Paul Celan Quotes

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.

who is invisible enough to see you

A nothing we were, are, shall remain, flowering: the nothing--, the no one's rose.

The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosophers Stone.

He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

Read! Read all the time, the understanding will come by itself.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

A poem, being an instance of language, hence essentially dialogue, may be a letter in a bottle thrown out to the sea with the-surely not always strong-hope that it may somehow wash up somewhere, perhaps on the shoreline of the heart. In this way, too, poems are en route: they are headed towards. Toward what? Toward something open, inhabitable, an approachable you, perhaps, an approachable reality. Such realities are, I think, at stake in a poem.

They've healed me to pieces.

Don't sign your name between worlds, surmount the manifold of meanings, trust the tearstain, learn to live.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

There was earth inside them, and they dug.

There's nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

We are told that when Hölderlin went 'mad,' he constantly repeated, 'Nothing is happening to me, nothing is happening to me.'

in the air, there your root remains, there, in the air

The language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere.

Poetry is perhaps this: an Atemwende, a turning of our breath. Who knows, perhaps poetry goes its way—the way of art—for the sake of just such a turn? And since the strange, the abyss and Medusa’s head, the abyss and the automaton, all seem to lie in the same direction—is it perhaps this turn, this Atemwende, which can sort out the strange from the strange? It is perhaps here, in this one brief moment, that Medusa’s head shrivels and the automaton runs down? Perhaps, along with the I, estranged and freed here, in this manner, some other thing is also set free?

Each arrow you shoot off carries its own target into the decidedly secret tangle

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

Tall poplars--human beings of this earth!

Illegibility of this world. All things twice over. The strong clocks justify the splitting hour, hoarsely. You , clamped into your deepest part, climb out of yourself for ever.

A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.

Reachable, near and not lost, there remained in the midst of the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes, in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, “enriched” by all this.