The Inconclusive Text: On Paul Celan’s “Blume”

This paper presents a close reading of the poem “Blume,” which emphasizes the inter-textual relations between the final and the preliminary drafts. More specifically, the paper proposes to read the textual history of the poem as a singular expression of a past that remains active in the present. The poem, while remaining mindful of the past and its impact on the present, is ultimately about releasing potentialities that remain and will continue to remain yet-to-be-realized. The poem, on this view, is not an autonomous aesthetic totality, but a singular expression of inconclusive textuality.