Aesthetic Seduction and Mundane Repulsion Notes on the Dialogue between Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger

One of the most famous encounters in the intellectual history of the 20th century is the one between Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger. Both the remote dialogue and the three actual meetings between the two intellectuals are ambiguous enough so that the re-examination of their relationship could prove useful: the most surprising aspect of this relationship is the discontinuity and even contradiction between the affinity of their modes of thinking and a certain tension present in the actual, existential relationship they shared. This discontinuity applies to Paul Celan's case; Heidegger, on the other hand, had an overall positive attitude concerning the Romanian-born Jewish poet. Celan's ambivalent attitude towards Heidegger is understandable if one takes into account the poet's increasingly fragile mental state towards the end of his life and Heidegger's past; the present study aims at proving that Celan's overall attitude can be easily explained without assuming this caesura between his aesthetic similarity to Heidegger's thought and his reserved attitude towards the German philosopher.