Poetisches Denken und die Frage nach dem Menschen: Grundzüge einer poetologischen Anthropologie by Marko Pajević (review)

Marko Pajević’s previous studies have laid the groundwork for his most recent philosophical and anthropological work on the role of poetic imagination (“poetisches Denken”) in reformulating what it means to be human in its highest and most sublime sense and in developing the fundamental outlines of a poetological anthropology (“poetologische Anthropologie”). These building stones include several previous publications on the poetics of various twentieth century writers, book-length studies of Celan and Kafk a in German, a volume on poetry and musicality in French, and a study of poetics after the Holocaust in Germany and Europe in English.

In the opening pages of his text Pajević points to the early German romantics as predecessors in their high regard for the poetic imagination and the transformative role that they played in a vision of man’s potential. He underscores this role in its highest embodiments as a kind of creative thought process that constitutes the subject de novo in its relationships to the world and the other. Just as the natural sciences have generated the linguistic means beyond a purely logical language to explore new theoretical impulses such as string theory and dark matter, so too must the humanities explore more encompassing ways to express phenomena of human life beyond the limits of logical constraints. With numerous allusions to literary and philosophical predecessors, including Thomas Mann, Günther Anders, Martin Buber, and Martin Heidegger, Pajević’s projections are intensely provocative as well as extremely topical for anyone who has ever felt a sense of inadequacy in the face of the technological advances that have flooded human sensibilities in just the past twenty years. In the remaining pages of his introductory chapter Pajević combs the thought of two contemporary European philosophers, the German Peter Sloterdijk and the Italian Giogio Agamben, for stimulation and support of his own anthropological project. In the final few pages of this first chapter, the author sketches the focus of his attention for the remaining four major chapters. A final short summation and glimpse forward rounds out his highly innovative attempt to engage “die Frage nach dem Menschen” on a fundamental level.

Pajević examines in the second long section the historical roots and contemporary state of man’s interrogation of his own nature—an anthropology dominated by the life sciences—as a foil for the development of his poetological anthropology. He finds allies in the recent work of Gernot Böhme and Günter Seubold, who criticize the emphasis on the physical over the spiritual aspects of human beings in traditional anthropological studies. The increasingly mechanized image of man threatens his very human dignity, a process that, left unmodified, could lead to the replacement of the traditional demarcations distinguishing man, God, and animals with one distinguishing man and machine. In the fascinating subsection on science, philosophy, and art, the author makes the case for literary value an sich, arguing that poetry stands in a cognitive relationship to reality and possesses intrinsic value quite apart from historical, sociological, or psychological value. It comes as no surprise that in his buildup to the subsections on “Sprachdenken,” “Dialogisches Denken,” and finally “Poetisches Denken,” Pajević emphasizes the “linguistic turn” (104) that literary scholarship has taken for almost half a century and cites Celan’s poignantly expressive words: “Wirklichkeit ist nicht. Wirklichkeit will gesucht und gewonnen werden” (122).

The author’s historical review of attempts to formulate the significance of language for human existence ranges far and wide, from the Greeks to the present day. Relying heavily on Jürgen Trabant’s recent studies of language, Pajević locates the crisis in man’s contemporary self-image in the very neglect of the value of poetic expression captured by Celan but apparently antithetical to the modern-day romance with its technology and machines. He writes approvingly of Trabant’s conclusion that the moment of poetic expression is man’s most intensely human experience. And, since “alles Sein...