ABSTRACT
Derrida has been talking about 'GROSSE, GLUHENDE WOLBUNG', a poem by Paul Celan, from the collection Atemwende. The poem itself contains a remarkable evocation of music, of music characterized as song, and yet apparently produced not by a voice, but by an instrument, a ram's horn. It is as music that the poem calls us, interrupts us, makes a claim on us: this theme is taken up by Derrida through Celan's expression 'Gesang der Windungen', in the poem 'GROSSE, GLUHENDE WOLBUNG'. Music might make death tolerable, because in the language of music, it might be possible not to betray the other; but for our words we need always to be forgiven. Derrida does not play music for his audience, he talks about music; and, as people will see, not a specified piece of music, but the possibility of music, the instruments that produce music.
