprünge / in allem was fest schien.” Ibid., 85.68 “in den fingerkuppen nistet die ahnung sich anbahnender brüche.” Ibid.69 Ibid, 29.70 “Etwas in Schutt und Asche legen” translates to “to reduce some to rubble and ash.”71 Kinsky, Naturschutzgebiet, 29.72 “nacht und nebel immer und ewig.” Ibid., 100.73 Clark, Ecocriticism on the Edge, 19.74 Ibid. For a critique of this premise through the lens of Adorno’s work, see Timothy W. Luke, “Reflections from a Damaged Planet: Adorno as Accompaniment to Environmentalism in the Anthropocene,” Telos 2018, no. 183 (2018): 9–24.75 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 1.76 Farrier, Anthropocene Poetics, 9.77 On Celan’s “geological lyric,” see Jason Groves, “‘The Stone in the Air’: Paul Celan’s Other Terrain,” Environment and Planning. D, Society & Space 29, no. 3 (2011): 469–84, https://doi.org/10.1068/d10009. Kinsky’s volume Schiefern traces more than-human-histories in the geological formations of the Scottish Slate Islands. Kinsky, Schiefern (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2020).Additional informationNotes on contributorsNatalie Lozinski-VeachNatalie Lozinski-Veach is an Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Cultural Studies at Arizona State University, as well as affiliate faculty in Jewish Studies and a Senior Sustainability Scholar in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. Her current book project traces how philosophers and poets reimagine language beyond the human after the Shoah.