Doing Justice to Poetry: Gadamer and Derrida on Reading Paul Celan

A post by Lucas Gronouwe

INTRODUCTION

What does it mean to do justice to a text, be it philosophical, literary, or poetic? In this regard, what is the task of philosophical hermeneutics, the discipline traditionally concerned with explanation and interpretation? This is the question at stake in the ‘Gadamer-Derrida encounter’, an intellectual debate that retains its relevance, not only because it has ‘animated contemporary philosophy’ (Di Cesare 2004, 74), but also because the practice of reading and interpreting texts makes up a large part of research and education in the humanities as such. By revisiting the diverging hermeneutical strategies of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida, this paper seeks to determine how we can engage in the practice of reading and interpreting in a righteous and just manner. 

Five Poems by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

Poems by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

Past

I swallow the past, steadying myself against the back of a young birch tree. The past is pulped, palpable; it is large and too-huge to choke down. When I live in the present, I feel newly cleaned and scrubbed by sun. When I face the day brightly, I see the world through baby-eyes; I see freckles of color and rainbowed-light. So what to do?

What I shall do: I shall defy hauntings. I digest the past, in all its spikes; then I will forget it. I will know the past; it has kissed me blithely and squatted in my house; I will feel the wild grip of past and know it still struggles under my skin but I will not see it. It will be in me, but I will not love it. The past: that ghosted hunger; look, I’m going to ignore my appetite.

Oh present, I open my mouth to consume you in full.