«durch… den Büßerschnee…». L’ultima poesia del ciclo Atemkristall

Not by chance, Celan’s cycle of short poems Atemkristall is a ‘laboratory case’ of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, upon which the German  philosopher wrote the famous essay Who Am I and Who Are You? , whose original context was a controversial discussion with Peter Szondi, the author of Celan-Studien and Celan’s personal friend, about the textual assumptions of the literary hermeneutics. Gadamer in the beginning disagrees on deriving extratextual informations such as those occurred in Szondi’s hermeneutics. But when i.e. in a Celan’s poem the word ‘ Eden ’ occurs, we see the risk of misunderstanding the historical allusion, if we don’t know that this name belongs now to the hotel along the River Spree in Berlin built in the place of the barracks where Rosa Luxemburg was murdered. So the image of the snow ( Schnee ) is the thread running through all the Atemkristall cycle, outlining an ‘autobiographical’ itinerary across which poetry becomes an irrevocable evidence. A ‘metapoetical’ itinerary of the poetry reflecting on itself – from snow to snow –, where the ‘You’ presents frequently female connotations. And with no doubt the german word Dichtung (Poetry) is feminine.