The Distance between Zurich and Todtnauberg
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 1
Abstract
This paper focuses on two poems written by Paul Celan after first encounters he had with writers who held great significance for him. In 1960 Celan met fellow Jewish poet Nelly Sachs at the Stork Inn in Zurich, and afterwards recorded the event in the poem “Zürich, Zum Storchen”. Seven years later, Celan visited Martin Heidegger at his hut in the German mountains. Celan’s depiction of this encounter is found in the poem “Todtnauberg”. In this essay, I make a two-fold argument regarding the Zurich poem. First I claim that “Todtnauberg” is clearly crafted in light of the earlier Sachs text, a fact that has been overlooked by previous scholarship. As such, it is only in placing the two texts side by side that a complete understanding of “Todtnauberg” comes into view. Second I will indicate how the Zurich poem reflects key elements of an approach to the problem of evil that I term an “enestological theodicy.” Such a term needed to be coined, since this sort of theodicy does not fit in the more traditional narrative categories related to the problem of evil.
Authors and Affiliations
A. K. Anderson
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25879
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9010011
- Views 287
- Downloads 10
The Apparatus of Belief: Prayer, Technology, and Ritual Gesture
Through a focus on the early history of a mass mediated ritual practice, this essay describes the “apparatus of belief,” or the specific ways in which individual religious belief has become intimately related to tele-t...
From Clichés to Mysticism: Evolution of Religious Motives in Turkish Cinema
As an art form, an academic discipline and an ideological instrument that finds a place in cultural studies and social sciences, film plays a significant role both in the creation and as a reflection of the culture in...
A Transcendentalist Nature Religion
Scholars of religion have often pointed to the Transcendentalists as progenitors of a distinct tradition of nature religion in the United States. Nevertheless, this work has not fully dealt with the problematic qualiti...
Measuring Symptoms of Moral Injury in Veterans and Active Duty Military with PTSD
The Moral Injury Symptom Scale-Military Version (MISS-M) is a 45-item measure of moral injury (MI) symptoms designed to use in Veterans and Active Duty Military with PTSD. This paper reviews the psychometric properties...
Ethnography of Religious Instants: Multi-Sited Ethnography and the Idea of “Third Spaces”
Attempts to understand contemporary religious practice, and its associated communities and identities, must take into consideration the way that these phenomena exist in both virtual and physical spaces, as well as the...