Broken Latin, Secret Europe: Benjamin, Celan, Derrida

The author begins by analyzing Walter Benjamin’s quarrel with George Kreis and the respective visions of culture advocated by both sides of the debate. Then, he offers a reading of a poem by Paul Celan in which the poet sides with Benjamin, but also makes his position more complex, ultimately offering a paradoxical figure of “the secret openness” or “open/public secrecy” as a remedy against the “mystery” of the Georgians. This idea can be seen as developed in Jacques Derrida’s understanding of secrecy, which the author proceeds to analyze. The secrecy as a deconstructive rift in the public discourse, a split which tears it open, can be seen as opposed both to the undemocratic mystery and to the seeming openness of globalatinization. After considering the formal, political and (post)religious aspects of secrecy, the author ends with showing how literature as such is the most powerful medium of Derridean secret.