“Part Woodcutter and Part Charlatan”: Tom Paulin’s Heidegger

When the full extent of Martin Heidegger's commitment to Nazism emerged in the 1980s, the resulting 'Affair' provoked many poetic, dramatic and fictional treatments. In his substantial poem 'The Caravans on Lüneberg Heath' (1987), Ulster poet Tom Paulin initially responded with an impassioned critique, and he has returned to Heidegger several more times in his poetry and criticism. The result is one of the subtlest and most ambivalent treatments of the Heidegger case, which touches on some of Paulin's most urgent poetic concerns regarding hermetic language, 'dwelling without roots', and the role of the committed intellectual within an oppressive state.