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
quotes reality
Reality is not simply there, it must be searched and won.
reality land hopeful
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.
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.
language
I went with my very being toward language.
shade speak
He speaks truly who speaks the shade.
understanding
Read! Read all the time, the understanding will come by itself.
invisible enough
who is invisible enough to see you
rowing
you're rowing by wordlight
heart dark stones
The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosophers Stone.
language
The language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere.
heart eye names
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
beauty truth poetry
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.
arrows secret target
Each arrow you shoot off carries its own target into the decidedly secret tangle