Quotes from Paul Celan

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

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?

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

How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

Reality is not simply there, it must be searched and won.

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

rush of pine scent (once upon a time), the unlicensed conviction there ought to be another way of saying this.

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

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosopher's Stone.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

who is invisible enough to see you

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

How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

There was earth inside them, and they dug.

Spring: trees flying up to their birds

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

They've healed me to pieces.

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

you're rowing by wordlight

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

With a changing key, you unlock the house where the snow of what's silenced drifts. Just like the blood that bursts from Your eye or mouth or ear, so your key changes. Changing your key changes the word That may drift with flakes. Just like the wind that rebuffs you, Clenched round your word is the snow.

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

no one bears witness for the witness