Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celanwas a Romanian-born German language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți, in the then Kingdom of Romania, and adopted the pseudonym "Paul Celan".. He became one of the major German-language poets of the post-World War II era...
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 November 1920
CountryRomania
running art lying
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?
giving-up writing world
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.
germany masters
Death is a master from Germany.
lonely loneliness poetry
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?
loss language spite
Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.
rose holocaust flowering
A nothing we were, are, shall remain, flowering: the nothing--, the no one's rose.
pieces healed
They've healed me to pieces.
reality doe
Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.
strong heart reality
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.
writing hands differences
Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.