Gadamer on Celan: "Who Am I and Who Are You?" and Other Essays

by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gerald L. Bruns (Introduction)

Overview

Gadamer on Celan makes all of Hans-Georg Gadamer's published writings on Paul Celan's poetry available in English for the first time. Gadamer's commentaries on Celan's work are explicitly meant for a general audience, and they are further testimony to Celan's growing importance in world literature since the Second World War. Celan's poetry has attracted the attention of many well-known figures, including Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Edmond Jabe's, Otto Poggeler, and George Steiner. As Steiner has said, "It will take a long time for our sensibilities to apprehend poetry of these dimensions and this radicality." Gadamer's commentaries will help readers to listen to Celan's poetry, and to become acquainted with his only book-length commentary on a poet, using the best example of Gadamer's thinking on the relationship of philosophy and poetry.

This book also contains a translation of Who Am I and Who Are You?, the centerpiece of Gadamer's most important philosophical project since the publication of Truth and Method (1960). Who Am I and Who Are You? demonstrates Gadamer's continual engagement with the key figures of twentieth-century thought, and his responsiveness to the challenges of modernist art and its various affronts to hermeneutics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438403557
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	02/20/1997
Series:	SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	190
File size:	465 KB

About the Author

Hans-Georg Gadamer is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Heidelberg. Richard Heinemann received his PH.D. in German Studies and Social Thought from the University of Chicago, and is a freelance translator. Bruce Krajewski is Associate Professor of English and Film at Laurentian University. Author of a number of books on philosophical hermeneutics including Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, Gerald L. Bruns is William and Hazel White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "The Remembrance of Language: An Introduction to Gadamer's Poetics," by Gerald L. Bruns

Abbreviations

Editors' Preface

Foreword to Who Am I and Who Are You?

Foreword to the Revised Edition

Who Am I and Who Are You?

Epilogue to Who Am I and Who Are You?

Epilogue to the Revised Edition

Meaning and Concealment of Meaning in Paul Celan

A Phenomenological and Semantic Approach to Celan?

Index of Names

Editorial Reviews

The first translation of Gadamer's essays concerning the poetry of Paul Celan portrays the philosopher's engagement with the ideas of modernity, beauty, and hermeneutics, as well as providing a schemata for appreciating Celan's intriguing but avante garde lyricism. Gadamer reconceptualizes aesthetics in these three essays, tackling the questions of how a person might be able to respond to modern art when it redefines "beauty" and demands that what cannot be comprehended be included in its artistic agenda. Includes a very good introduction to Gadamer's work written by Gerald Bruns (English, U. of Notre Dame). Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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