Best 32 quotes of Paul Celan on MyQuotes

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

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.

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.

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.

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

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.

He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

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.

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

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

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?

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.

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

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

Spring: trees flying up to their birds

Tall poplars--human beings of this earth!

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

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?

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 two heart-grey puddles: two mouthsfull of silence.

They've healed me to pieces.

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.

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.

A Leaf, Treeless A LEAF, treeless for Bertolt Brecht: What times are these when a coversation is almost a crime because it includes so much made explicit?

Ein Nichts waren wir, sind wir, werden wir bleiben, blühend. die Nichts-, die Niemandsrose.

Homecoming Snowfall, denser and denser, dove-coloured as yesterday, snowfall, as if even now you were sleeping. White, stacked into distance. Above it, endless, the sleigh track of the lost. Below, hidden, presses up what so hurts the eyes, hill upon hill, invisible. On each, fetched home into its today, an I slipped away into dumbness: wooden, a post. There: a feeling, blown across by the ice wind attaching its dove- its snow- coloured cloth as a flag.

I Hear that the Axe has Flowered I hear that the axe has flowered, I hear that the place can't be named, I hear that the bread which looks at him heals the hanged man, the bread baked for him by his wife, I hear that they call life our only refuge.

They are the efforts of someone who, overarced by stars that are human handiwork, and who, shelterless in this till now undreamt of sense and thus most uncannily in the open, goes with his very being into language, reality-wounded and reality-seeking.

U izvoru tvojih očiju more drži svoju riječ. Ja ondje bacam srce koje je boravilo kod ljudi.

Wer auf dem Kopf geht, der hat den Himmel als Abgrund unter sich.

You Were My Death You were my death: you I could hold when all fell away from me.