Paul Celan > Quotes

“Poetry is a sort of homecoming.”
― Paul Celan

“who
is invisible enough
to see you”
― 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.”
― Paul Celan

“How you die out in me:

down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you're there, with a
splinter
of life.”
― Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan

“There was earth inside them, and they dug.”
― Paul Celan

“Spring: trees flying up to their birds”
― Paul Celan

“Don't sign your name
between worlds,

surmount
the manifold of meanings,

trust the tearstain,
learn to live.”
― Paul Celan, Glottal Stop

“They've healed me to pieces.”
― Paul Celan

“Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.”
― Paul Celan

“Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.”
― Paul Celan

“you're rowing by wordlight”
― Paul Celan

“in the air, there your root remains, there, in the air”
― Paul Celan

“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.”
― Paul Celan

“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?”
― Paul Celan

“Speak you too,
speak as the last,
say out your say.

Speak-
But don’t split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
Give it the shadow.

Give it shadow enough,
Give it as much
As you know is spread round you from
Midnight to midday and midnight.

Look around:
See how things all come alive-
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.

But now the place shrinks, where you stand:
Where now, shadow-stripped, where?
Climb. Grope upwards.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!
Finer: a thread
The star wants to descend on:
So as to swim down beliow, down here
Where it sees itself shimmer:in the swell
Of wandering words.”
― Paul Celan

“Each arrow you shoot off
carries its own target
into the decidedly
secret
tangle”
― Paul Celan, Glottal Stop

“Between always and never”
― Paul Celan

“Count up the almonds,
Count what was bitter and kept you waking,
Count me in too:

I sought your eye when you glanced up and no one would see you,
I spun that secret thread
Where the dew you mused on
Slid down to pitchers
Tended by a word that reached no one’s heart.
There you first fully entered the name that is yours,
you stepped to yourself on steady feet,
the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence,
things overheard thrust through to you,
what’s dead put it’s arm around you too,
and the three of you walked through the evening.

Render me bitter.
Number me among the almonds”
― Paul Celan

“no one
bears witness for the
witness”
― Paul Celan

“Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen
Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft
dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng”
― 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. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and could resurface, 'enriched' by it all.”
― Paul Celan

“Ein Nichts
waren wir, sind wir, werden
wir bleiben, blühend.
die Nichts-, die
Niemandsrose.”
― Paul Celan, Die Niemandsrose / Sprachgitter.

“rush of pine scent (once upon a time),

the unlicensed conviction
there ought to be another way
of saying
this.”
― Paul Celan, Glottal Stop

“And the too much of my speaking:
heaped up round the little
crystal dressed in the style of your silence.”
― Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan

“The poem is born dark; it comes, as the result of a radical individuation, into the world as a language fragment, thus, as far as language manages to be world, freighted with world.”
― Paul Celan

“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.”
― Paul Celan

“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.”
― Paul Celan

“With wine and being lost, with
less and less of both:

I rode through the snow, do you read me
I rode God far--I rode God
near, he sang,
it was
our last ride over
the hurdled humans.

They cowered when
they heard us
overhead, they
wrote, they
lied our neighing
into one of their
image-ridden languages.”
― Paul Celan, Glottal Stop

“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.”
― Paul Celan

“Über die Ferne der finsteren Fluren
hebt mich mein Stern in dein schwärmendes Blut.
Nicht mehr am Weh, das wir beide erfuhren,
rätselt, der leicht in der Dämmerung ruht.

Wie soll er, Süße, dich betten und wiegen,
daß seine Seele das Schlummerlied krönt?
Nirgends, wo Traum ist und Liebende liegen,
hat je ein Schweigen so seltsam getönt.

Nun, wenn nur Wimpern die Stunden begrenzen,
tut sich das Leben der Dunkelheit kund.
Schließe, Geliebte, die Augen, die glänzen.
Nichts mehr sei Welt als dein schimmernder Mund.”
― Paul Celan, Die Gedichte.