In the last years, I have developed the political aspects of poetic thinking.
This becomes manifest in the monograph Poetisch denken. Jetzt, Passagen, Wien, October 2022 (Estonian translation: Poeetiliselt mõtelda. Nüüd ja kohe, trans. Jaanus Sooväli, Tartu University Press, 2023; English translation: Poetic Thinking Now,, trans. Nicola Creighton, Routledge, 2023), and in the edited volume and special issue on multilingualism and the political in German and Baltic literature (2020 and 2021). I pursued this with a conference on Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature (September 2021, Tartu) that will result in an edited volume: Forthcoming 2023: Care, Control and Covid-19. Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature, de Gruyter, Berlin/ New York, 2023, co-editor with Raili Marling, introduction and chapter (ca 320 pp.).
Also my work on developing the notion of the abyss in various languages and cultures into a concept for cultural theory is closely related to poetic thinking and the world-forming power of concepts, that is language. I organized a conference on this topic (October 2021, Tartu) that will result in an edited volume: Forthcoming 2023: The Abyss as a Concept for Cultural Theory. A Comparative Exploration, Brill, Leiden, 2023, editor, introduction and chapter (ca. 350 pp.)
For several years I have applied the notion of poetic thinking to translation theory, working on a monograph on Why Translation Transforms the World – A Poetic Thinking of Translation.
‘Is Translation Always Transmedial? Clive Scott’s Reader-Oriented Translation Theory and Practice’. Paper at the conference Transmedial Turn? Potentials, Problems, and Points to Consider, Tartu University, 8-11.12.2020
‘Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations – Biblical Hebrew as Transformer of Language Theory and Society’. Invited paper at the Université de Montréal, Conférence du MIDI, Dépt. de Lingustique et de Traduction, Université de Montréal, 4.10.2018
‘Buber/Rosenzweig’s and Meschonnic’s Bible Translations – Biblical Hebrew as Transformer of Language Theory and Society’. Invited paper in the German Studies Dept., Brown University, Providence, RI, 1.10.2018.
I also applied the concept of Poetic Thinking to transnational literature and multilingualism. I received the ‘Seal of Excellence’ by the EU, Horizon 2020, in 2018 for a grant application on a planned monograph on Speaking in Tongues. Multilingualism, Literature and Planetarity.
For this project, I gave several papers:
The following publication resulted from the latter papers:
I also organized the following conference, 14-15 November 2019: 'Mehrsprachigkeit und das Politische in zeitgenössischer deutschsprachiger und baltischer Kultur', which resulted in the following publications:
A volume on Paul Celan’s poetics, in collaboration with Prof Dr Karen Leeder (Oxford) and Prof Dr Michael Eskin (NY), Paul Celan Today – A Companion came out with de Gruyter, series ’Companions to Contemporary German Culture’, in 2021, comprising over 20 contributions by leading international Celan-scholars and artists, including my chapter ‘Correspondences of and with Celan – Transfer Processes of Life’.
I received a British Academy research grant in 2017 for a project on the thinking language of Henri Meschonnic, financing a symposium at Queen Mary University of London on 22 September 2017 and two workshops (23 Sept 2017 / 24 Febr 2018) in view of the translation of key texts by Meschonnic for a Meschonnic Reader in English language. Six translators – Pier-Pascale Boulanger, Andrew Eastman, John Joseph, David Nowell Smith, Marko Pajević and Chantal Wright – translated over representative 300 pages of Meschonnic’s works in a cautiously designed collaboration, ensuring quality, consistency and correct terminology.
This resulted in a special issue of Comparative Critical Studies, Oct 2018, ed. by Marko Pajević and David Nowell Smith: Thinking Language with Henri Meschonnic, with an introduction and an article by myself;
and in The Henri Meschonnic Reader: A Poetics of Society, ed. by Marko Pajević, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, with a substantial introduction by myself.
Queen Mary University of London; Lockkeeper’s Cottage
22 September 2017
Organised by Marko Pajević
Funded by the British Academy / Leverhulme
Marko Pajević (QMUL/Centre Marc Bloch, Humboldt Universität Berlin): Welcome and Introduction
David Nowell Smith (UEA): The Dynamic Unfolding/Enfolding of Sense
Serge Martin (Paris III – Sorbonne): Towards an Anthropology of the Voice with Henri Meschonnic; Respondent: Robert Gillett (QMUL)
Marko Pajević (QMUL/ Berlin): For a poetics of society: thinking language with Henri Meschonnic; Respondent: Rüdiger Görner (QMUL)
John E. Joseph (Edinburgh): Language-Body Continuity in the Linguistics-Semiology-Poetics-Traductology of Henri Meschonnic
Clive Scott (UEA): Translating Rhythm into the Rhythm of Translation
Respondent: Rafael Costa Mendes (Paris III – Sorbonne)
23 September 2017: translation workshop at QMUL for participants only
Other papers on Meschonnic are:
in Montréal: ‘A Poetics of Society: Thinking Language with Henri Meschonnic’, invited paper at the Université de Montréal, Seminar of Prof John Leavitt, Anthropology, 5.10.2018
Other Publications on Meschonnic:
Other papers and publications to promote the concept of poetic thinking include:
I received a British Academy research grant in 2016 for a project on the importance of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s thinking language today, financing a symposium at Queen Mary University of London on 29 April 2016 and resulting in a special issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies:
Thinking Language. Wilhelm von Humboldt Now, editor together with David Nowell Smith, Special Issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies, Oxford UP, 53/1, Jan 2017
This volume offers studies on one of the crucial language thinkers at the basis of poetic thinking. Humboldt, albeit one of the most important language thinkers of all times and very influential particularly in Germany and France, has been little studied in Anglophone academia and this volume intends to trigger a more intensive reception of his work.
A Symposium at Queen Mary, University of London
Funded by British Academy/Leverhulme
29 April 2016
Marko Pajević (London): Welcome and Introduction
Chair and respondent: David Nowell Smith (East Anglia)
John E. Joseph (Edinburgh): Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Reception in the Anglosphere, 1820-present
Chair and respondent: James W. Underhill (Rouen)
Jürgen Trabant (Berlin): Vanishing Worldviews
Ute Tintemann (Berlin): Collecting Language Date: from Humboldt to the Language Archive
Chair and respondent: Marko Pajević (London)
James W. Underhill (Rouen): Humboldt in Translation Theory. Pearls of wisdom, or splashes in the ocean?
Barbara Cassin (Paris): Humboldt, Translation, and the Dictionary of Untranslatables
Chair and respondent: Jürgen Trabant (Berlin)
John Walker (London): Wilhelm von Humboldt and Dialogical Thinking
Marko Pajević (London): Humboldt’s ‘thinking language’: Poetics and Politics
I also used a more popular form to disseminate some of the basic ideas in
And gave several papers on the concept:
This overarching project found its first concrete substantial manifestion in my habilitation (qualification for professorship) on Poetic Thinking and the Human. Foundations of a poetological Anthropology at the University of Rouen in 2012; published as Poetisches Denken und die Frage nach dem Menschen. Grundzüge einer poetologischen Anthropologie, Karl Alber Verlag, Reihe Dia-Logik, Freiburg i.Br., 2012 (358 pp.).
In this book I develop a theory of poetic thinking based primarily on philosophico-historical anthropology, the linguistic anthropologies of Jürgen Trabant and Henri Meschonnic as well as the dialogical thought of Martin Buber, and I apply this approach to contemporary literature and film.
A presentation of this book is available here.
I presented some of the ideas in several papers:
My PhD-thesis on the poetics of Paul Celan initiated the project by establishing the connection of Celan’s poetics and the query about the human, demonstrating that this particular dealing with language represents a reflection on what it means to be human, not only thematically but also in its elaborated poetic forms; published as Zur Poetik Paul Celans: Gedicht und Mensch – Die Arbeit am Sinn, Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, Band 177, Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg, 2000 (310 pp.)